Page 19 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he says, lying.

I take a minute where I just breathe, because if I don’t, I know I’ll lose my temper and smash his head in.

"I’ll give you one more chance to explain yourself. And if you do, I’ll let you live. If you don’t, my cousin here will make sure you feel a fuck-ton of pain before you die."

I feel like that’s fair.

At first, I think he is going to hold out, and just as I’m about to gesture to Natan to get to work, Mosby’s shoulder sag and resignation blankets his features.

"She has pretty eyes," he says. "And that ass, man, you’ve seen her. Going around tempting men and laughing at them when they say ‘hi.’"

Laughing at men? That doesn’t sound like Delilah.

He saw her on the north path in November and she was always alone and always at the same time. He liked her hair, and he'd been building up to it for four months the way he builds the aircraft, slowly, carefully, taking pleasure in the preparation.

She was probably laughing at something she was listening to, and this sick prick decided she was laughing directly at him.

Fucker.

"What about the others?" I ask, dropping the library card in front of him.

"I didn’t hurt them," he is almost yelling. "They wanted it."

Right.

She was just there. She runs at the same time every night because she likes routine, and he watched her for weeks until the night he couldn’t wait any longer.

I stand up. My hands are perfectly steady, which they've been my whole life and which I've never once been grateful for until now.

"Make the call," I tell Natan.

Natan nods. He's not a man who requires explanations, and whatever he sees in my face he leaves where it is.

I know that the police will take exactly eight minutes to get here. Natan knows what to say to make sure they find the evidence.

I go home to my empty apartment and stand under the shower until the water runs cold.

Sleep isn't going to happen, not without her beside me. I have her panties in my hand like some sort of talisman and every time I inhale I swear I can smell her shampoo. At half past three in the morning I'm standing outside her building.

There have been more nights in this position than I'd care to write down, in the car, at the corner, waiting for her lights to go off. Tonight I go up the stairs. Her hall light is off and I stand there in front of her door doing nothing at all for a while. Then I knock so quietly that a woman who was actually asleep would never hear it.

The door opens two inches, the chain still in place. Her face appears in the gap, blurred with sleep, her hair is tied up, but falling from the hair tie in chunks of dark curls.

"You put the chain on," I say.

"You told me to." She shuts the door. There's a scrape and a rattle, and then it's open properly and she's standing there in a T-shirt that comes to the middle of her thighs, squinting at me. "It's the middle of the night."

"I couldn’t sleep."

She looks at me for a moment. Whatever's on my face, she reads more of it than I'd like, and she doesn't ask a single question about it. She steps back to let me in, and locks up behind me, chain included, before padding through to the kitchen with her feet slapping on the boards.

The apple loaf is on a rack under a tea towel with my name piped across the top in white icing in letters that get progressively smaller as they run out of room.

She cuts me an enormous slice and sits on the counter, her feet slapping against the cupboard door, while I eat it standing at the table. She is talking about Bill and the cats, and Kimmie eating the burnt end of the cake.

I put the plate down and step in between her knees. She winds her arms around my neck and rests her chin on my shoulder without being asked. The kitchen clock ticks, and I don't let go of her for a long time.

"Your loaf isn't burnt," I say eventually.