I stood there, racking my brain for something to say—for anything that wouldn’t sound completely batshit—but came up empty.
Defeated, I looked away.
“Yeah.” Davis wiped the sheen of sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and sighed. “That’s about what I thought.Harris, if there’s something going on in your personal life, it’s none of my fucking business. But you need to fix it. Yesterday.”
“I don’t need—”
“You’re suspended until the investigation is over,” he repeated, his voice flat. “I suggest you use that time to get your head on straight.”
Detective Jimenez was smirking at me when I left Davis’s office. From the knowing look on his face, I was pretty sure he was the one who’d called Internal Affairs on me.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to punch him in the face. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have helped my cause any.
Instead, pretending that every pair of eyes in the room wasn’t locked on me, I collected my things and left.
I needed to call Cole.
He got me into this mess. He was going to get me out of it.
* * *
“Let me get this straight,” Cole said four hours later, after I had gone home in a seething rage, watched enough daytime television to make my brain feel like mush, and finally felt calm enough to pass for a sane person. “You want me to mind-control your boss into compliance.”
I gripped the phone to my ear. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“Is it possible Davis has a point? The investigation sounds like a nuisance, but a vacation might do wonders for you.”
I refrained from throwing the phone across the room, but it took effort. “No. The problem is that I don’t have a homicidal vampire solving all my cases for me anymore.”
“You do miss me!”
“Yeah.” He’d released me from the compulsion to always tell him the truth, but old habits die hard. “But I can’t exactly explain to my boss why my performance has suddenly taken a nosedive.”
“Right,” he said, sobering. “Look, I don’t really mess with people’s heads anymore, but I could probably make an exception this one time. After all, it’s my fault you’re in this mess.”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“So understated. You know, that’s one of the many things I adore about you, detective. You’re far more patient than you give yourself credit for.” He paused. “Are you sure you don’t want to move up to Seattle? There are plenty of homicides up here, too. Humans are so violent.”
“Plenty of folks for you to snack on, then.”
“I’m on the wagon. I’m areformedbad guy.”
“Right,” I said, heaving a sigh. “True love and all that.”
I punctuated it with a yawn.
“Not sleeping well?”
I chuckled darkly. “Not really.”
“Hmmm. You mentioned that last week, too.”
“Did I call last week?”
“You did. Like I said, you miss me. I don’t blame you, of course. I’m delightful.” He paused again, for longer this time, before saying, “I miss you too. Seattle isn’t so bad, really. You’d like it. And perhaps we could even find you a nice vampire to shack up with.”
Despite myself, I grinned into the phone. Cole had regained his humanity, but it was still sometimes like talking with an alien. And a wave of heartsickness gripped me—yeah, I reallyhadmissed him, the bastard. “Cole, are you trying to marry me off?”
