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“You headed back in?” she asked, going for the door.
“Nah, I’ve had enough fun, I think, for one evening,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up with that same fleeting emotion from earlier. Again, it was gone before she could really process it. “You watch your back.”
“Always do,” Shay said, as she stepped inside, tossing a wink over her shoulder.
The door closed on Nathaniel watching her.
Melissa had tears in her eyes when she ran into Shay in the kitchen.
“They’re animals out there,” Melissa all but wailed, the heels of her palms swiping at her cheeks.
“Oh my god, take five,” Shay said, knowing at this point Melissa would be more trouble than she was worth.
“I’m taking fifteen,” Melissa said, as she headed toward the exit. Shay rolled her eyes at the girl’s back, then put her out of her mind.
Shay took a deep breath before heading toward the bar.
Six customers in various states of irritation waited for her, so it took another ten minutes to work her way down toward Callum and the man she guessed to be his colleague.
“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked Callum, leaning into the cheese of it to cover her nerves.
“Hey, don’t talk shit about my favorite place in Houston,” he said, the hint of a dimple teasing her, and she laughed, finally relaxed enough to turn her attention to the other man.
A cowboy, had been her first reaction, and she stood by it. He was all limbs, long and rangy, his face tanned, almost leathery, from a life spent beneath a Texas sun. He must be local or from the south, at least.
His build leaned toward skinny, but she could tell it was more than that—he’d lost weight recently, his cheeks hollow, his skin stretching over his bones. If he was who she guessed he was, then the answer as to why was obvious. By now these two had probably been hunting the serial killer for the past four months straight.
“Well, you look like you do belong in a place like this,” Shay said to the man she assumed was Special Agent in Charge Xander Pierce.
That surprised a laugh out of him, some of the hard lines in his face going soft. Callum ducked his head and smiled, as if she’d made him proud with the banter but he didn’t want to be obvious about it.
“Fair enough,” the man said, and held out an enormous calloused palm. “Xander Pierce, pleasure to meet you.”
So Callum had told him who she was.
“Shay,” she said, skipping the surname. He probably already knew it, but there was no reason to just hand it over on the off chance he didn’t. “Looks like you’re ready for another.”
“Nah, I’ll head out,” he said. “Early start tomorrow.”
Callum still had half a drink left, so it made it easy for him to linger. He nodded to Pierce and then settled even more comfortably into the spot that had become his. Normally, he’d strike up a conversation with one of the regulars, but he was quiet tonight.
Shay was too busy to babysit him, but she made sure to pour him a club soda after he’d finished his whiskey. He smiled his thanks, his thumb brushing over the knob of her wrist in one of those tiny gestures of intimacy that Shay had always pretended she didn’t want.
“Hard day?” she asked later. They were in his hotel bed, that same generic, budget place that was technically walking distance from the bar. She was glad he’d driven that night, though. The rain hadn’t let up.
He wasn’t allowed to talk about his work. Sometimes he alluded to it, and they both knew why he was in Houston. But he was professional to a fault.
There was an aura about him tonight that had her pushing, just a little bit.
“They gave him a nickname,” he said. The room was dark, and the storm raged against the windows.
Shay rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “I’m shocked it took this long.” When he didn’t say anything, she cleared her throat. “Is it ‘the tattoo man’?”
He huffed out a breath. “That might be better. The Alphabet Man.”
She made a face that he wouldn’t be able to see. “Not exactly clever.”
“Easy to say, easy to remember,” Callum said. “It’ll stick.”