I reluctantly moved away from the lift. "What do you want, Clyde?"
"To see you, of course." Clyde gave me a charming smile; a glimpse of the man I'd been with. "I miss you."
"Bullshit."
His grin turned malicious. "Not so. But I also came to give you some news. Something's come up with your uncle. I thought you'd like to know."
I stilled. "What do you mean?"
"Well..." Clyde jerked his head towards my front door. "Why don't you let me in, and we'll talk? You wouldn't want anyone else to hear."
I glanced over my shoulder. The corridor was empty. "I think here's just fine."
He laughed. "You usually try to find strength in numbers when you see me! Now look at you. I'll say it again: let me inside."
"I'll say my line again. Here. Is. Just. Fine."
"Let's see, then." He dragged his words out. "A little birdie tells me Eric's been arrested."
A lump rose in my throat. "The same charge?"
"I don't know for sure. But wouldn't it be terrible if it was? Then your father's name would get dragged into things...and then your name might join it..."
Cold sweat spread across my palms. "It would be by your hands, of course. You'd write the article."
"And the rest of the journalists would follow. We're wolves, I'm afraid. That's what you called us once, isn't it?" His voice softened. "I want to help you. I want to keep your name out of this. But the thing is, I'll need something in return."
"Of course you will."
"I need you to get back with me. I need you on my arm again. We looked good together."
"You mean you miss having a cop as a girlfriend -- you miss getting the inside scoop." I shook my head. "Do what you like, Clyde, but I am never getting involved with you again."
"We'll see. I've terrified you, and we both know it." He put his hand on my shoulder.
"Get off me."
He looked into my eyes and squeezed.
I reached for my gun.
He let go and strolled away. A few seconds later, the lift doors creaked shut. It rumbled down to the ground floor.
I stumbled into my flat, hot all over. The first thing I did was throw the living room window open. I hung out of it for a while, staring at the shadows in the street and trying to remember how to breathe.
The second thing I did was go into the kitchen.
My punch bag was still hanging at the end of the room, and I saw nothing else as I walked towards it. My leather jacket slipped from my shoulders. I dumped it on the counter and struck out.
I swung again and again, descending into a mad flurry of blows. My heart rate rocketed. Sweat seeped down my back.
I hit the punch bag like I wanted to kill it. It was the only way out for my anger. But the bag remained sturdy; unbreakable.
Spinning around, I struck blindly. My fist collided with the coffee machine. Plastic cracked and caved in around my knuckles.
I yanked it so hard that the plug flew out, sharp pins flinging upwards and stinging my cheek. I threw it across the kitchen with a war cry. It crashed into the opposite wall, metal components falling apart and spilling across the floor. Something shattered, and a small surge of satisfaction rushed through my veins.
When I lifted the remains over my head and brought them down again, everything fell apart. I stamped on the pieces, and they crunched beneath my boots. Finally, when it was nothing, I stopped and caught my breath.
My palms stung. The plastic shards I was holding onto were covered in blood, and I dropped them, turning around to the sink. Everything else in the kitchen was tidy and undisturbed. Not even my punch bag swayed.
I washed the blood off my hands, then grabbed my jacket. I dug out my tabphone and sent my father an Xplora message on my way to the bathroom.
Taking a shower didn't wash my anger away, but it weighed my limbs down until I was too heavy to hold the energy. By the time I was dry and I'd swapped my contact lenses for glasses, I felt calmer.
I dragged myself into my bedroom and slowly turned my attention to what on earth I was going to wear for Alex. This wasn't a date. It was anything but a date. And yet I agonised over my choices, for once unable to bring myself to just turn up in jeans.
Eventually, I settled on a wine-coloured jumper dress, dark tights, and over the knee boots. The dress was a decent length, the tights were a respectable shade, and the boots hid most of my legs. I shrugged my leather jacket back on, tidied up my short hair, and strode into the hallway.
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. I was forgetting something.
The window and Mitzy. That was it.
Striding back into my kitchen, I retrieved a sachet of wet cat food and waited for Mitzy to arrive. She always knew when I opened the cupboard.
But she didn't come.
"Mitzy!" I called. Maybe she was asleep. "Dinner time!"
No quiet feet thudded through the flat.
"Mitzy?"
I checked the hallway. I checked my bedroom. I checked the bathroom. Nothing.
I looked in the living room. The curtains were flapping in the chilly breeze, and I went to the open window. My flat was facing a courtyard of bins at the back of the building, and a tall, spindly tree stood between the rubbish. Mitzy must have gone through the window and climbed down, trying to keep out of my way while I'd been breaking things.
What now? I couldn't go out and leave the window open, but if I shut it, she wouldn't be able to get back in. And she was very much a house cat.
"Oh, fuck it." I shut the window. "Mitzy, you'll have to go feral for a couple of hours."
***
Alex lived a five-minute walk away, in the same block of flats I'd escorted him to on his first day. When I reached number eleven, I rang the doorbell, and the camera surfaced instantly.
"May I come in?" I asked.
"Let me ask Alex."
I stared at myself while I waited, wondering if I should have put mascara on.
The camera suddenly vanished, and the door opened smoothly. Alex was standing right behind it, his jacket and tie off and his shirt sleeves rolled away from his forearms. "Hello. I was just about to call and ask if you wanted me to fetch you."
I raised an eyebrow. "Fetch me?"
"In case things like Clyde were lurking in the dark." His gaze drifted to my bloodied knuckles.
"Oh, Clyde's already been. He was outside my flat when I got there."
Alex met my eyes. "Are you all right?"
"It was fine. He was nothing more than a twat."
"Then why do you look like you've had a round with your kitchen wall?"
"I missed the punch bag."
He frowned and took my hands, looking at my cuts under the harsh light of the corridor. He held them so gently that my insides quivered.
When he'd accepted the damage, he let them go and stepped back. "Come in."
I went inside, and he shut the front door behind me. He hesitated, his hands hovering to take my jacket, and then he dropped them again. I shrugged it off and hung it up myself, next to his dark trench coat. My mouth had already turned dry.
He put some distance between us again. "I'm cooking pizza. Is that all right?"
"That's great," I said absently. "Hell, this place is really nice."
The hallway was wide and bright, and hologram photographs were speckled between the doorways. They pictured Alex and older people I presumed were his family, Alex graduating from university, and a teenage Alex with a younger girl who bore the same features as him.
"You almost sound disappointed," he teased.
"I feel ashamed." I turned away from his photos. "I made you eat in such a dump when you had dinner with me."
"Your flat is great."
"Alex, I don't even have a dining table! I made you eat off your lap!"
He smiled. "Well, I do have a dining table. But before you see it, take your boots off."
I started to tug off one boot. Then I stopped. "You wear your shoes inside."
"That's not what I meant. You're wearing a dress." His eyes trailed down my body. "I've never seen you wearing a dress before."
His gaze left heat in its wake, and I blushed furiously. Plenty of men had looked at me like that before -- and yet, somehow, no one had looked at me like Alex did.
He turned away suddenly, his eyes dark, and strode into the kitchen. I hesitated, one boot on and one boot off, then took both off and followed him.
The kitchen was short and wide, and a glass dining table stood in the middle, surrounded by glossy counters. His oven was an enormous thing stretching partway up the wall with two doors. Both were glowing.
"Two ovens?" I arched an eyebrow. "I didn't know you cooked so much."
Alex smiled. "I do when the occasion is worth it."
We dithered for a moment, suddenly on the brink of being awkward, and then I sat down at his table and made myself at home. He sat down slowly opposite me.
"We should talk about work," I said. "That might remind us why we're here."
I finally filled him in on what we were supposed to have covered in the briefing: robbery, court trials, assaults...he listened to it all without interruption. Eventually, the timer on the oven went off, and I shut up so that he could finish preparing dinner.
He didn't say anything until it was dished up, his expression thoughtful.
"I'm glad everything's under control," he said as he handed me a plate of pizza and sat down. "But I'm still sorry I wasn't here."
"It's okay. It was only for a few days." I picked up a pizza slice. "So, your aunt's out of hospital now?"
She'd fallen down a flight of stairs the previous week, and her situation had been unclear at first when Alex had been told. He'd taken off to Rosek not knowing what to expect, then called me the next morning with the relatively good news that she'd broken her arm in two places and undergone minor surgery.
"Yes. She'll take a while to heal, but she's recovering. I know she had my parents with her, but I still wanted to stay -- "
"You don't need to explain yourself." Although there were other things I did want explaining. His struggle to behave himself tonight when practising our good behaviour had been his idea, for instance. Or the photos in the hall of people he'd never spoken about before.
"Was it just your parents?" I asked. "What about your other family?"
"My uncle was there. And they did have a daughter -- my cousin -- but..."
I thought back to the picture in the hallway. "She's not around anymore?"
"She was killed. Murdered, actually." He looked away.
Cold seeped into my core. There was a moment of silence before his words fully sank in. I was used to offering my condolences to other people, but now I didn't know what to say. "Alex...I'm sorry."
"Let's talk about something else. I'm ruining the mood."
"No, you're not."
He turned his head and met my gaze, his eyes shadowed. It was a look I'd seen so many times before. A look I didn't like on him.
"I was eighteen," he said slowly. "Lola went to a party. I was supposed to walk her home when she was ready, but she sent a message saying she was going to walk alone. I don't know why. Independence?" He sighed. "I went to get her anyway, but she'd already gone. She never made it home."
I took his hand across the table.
"They found her two days later. In a skip."
"I'm sorry," I murmured again.
"If you're wondering whether that's why I joined the police, it is."
"So you could help bring other murderers to justice."
"And maybe save a few people from being murdered." He looked away. "Sometimes."
Sometimes. My thoughts drifted back to Zed. We were silent for a while, frozen in the past.
Eventually, Alex roused himself. "Tell me about your family."
"Mine?" My thoughts drifted further back, to fists cracking against bone; blood running over skin; a body that looked nothing more than broken. "There's not a lot to say. Obviously, you know Cassia. And my parents live on the other side of Socrico. This tastes really good."
"Thank you." He wasn't deterred. "Are you close with them?"
"Yes, but I don't see them as often as I'd like."
"What do they do for a living?"
"Mom runs a veterinary surgery. Dad's, er, retired. Has been for quite a while." I reached for another pizza slice to stuff in my mouth, but the plate was empty. I shoved my chair back instead, but Alex grabbed my hand.
"What?" he asked. "What is it?"
"Nothing. I just..." I shook my head. Family business was family business. It always had been since that day. "Nothing."
His gaze searched mine. Eventually, he let me go. "You have a reason, too."
I shrugged and carried my plate to the dishwasher. "Maybe. How does this open?"
He was quiet for a moment, still watching me, and then he came over. "Press the silver button and then the -- no, the silver button."
I poked the buttons on the dishwasher. "This is the silver button!"
He leaned over my shoulder, his hard chest pressing against my back. "This one."
It fell open with a crash, and I almost dropped my plate in surprise.
"Damn, it didn't do that when I left. I'll have to fix it." Alex took my plate and shoved it in, and it settled awkwardly on top of the prongs. I reached forward to rearrange it, but then his plate fell in, and his arms snaked around my waist before I overbalanced and joined it. "Steady on. What are you doing?"
The dishes blurred before my eyes. I got my feet back under me and turned around, and we looked at each other. Closely. His eyes were always a different shade of green when I was so near, and I didn't know if that was natural or if it had something to do with me. My heart was pounding in my ears. His arms were still around me.
I stepped back, fumbling with my words. "This...we've got to stop doing this. What the hell is it with dishwashers?"
"Dishwashers?"
"The first time we almost kissed, we were at my dishwasher. We need to stop -- "
His mouth clamped down on mine, smooth and hot. Desire bolted through me with no warning, and my lips parted instantly, words dissolving on my tongue. I stumbled back against the counter and hung onto his neck.
His hands fell to my hips; tightened over the curves of them; and then one slipped to my thigh. With just a stroke down the inside, he ignited heat deep within me. I wriggled against him, trying to catch his fingers, and he pulled away.
We stared at each other, catching our breath.
"This isn't working," I said.
Alex turned away, dragging both hands through his hair and down the back of his neck. I watched every movement from behind: the way his muscles tensed and flexed. Then I turned away too, closing my eyes.
"This was a terrible plan." Alex's voice was rough. "I'm sorry."
He'd made something of an understatement. The desire he'd ignited had not cooled off. In fact, it was worse than it ever had been before. How could I walk away now with the resolve not to get involved again?
It was simple. I couldn't.
"Maybe we're doing this wrong," I said. "Maybe the kiss wasn't enough. Maybe we just need to...work each other out of our systems."
When he turned around and looked at me, I could feel his gaze, and it strengthened my belief that I was right. How could we ever hope to ignore what was between us when there was so much of it?
We couldn't suppress the chemistry. We had to burn it instead.
I looked at him again. He said nothing, but it was written all over his face. He was fighting, even now, not to come to me.
"Let's get it over with," I said. "Just one night."
He thought about it for a moment longer. And then he came, crossing the kitchen in a single stride, and took me in his arms.