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Reese went to peer over his shoulder. He had several tabs open, and the one he’d been reading looked like credit reports for Thompson. She skimmed them. “Doesn’t seem like suspicious activity.” Establishing the card in Thompson’s name to pay the geolocator contract might have been its first illegal use. She needed one tangible answer. Just a single fact that would give them a direction to follow. But as usual, the questions kept piling up, with relevant details in short supply.
“It was a good thought, though. And I’ll keep searching.”
He clicked on a different tab, revealing an organizational map with boxes filled with text, connected by different-colored arrows. It was linear, denoting clear connections where they existed and question marks where no obvious link could be found.
“If you wanted another pad of Post-its you should have mentioned it.”
He grinned. “I prefer a graphic organizer that I can actually follow. Your wall of sticky notes is too abstract for this sequential thinker.”
She read for a couple of minutes until she saw the box with Samuel Thompson’s name. An arrow to Thorne, zagging in another direction to a line of question marks and dated eighteen months earlier. One arrow to Julia, dated when the contract for the device began. Another text box read “Reese.” There were no arrows from that box.
“I don’t think I can live with the not knowing,” she murmured. There was a shake in her voice, so she straightened, and steadied it before going on. “Always wondering if I contributed to Julia’s death. If Thorne is somehow linked to the Samuel Thompson name…after all my aunt did for me, being the cause of her demise…” She bit her lip to prevent herself from going on. But it was difficult not to remember Autry, who’d only been in Thorne’s path because of her. She was the hub from which spokes of suffering linked others who happened to get too close to her.
Reese was so entrenched in her anguish that she didn’t realize Hayes had come to stand too near her. “I understand why you’re here, but who’s going to protectyoufromme?” She tried for a smile. Couldn’t manage it. “It’s starting to look like proximity to me is dangerous.”
He tipped her chin up. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t. You’re not the cause of this. Not any of it. Assign the blame where it belongs. You didn’t kill Autry. Thorne did. You didn’t drive the van that killed your aunt. All three of you were victims of horrific crimes. Survivor guilt can be crippling, and you don’t deserve that burden. You’ve suffered enough.”
Reese made the mistake of looking at him then. He was much too close. Near enough to observe that his gray eyes were pure smoke, without a hint of hazel. Sparks ignited beneath his fingers, the warmth spreading to each fraction of skin he touched. A distant alarm bell shrilled in the recesses of her mind. Here lay danger of a different kind. Because Hayes had managedto divert her, but only by planting another, almost forgotten emotion.
Desire.
She saw the awareness in his eyes. Expected him to step away. But his touch shifted as he cupped her face in his hand. Achingly slowly, his head lowered to hers. Reese told herself to move away, but her limbs wouldn’t obey. His lips brushed hers, whisper-light, with only a ghost of pressure. And instead of retreating, she stepped closer and leaned into his kiss.
Her breath caught, the instant suspended by a gossamer thread, stretching taut between them. Hayes’s mouth firmed against hers and his fingers left her jawline to sink into her hair. Her lips molded against his, answering with an increasing demand that felt foreign. A moment out of time. The world faded to watercolor, and for the space of an instant, all that mattered was their mingled breath, the tangle of tongues, and the leap of chemistry, surprising in its intensity.
Hayes lifted his mouth from hers, an infinitesimal fraction, and smoothed her hair back gently. “We should?—”
A sound split the apartment, and they sprang apart like illicit lovers. He recovered first, pushing her lightly toward the couch. “Get down. Behind it.”
The noise came again. The doorbell. It had to be nearly ten. Reese didn’t get many visitors. “Do you think it’s Raiker again?”
“It’s not Adam.” Hayes crossed to her bedroom and returned with his weapon. “Either get behind the couch or in your room. Now!”
He went to the door and looked out the peephole as she hurried toward her bedroom door. Stepped just inside and stopped to listen. Her heart jackhammered in her chest, the sudden swing from longing to tension like a crazed pendulum.
Reese heard the locks disengage. Then his voice. “Good evening, Officers.”
“Evening, sir. Is Reese Decody here?”
Police officers? Reese ventured out of the room. At Hayes’s stern look, she retreated a few steps. “I need to verify your identities first. Badges.”
He drew his cell out and snapped pictures of something before saying, “Give me a moment.” Leaving them in the hallway, he went back to his computer, plugged in his cell, and then worked in silence for a minute, during which time the doorbell pealed again. He went back to his room and returned minus the weapon, holding something she couldn’t identify in his hand. He reopened the door.
“Come in.”
Reese emerged from the bedroom as two uniformed SDPD officers entered the apartment.
A woman, with a mass of dark hair pulled away from a face that spoke of decades on the job, with a younger, taller Black male companion. “I’m Reese Decody.”
They both sent her a quick appraising look. “Officers Hastings and Fenton.” The woman focused on Hayes again. “What’s your name?”
“Hayes Moreland.” He waved them in so he could shut the door behind them.
“Can we see some ID?”
The man was closer, so Hayes handed him the credentials he was holding. Fenton flipped the slim leather case open to study it. Then handed it to his partner, who looked it over and frowned. “What’s an employee from Raiker Forensics doing here?”
“Visiting.”