At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(17)

When she’d devoured the eggs and most of the sausage, she pushed her plate away and refilled her coffee. “It’s been weeks since you managed to meet me for breakfast. How are you?”

“I’m good,” he said. “Just busy. I went into Arrow Galleries the other day. So I could stare at my sister’s painting on the wall.”

“It’s just a little gallery,” she murmured. But a pleasurable blush rose in her cheeks. “You did not go.”

“I did. I took Jared. He’s been dying to see it.”

Gabe’s secrets were much harder to hold on to than hers, given his political visibility. But being gay was definitely not acceptable in Addie’s rough-and-tumble, uber-macho family. And Gabe wasn’t ready to upset the applecart.

Their mother, who might have mitigated the masculinity, had died when Addie was seven. As the only female on the premises, Addie had grown up in an environment so thick with testosterone that she was amazed simply breathing in the air at the dinner table hadn’t put hair on her chest. Gabe had been her closest, and sometimes only, ally.

“What did Jared think?” she asked, feigning disinterest in Jared’s opinion of her work by cleaning her sunglasses.

Gabe planted his elbows on the table and peered at her. “What do you think?”

The heat in her face deepened. “He hated it.”

“Oh, Addie. You and I are always so sure that underneath our bravado, we’re total fuckups. Have you heard of imposter syndrome? No? Read up on it. As for Jared, of course he loved your painting. He said your aesthetics are brilliant, with excellent contrast of light and dark and a rewarding emotionalism.”

“He said that?”

“God’s truth.”

“That was nice of him.”

“No. Jared is never nice when it comes to art. He’s a snob.”

Her shoulders came down. “Maybe we should have dinner. The three of us and Clayton.”

“Clayton L. Hamden? He’s your latest?”

“You don’t like him. And stop saying it like I’ve been sleeping with a whole string of men.”

“Bravo if you are.”

His expression was so kind that she felt the familiar stubbornness kick in. The part of her that translated kindness into pity and wanted to mistake understanding for condescension. She didn’t need anyone trying to smooth her feathers. Unlike Gabe, she didn’t care what her family thought of her.

A theory that fell apart as soon as she thought of her painting—a closely guarded secret that only Gabe and Evan knew about. She wasn’t ready to let Clayton L. Hamden into that part of her world.

“Forget dinner,” she said.

But Gabe never dropped anything, ever. “The problem, Addie, is that you and I are living double lives, both of us pretending to the world that the other part of us doesn’t exist. And right now, I think you’re okay with that. You like being the detective with the secret life. And the painter with a hard edge. But until you decide it’s okay for a man to see you as both an artist and a cop, you’re not likely to find yourself with Mr. Right.”

She squirmed miserably and attacked the only thing she could. “No one says ‘Mr. Right’ anymore.”

He shrugged. “I’m done. That’s my pop psychology for the day. But I do make my living reading people. And I read you, my beautiful Addie, like an open book.”

Out of mutual agreement, they turned the conversation to idle things—how the other “boys” were doing, their dad’s planned fishing trip with a group from the church, whether or not Gabe and Jared would make it to Mexico for a vacation. Addie didn’t mention the Talfour case, even though she was desperate to tell Gabe before it hit the papers. Maybe when she knew more.

After a while, Gabe glanced at his phone. “I’ve reached my maximum allotment for a complete disappearance.”

She stood. “I need to get back to work, too.”

Outside, on the sidewalk, they hugged. Addie watched Gabe jog lightly across the street and down the other side toward his car. At the last moment, he turned and waved.

She smiled.

You couldn’t pick your family. But sometimes you got lucky.



At her desk, she checked first to see if anything had come back from ViCAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which was the FBI’s database of serial violent offenders. She’d entered the details of their case, wondering if the killer had struck elsewhere. Nothing so far.

She hung up her coat and bought a Coke from the vending machine. It was time to create a victimology and get into the nitty-gritty of police work. While Patrick coordinated interviews of Talfour’s neighbors and friends, Addie focused on Talfour’s store employees and the various charities he’d volunteered for. She began by building lists of people to talk to, knowing the lists would grow like spiderwebs, expanding rapidly in all directions.

People thought being a homicide cop was glamorous. But mostly it involved pounding the pavement, real or virtual.

She was dialing out to one of the employees of Finer Things when her phone beeped with a call from the Kendall County Sheriff’s Department. The county was more than an hour southwest of the city but still part of metropolitan Chicago. She switched lines. A deputy explained that he’d gotten her name from the desk sergeant.