Page 10 of Winning Bid

“Fuck,” I mutter. “What did they know?”

“That I knew Neil. That I worked at O’Mulligan’s. That he kissed me and put his scarf on me as we left together,” her nostrils flare as she says the words. She’s on the brink of losing her shit—I can see it.

When I reach out for her hand, it’s hard not to be hurt when she flinches, but I get it. She is wound tight, and I don’t blame her at all. But she lets me hold her hand after a pause. Quietly, I ask, “What else did they know?”

“Isn’t that enough?” she snaps.

“It’s enough for them to know you two were involved. It’s not enough to convict.”

“Do … do you think they’re listening? That the apartment is bugged? For them to know all of that … I don’t know how else they’d know about O’Mulligan’s.”

I shrug. “It’s not hard to sort that kind of stuff out, but it is hard to get a warrant to plant a bug. I don’t think they’re listening to us.” I don’t want to say what’s on my mind. I really don’t. But it needs to be said. “Moss thinks that if we don’t talk about things, then this will eventually go away. I’m inclined to agree with him, but since he must have botched hiding Neil’s body, I’m not sure if that’s the right instinct.”

“That’s the plan? Never talk about it again?”

“For now, that’s the only plan I’ve got. As much as I do not think this incident is enough for them to get a warrant for a bug, my father’s shit is. All the stuff I’ve done with Moss is. So, while I don’t think they’d go through the paperwork of getting a bug for one dead guy, I do think it’s possible for everything else, which means, yeah. Not talking in our home sounds like a good start.”

She leans to me, putting her head on my chest. “I hate this so much.”

The defeated tone in her voice kills me. This is all my fault. During the fight, I was mindless. A strange Zen feeling took over as I fought Neil. I wanted him dead. I wanted to feel my fist go through his face for what he had done to her. But then I heard her voice through the violence. It was a fractured sound—Neil had tried to strangle her, and her vocal cords were bruised. But it shattered my focus completely, and I had to get to her, which meant the fight needed to stop. I worked him over to end the fight, but then he cracked his skull on a stud in the wall, and that was that. At first, I’d thought I’d knocked him out.

I wish that were all I’d done.

“I hate it, too, baby.” I hate that they came to her office and that I can’t stop them from doing it again. The only defense we have now is silence, and that has never been my skill. I am a talker, a professional manipulator, as one of my old law professors called it. But silence could be an attorney’s asset, too. Letting a suspect talk was a good way to get an accidental confession. Not that I think she’d say the wrong thing, but I have to ask, “What did you tell them about Neil?”

“That he was just a guy I’d met at a bar. He came to my job to wait for me and walk me home. On the way home, he mentioned some weird shit about how he didn’t like when a woman told him what to do, that he didn’t like mouthy women. So, when we got to my place, I said goodnight, and that was it because it was strange to say misogynist shit like that out loud.”

That’s my fucking girl, right there. I smile at her. “Not bad, Devlin.”

She quirks a crooked smile at me back. “What?”

“That’s a good story, and it could lead them to look for other women he put off. Maybe even find some of his other victims … fuck, if I wasn’t in love with you before, I would be now.”

Her smile goes wide, before she starts to cry. I hold her close until she stills, and it takes far longer than I’d hoped it would. She mumbles, “I can’t take this.”

“I am so fucking sorry, June.”

“I know. I’m not asking for another apology. It’s just … I need to be able to get this out without you constantly apologizing, okay?”

I nod. “Whatever you need.”

“I wish we had called the cops that night, and part of me wonders if we told them now?—"

“We can’t.”

She sighs. “I know. I just mean, I still wonder what would happen if we did, though. If we confess to it and let other lawyers handle this … it might not be so bad.”

“If I thought that even close to true, I’d do it in the blink of an eye just to stop breaking your heart. But it’s not, and neither of us is naïve enough to believe that would go the way we want it.”

“I know.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I tell her with more confidence than I actually feel. “We are not going to speak a word about any of this in either of our apartments. Not at our offices. Not anyplace we regularly go to. If we need to talk about it or anything relating to it, we go for a walk. Deal?”

“Yeah. And definitely not on any of our phones.”

I laugh and nod. “Agreed. The sun is down, and it’s fucking freezing out here. Are you ready for some supper?”

“I guess so.”

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