Page 16 of Dropping Like Flies

“It is,” I said smoothly. “I don’t dictate what you eat and drink.”

A strangled laugh came over the line. “No, just what I do.” My vow to be civil was already wearing thin, my fingernails digging into my palms. “Or are you going to pretend eating an entire jar of olives was an accident the other night?”

“Half a jar,” I said.

“Whatever.” A pause. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“You were with someone yourself a few nights later.”

Flynn. In the club bathroom. I could tell Ben that it had meant nothing, that apparently friends with benefits had become a thing in my life. I could tell him it was none of his business. I could lie about Flynn being my boyfriend. I said none of it, going on the attack instead. “And you were with someone a couple of nights after that. The same guy? Or a different one?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You were the one who brought the subject up.”

“Goodnight Griffin.”

Ben ended the call before I could decide whether to say it back. One thing was clear. We needed to steer clear of anything but work-related conversation, or this entire partnership risked going up in smoke.

Chapter Six

Ben

I slept for shit. No surprise, really, given everything that weighed on my mind. It meant I was more groggy than usual when the insistent ringing of my phone had me rolling over and groping for it on my nightstand. My alarm? No, wrong sound. It was someone calling me. Which, given the darkness of my bedroom, could mean only one thing. This part of the job never got any easier.

“DCI Weaver,” I said, my voice reflecting my lack of cognizance perfectly, as I struggled to fight my way through the layers of sleep still hanging over me like the world’s heaviest shroud.

If Baros noticed, he didn’t comment, choosing to cut to the chase instead. “There’s been another one.” Fuck! I levered my legs over the side of the bed, my bare toes sinking into the carpet as he reeled off an address and I memorized it. There’d been no pattern in terms of area, the murders spread over four different boroughs of London. And now it was five, the address taking me to Whitechapel. Hunting ground of Jack the Ripper. How apt.

“Take your necromancer.”

My necromancer. He had been once. Until grief and guilt had ripped him away from me and left me reeling, my behavior in retrospect, the complete opposite to what it had needed to be, which had left us both at fault for throwing away the perfect relationship. If you could screw up fate, then maybe you didn’t deserve to be happy. We had a chance, though, to do something good. Something that would put an end to the murders once and for all.

I pulled clothes on awkwardly with one hand while I called Griffin with the other. Only a few hours had passed since our last interaction had ended badly, so I doubted he’d take kindly to me calling him again. Hopefully, given the hour, he’d realize the implications. If I was lucky, tonight would be the beginning and end of our partnership. We’d get the information we needed and Griffin would exit stage left. Again. And I could get back to normality. Assuming you could call the fated mate bond that still existed between us normal. When we’d split, I’d expected it to fade with time. It hadn’t. On a bad day, it was just as strong as ever.

The phone went to voicemail as I sat on the side of the bed and tied my shoes. There was no point in leaving a message, so I hung up and tried again. “Answer, you piece of—”

“What?”

Not the friendliest of greetings, but then I hadn’t expected it to be. “I just got the call.”

“What call?”

Griffin sounded even less with it than I’d been when I’d spoken to the DCS. “The call about another murder.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah. My thoughts exactly. It’s in Whitechapel. I’ll pick you up on the way. Do you still live in the same place?”

A slight hesitation and then, “I do.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Meet me out front. I’ll be in a silver Toyota Corolla.” I didn’t wait for Griffin’s agreement before I ended the call. If he was going to back out, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t kidnap him and force him there against his will. It was one thing to agree to something in the bright sunshine of the day—it’d been cloudy today, but my point still stood—and another to go through with it in the cold and dark of early morning. An ex had once told me that only someone twisted would leave the warmth of their bed to attend a crime scene, and tonight, I found myself inclined to agree with him.

I pulled up in front of Griffin’s building in less time than I’d stated, tamping down on the waves of nostalgia threatening to engulf me. Once upon a time, it hadn’t just been Griffin’s building; it had been mine as well, the two of us moving in together less than three weeks after meeting. We’d done everything quickly, like we’d been determined to live our lives in fast forward. Everything had been perfect. Until it wasn’t.

I was so busy trying not to remember how Griffin just hadn’t come home one day and had stayed away for weeks until I’d finally given into the inevitable and left, that when the passenger door opened, I startled. “Bit jumpy, aren’t you?” Griffin said with a smirk as he climbed in. I spared the large backpack he’d pulled onto his lap a glance, but didn’t question it.

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