Page 85 of Savior

“Kyle Barton,” Nate finished. “I’d recognize that sleazy motherfucker anywhere. Do you remember him being at your sister’s wedding? Drunk off his ass, trying to convince one of the bridesmaids to blow him in the bathroom because he was a detective.”

I grimaced at the thought of any woman being desperate enough to willingly let him put his hands on her body. “Ugh, no.”

“Did it work?” Jeremy asked.

My skin crawled at his sudden interest in the topic, and a flush crept its way onto my face. I tried to swallow, feeling as though something was lodged in my throat. I shoved my chair back and got to my feet. “I just need a min—”

“Hell no!” Nate shifted his chair to the side to let me pass before continuing his conversation. “Instead, he just moved from one seat at the bar to the next. There was even one point where he came stumbling out of the bathroom and ran right into Grey. Like, so sloppy drunk that he was falling all over him.”

I stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a bottled water from the fridge before pressing it to my forehead. The two men continued laughing over Kyle’s behavior while I stewed in the next room. Suddenly, they were best friends.

I didn’t know what I expected—that Nate would’ve jumped up and offered to come with me? Maybe given me a secret look that meant we were going to sneak out?

So far, all he’d given me was the cold shoulder. Perhaps I’d gotten him to my mother’s under false pretenses, but he’d kept things from me too.

I glanced down at my watch, trying to calculate how many hours of footage we had left to review before it would be considered appropriate to leave.

“You okay?”

I jumped at the sound of Jeremy’s voice, backing myself against the cabinet near the sink. “You can’t touch me like that,” I hissed. “It’s not right.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes and grabbed a beer from inside the refrigerator. “I think you’re overreacting—”

“No,” I whispered, blinking back tears. “You can’t just cross lines like that.”

“Jesus.” He let the fridge close with a soft thud and slowly walked over. “Is this about the other night? Let it go, Kate. We had a few drinks, I thought you wanted me and made my move, but you shot me down. End of fucking story. Nothing happened.”

“But—” I paused, scrambling for a rebuttal. His explanation seemed simple when my feelings on the matter were complicated and confusing.

“But what?” Jeremy asked, reaching around me to open a drawer. He grabbed the bottle opener and popped the top on his beer. “It’s not like we fucked. Trust me, I would’ve remembered that.”

I took a deep breath and held it in as he left the kitchen, hating that his words made sense.

Nothing had happened.

I was so used to looking for loose threads that I’d magnified a simple misunderstanding, blowing the entire night out of proportion.

“Stop being ridiculous,” I chided under my breath. “Just be an adult and do your job so you can go home.”

Nate and Jeremy were studying a still image of the detective when I came back in, neither raising their heads to acknowledge me.

I pushed my wounded pride aside and studied the time stamp on the bottom of the screen as I sat down. “Wait.” I looked over at Nate. “What time were you called in?”

“Uh…” He thought it over. “Twenty-two hundred hours, give or take. Why?”

I looked at the footage again and pressed play. “Look at the time. It’s just after midnight. You said he was stumbling around at the reception. Does this look like a man who was falling down drunk just a couple of hours before?”

Kyle looked directly at the camera before speaking into his cell phone and moving off-screen. I went to the next camera, but he never appeared.

“Christ,” Jeremy noted before rewinding the footage. “She’s right. He’s as sober as a fucking judge here. Either he metabolizes alcohol better than any human I’ve ever met or—”

“Or he was never really drunk,” I finished for him.

Just two adults having a simple conversation.

“Why fake it?” Nate asked the room. “Surely, that wasn’t his way of picking up women.”

“I can think of more effective ways to get a woman.” Jeremy leaned back in his chair with a stretch. The tattoos on his forearms peeked out from under the sleeves of his dress shirt, and I forced my eyes back to the screen.

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