Fourteen
Erin sucked in a breath. Had that been a confession? Or the start of one? She wasn't sure. But her sister had come up and she panicked. She had to make sure that she had him wrapped around her finger. If he started talking now, maybe she would have been able to handle it.
She tried to catch her breath. The pizza was cold now, and Craig had left after. He'd taken her number down. Two guys in a week, and both of them had her number, while she only had a dead girl's and the one number on earth she would never call.
There was something strange about it all. Maybe it was her, maybe it was how she was acting, but she wasn't about to worry about that. Not right now.
A call came a moment later, while she was trying to decide if it was worth the effort to finish the pizza, or if it should be moved to the fridge. Or the garbage, for that matter. She picked up.
"Erin Russo," she said, keeping her voice nice and light just in case the wrong person called. This was, she suspected, why people kept track of contacts in their phone.
"How are you holding up?" Roy sounded genuinely concerned, which only made her more annoyed.
"I'm fine. Is this a social call, or did you want to gloat some more?"
"I never gloated, Erin. I'm just doing my job."
"By not letting me do mine? How kind of you."
She could hear him take a deep breath and let it out slowly on the other end of the line. "I know you went straight home to do your own investigation."
"I would never do that, Special Agent Schafer."
"Erin, sometimes I can be distant, and sometimes I can overlook things—but I'm not an idiot."
"And of course I wouldn't say that you were an idiot. After all, you're a hard-working employee of our federal government and I respect the work you do."
"I'm sensing some sarcasm there."
"Oh, no, sir. No sarcasm, as long as your work is outside of Los Angeles."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he answered. "I'm about to hit lunch, and I wanted to know if you wanted to let me know what you've found. I might be able to share some things with you, as well."
Erin opened her mouth to say she'd already eaten, but with the lunch came the information, and she sure as hell wanted access to that. "Sure."
"I'll meet you somewhere, you got a recommendation?"
"Anywhere that isn't pizza," she said, looking sideways at the open box on her coffee table whose smell was slowly overtaking the smell of sex in the room.
"Okay, then. Uh. Chinese?"
"Fine by me." She gave him an address for someplace near the station. No reason to get him lost on his second day in town. It wouldn't get him pulled off the case, and would only make pumping him for information harder.
She got dressed. Nothing like the way she was going to get dressed for Craig. This wasn't a chance to show off her body. It was a chance to get information and give very little back. She let out a breath. It was a bit rude of her, she knew, but it didn't change the fact that she was going to do it all the same.
She took the straightest route, but there was no way that she was going to beat him there. It was half the distance for him, after all. Even still, she only pulled in a moment after him, parked in next to his car, and got out wearing a long dress. She only owned a few, for the rare occasion that they got her to go to a formal dinner, and even then she felt under-dressed. Now she felt over-dressed, but she ignored it.
Playing with Roy didn't mean getting him hot and horny and taking him back to her place. It meant convincing him that there was going to be something between them. She hadn't decided yet whether or not that idea was toying with him. Looking at him, he wasn't so bad, and she could certainly get used to him being around.
She scolded herself internally. It would be great. He was a good guy and all, but that didn't much matter, because he wasn't going to be around. Not for very long, anyways. So she had better not get used to the idea, because it sure as hell wasn't going to happen, like it or not.
She straightened her dress and fixed a smile as he came around. She could see that he wasn't sure how to greet her—with a handshake, a hug, or a nod—and she let him live in the uncertainty for a minute. She enjoyed seeing him squirm, a secret pleasure that she couldn't have admitted to but couldn't deny.
Finally he came in for a hug and she accepted it, hugged him back. "You okay?"
Erin nodded. "I'm fine, why? Do I look ill?"
"Erin, your sister just died."
"I know that the FBI sent their best men just to look into it."
Roy rolled his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. "You know, you don't need to do that."
"Do what?"
"Be sarcastic all the damn time."
"What makes you think I'm being sarcastic?"
"I know how it is, okay? I know that you guys don't like it when we step in on your cases. I'm not a politician, but I'm not an idiot. But I'm a cop, and I investigate my case, and this is my case. Has been for a year now."
"Only a year? I thought there had been murders the past four."
"You noticed that, did you? Someone should make you a detective. You're perceptive."
It was Erin's turn to roll her eyes. "Thanks, college boy."
"I took over from a Special Agent who ended up not cutting it. He couldn't turn it into anything."
"What, not enough profiling crap?"
"Too much. He was either sexually frustrated, or he was a sexual sadist, and he liked his mother too much, or not enough. The damn head-shrinkers had us jumping at every opportunity. Not enough solid police-work. But by the time I get ahold of the case, even the most recent murder sites are weeks old. Most of them years old. The trail's cold."
"So, what, you wait around until another one comes along, is that it?"
"Not exactly, no. We had bait set up to try to catch the next guy, but come on. Looking for a creep on an online dating site is like looking for a needle in a field of needle-stacks, you know that."
"Sure. So the end result is, though, you can't catch the guy soon enough, so you have to rely on trying to catch him when he strikes again."
"You're not totally wrong."
"Why the vacation?"
"It's important to get away sometimes. To make sure that you have a clear head. Why? You don't believe in being away a little?"
"I believe in closing cases and getting my work done."
They had seated already, a waitress watching them talk from the front counter but not coming to take their orders yet.
"Of course, don't we all? But that's not really a fair picture to paint, and I think you know that. It's just not feasible to do that sort of thing all the time. There's always another case. Always more work to do. You can run yourself ragged, never stopping, but at some point, are you hurting the work you're doing?"
"It never hurt my work. I kept a near-perfect clear rate, and of those, conviction rates—well, they are what they are."
"So, not as great as you wanted?"
"That's not on my head," Erin growled, flicking a hair out of her face a little too sharply. "It's the District Attorney's job at that point."
"That's sweet," Roy said. He looked up at the woman who had finally approached. "Could I get the Teriyaki Chicken, white rice?"
Erin ordered just a bit of fried rice. She still wasn't very hungry, after all. 'Big breakfast,' she claimed.
"I don't want to fight with you, Erin. I think we're close to making a break. If we're lucky, we can get whoever took your sister before he takes someone else." He leaned in close. "So I need you to stay away from that guy. That Hutchinson guy. I think he's dangerous, and I don't want to see you get hurt."
"Okay," she said, electing not to mention that he'd been inside her earlier that day. "Done. Anything else?"