She shrugged and said, “I just sleep.”
“Not last night, you didn’t,” he said, his gaze intent.
She deliberately turned away from him. “See you later,” she said and headed to one of the big public buildings up ahead. Except he wasn’t deterred.
“I’m going this way too.”
“Sure you are,” she said in a tone of disbelief.
“What? Now you think I’m following you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m looking into these kids.” She locked her glare on him. “Remember? The ones you dangled information on, then pulled back.”
“I didn’t dangle any information,” he said in frustration.
She slid a sideways glance at him. He definitely did look like he was frustrated. Why? What was his game? If he wasn’t involved, he knew who was. As far as she was concerned, at this moment, that was the same thing, but she needed whatever information he had. “Whatever information, whoever you think is doing this, whatever you know,” she said, deliberately avoiding the fact that she thought he was involved, “you need to tell me.”
He stopped, looked at her. “Are we back to that again?”
“Back to what?” She opened her eyes wider.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Of course not,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s never you.”
He took a slow deep breath. “You really think I’m involved though, don’t you?”
“I don’t know jack shit,” she said. “I know that I have a boy in the morgue and cold case files involving several dead children,” she said, “and that is never good.”
“Apparently another one went missing last night,” he said, thinking about his ex-fiancée.
She stopped, turned, and looked at him. “What?”
“Somebody I know.”
“What I want,” she said, “is the name of whoever is involved in this. If you know,” she said, pointing her finger at him before poking him in the chest, “I want to know too.”
“I don’t know anything about these kids,” he said. “But my ex called me to say her nephew was missing.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What? Did she report it?”
“I didn’t even think to tell her to call the cops,” he said in confusion. “I should have though, shouldn’t I?”
“Well, let’s hope somebody did,” she cried out. “Why’d she call you? What the hell would you do about it anyway?”
He didn’t have an answer for it; he just stared at her.
Yet something was in his gaze, something that made her stop and frown. “What were you planning on doing?”
“I wasn’tplanning,” he said, his voice hard and clipped, “on doing anything.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You carry on,” he said. “I’ve had a change of plans.” And, with that, he turned and walked away.
Only she wasn’t through. She raced up behind him, grabbed his arm, and turned him around. “What do you know about this missing boy?”
The look in his eyes was haunted. “I don’t know anything,” he snapped. “For all I know, the boy and other cases are unrelated.”
“I hope so,” she said. “Otherwise we have a problem in the city.”
He took a slow deep breath. “Some of those cases are very old.”