He held up the key. “Where the hell did you get this?”
She gave him a casual look and said, “I found it.”
“You let yourself into my apartment last night?” That didn’t make him feel any better. Better to have no sleep than to sleep through someone sneaking into his place, while he snoozed on.
“Sure, why not?” she said. “I already knew you were up for an easy lay. Of course you weren’t exactly all action last night,” she said, with a disgusting snort. “Matter of fact, you wasted my night.”
“What the hell?” he said in outrage. “If I’d wanted you over, I would have invited you. You don’t just walk into my place because you somehow got a hold of my key.”
As he held the key, he tried toseejust where she had gotten it from. And he thought of Caitlin. “Caitlin gave it to you?” he said in disgust. “How many of these damn keys does she have?”
“She made a bunch,” Annalise said, with a trilling laugh, as she headed to the front door. “I’ll tell her that I struck out, but at least I got a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah, well, you can tell Caitlin that she can fuck off too,” he said. “We broke up six months ago. Why the hell is she sending women my way?”
“Because she figures that, once you understand nobody’s as good as her, you’d have her back.”
“Not in this lifetime,” he roared.
She closed the door with asnapbehind her, but her laughter stayed in the room. He walked over, locked the door, and called the locksmith. Within minutes, he had the order in for early the next day to come change the locks on his door. He set the key down. It had been months since his ex-fiancée had tried something like that. He couldn’t believe she’d done it again.
When his phone rang, he looked at it and then tossed it on the bed in disgust. Somehow Caitlin wasn’t getting the message. Simon shook his head. What a mistake he had made with her. He wouldn’t do that again. What had he been thinking when he got engaged?That he wanted normal. That he wanted a partner. That his solo life had served its purpose for all those years. That he wanted… more. However, today just reminded him—yet again—that normal wasn’t for him. That a partner he could trust was not in the cards. That living his solo life protected him. That he shouldn’t want…more.
He walked into the bathroom to shower, only to find that his uninvited house guest had left a mess here too. He stepped into the shower, hating the smell of her perfume and old hair spray. He doused himself well with soap and shampoo to clean up the stench. When he stepped out, he felt better, but just the sight of the mess in his bathroom pissed him off all over again. After such a great night’s sleep, when he saw his bed, with her indentation and some of her long hairs and even her hairpins on the bed itself, he immediately stripped it down and threw it into the laundry.
He couldn’t believe Annalise had done that. And he couldn’t believe he’d slept through it. How the hell had that happened? He hadn’t slept well in a long time, but sleep deprivation was no excuse. Then he remembered the half bottle of scotch, now sitting empty beside him on the bar.… Well, that explained him not waking to her arrival and would be the last time he’d do that for a while.
Moodily, he started a cup of coffee and then sat in front of the huge picture window to enjoy the view. He had a two-seater couch arranged in front of the circular windows that showed him the city of Vancouver from his penthouse apartment. He sat here, sipping his coffee, trying to quell the rage inside.
He picked up the phone, turned it on, and called his ex. “You do that again,” he said, “and I’ll take apart your house of cards and make sure nothing’s left for you to pick up the pieces from.” Just when she wanted to protest, he turned off the phone and tossed it on the couch beside him.
The last thing he wanted to listen to was any more excuses from her. They’d had months of ups and downs on a daily basis. The sex had been hot, and the rest had been awful. When he couldn’t stand any more of the chaos and the constant drama, he broke it off. Only she’d refused to listen. And she’d taken her revenge in a constant irritating string of emails, texts, phone calls. Then resorted to some mad retaliation by sending her girlfriends to his doorstep. This was the first time one had entered unannounced. She’d also be the last.
He was so done with it. He was done with so many things. Hopefully his police visits were done too. He sipped his coffee and stared out at the city, wondering why everybody in his world lived such a shadowed life. He could crush business opponents; he could clean up at any card game. But, when it came to relationships, well, he hated to say it, but apparently he sucked. It was time to change his game, only he wasn’t sure exactly how. He didn’t want any of those damn recurring nightmares either.
Control was everything to him, and no one and nothing would take that away from him.
Chapter 4
Saturday and Sunday
Kate spent thenext two days, her whole weekend, trying to fit in searches on the missing children, according to St. Laurant’s minimal descriptions. Only her time was at a premium. Vancouver had had two murders the previous night; one looked to be an open-and-shut case, but the other one was still dodging them. The detectives on her team had hours of interviews left to do, walking the streets and talking to passersby. They’d managed to snag a couple patrolmen to give them a hand going door-to-door, but nothing shortened the legwork that needed to be done.
*
Second Monday in June
Walking into theoffice early on the third day, she was tired and cranky. She hadn’t slept. They’d been out working a case until well past two in the morning.
When she dropped her phone on the center of her desk with a louder-than-normalsnap, Owen looked up and snickered. “You know that getting laid is a great stress relief.”
“If that’s the only reason to get laid, I’ll skip it, thanks,” she said. She walked to the counter and picked up coffee, bringing her cheap mug back to her desk, where she set it down carefully. She might drop a lot of things, but she treated her coffee as gold. The guys had tried to replace her cheap mug several times, but she wasn’t having it. It was her favorite cup; it was thick, held the heat, and it was bigger than all the others. And that meant that she got at least one and a half cups of coffee per mug, compared to what the rest of them were getting.
Besides, they were in cahoots to empty the pot before she got hers. It drove her crazy at the beginning, and they were in sync over it all. And, if that were the case, then she was better off just letting them do their thing and ignoring them. She was still all about the case and the victims. Right now she had more of both than she was happy with. When the temperatures outside spiked—which, yeah, in Vancouver wasn’t much of a real heatwave—violence spiked. Tempers flared, dispositions shortened, patience disappeared, and all kinds of things that wouldn’t normally happen, happened.
The one possible open-and-shut case was a fight between husband and wife. They’d been out on the beach all day. Both of them were hot and suntanned—badly sunburned actually, she added mentally with a snort. They’d been drinking beer and smoking marijuana for most of the afternoon. Somehow they got into an argument at home over munchies, in which she stole his bag of chips. He grabbed the knife and pinned her to the wall with it, jamming it deep along her breastbone.
When Kate took her first sip of the hot fresh brew, she sat back, closed her eyes, and just let it slip down her throat to her stomach. She could almost imagine the caffeine being injected into her bloodstream. Surely it wouldn’t be more than ten years before caffeine was actually something you could shoot. Hell, they injected everything else. Why not coffee too?