“You paint a picture with your words.”
The sarcastic edge to Cade’s voice made him swear silently. Despite the pep talk he’d given himself on the way over, he had not brought his best self to play. He tried to cough up an apology, but the flash of a sudden, unexpected grin from Marlow interrupted his attempt.
It was a nice enough smile—wider and more mobile than Cade had expected from Marlow’s lean, sharp-boned face. Nothing about it, though, justified the rush of gooey, soppy warmth that rose from Cade’s stomach and filled his chest. It just felt good that he had been the one to coax something more than half a crooked smile out of the self-contained TAC officer.
Idiot, he jabbed at himself with wry disdain. It was true, but it was hard to care much when he could just… enjoy it.
“Yeah, well,” Marlow said as he pushed the sleeves of his fitted tee up over his forearms. “The full story would just sound like I was boasting.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Cade said as he turned away—he didn’t plan on pushing his luck with this whole “not being a jerk” thing—and headed over to the front door. “How else will the rest of us know anything worth a boast or two even happened?”
The building was locked up again after their earlier visit. Cade used his company skeleton key to open the front door.
It still reeked inside—more than he’d remembered—the rancid smell of decomposing sugary sauce thick enough to taste.
“Good question,” Marlow said. “Maybe I need to work on it.”
Cade found the control panel on the wall and flicked it open. That was as far as he got. It looked like Macroy’s uninvited guest had lost her temper with the system and smashed it with—Cade measured one of the divots with his fingertip and guessed—a high heel.
“What are you looking for anyhow?” he said as he turned back around.
Marlow shrugged, an off-kilter hitch of his shoulder that made Cade remember the scars on the other.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something?”
“That narrows it down.” He didn’t get the grin this time, but the amused quirk of Marlow’s mouth at his jibe topped up the warm flush that filled his stomach. This time Cade iced himself down mentally with the unromantic reminder that if they ever actually fucked, he’d lose interest quickly enough. They were here for a reason. He should focus on that. “There’s no reason to believe Haley died here. No blood. No weapons…”
He stopped the list with one item to go and turned on the ball of his foot as he scanned the room. It had been a while since he’d been here, not since Macroy moved in, but Cade had a good memory for places. He could walk past an ex in the street and not even register he might know them, but he could pull up the layout of the club they’d gone to on their first date.
Very useful at work, less so in his private life.
“Last time I was in here, Macroy had two samurai swords on that wall. A souvenir from one of his films,” Cade said as he pointed at the bare concrete. “They’re gone.”
“Redecorating?”
“Not the sort of man who did things like that himself,” Cade said. “And the pegs are there.”
He left the living room and headed back to the disaster of a kitchen. The water had spilled out of the sink and onto the floor, greasy and cold on the tiles. Dirty plates and glasses were piled haphazardly on the counter. Plastic forks floated in the sink, between the lumps of burned whatever-it-was that had soaked out of the pan.
No metal forks.
No knives. Not even a butter knife.
The drawers were slick metal, flat and smudged with greasy fingers and smears of sauce. Nothing as pedestrian as handles for Macroy. Cade gave one a push until it clicked and slowly slid open. Empty. So was the next one.
“It’s more nothing than something,” Cade said as he closed the last drawer. “But it does suggest that Parker didn’t tell us everything.”
Marlow stared at him for a second, his face unreadable behind those glasses, and then clenched his jaw.
“Fuck,” he spat out. “How did I miss that?”
Chapter Seven
THE BACK OFMarlow’s neck was so hot that it felt sunburnt. He should have realized why the idea he’d missed something had gnawed at him. This hadn’t needed a nose for detective work; it was what he did. At least it was when he wasn’t distracted trying to convince himself Cade had flirted with him.
“Parker broke in to try and get rid of evidence he’d had Haley stay here,” Marlow said as he walked around the corner and toward the window. “Right?”
Cade nodded as he followed Marlow’s lead. “That’s right,” he said. “Not exactly a good plan, but evidence suggests he’s not a man that makes good decisions.”
