“Do you think they were fake? Maybe caps?” Eddie asked.
“I don’t know. It seems like a weird thing to remember, but it just came to me.” Marty lay back down and sighed. “I see his face in my sleep. Well, not his face, but him. He chases me sometimes, and I try to get away. Every time he gets close to catching me, I wake up and try to remember something more about what he looks like, but then it’s gone.”
“Hey, it’s okay. You remember what you can.” Eddie lay down as well and slipped his arms around him. “We had a case last year. It was a robbery, and four people saw it. Not a one of their descriptions matched the others. One said the man was blond, and another said he had dark hair. Blue pants versus black jeans—even his shirt color was different. It happens, and we learn to take a description with a grain of salt. So don’t worry if bits and pieces come to you. But I’ll add what you just told me tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get lucky—you never know.”
“Maybe,” Marty said as he snuggled closer to Eddie and let himself relax. He was safe for now, and if he was going to help anyone, he needed to get some sleep.
It wasstill dark when Marty snapped awake. “What’s going on?” he asked as Eddie got out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants, and got his gun.
“Get down on the floor and stay in here,” Eddie told him. He left the room, closing the door.
Marty slipped out of the bed and lay on the floor, sliding halfway under the bed as he listened. Light shone through the bedroom window that overlooked the backyard, which meant someone was back there.
Sirens sounded in the distance and drew closer. “Stop!” he heard Eddie snap, and Marty pressed closer to the rug, wondering where he would be safest. More sirens joined in, and soon they came to a stop as other voices drifted into the room.
“Marty,” Eddie said from outside the door. “It’s okay.” He came in and helped him up. “Go on back to bed. It was one of the neighbor kids. He thought he could sneak across my yard to get back into his house without his father knowing. It turned out he was wrong and woke the entire neighborhood.”
“Oh.” He climbed back into the bed, shaking from cold and nerves.
“I need to wrap things up out front, but you try to sleep. Everything is fine.” He helped Marty settle in bed and leaned over to kiss him gently. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He left the room, and the lights in the back went out.
Marty lay there staring at the ceiling. Well, if someone did show up here, the police had proved that they would get there fast. That was a comfort, but the biggest one would be getting this jackass behind bars.
ChapterSeven
“You wantme to go in to work with you?” Marty asked as they got dressed.
Eddie wondered if Marty had forgotten. “You wanted to look through our books to see if you recognize the guy you saw, and I want to keep you close.” After last night, even though the person in the yard had nothing to do with the case, it brought home that Marty was vulnerable.
“But what if someone is looking for me?” Marty asked as he shrugged into his shirt.
Eddie wanted to slide his hands around Marty’s waist and press him back down on the bed to help him forget all about last night, His smooth skin was so damn tempting. He stared and almost forgot what he was going to say. “If they see you, they’ll see you with the police,” Eddie told him. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.” He finished with his uniform and left the room, putting temptation behind him, at least for now.
He poured two mugs and handed one to Marty when he joined him.
“What happens once you have this case buttoned up and everything is done?” Marty asked before taking a sip. “You always made the best coffee.”
“I get it from that roaster downtown, next to the chocolate shop.” The two of them used to shop there all the time. It was where Eddie got his coffee while Marty would dream over the chocolates.
“Yeah… I remember,” Marty said, still watching him.
“To answer your question, I don’t know. You’ll need to get a better job one way or another, and from there I suppose things will go back to how they were.” Eddie didn’t want to push Martyinto anything, even though the urge was growing to pick Marty up, throw him over his shoulder, carry him back to his cave, and never let him go. But he wasn’t sure what Marty wanted. There was a lot of water under the bridge for both of them.
“Oh, okay….” He turned away and set the mug on the counter. “We can go whenever you’re ready.” A cold front had just moved in, and Eddie felt the chill from across the room.
“Hey. I don’t know what you want. Asking me questions like I’m supposed to have all the answers isn’t fair.”
Marty whipped around. “Okay. But what if I don’t want things to go back to the way they were? And I hope we’re talking about the same thing, rather than in circles.”
“No, I understand what you’re saying. And we’re not talking in circles. I just don’t want to push you into anything.”
Marty rolled his eyes. “You know something? You are a real doofus. I know how you feel—you showed me the other night—and if you think I go to bed with just anyone…. I’m not that kind of boy.” The mock put-upon attitude made Eddie chuckle as he drew closer.
“Yet, maybe you are, and I could prove it to you tonight,” Eddie whispered. “But right now, we need to get to the station before I’m late. We both have a lot to do.”
Marty satat an empty desk off to the side with a computer, going through pictures, while Eddie and Brian reviewed the evidence once more.
“I want to go back to the crime scene,” Brian declared after a while. “There’s something we’re missing, and we need to figure out what it is.”
