“Like what?” He leaned into my field of vision. “What don’t you want me to see, Finn? The fact that you’re hurting or that you’re hiding something from me?” His jaw tensed when I didn’t answer.
“Look, I get it,” he said earnestly. “After seeing what Steven did to you, I get why you don’t want to open yourself up to that again. But I was lying to myself before when I said I could be okay with the way things are between us.” A familiar knife blade twisted inside me as I braced for what he’d say next. “I was kidding myself when I said there were things about you I was okay not knowing. That maybe I didn’t want to know them. Because that look on your face killed me yesterday. Not when Penny told you she’d been having an affair with your husband, but the moment she answered the door—the expectation in your eyes, like you knew the betrayal was coming. Like youknewin your heart he was going to let you down. It’s the same way you look at me sometimes, when I want to be there for you or when I want to help you. You want to confide in me, but you won’t. You want to believe I would never do anything to hurt you, but you can’t. Because Steven broke that trust, over and over, and I can’t stand seeing you look at me that same way. Like you’re scared to talk to me.” His voice shook with barely restrained emotion.
“And it’s the trust part that’s killing me, Finn. You can’t ask me to only fall in love with the pieces of you you’re willing to show me.I want you. Not part of you.Allof you. I don’t want you to run away when you’re afraid. I want you to come to me. When I ask you a question, I want you to feel like you can be honest with me. When you look at me, I want to know beyond the shadow of any doubt that you believe—truly believe—I would never do anything to betray that trust.”
“I do trust you!” Iwantedto.
“Then tell me something. Anything. Tell me one thing that scares you,” he pleaded.
I watched him, a deer caught in headlights. I opened my mouth but didn’t know what to say. Why couldn’t I give him this one small thing without risking everything? “You first,” I said. “You know as much about me as I know about you.”
“What do you want to know?” He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t look away. Whatever question left my mouth next, I’d better be damn sure I was ready to hear the answer.
I gestured to the file on the table. “Where did you get that?”
He hesitated a second before answering. “From the LCPD file room.”
“How?”
“Joey made me a copy, and he’d get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out, but he did it because I asked him to.”
“Why?” I knew I was pushing my luck, but Nick never said I only got one question.
“I wanted to make sure your name’s not anywhere in it.”
“Is it?”
He pushed the file toward me, not expressly granting permission but not withholding anything from me. I picked it up and opened it. He sipped his beer as he watched me thumb through the Dupree case notes. Penny had been cleared from the preliminary list of suspectsafter her husband’s disappearance five years ago. According to the original investigator’s notes, a neighbor had seen her leave for their beach house in Florida the night before Gilford had gone missing. She’d been alone in her SUV when she’d driven out of her garage, and her husband’s coupe had been inside it when the garage door had closed behind her. The next morning, the same neighbor had seen Gilford leave for work, only that afternoon he hadn’t come back.
Penny had placed a call to the Loudoun County police from the Duprees’ beach house the following evening, claiming Gilford hadn’t been returning any of her calls. She’d requested a wellness check at their Ashburn house. Finding no one at home and no signs of forced entry, no action had been taken by the police, until Gilford’s car and phone were found abandoned later that weekend at a local park.
I turned the page, angry at myself for breaking into Penny’s house for nothing. Her alibi had been verified by her neighbors in both Virginia and Florida, and she’d been cleared as a suspect very early on.
The next reports were more current, including the discovery of the body and the medical examiner’s findings concerning the cause of death—blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Mike Tran’s notes were also copied in the file. Margaret and Owen Haggerty had been listed as possible suspects early on, but over the course of the investigation, both were discounted.No known association with the deceasedhad been noted beside each of their names. Brendan’s name had also been crossed out.
The remainder of the file was mostly about Steven, beginning with the report Mike Tran had filed when Riley and Max had broadcast the anonymous tip, followed by the invoice for the mulch delivery with Steven’s address on it and a copy of Penny’s voided check.
There were interdepartmental reports about the bodies found on Steven’s farm last fall, taken from the joint task force investigation of the Russian mob. Redacted sections had been markedconfidentialand blocked out in thick black bars.
I turned to the last page of the file and felt a hot rush of blood to my face. Mrs. Haggerty had provided a statement detailing the exact dates and times when she’d observed Steven’s extramarital activities while we’d been married. I was mentioned once on that page, identified only as Steven’s spouse. A handwritten question mark had been scribbled beside my name, presumably by Mike Tran.
Nick reached out and delicately took the file from me. He closed it quietly and set it back on the table, as if he’d known what page I’d been reading by the look on my face.
“Are you finished grilling me?” he asked indulgently.
“Not even close.” My throat burned, and I sipped my beer as I considered what to ask him next.
He cracked a smile, but I could tell his patience was wearing thin.
I looked around the room, at the tiny water stain on the ceiling, at the worn spots in the thin gray carpet and the cracked pane in the window, grasping at every surface for a question. Anything to put off the moment when the tables would be turned and he would expect me to answer one of his.
“Why do you live here?” I asked. “You’re a detective with thirteen years on the force. Why not buy a house in a decent neighborhood?” It felt like low-hanging fruit, or maybe like I was baiting him, but it was the question that had been nagging at me since he’d opened the door. Even my sister, with all her commitment issues, rented a nicer place in a better neighborhood than this.
Nick took a deep swig of his beer, polishing off the last of itbefore answering. “I moved into this apartment eighteen months ago,” he said quietly. “I never bothered to buy a place of my own before that because I had been living with a woman for the past five years, and I assumed Tonya and I would eventually get married. She came home from work one day and told me she was sleeping with a cop named Wade Coffey. Wade and I had worked in the same precinct together for years, and I wasn’t sure which of them I was angrier with.
“I moved out that night. I crashed on your sister’s couch for a week and signed a lease for the first vacant apartment I could find. This was it,” he said, setting down his empty bottle.
My stomach clenched with a jealousy I had no right to. All I had known about Nick’s last girlfriend was what little his former partner had told me, and what Wade Coffey himself had inferred when he’d been my handgun instructor at the citizen’s police academy. But to hear Nick say this woman’s name gave the vague notion of her a solid form. It took up an uncomfortable space in my mind. I looked down into my beer, wishing I hadn’t asked.
