Tanner reaches us as I finish my sentence. He nods, absorbing the information. “Did you see anything?”
“Nope. And my cameras were both facing the stage. All I saw was the impact.”
“I saw someone ducking out of the front door,” Tanner growls. “But they were long gone by the time I got outside. Fucking asshole. I bet it’s Brent.”
“Her ex? You think he’d try and hurt her like that?”
“Not exactly. He’s an attention-seeking dickstain. I think he threw it deliberately as she stepped away, because she blocked his number.”
“She didn’t tell me that earlier. Just that he stole all her stuff.”
Tanner’s dark gaze flares with empathy. Heknowswhat that means to me even if the comparison isn’t literal. “I want to go to his place and stomp on his head.”
It’s so close an echo to my earlier thoughts that I almost smile. But I don’t. Because there’s no humor to be found in a grown man hurling missiles at a young woman who kicked him to the curb. That shit is scary.
Tanner storms away to call the cops and calm the crowd. He bribes the patrons who’ve stayed with free wine, and it’s not long before the charm he thinks he lacks brings a chilled hum back to the bar. He turns the lights low again, and Rainn flicks the music back on. Jazz fills the gaps conversation doesn’t. It’s business as usual, but adrenaline still courses through my veins. I keep busy packing my gear away. The footage on my static cam is epic. I watch it through on the tiny screen of the camera, then it occurs to me that the cops might want to review the footage on my handheld camera—they’re already upstairs with Molly and Tanner.
I take my shit and knock on Tanner’s front door. It swings open before I’ve retracted my hand, and he’s right there.
He pulls me inside and brushes a fleeting kiss to my jaw. “You okay?”
“Course I am. I’m not the one who had a bottle chucked at my head.”
“So?”
I don’t have an answer for him. I set my tripod down in the hall and point at the living room. “Molly brought my Sony upstairs with her. There might be something in the footage the cops can use.”
Tanner nods, his gaze still searching my face for who-the-fuck knows what. I push past and duck into his living space. Molly is sitting on the couch where I used to lay my head. She’s wide-eyed and pale. A female cop is perched on the coffee table, just like Tanner does.
There’s another officer by the window gazing out at the street. My gimbal is leaning against the wall beside him. I detach the camera from the frame and find the footage I’ve taken of the bar. It sucks me in. Distantly, I hear Tanner explaining to the cops who I am and what I’m doing, but their holstered guns are freaking me out enough that I don’t look at them. That’s right, even after all these years away from English bobbies and their batons, I’m still not used to how the rest of the world works.
The footage on the Sony is dark—at least it will be until I get it onto my laptop. Faces I’m not directly shooting are hard to make out. And I don’t know who I’m looking for. Attuned to me as ever, Tanner peers over my shoulder. His solid body presses against mine, and I lean into him, absorbing his warmth. “There’s two hours of footage here. I’m gonna speed it up, tell me if I need to stop.”
He hums his agreement. I feel the low sound everywhere, but there are too many cops and guns in the room for my dick to respond, and I’m not sorry about that. I click the footage into a faster frame rate. Images flicker through the screen. It’s too rapid for me to tell if I’ve done a good job tonight, so I focus on the people I don’t know to see if anyone jumps out at me.
They don’t, but I know the moment Tanner spots who we’re searching for. His muscles tense like steel and a growl rumbles from his chest. “There he is.”
I pause the footage on a shot that makes my heart thump. It’s of Tanner, right before Molly hit the stage, and it captures my obsession with him so perfectly that it still takes me long slow seconds to spot the figure lurking at the end of the bar behind him—a gangly dude dressed head to toe in red.
Jesus. How did I miss him? I rewind the frames and hand the camera to Tanner so he can show the cops.
Molly looks too. “Wow. So it really was him, huh? I was hoping it was just kids.”
“I don’t let kids in my bar, Molls,” Tanner says sharply. “If I’d been paying attention, he wouldn’t have gotten in either.”
Then what? He’d have waited for her outside instead?I don’t like that thought any more than I do the reality of what’s actually happened. Imagining Molly bloodied and hurt makes me want to puke. And kill someone.
Raging, I retreat to the kitchen. I can still hear every word exchanged in the living room, but I’m an expert at tuning the world out. I light the stove beneath Tanner’s archaic kettle. It comes to the boil. I take it off and do nothing with it. Tanner comes up behind me. He says nothing, just kisses my neck, then he’s gone again and I miss him.
Man, what a day. I’m battered by every emotion that’s come my way since I dragged myself into Wildfoot HQ at arse o’clock this morning. Elation from the lynx footage. Angst from the past and for the future. Every fucking feeling that comes from being anywhere near Tanner. And now red-hot fury simmers in my veins too. I want to punch stuff. I want to lie down and sleep with Tanner stretched out beside me. I want to—
“Hey.” Tanner is behind me again. “The cops want to take your memory card. Is that okay?”
I spin around. “What?”
“The memory card from your camera. They want to take it so they can upload the footage onto their computers at the station.”
Giving up my memory card is like asking me for my kidney, and it must show on my face. Tanner speaks again before I can push it aside and acquiesce. “Never mind. Let me find my laptop. I must have a flash drive somewhere. We can make that work, right?”
