“Why you’d cover for someone else’s murders,” he said.
That did it.
Beth pushed the car door open, leaned out, and threw up onto the driveway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
October 2017
SHEA
It had started to rain as I sat in the corner bar. I could see the drops rolling down the windows. It wasn’t even late; I’d left Esther’s right after dinner. Then I’d sent myself straight from that awkward evening into this one.
My hands were clammy where they curled around my glass of soda with lemon, but otherwise I was surprisingly calm. Even though I’d only seen one photograph of him, I was sure I’d recognize Michael De Vos when I saw him. And I did.
He was wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a dark brown blazer that matched the dark brown of his hair. His brows were furrowed as he came through the door and scanned the dim room, and then he saw me. We stared at each other.
Michael came toward me. His brows were still furrowed, like he was trying to figure something out, which he probably was. As he got closer, I realized he was bigger than I’d thought—over six feet tall. He looked nothing like my ex-husband, Van, who had his name because his parents were Van Morrison fans. Van was slender and occasionally grew a patchy beard. He was the kind of guy who looked ridiculous in baseball caps. Michael’s shoulders filled out his jacket, and even though he was clean-shaven and clean-cut—except for the fact that his hair was an inch too long—he had shadows under his eyes. Still, the photo I’d seen hadn’t done justice to what he was like in person.
He pulled out the chair across from me at my little table and sat on it. “This is a surprise,” he said.
It was his voice, the voice I knew so well from the phone. “Thanks for meeting me,” I said.
“Are you kidding me?” His eyebrows rose. “You’re my most mysterious client by far. I couldn’t pass up the chance to finally meet you in person.”
I wondered if he was teasing me, but he wasn’t. He actually thought I was mysterious. I glanced down at my jeans and hoodie, thought about my dark hair in its ponytail and my lack of makeup except for a few swipes of mascara. I didn’t look anything like Beth, with her expensive slacks and beautiful turtlenecks. She was the epitome of the mysterious woman, the siren who walks into the detective’s office and begs him to take the case of protecting her, sending him straight into trouble.
That wasn’t me. Still, I could channel a little of Beth right now. What would she do in this situation?
Your problem is a simple power imbalance. It’s your call. Make it.
“Why aren’t you a cop anymore?” I asked him.
The waitress drifted by, and Michael ordered a beer. Then he turned back to me. “I joined for the most cliché of reasons,” he said. “To please my father and my uncle, who were both cops. To get their approval. That was important to me, and I tried. I really did.”
“And you didn’t like it?” I asked.
“I hated it. It took years for me to admit it. Being a beat cop was absolutely the wrong job for me. I’m not the guy who can haul a two-hundred-pound drunk out of a bar or pull a child’s corpse out of a wrecked car. I’m not knocking it. It just wasn’t me.”
“What kind of guy are you, then?” I asked him.
“I’m a desk guy, a research guy. A puzzle guy.” It should be incongruous for a man over six feet tall, but when I looked at Michael, somehow it fit. He had depths of intelligence behind his expression, and I knew he was adept at researching, writing, theorizing. Despite his size and muscle, deep down he was a nerd like me. “You have to do a lot of years and be really good to make detective, if they’ll even take you,” he said. “I didn’t have the patience or the talent. So I weathered the disappointment from my family and my then wife, who thought she was marrying a cop, and I quit. Now I do this instead.”