Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(81)

What a dump of a neighborhood. Why live here on a cop’s salary? It made no sense. She’d been distracted on her way home, obviously, or she would have known she was being followed. Reconnaissance. That was what this was. It was better to know your adversary, to see what they were made of, what they valued, what they didn’t. This place? No answers, only questions. This cop, this Foster, was an unknown element, a potential problem. She and her partner were making the right moves. They were a threat, but now wasn’t the right time. It was enough for now knowing where. Other things would come soon enough.

The car started, pulled away, the night still young . . . for some.





CHAPTER 57


He had no idea what her name was. Something with an R, but it was 1:00 a.m., and the who didn’t matter; it was the why that did. She was okay looking enough, not as young as he liked, but at the end of a bar night, his choices were limited.

“I don’t usually do this,” she cooed, leaning all over him, smelling like beer and despair. “You’re special.”

Bodie smirked, pushed her upright, and led her into the lobby of his building. “Sure. I know. We’re all special.”

The sloppy ascent to his door ended at his doorstep, where a box sat wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Bodie hadn’t a clue what it might be. He didn’t order things online; he didn’t shop for anything but necessities.

“It’s your birthday, hon?” R. asked.

Bodie bent down, opened the box. Maybe it was from Am. A peace offering for the tense exchange they’d had. She was like that often. Judgy, then thoughtful. He opened the box, looked inside, then dropped it at his feet.

“Oops.” R. giggled. “Didn’t break it, did you?”

“Go away,” Bodie muttered.

“What?”

“I said go away. This isn’t happening tonight.” He reached into his pocket, peeled off two twenties, and shoved them into the woman’s hands, pushing her toward the elevator. “Get a cab.”

The string of profanities that followed didn’t faze him. All he saw was the box. All he felt was the years peeling away. All he heard was himself whimpering like a coward in a closet in Am’s room in a different world than the one he’d woken up in today. Surprisingly, his hands didn’t shake when he picked the box up again and looked inside. The small wooden train was still there, feeling like death in his hands.

“Son of a bitch.”



He pounded on Am’s door, frantic, not caring a whit about her neighbors or the lateness of the hour. In his defense, he’d tried calling first, but she hadn’t picked up. Am could be such a bitch sometimes. He kept the pounding up. “Am. Am!”

A door across the hall swung open, a man with bedhead and sleepy eyes poking his head out. “What the hell? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Bodie reeled, their eyes meeting. Bodie’s transmitted something that forced the man back a step and drove him to narrow the crack in his door. “Shut your door,” he ordered, “and mind your business.” He watched as the man shrank back and quietly eased the door closed. Bodie waited for the lock to click before he turned back to Am’s door. He was about to pound again when the door opened. Am stood there in a short robe, her hair mussed.

“What the hell?” she whispered. “Do you know what time it is?”

Bodie pushed past her, the box with the train in his hands. He shoved the box at her. “Look.”

She looked down at the box but didn’t take it. “Bod, it’s two in the morning and . . . what’s this?”

He pressed the box into her hands. “Look!”

A half-naked, half-drunk man shuffled out of the bedroom, struggling into a shirt as he came. He was leaving on tiptoe, like he was embarrassed, like Bodie cared what Am did in her bed. “Later,” the creeper said to Am, giving her an unenthusiastic thumbs-up she didn’t bother to acknowledge or return. Bodie waited impatiently for the idiot to get out and close the door behind him.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Am said, but he could tell she didn’t mean it. The man, like R., was a port in a storm. Temporary. Not meant to be anything.

“Am,” he barked.

“All right. All right.” She took the box and then shuffled into the kitchen and dropped it on the table. Bodie expected a shocked expression, a gasp, something, when she opened it, but he didn’t get any of that. Am stared at the train, then at him. “It’s a train. I don’t remember asking for one. It’s not our birthday.”

“Not funny. You know what you’re looking at. He made it. He’s not dead or somewhere else. He’s here, and he knows where I live. And if he knows where I live, he knows where you live too.”

Am pushed the box away. “Calm down.”

She didn’t look surprised. There was no fear.

This wasn’t a revelation.

“You know, don’t you?” he said, seething. “I can see it in your eyes. You know he’s alive. You know he’s here.”

She closed the box carefully. “Look, Bod—”

“How long?”

She opened the fridge and took out a bottled water and twisted off the cap. “I don’t think this—”

He wasn’t about to let her turn this around. “How. Long.”