Under the Surface (19 page)

Either he avoided the nuance or he opted for the most immediate answer. “Hawthorn and Sorenson are coming over at six. We need to talk about what happens next.”

If Hawthorn was right, if Lyle was dead set on killing her, she had no option but to continue to cooperate with the LPD. “I don't really have a choice, do I?”

“People tell us to fuck off all the time, Eve. More often than not, they get scared, walk away. Your family has history with Murphy. If you want to make amends there and walk away, you probably could.”

She could. She never, ever would. Death threat or no death threat, Lyle had to be stopped, and she was in the best place to do just that. But trusting Matt was a completely different story. “Did you sleep with me to keep me close? To make sure I'd take your protection?”

He smiled, but there was no real humor in the twist of his mouth. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is a limit to what I'll do for the LPD.”

A hint of a smile curved her lips at the self-mocking words but she really didn't feel like liking him right now. “So why? Why give in to the impulse now, after weeks of no?”

“I wanted to,” he said.

Oh.

His expression didn't change. She rested her head on her folded arms and closed her eyes. The vent emitted tepid air from the softly rattling air conditioner. She lay beside him and wondered how to handle a Matt Dorchester who was actually doing what he wanted to do.

 

CHAPTER TEN

He'd just made mistake number four. No, mistake number four was going upstairs with her, what was it, less than twenty-four hours ago? This was mistake number five. Making mistakes was becoming a habit, the kind of habit his father loathed, preached against, habits of weakness and emotion. Except this time his emotions weren't the only ones in the game, and it sure as hell didn't feel like a mistake.

He lay on his back beside Eve, one arm tucked under his head. She wasn't asleep, just stretched out on her belly, her ankle resting in the bend of her knee, arms folded under her head, her eyes closed. The pale skin of her back gleamed with sweat and her black hair tumbled around her shoulder and over the pillow.

For a moment he tried for the usual blankness when he could be nothing, no needs, no demands, no pressures, but there was no ignoring Eve in his bed. God knew she had every right to tell him to deliver meals to Luke's room for the next forty-eight hours, then go fuck himself, but he'd underestimated the unpredictable life force Eve channeled. He'd tried to do this the right way, offering up the option that, until recently, had worked for him. It didn't work for her. Eve wasn't the kind of person to stuff everything down, or substitute exercise for emotion, or settle for anything less than what she wanted.

People did atypical things when they were angry. Physical things. They hit things, or each other. Ran. Stormed around, screamed obscenities, made accusations, went cold and hard and silent.

Sometimes, for all the wrong reasons, they had sex.

If he'd been able to pick the circumstances for his first time with Eve, anger-driven sex wouldn't have been on the list. Except she'd sat in his kitchen, looking like she was going to flare into flames from the inside out. Her tight, clipped sentences told the story as much as the edgy nerves she didn't even bother to hide. Then she said she still wanted him, despite the anger, or maybe because of it, throwing the words at him like a challenge. Just like every encounter with Eve for the last two weeks, he simply couldn't resist reaching out to touch that live wire.

It chapped his ass to hear her list any number of motives for sex, and burned like salt rubbed in the raw spots when she checked the condom wrapper for herself, but he'd earned that. There was more to come. But for now she was relaxed, breathing easily, soft and warm in his bed. It should have been purely physical, a way to ease her stress, scratch the itch and see if it went away. It hadn't. Instead, he felt sore inside, something similar to the ache left after he took a good pounding to his ribs. He couldn't name it, so he noted the feeling and set it aside.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Less than an hour until Hawthorn and Sorenson arrived. “You want to shower again?”

“Yes,” she said. “You go first. I'll take longer.”

He eased himself away from her warm body, stood under a lukewarm shower, and repeated his new mantra: no more mistakes. He'd fucked up, but he could rescue this from the death spiral. All he had to do was keep it together, until they got Murphy.

He got out, toweled off, then went back into the bedroom to get dressed. As soon as he reappeared, Eve slid out of bed, gathered her clothes from the floor, and ducked into the bathroom.

She joined him in the kitchen ten minutes later, her combed hair lying wet against her neck. “Do you have any elastic bands?”

“Junk drawer,” he said, pointing under the silverware drawer.

She found a rubber band formerly holding the ads in his Sunday paper, slicked her hair back and secured it with two quick movements. Lightning cracked through him, halting movement and breath for a heartbeat, then another as their eyes locked. He resumed breathing when she broke away to gather the dirty plates and silverware from the dining room table and slide them into the soapy water he'd run to do dishes.

“You don't have to do that,” he said.

“I need to do something,” she replied.

Framed that way, he was okay with it, so she washed, he dried and put away. While the sink drained, she went into Luke's room and returned with her iPhone. She swiped and tapped at the screen, then lifted the phone to her ear.

He raised an eyebrow in question.

“My contractor,” she said. “I need him to replace the glass in my windows. I can't live here forever.”

“East Side guy?”

“Of course,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “A cop I know does renovation work on the side. I called him before you got up. He can install new glass Monday after work and he'll keep it quiet. I just need to call him back to give him your approval.”

Slowly she lowered the phone and tapped the screen to end the call. “Because you don't want the whole East Side to know about the shooting.”

“Until we have a better handle on the investigation, yes,” he said quietly.

“How did you keep it out of the paper?” she asked. “Anybody with a police frequency app on their smartphone can monitor the radio.”

“Do you have any idea how often we respond to a ‘shots fired' call on the East Side? Multiple times a night,” he said. “No one's going to pay any attention to what happened.”

She rubbed her thumb across her iPhone as she considered his words. “And that's why I'm here, not at Caleb's office strategizing a lawsuit. Go ahead and call your friend.”

He didn't push, just wrung out the dishcloth and draped it over the faucet, then made the quick call. When he turned to face her again, she was still staring at him, that assessing look in her eyes.

“You're handling this much better than I am.”

“I've known from the beginning who I am,” he said with a shrug.

“Somebody shot at us last night!”

Oh. That part of “this.”
“Not my first time at that rodeo,” he said bluntly.

Eve narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth. “About that—” she started.

The doorbell rang. Eve looked at him. He waited, then his cell phone, clipped to his belt opposite his gun, buzzed. He flipped it open. “It's them,” he said, but he still peered through the blinds before opening the door.

“McCormick said you live on the most boring street in all of Lancaster,” Sorenson said as she slipped through the door, then nodded at Eve, hanging back by the dining room table. “I called in Carlucci to take over. He's great at sitting on his rear end, and McCormick would rather be back on the street anyway. Ms. Webber.”

“Detective,” Eve replied politely, then turned to Hawthorn. “Ian, you jerk. You are so on my shit list.”

Her scathing glare slid right off the LT. “It was the right thing to do, Eve. We didn't know what you could handle, and we never thought it would turn out like this.”

Eve opened her mouth to argue, but Sorenson stepped past Hawthorn and drew Eve into the living room, quietly asking how she was feeling, if she needed anything from her apartment. Hawthorn looked at her, then at Matt, shook his head, but said nothing.

Eve spoke from the dining room. “Ian, Detective Sorenson asked if I'd identify some people you've photographed with Lyle.”

Matt recognized the technique. Start with something simple, giving names. Nothing incriminating or snitchy in that request, but it would make it harder for Eve to break the flow of the conversation if it took a more participatory turn.

“We'd appreciate it,” Ian said gravely.

“Do you want your brother here for this conversation?” Matt said. Because it was the right thing to do.

Amusement flared in her eyes. “I think giving Caleb a couple of days to calm down is a good idea.”

No one disagreed with that conclusion. Matt felt the vibe shift as Sorenson and Hawthorn incorporated this conversation into their judgment of Eve's shrewdness. Hawthorn headed for the dining room and Sorenson sent him a look that read
Damn, Dorchester
. His return look conveyed
See what I've been up against for the last two weeks?

Hawthorn shifted a thick folder and a laptop to the table and began unwinding the power cord. “You're well connected to the East Side. We usually have to piece together networks and relationships after several arrests, and information from East Side informants is sporadic.”

“No matter what we do it doesn't seem to improve,” Sorenson added as they seated themselves around the table.

“Without backing from neighborhood leaders, you're wasting your time,” Eve said. “The Eastern Precinct has a reputation for corruption. Why snitch when there's a good chance nothing will come of it, and an even better chance of retaliation?”

“Why did you come in?”

“Because if we don't work together, nothing will change,” she said precisely. “And because I take it personally when a drug dealer thinks I'll be his shell company or whatever.”

From the folder at his side Hawthorn pulled duplicates of the photographs decorating the bulletin board back at the precinct. “These are all individuals who've been seen with Murphy since he arrived. About half of them are in the system for one reason or another. We'd like your help with the other half.”

She tucked her leg under her and sifted through the photos Hawthorn handed her. “Well, that's me,” she said, pointing to the photograph of her with Lyle at Chat Noir.

“Pretty fancy for a dealer,” Sorenson mused.

“Lyle's always been more uptown than East Side,” Eve said. “His mother, Dolores, grew up poor. Good people who live in poverty often have very rigid definitions of respectable. They want better than they had for their children. She didn't want Lyle to have anything to do with Victor's business, and used Victor's money to make sure Lyle didn't look like a corner kid. Perfect grammar and elocution, nice clothes. None of it kept Lyle from worshipping his father.”

“Why did he approach you?” Hawthorn asked.

“After what happened yesterday this seems impossible to understand, but we were friends. Caleb wouldn't have anything to do with Lyle, but Lyle and I, we had things in common.” She stopped, as if she'd said something she regretted, or maybe just choosing her words.

Hawthorn typed. Sorenson preferred the old-fashioned method of pen to paper, although come trial prep half her notes were doodles and oddly drawn little caricatures. Eve looked at the photo, tilting it under the overhead light to reduce the glare before setting it aside.

“What did you have in common?” Matt asked in the silence.

The answer to that question came far less readily, and with a look through her lashes he couldn't read. She shifted in her chair, putting both feet flat on the floor, then crossing her legs as she chose her words. “Growing up with Caleb was difficult.”

Sorenson gave an amused snort, and Eve cut her a glance.

“Impossible to understand, right? He's brilliant. You don't get a full ride to Yale Law without genius IQ brains. He could have played pro basketball, and he's a firstborn son in a family that's got some pretty defined gender roles. I wasn't him, which nobody expected of a girl, but I'm not my mother either. Lyle understood about not fitting in, especially after his father went to prison and his mother got even more religious and strict.”

Her jaw tightened, then she shuffled through the stack of photographs again until she found pictures of a meeting deep in the East Side. “You probably have him in the system, but that's Travis Jenkins. He was Lyle's best friend back in the day, always ready to get dirty so Lyle could stay clean. He stayed around after Lyle left, but from what I hear he never made it to the Strykers' inner circle. He's a blabbermouth, always trying to look like he's on the inside by showing off what he knows. But … Travis's cousin Maria lives with one of the Stryker lieutenants, a guy who used to sing in my dad's youth choir. Beautiful baritone. Dad was crushed when he lost him to the Strykers but he still baptized both of Maria's kids eight, maybe ten years ago. Through Maria, Travis is probably Lyle's source of street information.”

Eve's memory was nearly perfect, remembering names, relationships, connections forged in gangs or juvenile hall or after-school programs and church. Several hours later, Chinese takeout cartons and empty soda cans littered the table and the sun was setting. They'd identified most of the individuals not in the system, and Eve was sitting cross-legged on a dining room chair, picking through a carton of cashew chicken.