Page 22 of Wicching Hour

“I’m freezing,” I said. “I’m going to make tea, if you want some.” I went to the kitchen and pulled out my brewing supplies.

“Yes, please,” she said, taking a seat on the couch. “Should I assume you’re shivering right now because you didn’t want him in your space?”

“You’re an excellent detective.” I opened the freezer door. “Do you like meringue? I have some chocolate-filled meringue cookies.”

Hernández leaned back on the couch. “That sounds amazing. Yes, please.”

I turned with a plate of magically thawed and warmed cookies and stopped short. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry about your grandmother.”

The detective blinked and then sat up straight.

“Shit. Sorry! I’m sorry.” I shook my head, disgusted with myself. “Give me a minute.” I put down the plate and walked back to the kitchen. Putting my gloved hands over my face, I built my mental barriers back up, reinforcing them.

When I walked back with two mugs of tea a few minutes later, I placed one on the coffee table for her and then kicked off my shoes and sat in my chair with my legs pulled up, holding the steaming cup between my knees and chest, trying to warm up.

“Please forgive me. I wasn’t looking. It’s on your mind. There’s a lot of emotion wrapped up in it, so I got a flash of her in a hospital bed. I’d lowered my mental walls earlier when I was trying to figure out who was on my deck and what was going on.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the steam from my mug. “Ihatehearing personal things.” Opening them, I found her watching me, her brow furrowed. I took a sip and tried to make peace with the death of yet another friendship. I’d really thought this one might work. She knew a lot about me and still liked me. Past tense.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said.

I nodded, staring into my cup.

“Can you tell me what happened with the stalker?” She opened her notebook and began to write.

I went over all of it, including my belief he had been recording me.

“You said his name is Brandon. Can you draw a picture of him?” She asked.

Placing my empty cup on the side table, I stood and went to my computer. “I could, but I have video footage of him. There are cameras all around my gallery.”

Hernández moved to stand behind me so she could watch what I was doing.

“There’s no sound,” I said, pausing the replay when the cloud moved and the guy’s face was visible in the moonlight.

“Can you send me that?” she asked.

I nodded, taking a screenshot and then running it through my digital imaging program. It was what I used to clean and tweak photos for sale. Once I was done, the image was quite clear. “When he approached me the first time—a month or two ago—he was clean-shaven. The beard is new.”

She made a softhmmsound. “He wanted to look more like Declan.”

My hand on the mouse froze. How had that not occurred to me? “There’ll also be footage of him last night and earlier today on the camera feed from the front of the gallery. Do you want me to pull that up as well?”

“No. This is good enough for tonight. I can get started with what you’ve already given me.Butcan you check the other cameras to see if you’ve got your stalker leaving and Officer Harding watching him go?”

“Ooh, good call.” I flicked through camera feeds until I found the one on that corner of the gallery. Unfortunately, it was pointed down so I could document and charge anyone vandalizing my gallery. The outer edge of the video feed caught the police car hood but not the windshield. We couldn’t see the cop. The stalker clearly jogged by after the car appeared in the video, though.

“Is that enough to prove he let the stalker go?” I asked.

“No,” she said, voice cold as she scribbled in her notebook.

I didn’t think that anger was directed at me.

“It’s the hood of a dark SUV,” she explained. “There are no insignias we can see that mark it as a police vehicle. Can you send me that video clip too, though? At the very least, I can submit the full report, your phone call—I started recording almost immediately—the images, and videos to my captain and see what he says. Harding doesn’t have a clean record. I know of at least one suspension.”

Turning in my computer chair, I watched her flip her notebook closed before pocketing it with her pen. She took one last sip of tea and said, “Send me what you have there. I’ll go home and write it up and then see if I can talk with the captain tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I know you’re already busy, so I hate adding to your work.” And I hated that my comment about her grandmother was weighing so heavily on her.

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