I chew on my chip. “Very. One time, I got shot through the hand.” I point at my palm, and the glimmer of a scar. “You could see right through it.”
“What?” Her mouth drops open. “That’s so cool. Why has no one ever shot me in the hand?”
“Have you been shot before?”
She nods. “Four times.”
“Four?” I gape, and she nods. “Where?”
“Two in the leg, one in the shoulder and …” She takes another bite of her taco and mumbles the last one.
“What? I didn’t hear that.”
She rolls her eyes. “In the arse.”
I burst out laughing, and she smirks into her taco. “You’re lying.”
“Seriously. And I wasn’t running away, before you even suggest it. I thought the bastard was dead, but he wasn’t and he had another gun hidden. He shot me in the arse, then died before I could make him pay for it.” I’m still cackling, and she playfully punches my arm. “Stop that! It hurt!”
“Do you have a scar?” I ask, and she rolls her eyes again and nods. “Can I see?”
“You pervert, no!”
“Come on, this is strictly a work wound discussion. Nothing sexual about it. Show me.”
She sighs, puts down her half-eaten food, and leans toward the window, pulling down her leggings. A small, white scar mars an otherwise perfect ass cheek, and now I wish I hadn’t asked.
“Wow,” I say. “I’m almost proud of you.”
She sits back down and grins. “Thanks. So, who was your biggest bust?”
Now that’s a question with an easy answer. “Hoping it’ll be you, to be honest.”
“Hardy har. Chief Gibson, the comedian.”
I shoot her a smirk. “William the Barbarian.”
“Ooh!” She turns to face me and leans her shoulder into the seat. “Who was he?”
“God, I forget how young you are.” I groan. “He was a serial killer in the nineties. No MO, no discernible pattern at all. He started off kidnapping people, bodies never found, then eventually, body after body showed up. And do you know who he turned out to be?” She shakes her head. “The first victim.”
She smacks my arm. “Shut up!”
“Yep. He’d faked his own disappearance, so we’d never suspect him. Really fucking clever. We’d never look for a dead man, except, I did. The lack of a pattern was the pattern. No victim was linked, not even slightly. Except two of them. A woman was on a dating website and had matched with a guy months before she died. I was going through those matches, hoping to find anything?—”
“And you foundWilliam!”
“Nope, I found his neighbor.”
She pouts. “That’s a bit of an anticlimax.”
“It was a connection, though. So, I went back to the first victim and checked his phone, too. Sure enough there was a deleted profile from the same dating site, and he’d used his neighbor’s photo for it. Blew the case wide open.”
Monty crunches on a chip. “I’m so attracted to you right now.”
I huff a laugh. “What about you? Who’s your biggest … job?”
“Contract killing. Lesson one: do not confess to a cop.”
