CHAPTER 18
When I opened the door to our dorm room after class, Vero was sprawled on her belly on her bed, reading from my open laptop.
“Hey!” I slapped it shut.
“A tsunami, Finn? Are you kidding me right now!” She sat up on her knees, grabbing my computer as I reached for it and holding it hostage behind her head. “The assassin and the cop were having a moment—a very hot one, I might add. They were just about to get naked and do it on the beach, and you had to throw atsunamiat them? What kind of cockblock is that?”
“It’s not a cockblock! It’s a natural disaster.”
“Do they even have tsunamis in Mexico?”
“I don’t know! I’ve never even been there.” The most exotic place Steven and I had ever done it was in the bed of a pickup truck in the parking lot of his frat house in college.
“Tonight, you’re going to rewrite this scene, Finlay. You’re going to get rid of the tsunami—”
“Fine, I’ll make it a tropical storm.”
“No storms! Your assassin is going to stay on that beach and confess her feelings to the cop. She’s going to be bold and brave and face her fears, and she’s not going to freak out and go running in the other direction when he does the same. She’s going to throw caution to the wind, Finlay—”
“You told me to delete the wind.”
“She’s going to lose herself for one night of pleasure and passion.”
“And then what? They’re only going to get hurt.”
“So they get a little sand in their nether regions. What’s sex without a little chafe?”
She held out my laptop. I took it with a begrudged sigh. She didn’t understand. It had been different with the attorney. The stakes had been low. There’d been no risk in being intimate with him because he didn’t have the power to arrest her.
The cop was different. What happened to the assassin in the morning? Was she just supposed to wipe the sand from her ass and turn herself in? There was no resolution to their story that didn’t end in a shitstorm of pain and aloe vera. “I’ll figure something out.” I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto my mattress. “How was your ride-along with Roddy?”
“Bo-ring.” She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “He wouldn’t let me drive. He kept blathering on about rules and policies.Blah blah blah. He wouldn’t even let me put the lights and sirens on. We spent two whole hours clocking radar and he didn’t give anyone a ticket. He let every one of them off with a warning and I fell asleep twice. Roddy felt bad that it was a slow day, so we bought a box of Twinkies to split between us and hung out in the parking lot with a few of the other patrol officers.”
“Talk to anyone interesting?”
“No one of note.”
“What about Roddy? You think he could beEasyClean?”
“Hell. No. The guy’s way too boring to beEasyClean. I’m serious, Finn,” she said at my cynical look. “Case in point, I asked him why he isn’t a detective after twenty years in the department. Want to know what he said? That he never really cared about getting promoted, he just likes the job. His wife’s a cosmetic surgeon in McLean. He drove me past his McMansion in Clifton. He doesn’t need money; his wife’s loaded. There’s no way he’sEasyClean.”
“Did you ask him anything about the night of the shooting? Were you able to corroborate Joey’s story?”
“Yes and no.” She rolled onto her side to face me and propped herself on her elbow. “Roddy definitely remembered calling Joey and asking him to cover our house that night so he could grab dinner and do a little last-minute Christmas shopping for his wife. He said he left as soon as Joey’s car arrived. They flashed their headlights at each other, but they never got out of their cars. And according to Roddy, Joey was gone by the time he got back.”
“Meaning he has no idea how long Joey was actually there. Or if the person who covered for him was even Joey.”
“Precisely.”
“Which means Joey is still high on the list. And you’re sure there’s no way Roddy could possibly be our guy?”
She blinked at me. “He put his roof lights on and stopped four lanes of traffic to help a turtle cross the road, Finn. I think we can safely scratch him off our list of suspects. How about you? What did you get out of Detective Coffey?”
“He’s not a detective. Not anymore.” I relayed both of my conversations with Charlie and Wade, including everything I’d learned about him—why he carried a different gun than most of the other cops here and why he behaved differently. I told her about his competitive streak and his rivalry with Nick. And yet, while every clue seemed to point to Wade as a likely suspect, it wasn’t Wade who had left me feeling ill at ease.
“What do you think of Charlie?” I asked, turning to Vero.
She looked me up and down. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a little old for you, but you do you.”
