“You’re right,” she replied. “So?”
“So,” he said, teasing a henna highlight from her chestnut hair. “Did you think twice about pulling the trigger? Did you aim low to hit metal instead of his head? Did you hesitate, even a fraction of a second, to jump into the fray?”
“Why?” she snapped. “You going to take away my shiny little badge if I say yes?”
Another sour look.
She blew out her breath. Marty was only trying to make sure she was all right with what happened today. To do that, he had to break through her natural stubbornness.
Which was, she had to admit, not easy sometimes.
“The only regret I have,” Emily said, touching Marty’s muscled chest, “is the dirtbag escaped to kill poor Sergeant Luerchen.”
“‘Poor Luerchen?’“ Marty said. “You hated Ray as much as I did.”
“Yeah, I know,” Emily said, sighing. “But he was one of us. He was family. He shouldn’t have died that way.” She kissed Marty’s forehead, returned his laser stare. “I would have put all eighteen rounds in the driver’s brain if I’d gotten close enough.”
“You’re certain.”
“I am.”
Marty smiled. “Then what’s with your nightie?”
Emily looked down, astonished. She’d bunched the silk so high and tight it looked like a goiter on her hip.
She slapped it to her knees. “I don’t know,” she muttered.
“Neither do I,” Marty said. “But your subconscious does. Maybe someday it’ll tell you.”
Then his eyes, concentrated so intensely on her face as they talked, drifted south.
“For what?” she said, knowing what that meant. “Dispensing your psychobabble?”
“That was free. You owe me for that remark about dirt behind my ears.”
“Annie came up with that,” Emily pointed out. “Not me.”
“I’m not interested in Zenning the good lieutenant,” Marty said.
Emily giggled, then slipped off her lavender spaghetti straps. She adored how Marty made her feel. She could crawl through ten miles of sewage, and he’d be waiting at the end, eyes twinkling, telling her she was pretty.
She groaned as his giant hands worked their magic.
“Oh, Marty,” she whispered. “I love you. I love you so much.”
“Me, too, baby,” he murmured, riding the lavender.
“I can’t explain what you mean to me,” she said, body tingling, breath shortening. “Falling in love with you was like being born again - oh! Damn! No!”
His eyes flew open. “I do something wrong?”
“No,” she said. “I did.”
She flopped backward, bouncing her head off her overstuffed down pillow. “How could I forget that?” she raged. “It’s too important! What an idiot I am!”
Marty dropped his head on his outstretched arm, watching her with faint amusement. “Is this a private beat-yourself-up party?” he asked. “Or can anyone join in?”
“I forgot to put those burnt matches on NCIC.”
The National Crime Information Center held millions of law-enforcement records, from fingerprints to mugshots to aliases to VINs to crime scene descriptions to the inmate locator that nailed Devlin Bloch. Any cop in America could query NCIC to see if something in one of their cases had popped up anywhere else.
She’d assured Branch she’d log the burnt matches before heading home. An extreme long shot, she knew - they’d almost certainly been dropped by a client. But Branch’s mantra was thoroughness, and she hated not having crossed that particular item off her list. Especially since, without Bloch, they had less than zero.
“It’s been a long day, Em,” Marty said. “It’ll keep a few more hours.”
She shook her head.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He rolled off the bed and reached for his jeans.
“Oh, hon, stay here. Get some sleep. You’re exhausted,” Emily said, clipping on her gun and badge. “I’ll drive to the station and send out the request. I’ll be right back.”
Marty looked at her, then the rumpled sheets.
“Think I’ll tag along to ensure you don’t linger, Detective,” he said. “We’re not due till seven, and I don’t intend to spend all of it sleeping.” Pause. “By the way, do we have any whipped cream in the fridge?”
“Why?” she said, heading for the stairs. “You hungry?”
“That, too,” he said.
In the garage, he glanced at his watch.
“Shit. I forgot.”
“What?”
“About a phone call I gotta make.”