Page 16 of Draven

“Never took you for the type of girl who gave a shit about her appearance.”

She ignores my needling, instead fixing her gaze across the street. She walks a few paces, then returns, taking a few steps past me in the opposite direction. “You’re right,” she eventually says, immediately recognizing the issue in the form of a giant statue of Frank Wigham, one of the town’s founders, and a fucking great eyesore. If I had my way, I’d take a wrecking ball to the monstrosity.

“From here”—she points at the vape shop next door—“to there,” she says, this time indicating the comic store on the other side of the pharmacy. “You can’t see the bakery.”

My crooked, and cocky, smile makes her scowl.

“I know,” I gloat.

“Urgh.” She throws her hands in the air. “You just love being right, don’t you?”

“Who doesn’t?” My smile grows. I do love being right. I especially love being right when Louise is wrong because she hates being wrong that much.

“But, why? Why would a witness lie?”

“Maybe she didn’t.” I shrug one shoulder. “Maybe she wasn’t standing here at all. She could have been farther down and just thought she was outside the pharmacy. Most people’s memories are unreliable. It’s why we have to corroborate witness statements with other evidence.”

She narrows her eyes at what she thinks as a dig at her and the investigative team. On this occasion, it wasn’t. I simply stated a fact most police officers know all too well. When information is coming in thick and fast at the start of an investigation, things get missed. Eventually, someone would have picked up on the discrepancy.

“Plausible, I suppose.” She sets off again, stopping when the bakery comes into view, and I follow.

“God, Draven, can you imagine how terrifying it must have been to simply be going about your business one minute, then snatched right off the street in broad daylight the next? And the only person who claims to have seen anything is potentially an unreliable witness.” She turns my way, but she’s not looking at me. She’s staring into the distance. “Where are they?” she murmurs, more to herself than me.

An urge to ease her obvious distress has me caressing her arm with the back of my hand; a soft, tender, and very unlike me move. I expect her to step away, or to snap at me not to touch her.

Instead, she tips back her head and stares up at me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Her admission makes me uncomfortable, yet I’ve no idea why. Maybe it’s easier to forget how fucking much I like her when we’re arguing.

I drop my hand. “Let’s go.”

A flash of… something crosses her face, vanishing as quickly as it arrived. “Where to?”

“I think it’s time we had a chat with Sally Fowler, don’t you?”

Chapter 8

Louise

I tighten my hold on Draven’s waist as he weaves us in and out of the heavy traffic on the way to interview Sally Fowler again. Even through my helmet, and with the whipping wind as we hurtle down the highway at eighty miles an hour, the smell of his leather jacket mingled with a faint whiff of bodywash tickles my nostrils. I breathe in deeper, savoring the underlying scent of his skin.

Because we can’t talk, the journey gives me time to hash out my feelings. Draven keeps sending me signals that he might not be quite so pissed with me as I’d originally thought, then in the very next breath, he pulls away.

Case in point: the gentle caress on the street back there.

I’d almost leaned in and placed my hand over his, but the chance had gone as quickly as it arrived. Eight years was a long time to mourn a life I’d never had, but every time I think about what might have been, regret—for my actions and his—weighed me down.

Even now, all these years later, I still don’t agree with what he’d done to Tony Callides, but I can understand why he did it. Sexual abuse of anyone, especially of a minor, is a trigger for most people, and when faced with an abuser who’s just beaten his victim half to death, believe me, I’d wanted to batter him, too. The older, more mature me would have taken Draven to one side and had a stern word—told him if that was the way he conducted his business he should find another partner. Except my rookie status and inexperience dealing with difficult characters meant I’d handled the whole situation badly.

He’d been in the wrong.

But so had I.

And now, years after that dreadful night, fate has conspired to bring us together once more. Except Draven has never shown any romantic interest in me. Even back there outside the bakery, when he’d extended me a sliver of kindness, the attraction I felt had been completely one sided.

Yet he keeps making these jokes and innuendos, pushing my buttons. What would he do if I called his bluff? Am I even brave enough to attempt making a pass and risking rejection, no doubt with his special brand of sarcasm thrown in?

He slows the bike, coming to a stop outside a small one-story house. The brown paint is peeling, and the tiny front yard is overrun with weeds and litter. We dismount, secure our helmets to the bike and, with Sally Fowler’s statement in hand, walk up to the front door.

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