Page 43 of Allure

“A mugging.”

“When did this happen?”

A few days ago.”

“I need the exact date.”

“Two days ago. At night. Around eight or so. P.M. Duh, I said at night. It happened at the New Age Grocery.”

The cop had been reaching for a form, maybe to file a police report, but he lowers his arm now. “What is this?” he demands. “Some kind of prank? Did your friends put you up to this?”

“What? No. Look at my neck! You can see the bruising yet, can’t you?”

"Your skin is all red and raw, miss. Have a bit of a rough time in the sack and then want to try to pin it on that mugger, so no one suspects that your husband or boyfriend abuses you?"

“I thought about reporting right away, but I was a little busy canceling my credit cards, and now that I saw he’s done it again—”

“Exactly. How can we be so sure that this actually happened? That you aren’t just trying to have some time in the spotlight?”

I just gape at him.

“Why didn’t you report it right away? Did you talk to Arne Montel?”

“Arne?”

“The owner of New Age Grocery. I take it that’s a no. You didn’t even inform the store of the attack.”

“No, but I can tell you all about it now. It was in the parking lot, right by the cart—”

“Look, miss, I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re swamped as it is. You aren’t the only one to come in here trying to claim a crime happened.”

“It’s not a claim,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Yes, well, we have enough to worry about, and we do have a legitimate case against the guy with the woman who didn’t delay reporting her crime.”

“So you can’t possibly believe me because I didn’t come right away.”

“I hate to break it to you, but we’re swamped. Overbooked, understaffed… we have a ton of leads to follow up on, and maybe all of them will be false.”

He throws up his hands and walks away.

I stand there, trying to wait for someone else to come by. Eventually, another cop does, but while he’s nicer about it, he wants me to sit and wait and admits that it might be a long wait. As in hours.

I have had it with this place. I’m so sick of this town.

I rush out of there, throwing the door open, and I smack into someone hard.

Gritting my teeth, I look up to see Declan King there of all people.

He really is a stalker, isn’t he?

CHAPTER16

Ibrush past him, not even looking at him. The last thing I need is to be given even more grief. I understand that the police are busy, that they have to prioritize cases, but there's a mugger out there who has been attacking a lot of women lately. Not only that, but he's armed!

It’s enough to make me wonder what is going on in this city that the police can’t prioritize finding that guy.

Honestly, I probably don’t want to know.

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