Page 59 of Duplicity

Cat needed to write down everything that had happened. She needed to recount it out loud and have it recorded. What she didn’t need to do was sit here and spend time talking about her feelings. That could come later, in her trauma group.

Cat nodded. “Thank you for sharing. That must have been a hard thing to go through.”

Destiny blinked. She glanced at Violet. “That’s…not why I shared.”

“I know.” Cat got up, even though pretty much everything ached. She went to the other armchair and patted Destiny’s hand. “Thank you for telling me.”

There were entirely too many people in the room. Cat needed to go somewhere else to have whatever breakdown she was about to have without anyone watching.

Her father sat on the edge of a desk in a tiny cubicle with no computer and no personal effects. His cane leaned against the side. He scanned her as she approached and then held his arms out.

“I’m okay.” But she stepped in and took a moment to absorb the feel of her father’s arms. Something she had always known but wouldn’t always have.

“You will be.” He patted her shoulder.

As soon as she stepped back, Romeo moved in. He tugged her to his side and kissed her forehead. “Hands hurt, or can you write?”

Better to just get it all out. “I’m good.”

The words she and that man had spoken to each other rattled around in her brain as she did her best to hold on to them. She needed to get them onto paper so the others would know precisely what he’d said. They could use her statement to come up with a plan to catch him.

He handed her a pen and notepad.

Cat tugged out a chair and sat at someone’s desk.Simon.The photos around the computer were of that police detective, his brother-in-law, wearing a suit standing next to a woman in a wedding gown—his sister. She looked a lot like him and Peter, enough that the resemblance was clear.

Another, much older, photo of a woman had been pinned beside it. The color was washed out, slightly orange. The woman had dark hair, fastened back, and a floral dress that was more than modest. She wasn’t quite smiling. Behind her were palm trees and the door of a hut.

Cat moved his keyboard a little so she had enough room for the notebook. She described what she could remember of the two men. The hood. The car ride. How they’d stopped and she’d spoken with the man in the car.

She could hear his voice.

Cat flipped to another page and wrote down the snatches of the conversation she could remember, putting them in order as much as she could. She drew a couple of arrows and moved some around.

To her left, snatches of conversation floated around between Destiny and Violet, Jasper and Blake. Things like “…in denial. But it’ll hit her.”

Destiny thought she was pushing down what happened and she would fall apart later? So what if Cat did that? What happened when she was alone was between her and Jesus. Right now…she was a cop, and she needed to process this like a cop.

She’d fallen apart after they buried her partner.

After the funeral and the wake.

Around about midnight that night, alone in the shower, she had sat there on the cold tile and cried for Ellis. For her own pain.

“We could get a counselor to come over.” That was Jasper.

Cat wrote a couple more things, but she was losing focus.

Blake said, “We need her to tell us who it was.”

“She didn’t see his face.” Violet was the one she’d told that to, in an effort to get across the fact he hadn’t touched her. None of them had.

Cat closed her eyes. She could hear his voice, plain as day in her head, as if he were here. The same way they were talking.

“Maybe you should let her do her job.” Romeo sounded irritated. “And quit talking about her like she’s not here.”

Violet said, “We’re just concerned, that’s all.”

Cat opened her eyes. She’d written all she could remember right now, but it was a first draft at best. She’d need to compile it all into one statement where she could recount the conversation in order as much as she could remember.

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