I hated interrogation rooms. They felt exactly how they looked like on those A&E reality TV shows. They were mostly small rooms with no windows and zero decor. Just four blank walls, a flimsy table, and a few extremely uncomfortable chairs. I had requested to get one of the larger rooms with the double-sided mirrors, but those were all “taken”. I had a feeling the police chief just liked seeing me slum it, but I was fine with it.

Mainly because I was guaranteed to see Zane today, and that made any windowless room seem much brighter to me. He had called to set up a meeting with Ricardo, and he apparently had some good news to share as well. I could tell Ricardo was getting his hopes up. He was sitting next to me, and he was chatting nonstop. About what I thought Zane found, and how soon he could get back home, how he had shows to watch, and how excited he was to just do groceries.

My heart was heavy for the guy. I didn’t like making any judgments on my clients, but I was almost a hundred percent certain Ricardo was innocent, and he was having to sleep on a back-breaking cot next to other men who were likely not as innocent as he was. I didn’t want to feed into the growing hope, though. Not until we found out exactly what Zane knew, so I let Ricardo talk himself out. By the time Zane showed up, we were already two Styrofoam cups of coffee in.

“Oh,” Zane said as he entered the room after knocking. His eyes landed on mine, and the already small room seemed to have gotten smaller. We’d been texting pretty frequently, but texts didn’t have near as big an effect on me as being in the same room as Zane did. Maybe it was because the last time I’d actually seen him, he was saving my life from a crazy gunman.

“Enzo,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

Damn right it’s nice to see me.

“Very nice to see you,” I said, keeping my tone as professional as I could. I smiled and reached for his hand, closing it and shaking. His big hand felt good being held in mine. Made me wonder how it would feel if I could knot our fingers together.

“Hello, Mr. Aventura,” Zane said, turning to Ricardo. He smiled and looked like a fawn imprinting on its maternal figure. I cocked my head, realizing Ricardo was probably thinking exactly what I was thinking.

Except I already know how Zane’s dick tastes.

I sat back down, just in time to prevent an obvious bulge from giving away my fiery thoughts. I normally wasn’t the jealous type, but I did find myself turning a slight shade of green in the tiny room. Which was ridiculous seeing as how Zane and I weren’t even anything official, so what was there to even be jealous of?

Cazzo. Why am I acting like this?

“So?” Ricardo started, his tone upbeat as he pulled the chair in toward the table. “Am I free? Do we have who did it?”

Immediately, I could see the answer in Zane’s eyes. “No,” he said, confirming my observation. “But we are closer. I met with Susan, and she told me that Luanne had been seeing someone else.”

Ricardo perked up in his seat. I watched Zane from across the table. His focus was on Ricardo, so I allowed myself extra time to stare at the smaller features on Zane’s face. The prominent cupid’s bow on his upper lip. The three—four—six—eight, the eight beauty marks that dotted his face, like a mystical constellation that created the symbol for some ancient deity. The long eyelashes that would be the envy of any Maybelline model.

Annnd merda, I’m not paying any attention to what he’s saying.

I honed back in and focused on what Zane was saying. “…She wasn’t able to give me any details of who this person is. She said Luanne was secretive in that way. I’m thinking that Luanne got involved with someone shady, and maybe promised that person a deadline on when she’d leave Oscar. With their recent marriage, I could see how this would infuriate the wrong person, to the point where they’d sneak in during the middle of the night and shoot both Luanne and Oscar pointblank.”

Damn. He’s good.

I realized that this was the first time I was really seeing Zane do his job. And wow… was he really fucking hot. He looked like a pit bull, hot on the bleeding trail of his prey. He was sitting strong in the chair, his chest held high and his shoulders back, like he had all the confidence in the world, even if the case was only moving inches at a time. Just looking at him made me feel like we had it in the bag. Like I could call each of the jury members right then and there and tell them not to even worry about it. His confidence was contagious. And served as a powerful aphrodisiac.

Seriously, I was rock hard under that table. If I hadn’t been wearing briefs, I was sure my slacks would bust in half.

“Do you know who could have potentially been the second apple of her eye?”

I looked to Ricardo, hoping that it would ease the throbbing between my thighs. “I mean, if her sister didn’t know, I’m definitely not going to know.”

It didn’t work. My cock was aching. I fisted my hands and dropped them on my lap. Bad move. The pressure was making it worse. Or better, depending on how I was looking at it.

Cazzo. Relax.

Zane was making me lose control without barely having even looked at me.

“Do you remember hearing anything?” I asked, forcing my thoughts away from between my legs. “Maybe a random name? The walls at your place aren’t exactly soundproof, right?”

“Right. That’s what my argument with them had been about. They kept waking me up at all hours of the night with their constant fucking. And especially over the last week or so before they were killed, that’s when it had gotten really bad. It was extremely loud sex. Gross sex.” Ricardo shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Straight sex?” I quipped.

“Exactly,” Ricardo said, chuckling. “But seriously, it was upsetting. So I confronted them. Nicely at first. Told them to please be considerate, that we share a bedroom wall and that I’m a light sleeper. Luanne, to her credit, apologized and looked embarrassed. I felt like she wanted to run back into the apartment and forget all about it. Oscar flipped. Said that I was making shit up, and that I was just a pathetic gay prostitute, probably trying to cover for my own weird sex. That clearly got me pissed, and shit just got out of hand.”

“Wait a second.” Zane leaned in. “You said it had gotten worse the week before her death?”

“Yeah, it was really bad. Lots of spanking and gagging and—”

“Oscar was on a work trip that week.”

Ricardo’s eyebrows shot up, along with mine. Blood redirected from my dick to my brain. “So then that must have been the other guy,” Ricardo said. He dropped his head in his hands, as though he’d find some answer in them. “Ugh.” He exhaled loudly. “I’m trying to remember if she ever said a name. But no, no I don’t think so. I would have realized then that it wasn’t Oscar. Maybe the cameras caught who the guy was?”

“I called management about checking the security camera in the hallway, but they don’t keep tapes longer than a couple of days unless there’d been an incident reported,” Zane pointed out. “So no way of going back and checking. And whoever killed them broke in through the back, where there weren’t any cameras.”

“Well, it explains why Oscar reacted the way he did when you confronted him,” I noted. “He must have realized Luanne was cheating on him. He was taking it all out on you.”

“But then they must have made up, because I didn’t hear any loud fights or anything.”

“Speaking of hearing things, you’re sure you didn’t hear anything the night of the murder?” Zane was looking down at his notepad, but I knew his attention was a thousand percent tuned into Ricardo’s answer.

“Nothing. I was in the living room, and I was… well, I was watching porn, but I like doing it with my headphones in. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Right,” Zane said. He glanced up from the notepad and must have seen the nerves on Ricardo’s face, because he said, “I believe you.”

I studied Zane’s expression, wondering for a moment if he really did believe Ricardo. This investigation could easily lead back around to Ricardo, and then there’d be an entirely different situation to deal with. But Zane didn’t reveal any doubt behind that confident expression.

“Wait, wait,” Ricardo said. Both our heads snapped to the man. “I remember something. A guy. Yeah, it has to be him! I was closing my blinds when I saw him leaving their apartment. I thought it was one of their mutual friends or something.”

“Good, good, what did you see?”

“He was a bigger guy. Long hair, down to about his shoulders. A greasy brown. He was wearing a leather jacket and looked well-put together. Uhm.” Ricardo was reaching the end of his memory. I could almost see the neurons in his brain firing, trying to signal for something more vivid. “A tattoo! I saw a tattoo—it was on his neck. Looked like a tilted peace sign. The bottom of it was covered by his jacket. But it was uhm, red and blue. And it had legs.”

“A tilted peace sign with legs?” I shook my head. “Drugs are bad, kids.”

Zane looked lost in thought. He drew something out on his notepad. Scratched it off and then sketched something else. He spun the pad around and showed it to us. On the center of the page was the peace sign, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned. It looked like a scarab, with its six legs coming out the sides.

“Yeah, that’s it!” Ricardo said.

Damn. Zane really is one of the best.

Annnd, I was hard again.

Merda.