“Right. Like, what’s the word for it? Oh, right. A team.”
“Funny.”
“I’m waiting.”
“On?”
“The answer to the question you conveniently ignored. Did you forget?”
He hadn’t forgotten. He and Faith did have a connection that was intensifying. He didn’t know what she was to him anymore, but words likecolleague,coworker,friend—none of those covered it. Not even close. “I still hate the FBI.”
“Looks to me like you’re in love with the FBI.” Gil smirked.
Those were fighting words, and Gil knew it. “Be glad you have a hole in your head.”
“I can take you. We both know it. But I led with a question I want an answer to. What’s the deal? Have you kissed her yet?”
“Kissed her?”
The door slammed open. No warning tap. Faith stood in the doorway. “Luke. We need to go.”
“Why?” Luke was already moving, knowing the answer to the question wouldn’t change anything. She said they needed to go. He was going.
“Hope’s suicide victim? It wasn’t suicide. He was murdered.”
“Okay.” Murder was awful, but what did that have to do with him?
“The dead guy is a known associate of David Lee.”
The boyfriend?
“Hope’s client knew Park Mi Cha and David Lee. She’s at Hope’s office now, and she’s willing to wait for us.”
Luke moved as fast as he could to Gil’s bed. He clasped his shoulder, and Gil mimicked the gesture.
“Stay safe,” Gil said.
“You too.”
FAITH DROVE.Luke didn’t argue, but he did buckle up the second he slid into the passenger seat, muttering all the way about how things would change on Monday when he was cleared to drive.
He must be forgetting he still didn’t have a car. Not that Faith intended to remind him of that painful fact.
She concentrated on her driving, chafing at traffic and streetlights and the thunderstorms that wouldn’t move out. They were obstacles on her path to Hope’s office and a possible breakthrough in this case.
She’d half expected Luke to pepper her with questions, but aside from a few murmurs and one full-blown gasp, which he tried to cover with a cough, he stayed silent. Was he thinking about the case, or was he so terrified of her driving he didn’t want to risk distracting her?
When they parked at Hope’s office, the storm had intensified. Luke made no move to exit the car. Instead, he turned to her and asked, “What do we know?”
“Hope took your words to heart last night. She came in early and pulled all the records she could find before she met with her client. She spoke with the detective working the case and discovered that the autopsy was scheduled for today. She thought that was odd—they don’t always do autopsies on Saturdays—and she intended to put a bug in his ear. Just a quick ‘Hey, any chance it wasn’t a suicide?’ But he beat her to it. Commented that something was sketchy about this case. At first, she thought he was referring to her client, but he assured her he had no doubt of her client’s innocence.”
“Being on the other side of the country does make it difficult to pin the murder on her.” Luke’s comment was dry but not sarcastic.
“Precisely. But when Hope pressed him, all he would say was he didn’t think everything matched with a suicide and he was going to be present at the autopsy. She asked him to let her know if anything didn’t point to suicide.”
“What didn’t?”
“That’s what had Hope all in a tizzy. When the detective called her, he told her the ME’s report would be available in the system tonight, and she was planning to rule it a suspicious death. Due to the decomposition of the body, a few things were impossible for her to conclude with certainty, but she thinks the guy didn’t hang himself but was hung. The detective agrees, although he admitted some of that is gut feeling and he has no proof.”
