#TeaserTuesday: Don't Let Go

 

Remember the police procedural I mentioned on Sunday? The one I said I might post part of here just to throw it out into the universe? Well, consider this the wind up, and the pitch. 

Don't Let Go is currently sitting at 61,500 words, and despite lots of waffling, it seems like it would be a shame to abandon it with so much already written. Plus, I've grown attached to the characters, and already have a sequel planned. *ducks tomatoes* 

This is a contemporary novel set in Nashville, TN, that's half M/F romantic suspense, and half police procedural about a group of detectives struggling with personal problems against the backdrop of an assault against a celebrity author. After writing College Town, in which Lawson wants to be and is struggling to become an author, I decided to flip the script: this novel's central protagonist is an author who's hit it big, and has garnered a lot of ugly, unwanted attention in the process. She's attacked after a book signing in Nashville, and the local detectives set about solving the case while the media has a field day. Stuck in Nashville during the investigation, our author, Avery, becomes romantically entangled with the sexy district attorney in charge of taking her attackers to trial. Conflict of interest much? 

It's a whodunnit meets character-driven real-life drama, and I'm dropping the first five chapters here. Have a gander, see if you're interested, and leave me a comment. 😊 

*Fair warning, this hasn't been edited or proofed AT ALL, so here there be typos. 

1

 

An employee in a pin-bedecked ID lanyard claps her hands and then cups them around her mouth to yell, “Attention, shoppers! TBR is now closed! Please collect your final purchases and make your way to the register!”

Avery glances up from the page she’s signing with a start. “It’s ten already?”

“Yes,” her publicist, Trish, says with a gusty sigh and a fast check of her Apple watch. “Thank God.” She then turns a severe smile on the last fan in line that leaves the woman blinking and stepping back. That’s Trish: punctual, organized to a fault, a hell of a hard worker…terrible with people. “No offense, ma’am. We hope you enjoyed the signing.” She gives a little shoo motion with the flats of her hands.

The woman, mid-fifties, plump and sweet-faced in a way that reminds Avery of her late grandmother, clutches at her purse and swaps a bewildered look between Trish and Avery. “Oh, um, well, yes,” she stammers. To Avery: “The reading was really wonderful. I loved the new chapters—”

“Super,” Trish says, and bends over the signing table to start stacking up spare bookmarks and post cards. Without looking at the woman, she adds, “Be sure to mark your calendar for the next release: March fifth. Thanks so much for coming.”

Avery frowns, not that Trish sees it, too busy boxing swag.

Avery smiles up at the fan and says, “We’re not in a hurry. Would you like a photo?”

The woman’s face lights up.

Trish sighs again, long-suffering.

Avery ignores her. “And who should I make the book out to?”

“My daughter, Mia. She’s gonna be so thrilled! It’s a birthday surprise. I wish she could have been here, but she has finals coming up and couldn’t make it, poor thing.”

“Aw, bummer. I would have loved to meet her.” Avery stands and moves around the table so she can slip an arm around the woman’s shoulders and press their faces in together. She can feel her shaking with excitement; hear her giddy, girlish laugh as she lifts her phone to snap a selfie of the two of them together.

“Do you want to film a quick video message for Mia?” Avery offers.

“Oh, would you? That’d be amazing!”

Trish makes an aggrieved noise and hefts a box. “Meg,” she says to her assistant. “Pack up the rest of this. Avery”—pointed, sharp—“I’m calling the car. Be ready in five minutes.”

“Good grief,” Avery mutters as Trish clicks away in her stilettos. “You’d think she was the one paying me.”

The fan laughs, and swaps the phone to video mode. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not. The whole point of writing books is making people’s days a little brighter. Ready?” When the camera starts rolling, she waves at her own pixelated face on the screen and says, “Hi, Mia! I’m so sorry I didn’t get to meet you today, but your mom is the sweetest, and I hope you do great on your finals!”

It sounds trite, and insufficient. Avery doesn’t know if she’ll ever get the hang of public sincerity. She does love meeting her fans; she keeps every card, pores over every positive Instagram and X and Facebook comment. Still marvels over the visible, physical excitement in readers when they wait in line for hours to meet her. The interactions are all brief be necessity, and blur into a bright smear of anxiety and gratitude that leaves Avery fervently going over every benign but stupid thing she said afterward. Was she stiff? Weird? Did she throw off a weird vibe? She hopes not, but has no confidence in her own public persona.

This fan seems happy, though, thanking her profusely and hugging her signed book to her middle.

“You’re quite welcome.” Avery waves her away and sees someone rushing toward the table.

The woman who hurries down the rows of bookshelves is tiny, with a cap of close-cropped curls, small, round-rimmed glasses, and a red scarf so large it flaps in her wake like a split-in-half cape. She’s walking, but power walking, short strides quick, quick, quick across the tiles, her clogs rapping out a staccato rhythm. One hand holds her puffer coat closed across her chest, and the other clutches Avery’s latest release: a fat hardback that’s regrettably difficult to hold over one’s head while reading in bed.

An employee steps into the aisle, waving his arms back and forth in a negating gesture. “Ma’am, ma’am, excuse me, the store’s closed, you can’t come back here.”

“But I was inside the door before ten,” she protests. She lifts her book. “Is Avery Jamison still here? Can I—”

“I’m still here,” Avery calls, and the woman’s head snaps her direction. Even from a distance, here attention is laser-focused, sharp as an osprey’s.

The employee starts to protest some more, but Avery smiles, and beckons. “It’s okay. She can come on back.”

The employee makes a face, but doesn’t argue. TBR—To Be Red, a cheeky, red-walled shop bursting with books old and new, fresh lovingly tattered—is still considered a new business, and Avery’s signing tonight pulled in their single largest day of sales ever, according to the manager.

The woman straightens her scarf, and herself, standing up to her full, insubstantial height, and continues up to the table at a stately walk.

Up close, Avery sees that she’s probably sixty or so, and that she has the biggest, greenest eyes Avery’s ever seen, a bright spark in her gaze that contrasts the eager friendliness of her smile.

“Hi,” Avery says, reaching for the book. “What’s your name?”

“Selena Flores, Miss Jamison, and I am thrilled to meet you.” She has a big, strong voice for such a diminutive woman, her hands tiny, her nails squared off and painted bright red to match her scarf. For reasons she’s never questioned, and has always used to her writing advantage, everything about Selena Flores plucks at Avery’s creative strings: sometimes you meet a person, and know straight away that you’ve met not merely a passerby, but a potential character. It’s a swift and sure vibration in the back of her mind, and it stirs to life now.

Though her face is tired from smiling for hours, it isn’t an effort to smile, now. “Well, Miss Flores,” she says, spinning the book around and opening it up to the title page. “I’m thrilled to meet you.”

“I didn’t think they were going to let me in,” Selena says, as Avery selects and pen and starts in on her swooping, professional signature. “I had to park down the street, and ran all the way here, and then they were locking the door as I arrived. I waved my ticket at them through the glass—my son bought me the ticket for tonight, he’s a very thoughtful boy, though he would tell you he isn’t, my little gentleman—and the manager came over, and I told her I was dying to get my book signed, I have all of your books, all of them, even the first ones! I know the new series is the popular one, good for you! How much was the advance again? Several million, sí? It’s none of my business, I shouldn’t ask. Eduardo, that’s my son, Eduardo would say that’s a rude thing to ask, and so I won’t, forget I said it.”

Avery bites back a laugh. Selena is a talker, barely a breath between run-on sentences. Definitely a character.

“Your son bought you the ticket? That was kind of him.”

“Oh, sí. He’s very kind. And very smart, too. And handsome. Muy guapo, my Eduardo.” Her voice takes on a sly lilt that Avery knows all too well. You’re single? I know the perfect guy for you. When she glances up, she sees that Selena wears a sly look to match. “He works so hard, all he does is work, day and night, and I always tell him, ‘Mijo, you have to make time for living. For love.’ I want him to find a nice girl. Someone warm and good to him.” She raps her nails on the table edge and tilts her head, the sly look going positively devious. “Someone like you.”

Avery laughs. Awkwardly. “Oh, well, maybe he’ll meet someone soon.”

Selena’s green eyes narrow, lips pursed in a way that promises mischief. “Maybe he will. You’re in town for another week, aren’t you?”

The laugh dies away. Avery says, with reluctance. “I am. I’m putting on a writing seminar, but I don’t think I’ll have time for—oh. Okay.”

With a magician’s flare, Selena plucks a small, white square from her jacket pocket and flicks it to land face-up on the table in front of Avery. A business card, delivered with the deadly accuracy of a Chinese throwing star.

Avery doesn’t pick it up, but she catches bold, black copperplate lettering edged with gold.

Eduardo Flores

Davidson County Assistant District Attorney

Nashville, TN

There’s a downtown address and two phone numbers.

“You should call him,” Selena says as she collects her signed book. She leans in, earnest, firm, motherly as if she’s known Avery forever. “You’re just the sort of girl he needs.”

“Ha. I don’t know that—”

“No, you are! I can tell from your books. You’re smart, and you’re sensitive. You’re keen.” She lays a finger alongside her nose in a way that nearly startles a laugh from Avery, so reminiscent is it of Santa Claus. “You could keep up with him. You’d be a perfect match.”

Movement off to the right signals Trish’s return, who looks thunderous that Avery’s still sitting here talking to fans. Or one fan. One tiny, terrifying fan.

“I’m sure he’s lovely,” Avery says, and stands. “It was so good to meet you, Selena. I’m glad I got the chance to sign your book.”

“Me, too! I’m thrilled, thrilled. You’re my favorite. I tell everyone I meet, ‘You have to read Avery Jamison. Even the early stuff.” She wags a finger, miming the orders she’s given to friends. “I don’t know why it took so long for some idiot publisher to figure out you were a star. It’s ridiculous!”

“Avery,” Trish says, coming to stand beside the table, Meg hanging meekly back in her wake. “The car’s waiting.”

“I’m afraid I have to go,” Avery tells Selena. “Thanks so much for coming.”

Selena reaches forward and grips her wrist, lightly. Gives her another of those earnest, maternal looks. “Thank you, dear.” She draws back, and nods down at the business card. “And do think about calling Eduardo. I think you’d be good together.”

Avery scrounges up a smile. “Okay. Thanks.”

Book held reverently in both arms, Selena heads for the door with an over the shoulder wave.

When Avery turns to Trish, she finds her publicist typing furiously on her phone, thumbs flying. “What the hell was that?” Trish asks, without glancing up. She turns, and Avery grabs up her jacket, her pens, and follows.

“A fan,” she says, as she falls into step beside Meg. “She almost didn’t make the cutoff.”

“She didn’t,” Trish says, disdainfully.

“I was still here, though. I wanted to make sure everyone who bought a ticket got their book signed.”

Trish waves a dismissive gesture.

It isn’t until after they’ve thanked the manager and pushed through the building’s rear door that Avery spares a thought for the business card left behind on the signing table. Then she spares a fleeting thought for Eduardo Flores, whose mother is such an intense matchmaker she’s trying to force him together with an author she spoke to for five minutes. Poor guy. Then she doesn’t think of anything save her waiting hotel, and a hot shower.  

 

~*~

 

Back in July, Trish issued an official press release about the seminar, and then Avery echoed it less professionally, and more personally, on her Instagram, inviting aspiring authors and budding writers of all experience levels to sign up for a special one week writing seminar that would focus on Avery’s specialty: characterization.

Registration was $150, there were fifty slots available, and tickets sold out in fourteen minutes. Trish, and Avery’s agent Will, are already organizing another five such seminars for next year, each to be held in a different city.

It makes her head spin every time she stops to really think about it.

As does the hotel they’re staying in for the week.

The Fitzroy opened two months ago, the Nashville location the latest in a chain of increasingly extravagant feats of construction. It’s octagon-shaped, its bedrooms, ballrooms, shops, and spas built along the outer edges, the interior give over to five acres of glassed atrium that boasts full-size trees planted in lush landscaping beds, koi ponds, patios, gazebos, and walking trails done up to look like the Smoky Mountains. There’s even a lazy river you can tube down, a mill with a water wheel, black bear and mountain lion habitats as sophisticated as those in any zoo. Guests can fish in an indoor pond, or eat at one of the seven restaurants embedded within the wild-looking landscape. Each room has a balcony that lets out into the atrium, so guests can sit and gaze across the manmade vista.

Avery’s seminar is to be held in Ballroom Two, which sits on the second floor, a wall of windows overlooking the bass pond. She hopes her presentation is interesting enough to compete with the view.

Meg checked them in earlier in the afternoon before joining them at the bookshop, so when they arrive at the Fitzroy, Trish whips out two keycards and passes one to Avery. In an attempt not to look like a bumpkin tourist, Avery glances side to side at the hotel’s splendor without turning her head. Sleek marble floors, and more of the same cladding the walls. Huge flower arrangements in shoulder-height urns. Businesspeople talking loudly into cellphones and children tugging excitedly on their parents’ hands. She can hear a fountain rushing somewhere nearby, and soft bluegrass music piping through unseen speakers.

“Attendants are arriving at ten tomorrow morning,” Trish says as they reach the elevator bank. In the bright gold plating of the doors, Avery and Meg look like students flanking a teacher, and the sight makes Avery want to laugh. “So be sure to get a good night’s sleep, and set a backup alarm. We’ll need to be up and ready to go by eight. We can get in the room and start setting up at nine. Have your clothes set out so—”

“Trish.” Avery turns and offers a tired smile to which Trish responds with lifted brows. “I know. I got this.”

Trish hmphs as the elevator arrives with a ding and they step on board, but doesn’t offer further instructions.

It’s a silent, but not tense ride up to the fifth floor. Avery and Meg catch one another’s gazes behind Trish’s back, and Meg crosses her eyes and makes a fish face that forces Avery to hide a smile behind her hand. They’ve both grown used to Trish’s…Trishness. Meg, unfortunately, takes the brunt of her whirlwind force, and Avery can, sometimes, gently pat her back into place.

When the elevator glides to a stop and the doors whisper open, they step into a quiet, floral-carpeted hallway with inoffensive sconce lighting. Trish points toward the left, and they make their way down to 503 and 504.

“Meg and I are next door if you need something,” Trish says. “Sleep well.” She doesn’t smile, but dips her head in farewell, and that’s the same thing for her.

“Night.” Avery lets herself into her room, and lets out a deep, grateful sigh once she heels the door shut.

She takes a long, much-needed moment to lean back against the door and simply breathe. Lets the solid wood panel hold the weight of her head and shoulders, and inhales the scents of carpet cleaner and lemon bathroom solvent. The room is simple but pretty, clean, with white coverlet and linens, soft-focus art on the walls, and a splendid view of the fairy lights strung up in the trees beyond the balcony.

Avery loves signings and meet-and-greets, but they’re draining. She was never an extrovert growing up—hence her profession of choice—but hadn’t realized quite how much energy this level of interpersonal interaction required until she was neck-deep in it. Books, both the reading and writing of, had been an escape growing up. She loves home, loved it through childhood and adolescence, but had found herself perched on the seat of the Massey-Ferguson most evenings, gazing out across the fields and dreaming of far-away places, of wild adventures, of sweeping romances.

The reality of creating those sorts of adventures and romances takes a mental toll, however. And on tour, there’s nothing quite like finally closing the door on a long and busy day, and basking in the quiet a little while.

She’s toeing off her heels when her phone rings.

“Noooo,” she murmurs as she pulls it out, and sees the caller’s ID. “Hi, Will.” She can muster polite, but not cheery; her fans got every ounce of that today.

“How’d it go?”

Will is a New Yorker, born and raised, and doesn’t do small talk. He’s still warmer than Trish, and can turn on the charm at a work function, unlike her, but is just as brutally efficient.

“It went well.” She bends to collect her shoes and sticks them on the floor of her closet. She has slippers in her bag, and they’re calling her name. “We had a few stragglers at the end, so Trish wasn’t happy about that.”

He snorts.

“But the manager said we had three-hundred people turn up, so that’s amazing.”

“Only three-hundred?”

She rolls her eyes as she unzips her rolling suitcase. “Three-hundred’s a lot.”

“Not a number one bestseller.” He sounds offended.

“It’s a small shop, and it was full to bursting at six p.m. It was a good event, Will. I’m happy with it.”

A knock sounds at her door, quiet and unobtrusive. Meg, then.

“You’re happy about everything,” Will says. “It’s a real problem.”

“So you keep saying.” The slippers aren’t in the front pocket, she doesn’t know where they are, actually, and the knock sounds again, so she abandons the search and goes to answer it. “I’ll be in your neck of the woods in a couple weeks—”

“Neck of the woods. You’re a hick.”

“Thank you.” She lays the accent on extra thick just to hear his disgusted noise as she turns the doorknob. “I think—”

Pain explodes in her nose, between her eyes. A hot burst of it that blinds her immediately.

The door, she thinks, wildly, it’s the edge of the door. Then pain strikes her toes, and her chest, and she’s shoved back, hard. Dizzy, vision clouded, she staggers, trips, and falls.

She lands on her elbow, and her whole arm goes numb. If she makes any kind of noise, screams or whimpers, she can’t hear it over the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

It’s not Meg, oh God, it’s not Meg, she has time to think, before something strikes her in the side of the head.

Time slides sideways. There’s darkness. Loss.

When she next becomes aware of her surroundings, she’s being lugged somewhere like a sack of laundry. There’s a fist tight in her hair, and a huge, punishing hand gripping her upper arm, and her bare feet drag and bump over a cold, rough surface. Concrete. That’s her first rational thought. The ground that scuffs her toes and catches on her toenails is concrete. It’s…stairs.

It’s stairs.

Her eyes slam open, and despite the awful, ringing pain in her head, she can make out cold fluorescent light, and a steel handrail. Yes, she’s in a stairwell. A service stairwell.

She’s being dragged down the hotel service stairwell.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Adrenaline floods her system, blotting out the pain, rallying her with a surge of urgency. This can’t be happening, it can’t be. She has to get away.

She thinks of home, of the weight of her dad’s shotgun, and old coffee cans pinging off the hitching rail, and the farm hands’ cheers. Thinks of tussling with a stubborn hog, and that one time she misjudged the gate timing and the Hereford bull bowled her over, slammed her up against the corral panels and bloodied her nose. Thinks of Mom’s hands shaping hers on the reins: whatever happens, don’t let go.

It's that more than anything, the memory of landing on her hip in the arena sand, Charger snorting and squealing and dragging her, because she refused to let go of the reins, and so she didn’t land on her head. When he started backpedaling, he pulled her to her feet, and then she dusted herself off, calmed him down, and swung back up into the saddle.

Whatever happens, don’t let go.

She needs to grab onto something first.

She blinks her vision somewhat clearer, and sees they’ve arrived at a landing. She takes a deep breath and flattens her feet against the floor. The concrete scrapes at her bare soles, but the pain is secondary to panic. Just like every time she fell off a horse, or got trampled by a bull, or that one time a goat head-butted her, the need to act overrides all physical discomfort.

One of Avery’s arms is held tight, but the other is free, and she swings it back, hard and sudden, and grabs a fistful of fabric. The man holding her is wearing something plush, a hoodie, maybe, or a soft-shell jacket. She curls her fingers tight in it, and yanks hard as she twists and bucks and throws herself out of his grasp.

“What the fuck?” he exclaims. He has a raspy smoker’s voice, and a thick Southern accent, all his consonants round and indistinct.

In his shock, his grip on her arm loosens, and Avery falls.

Or she would, if she didn’t have a fistful of his sleeve clenched in her left hand. She swings around instead, landing hard on her butt, feet tangled with his, and through the crazy concussion-swirl of her compromised vision, she catches a glimpse of his face.

A beanie and the pulled-up hood of his jacket conceals his hair, forehead, ears. But she sees that he’s white, and broad-jawed, with a patchy dark beard and eyebrows thick as wooly bear caterpillars over brown eyes that look black and frightened in the glare of the tube lights. It’s his fear—fear verging on panic—that strikes her most.

Why is he afraid of her?

Shaking terribly, she uses her hold on him to pull herself up.

And he slaps her hard across the face.

Something cold and sharp pops her lip, a bright spot of pain, and her cheek and jaw bloom with cold, and then heat. Her head cracks to the side, and something in her neck lights up with agony.

“Stupid bitch,” he growls in a voice she’ll never forget. His palm is smooth with old calluses, cold as a slab of meat when it closes around her throat and squeezes. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.”

“Hey!” someone shouts from above. “Hey, what are you doing?” The rap of shoes clatters down the stairs toward them.

Avery can’t call for help, can only croak, and then gasp, as his hand tightens further, and black spots crowd her vision.

Pain snaps through her torso.

Something in her shoulder wrenches and the agony of it amasses the black spots into a curtain; she can’t see at all.

But she feels the heat of sour breath on her face, the tickle of it in her ear. “You think you’re so special,” he whispers. Spit flecks her neck. “But you’re nothing but a redneck whore. You deserve every bit of what’s comin’ to you.”

There’s one last detonation of pain inside her skull, and then nothing.

 

 

2

 

Captain Regis is on the phone when Heidi pokes her head in his office door, but he waves her in.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Mayor. We’re all excited about it,” he says, tone solicitous, eyes rolling and hand doing the yada-yada flap.

Heidi smirks at him and drops down into one of the two chairs across from the desk.

“Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. I’ll make sure they’re all there. Of course. No, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Buh-bye.” He cradles the phone and then sinks back in his chair, both hands pushing through his hair. “Jesus Christ, I hate that shit.”

“But you sounded so excited about it talking to Mr. Mayor.”

He sends her a narrow look that, as a rookie, left her shaking in her boots, but which now makes her laugh and offer her palms in a bid for peace.

“Sorry, sorry. How is the benefit coming along? Seriously.”

Regis leans farther back, kicks his boots up onto the corner of his desk, and sighs again, hands linked together over his stomach. He’s built like an old school cowboy, tall, rangy, with big hands and feet that move with graceful competence. The sort with a narrow, but masculine jaw, and a ruddy, wind-lined complexion. He gets thinner as he gets older, without the extra padding so common in men of his age and profession. His hair was still mostly black when Heidi met him, and now it’s the white of bleached bone, but still thick, his hairline as bold as ever. He dresses as a police captain should, suit and tie, pressed shirts. But he does wear Tony Llama boots, his one concession to a past he refuses to admit to.

(Marcus is convinced he was a ranch hand. Jillian swears he was a country singer. Heidi knows, thanks to a tipsy confession from his wife two Christmases ago, that spent his teenage years working as a rodeo clown in Texas. The photos are hilarious.)

“It’s going fine, I guess.” He shrugs. “It’s just a buncha bullshit.”

“It’s for a good cause.”

“Cutting a check would be a better cause. Why you’ve gotta spend all that money on dinner, and dancing, and dressing up.” He shakes his head. “It’s a waste. Just give it to the kids instead.”

Heidi grins. “But Sheila’s enjoying it, right?”

For every inch that Regis embodies the John Wayne aesthetic, Sheila Regis is all glam, nothing but bubbles and Louboutins. Regis likes to play the long-suffering husband, but Heidi knows his devotion runs deep.

He makes a face and says, grudgingly, “Yeah. Damn it.” He shakes his head, dismissing the topic of the benefit, and sits forward, hands on the desk. “Alright, what did you need? Did you send the Bradley case notes to Flores?”

Heidi sobers, momentary good mood evaporating. “I did, yeah. And he’s working on a warrant for Miguel Gonzales’s phone records.”

“Good.” His brows lift, expectant. He knows she wouldn’t sit and wait for him to get off the phone to relay such simple messages.

He’s right.

“Speaking of the Gonzales case… I wanted to talk to you about McCoy.”

A muscle in Regis’s cheek twitches, but he doesn’t look surprised. “What about him?”

Heidi’s spent several days considering how she wants to phrase this. Regis has a unique ability to reduce her to the eager-puppy rookie uniform cop she once was, and she instead wants to sound like the forty-two-year-old seasoned detective she is. She also doesn’t want to heap any shit on McCoy’s head. He’s not a bad person, and not even a bad cop, but…

“Sir—”

“Uh oh. I know it’s serious if you’re busting out ‘sir.’”

“Captain. I know that McCoy is energetic, and that he has good intentions. But I’m not sure if he’s a good fit with the rest of the squad.”

There. It’s out there. None of them have said it in so many words, but they’ve all been thinking it; have traded knowing glances and subtle eye rolls. Heidi nominated herself to bring it to Captain Regis on the basis she’d handle it with the lightest touch.

Regis regards her a long, silent moment, with that flat, cowboy, poker table stare that’s elicited countless interrogation room confessions. “He’s not a good fit,” he deadpans, finally. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“Captain—”

He holds up a hand. “I know McCoy’s still wet behind the ears.”

“He’s insensitive.”

“He’s young, and a bit of a cowboy, I’ll grant.”

She lifts her brows.

“Hey, I know from cowboys,” he says, and one corner of his mouth tugs in a reluctant smile. Then he grows serious again. “He’s a rookie. Rookies make mistakes. Have any of them been disastrous?”

She swallows a sigh.

“Has he used excessive force? Mishandled evidence? Endangered his partner?”

His partner, for the moment, being Heidi. “No.” She wants to argue further, but she won’t. He’s obnoxious and tactless doesn’t mean much if he can handle the brass tacks of the job itself.

Regis gives her his Captain Look another moment, then eases back in his chair, face softening—as much as it’s capable. “Aw, hell. I know he’s annoying. But he’s got a spotless service record as a uni, and, at heart, he’s a good kid.”

A headache’s blooming between Heidi’s brows. She massages at it. “I know. Shit, yeah, I know.”

“I paired him up with you because I think, more than anyone, you have the most to teach him.”

“I know.”

The grin threatens again. “That’s a compliment, in case you didn’t catch it.”

“I know,” she huffs, but feels her own smile tugging. “I’m sorry.” She stands. “Can we just forget I came in here? I’m…” She waves a dismissal. “Sleep deprived, or something.”

“Or something.” His expression softens another fraction. He looks almost kindly, like that, with the seven-a.m. silver sun peeking in at the blinds behind him. “You’re due some time off.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Heidi.” Not pleading, but firm. Wanting her to put in for vacation. It’s an old song and dance between them: he tells her to, she says she will, and then she never does.

“I hear you.”

A rap sounds at the door, and it swings open to reveal McCoy. Marcus, or Jillian, or Dan would ask if they were interrupting. Would read the fine threads of tension strung across the desk.

Not McCoy. He says, “Hey, Cap.” Then: “Hey, Coop, we got a call. Vic at the hospital.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

As she follows him out of the office, she glances back and catches Regis’s wink. She wrinkles her nose in response and pulls the door shut behind her.

The bullpen’s its usual morning beehive of activity. Phones trilling, detectives moving between their desks and the break room. Copiers humming, printers chugging.

Jillian glances up from her computer as they walk past. “I heard about the call. You want me to tag along?” Her head tips toward McCoy meaningfully. “The vic’s a woman, and she’s, uh…” She lowers her voice to a near whisper, so Heidi has to pause to hear her. “Famous.”

“A celebrity? Who? A singer?”

“No,” Jillian starts, and McCoy whirls around, face lit up like Christmas.

“Oh man, no, not a singer.” He claps his hands together, walking backward, and nearly trips over someone’s desk chair legs. “It’s Avery Jamison.”

“Who?”

McCoy has one of those earnest, handsome farm boy faces which telegraphs every expression to near-comic heights. His brows shoot up, and his mouth drops open. “You don’t know who Avery Jamison is?”

“No, McCoy,” Heidi says. “Who is she?”

“An author,” Jillian says.

McCoy says, “She’s like, the author right now. How have you not heard of her? Across the Bridge? Never Look Back? She wrote—”

“You know what?” Heidi shoos him along. “Tell me on the way.”

“Have fun, you two,” Jillian sing-songs behind them.

“Okay, catch me up,” Heidi says once they’re in the Crown Vic and she’s cranked the engine.

McCoy shifts in his seat, half-turned toward her, both hands held out in front of him like he’s about to tackle someone. He’s a hand-talker, this one. “Right, so. Avery Jamison came out of nowhere, like, three years ago. That’s what it seemed like. Her first book—not really her first, but I’ll get back to that—dropped, The Last Word, and it just blew up. My sister’s a big fan, and she was obsessed with it. It’s this mafia versus cop action story with this kinda kinky, hot and heavy romance element. I mean: it’s dirty. Like, damn.

“But anyway, the book comes out, and it goes straight to number one, and then she turns it into a series, and she’s a total sensation. Three of her books have already been optioned for movies, and she’s got a whole bunch of copycats popping up. Girl made fifty million last year alone. Holy shit, can you believe it?

“But get this,” he continues, after sucking in a big breath. “The Last Word wasn’t her first book. Before she got discovered, she was this farm chick from Nebraska. Her parents raise cattle and shit. She’d been writing books for, like, seven years. Westerns. Isn’t that wild? Then she wrote mafia porn and, boom, multi-millionaire.”

Heidi hits the turn signal and regrets not grabbing a coffee to go. “That’s fascinating, McCoy,” she says, “but I meant: what happened to land her in the hospital?”

“Oh.” He whips out his phone, without seeming embarrassed and contrite for having missed her initial question, and opens his Notes app. “Vic is Avery Jamison, thirty-five, Caucasian female. A guest at the Fitzroy hotel walked up on someone attacking her in the stairwell. The guest scared the guy off, and Avery was unconscious when he reached her. In his words, she was ‘beat to hell.’ She arrived at the hospital shortly after eleven p.m., and they worked on her all night. I don’t have the full rundown from the docs yet, but apparently she’s awake, and expected to make a full recovery.”

“We’re only just now getting the call?”

“Uniforms responded at midnight, and talked to her publicist. There was some kinda brawl downtown that pulled them away, wires got crossed, you know the drill.”

“Right. What’re are next steps?” She likes to quiz him, and, even if he’s caustically enthusiastic about far too many things, he does know his stuff.

“Talk to the doctor,” he says, ticking items off on his fingers, “take Avery’s statement, hit the hotel for witnesses and security footage.”

“Right.” The boxy white tower of Nashville General slides into view as they crest the next hill, and Heidi merges into the turn lane. “When we get to Avery’s room, let me take the lead.”

“Yeah.” His tone heavily implies a duh.

She darts a glance across the car at him as they wait for the turn light to go green, and sees the small, displeased tuck in the corner of his mouth. “I’m serious, McCoy. I know you’re a fan of hers—”

“My sister’s a fan. I never said I was.”

“Still. Let’s keep things professional.”

He nods, but looks unhappy about it, and Heidi feels like his mother. Damn.

 

~*~

 

Heidi’s worked with Dr. Lessing hundreds of times, and there’s no need for a long preamble or awkward small talk. He’s between patients, and walks with them from the ER desk down the hall to Avery Jamison’s room.

“Two cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, ligature marks on her throat, split lip, a cracked orbital bone, and multiple contusions on her face. The most concerning injury is the concussion. We ran a CT last night, and so far we don’t see signs of a bleed. We want to monitor her another twelve hours, but then she should be good to go home,” Lessing tells them.

“Any signs of sexual assault?” Heidi asks.

“No.”

“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t planning one,” McCoy says. When Heidi shoots him a look, he shrugs. “What? Guy got interrupted, right? Who knows what he was going to do.”

“Avery, hopefully.”

Lessing stops in front of a closed door.

“She’s awake?”

“As of twenty minutes ago, yes,” Lessing says. “She’s on pain medication, but she still seems lucid.”

Heidi nods. “Thanks, Brian.”

He nods and hustles off to his next patient.

Hand on the doorknob, Heidi gives McCoy one last look.

He lifts his hands. “I’ll be good. Scout’s honor.”

“Were you in the Scouts?”

He grins. “Nah. 4-H, though. My cow blue ribboned at the State Fair one year.”

The problem with McCoy is that no matter how much he annoys you, he’s likeable as hell.

Heidi manages to keep her smile in check, knocks, and lets them into the room.

Two women are on their feet: a mousy-haired girl with a water pitcher in her hands, poised halfway between the room’s sink and the bed. She freezes when they enter, her gaze wild and big-eyed as it swings toward the door.

The other woman is tall, pencil thin, with a sharp, sleek black bob and burgundy lipstick. Her gray suit is rumpled, doubtless from spending the night in hospital chairs, but her makeup is fresh and her eyes flash with leashed aggression.

“Are you the detectives? Finally. Where have you been?” she demands, hands on her hips.

“Trish,” a soft voice calls from the bed. “I’m sure they got here as soon as they could.”

The woman—Trish—huffs in annoyance. Cocks a brow. “Did you?” she asks them.

“We got the call ten minutes ago, ma’am, and came straight here,” McCoy says in a solicitous, Southern good boy voice that doesn’t melt the woman’s icy exterior, but which thoroughly impresses Heidi. Good job, kid.

“Trish, is it?” Heidi asks. “I’m Detective Cooper and this is Detective McCoy. If she’s feeling up to it, we’d like to ask Avery a few questions.”

Trish gives them the stink eye another moment, then steps aside, and moves to a chair up by the head of the bed. “She needs to rest, but I want you to catch this guy.”

“So do we,” Heidi agrees, and gets her first real look at Avery Jamison.

To put it bluntly, she’s a mess.

If she’s a pretty girl, it’s impossible to tell now, her face a mass of purpling bruises, her lip split and bisected with a jagged row of stitches. Her left eye is swollen shut, a tight, painful-looking egg. Her other eye might be blue, or green, but there’s a broken vessel that’s filled the sclera with red, so it’s hard to tell. Dark hair falls in two lank curtains on either side of her face, framing the red ligature marks around her throat; there’s the clear shapes of large fingers pressed in a necklace of bruising.

The head of the bed’s propped up, and her left arm is strapped across her chest in a sling. Someone has tucked the blankets neat and tight across her waist, and the mousy-haired girl pours a cup of water that she then offers forward, hand holding a straw so Avery won’t have to manage the vessel with her one good hand.

Avery starts to shake her head and then stops with a quick, indrawn breath that lifts her ribs inside her gown; that sets off a fresh wave of pain, one she bites back with lips pressed tight together, breathing sharp and shallow through her nostrils.

Privately, Heidi thought the only reason detectives were being called in was because the vic is a wealthy celebrity. Standing here now, looking at Avery, she amends her opinion: they’re dealing with an attempted murder. That’s what their A.D.A., Flores, is going to run with, anyway, when they get around to charging a suspect.

“It’s okay, Meg,” Avery says with obvious effort, and sags back against her pillow. “I’ll have some in a minute.”

The girl retreats with the cup, brow knit with worry.

Avery shifts her head, but slowly, and with pain and tension etched in the lines of her battered face. Her throat jerks as she swallows, and she winces again. “Thank you for coming, detectives.”

McCoy makes a very quiet noise: disgust, anger. Heidi feels his sleeve shift against hers, and a glance proves he’s balled his hand into a fist.

She feels the same, but she’s spent nearly two decades on the job learning to turn that anger at a suspect into gentleness for victims.

“Hi, Avery.” Heidi steps in closer to the bed, leaving McCoy to take up a stance down near the foot of it. “Do you feel okay to talk to us?”

Avery’s good eye flutters, but she opens it again, and firms her jaw. “Yes.” Her voice is raspy, like her throat’s sore. Up close, the handprint on her neck looks bolder, darker. Heidi knows all too well how hard her assailant must have squeezed to leave behind a bruise this vivid after such a short time.

“Okay,” Heidi says, “start with your arrival at the hotel and walk us through the sequence of events.”

“We left the bookshop at quarter after ten,” Trish cuts in. “Later than we should have thanks to stragglers.”

Heidi turns to find her typing away on a phone. “Actually, Trish, we need to hear the story directly from Avery.”

Thumbs still flying, Trish shoots a narrow, dark look over the top of her iPhone. “I was with her up until the attack. She’s in pain, she’s on meds—”

“Trish,” Avery says. Still raspy, still exhausted, but with a firm undercurrent. One that actually snaps Trish’s mouth shut with a click of teeth. The woman’s bob flares in a batwing arc as she snaps her head around to look at Avery. “Would you mind updating my parents? I want them to hear about this before it hits the news.” When Trish only stares, her mouth twitches in a sad attempt at a smile. “I’ll be fine with the detectives. Please.”

Trish’s mouth does a brisk side-to-side twitch, then she stands in a flurry and ducks around them, barely avoiding a shoulder-to-shoulder collision with Heidi. She doesn’t slam the door on her way out, but it’s a near thing.

The other girl drops down into a chair in the corner with a shaky exhale.

Avery says, “Trish is my publicist. She’s very good at her job, and she’s been really good here at the hospital. She’s trying to look out for me, but…”

“She’s kind of a fire-breathing dragon?” McCoy says.

Avery’s good eye widens, and a jerky, choked laugh bursts out of her mouth before she groans and screws her eye shut in pain. She smiles, though, despite the way the stitches tug her at her lower lip.

Heidi snaps her fingers in McCoy’s face and points to the chair Trish abandoned.

He rolls his eyes, but sits. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Uh-huh, save it for 4-H. Avery, please excuse my partner. Do you need some water? A nurse?”

Seeming recovered as recovered as she can be she opens her eyes and says, “No, I’m good.” With her good hand, she gestures limply toward the other girl. “This is Meg, Trish’s assistant.”

“Hi,” Meg says, and waves at them with her hand tucked inside the sleeve of her hoodie.

“Hi, Meg. We’ll get statements from you, and Trish, after this,” Heidi says. “Okay, Avery. You left the bookshop at ten-fifteen?”

“Yeah—yes.” It’s a delayed catch, a faint brush of an accent quickly smoothed with formality. “There was an Uber waiting for us behind the shop. Trish and Meg…” Pain glazes her features, and she pushes past it. “Had already loaded the swag and our bags. It was an SUV, a Toyota Highlander, I think. Yeah—yes. Dark red. Cranberry. Tan interior. The driver said his name was Sam.”

McCoy’s taking notes on the pad from his breast pocket. “That’s detailed.” He sounds impressed.

Avery lifts her good shoulder in a shrug. “Writer,” she says, by way of explanation.

“The Uber took you straight to the hotel?” Heidi asks.

Avery swallows in a painful looking way, and Meg gets up from her chair and offers the water again. This time, Avery takes a few sips, then grimaces. “Yeah.” Formality set aside. But not the details. “He dropped us off right at the portico out front, and we went through the main lobby. Took a right. Went to the elevators. We were the only ones in the cab when it arrived. Straight up to the fifth floor. Rooms—” She takes a deep, gasping breath, and pain grips her by the jaw, peels her lips back. Her ribs, Heidi assumes. Or maybe everything. “Five-oh-three and five-oh-four. I was in four. I—I let myself in.” Another sip of water. “Took off my shoes. I was going to the closet to get my slippers out of my bag when my phone rang. It was Will, my agent.”

“Will Patterson,” Meg says. “I can get you his information, if you want it.”

Heidi nods and McCoy jots down the name.

“There was a knock,” Avery continues. “I thought…” Her one-eyed gaze shifts to Meg, then shakes away, and lands somewhere in the middle distance. Heidi’s seen that sort of withdrawal before: falling back into the crisis moment, questioning oneself, asking if she should have known better. “I thought it was Meg, or maybe Trish. We’d just parted in the hall, and I thought…”

She shakes her head, an aborted half-shake again, and grits her teeth against what has to be a monster headache. “It was stupid. I was stupid. I was on the phone, and I wasn’t be careful, and I opened the door, and he just slammed me right in the face with it.”

“You weren’t stupid,” Heidi says, soothingly, as the shallow, quick sound of Avery’s breathing swells and fills the small room. “You had no way of knowing who was out there.” Yes, she should have checked through the peephole, but she was distracted, tired. Heidi sees it far too often: people get busy, and they get comfortable, and they stop being cautious.

“He barged in, and he must have hit me in the head. I blacked out for a minute, and I…”

“It’s okay. Take your time.”

Avery frowns, and presses on. “When I came to, he was dragging me down the stairs, and I thought…”

Meg offers the water, but Avery lifts her good hand and waves her off.

“I just thought…” Avery says, slowly, whether from pain or a struggle with memory, Heidi doesn’t know. “I couldn’t let this happen. I had to fight him. ‘Don’t let go.’” Before Heidi can ask, Avery turns her head and meets her gaze. Even with only one good eye, and with a battered face swollen out of shape and mottled with darkening bruises, there’s something arresting about the eye contact. Like Avery’s seeing right through her concerned cop mask and glimpsing all the snakes in her head.

It's unnerving.

“That’s what my mom always said when a horse threw me. She said, ‘Whatever happens, don’t let go.’” She turns away—Heidi breathes an internal sigh of relief—and says, self-deprecating. “I don’t know. That’s stupid, too, I guess, in this situation. But I grabbed hold of him, and I threw myself away from him, and it must have shocked him, because he dropped me.

“When I fell, I swung around. I had his sleeve.” She demonstrates with her good hand. “I got a look at his face. It was just quick, before he slammed me up against the wall and…” She gestures to her face, her throat, her shoulder. “But he looked…scared.”

“Scared?” McCoy asks. “Of you?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe that I would get away. I tried, but, obviously I didn’t.” She blinks rapidly, and the way her face sags is eloquent of shame.

“You did great, Avery,” Heidi said, and earns a disbelieving huff. “No, really. Most people panic and freeze. They can’t even try to fight back.”

“Some good it did me.”

“It did,” Heidi insists. “You’re here. You’re alive.”

Avery stills, and her gaze flicks back.

“Did he say anything? Did you recognize him?”

“I’d never seen him before. But he said, ‘You think you’re so special, but you’re nothin’ but a redneck whore. You deserve every bit of what’s comin’ to you.’”

“Jesus,” McCoy says. “And you didn’t know him personally?”

“No.” Avery turns to him, and beneath the injuries, Heidi gets her first glimpse of the pretty woman she is. Pretty, and cautious, and haunted. “But I know the words.” To Heidi, she says, “They’re lines from my latest book.”

 

 

 

3

 

In the early days of his uniform career, Caleb McCoy was accused more than once of being “too fucking happy.” He’s the only one smiling in their Academy photos; the one who cracked the most jokes on the job, trying to lighten the mood. He thinks of himself as optimistic, rather than happy. He sees some ugly shit in this line of work, but life, in general, is pretty damn beautiful. There’s always a bright side, always a silver lining. Even the worst of days ends.

He knows that most of his colleagues, both during his uniform years and now that he’s a detective, think he’s naïve, maybe even childish, and destined for a rude awakening. But Caleb likes to think—no, he knows—that his optimistic streak is immediately disarming when it comes to dealing with the public, from vics, to witnesses, to suspects. Whether it soothes, startles, or engages someone, his energy is never expected, and always yields results.

Trish Wheatly is going to be a challenge, though.

They stand at the entrance to the parking deck, up on the curb out of the flow of traffic, and Trish works on a cigarette like it’s an assigned task and she’s mad about it: quick, harsh drags and forceful dragon exhales through her nostrils. Heidi stayed inside to talk to Meg—good call, honestly—and when Caleb asked if he could talk to Trish, she said, “Outside. I need a smoke.”

“Did you see anyone in the hallway when you headed to your rooms?” Caleb asks. He’s got his notebook out, still, because Trish is the sort who won’t talk to him unless she thinks he’s taking things seriously. “Someone coming in or out of a room? Loitering? Even a housekeeping or room service cart?”

“No, nobody,” she addresses a stand of shrubs, tone impatient, lips twitching around the cig filter on her next drag. “The hall was totally empty. I let us into our room the same time Avery went into hers, and didn’t see anyone else.”

“Avery says the knock on her door happened just a couple minutes after she got inside. Did you hear anything from next door? Did she cry out? Could you hear the guy bumping around?”

Caleb wonders if she always turns her head in sharp movements, like a bird, or if it’s exaggerated today because she’s upset about her client. Either way, it’s unnerving. She turns to him, exhales smoke, and says, “Don’t you think I would have checked on her if I heard something?”

“I don’t know what you’d do, ma’am,” he says, bluntly. “I’m not here to judge, I’m just trying to establish a timeline. When did you realize Avery wasn’t in her room?”

Her eyes narrow, and her lips purse, but after a beat, she takes another drag and turns her head away, bob swinging. In a slightly less hostile tone, she says, “The second we got in the room, I started the shower. I didn’t hear anything.” True regret touches her voice, draws it down an octave, and quivers its edges.

Caleb wonders if she’s a hard person who softens rarely, or if she started out soft and built a shell around herself, for personal or professional reasons.

“I was toweling off when Meg starts pounding on the door. She said a man, a guest, came running down the hell, yelling, knocking on doors, saying he found a woman being attacked in the stairwell. By the time I threw on some clothes, the paramedics were on the scene. Avery was…” She shakes her head, and picks at her teeth with a long, manicured nail before taking another drag. “I’ve seen people walk away from car crashes look in better shape.”

Her heads turns back toward him, another abrupt movement. “The man who did this to her…when I get my hands on him…”

“I get it,” Caleb says. “Whoever it is needs his ass kicked”—Heid would not like that—“but let us handle him. You can help us by sharing any information that could lead to his arrest.”

She nods, and drops the cig butt to the concrete. Grinds it out beneath her expensive shoe.

“Now, Avery told us that her attacker quoted a line from her own book to her before he knocked her unconscious.”

For the first time, Trish’s angular, harsh face softens, eyes widening and brows lifting in shock. “He what?”

“It was something like ‘You’re a redneck whore, and you deserve what’s coming to you.’”

She sucks in a breath, and says, “Jesus,” on the exhale. “That’s from her latest. All Fall Down. The heroine is from Alabama, and she’s taking on this mob boss in New York…holy shit.” Her eyes flash. “I thought this was some random shitbag, but this was personal.”

“Looks that way. Do you know anyone who might have a vendetta against Avery? Someone who’d want to hurt her?”

Trish’s expression hardens down into its former cut-glass angles. “Clearly, you don’t follow her on social media.”

 

~*~

 

“I came ahead to the hotel and checked us in,” Meg says, clutching a paper cup of tea at one of the small, round tables in the waiting area just down the hall from Avery’s room. “Around two o’clock. I got our keycards, and took the bags up to the rooms.”

“Is that something you normally do on tour?” Heidi asks.

“Yes, ma’am. Trish doesn’t like to wait around to check in. She likes to go straight from the venue to the hotel.” She releases her cup to tug both sleeves down over her hands, then jams them together on the tabletop. She only meets Heidi’s gaze in fits and bursts, lashes lowering every few seconds.

Trish doesn’t like a lot of things, Heidi figures.

“So you put the bags in the room,” Heidi prompts. She can ask question after question, but finds she gets a more accurate timeline if the interviewee can relate the story in their own words, at their own speed.

Meg nods. “I put the bags in the closets, made sure there were enough towels. Then I locked up and called an Uber. I went back to the bookshop, and got there about thirty minutes before the signing started.”

“That would be, what, five-thirty?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Meg, when you were at the hotel, did you see anyone in the hall? Or maybe in the elevator? A man hanging around, watching you? Maybe you got the feeling you were being watched. Anything like that?”

“No, ma’am.” She tugs her cuffs some more, rolling their edges deep into her palms. “There was a family in the elevator with me, parents and two kids. But nobody who looked suspicious or anything.” She chews at her lip, and braves eye contact again. “But the hotel has cameras, right? Can you find him that way?”

“We’re certainly going to take a look at the footage. But. In the meantime: can you think of anyone who might want to hurt, or even scare Avery? If her attacker quoted her book to her, then he knows who she is, and this was a targeted attack, rather than one of opportunity.”

Meg looks stricken, already pale face whitening. “It was? Targeted, I mean?”

“A random mugger wouldn’t throw lines from her own book at her,” Heidi says, as gently as possible.

Meg takes a shuddering breath and cups a sleeve-covered hand over her mouth. Turns her head and murmurs, “Oh my God.”

The back of Heidi’s neck tingles, a familiar prickling of finding a thread, catching a lead. “What? Did you think of something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” When Meg glances back at her, she looks guilty, almost. “Avery…she has lots of fans. Tons of them. But there’s also lots of people who hate how successful she is.”

Heidi lifts her brows. “Any people specifically?”

“I think you need to look at her email and social media.”

 

~*~

 

A drowsy, but determined Avery gives them all her social media and email passwords, and then Trish all but shoos them out the door with a firm demand that they “find this prick.”

Back at the station, Jillian takes the list of passwords and immediately gets to work.

“He knew which room she was in,” Marcus says, sitting back against the edge of his desk, arms crossed loosely over his chest. Heidi once overheard two young female uniforms whispering to one another that he looks like Idris Elba, and the resemblance is never stronger than when his shirtsleeves are folded back like they are now, and he’s casually reclining in a way that highlights how many hours he spends at the gym. “For him to knock that fast after she got inside, he had eyes on her.”

“She, and her publicist, and the publicist’s assistant say they didn’t see anyone in the elevator, or the hallway when they arrived,” Heidi says, and turns to white board, marker in hand to start shaping the case in bold black Expo marker.

She imagines Marcus’s shrug based on his voice. “He could have taken the next elevator. Could have got out in the hall right as their doors were closing.”

“That’s a stretch,” Jillian says, keyboard clacking away.

“Okay, so, how did he know her room number?” Marcus has a deep, resonant voice, endlessly patient, and plays devil’s advocate in a way that heightens the team’s thought process, instead of stifling it.

“Maybe he works at the hotel,” McCoy says. He’s tossing a rubber ball up into the air over and over, the smack of it in his palm oddly satisfying.

Much more so than the squeak of the marker Heidi’s using.

“He’s security,” McCoy continues. “Or at the check-in desk. He knows she’s gonna be there, knows her room number, bam.”

“What does the security footage show?” Marcus asked.

“We pulled it, and it’s with the lab, now,” Heidi says, and then steps back from what she’s written. “Okay, so.” She taps the board with the end of the marker. “Here’s our timeline: Avery, Trish, and Meg all flew in together from Salt Lake City. They arrived at four-fifteen yesterday afternoon, and parted ways at the airport. Avery and Trish went straight to TBR bookshop to start setting up for the signing, and Meg went to the Fitzroy to check them in and put their suitcases in their rooms. Meg then Ubered to the bookshop and joined them, where they stayed until ten-fifteen or so. Dinner was delivered to them during the event, so none of them ever stepped outside the shop until they left.

“Then, they took an Uber back to the hotel, entered through the lobby, took the elevator up, and went straight into their rooms. None of them saw anyone in the hall. Five to ten minutes later, the attacker knocks on Avery’s door.

Marcus’s gaze tracks back and forth across the timeline, expression thoughtful. “It’s not a coincidence, the time of it, I mean.”

“No,” Heidi agrees. “It can’t be.”

“Right, so,” McCoy says, catching the ball, and then rolling it between his palms. “Back to what I said: he works at the hotel.”

“We won’t know for sure until we get the security footage.”

A phone dings—McCoy’s—and he digs it from his pocket and smiles at the screen. “That time is now, my man. The lab’s got the video up and ready for us.”

“Marcus, why don’t you go, and take McCoy,” Heidi says.

Behind McCoy, Marcus makes a subtle face of displeasure, but nods, and pushes off the desk. “C’mon, newbie.”

McCoy bounds up like a puppy, already talking Marcus’s ear off as they shrug into their jackets and head for the door.

Heidi feels a little of the tension in her belly unwind in his absence. She’s never known what to do with cheerful people. Sets her teeth on edge and leaves her feeling wrong-footed.

She refreshes the coffee in her mug and drags her wheeled chair over so sit at Jillian’s elbow.

“That was good thinking,” Jillian says, eyes glued to the Facebook feed she’s scrolling through at breakneck speed.

“Getting rid of McCoy?”

“He’s like a black hole sucking all the smart out of the room.”

Heidi wants to laugh, but swallows it down.

Up until McCoy’s placement on the squad, Jillian was their youngest detective, though aside from her technical know-how and fresh, unlined face, most people would peg her as at least a decade older. She’s thirty, petite, impressively fit, and wears her blonde hair in a long pixie cut that works well with her dainty face. Her first day on the team, Dan smirked and called her Tinkerbell. Jillian smirked right back and said, “Thanks, Mr. Clean. You leave your earrings at home?”

Dan doesn’t shave his head anymore, though he still calls her Tink. Heidi chalks that up as a win in Jillian’s column.

“He’s…a lot,” Heidi concedes about McCoy, “but he’s not stupid.”

Jillian’s hands still on the keyboard, and she does an exaggerated slow head turn Heidi’s direction. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone all Mama Bear on him.”

Jillian’s face falls the moment the words hit Heidi somewhere high in the chest. “Shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Heidi waves her to silence, swallows down a sharp lump of old hurt, and says, “Forget it, you’re fine.” She nods toward the computer, though her pulse is doing kickflips. “What’ve you got?”

Jillian takes a breath, and turns back to the screen subdued, all business. “I started with her X account, and that’s a whole mess, but let’s look at Facebook, first. Avery’s personal account is set to private, and she hasn’t posted anything there in over a year. Just a few friends, probably real-life friends and family, not fans. Nothing sketchy jumps out, though she has more than ten-thousand friend requests, none of them answered. But look here at her professional page. She has two-point-three million followers. Some of the posts have a personal touch, but most of them are promos for upcoming releases, and tour information. Most of it reads like it was written by someone at the publishing house, instead of Avery herself.”

“You’re familiar with Avery’s writing style?” Heidi asks, surprised.

Jillian shrugs. “I’ve read a few of her books. They’re not bad.” She grins, quick and humorless. “Kinda spicy. But, here. Most of her comments are positive. ‘I love your books,’ ‘You’re my favorite author,’ so on and so forth. Then there’s the negative ones: ‘You suck,’ ‘What a fucking snob,’ ‘Hard pass on supporting a misogynist.’”

“Misogynist?”

“Before she made it big, when she was still self-publishing, Avery got a bad rep for hating other women because she wasn’t actively promoting her fellow authors’ books.”

“And that means she hates women?”

Jillian reaches for her coffee cup, and shakes her head. “Before you brought the passwords, I started digging around online, trying to get a better feel for the book world.” She shoots Heidi a serious look over the rim of her mug. “It’s like the high school cafeteria all over again. And a little like a prison yard. There’s cliques – hell, there’s factions. Big name authors with girl gangs who pimp their books and try to take down the competition. Chat rooms, and secret chat rooms, and online smear campaigns. It gets nasty. If someone new pops up, she has to kiss the ring of whichever Queen Bee is at the top of the heap at the moment. If she doesn’t, followers and influencers try to coerce her into doing it. They call it ‘women supporting other women,’ but it’s really more like kicking a vig to a kingpin. Some of these authors spend tens of thousands of dollars paying bloggers and TikTok starlets to hype their books, all of it designed to look organic. It’s a snake eating its own tail, and for whatever reason, Avery never participated in that. Keeping to herself pissed a lot of influential people off, and now that she’s ‘made it,’ they want to take her down even more. See, check this out.”

She clicks into Avery’s direct messages and opens one titled Seriously?? It’s paragraphs-deep. 

Jillian starts to read aloud: “‘Miss Jamison, this is the fourth time I’ve messaged you and you lack the courtesy to message me back, but this bears repeating. As I’ve said before, while your writing shows real raw talent, you would benefit from the help of a professional, knowledgeable editor, which your publisher clearly isn’t providing. I guess all they care about is sales, rather than the quality of the books they’re producing.’ It goes on for a good three-thousand words like that. This person, rubyredrainbow22”—Jillian snorts—“wants Avery to consult her and her ‘team’ about ‘making the most’ of her creativity.”

“Hell of a way to ask for a job,” Heidi mutters.

“Right? There’s at least twenty more messages just like this one, someone telling Avery she could be better if she’d only listen to Random Name Cartoon Avatar about how to be a better writer. They range in tone from ass-kissing to vicious. Then there’s these messages.”

She opens another, no subject line, and Heidi leans in closer to the screen to read it for herself.

There’s no salutation, either.

You’re such a fake bitch. You think you’re so much better than everyone you came up with just because one of the big five picked you up, but you’re not. You suck. You write like Shakespeare got high on shrooms and got a head injury. You take fifteen fucking paragraphs to describe one tiny thing, and everyone who reads your books gets bored as shit and can’t finish them. You wouldn’t have a career at all if you didn’t step on the Strong Women who came before you, who INVENTED the kind of fucking shit you write. You hate other women, and it really shows.

Heidi sits back, feeling like the message physically shoved her. “Good God.”

“Yeah. Her X DMs and author email inbox are full of more of the same.”

“Are we talking dozens of messages? Or…?”

“Hundreds,” Jillian says. “And that’s just at a glance.”

“Any blatant threats?”

“Not that I’ve seen so far—not of the choke-you-out variety, anyway. But I think we need to turn this over to the lab guys and let them mine through her accounts.”

“Yeah.” Heidi sinks back in her chair and massages at her temples. The headache that first bloomed in the car with McCoy earlier is spreading, and starting to throb. She can feel it in her ears and behind her eyes, heartbeat-timed pressure that compounds the figurative headache that is Avery’s online abuse.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky with the security footage,” Jillian says. “And we can run facial recognition.”

“Maybe so.” The case feels swamping, suddenly. Heidi can only hope that this is a one-off, unrelated to the reams of hate mail and insults that fill the screen.

 

 

4

 

Avery’s had her share of scrapes, bumps, bruises, and even a concussion, once. She’s never been this beat up before, but she doesn’t think the pain is purely physical.

Each breath sends sharp needles through her broken ribs. Each slight shift of her body in the bed brings a new bruise to light. Her entire body aches, and her head throbs, railroad spikes at her temples and a dull pounding across the entirety of her skull. Her swollen eye feels so tight it might burst, a kind of pulpy, tender pain too great for comprehension; she thinks the drugs are all that keeps her from spiraling into a hurt-fueled panic attack. Even her feet hurt, teeth-gritting stabs where here nails are broken and torn, where the soles scuffed raw over concrete.  

But a humming undercurrent of fear heightens all of it. Someone did this to her. She didn’t fall off a horse, or throw herself out of a truck unloading hay—she’s done that before—or fall off an icy curb and land hard on the pavement. A stranger grabbed her, struck her, injured her. Her injuries are the result of a conscious act of violence, and knowing that, thinking of it each time she sits forward in bed, sharpens every pain, tightens every strung-out nerve.

Talking to the detectives tires her more than she expected; or maybe it’s the pain meds. She swims for a while, when they’re gone. Dragged beneath a tide of half-consciousness, in which she dreams of cruel hands and fierce blows, while still able to hear the hushed sounds of the hospital around her. She tries to move, and can’t; thinks sleep paralysis, and then goes deeper under for a bit, a dark, velvet void of thoughtlessness.

She wakes with a start when pain squeezes tight around her ribs. “Where…?” she slurs, and reaches out for something that isn’t there. Her right arm works, her left doesn’t respond, save to blast another jolt of pain through her wrung-out body. “Ow. Shit.”

Urgency greater than the pain slams into her. She attempts to sit up, and can’t be sure how far she gets because her vision goes black and spotty. “The seminar.”

“Cancelled,” Trish says from somewhere off to her right. “It was the first thing I did. Well, the second. Once the doctors said you were going to be alright.”

“Cancelled,” Avery repeats, and in her groggy, pained state is momentarily swamped with regret. All those people who bought tickets, who made plans, who came to the hotel, some of them from out of town…and they were met this morning with a sign on the door and apologies from a hotel employee. She let them all down. She failed them.

With no small effort, she turns her head on the pillow, every microscopic movement agony, and sees Trish sitting in a visitor chair by the bed. She’s on her phone, as ever, but she glances up and regards Avery with something serious that might be concern. Or sympathy. Or a blend of both. She holds eye contact when she speaks, and Avery can’t remember the last time that happened, that Trish wasn’t multitasking.

She says, as gently as Avery has ever heard her, “Yes, I cancelled it. I had to.”

“But…” Avery’s breath quickens, and that makes her ribs hurt terribly. “I don’t want to cancel it.”

“You’re in the hospital, Avery. You were attacked.”

“I know. But I don’t want to let everyone down.”

Trish’s gaze tightens, a more familiar expression, and it’s oddly comforting. “We can see about rescheduling, if that’s what you want to do, and if we can fit it in with the rest of the tour. But you’re out of commission for the next while. Will’s already handling postponing your next few stops.”

Avery closes her eyes and fights the sting of tears. So many people in so many cities are excited to see her, and she’s failing all of them.

She hears Trish stand. “I’m going to go make a few calls. I’ll find your doctor, first, and have him get you more pain meds. They said they’d keep you twelve hours, and we’re coming up on that at five. Maybe we can get out of here.”

And go where? Avery wonders, but doesn’t say.

Trish leaves without further assurances, heels clipping on the tile, and that’s familiar, too. Also comforting in a Trish sort of way.

Avery takes a few minutes to fight down the competing waves of pain and get a handle on her emotions. Anyone would cry in this situation, she imagines her mother saying. But Mom didn’t cry, not routinely, and crying now makes Avery feel even weaker and out of control.

Slowly, the sharp spikes of pain return to dull throbbing, and the burning in her eyes recedes. When she opens them next, it’s just in time to see the door whisper open.

A nurse enters, bearing a pale blue ceramic vase bursting with flowers.

Avery blinks some more, and she sees yellow, and she sees red. And she sees roses. A garish spray of yellow and red roses, padded with baby’s breath.

Her body goes cold. Her heart slams against her broken ribs. She wants to speak, to shout. Take those away! No! But her tongue shrivels.

“Oh, you’re awake,” the nurse says, smiling, chipper. She totes the flowers over to the rolling nightstand and sets them up beside Avery’s plugged-in phone and water cup. “Aren’t these pretty? There’s a card.” She plucks it from its plastic holder and offers it over. Avery doesn’t want to take it, but she does anyway, politeness too deeply ingrained. Her hand trembles, and crumples the paper.

“How’s your pain, sweetie?” the nurse asks, oblivious to her sudden bout of terror. “It’s time for more meds, I think.”

“I…” Avery starts, and that’s as far as she can go.

Trish steps into the open doorway. “Good, you’re here. She needs more meds. I can’t run down Dr. Lessing, so if you could—” She breaks off when she sees the flowers. Her eyes go wide. “Oh, fuck.”

The nurse looks between them, flabbergasted. “What?”

Trish whips her phone from one jacket pocket, and a white business card from the other. Taps her foot after she dials, phone pressed to her ear. “Hello, Detective Cooper? You need to send someone back to the hospital. Immediately. Forget attacked: Avery’s being stalked.”

 

 

5

 

Dan shows up while Heidi’s neck-deep in Avery’s emails, good and bad.

While they wait for the guys to get back with the video results, she and Jillian are splitting up the computer side of things. Jillian tackles Facebook and X, and Heidi pores through Gmail.

Heidi doesn’t enjoy reading her own emails, though she does so diligently; it’s one of those normal, everyday touchstones that keeps her grounded. “Locks you in the present,” the department shrink told her, during her mandatory six weeks of therapy. She scoffed originally, but she gets it, now. Be it coupons or, more interestingly, case correspondence with Flores or someone else at the D.A.’s office.

Avery’s email, though, is downright depressing.

There’s lots of fan mail. Complimentary, sometimes gushing, usually encouraging. There’s requests to participate in novelty book boxes and crates, whatever those are, and group signings; those are flagged as forwarded, sent along to Trish or the agent, Will.

Then there’s the hate mail. There’s…a lot of it. More than should be possible. Heidi reads the first dozen all the way through, but after that, finds her eyes glazing over. The words—hateful, uncreative, bludgeoning—begin to weigh on her physically, until she realizes she’s scrunching down in her chair.

She’s up refreshing her coffee when Dan strides into the bullpen, tie askew, hair still damp, massive to-go coffee clutched in one hand.

“I know, I know, I know,” he says, and dumps his jacket on top of his desk.

Heidi shares a glance with Jillian.

“Rough morning?” Jillian asks, and sounds innocent. Key word: sounds.

Dan sends her an unimpressed glance and then takes a deep swig of his coffee, throat working like a man parched.

At one point, Dan Miller was considered the best and brightest young detective in their squad. Those were the early days, when Heidi and Dan first made detective, the young guns in a group of old timers nearing retirement. They were bright and shiny, and Dan especially possessed a hunting dog ferocity, a sharpness that pushed him harder, longer, and more successfully than anyone else. Heidi struggled to keep up with him some days, but never felt more confident about a case than when they were partnered together.

But Dan’s wife left him two years ago, and he’s been unraveling slowly ever since. It started with a hot temper that simmered down into a general malaise. A dulling of his once-keen edges. He still performs his duties to the letter, but without the old flair. He and his ex, Sharon, have joint custody of the kids, who are teens, and rather insufferable, Heidi thinks, with love. Dan’s late at least once a week, and it’s not uncommon for there to be something amiss with his wardrobe: a missing button, a wrongly creased shirt collar; it today’s case, a crooked tie.

He still looks good, though. Now that his head-shaving kick is at an end—honestly, thank you, Jillian—his hair’s thick, and dark, and a little too long on top in a charming way, heavily gelled when he isn’t fresh from a gym shower, like today. A former high school and college running back, he’s always been fit, but it’s clear weight-lifting is an outlet for all his post-divorce frustration.

He thunks his coffee down on the desk with a motion that clearly tells Jillian not to push him. “What are we working on?”

Heidi says, “Avery Jamison.”

His brows lift. “The author?”

“Okay, does everyone know who this woman is except me?”

“Probably. What did she do? All writers are kinda fucked up. Not shocking this one snapped.”

“This one is our victim,” Heidi says, frowning. “Someone dragged her out of her hotel room last night and assaulted her in the stairwell.”

“Shit.”

Heidi’s cell rings, and she pulls it out. “Yeah.”

“The attacker delivered a line from her book to her,” Jillian’s saying. “Marcus and McCoy are looking at the hotel security footage, and we’re—”

Heidi tunes them out. “This is Detective Cooper.”

The caller doesn’t identify herself, but Heidi recognizes Trish the Publicist’s voice straight off. “Detective, we have a problem.”

 

~*~

 

A different pair of detectives arrive about a half-hour after the flowers do.

Avery’s on her feet. She waved off the pain meds the bewildered nurse brought her in a paper cup, and insisted on getting out of bed. It was a laborious and terribly painful process, but once she’s upright, the pain is mostly in her ribs, and her head, the throbbing of which is making the room sway around her. Meg went down to the gift shop earlier, so she has slippers and plush robe, belted as tightly as she can bear it over her gown in a bed at something like decorum. Like hell is she going to be tucked under the covers the second time she talks to the police.

“At least sit down,” Trish grouses.

“No, I’m fine.” Avery shifts her weight from foot to foot, the memory foam distributing the discomfort from her scraped soles, and peers through the window at the parking lot below. She has a view of the hospital’s circular drive, the drop-off portico, people coming and going, both on foot and being pushed along in wheelchairs. Any one of them could be the stalker who brought the roses, along with a note whose text continues to cycle through her battered head, over and over:

 

Roses are red,

Roses are yellow,

Bet your dumbass thinks

You’ve got a good fellow.

 

As far as vengeful other-woman messages go, it’s stupid. Avery wrote it herself, and she can admit that. To her credit, the fictional other woman who sends it to a cheated-on wife in her novel Take a Bow is more of a psycho than a poet. Still. Not Avery’s most imaginative work.

Also not appropriate in this situation, given she’s single and certainly not being cheated on.

It’s an effective message, though. I’ve read your books, it says. I know your words. This isn’t random, it’s about you specifically.

Down in the parking lot, a man in work coveralls with a stepladder hooked over one shoulder heads around the corner of the building. A ballcap hides his face, but she can see a scruff of dark stubble, dark hair peeking through the hole in the back of his hat. Is it him? Posing as a maintenance man to deliver a flower warning?

What about that nurse in scrubs helping an elderly woman into a wheelchair beside her van? He has a regrettable swooping haircut, and a wide smile, but maybe he wants Avery to be up here shaking in her fluffy shoes.

She’s being paranoid. A vivid imagination is both a writer’s greatest asset, and fatal flaw. It’s far too easy to spin out the possibilities into nightmare-inducing scenarios that make her want to hop on the next flight back to Nebraska and never write another word.

A sharp rap sounds on the open doorframe, and Avery hates how long it takes her to turn around, an awkward shuffle that still sets her off balance. She reaches with her good hand for the plastic footboard of the bed to steady herself.

The man and woman who enter are clearly cops, but not Detectives Cooper and McCoy from earlier. The woman is petite, short-haired, and under an open puffer coat her clothes shift over a lean, athletic physique. The man is tall, dark-haired, handsome in a strong-jawed way, and built like a bodybuilder, buttons of his dress shirt straining to contain his pecs.

He's the one who reacts when Trish pulls up short on her way to the door and says, “Where’s Detective Cooper?”

“Working on a different aspect of the investigation. This case is getting as complicated as one of Miss Jamison’s books.” His gaze flicks Avery’s way, mouth tugging wryly to the side. “No offense. My daughter’s a big fan.”

The blonde goggles up at him. “You let Piper read her books?”

“Yeah, so? She’s fifteen.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of por…” She bites her lip and darts a glance Avery’s way. Offers a small, tight smile. “Sorry.”

The man clears his throat, nudges the woman with his elbow, and shifts a more serious gaze between Trish and Avery. “I’m Detective Miller, and this is Detective Scott. We’ll be handling things here at the hospital for now.”

Trish folds her arms tightly. “Professionally?”

Miller cocks a single brow. “Of course. I’m guessing you’re Trish. Why don’t you step out in the hall with me while my partner takes Avery’s statement?”

 

~*~

 

“We got a hit on facial recognition on the guy in the stairwell,” McCoy announces with satisfaction when he and Marcus return to the bullpen. He goes up to the board and pins a mugshot in place with two magnets. “Dale Matthis. He did two years starting in 2015 for DV, and had a DUI last year, lost his license.”

The mug shot shows a large, broad-browed guy with a scruffy beard and deep-set, lifeless eyes. A hint of a neck tattoo suggests a dragon, or a lizard, or a snake.

“Do we have footage of him entering or exiting the hotel?” Heidi asks. “I’m assuming he’s not an employee.”

McCoy turns around, hands on his hips, expression smugly pleased.

Marcus makes a long-suffering noise and resumes his earlier perch on the front of his desk. “He is, actually. He’s a janitor on the main floor. Spa, atrium, lobby. I called the hotel manager and he says Matthis has been there about six months.”

McCoy says, “The cameras caught him in the stairwell ten minutes before Avery arrived at her room, lingering between the fourth and fifth floor.”

“So he was waiting for her,” Heidi says.

“Yeah, and the lobby cameras caught him messing around on one of the front desk computers the day before,” Marcus says.

“So he looked up Avery’s room number,” Heidi says. Her headache recedes in the face of fresh facts, mind starting to fan things out in snapshots. “Which meant he knew she was staying at the Fitzroy. The question is: how? Nashville is a tourist town, and there’s plenty of hotels to choose from.”

“If he works there, he could have overheard someone mention her,” Marcus says.

“Nah, it’s ‘cause of the seminar,” McCoy says, confidently. “We know this guy’s stalking her, right? Between the book quotes, and the flowers, this is someone who pays attention to her.”

He does make a point. Heidi nods.

“The seminar’s been all over her social media for months,” McCoy continues. “When, where, what time. He knew when her signing was, knew when it would be over, and he correctly assumed she would be staying in the same hotel where the seminar was being held.”

Marcus points to the board, to the mugshot. “Matthis doesn’t strike me as being that clever.”

“He doesn’t have to be,” Heidi says. “With the way stuff gets advertised, a stalker can be spoon-fed everything he needs to know to get to his victim.”

It’s a sobering thought, a frightening one, and they all trade looks.

“Okay, so.” She stands. “Do we have an address for Matthis?”

“Yeah,” both of them say together.

“Cool. Let’s go pick him up.”

 

~*~

 

“Jillian,” Detective Scott says, once they’re seated: Avery on the edge of the bed, teeth gritted against the stabbing in her ribs, and Scott—Jillian—in Trish’s visitor chair. “I figure your week’s off to a shitty enough start, no need for formality.” Her smile is a little wry, a little smirky, and reminds Avery very much of the rodeo girls she grew up around. There’s a toughness there, beneath Jillian’s surface, efficient, sure movements that speak of physical confidence, and competence.

Avery finds herself smiling back, despite the tugging of the stitches in her lip. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“The flowers.” Jillian gestures to them over her shoulder with her notetaking pen. “That’s like the red and yellow roses and the note from Take a Bow, right?”

“Yes. You’ve read the book?”

“Yeah. The mob boss’s wife starts getting threatened by a woman who claims to be his mistress, but she’s actually just stalking him?”

“That’s the one.”

“But you’re not married, right?”

“Right.” Avery massages at the back of her neck with her good and, and not only does it not alleviate the tension there, it also sends fresh crackles of pain along her skull. “My situation is nothing like that, so it’s not a one-to-one matchup.”

“Just someone trying to make sure you know he’s read your books,” Jillian says, jotting something down on her pad. “Do you have the note?”

“It’s there on the table.”

Jillian pulls a clear plastic envelope and a disposable glove from her jacket pocket and takes care of the card. “We’ll print it to make sure it’s a match to the guy we caught on camera in the hotel.”

Avery’s stomach rolls, half-hope, half-dread. “You found him?”

“Officially? We’re dispatching detectives to speak with a person of interest. Unofficially?” She lowers her voice. “We caught his ass in 4K hitting you in the stairwell.”

“Oh. That’s good.” A shudder moves through her, and she’s helpless to do anything but let it pass, and the pain it caused along with it.

Jillian sets her notepad aside and produces a tablet next. She scrolls a moment, then says, “I’m going to show you some photos. Tell me if you recognize your assailant.”

She spins the tablet and the screen displays six small headshots.

Avery spots the man who put her in the hospital straight away. “That’s him.” She points with her good hand, finger trembling wildly.

Jillian pulls the tablet back. “Him? You’re sure?”

“Definitely. I recognize his eyebrows, and the shape of his nostrils.”

Jillian’s smile is small, but deeply pleased. “Awesome.” The tablet goes back in her coat, and she fires off a quick text. “Okay, let’s talk next steps,” she says, when she’s done, hands in her lap and gaze back on Avery’s face. “Dan and I are gonna talk to the staff here, pull security video, and we’ll figure out who delivered the flowers, and who signed for them. And who ordered them. We’ll dust the card for prints, but it’s most likely someone at the florist typed it up, and our man never touched it.”

Avery starts to nod, then thinks better of it. “Okay.”

“Sit tight for right now. I know you want to get out of here, but we’re going to station a couple of officers at the door to make sure you’re safe. Once we have a suspect in custody, we’ll need you to come down to the station for an official ID.”

“Okay.”

Jillian stands. “You good for the time being?”

Again, Avery’s struck by Jillian’s no-frills demeanor. The comforting familiarity of it. “Yeah.”

Jillian hands her a business card. “Call if you need anything, or think of something useful. I’ll be back.”

 

~*~

 

Dale Matthis’s license is currently revoked thanks to his DUI, but the address listed in the computer takes them just off the strip, down a seedy little side street packed tight with rundown duplexes and crumbling old Victorians that have been converted into three-unit apartment buildings. It’s a street Heidi knows well after fifteen years on the job, one that evidence leads them down too often.

As the unmarked, piloted by Marcus, cruises past chain link-fenced yards, a woman in a housecoat tucks quickly inside a front door and slams it shut. A pitbull runs to the end of its chain, barking at them, foam flying off its tongue. A few curtains twitch in upper windows.

They aren’t a welcome sight for the people who live here.

“This is it.” Heidi gestures to a cockeyed mailbox ahead, and Marcus turns up into the driveway of a blue duplex unit in bad need of repainting. The porch is concrete, and bisected down the middle by an iron railing, separating the two different owners. The far side is tidy, and hosts a bench, and a little potted tree. The near side, the side whose door they’re about to knock on, is cluttered with brightly-colored kids’ toys and a upholstered chair with an overflowing laundry basket balanced on its seat.

They sit for a minute, once Marcus kills the engine, scanning the house, searching for signs of movement. There are none.

McCoy sits forward between the front seats to peer through the windshield. “You think nobody’s home? If I were him, and I’d been caught on camera in two places, I wouldn’t go home either.”

“Then we’ll do what?” Heidi asks, half-turning, using her Pop Quiz voice.

Marcus looks like he’s trying not to smile.

McCoy looks like he’s trying not to roll his eyes. He answers respectfully: “We’ll canvas the neighborhood.”

“Right.”

“You two take the door and I’ll go around back?” Marcus asks.

Heidi pops her door. “Yeah.”

She waits for McCoy to get out and catch up to her, then pushes through the gate that lets onto the front sidewalk. It squeaks loudly enough that she winces.

“Who’s listed as the homeowner?” she asks. The walk is full of weed-choked cracks, and she has to take a long stride to avoid one.

To his credit, McCoy doesn’t have to check his phone. “April Cleveland. She’s been the listed homeowner for two years. I’m thinking girlfriend.”

“Or landlord,” Heidi says, and starts up the steps.

“Yeah.”

His tone is breezy, unconvinced, so she pauses on the top step, and turns to him. Before she can deliver yet another caution—she’s tired of them at this point, doubtless he hates them—he lifts two fingers in another Boy Scout salute.

“Right,” Heidi says, and goes to ring the bell.

It bing-bongs deeper within the house, but though she tries to peek through the gap in the sidelight curtains, she can’t see anything of the interior.

McCoy goes to the wide front window, leans in, and cups his hands around his eyes. There’s a broken slat in the blinds, and that’s where he presses his nose, but he pulls back after a moment, shaking his head. “I see a couch, and a TV, but that’s about it.”

Heidi presses the bell again.

The door to the neighboring unit opens, and a woman with a tight gray bun and a matching sweater set steps out onto the porch. She carries a small watering can in one hand, and props the other on her hip. “Y’all looking for April?”

Heidi clocks the badly veiled contempt in the woman’s gaze, the wrinkling of her nose as her gaze flits from them to the messy porch, and then back. “We’re looking for Dale Matthis, actually. Does he live here?”

The contemptuous expression deepens, pressing deep grooves around the woman’s mouth. “Dale? That piece of…” She catches herself. “Trash? What would you want with him?” Her gaze drops to Heidi’s belt, where she wears her shield in front of her gun. “Oh. You’re cops. That seems about right?”

McCoy steps up beside her, and after his good showing with Trish at the hospital this morning, Heidi doesn’t try to check him. “Ma’am, it’s really important that we talk to him. Does he live here?”

The woman nods. “Most of the time. April isn’t smart enough to dump his ass. Poor girl.” She turns away from them and begins watering the potted tree. “I keep telling her she’s gonna get arrested with him one day, but she thinks she can save him. She’s one of those girls.”

“Have you seen either of them today?” Heidi asks.

“April had to take one of the kids to the doctor. Dale works at that new hotel. The fancy one with the indoor forest.”

“Yeah, we’ve already tried there, and he didn’t show up today.”

She snorts. “Then he’ll be at Rosa’s, trying to get another DUI.”

 

~*~

 

Dr. Lessing checks her reflexes and vitals one more time, proclaims the immediate danger of her concussion to be over, prescribes her some painkillers and signs her release paperwork. She’s free to go.

But go where?

One step at a time, Avery decides. The first, most arduous of which is donning the clothes Meg brought her from the hotel. It’s joggers, a t-shirt and hoodie, all loose and soft, but it still takes her fifteen minutes to get dressed. She bites her tongue against the pain, and tastes blood.

She leans against the bed for a few minutes, until the sharpest wave passes, then straightens carefully and stuffs her feet back in her giftshop slippers. Like hell is she fumbling with shoestrings in her current state.

A knock sounds at the door—she’s tired of door knocks; tired of the way her stomach clenches with dread every time—and Meg pokes her head in, expression a blend of concerned and apologetic.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Fine.” She feels certain her smile falls short.

“Sorry,” Meg says again, “but the detectives are back.”

“That’s fine. Send them in.”

Meg pushes the door wide, then hurries in and to the side, head ducked. She goes to collect Avery’s bag, and Avery’s too tired and sore to insist on carrying it herself, the way she usually does.

The detectives follow, Jillian leading. “Good news, bad news,” she says, without preamble.

“Jills,” Detective Miller sighs.

“Avery grew up on a farm,” Jillian says. “She doesn’t want a bunch of bullshit, do you?” The last she directs Avery’s way, brows lifted expectantly.

“I’m allergic to it, actually,” Avery says, and gets a grin out of both detectives.

“The good news,” Detective Miller says, leaning a hip up against the room’s small countertop, “is that we have the flower delivery on film.”

“The bad news,” Jillian said, “is it came from Flowers 2 Go. We got the van, and the driver in his little uniform coming in the lobby doors. A nurse signed for it.” She shrugs and stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets. “We’re headed to the flower shop, next, but the employee is definitely not the man from the hotel.”

Avery doesn’t know if that’s an added worry or not. If her attacker hasn’t been caught yet, he could have easily turned around and ordered flowers.

She asks, “Could he have an accomplice?”

“We’re going to find out,” Miller says, with a firmness that says don’t you worry, we’ll catch the bastard.

“Meg was just telling us you’ve been released,” Jillian says.

“I have.” Her heart lurches; as badly as she wants to leave the hospital, the idea of setting foot back out into the world where a man wants to hurt her, maybe even wants to kill her, sets her to shaking.

Detective Miller steps forward, hand extended in a gesture that brings to mind gentling a spooky horse. In a low, soothing voice, he says, “We’re going to take you back to the hotel, and get you inside.”

“In a different room,” Jillian puts in.

“We’ll leave uniforms stationed in the hall, and the hotel staff’s been put on high alert. This guy isn’t going to get to you again.” He pauses a beat, holds eye contact. His eyes are dark, like warm coffee, and very serious. “I promise.”

Avery swallows, dry throat sticking. “Okay.”

What else is there to say?