“You’re welcome. Remember to turn that camera back on when you’re done. Just in case something else happens and your office is broken into for files.”
“Thank you, boss,” I tease him with a smile. “I’ll turn it back on. No worries.”
He nods once, smiles, and disappears back into his office. Slowly, I close my door and lean against it, closing my eyes for just a second to gather myself.
“Santiago-Westwood file?” Drake asks, his voice rough.
“Some of.” I open my eyes, my heart beating hard as soon as I meet his gaze. “You’re welcome to look it over with me, although I have no idea if any of this will be useful.”
He waves his hand toward my desk. “Sure.”
I walk around to my side and sit in my chair, laying the file on my desk. Drake rounds the desk, too, and leans over my shoulder to read. I can feel his body, hot and strong over me, but I tamp down the lingering memories from the kiss we just shared and open the folder to the first page.
I skim-read it, knowing that, if there’s anything majorly important, it’ll jump out at me. Line after line, I read, feeling the memories about the case come sinking back.
That’s the thing with this job—the cases might all be the same in technicalities, but the details are all different. For instance: Ryan and Lena almost always went to exclusive hotels in Austin. Daniel and Claire always hit up a town around forty-five minutes from here.
I wonder if Daniel and Lena knew about the others’ extracurricular activities. If they were both partial to the other’s sordid and immoral activities.
That bugs me. Almost as much as having Drake’s bicep touching my shoulder.
I swallow hard and inch away from him. What the hell was I just thinking, letting him kiss me? I’m done reading, but he clearly isn’t. So I’m stuck. With him behind me. Just staring at me.
Wait. No. What?
“Is there something on my face? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Drake’s lips twitch up to one side. “For the last few minutes, you’ve moved farther and farther away from me.”
Clearing my throat, I meet his eyes. “Well. You are a little close.”
His smile grows. “Noelle,” he murmurs, “not ten minutes ago, you had your legs wrapped around my waist and your tongue in my mouth. Little late to be worryin’ about personal space, don’t you think, cupcake?”
“Okay! One—stop with the cupcake nickname!” I slam my hands on the desk and get up, moving away from him. Ignoring the speedy pound of my heart, I push my hair from my eyes and point at him. “That…serious lapse in judgment…ain’t ever gonna happen again.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m…” I frown. “I am?”
“Sure you are.” He takes a few steps toward me, his lips still curved in that annoyingly sexy twist and his eyes dancing with laughter. “Next time, it won’t be a lapse in judgment.”
I blink harshly and clear my throat again. “Perhaps for you. For me, it will never be anything but.” I smile tightly, ignoring the clench of my stomach when he drops his eyes to my mouth, and ask, “So, did you see anything in the file that you think could help?”
Anything to change the topic of conversation. I know for a fact he wouldn’t have. The file is full of nothing but Claire Santiago and her various comings and goings. Nothing at all on Daniel.
“No. But I’m gonna need you to copy it anyway, just for the case file.”
“Obviously.” I take the folder from him and turn to my printer-copier-scanner thing I don’t know how to work apart from printing. I stare at the machine for a second and run my tongue across my teeth.
Yeah. About this.
A low whistle leaves my pursed lips as I perch on my desk and reach for my phone.
“You don’t know how to work it, do you?”
“I can work the printer,” I reply defiantly.
“The printer ain’t gonna get me a copy of this, Noelle.”
“Sure it is. I just gotta turn my laptop on and print another.” I shrug, slipping past him. My butt has barely touched my chair before the file is unceremoniously whipped from my hand and Drake moves across the room to the printer-copier-thingymajig Marshall talked me into buying everyone.
He presses some buttons on the pad that’s sticking up, lifts a lid I’m not sure I ever knew existed, and slips the top sheet of the report in facedown. Another button, some clicky noises, and the whir of the printer and the machine spits out a sheet of paper.
“I could print this quicker,” I grumble as he replaces the sheet.
“I know. I’m just enjoyin’ how real fuckin’ awkward you look right now.” He shoots a smirk over to me and carries on with what he’s doing. “Plus, the fact that you can shoot any gun given to you but can’t work a three-in-one printer is pure gold.”
I glare at him, putting every ounce of annoyance in my body into my gaze. Something that’s real hard when I can still kinda sorta feel him kissing me. And touching me. And this was not on my to-do list, dammit.
“Done.” His voice cuts through my musings. “This one is yours.”
“Thank you.” I take the file and set it on my desk. “If Marsh recovers any more, I’ll let you know.”
Drake nods once, his eyes firm on mine as he tucks his file under his arm. “And the other thing you asked him about?”
“Huh?”
“When he gave you this”—he taps his fingers on the file—“you asked him about ‘the other thing.’ He said no and that he didn’t know where Dean had found it.”
I suck my lower lip into my mouth as I consider what to tell him.
What to tell him.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Noelle.
I know the rules—anything I come across that could impact the official investigation definitely needs to be passed on to the HWPD. As much as I hate it. Mostly because I have a serious competitive side, and dammit, I want to work out who this murderer is.
Not catch them, mind you. That’s all down to Drake, my brothers, and their cronies.
“Lena Perkins is married.”
Drake laughs. “Yeah. Her husband is your client, remember?”
“Technically, he’s not,” I reply slowly, thinking over every word. “She apparently got married in her senior year of college. And she never got divorced.”
His dark eyebrows pull together, creases lining his forehead. “Are you tellin’ me Lena and Ryan ain’t married?”
“Dean seems to think so.” I stand and move to my window, looking out at the park for what feels like the hundredth time today. “But that’s it. Literally. After that…the trail goes cold until she returned to Holly Woods.”
“When did she come back?”
“A few months after graduation? I think. I was already in Dallas. She was here when I came home for Thanksgiving, though, so she certainly didn’t stay in Houston long.” I take a deep breath and turn around.
“Did you call the reference office?”
I roll my eyes and turn to him. “I’m no amateur, Drake. It was the first thing I did. Unfortunately, I’m not a cop, so I can’t get a warrant, which means I have to wait in line like everyone else waiting for documents they need.”
His eyes flare. “But the certificate is there? They have it?”
“She says there’s one on record—maiden name Lena Young.”
“Come with me.”
The ride to the station is tense and full of silence. Drake grips the steering wheel steadily the whole way back, and I’m guessing that it’s tight because his knuckles are white. And his jaw is clenched—devastatingly tight. Like, I’m wondering if he has any teeth left by the time he pulls up in the HWPD parking lot.
Drake gets out of the car and slams the door. The loud noise makes me jump, and I follow him into the building. Every door he comes across, he slams it, and by the time we make it to his office down the hall, I think he’s rattled every hinge in his path.
Trent’s door opens and my brother pokes his head out. “Don’t tell me he finally arrested you,” he groans. “I don’t have time to bail you out today.”
I poke my tongue out. “No. For once, I’m not the reason he’s mad.”
“You think,” Drake snaps. “You should have told me right away!”