“Yeah?”
“Wow, you sound rough,” Petra’s over enthusiastic and caffeine enhanced voice chirped on the other end. “Big night?”
“What is it?” I barked at her, trying to adjust my eyes to the light streaming in from the window.
“Jeez, I was just going to tell you that I emailed you everything about the guy your suspect was with to your email but dude, if you’re only just waking up now, you have approximately twenty minutes to wake the fuck up and get some good manners juice aka coffee before your meeting with your witness.”
My eyes opened wide as I took in the time on the bedside clock.
Fuck.
“Shit,” I grunted. “I’ll call you later.”
Petra hung up and I flung the phone onto the bed, pulling myself up and feeling like I was hungover. I hadn’t drunkthatmuch last night.
Wait.
I stopped in my tracks and looked around the room. My memory was a little hazy, but I could have sworn I had an interaction with Maurelle last night. Nothing in the room was out of order, nothing on the table, no disarrayed furniture.
Nothing.
It must have been a dream.
Shit.
I headed for the bathroom to take a quick shower and caught sight of myself in the mirror. My stomach dropped when I noticed the telltale sign of scratch marks on my abdomen.
It wasn’t a dream.
Maurelle had been in here last night, and we’d had our round two.
Shit.
Chapter Eight
Kane
“What are you doinghere, Mi,” I asked as I looked at my ex-wife on my doorstep. She was smiling that megawatt smile she always had for people and holding a glass dish with tin foil over the top.
“Can I come in?”
I stepped to the side and let her walk into my apartment. She looked around, and probably thought I’d been living like a Spartan compared to our life together. I searched for Kemp outside but he didn’t appear to be out there. Closing the door, I turned to face her. She set the glass dish down and continued to look around.
“Mimi,” I started.
“How are you?” she asked, turning to me finally. “You look like you’re keeping your fitness up.”
“This isn’t about my fitness,” I stated. “What are you really doing here?”
She sighed. “I’m worried about you, Kane. You are acting recklessly, getting in trouble with your Captain, almost being killed in a house fire after you went after a suspect alone and without telling anyone. This isn’t like you.”
“I made some errors in judgment,” I said, almost wanting to laugh at the fact that there were many. “But I’m all good. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I still love you, Kane,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“Are things with you and Kemp okay?” I changed the subject, hoping she’d lay off the emotional stuff. I couldn’t deal with it right now, not after the trip to Chicago.
“Yeah, he misses his friend,” she said, but I could see the sadness behind her eyes when she spoke about him. “I think he really is struggling, you know?”
