I haul a deep breath, then give the photos a cursory glance. “I’ve never seen—” But my gaze catches on a face in the middle of the page. It’s the guy who was flirting with Nora. The one who had Ben all uptight.
“You recognize someone?” he asks just as the door is flung open behind me.
“Montgomery’s in the house,” Jenkins’s says. “But he’s on the line with Special Agent in Charge Navarro.”
Cooper ignores him, sliding the pictures closer. “Which one, Jezebel?”
“None of them. I told you, I only worked there for two weeks. I don’t know anything. And I didn’t prostitute myself. Harrison Yates is a manipulative asshole. Can you say ‘entrapment’?”
Cooper just looks at me, but Jenkins breaks out laughing.
“Harrison Yates,” he guffaws. “May as well have called himself Prince fucking Charming.”
I look between him and Cooper, confused.
Cooper cuts him a glare then levels me in his sharp gaze. “Providing a perpetrator opportunity to commit a crime does not constitute entrapment.”
I think about all of our encounters. He told me he wanted to touch me. I’m pretty sure he kissed me first tonight. Is that enough? At just the memory, my skin prickles into goose bumps, my heart races, my breathing gets shallow, and a thin sheen of sweat breaks over my whole body.
Damn. How can I still want him?
Behind me the door clicks open, and I don’t have to turn around to know it’s him, as if my thoughts summoned him.
“Find anything?” Cooper asks, looking over my shoulder.
“The evidence team is going through it now. Hopefully we’ll have something by morning.” That warm honey drawl causes me to shudder and I want to slit my wrists. “How’s it going in here?”
Cooper scrapes his chair back. “Excuse me for a minute, Jezebel.” He looks past me to where I know Harrison is standing. “I need to talk to Agent Montgomery in the hall.”
“Don’t call me Jezebel,” I grumble, but I don’t turn around as he passes me on his way to the door. I can’t look at Harrison. My body’s reaction to just being in the same room is totally unacceptable, and that’s without even seeing him. I won’t let him know he still affects me.
“Your boyfriend’s looking a little rough around the edges,” Jenkins tells me with a smirk after the door clicks closed, and that’s when I realize Harrison must have gone outside with Cooper and that Montgomery person that Jenkins seems to hate so much.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, turning and finding the room behind me empty.
Muffled voices come through the door, Cooper’s and Harrison’s, as best I can tell. The door opens a minute later, and the chair next to me scrapes back. I don’t look as Harrison lowers himself into it, but I feel the weight of his gaze.
Cooper finds his seat across from me and sets my bag on the table. “This is your purse?” he asks me.
I nod.
He reaches in and pulls out my phone. “And this is your phone?”
“Can I have it?” I ask, holding out my hand.
He flips it in his hand and looks at the screen. “What would we find if we went through your texts, I wonder?” he muses.
I think about that for a second and realize there would be nothing incriminating. I didn’t even text anyone about Harrison. “About a hundred raunchy texts from my friend, Jonathan; a couple of conversations with Katie and Izzy; and, I suppose if you go back far enough, you’ll find a thousand to-do lists from my mom.”
“Nothing from Ben Arroyo?”
“It wasn’t like we were friends.”
He sets the phone down. “Jezebel here was just telling me that she recognizes someone on this page,” he says to Harrison, sliding the collage in front of me again.
I blow out a weary breath and hang my head. “No. Actually, if your hearing wasn’t so selective, you’d remember I said I didn’t know anything. And you’d also remember I told you not to call me Jezebel.”
“Sam,” Harrison says, too close to my ear. “If you work with us, things will go a lot easier for you.”
I spin on him and find he’s leaning his elbows on his knees. He’s so close I can feel the heat of his skin and I scoot my chair back. But he gives me a focal point for all the fear and anger and betrayal. The cyclone of chaos tearing my insides apart spirals into a sharp point, and all I want to do is stab him with it. “You know what? Fuck you.”
“Your girlfriend’s a little pissed, Montgomery,” Jenkins scoffs. “Think you need some work on your dating skills.”
Harrison cuts a look at Jenkins, but I’m still trying to work out what he said. He called Harrison, Montgomery.
When it all clicks, I stand so abruptly the chair flips over behind me. I glare down at Harrison. “Who the hell are you, exactly?”
Chapter Twelve
HARRISON . . . OR WHOEVER he is, gets up and straightens my chair behind me. Then he stands and locks me in his icy gaze. “Special Agent Blake Montgomery. L.A. unit, DEA.”
“Harrison Yates,” Jenkins snickers under his breath from across the table.
It’s a relief when Harrison/Blake shifts his gaze toward Jenkins. His voice turns sharp as broken glass. “That was the cover Special Agent in Charge Navarro put in place. I’ll be sure to give her your thoughts on it, though.”
Jenkins chokes on his snicker, suddenly looking like he swallowed a canary.
Cooper splits a glance between them. “Can we finish this pissing match when we don’t have a suspect to interrogate, gentleman?”
I sit and bark out a laugh.
Cooper’s eyes shoot to me, none too pleased. “You have something you want to share?” he asks, clearly fed up with this whole circus.
I shrug. “It’s just that I don’t see any gentlemen here. Just a couple of horny boys fighting over who got to feel up the girl.”
“Point taken,” he says, rubbing his forehead.
I was hoping to get a rise out of Harrison/Blake, but his expression is aggravatingly blank. “I’ll leave the suspect to you,” he says to Cooper, ignoring Jenkins’s snort. “If you need me, I’ll be in Evidence.” He spares a glance in my direction as he turns for the door, and as much as I hate myself, I can’t deny the tingly rush when our eyes connect. But his stay glacial. No crack in the ice or the cool exterior. “Somebody should get her some clothes,” he adds. Then he’s gone.
It’s just then that I realize I’m still in my skimpy Benny’s uniform. Without even thinking, I cross my arms, covering my bare midriff. “Can I call someone to bring me some clothes?”
“When we have what we need,” Cooper says, shoving the collage in front of me. “So, which one?”
“I want a lawyer.”
He drops his head in defeat. “This is going to be a long night.”
TURNS OUT, I don’t need clothes. The DEA has something special for me. A gray jumpsuit that could double as a potato sack.
It was dawn when Cooper finally led me out of the interrogation room to a holding cell, which really is just another white room. But instead of a table and chairs, this one has a cot. And a window. I watched the sun come up over the city, then laid on the cot and closed my eyes as my body burnt through its last ounce of adrenaline. I might have slept for an hour, tops.
My door clicks open and Cooper steps through. His face is strained and he looks like he hasn’t slept in three weeks.
“You look like shit,” I tell him, though I haven’t looked in a mirror in a while, so it’s probably one of those glass house deals. I really shouldn’t be throwing stones.
He sets a paper coffee cup and something in a McDonald’s wrapper on the table near the door. “Your lawyer will be here in an hour,” he says without acknowledging my comment.