Dial Em for Murder (4 page)

I blurted out the truth, knowing that it was the one thing he would never believe.

“
I have no freaking idea!
”

Detective O'Brian didn't seem to find my denial particularly convincing.

Then again, I doubted I could've said anything to him to prove either my innocence or my ignorance. The man was too busy trying to make me crack under the pressure of his withering glare to actually hear me out. In his eyes, I wasn't a teenage girl who had chosen to write a romance novel at the wrong time in the wrong coffee shop.

Nope, one conversation with a dead man and I was a potential suspect in a murder investigation.

I had no trouble picturing Detective O'Brian practicing his Serious Cop Face every night in the mirror, but that didn't make it any less effective. My hands had started shaking all over again and this time I couldn't run off the worst of my panic. It felt like the oxygen was being sucked out of the small interrogation room. I couldn't think clearly.

Or maybe I was simply trying too hard to make sense out of something that defied all logic.

Somebody wanted me
dead
.

Me.

The situation had driven beyond strange, past absurd, and taken a hard left down batshit crazy lane. There was no way to prove that I didn't deserve to be grilled by a detective. A
homicide
detective, I realized belatedly. If this were a romance novel, Detective Luke O'Brian would be the jaded cop who had spent years uncovering the darkest, most brutal acts people could commit. He would growl and glower and snap at anyone who dared get in his way. Funny how I'd always enjoyed those kinds of theatrics on cop shows until I found myself seated in an interrogation room.

If I thought for even half a second that he might believe me, I would have spilled the truth about everything. As it was, I didn't want to give him a reason to blame me for a crime that I didn't commit. A crime that I didn't understand.

“Shouldn't you be questioning the killer instead of me? That seems like a much better use of your time.” My cheeks reddened under the intensity of his glare. “I'm trying to be helpful here!”

“Try harder,” Detective O'Brian suggested. “We don't have your friend in the baseball cap in police custody yet. Which means that I have all the time in the world to talk to you.”

I felt lightheaded. The few bites of lunch I'd eaten earlier churned uneasily in my stomach. “Let me get this straight: you're grilling
me
instead of looking for
him
?
And by ‘him' I mean
the guy who tried to kill me
?”

“I'm not grilling you, Miss Danvers. You've got this all turned around. I'm the one keeping you nice and safe. Now why don't you try your best to be helpful?”

I sure as hell didn't feel safe. Not in the police station and
definitely
not with him. I couldn't tell if Detective O'Brian really thought that I was involved with the guilty party or if he was simply trying to scare me into letting something slip. Either way, I was catching a strong whiff of bait. And it wasn't coming from the only other person sitting in the room.

The dead guy was right once again; I couldn't trust anyone.

“I don't know anything, Detective!” The words felt as if they were being ripped out of my chest. “I can't think of
anyone
who would want to hurt me. I don't have any vengeful former lovers. I don't make a habit of chatting with known felons. I don't even own a fake ID!”

The detective leaned toward me. “Then why were you talking to a stranger in Starbucks?”

“Because he stole my drink!” I stumbled to my feet. “I've told you all of this. Multiple times. So either charge me with a crime or let me go.”

I'm not sure what I expected him to say. I seriously doubted that threatening a walkout would make the detective any more forthcoming. Still, I wasn't prepared for him to open the door and usher me out of the interrogation room.

“After you,” he said smoothly. “You might want to tell your friends to walk three paces behind you. When you consider that the last man to stand in front of you was murdered, well, no use dwelling on that, right? Have a lovely afternoon, Miss Danvers.”

I twisted in the doorway and couldn't keep my voice from trembling. “What do you
want
from me?”

“Why don't you sit in the waiting area and we'll talk more when your mom shows up. That'll give you some time to contemplate all your options. And, hey, let me know if the killer pays you another visit. Although come to think of it, you probably won't be in a position to do much talking.” Detective O'Brian shrugged as if he didn't care either way. My legs went numb as he propelled me forward. “Just give a holler if you happen to remember anything.”

Then with only the barest of nods for the officer manning the front desk, Detective O'Brian sauntered back into the heart of the station, leaving me with the unenviable task of finding the best place to sit with all of the other people who desperately wanted to be anywhere else. A Hispanic woman with a swelling black eye appeared to be battling tears as she filled out a form. Four seats away from her, a lean man with a long goatee was ranting about the unfairness of his jaywalking ticket loudly enough to be receiving the lion's share of attention.

I'd already reached my quota of crazy interactions with strangers for a lifetime, so I purposefully walked to the calmest corner of the room. There was a boy sitting three spaces down from me, but he had headphones in and appeared immersed in a battered copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
, his head bent low over the dog-eared pages. Even slouching in his chair, he looked out of place with his perfectly pressed slacks, a button-down shirt, and an overcoat with a price tag that would probably set my mom back a month in rent.

He wore wealth with the kind of confidence that only comes from familiarity with it. Luxury that was such an everyday occurrence that he dismissed it as commonplace. He was probably there to file a complaint for his daddy. Maybe his Lexus had been taken to the impound lot and he couldn't handle taking the family Porsche for more than two days in a row.

A nicer person wouldn't feel the need to take mental potshots at a rich kid just to distract herself from the biggest crapfest of her life. I sank into my seat and shrugged, chalking it up to my writer's temperament as I searched for a good way to describe the unruly mass of hair that fell across his forehead. Crows-wing black sounded (a) pretentious and (b) inaccurate. It was more of a dark chocolate brown than a pure black. If someone tried to dye their hair that color it would probably have some ridiculous name on the package, like “espresso roast” or “midnight mahogany.”

Not that it mattered since no self-respecting hero would
ever
look in the mirror and think to himself, “Why yes, my thick head of midnight mahogany hair
is
looking particularly good tonight,” before sauntering off into the darkness.

“What did you tell the cops?”

My leg jerked as if he'd tested my reflexes with one of those little hammers that pediatricians always have within easy reach. There might not be an official rule against talking, but the front entrance of a police precinct isn't the kind of place where it's socially acceptable to chat with strangers. Not that the rich kid appeared to care about breaking social norms. He also didn't bother setting down the book that was probably more of a prop than anything else. I had to admit, he was doing an impressive job of hiding his face with it. This boy seemed to know exactly how far to tilt his forehead, how to position his neck, how wide to open the paperback, and how to utilize the shadows cast by his disheveled hair to make anything above the unsmiling lines of his lips difficult to see. When it came to knowing his angles, this guy could probably give even the most devoted selfie enthusiast a few pointers.

“Um, what?” I said profoundly.

“What. Did. You. Tell. The. Cops?” He repeated the question slowly as if he honestly thought the problem was that I hadn't heard him right the first time. It was hard to tell when he enunciated each word, but I thought there was something vaguely familiar about his voice. It was like catching the end of a commercial and knowing that the actor explaining why you should buy this revolutionary new ergonomic something-or-other was a supporting character in a movie you watched years ago but couldn't identify now.

I crossed my arms and briefly considered moving to a different seat. Just because we were the only high school–age kids in the place didn't mean we needed to pretend that this was a bizarre remake of
The Breakfast Club
with a significantly smaller cast.

“I told them the truth.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but the slight quiver I couldn't control made it sound like a lie.

The boy snorted in disgust. “Oh yeah? And how did that work out for you?”

Not particularly well. Detective O'Brian hadn't believed a single word I'd said, making it sound like he arrested painfully boring sixteen-year-old girls like me all the time. As if it made perfect sense for me to have gun-wielding archenemies despite the fact that up until yesterday my biggest adversaries were the manspreaders who somehow took up three seats on the subway with their legs.

“I'm not in handcuffs,” I pointed out, right before my curiosity got the better of me. It was a bad idea to make small talk in a police precinct, because either something terrible had just happened to them or they'd done something terrible to somebody else. Either way, not the best time to practice making casual conversation, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. “What, uh, brings you here?”

The boy stretched out his long legs and I wondered somewhat inanely whether he played sports. If he was accustomed to deflecting soccer balls with his ridiculously strong jaw. The segment of his nose that I could see appeared unbroken, but for all I knew there was a gigantic bump right between his eyes and that's why he was so self-conscious about showing his face. Although it wasn't as if he could spend his entire life hiding behind a paperback.

“I thought that was obvious. I'm your ‘Get Out of Jail Free' card, Emmy.” He lowered the book, and if his first words had been a shock, the recognition that filled me as I met his piercing blue eyes and got a good look at the full picture of his face was a cattle prod to the stomach.

Sebastian St. James.

If there was one person I never
ever
wanted to see again, it was the Starbucks killer in the baseball cap. But if I was allowed to add another name to the list, I would have scrawled Sebastian St. James on the second line without any hesitation. Sebastian even beat out my mom's current jackass boyfriend, Viktor, for that highly coveted spot, which was pretty impressive considering that I had only met him once roughly two months ago. To my way of thinking, our three-minute conversation in a poorly lit room had lasted three minutes too long.

“Don't tell me you've forgotten me,
bestie
.” Sebastian sounded darkly amused. We both knew that he was a lot of things, but unmemorable wasn't one of them. Apparently I'd made an impression of my own. Although that was probably because most girls don't duck away from their best friend in the midst of a huge party at a fancy private residence that was within the gated walls of some exclusive prep school, which seemed weird to me on a whole bunch of levels, but whatever. Rich people made strange life decisions all the time. My plan was to blend in with the wallpaper, keeping the volume on my phone cranked all the way up in case Audrey needed me. She was the only reason I had agreed to go in the first place. And since she seemed to be handling the horde of unfamiliar faces fine without me, I decided to do a little exploring on my own—only to stumble upon a burglary in progress. A leanly built dark-haired boy calmly put away his lock-picking set and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid from a heavy oak desk. He didn't appear overly concerned about being caught in the act. He lifted an eyebrow in a silent challenge, as if daring me to call him out. A smart girl probably would have kept her mouth shut. Minded heir own business. Returned to the party as if nothing had happened.

Instead, I texted Audrey,
Tell your boyfriend that I caught someone breaking into the liquor cabinet.
Then just to ensure that they actually found me in the enormous private residence, I added,
I'm in the first floor study. With the thief. And I think there might be a candlestick.

Audrey and Nasir had rushed into the room, only to find me blocking the exit while the strange boy with the lock-pick set relaxed in an enormous leather chair with his glass of amber liquor.

Nasir couldn't hide his amusement as he explained that my thief was the owner's grandson.

That it was basically his place and
definitely
his party.

Yeah, nobody makes an idiot of themselves quite as spectacularly as me.

My cheeks heated with embarrassment at the memory. “So does this mean you were finally busted for stealing? Let me guess, this time you were caught with something a lot more expensive than alcohol.”

He smiled, the expression one of pure smugness. “First of all, I
allegedly
stole a thirty-year-old bottle of Glenlivet scotch, not some cheap beer on tap. Show some respect, please. Secondly, you're the one who probably needs a drink. It'll make it a lot easier for you to accept that I'm the best ally you've got.”

An odd squeak emerged from my throat that sounded like the demented cousin of my normal laugh. “Let me see if I've got this straight:
You
want to help
me
. Out of the goodness of your nonexistent heart. Because that's the kind of favor you like to do for your best friend's ex-girlfriend's best friend. Sure. That makes sense.” I gritted out the last part, but instead of returning my scowl, Sebastian's grin flashed a set of perfectly straight white teeth.