Page 51 of The Piece You Stole

“Rooms taken!” Detective Ferdinand yells. “Use another one.”

Detective Bradley lifts one corner of the folder. In warning. In a threat. I drag my eyes away before I can see anything more than the barest corner of the photograph. “The doctor’s car keys were on the ground. Why was that? And why did we find his address scrawled on a receipt in his wallet? Did he write it? Where was he taking you?” His tone is almost friendly, but the fact he’s slowly lifting the front of the folder as he speaks means I’d have to be blind and stupid not to view him as anything but an enemy.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I jerk my gaze back to the door.

Whoever that is, please be someone here to save me.

“Use another room!” Detective Ferdinand screams at the door, never taking his eyes off me. “You’re running out of time, Miss Leo. Just give us one thing and—”

The door flies open, and the cops spring to their feet, already shouting to get the fuck out.

CHAPTER 13

SAIGE

“Detective Bradley, you’ve lost weight.” An unfamiliar man with a soft, southern accent steps into the room, seeming not to notice Detective Ferdinand and Detective Bradley are doing their best to block him.

Who are you?

I study him curiously as he pats Detective Bradley’s bulging gut before easing his trim figure between the two cops. Turning, he offers Detective Ferdinand a lazy smile, “Ah, good to see you again, Ferdinand, did you ever find the guy responsible for…” His dark head swivels my way as if he’s just noticing me for the first time. I don’t see how he could have missed me when I’m sitting right in front of him. He clears his throat. “Probably best not to mention that in pleasant company, eh? I haven’t looked at a stapler in the same way after that case.”

Case? So, he’s a cop?I take in his silky-looking white shirt and the black pants that fit him so well they must be tailored, then I take in the cop’s sweat-ringed cotton shirts.

Okay, so he’s a cop with money…and style?

Whoever he is, he knows how to make an entrance. And while he might be smiling, he’s the only one in the room who is. He doesn’t wait for a response, just strolls over to me, trailing a luxurious oak and citrus cologne with him.

The cops didn’t invite him into the room. They certainly didn’t invite him to sit. But that doesn’t stop him from dragging Detective Ferdinand’s chair to my side of the table before folding himself into it beside me.

If he notices I’m smelling less than fragrant after my hours in this room, that my hair is probably a bedraggled tangled mess, or Rylan’s bites lining my throat, he gives no sign of it.

He merely sits, a hint of a smile playing on his lips as he studies me as if waiting for me to recognize him.

I’ve never seen him a day in my life.

There’s an easy confidence and assurance in his relaxed pose that makes me think he’s in his thirties or forties. If he’s any older, then he knows how to take damn good care of himself. Short dark hair, shorter at the back than the sides. Eyebrows plucked and shaped, but nicely. Not overdone. Nothing is out of place. Not one thing.

And even though it’s—my gaze darts to the wall clock—nearly three-thirty in the morning, this guy makes it look like it’s a bright and productive nine a.m., and he’s had time to go to the gym, squeezed some work in at his home office, and is walking into work with a coffee in hand, refreshed and ready to face the day.

The cops look like they’ve slept in their clothes for the last five nights. I probably do too.

With no idea what to say or do, I wait for the cops to demand this man—whoever he is—to get out, but not before he drags the chair that he’s made himself comfortable back to where he got it.

He has to be a cop. People can’t just interrupt a police interview like this. Can they?

Maybe he’s their boss, and now it’s his turn to get me to talk?

I wriggle to the edge of my seat, wishing I could drag my chair even further away without it looking like his quiet attention is making me uncomfortable.

“Now,” the man says, with the same lazy-eyed smile he gave Detective Ferdinand pointed right at me. “I received a call that my client had been arrested, and I’m shocked.” His face falls as he claps a hand dramatically over his heart. “Shockedthat she is in this interview room without me.”

What?

Thud.

Jumping in my seat, I spin my head toward the door, just in time to see Detective Ferdinand taking his hand off it. Whether he slammed the door on purpose, or it’s just one of those doors that likes to slam, I don’t know. But from his twitching right eye, I have my doubts gravity was the guilty party.

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