Page 45 of Hide and Seek
“Damn it,” I hear Diesel from across the locker room.
“I did not go and find myself a girl,” I tell him, knowing damn well Diesel is listening too. “All I’m saying is this one is off limits. I’m not with her, we’re just . . . I don’t fucking know what this is. It’s new. Very fucking new, and until I figure it out, you don’t get to comment on her ass, and if I hear you even mention it, I will have no problem singeing the memory right out of your brain.”
“Fuck, Knight,” Diesel says, suddenly a lot closer before smacking the back of my head. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I don’t got nothing bad.”
“So who is she?” Ace asks as I release him from my hold.
“She’s no one that you need to be concerning yourself with,” I say, desperately needing to get the spotlight off me. After all, I’m not quite ready to tell them I spent the morning buried inside my step-niece. “You two have enough girl problems of your own to be worried about mine.”
Diesel scoffs, his gaze shifting to Ace. There’s still hostility there, but I gotta give it to the assholes, they’re good at keeping a lid on it while we’re out in the field. But now that we’re back at the station, all bets are off. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Come on, man. You know she wanted a piece of this right from the start,” Ace taunts. “They all do. Nobody can resist all of this.”
“Amy Cartwright. Grade nine biology,” Diesel says, starting to list off all the women who have shamelessly rejected Ace. “Trina Kent. Sarah McLoud. Bar Jessica. Insurance Jessica. And don’t forget my fucking cousin Jessica. There’s Maggie from—”
“Okay, okay,” Ace cuts in, knowing this list is bound to get long. “Maybe not every last living soul on Earth wants to get on their knees for me, but no matter how many rejections I’ve had, they don’t mean anything because, at the end of the day, I’ve had your sister, and that will always be more than enough.”
Diesel’s face drops and Ace launches into a sprint, knowing damn well he’s about to have his ass handed to him. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” Diesel roars, taking off after Ace toward the station gym.
I let out a heavy sigh.
Ace would never cross that line with Diesel, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t taunt the fucker about it, and with the two of them already bickering like an old married couple, this isn’t going to go down well.
There’s an hour until our actual shift starts, and Diesel isn’t going to waste a second of that time teaching Ace a lesson, and honestly, he deserves it. Ace knows that Diesel’s sister is a sore point for him, but there’s also a good chance Ace baited him on purpose. He hates when they fight, despite how he goes out of his way to make it worse, and though it’s entertaining, things are just better when they’re getting along.
I head toward the station gym, striding through the door to find Ace already flat on his ass on the sparring mat. “Is that all you got?” he taunts Diesel as I shake my head, hoping like fuck Diesel doesn’t break him. After all, I’m going to need both of them sharp and focused during our shift. They need to get this shit out of their system, but they also need to remember they have careers to think about. So if they can’t manage their shit, I have no problem heading over there and putting both of them in their place.
I take a seat on the bench by the sparring mats to supervise the children when I notice Detective Gray pass by the door. He glances in, and seeing me sitting here, he pivots and strides into the gym. “Slater,” he says with a slight rise of his chin.
I get to my feet and meet him in the middle, hoping like fuck he’s got some good news for me. “Were you able to figure out who’s running up that case?”
He shakes his head, instantly putting me on edge. “That’s just the thing. I’ve been looking into it since you mentioned it, and I can’t find anything that matches the description you gave me from that night. I’ve asked around, and no one knows what I’m talking about.”
My gaze narrows on him, suspicion rattling me. “You sure?”
Gray shrugs. “Don’t know what to tell you. I’m positive. There’s nothing in the system. No homicides were logged for that night. Maybe you got the details wrong.”
Remembering the look in Harper’s eyes when she came to my place after that shift, unease begins to plague me. She was terrified, even her hands were shaking. Nobody can feign that type of terror. There was a body and a message. Now that the body is no longer in the morgue, there is suddenly no information logged in our system, and the detective who dropped the body off wants to claim he knows nothing about it. I can only assume the worst.
“Right,” I say slowly, my suspicions making me feel sick. “I must have my wires crossed.”
Could Gray be the asshole responsible for all of this? The one who’s been watching her, the one who’s been sending sick messages in the form of mutilated human hearts? Or is he just a pawn in somebody else’s sick game?
I need to get to the bottom of this.
Heading back to the sparring mat, I pull out my phone and bring up a number for someone I haven’t thought about in a long time. After hitting call and holding it to my ear, the phone rings three times before a feminine voice answers.
“Knight?” Carly questions in a hesitant tone. Not that I blame her. The last time we spoke, she was confessing her undying love after we’d slept together once. I ran the first chance I got. I don’t even know why I still have her number in my phone, but I’ve never been so glad that I do now.
“Hey, Carly. How have you been?”
“I, ahhhh . . . I’m confused. Why are you calling me?”
“Do you still work in security at Blackstone Hospital?”
There’s a short silence, and I can only imagine the millions of questions floundering through her brain. “Yes,” she finally says.
