She wasn’t imagining this. She wasn’t. She clutched Tom’s arm, moved even closer to him on the couch. They’d arrived at police headquarters, been sent here to the third floor, told to ask for Detectives Brogan and DeLuca. The same two who’d come to their house, Willow remembered. The girl at the desk was nice enough, informed them Detective Brogan would return soon, and would they wait?
Of course they would. Willow tried reading one of the People magazines on the scuffed and battered coffee table, trying to make the time go by faster, but too many pages had been ripped out for the articles to make sense, and the tattered ones that remained threatened to escape the weakened staples at the slightest touch.
But it was fine. They could wait. The couch, lumpy and unforgiving, was the only place they could sit together.
“It will all work out,” Tom had told her. “We’ll take it together, one step at a time. And.” He kissed her on the top of her head, the way he always did. “Avery would be proud of you.”
“Of us.” She was doing the right thing, she was sure of it.
It seemed like hours they’d sat there, and a silly clock on the wall, unplugged, was no help. But Tom’s watch proved it had been only fifteen minutes.
The outer door opened. Her heart leaped. It had to be Brogan, and soon this would all be over.
But it wasn’t Brogan. It was the crosswalk man. The blue-blazered sidewalk man. The one she’d decided this morning was no one. Wrong.
She grabbed Tom’s arm, wondering if everything she’d feared, everything, was true, and he’d followed her—them—here!
“Tom,” she whispered. “That man.”
But she couldn’t say anything more. Not with him right there! But why would a bad guy—a hit man? an assassin?—come to the police station? It seemed impossible. Dangerous. Ridiculous.
She hadn’t told Tom about him. Why should she, it was too silly. Now, she realized, maybe it wasn’t silly.
“What?” Tom asked.
But there was nothing she could say. Not without that man hearing. Did she have a pencil and paper in her handbag? Maybe she could write a note.
Willow burrowed herself closer to Tom. The man barely gave them a glance. Nothing could happen to her inside this police station, anyway. She was safe. And once Detective Brogan came back they’d be even safer. So strange—she’d once hoped Brogan would leave her alone. Now she couldn’t wait to see him.
The man approached the receptionist. “I’m here to see Detective Brogan,” he said.
She and Tom exchanged glances. Tom smiled, took her hand. “This is Brogan’s office,” he whispered. “Where else would a person come?”
“I’m Edward Tarrant,” the man said. “I know he’ll want to see me. Tell him it’s about Avery Morgan.”
Willow couldn’t stifle her gasp. She saw the look on Tom’s face. Still, agonizingly, she couldn’t explain anything to him. But there it was, and she was right, totally right, and maybe the man had only pretended not to recognize her. Maybe it was a code, what he’d said to the receptionist. She could not bear it, and what if …
It was all she could do not to cry, to break down completely and cry.
EDWARD TARRANT
“Any minute now” was long gone.
Edward paced, impatient, calculating, revising. Assessing. A youngish couple, inappropriately intertwined in each other, sat on the supposedly-brown couch of the waiting room outside the police homicide offices. Edward could not bear to sit. The risk he was about to take, the tightrope he was about to walk, made staying still impossible.
“Tarrant the supplicant” was hardly his usual role. He was used to people coming to him, after all. But this was necessary. If he was going to extinguish this particularly dangerous fire, he needed to make a big move.
And now, according to the dismissive receptionist, he was on hold. She’d given him a mere pretense of interest, a terse “Detective Brogan will be back any minute now if you care to wait?” then returned to her crossword puzzle. Where the other one was, DeLuca, she insisted she didn’t know.
He steeled his temper, knowing this would only work with patience and skill. Playing the right cards at the right time. And maybe—a smile crossed his face—Avery Morgan would thank him for it. It was justice, after all. And wasn’t that what he was all about?
Ten steps across the seedy beige carpet, wall to wall, and ten back the other way. He eyed the peeling wallpaper, some fading stripe, the brown patches of stains under the half-empty water cooler. The battered magazines splayed on the too-small coffee table. The black-framed clock on the wall, its frayed power cord unplugged from the greasy outlet. Time had stopped. He didn’t need some appliance to tell him that.
The best part, which he’d figured out last night—Brinn breathing next to him, her scrawny little body taking up more than its share of space in the bed—was that in reality, he’d done nothing wrong. In his role as student advisor, he used his best judgment, drawn from his experience, offered solutions and long-term benefits. That’s all. If any parents or students had wanted to pursue their complaints, he’d agreed.
He’d blinked at the pale gray bedroom ceiling, approving of his argument. And there was proof he was right. Some parents had complained, and those cases—one supposed assault, and a drug deal, or two or three—had proceeded through the system. Not quickly, but proceeded. He could point to those. There was no cover-up, or any persuasion, or any quid pro quo, or any other distasteful word. There was process. Conversation. And decisions made in the best interests of all.
He had never, ever, asked for anything.
He was blameless in every way. Why he had let those girls browbeat him … He shook his head, understanding his inescapable vulnerability. Avery. Their dalliance. Fine. Affair. Now he’d never been more aware of Brinn’s existence. Her power. Her anger. Her father. That was his Achilles’ heel. But one obstacle at a time.
He’d tossed that idiotic spiral notebook into the trash. It was already covered with the shoeprints and filth of uncaring pedestrians. He could hardly bear to touch it, but he’d gone downstairs to get it, and looked at it only long enough to seethe at the pages. He’d fallen for it, the silliest trap imaginable, choked by his fear.
Still pacing, he was aware that the couple on the couch, the woman at least, was talking about him. Hopefully they hadn’t recognized him, though on second thought what if they had? He was a fine, upstanding citizen, and about to make a deal to prove it.
As soon as Detective Brogan returned.
Any minute now.