I sighed. “It means you’re gonna keep bugging me about that envelope, that’s what it means.”
He winced almost imperceptibly. To an untrained eye, his expression never wavered—he usually seemed to be a combination of annoyed and bored. But there were subtleties, shadings, like quick clouds scudding before the sun.
“I don’t like bugging you,” he said. “You think I do, but I don’t.”
I felt myself soften. We bugged each other something awful at times. I stepped closer and slid my arms around his neck, ran my fingers under his collar. His skin was warm, fresh from the shower, his hair still damp.
He moved his hands to the small of my back. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to distract me.”
“You always say it like I’m laying some trap. Like you’re just standing there and then, whoops, suddenly we’re making out and you have no idea how it happened.”
He pulled me closer, gently, but with definite intent. “I’m not complaining.”
My bedroom was upstairs, only a few steps away, but I contemplated taking him right where we stood, with all three security cameras still rolling and the OPEN sign still out. And I could forget the envelope in the drawer. And the bruise on my chest. And the cash register with very little cash in it. I stood on tiptoe, the better to reach his mouth.
The front door jingled. A familiar female voice said, “Uh oh, I’m interrupting something, aren’t I?”
I glanced over Trey’s shoulder. He turned toward the door as his right hand instinctively reached for the gun he didn’t carry anymore.
“Finn,” I said.
Chapter Three
Finn Hudson let the door jingle shut behind her. I hadn’t seen her in months, not since Savannah. Now she’d materialized in my shop like some Goth fairy, her tawny hair pixie-cut, her slight frame decked head-to-toe in black—black mini, black tights, black stack-heel boots.
Trey stepped away from me, facing her. He kept his body at an angle, his left foot slightly behind, a fighting stance. He didn’t trust Finn as far as he could throw her, and I’d seen him throw people quite a ways.
Of course, I didn’t trust her either. She was a private investigator who occasionally worked for one of Atlanta’s best known defense attorneys, although whether you’d call him infamous or celebrated depended on your frame of mind. For ex-cops like Trey? Definitely infamous. I tended to agree, especially since his firm had represented the racist sociopath who’d tried to kill me not once, but twice.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
She looked around the shop. “Nice place.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Not yet.” She smiled. “How have you been, both of you? I’ve been thinking about you.”
“That makes me nervous.”
She laughed. She had a lovely bright laugh that rang as false as tinsel. Back during my tour guide days in Savannah, I’d told stories about the glamour, a sheen of magic that disguised a person’s true nature. If any human being could conjure such a thing, it was Finn.
“Have a second?” she said.
“For what?”
She flipped the door sign to CLOSED. “It’s complicated.”
Trey remained silent and taut, like a trip wire. Finn spooked him. He could read most people, separate lies from truth with ease, but Finn was a blank. During the most recent troubles in Savannah, however, she’d been instrumental in our success, dropping us hints and pointing us toward clues that she herself could not investigate. She’d claimed it served her larger moral purpose. I doubted that, though it had served something, that was for sure, and it had served Trey and me well enough.
“Make it simple,” I said. “And quick.”
“Okay.” She kept her expression business-like. “I’m investigating a possible assassination attempt.”
“That sounds like a situation for the cops.”
“My client wishes to avoid the PR nightmare that would result from filing a police report.” She turned her attention to Trey. “Which is why I’m here. I need your help.”
It was at this point I realized Finn hadn’t come to my shop for me—she’d come for Trey. He realized it too, and immediately went into “absolutely not” mode.
“I don’t contract independently,” he said. “I’m bound by a strict noncompete clause at Phoenix.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Marisa keeps you on a short leash. Not that I blame her—if I were your boss, I would too—so let me rephrase. By help, I mean off the books. Unofficial.”
Trey crossed his arms. “I don’t—”
“What if I told you that the target of this alleged assassination was Nicholas Talbot?”
Trey’s head snapped back. His expression hardened, and I was grateful at that moment he didn’t have a gun on him.
“Nicholas Talbot?” I said. “Wasn’t he that hotshot Hollywood import who got charged with his wife’s murder a few years back? The case is still unsolved, isn’t it?”
Trey’s voice was level, but his eyes burned. “No. It was solved. But the evidence that solved it was thrown out of court, and Talbot went free.”
Uh oh, I thought. Trey was holding a grudge. A big, nasty, deeply embedded grudge, one that he’d cradled and nurtured for a long time. And Finn knew it.
She kept her voice low and calm. “Of course the evidence was thrown out, it was compromised.”
Trey glared. “What I saw was not compromised. What I recorded was not compromised. My testimony should have gone into evidence, and it would have gone into evidence if…if…”
He shook his head, frustrated. The words weren’t happening. He’d lost them, a casualty of the brain damage exerting itself again, as it did during times of high emotional stress. I placed my hand on his back, which was a rigid sheet of muscle, full lockdown. He looked my way, then back to Finn.
“The evidence demonstrated that the scene was staged to look like a burglary gone wrong. I documented this evidence and turned it over to the crime scene techs, following all the proper protocols. But because the first responding…because he was…”
“Dirty,” Finn supplied softly.
Trey didn’t reply, but I saw it clear on his face. Finn was right. A dirty cop
