“Coming in for a beer.” He stomps up my stairs and peeks down at the cat circling my feet. She wants Rose to come home, too. “She’s sitting at Santoro’s in town right now, chatting with that dude and asking her questions. I figured I’d come over here and get started with these, now that we have a name to work with. Nobody will comb these files closer than you.”
“Ramone doesn’t wanna put in overtime tonight?”
He chuckles, pushing past me and helping himselfto my home. “He’s sitting outside the restaurant.” Moving around the couch and stopping between it and the coffee table, he sets the massive stack down and glances over his shoulder. “Just in case.”
“Right.” I scoop Poopy out of the doorway and close it up, then I wander across the room, deposit the cat on the couch, and continue through to the kitchen to get a couple of beers. “Ramone know something I don’t? If she needs a police escort to eat a meal with the dude who claims to be her fiancé, then perhaps she shouldn’t be eating a meal with him.” Snagging two bottles, I close the fridge and walk back to the living room. “If she’s in danger, I’d hope you’d be in town dealing with it. Not here, drinking.”
“You know us Plainview folk.” He accepts the beer and sits on the edge of the couch, popping the lid and flicking it across to the cat. Taking a long sip, he selects a file from the top of the pile and settles back with it. “We don’t like strangers coming into our town and shaking things up. Being cautious is not the same as thinking she’s in danger. Plus, I’m technically off shift, and last I checked, you and I were friends back in the day. Same football team in high school.”
“There was onlyonefootball team in high school.”
He draws one foot up, perching it on the opposite knee and creating a table to balance the open file on. That way, he can flick through each page one-handed. “Same basketball team. Same little league team, too.”
I sit on the couch and pry the bottle cap from Poopy’s mouth before she chokes on it. “Do you have something to say, Billy? Somethingreal? Because football and basketball and little league aside, you haven’t been to my house to shoot the shit, drink beer, and talk work in eight fuckin’ years. And the last time you did, it was to talk aboutmywork, not yours.” I glance across and study the side of his face. “And by talking, I mean you blackened my eye, chipped my tooth, and screamed at me, ‘cos I couldn’t save Aria.”
“I’m sorry I blamed you.” Swiping a hand beneath his nose, he glances right and meets my eyes. “I was grieving and angry. I had a brand-new baby boy still in the hospital, no clue what the fuck I was supposed to do with him, and I had your mom dropping casseroles on my porch. The funeral director was leaving messages on my phone. Janine was calling because my baby needed me. But I was just so…” He shakes his head. “I needed my wife, Ol. I needed her more than I needed air in my lungs. And you were the only person I could aim my anger at.”
He snaps his file closed and drinks—three long glugs—to wash the bitter taste of grief down. “It wasn’t your fault,” he rasps. “It was no one’s fault. These things just happen sometimes, but I was so caught up in my pain, and as my best friend, you were always so available to me. So willingto carry me when I couldn’t carry myself. Raquel and Aria were like sisters their whole lives. You and I were like brothers.” He scrubs a hand over his face and noisily exhales. “I wasn’t the only person who lost someone that day, but I acted like I was. You could’ve had me written up. Charged. Fired. But you let me swing anyway, and when Ramone broke it apart, you lied—badly,” he chuckles, “and claimed you tripped over in the shed and busted up your own face.”
“Your knuckles were still bleeding,” I snicker. “Couldn’t see out of my left eye for days. Spent a thousand bucks at the dentist to fix my tooth. Felt like an idiot telling my lie, ‘cos it was so weak.” Balling my fist, I reach across and tap his chest. “You’re a damn good cop, Billy, and you’re an even better dad. Losing Aria was hard. I’ve never held that day against you.”
“No, but I’ve held a lot against you. Makes me an asshole.” Sniffing, he shrugs and flips his file open again. “I don’t like this dude. He’s too smooth. Too perfect.”
“I thought I was the only one thinking that. Chalked it up to jealousy.” I push Poopy onto the cushion between us and snag a file of my own. “Didn’t realize Ramone was heading into town to keep an eye on her, though.” I drag the phone from my pocket. “Means I can tell Eliza to stand down.”
“Not surprised you did that.” Smirking, he sips his beer and points at the words in his lap. “It’s pissing me off, ‘cos everything he says matches up with what’s in these files. On paper, he looks perfect, and I spent all day looking athim. But things start getting a little messy when I look at her.”
“Rose?” I hitsendand look across. “What do you mean?”
“She turned up here in February, right? But she was skin and bones, damn near frozen to her core, and…” He peeks across, wrinkling his nose. “Not to sound like a dick or anything, but she was a mess. Her hair. Her skin. Her nails. He’s presenting this perfect, upper-middle-class life. Travel. Social events. Even wedding planning. But she looked like she’d been living rough. I’m not proud to say I made assumptions at first.”
“No shit,” I drawl. “You were a prick that first day in the hospital.”
“Small-town upbringing, small-town mind.” He taps his temple with the tip of his finger. “That was my bad. I figured her for one of those emergency room frequent flyer types who talk kindhearted doctors into giving them a hit of the good stuff. Her injuries were real, and her CT was legit, so I’m not saying I thought she was faking it. But a junkie jumping in front of a car?” He drops his hand again, shrugging. “She wouldn’t be the first to hurt herself in her quest for her next high.”
“You were wrong about her.Reallywrong.”
“I know it. I figured it out within a few days of her waking. But that doesn’t change what we knew about her: she looked rough, yet he turns up here with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar engagement ring. The two don’tmatch.”
“He reckons Liam snatched her up.” I lean forward again and flick through the pile on the coffee table. “Do you have his history, too?”
“Working on it. But let’s say we take Darcy’s story as he presents it. Liam’s obsessed with her. He makes his feelings known, shoots his shot, and she turns him down. He flips out and disappears for a few days. Then he returns, nice as pie, apologetic, and worming his way back into Rose’s life.”
“She had nightmares about him.” I scratch the back of Poopy’s ears and stare straight ahead at the black-screened TV. “She remembered Liam. Said he was her friend at first.”
“She said that to you?”
“Mm. Said he was protective and kind. But the instant she started staying here with me, everything flipped, and he turned dangerous. She’d wake up screaming. Sobbing. She made herself sick with worry, because he kept killingmein her nightmares. Kinda all plays along the same line Darcy is talking. But she, uh…” Clearing my throat, I shift my focus left and meet his eyes. “She had another dream she didn’t tell you about.”
His brows shoot high on his forehead.
“She killed him. In her dream,” I clarify. “She said they were freezing. Starving. They’d just ransacked a convenience store and stuffed her pockets with food, and after they sprinted out of there, they found somewhere to hide and sat down. They were talking. Eating. Whatever. At some point in her dream, she realized she had a gun in her hand. And then she just…” I shrug. “She shot him.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? That’s not an insignificant detail.”
“Because she was terrified it was real. Scared to her bones that she’d hurt this guy. We’d talked it through, and I came to the conclusion that it was just a bad dream. Not a memory.”
“Youcame to the conclusion?” He scoffs. “Because you’re qualified to make that decision?”
