Page 59 of Devil's Hour
Royce and Sawyer took advantage of her preoccupation and stepped inside the apartment, careful not to touch the handle until they had their gloves on. Royce turned on the light switch, casting stark LED light over a sparsely furnished room. Everywhere he looked, he saw industrial beige carpet or vinyl flooring in a multitude of earth tones that was supposed to mimic marble floor. The walls were off-white, and there was no artwork, family photos, or embellishments anywhere in sight, but an undercover agent would keep their surroundings generic. They wouldn’t display pictures, memorabilia, or keepsakes that would give away their true identity. The only spot of color was a worn-out Atlanta Braves hat hanging on a peg near the front door, breathing became hard for Royce once more.
Sawyer stepped up beside Royce, placing his warm hand between his shoulder blades. Some of Royce’s tension melted beneath his touch. “Is that Marcus’s hat?”
Too choked up to speak, Royce nodded. It wasn’t just any hat; it was his lucky one. “I think a part of me had hoped Crystal was a compulsive liar, and pricey lap dances were as far as things went between them. There’s no way this hat is in her apartment without Marcus having been here.” Royce tipped his head to the side.
“Let’s start looking around before Tabby comes back,” Sawyer said, spurring him into action.
They opened the cabinets in the entertainment center but only found a few movies. No photo albums, candles, or the other stuff Candi stashed in hers. There was a small pull-out drawer in the coffee table, but it was empty except for the TV remote. They moved into the hallway next. Royce stepped into the neat but plain master bedroom while Sawyer continued to check the other two rooms farther down the hall.
One nightstand was empty, and the other contained an item that hit Royce harder than the lucky hat. At least he’d solved the mystery of the missing cell phone. It was dead and wouldn’t turn on, but he hoped all it needed was to charge. He looked up when Sawyer entered the room.
“The spare bedroom is empty, and there’s nothing in the bathroom except the typical things you’d expect to find.” He looked at the phone in Royce’s hands. “Is that Marcus’s?”
Royce nodded. “I just found out from Candi last night it was missing. She thought the police had collected it as evidence after he died, but I told her they hadn’t.” He released a long, stuttering breath. “He left his cell phone and his hat here as if he’d planned on coming back. So what happened between the time he left this apartment and the time he got home to make him decide his life wasn’t worth living?”
Sawyer cupped his face, caressing his skin. “You and I both know that we don’t always get the definitive answers to questions like that, no matter how hard we try.”
Royce turned his head to kiss Sawyer’s palm, then stood up. “Yeah, I know.”
The apartment door opened, and Tabby called out, “Detectives, is everything okay?” She sounded nervous and anxious. They’d run out of time before they’d had a chance to search the kitchen, but Royce knew they wouldn’t have found anything to give away Crystal’s investigation, and he at least recovered Marcus’s hat and cell phone. The latter he slid in his back pocket. They quickly removed their gloves, tucking them out of sight, then Royce followed Sawyer out of the room.
“She’s not here,” Sawyer told the property manager. “Doesn’t appear that she slept here last night. Maybe she has a boyfriend her family doesn’t know about.” He added a shrug for good measure. “It’s good they worry, right? It’s also great that you can help put their mind at ease.”
Tabby’s apprehension from earlier went poof when Sawyer aimed his disarming grin at her. Royce had to fight back a chuckle. Tabby would melt into a puddle of goo if she witnessed the smiles Sawyer reserved only for him.
Sawyer gestured for Tabby to exit first. Then he filed out behind her, blocking her line of sight if she turned around, enabling Royce to grab Marcus’s lucky hat. There was no fucking way he was leaving without it, and Sawyer knew that. Royce folded the ball cap and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, then pulled his shirt down to cover it.
He smiled at Tabby too. “Thank you for your assistance, ma’am. I hope you have a nice day.”
“Likewise,” she said, sounding a little breathy while closing and locking the door.
Once they reached the car, Royce pulled the hat out of his waistband and looked at it, running his thumb over the frayed edges of the bill and the stain left behind from years of Marcus adjusting it on his head. Royce closed his eyes, and for the first time in months, saw the Marcus he’d known and loved and remembered the day he’d given the hat to him. It had been his birthday. Royce hadn’t known what to give his best friend, so he went with the sure thing and bought him a new Braves cap. During his birthday party, Candi’s water broke, and Marc was born eight hours later, just beating the clock by a few minutes to share a birthday with his dad.
“It’s this lucky hat,” Marcus had said, hooking his arm around Royce’s neck and pulling him in for a hug. “I’ll cherish it always.”
And he had. The once vibrant red hat was dingy from wear and tear, but it only made the item more meaningful to Royce than if Marcus had stuck it on a shelf or inside the curio cabinet with his other collectibles.
“What are we going to tell Rigby?” Sawyer asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Stowing the hat and phone in Sawyer’s glove box for safekeeping, he said, “The truth.” Royce glanced over at Royce and smiled wryly. “I’ll just leave out the sequence of events. There’s no harm in her thinking we stopped at the apartmentbeforewe learned that Crystal was actually Amber, an undercover agent.”
Sawyer chuckled. “If you say so, Sarge.”
Royce’s phone rang again, and he cringed when he saw it was Holly. She was going to chew his ass for not calling her back with the ID on the victims. “Sorry, Holls,” he said instead of a standard greeting.
“As you should be,” she replied. “Who was it?”
“Savage and Crystal Akeman,” Royce replied.
“Fuck,” she said, sounding sad. “I know you dislike the woman on principle because she had an affair with Marcus, but she seemed like a decent person.” Holly quieted for a second. “What was she doing there? The whole reason I had to work last night was because she called in sick.”
“Probably had something to do with her undercover mission.”
“What?”
“Are you able to discuss something sensitive right now?” he asked.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”