Either way, Gwen would be safe here for now. He’d know more soon.
“You’re looking at me different,” she said quietly.
“I don’t mean to, Gwen.”
“You’re not actually looking at me at all.”
He finally did, and her face nearly broke his heart. It wasn’t the face he’d seen earlier today in her hospital room; it was closer to the face he’d seen three days ago, in Sorensen’s office above the store.
“Please don’t start looking at me different.” Her eyes glistened. “Please.”
Some force moved him toward her. He didn’t get there under his own power. It wasn’t his doing, moving to hold her.
He just went numb for moment. Two seconds, tops.
The next he knew, she’d somehow folded into his arms.
“I know what I did,” she said into his neck. “I don’t know how. I hardly even remember doing it now. It’s like a big red blur.”
“Gwen. Shhh.”
“I was too scared to leave but I couldn’t let him hit me anymore.” She pressed her face against his. Her hot tears seemed to burn his cheek. “I meant to turn myself in. When I came to the store. I did.”
“I know.”
“Please believe that I did.”
“I believe you,” Worth said.
“I’m screwed up, Matthew. You don’t have any idea. But please don’t look at me differently.”
He opened his mouth to tell her he wouldn’t, but somehow her lips ended up on his. She clawed her hands into the back of his jacket, but her mouth was soft as warm silk.
He wanted to push her away but he couldn’t. All of a sudden, he became aware of the length of her body pressed against him. Through thin cotton and flannel he felt her breasts, her stomach, her hips. Her mouth parted, and he felt the wet velvet flick of her tongue.
His mind flashed to Sondra’s kiss in the kitchen on Saturday. It hadn’t been like this. This reminded him that he hadn’t really touched a woman in over a year.
It wasn’t what this was supposed to be about. Gwen hadn’t even healed from her injuries.
Yet she sighed in his mouth and he was hard as a rock. Angry at himself for letting this happen, swept up in it at the same time.
“Thank you,” she murmured. She touched his face. “Thank you.”
He drew Gwen closer, telling himself over and over to step away.
Tony Briggs hit the john on the way to roll call. He looked at the side of his head in the mirror while he washed his hands at the sink.
They’d shaved a patch at the hospital.
It had taken the doc eleven stitches to cinch the wound up. The job had left a puckered spot the size of a quarter in the fresh bald spot on his scalp.
Leaving the hospital, Tony said, “Get it over with.” Ray had just smiled to himself. He hadn’t said a word.
Tony dried his hands on a paper towel and made his way down to the muster room. Everybody was there already, sitting around the table, shooting the shit. They all stopped talking when he walked in.
He looked around. “What?”
“Meow.”
Tony couldn’t tell who said it.
Carla Billup started making a purring sound. She pretended to lick the back of one hand, smoothed it over her ear.
Pretty soon everybody joined in.
“Meeeow.”
“Reeow.”
“Mrrrowwww.”
Down at the end of the table, Ray Salcedo had a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Tony glared at him. Ray just shrugged: Don’t look at me. Even Sergeant Williams was smiling.
Pathetic. It sounded like a bunch of goddamned back-alley strays in there.
“Hey, I get it,” Tony Briggs said. “You guys are a bunch of pussies.”
Carla Billup made a claw and swiped at the air. “Fffft.”
The whole crew broke up over that.
Hilarious.
21
The woman pulled out her debit card and laughed. “I thought Halloween was tomorrow.”
When Worth made eye contact, her grin faltered and slowly collapsed. He watched her eyes flicker to his shield, down to his gun, widening slightly with the recognition that neither was a costume prop. It didn’t seem to matter that he was smiling. That he’d spoken to her in a friendly tone of voice.
“Oh. Gosh,” she said, evading his eyes now. “Um, plastic, please?”
What did people think? Worth remembered his father coming home with plates of food from people in the neighborhoods. Was it like this back then, too? Reach out to the average law-abiding citizen and half the time they acted like you were there to shoot them or put them in jail.
Worth tossed eighty bucks’ worth of shampoo and vitamins into a one-ply sack. He handed the sack to the woman and said, “Watch your ass.”
The woman inhaled sharply.
Then she tucked her chin and scuttled out of there.
Watching her go, Worth could feel LaTonya looking at him. He looked back at her. “What?”
LaTonya just held up her palms. “Baby, I ain’t said a word.”
All night long, the minutes seemed to crawl. Worth saw an old man with ashy skin lift two packages of D-cell batteries. Instead of busting him, Worth handed him a ten-dollar bill. The man said, “Lord bless you, brother,” and walked out without paying for the batteries.
At 2 A.M., he normally walked the outside perimeter. Tonight, Worth went to the break room for coffee instead. Ricky and Curtis were there, eating Snickers bars and reading the newspaper.
“Hey, Supercop.” Curtis threw him a nod. “What’s shakin’?”
“Guys.” Worth poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup. “Thanks again for all the help yesterday. I owe you.”
Curtis waved it off. “You bought the beer. Hey, we went by to see Gwennie today. They let her out, huh?”
“This afternoon.”
“When you think she’s coming back to work?”
“Few days, maybe.” Worth shrugged. “She’s still pretty banged up.”
“You guys find jerk-off yet?”
Worth sipped his coffee without answering.
Curtis nodded. “Sooner or later, right?”
Worth said, “I expect.”
Ricky got up from the table. He tossed his candy wrapper in the trash, tied his apron strings around front, and went over to the time clock on the wall. He punched back in, gave Worth a nod, and went back to work.
Since his second or third week in exile at the SaveMore, rare was the occasion when Ricky failed to flip him some type of good-natured shit. The kid’s recent demeanor was beginning to nibble around the edges of Worth’s thoughts.
He was about revisit the subject with Curtis when his cell phone buzzed on his belt.
Worth didn’t know the number on the ID screen. He stepped out of the break room and answered.
“Matthew?”
The safe unit. Worth felt his pulse kick up. “Are you okay?”
“I…yeah,” Gwen said. “Not really. I don’t know.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Can you come over?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good—”
“Please come over,” Gwen said.
She answered the phone after three or four rings and buzzed him into the building.
Ray Salcedo opened the apartment door.
It was 2:35 in the morning. Salcedo and his partner should have gone off duty over two hours ago, but Ray was still dressed in patrol gear: long sleeves, turtleneck, comset on his shoulder, trouser legs bloused into the tops of his boots. He must have arrived at the apartment just ahead of Worth. He still hadn’t taken off his gloves.
“What happened?”
“Eight-eight,” Salcedo said.
Situation secure. Worth had been on channel 2 all night; he hadn’t heard this address go over the radio. “I thought you guys went off at midnight?”