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.Hop in.”“Rocky can’t go into a diner, and I don’t feel good about leaving him tied up outside.Hold on,” I said and carried the little dog back into the building.Effie agreed to puppy sit while I went about my day.The scenery, grey buildings and green lawns, blurred past my window as Tex drove us to the diner.Silence carried us from his Jeep to the interior of the diner, to a booth between a couple of high school kids and a family of five.Tex shook his head and gestured toward a more secluded booth along the back wall.The waitress dropped a couple of menus and two plastic tumblers of water on our table.The silence remained until she walked away.“So Night, I’m only going to ask you this once.Why are you covering for Hudson?”I slapped the plastic menu down on the table.“You’re only going to ask me that once? Funny.Because that’s the fifth time you’ve only asked me that once.”“If you’d just work with me instead of against me this could all be over.”“I tried that.Remember? And look what happened.How about you answer some of my questions instead?”“We’ve been over this,” he said in a low voice.“I’m not talking about your investigation, which you’re not even supposed to be conducting.Why don’t you tell me about the Halloween party? What you and Sheila Murphy fought about before she ran off and got herself killed?”The words popped out of my mouth unedited.Tex’s eyes bore holes into me, but I matched his stare with the same intensity.I would not allow him to manipulate me into feeling guilty for asking about that night, not after the way he’d used me to try to catch Hudson.Abruptly, he stood.The plastic tumbler on the table bounced and water sloshed onto the menu.He strode toward the front door, leaving me alone.I wasn’t worried.His code of honor was too great to leave me behind.The waitress came back to the table.I ordered two cups of coffee and two blue plate specials.Eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, and potatoes.Enough food to distract an angry cop if he returned to the table.Enough to feed a small dog and cat in my apartment if I ended up taking it to go.The food arrived on the table before Tex came back.I waited for half a minute, letting it cool down while I wondered if it would be rude to start.Hunger dictated the answer.I bit into a piece of bacon then followed it with a forkful of scrambled eggs.“Damn, Night, you got a hell of an appetite.”I turned around and looked up at him.He snatched a triangle of toast from the small ceramic plate, then slid back onto his side of the booth.I wasn’t sure if his return required words on my part.He speared a sausage link and bit into it, while I nibbled on a second piece of bacon, pinched between my fingers.We finished three quarters of our food in silence.He seemed to have picked up on my theory of us getting along better when we didn’t talk.When the waitress came by with our check, he snatched it before I had a chance to reach out.“What’s my share?”“It’s on me.”“No, I’ll pay my half.This isn’t a date, Tex.”“You think I don’t know this isn’t a date? It stopped being a date the minute you brought up my ex-girlfriend.” He pulled a couple of bills out of a well-worn leather wallet and tucked them under the sugar shaker.“Besides, when we go on a date, it’s not going to be to a diner and you’re going to wear one of your little cotton numbers.”“‘When’?”“I don’t know when.Soon.”“No, I’m not asking when.I’m questioning your choice of ‘when’ versus ‘if’.”“Oh, it’s a when.But there’s a couple of things we have to figure out before I get around to asking.I don’t like having this thing between us.Let’s get out of here.We gotta talk.”“Lieutenant, if you think a greasy meal at a diner is going to make me turn against a friend, then you’re mistaken.”“I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about me.It’s time I talked to someone outside of the force about what happened with Sheila that night.”THIRTY-ONE“Go to my studio.We can talk there,” I instructed.We were close enough that it was a good idea and Tex knew it.He parked the Jeep behind the storefront.I climbed out and a beam of pain shot through my knee when my feet hit the ground.I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and fought to get the pulsating intervals under control before I continued moving.Tex headed to the building without me.When he reached the back door I stood straight up and followed.Even though he knew about my torn ACL, I fought the pain.It had become a matter of pride to hide my injury from the lieutenant even though we both knew it had happened.I unlocked the doors and we went inside and sat down on a long, low turquoise and lime green chenille sofa that was framed in silver chrome.It was nine feet long and I was able to put my leg up on the cushions and face Tex without coming close to touching him.I waited.He wanted to talk and he knew I wanted to listen.It was his responsibility to start.“I’ve been over that night so many times I don’t know where to begin.I’m missing something, I know that much.But it doesn’t make sense.”He rubbed his thumb and index finger along his forehead just below the front of his hair.He’d taken to wearing the cowboy hat while driving his Jeep and his hand knocked the brim back, like James Dean in a thousand promotional photographs.The only things missing were the reed of straw between his teeth and the devil-may-care attitude.“Who knows? You might see what I’m missing.”His words surprised me.With that one sentence, he gave me respect.He was no longer a cop looking out for a potential victim, and whether or not I wanted to see it that way, that was the relationship we had.But the way he related to me now, sitting in my studio, thinking back over a night that had set into motion a chain of events that couldn’t have been, still couldn’t be predicted, he was letting me into his thought process, his memories.He was hoping I’d see things more clearly than he did.He was treating me like an equal.“I’ll try, but I can’t help if you don’t start.”“Okay.We were kids.I was in the academy.She and I’d been dating for a couple of months.”“Exclusively?” I asked, instantly regretting the interjection.He looked up and focused his eyes on me for a moment.“Yes.”I nodded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]