Page 18

CHAPTER 17

“A re you coming in?” Hank asked as he threw the cruiser in park.

Marty held up a finger to let him know that she’d be in there in a minute. In the meantime, she was on hold with her cell phone provider. Thanks to Tristan’s antics yesterday, she was forced to change her phone number or continue to deal with phone calls every other minute from people that she didn’t know asking questions about her and Tristan or guys that were hoping to get between her legs.

So, now, she was forced to pay forty dollars to change her number. Forty dollars that she was determined to make Tristan pay. That orgasm was not worth this bullshit or those damn dreams that she’d been having since Friday.

She closed her eyes and groaned.

She needed to get her act together and get over the jerk. One would think that after all these years that she’d be over him. If anything, she loved the bastard even more now. Love just plain sucked and it wasn’t worth it. She’d just stick with Bob and chocolate from now on.

Ten minutes later, and forty bucks poorer, she walked into Betty Lou’s Coffee and Pastry shop and stepped in line. Her father was already seated at one of the small booths on the other side of the large coffee shop and was talking with the boys. Hopefully, he was still unaware of her weekend activities.

She wasn’t looking forward to the conversation that they would no doubt be having when he found out about her involvement in Tristan’s internet debut. It had been stupid and childish, but something in her had snapped after Tristan toyed with her. After years of being ignored only to be played with when he’d finally acknowledged her existence had set her off. She’d finally had enough and did something she’d regretted almost immediately, but it was either follow through with her rash decision or take a chance on a man that would probably shove her away as soon as he was done with her.

She slowly exhaled and focused on the apple fritter and hot chocolate that would make her morning better. A few minutes later, she was waiting for a rather chatty woman to grab her coffee and get the hell out of her way.

There was only one fritter left and it was hers.

Just as she opened her mouth to ask the woman in front of her to move aside so that she could place her order, a large man in a dark suit stepped in front of her.

What the hell?

“There’s a line,” Marty pointed out, not caring enough to be polite about it. She needed her delicious fritter or she was pretty sure that she was going to kill someone.

“And there still is,” a familiar voice said. It didn’t take long to figure out who the bastard that cut in front of her was.

“Tristan Black,” Marty bit out through clenched teeth, “move your ass!”

He looked over his shoulder and snorted but didn’t say anything else as he returned his attention back to the cashier.

“I’ll take a hot chocolate and a coffee roll-”

“It’s our last one, Detective. I know that you usually get two,” the woman said in a flirty tone that had Marty’s teeth clenching.

“Okay, then, I’ll also take the last apple fritter, Jen,” Tristan said, taking her anger to a whole new level.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” Marty bit out.

Tristan turned around and crossed his arms over his chest while he leaned back against the counter. “I’m sorry, did you want that?” he asked with mock innocence.

She narrowed her eyes on him. The bastard knew that anything with apples was her weakness.

“ Yes ,” Marty hissed, so close to taking that coffee roll and shoving it down his-

He nodded, looking thoughtful before he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Too. Bad.” He kissed her cheek before pulling away, leaving her pissed and more than ready to finally kick his ass.

“Thanks, Jen,” Tristan said as he dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter. He grabbed the two small bags and large hot chocolate and headed for the door.

Marty closed her eyes and counted to ten. She would not go after him and kick his ass. She would not go out there and jump on his back and take him down with a chokehold. She would not go out there and kick him in the balls and take his fritter and run away laughing. She would not-

“Can I help you?”

Marty’s eyes flew open in time to catch the nervous expression on the cashier’s face. She took a cleansing breath and then another.

“Yes, can I please have a hot chocolate, and do you have any apple fritters left in back?” she asked, sounding pathetically hopeful.

“Sorry, the only thing we have left are bran muffins and I think we just ran out of hot cocoa.”

Marty sighed miserably. “Of course you did.”

* * *

“Ye really shouldn’t have done that, lad,” Shayne said as Tristan finished off the last bite of that unbelievably delicious apple fritter. Something about Marty wanting it made it ten times more delicious. He took a healthy sip of his hot cocoa as he looked over the notes he’d made over the weekend.

“She had it coming,” Tristan simply said.

“Tristan, ye need to either stop being an ass and man up and be with the lass or leave her alone. Stop torturing her. It’s not fair.”

His eyes snapped up at that. “It’s not fair?” Tristan bit out coldly. “What the fuck do you know about fair?” he demanded as he stood up, sending his chair slamming back into the wall. “Do you think this is easy on me? I’m the one that can’t be with her. I’m-”

“No one said that ye couldn’t be with her, lad. Ye made that foolish decision on yer own years ago,” Shayne said softly.

Tristan glared at Shayne as he said, “Foolish?”

“Aye, foolish! Ye love that lass!” Shayne yelled, which was surprising because Shayne never raised his voice at him. He’d always handled Tristan with a patient smile and a calm tone. “Yer a fucking fool to turn yer back on her! All ye care about is her rejecting yer dumb ass when she discovers what ye are instead of giving her a chance. Why don’t ye think about her for once-”

“She’s all I ever think of!”

“Yer putting her through hell! She loves ye and ye know it! Stop playing these games and grow some balls!”

“Fuck you!” Tristan roared as he kicked the chair across the room, slamming it into the side of a metal filing cabinet and putting a very noticeable dent into it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tristan’s gaze flew to the door as Marty walked in and dropped her purse on the desk. She gave his hot chocolate a glare before sitting down at her desk.

“Tell her!”

He stubbornly shook his head as his jaw clenched.

“Fine! Have it yer way then, lad,” Shayne said before he disappeared.

“What?” Marty asked.

“Nothing,” Tristan snapped.

She shook her head in disgust as she placed her purse in the bottom desk drawer and placed her jacket on the back of her chair before sitting down. Without another word, she logged onto her computer.

With a tired sigh, Tristan pulled his chair closer to his desk and sat down. He grabbed the small pile of folders in his inbox that required his attention. These were the arrests made over the weekend. The ones on top were the arrests made the night before and the ones that required his immediate attention.

He grabbed the top folder as he took a sip of his hot cocoa.

“You’re such a bitch!” a woman’s shrill voice suddenly announced, making him jump and spill hot chocolate on his leg.

“Shit!” Tristan bit out as the hot liquid seeped through his pants and onto his leg. He quickly placed his drink back on top of his desk and grabbed a handful of napkins and pressed them against his leg.

Marty muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Karma” but otherwise didn’t acknowledge him in any way.

“Me? You’re the bitch!” another woman screamed.

Tristan was just about to get up and see what was going on out in the pit when two young women stumbled into his office through the wall. He barely bit back a groan. He didn’t need this shit today, especially with Shayne off pouting somewhere.

He wasn’t about to summon Shayne to deal with these two, knowing that it would just invite another lecture about Marty. That subject was closed. Any possibility of him taking a chance with her had been squashed when she’d shoved his naked ass out of his house and ran.

“You got us killed, you ho bag!” the peroxide blonde said as she shoved the brunette back. The brunette stumbled back several feet before coming to a stop in the middle of Tristan’s desk.

“I’m the ho? You’re the one that slept with that creepy security guy!” the brunette snapped with her hands firmly planted on her torn pink leather-covered-hips.

“I thought he was part of the band!” the blonde shrieked as she threw herself at the brunette. They both went flying through his computer and onto the ground, where they proceeded with the saddest bitch-slap fight that he’d ever witnessed.

Tristan sat back in his chair, rubbing his hands roughly over his face and sighed. This was going to be a long fucking day.

* * *

“At least I didn’t die ten pounds overweight!”

“I might be ten pounds overweight, but at least it’s not all in my ass like in some people that I won’t mention!”

A loud gasp of outrage was followed by the sounds of another bitch-slap. Tristan didn’t bother looking away from his computer as he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Advil. He popped three pills into his mouth and chased them down with the now-cold hot chocolate.

He returned his attention to the database that he’d made over the weekend for the missing girls from the past twenty-two years. Based on the files, he’d been able to dismiss thirty of the missing cases. That left over fifty cases that fell into a pattern that, at first, looked like nothing more than coincidences, but after putting them into a database and mapping them, he could see a clear pattern.

All the women on his list were grabbed within two miles of a restaurant or a restaurant supply company. It wasn’t until a month ago that these cases caught his eye. At first, he didn’t think there was anything that he could work with since they all occurred in downtown areas.

The fact that not all of the kidnap victims were associated with any of the restaurants either as employees or customers was another problem for his theory as well as the fact that none of the women fit any pattern. They were all different ages, body shapes, ethnic backgrounds, and came from different financial backgrounds. Any other investigator would have just looked at the cases and said that they had nothing in common. He would have dismissed the cases if it hadn’t been for one small detail.

The restaurants and supply stores were all high-class establishments. The kidnappings occurred well away from fast food joints or Mom and Pop establishments.

He knew that it was a long shot and he could very well be wrong, but he had a nagging feeling about these cases that he couldn’t let go. Until he had some kind of physical evidence like a video, prints, witnesses, or even a body, he couldn’t push for a task force or even issue a warning. All he had right now was a database and a hunch. Hell, there wasn’t even a pattern to help him figure out where the kidnapper would strike next.

What he wouldn’t give for a spirit to harass him at two in the morning over this case…

For the past month, he’d been waiting for just that, but so far, nothing. It wasn’t surprising, but it definitely wasn’t good news. Since he doubted that all these women ran away like some of the investigators suggested, he was left with only one conclusion.

They’d all suffered greatly before they’d died and welcomed the peaceful release from their bodies. On one hand, he was happy that their spirits didn’t suffer further torment by wandering the earth. On the other hand, if even one of them had contacted him, he would have been able to end this a long time ago. Then again, for all he knew, they could be stuck where they’d died, unable to let go.

“Bitch!”

“No, you’re the bitch!” the airhead twins argued as his head started pounding. “Ask him. He’ll tell you!” she said, gesturing to him.

Tristan just barely bit back a groan. They’d been too busy bitch slapping each other to even notice him and he’d hoped it stayed that way.

“You know that if he could see us that he’d totally want me, right?” the brunette said as she pushed her blood-caked hair back out of her face while they stood behind Marty, watching him.

The blonde snorted. “He can see us and he was totally checking out my girls,” she said as she made a show of adjusting her breasts and winked at him, making him cringe.

“Nah-ah!” the brunette said.

“Yeah, because when we were arguing over whether my text messaging and fixing my makeup while I was driving or all those cars going the wrong way on the highway was the reason we crashed, he muttered that we should win the Darwin Award.”

“Oh, my God! We’re going to win an award?” the brunette asked, practically jumping up and down.

“Totally!”

As the dead women suddenly rushed him, he promised all kinds of revenge on Shayne, starting with canceling the porn channel.