Deja Who (Insighter #1)(52)
Not bothering to listen to his response, Leah looked up and her eyes widened when she saw Archer waiting for her. Then they narrowed, and for a heart-stopping moment Archer thought she didn’t want him there.
But that wasn’t it. Instead, when they walked right up to him, Leah again turned to Detective Preston and said, “It was unprofessional and cruel to bring this up outside of a session, in your workplace, in front of other people. I have no excuse. It was unacceptable. I . . .” Archer could almost hear her teeth grinding together. “. . . apologize.”
Preston barely seemed to notice; his thoughts were miles away, possibly imagining his life as a farmer. He nodded almost absently. “That’s fine; it was just as inappropriate for me to arrest you. I didn’t really think you killed your mother; I was upset by what you said. My boss and your boss are insisting we play nice, so let’s just do that.”
“All right.”
“Are you okay?” Archer asked in a low voice. Leah seemed unbeaten. Unstabbed. Un-bleeding. And alive! Even better. In fact, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been cooling her heels in the hoosegow for the last few hours. He wondered if it was inappropriate to ask her if any Chained Heat–type stuff had gone on. He also thought it was adorable that she still had only the one shoe. He thought the cops might have at least offered her a flip-flop. “Leah?”
“Oh, sure.” She waved it all away: the arrest, booking, brief imprisonment. “It was interesting. I’ve never been on that side of the bars before. And some of the other women were interesting. I’ll have stories to tell my colleagues. Too bad I loathe my colleagues.”
“Mr. Drake.” Detective Preston seemed to notice him for the first time. “Ah.”
What is it with cops and “Ah”? Do they mean to make it sound terrifying? “Hey. Glad you two worked it out.”
“Yeah.” Preston was staring at him, and given the man was investigating a horrific murder, Archer found his regard more than a little unnerving. “That’s interesting. About your family history.”
“Oh, here we go,” he sighed. He glanced at Leah. “There’s really no way to make this not sound awful. And I promise I was going to tell you. You have to admit it’s been a crazy week.”
“What?” Leah was looking from him to Preston and back again. “Oh, God. What is it now? What horrific dreadful thing is going to happen now?”
“If this is the Archer Drake, the only son of one William T. Drake—”
“The detective is coyly leading up to the fact that my dad’s in federal prison for murder.” After a beat, he added helpfully, “He didn’t do it. If that helps.”
THIRTY-SIX
“You stabbed me,” Archer said for the third time, “which I generously overlooked—”
“Stalker,” Leah said as if talking to the air. “Stalker hired by my mortal enemy.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point, but you’re breaking up with me?”
“How can I do that? We were never boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“We were negotiating, dammit!”
“A month ago I didn’t even know your name. You, of course, knew mine. Because, as earlier: stalker.”
“I let you feel me up in your car!”
“Oh, ‘let’ me?”
“I gave you my innocence! Repeatedly! Which wasn’t part of the plan except you’ve got great hands and oh my God, your mouth . . .”
“That is quite enough about my mouth.”
“You used your sexuality as a weapon! And now, after you’ve callously gotten what you wanted—”
“What did I want, exactly?”
“—you’re breaking up with me because my dad didn’t kill my uncle? Cat will understand where I’m coming from,” he added darkly. “She, like me, was vilified for shit she didn’t do. Or people related to her didn’t do.”
“I’m breaking up with you—dammit!” As this was all happening outside a curiously empty desk (on TV the desk sergeants were always at their desks) while Detective Preston looked on with the unapologetic air most cops have (“yeah, sorry, I know this is none of my business, but you’d be surprised how often ‘none of my business’ turns into ‘totally my business,’ so I’m just going to linger and shamelessly eavesdrop, and sorry in advance”) while witnessing heated exchanges, she plucked Archer by the elbow, nodded a terse good-bye to a bemused Preston (who turned out to be almost okay given his previous life nonsense and propensity to yank the handcuffs off his hip before he had all the facts), and marched Archer out of the police station. As she expected, he bitched incessantly, and loudly, and didn’t appear to give a single shit about the stares and interest they were attracting.
Until then, the arrest-jail nonsense had been almost . . . not fun, but . . . interesting? Alarming yet intriguing? She wasn’t sure there was a word for it. She had never been frightened. She had never felt threatened. Mostly she watched and listened and, when she thought it was appropriate, commented. As at work, when she felt it was appropriate to comment, and when the person she spoke to felt it was appropriate, were often different. As at work, she didn’t especially care.