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I’D READ FOR a few hours but I was never someone who could stay still for long so I showered, changed, and decided on a suitable punishment for poisoning myself: ten laps of the lawn and sprints should help me sweat it out.
My legs were heavy as I headed out to the courtyard and into the spring sunshine; my stomach gurgled and my mouth felt like I’d coated my tongue with sugar.
“Looking a bit worse for wear, honey,” Trin said with a charming smile as she strolled over to me.
“I don’t know what I said, but drink is not good for me.” I held up my hands, my prosthesis whirred and I hid it behind my back.
“I dunno, being told I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve set eyes on and that you want me to visit you more made an impression.” Trin folded her arms under her bust which pushed it up. It didn’t need a lot of presenting. “Telling me you are scared I’ll never fancy you again kept me up most of the night.”
I shrugged. I didn’t talk about my feelings a whole lot but clearly drink helped.
“I do fancy you.” Trin strolled up to me and stopped inches from my lips. “I haven’t run off and I’m sorry I missed your birthday.” She brushed my hair from my face. “I’m struggling with you being hurt. I want to fix it but I can’t and that makes me feel helpless . . . but I do love you.”
I touched her arm with my prosthesis and she flinched. “Fancy me now?”
Trin stepped back with a shudder. “Why can’t you wear the cover or something?”
“It looks worse.” I flexed the prosthesis around. I had implants into my nerve endings above my elbow but there was deep scarring from the attack, including whole chunk of skin on my shoulder. The scars were shiny, raised, and deep red in colour. The hand moved like my right hand by my brain signals alone. I was lucky how I’d been trialled with such a cutting edge piece of technology. I could use it.
“It’s better than a chunk of metal.” She sighed, tears in her eyes. “I love you. I promise I do. I want to be what you need, can’t you see that?”
What I could see was a conflicted person who didn’t know what she wanted let alone if she could stand my prosthesis enough to come near me.
Trin’s phone buzzed and she snapped it out of her pocket. “I have to go . . . Ruth wants to get back to the station.”
“Don’t let me stop you.” Sounded hurt and angry but then I felt far, far worse. I felt . . . ugly, unloved, guilty, alone . . . and stupidly, the ugly bit hurt the most. Was I shallow for that? I didn’t really count myself as vain but maybe I was? Then again, who wanted to feel ugly?
Trin reached for me, then sighed and strode off. I leaned against the wall, trying to calm the tears. Then anger surged through me and I jogged around the courtyard to give Trin enough time to get out of the gate before I jogged down to the lake.
My chest was heavy and achy as I headed out through the arched gateway. My nose tickled with the pollen from all the Daffodils that had sprouted up on the grass beside the path, around the lake and the water. I got to the forest and large gouges marred the grass where the police team had been.
Don’t get me wrong, my relationship with Trin wasn’t some textbook on romance. I could be grumpy. I used to show up at her place when I had five minutes then be too busy with a case to bother much . . . but I never missed her birthday . . . and when I was there with her, I made sure she had my full attention. She was short-tempered herself, she spent more time connected to social media than to any conversation, but she could make me laugh harder than was healthy, and had always been a big supporter of anything I did.
I slowed at the crime scene then sprinted across the lawn to the tree and ducked through the thick blossoms and leaves. You couldn’t make out the trunk ’til you got through but it was thick, knotted, solid as I touched it and sprinted back out.
My heart slammed in my chest as sweat dribbled from me.
Had our relationship changed because I’d got hurt or was it just that I noticed because I got hurt? Maybe nothing between us had changed but it was that I had? Although I missed being a police officer, I didn’t miss the stress. I’d got stressed so much that I had been used to the knots in my stomach.
I turned at the path and sprinted back toward the tree.
Trin was doing what I’d loved once. She loved being a police officer as much as I had. I didn’t even know if her coming to see me was just to give Wood a clear route to Sophie.
I hit the trunk and sprinted back out across the lawn.
Would I have been any different? A history of people going missing and two murders, not to mention a suspect who was hiding something . . . it was the kind of case every DI wanted to prove her mettle.
That’s if Sophie was a suspect.
I turned at the path, chest heaving, and sprinted back toward the tree.
And was Sophie a suspect. Really? There were hundreds of people on the estate who could have shot Salisbury. Any one of them, as they all wanted to safeguard the estate so much, could have learned what Salisbury’s father was up to and so shot her. Yes, Sophie had slept with her but Salisbury had still been alive when she left her company. Why follow someone to shoot them? It would have been more convenient to kill her and hide the body, surely?
Then there was Bunion’s body. Why would she want to plant his body on her own flowerbed? No, it made no sense at all.
I ducked in through the leaves and ran smack into Sophie. I shrieked, yet again, and I never shrieked.
Sophie laughed, soft, siren-like and held me by the biceps, a dangerous smile on her face. “Morgan, you are not permitted to walk on the grass.”
Charcoal eyes bored into mine and sucked at my logic, my resolve and injected me with . . . desire. Shit, she was like venom.
“I was running on it though, ma’am,” I said, hearing how flirty it sounded. “Less likely to flatten it that way.”
Sophie eased closer to me, her eyes magnetic. “I love it when you run.”
Should be creepy. Should set off alarm bells. Instead it heightened the desire now pulsing through me. “You do?”
“Yes,” Sophie whispered like I was some delicious treat she was trying to resist. “You run in perfect balance . . . and it’s taunting me.” She leaned in and stroked the hair away from my neck. “You taunt me.”
I shivered with her tone, still panting from running but now it was harder to breathe. She smelled like the blossoms on the tree. “I didn’t realise . . . ?”
She leaned close to my lips. Her hot breath tickled my skin as she breathed.
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
My sweat dribbled down my back.
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
“You watch me . . . constantly,” Sophie whispered into my ear: purr-like, hypnotic.
“It’s my job,” I managed, clamped there, unable and unwilling to break free. She was merely looking at me but it felt like she was paralysing me.
“Your job is to watch my estate.” She held my gaze, her eyes filled with some deep need.
“Yeah.” My lips parted and a satisfied smile touched her lips. “But you’re part of the estate?”
She turned us and backed me up until I felt the trunk behind me. “I am in charge of the estate.”
“I . . . um . . . I have a fiancé . . .” Not that I sounded convinced about it.
“Why do I care?” Sophie’s smile grew.
“We can’t do this . . . I . . . We . . .” I gripped her arms back as if that would stop me letting her get any closer.
“And what do you think I’m going to do?” Sophie was inches from my lips but she paused, met my eyes and laughed a dangerous laugh.
“You know full well what you’re going to do.” I shuddered, trying to steady my breathing. Fear, arousal, panic all pounded around me as Sophie’s breath tickled my lips. I needed to stop. I held her face away, battling not to pull her to me.
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
“You terrified me,” I whispered, locked there by her charcoal eyes, by her full bodied smile.
“Good.”
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
“You’re . . . I have a fiancé.” I was whimpering it.
“I don’t care.” Her hungry smile glinted in her eyes. “Let go.”
I shook my head. “They warned me not to let you close.”
Her smile grew ever more hungry, eyes more intense.
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
“I don’t know why you find me attractive.” I flexed my prosthesis like that would change her mind.
“You taunt me.” She took it and rubbed her face to it, then kissed it like it was some kind of sweet. “Your beauty taunts me.”
Exhale, pause, exhale, pause.
Sucker punch. I dropped my hands away.
She eased toward me.
Crack.
Sophie pulled me behind her and held me close to her, eyes tracking through the leaves.
I gripped onto her belt as if I had enough strength to throw her to the ground and cover her against her will. “Gunfire.”
“Yes.” Her broad shoulders eased back, she moved onto the balls of her feet as if ready to attack.
“Then I should be in front of you,” I muttered and stepped in front of her. “It’s important you’re safe.” I searched through the leaves. No one had yelped or screamed. It wasn’t a gun club day though.
“I need no bodyguard,” Sophie purred into my ear and pulled me back to nestle into her. She draped a protective arm over me like she would haul me to the ground and cover me.
I did feel protected too. I felt stronger and comforted. I turned my face to hers, soaking in her strength. She was holding my hand, my left hand, to her waist and interlocked her fingers with my metal ones.
Jake hauled a young boy along as he trudged out of the forest and I leaned my head to her shoulder, half wanting Jake to trudge off to the house and leave me to do something incredibly stupid.
“Boy might need a bodyguard by the look of it,” I whispered to her and straightened myself up. “Better go and do my job.”
I went to move but Sophie squeezed me. She put my hand to her mouth and kissed the metal fingertips.
“Don’t think I’m done with you,” she growled into my ear and shoved me into the leaves.
“Morgan?” Jake called in his gruff tone.
I straightened myself out and hoped I didn’t look flustered.
Jake threw the boy at me. “Firecrackers. After all the problems we got, he goes and throws them.”
I caught the boy. He couldn’t have been more than ten.
“I was just playing,” he said, holding up a box of firecrackers. “Didn’t think nobody’d hear me in there.” He hung his head. “I didn’t mean to spook nobody.” Fear filled his eyes. “Don’t take me to Lady Haye, please, I swear, I won’t do it again.”
I glanced back at the tree, expecting Sophie to stride out but there was no one there. Guess she’d slipped away. How did she do that?
“Who are your parents?” I asked. He must have belonged to the estate because I might not have known much about Jake but he didn’t like people, let alone children.
“Mum is the head cook,” he whimpered, his little chin wobbling.
“Then if you help her all day with no whinging, and you don’t do it again,” I said and wagged the box at him, “Jake and I will forget we saw you, right, Jake?”
Jake frowned.
“Lady Haye has had a tough enough few days as it is, yes?” Or I’d have to go and tell her and then she’d do . . . whatever she did . . . to me.
“You’re right.” Jake smiled at me then glared at the boy. “Stay out of my trees.”
“Yes, Jake. Sorry, Jake.” The boy kept his head down, still shaking.
“Off you go.” I motioned with my head and the boy bolted for it. “Thanks, Jake.” More so for rescuing me from myself. “Could we do some more exterior wall checks later?”
Jake gave me a toothy smile, a look of awe in his eyes that I could make out even through the tinted lenses. “Ma’am.”
He trudged off.
I looked back to the tree, trying to ignore that I really wanted to see if Sophie was still waiting. The maid had said she was dangerous and I was a happily engaged woman . . . right?
I needed to work off some energy and clear my head. I glanced back at the tree again and jogged up onto the path. Best I workout in full view of the cameras.