Jacob crosses my living room, opens my front door, and in about thirty seconds shuts it again. Just that fast, his sexy, arrogant, big-ass self, is closing the space between me and him again, all loose-legged swagger with his overnight bag in his hand. The bag that says he’s not leaving because he doesn’t believe the butterfly slayer is going away. I wish I could argue. I wish I could say that he’s wrong. I wish I could send him away or keep him here for the right reasons—he’s hot and we’re hot together—because it’s been a long time since I’ve been hot with anyone.
He stops on the other side of the coffee table and pats his bag. “We should have everything we need now.”
“Including your overnight boxers?” I ask, because I just want the man to blush, or smile, or react in some human way.
“I’m a tighty-whitey kind of guy,” he says, which might seem like a joke from someone else, but from Jacob, it sounds like a fact check.
But I’m not ready to give up. “I think you should know,” I say, as he rounds the coffee table to join me on the couch again, “that our conversation about your tighty-whitey underwear means that I’m officially in the most committed relationship of my adult life. With a man I still haven’t decided if I like.”
“We already covered this,” he says, pulling his MacBook from his bag. “You like me. You said so.”
“I don’t hate you. I’ve committed to nothing else.”
“And this is the most committed relationship you’ve ever had?”
“In what I consider my adult life. Okay, no. Actually, that’s really not true. There’s David Rodriquez.”
“The detective?”
“Yes, and I don’t like that you knew that.”
“I told you. I have to know you to protect you, but I didn’t find any evidence you were dating him.”
I grimace. “I didn’t say I was dating him, or fucking him, for that matter.”
“Then I’m confused. How is he your most committed relationship?”
“We’ve stared at each other across our desks for all of my four years as a detective and for the past six months of that time, we actually said real sentences to each other. He even brings me chocolate on occasion, in an effort to keep me from being bitchy. Now that I think about it, we might be in love.”
He gives me a three-second deadpan look. “You win. You’re more committed with him than I’ve ever been with anyone. Ever.”
“Do all Green Berets have commitment issues?”
“I own my commitment issues,” he says, and obviously eager to get off topic, which we both know is headed toward my cold-case Green Beret, he pulls his MacBook from his bag. “I need a few to pull up the feed,” he says.
“Speaking of the feed,” I say. “Is Asher shy? He sure ran off quickly.”
“The minute we hung up with Savage, he called Asher and asked him for security footage to review as well,” he says. “He’s taking it over to him. And before you ask, yes, we watch the feed in real time, but Savage wants to do what we’re doing. Look for what he might have missed.”
It’s exactly what I would have done, if I were Savage. “I approve,” I say. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes, actually,” he says. “And not because I’m arrogant, detective. Because I want you to feel confident that your father is as protected as you are.”
Detective.
I am kind of sick of him calling me that, when I should approve. It’s formal. It’s a wall.
I stand up and head toward the kitchen. “No reply?” he calls after me.
“No reply,” I say, and not because I’m being an asshole now myself. Because at that very moment I’m at the island, reaching for the wine bottle when my attention lands on the butterfly. On the broken wing, the warning and threat in that break cutting through me. And while I make a habit of forcing myself to look at crime scene photos, I can’t look at that butterfly one more second. Snatching up the bag, I stuff it in a drawer under the island before returning to the living room with my briefcase, my glass, and the bottle of wine.
“Detective,” he says softly, only to amend to, “Jewel” and I can feel the way he’s looking at me, willing me to look at him, seeing too much, and yet I find myself giving in. I don’t fight him.
I glance over at him. “A sincere moment here,” I say. “I’m impressed with what your team is doing. I’m relieved that your team is protecting my father, but after that butterfly showed up, catching this creep is all that is going to make me feel better.”
His eyes soften and then darken. “Nothing is going to happen to you or your father,” he says. “I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I don’t.”
“You just did,” I say, “and I’m not some random woman you’re protecting. I’ve been in my only version of your warzones. Words don’t comfort me.”
“Then what does?” he asks.
I’m taken aback by the fact that this question is thoughtful. It’s not a demand that I just feel relief. “Catching the bad guy.”
“But there’s always another bad guy.”
“Yeah,” I say. “There is. What about you?”
He arches a brow. “Me?”
“Yes. You. I know you saw bad things. Did leaving the service give you comfort or peace?”
There is a flicker of some emotion in his eyes I can’t quite read, there and gone before I can really even try. “I’m still trying to decide.”
There is so much more to that statement than just the words spoken, and I want to ask more, to know more about him, when I should not. He confuses me, challenges me, infuriates me, but perhaps, if I’m honest with myself, that’s because I’m drawn to him. And I don’t want to be drawn to anyone. I don’t want anyone, ever again. But right now, here in this moment, there’s just me and him, a man and a woman, both I believe, damaged in our own ways, so I dare to push forward. I dare to ask for more. “What does that mean?”
His phone buzzes with a text. He hesitates, as if he’s not ready to leave this moment with me just yet, but then he gives a slight shake of his head, as if scolding himself. And just like that our moment is the next, and our little soul-revealing conversation, is over.
He glances at his screen and then me. “My team in the surveillance truck confirmed they’re reviewing the feed again as well.” He picks up his wine and takes a sip. “I’d say our target window for review is the window after we left the restaurant until to your arrival here. That’s the only way our slayer could have been certain you’d find it.”
“Agreed,” I say, sliding down to the floor to gain a better view of the screen, which is focused on the front door.
“I started our review at one hour ago,” Jacob says, tabbing through the footage, but almost instantly he adds, “Houston, we have a problem.” He joins me on the floor, as if trying to gain a closer view himself. “We can’t see feet level.” He grabs his phone and dials it on speaker. The line rings once before a male voice answers.
“What’s up, army dude?”
“We have a problem, Ash,” Jacob bites out, almost sounding frustrated, almost, but that would require emotion, of course, that he doesn’t show. “This security footage cuts off at knee level. We need to see the ground.”
“I’m good at what I do,” Asher says. “But I can’t create feed that wasn’t fucking shot.”
“What about cameras on aligned structures?” Jacob counters.
“There aren’t any cameras to hack,” he says. “It’s a residential area, and not a fancy high-rise, high security residential area, either. And even if we captured a random camera, it’s not going to show her porch. I’ll get with our team and get corrections made.”
“Can we make sure those same corrections are made with my father’s team?” I ask.
“Done,” Asher says before he adds, his keyboard clicking. “I just messaged Savage. And nice to fucking meet you, detective.”
Obviously, he talked about me with Savage, and I accept the prompt accordingly. “Nice to fucking meet you too, Asher. Nicer if you can get me footage of our butterfly slayer.”
“Nicer indeed,” Asher agrees. “I’ll hack around and see what I can do, but no promises.”
“Call us back to confirm your failure,” Jacob snaps, clearly challenging him.
Asher laughs. “Okay, man. I know you’re punching my buttons and I’m taking the bait. I’ll call back and when I do you’ll say thanks for all your fucking badass-ness, Asher—”
Jacob hangs up. “We need to look through the footage and make sure your slayer isn’t in the building.”
“Agreed,” I say. “But then I want to see the notes.”
“Understood,” he says, but he’s focused on the computer screen, already tabbing through the footage, slowing it as two people head inside the building: a pretty blonde and her guest, a man with a beanie and a scarf that blocks his face “That’s Sally Moore,” I say. “Her bed is a rotation of men that she doesn’t know. She’d actually be a perfect target for a male slayer to enter the building.”
Sally and her man enter the building and Jacob leaves the now uneventful feed rolling, while pulling up a messenger window and types: Put cameras on every residential door in the building, starting with Sally Moore on the top floor. In the meantime, if the man she brought home tonight leaves, follow him. Find out who he is.
The reply from Chow Hound is instant: On it and on it.
“Who is Chow Hound?” I ask, as Jacob begins tabbing through footage again.
“Finn,” he says. “Ex-Chicago detective, who is now manning the surveillance van. And as you might guess, he is always stuffing his face.”
“Do you give everyone nicknames?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, glancing over at me. “I guess I do. Ash is ‘Tat Dude.’ He has double sleeves. Royce is “King Kong” because he goes at everything with brute force. Blake is “Fuck Face” because fuck is a verb, noun, and adjective for him. You get the idea.”
“But you don’t make jokes.”
“The nicknames protect their identity,” he says, quite seriously.
“Right. Got it. And what’s my nickname?”
“You don’t have one,” he says. “Not yet.”
“Any ideas floating around in your head? Because I have a few ideas for a nickname for you. Asshole. Bigfoot. Preacher boy. No. Make that Saint.”
“Saint?” he asks, glancing over at me.
I don’t answer. I point at the security footage and we’re both instantly focused on the feed, where a petite brunette female has appeared on film. “That’s Mary Anne,” I say, as Jacob slows the action again. “She’s a school teacher and complete sweetheart. She lives on three. And her guest list runs the same as mine, which is no one at all.” She enters the building and almost instantly, a man appears on the feed.
“Tim Mayfield,” I say, of the tall, good looking man in a suit. “He’s an attorney who is as arrogant as you are. He’s also a man-whore, who I’m pretty sure has done Sally, or she’s done him and made him think he did her.”
Tim turns and faces the security panel and a realization hits me. “Freeze that.”
Jacob hits the space bar and looks at me and says, “We can’t see the front of him or his feet.”
“Exactly,” I say. “And if you look closely, there is a bit of a recessed area at the security panel. That’s where I found the butterfly. You can’t see that shadowed area on the camera, and even if you could see the ground, I don’t think you’d be able to make it out.”
“Or see if anyone at the panel dropped something.”
“Maybe in the daylight,” I suggest. “But not at night.”
“That butterfly could have been placed hours before I arrived,” I say, as Jacob hits the spacebar again, and Tim enters the building.
“True,” Jacob says, “but the only way the slayer could have been certain that you’d be the one who found it would have been to place it right before you arrived.”
“And on that note, there I am on the feed and nothing obvious happened before I got there.”
“That we can see,” Jacob points out.
“I know I’m not crazy,” I say, lifting myself up to the couch. “Someone put that butterfly on the porch. Can you give me the security feed to look over before I go to sleep?”
He joins me on the couch again. “We’ll have to go through it together. Ash codes our data with a secure link that won’t work on any computer he hasn’t approved in advance.”
That hits me ten shades of wrong. “You’re serious?” I don’t wait for a reply. “I’ve agreed to this arrangement despite the many concerns that I’ve expressed, namely you becoming a trigger for the slayer, but I can’t even look at the security footage of my own apartment by myself?”
“I can call Ash, but that means he’ll come here and setup your computer, which could bring more of the attention from the slayer, you don’t want.”
“And we both know that can’t happen,” I say, feeling as if I’m losing control of a situation that directly affects my father’s safety, and I can’t let that happen either. “Tell Royce Walker I want to have an official meeting with him tomorrow about how we coordinate this investigation.” I reach for my briefcase where it sits on the floor and manage to hit my wine glass that tilts toward Jacob’s keyboard.
I lunge for it, and so does he, and in the same moment that he rights the glass, our foreheads collide. He curses softly while I suck in air, and somehow my hand settles on his cheek and his on mine. Our foreheads part but we don’t pull back. We linger there together, as if frozen, that push and pull between us all pull now. The anger now lust. The heated words now an invitation for a heated kiss. In this moment, I decide that I most definitely don’t hate him. He probably doesn’t hate me either, but we’d both be better off if he did, if I did. But it doesn’t matter either way. Not now. Not when he smells like winter spice, delicious and addictive. And his breath is a warmth on my lips that I feel in every intimate part of my body.
“You okay?” he asks finally, his voice low, rough, affected for the first time since I’ve met him.
“I’m a detective,” I reply. “Of course, I’m okay.”
“You’re also human,” he says.
“Like you’re human, Mr. Never-Tells-a-Joke-or-Flirts?”
His hand slides to my neck, where it closes around my braid. “I’m protecting you,” he says, his grip tightening around my hair, but not pulling, not tugging my mouth to his. “It’s okay,” he adds, “to need me. It’s okay to be more than the badge. You know that, right?”
He’s hit a nerve. A big, deep burning nerve that reaches deep into the past where the word “need” translates to loss, death, and murder. I pull back, breaking our connection, standing as I do. He’s on his feet by the time my bag is on my shoulder, and that just feels like he’s suffocating me. “The badge is who I am,” I say. “There isn’t more than my badge and as for needing you. I do. To protect my father. You can sleep in the library upstairs. The couch folds out into a bed but there are no walls or doors. In other words, don’t sleep naked.” I rotate and start walking, the weight of his stare following me, while the way I can still feel his hand on my face taunts me.
“Detective.”
I stop at the open door to my bedroom, but I don’t turn. I wait, and he waits, until I say, “Yes?”
“I never sleep naked when I’m alone.”
I whirl around to face him. “Is that a joke?”
“I don’t joke, remember?” he replies. “I simply state facts.” And with that statement, he walks toward me, closing the space that I need between us, but that I don’t want. I consider backing up, retreating, but then he has the control that I can’t, and won’t let go.
And so, I stand my ground and he keeps coming, until we’re toe-to-toe. “And the fact is,” he adds, “that when I’m on the job, I can’t ever let myself be naked, or exposed. Because that means you’re exposed.”
“I don’t need to hear this,” I say, curling my fingers in my palm a moment because, for some godforsaken reason, it wants to land on his chest.
“Yes, you do,” he says. “Because whatever this is between us—”
“Is nothing,” I supply. “There is nothing but this investigation between us.”
“And yet there is more,” he says.
“I don’t do more.”
“I don’t do denial,” he counters. “It backfires, which is why I’m standing here. Which is why I’m saying right now that when this is over—”
“We’ll say goodbye,” I supply, entering the bedroom and shutting the door. Once it’s sealed, I collapse against it, and damn it, I didn’t let him finish. I don’t know what he was going to say, and why do I regret that so damn much right now? Goodbye is easier when it’s said from the very beginning. I’ve learned that the hard way. And nothing, and no one, not even Jacob’s arrogant, good-looking, Green Beret ass is going to make me forget that.