Cuff Me(37)

Maggie’s hand stroked her back. “A change would what—what do you need to change?”

Jill glanced at the ground, and Elena made a knowing, understanding sound. “Vincent.”

Jill’s head snapped up. “Vin and I are fine.”

Nobody said anything for several long seconds.

Ava broke the silence. “Maybe that’s the problem, hun. Maybe you want more than fine.”

Jill would have backed away from them had they not been surrounding her so completely. Instead, she settled for shaking her head. “I’m not following.”

It was a cop-out. She knew exactly what they were getting at. But denial was the easier path. And right now, Jill needed easy.

Elena’s fingers gently wrapped around Jill’s arm as she tugged her forward. “Let’s finish this conversation at my place.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Jill said stubbornly. “Vincent’s my partner, and he’s happy for me. We work great together, sure, but he’s the best detective in the city. He’ll get another partner, and—”

“And what?” Ava prompted as she lifted her slim arm to hail a cab.

Vincent will find another partner.

She’d be replaced.

Granted, it’d be of her own doing. She’d be leaving him. But the thought of him showing up to a crime scene with someone else by his side, talking over beers about a case with someone else…

Jill’s mouth tasted distinctly bitter.

“It’s just work,” she said quietly, to nobody in particular. “We’re just partners.”

None of the other women responded as they piled into the cab, and the long silence held an uncomfortable truth:

What if just partners was no longer enough?





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


You’re grumpy today,” Vincent said, handing Jill a mocha.

She took a sip of her sugary coffee. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

He studied her through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. “You good?”

“Yeah, real good,” she snapped.

She wasn’t good. At all.

Tom was flying in from Florida tonight, and she should be over the moon, but instead she felt… nervous.

She had butterflies, but not the kind she’d been wishing for just days earlier. Instead she had a terrible sense of foreboding.

“Really? Because you look kind of—”

“Can we just focus on the case?” Jill snapped, interrupting whatever insult Vincent likely had at the ready.

He was silent, and for a moment Jill had the strangest sense that maybe her rejection had hurt him. That maybe he wanted her to talk—to confide in him.

And then he shrugged. “Works for me. Got any new thoughts?”

No.

No, she did not have any new thoughts on who freaking killed Lenora Birch, and it was starting to get ridiculous.

Worst of all, their lack of progress had led to other investigators being assigned to the case. Something that had never happened in Jill’s career. Or Vincent’s.

“Why aren’t you more upset?” she asked as they headed toward their car.

“’Bout what?”

“About the fact that they had to bring in extra resources for the case because we can’t do our job.”

He shrugged. “Whatever catches the killer.”

She jumped in front of him, holding up a hand so he had to stop. “Okay, my turn to ask. What’s going on with you?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re seriously okay with the fact that this case is destroying our perfect record? That there’s a very real chance someone else will solve this before we will?”

Vincent shrugged. “They can throw as many resources at this as they want, but it’s still going to be us that finds the guy. Or the woman.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

He grinned, completely confident. “Because we’re the best, baby.”

Baby? Jill watched in puzzlement as he moved around her and continued down the sidewalk.

Something was weird with him. Definitely.

Jill darted after him. “Okay, well then, what’s our next move because I can only talk to the same people so many times. Should we go back to question Holly Adams? She’s the only one who—”

Vin shook his head. “I don’t want to make that trek again until we have something else to go off of.”

“So then what?”

He rocked back on his heels. “We start over.”

“Sorry, come again?”

“We start the case all over. Repeat from the very beginning when we arrived at Lenora’s house.”

“Sort of hard to do a do-over in a homicide investigation case,” she said. “The whole lack of body, and whatnot.”

“So we’ll pretend.”

“And the point of this exercise?” she asked as she jerked open the car door.

He glanced at her over the hood, tapping his fingers against his cup thoughtfully, looking very serene, and very un-Vincent-like.

“We missed something, Henley. It’s the only explanation. Think about it: we’ve never had this much trouble on a case. It’s never taken us more than a couple days to have a solid list of suspects, and most of the time we’re leaning toward one suspect—the right one. But this case… we did something wrong. So let’s go fix it.”