Chapter Fourteen – Lucy

 

I tossed Kent Marten’s incident file on the table in front of me, sighing in frustration.

“What’s wrong?” Carter asked without looking up from the folder still spread out in front of him.

“This is pointless, that’s what’s wrong!” I slapped the folder shut, pushing it away from me in disgust as he looked up at me, eyebrow raised.

We’d been there in that hotel room, sitting at the small table going through the files for hours, it seemed, and the clock was ticking. This was my third or fourth time through Marten’s file, and the words were practically swimming in front of my eyes. All the information we had down on the victims seemed to amount to nothing.

No commonalities in much of anything. In their jobs, neighborhoods, or ages.

“We’re going through them, because you may have missed something in the different reports, that’s all. You didn’t know what you were looking for, before.”

“Why, though?” I asked, my hands curling into fists on the table. “We need to just go talk to the families. All of these files are about fires, not murders. Shouldn’t we be treating this like a homicide? Looking for people who might have had a grudge against them? That’s what you said.”

He sighed as he reached across the table, putting his hand on mine. It was so large it covered my own tiny appendage like it was nothing. “Yeah,” he replied, squeezing my hand softly, “I see what you’re saying. And I agree.”

At the moment his skin touched mine, my fingers began to uncurl of their own volition. Instinctively, I grabbed his hand as my mind seemed to clear. A sense of calm and comfort came over me despite the maelstrom of life swirling around us in that tiny hotel room.

He flipped his wrist around so he could see the face of his watch. “But, it’s nearly midnight already.” He ensnared my gaze with his own, and I could almost feel myself sinking into those depths. “We can’t exactly go knocking on doors of victims at this time of night, or even get them on the phone. Besides, we’ve got to wait for law enforcement to get here and take our statements. Until that’s squared away, we really shouldn’t leave or make any more rash decisions.”

I groaned and shook my head as I waved a hand in agreement. “No, you’re right. Talking to them is more important right now.”

“So, in the meantime,” he continued, pointing with his free hand to the folder in front of him as he trailed off. His eyes traveled down to our joined hands, to our fingers, which had somehow become entwined as we spoke.

There was something about the feel of his rough, callused fingers on my own. How they seemed to be so confident and sure of themselves. How they dwarfed mine with their size. How strong they appeared, yet how agile and gentle they conversely felt.

So human. So masculine. Almost beautiful.

I pulled my hand back, shook my head a little. What was I doing? This man wasn’t even really a man. He was a bear, wasn’t he? A bear with a beard, remember? Remember, Lucy? He hunted vampires, demons, and other creepy crawlies.

He wouldn’t want a woman like me.

And could I even be with a man like him? I didn’t know anything about him, except for the giant red flag waving itself right in front of my face.

His lonely, solitary hand still resting on the table like the child who got picked last at kickball, Carter frowned. Not a deep, creasing frown, but one that was just enough to turn down the corners of his lips.

My heart dropped, and the heat began to rise to my face as I looked away. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “But, we’re working a case. We shouldn’t…”

“Yeah,” he replied as he removed his hand from the table, returning it to his lap, “you’re probably right. We shouldn’t.”

I swallowed hard as I flipped open the folder I’d so recently slapped shut, and returned to the typed and organized world of the fire investigation file. All those little entry fields, all those well-reasoned notes. The columns and rows. Sure, they might all be pointless, and they might lead us to nothing new. But, at least they were orderly and neat, devoid of emotion, empty of confusion. I centered my being in them, tried to somehow see beyond just the facts on the surface, the similarities of the cases as presented.

Carter cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, as he pushed back from the little table we’d turned into our work station, “I need to use the restroom.”

I didn’t look up as he rose and went to leave the room. I couldn’t. Worry that he’d see the blush on my cheeks and the shame in my eyes kept me locked on the page of the report.

Behind me, he stopped at the bathroom door, seemed to hesitate for a moment before he slipped inside and quietly shut it after him.

I took a deep breath and tried to control the emotions welling up inside me. What was this? The way I was feeling about him? What was this attraction? I redoubled my efforts, tried to focus more intently on the pages. Before my eyes, though, the words seemed to swim and swirl, to lose their previous logic and order. I closed my eyes tightly, pushing the file away from me.

Still in the bathroom, Carter turned the water faucet on, and it sounded like he splashed some water from the basin onto his face.

God, I was a bitch.

This wasn’t working. I glanced around the room, at Carter’s heavy duffel bag sitting next to my briefcase on the bed. An eclectic mix that, oddly, worked. At his pistol on the nightstand, at my phone sitting next to it.

How had I gotten into this mess with such a handsome man that was from such a completely different world? A world I could never be part of, even if I wanted to? And now here I was…rejecting him.

I pushed back from the table and got up to pace. Pacing always seemed to help, didn’t it? I’d made it all the way to the windows, with the hotel room’s heavy curtains covering them from nearly floor to ceiling, when a series of rapid knocks sounded loudly at the door, sending me nearly jumping out of my skin.

“Ms. Skinner? Mr. Carter?” called a woman’s voice. “Shamrock PD, here. Do you have a moment to talk about the incident earlier this evening? We really need to speak to both of you, see if we can’t get some clarity on this situation.”

Thank God, I thought, as I breathed a sigh of relief. “Just a minute,” I called back as I crossed the floor of the hotel room to the door.

“Lucy,” Carter said from behind the still closed bathroom door just as I put my eye to the peephole, “don’t.”

Outside the door stood two detectives, a man and a woman in their early to mid thirties, both wearing ill-fitting suits and clashing ties. The woman, who had short, blonde-highlighted hair, held up a police badge in one hand, which I barely glanced at. Yep, that was Shamrock PD for you. Underpaid, understaffed, overworked. Just like the fire department, come to think of it.

“It’s fine,” I replied easily as I took my eye from the peephole, reached up and undid the security chain, and flicked the deadbolt.

Carter opened the bathroom door, reaching a hand out to me, saying, “Lucy! No!”

Too late. With my face turned to him, I’d already begun to pull the door open, saying. “We’ll just talk to them, explain what happened, and get this over with. Easy peasy.”

As the door opened, a wave of cheap cologne hit my nose, so heavy it seemed to overpower everything. God, they needed to pay these guys more, if that was the stuff they were wearing!

“Lucy!”

Ignoring Carter, I directed my attention back to the two detectives waiting outside our room. My breath caught in my chest, though, as my eyes immediately traveled down to the pistols in their hands, and the big cylindrical silencers screwed onto the ends of their barrels.

Shit.

Carter was right. I shouldn’t have opened the door.