Page 14

“That’s right. Can I go now?”

Taylor’s eyes flashed and she turned to Coughlin for guidance. It was the first time I’d seen her take cues from him.

“We haven’t got anything that we can hold her on.”

Taylor scowled and stood, her chair clattering to the floor. I struggled to my feet, my ankle still very tender. As I turned to the door, Coughlin winked at me. I shuddered. He would absolutely have seen that video, even if he didn’t stay for the replay.

I hobbled from the room and Coughlin led the way to the main entrance. I took a seat just inside the door, pulling my phone out. My hands were shaking and my chest felt too tight.

Gaping mouth.

Blood.

Bulging eyes.

I pressed my hands to my stomach. While Steve was being … I had been vomiting up too much alcohol. After being secretly filmed drunkenly fucking.

I couldn’t call Joel. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to have to explain to him, and I knew he’d bug me until I told him everything. What I really wanted to do was forget what I’d just seen.

Like that was ever going to happen.

I clicked onto the Uber app. Ride sorted, I lay my head back against the vinyl seat, stretching my injured ankle out in front of me.

“You look thirsty.”

I squinted up to see Coughlin holding out a little plastic cup of water to me. I took it gratefully and downed it in one swallow. The older man smiled indulgently at me .

“Sorry about Detective Taylor. She gets so serious about things sometimes, but she doesn’t always see the bigger picture.”

It seemed unprofessional for him to be telling me this when I was apparently on their ‘people of interest’ list. I nodded, hoping to end the conversation.

“For the record, I’ve never thought you were a suspect, but you know how it is – we have to explore all avenues,” he continued.

I nodded again. He didn’t leave.

“You clearly have something else you want to get off your chest,” I muttered.

He laughed nervously and reached into his pocket, pulling out a tennis ball. He thrust it under my nose, followed by a Sharpie marker.

“My son Randy’s a big tennis fan. Would you sign this ball for him?” Coughlin asked shyly. I managed the remnants of a smile, plucking the ball from his hand and scrawling a signature onto it.

“Oh, thank you Mel! He’ll be stoked!” Coughlin gushed, finally returning to his job.

My phone pinged. My Uber had arrived.

The driver was polite and silent, which suited me fine. I rested my head against the seat, staring vacantly at the city buildings as we crept through traffic.

Blood.

Gaping mouth.

“Stop!” I shouted. The driver smashed on the brake and looked worriedly at me in the rear-view mirror.

“Do you want to get out?” he asked in clipped English. I couldn’t speak, my throat was locked. I shook my head and coughed.

“Keep going,” I grated. He looked at me sternly for a moment longer, until the car behind him honked and he accelerated once more.

“I thought you’d call when they were through with you, Stink,” Joel said as he opened the front door to let me through.

“I didn’t want to bother you – I Ubered instead.”

Joel’s eyes narrowed and he pressed a knuckle under my chin, tilting my head up, “Everything okay?” he murmured.

I tried a smile. It felt too tight. “Just peachy,” I replied. I wasn’t going to explain what I’d just seen at the police station.

“I put your stuff up here in the biggest guestroom,” he said after a pregnant pause. He led me up to the top level of the house, along a loft-style hallway and through a door on the left.

Connor was lounging on the bed, as if he already owned the place. I noticed with surprise that Joel had set up his kitty litter and put bowls of food and water down for him in the enormous en suite.

“Connor won’t want to leave if you start treating him like a king,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Joel.

His grin nearly knocked my feet out from under me. Damn it, why did he have to have such a gorgeous smile?

“So, Stink, what did the cops have to say?” he asked as he sat on the bed beside me. Trust Joel – his curiosity would always get the better of him.

“Well, Pete gave me an alibi, but it turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing.”

“Why?”

I shook my head, lying back against the plush mattress and putting an arm over my eyes so he couldn’t see me. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

I waited for Joel to insist, but he was distracted by his phone buzzing. As I peeked at him, he pulled it out, staring down at the screen for what seemed like forever.

“What is it?” I asked, sitting up again.

“There’s this sports gossip blogger: tennisfanboi. He always Tweets about you. I have Twitter set to notify me when he posts. I just got a …”

And then I heard a sound that I had hoped never to hear again in my life. At first, I thought I must have just been reliving the humiliation, but then I heard Joel make a choking noise. I sat bolt upright, looking at him. His eyes were wide, and there was a strange, shocked expression on his face.

“What is that?” I demanded. Joel didn’t look away from the screen. Instead, he tilted his head to the side and stared intently at what I wished wasn’t the video of me and Pete. But I knew it was.

“Looks like Levine’s alibi has gone viral … Jesus … is that … even possible?”

Joel’s voice had taken on an odd tone. I groaned and reached over to snatch the phone from him. He pulled away from me, eyes still fixated on my gyrating hips on his phone screen.

“This is the alibi, right?”

I was about to die of embarrassment. “Yes, that’s the alibi! But if you can pry your eyes off your phone, you might like to know that Pete left his hidden camera running after we fell asleep, and it shows me getting out of bed for an hour or so right at the time that …”

That stopped Joel in his tracks. The animal sounds were still coming from the phone, but he wasn’t watching them. He was looking at me in shock.

“What, they think you …” he rasped.

I sat on my trembling hands. “I don’t know – one of them probably does, but they don’t have any real evidence.

I told them that I’d spent that hour embracing the toilet bowl.

Why did Pete lie in the first place? And why did he decide he needed to give the police this footage?

And how the fuck did it get onto Twitter? ”

“Did you say, ‘hidden camera’?” Joel asked. I nodded, wishing the video would just finish.

The sounds stopped. I turned to look, finding Joel’s phone screen blank, his knuckles white as he gripped it.

“You didn’t know he was filming.”

“Nope,” I replied.

“Fuck. Pete Levine, what a fucking piece of shit.” Joel’s voice was dark.

“Yep.”

And then I had another horrible thought. If the video was already on Twitter, then it wouldn’t be long before the whole world knew about it. And when that happened my hopes of finding another sponsor would fly out the window.

“So long, Martel,” I muttered.