Give Me Grace(142)

I also knew her, and as of last night, that intimate knowledge may or may not have been re-acquainted. Events were still hazy.

“Gabriella.”

Her eyes flew open, widening on my cock before slicing up to my face. She flinched, cursing in Spanish. “Mierda!”

Ripping the sheets away, she slid naked from the bed, grabbing for her clothes. I stalked around the bed, seizing her bicep roughly. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Let me go, you cula!” she growled in that husky tone of hers that always got me hard. She yanked her arm free, her gold-coloured eyes shooting sparks. Her nose, covered with a smattering of freckles, scrunched adorably in contrast to her anger. “I must have been off my face on snow to sleep with you.”

My stomach rolled in disgust. “You doing coke now?”

She paused to rake her eyes over me, the look both lazy and suggestive. My cock jerked, not seeming to care about the whole drug thing. At all. Then she shrugged. “I’m doing a lot of things now.”

Including me? I scanned the floor, not seeing any evidence of torn, empty condom wrappers. “Did we have sex?”

Her panties were already on and her bra snapping in place when I asked my question. “If we did, then God save us all, because Hell must have frozen over.”

I couldn’t blame her fury. We’d left things in a bad place. Her sudden appearance last night at the party on the arm of a man I didn’t know had hit me like a solid punch in the gut. Where had she been all these years? With the Black Vipers? How the fuck had it come to that?

I waved a hand in the direction of her torso where no matter what angle I stood, the eyes of the coiled snake glowered at me. “What’s with the tattoo?” I growled. “We went through the academy together, then all of a sudden you disappear, and now you’re running with the Vipers?”

“It’s none of your business,” she hissed, her voice muffled as she yanked a tight black dress over her head and twitched it quickly in place.

“You woke in my bed.” I folded my arms as she yanked her hair from beneath the neckline of her dress. It resettled down the delicious curve of her back. “That makes it my business.”

“Arrghhh!” She threw up her hands. “Eres una cara tan verga!”

The Spanish words rolled off her tongue beautifully, making me realise how much I’d missed it. How much I’d missed her. “What did you say?” I asked as she grabbed her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I said,” she enunciated sarcastically as she jerked the pair of black stilettos on her feet, “that you are such a dickface.”

With that she stood and grabbed her small bag. It began to ring and she rummaged her hand around inside it. Yanking out her phone, she answered with, “Hola!” as she stalked from the room.

Wrenching open a dresser drawer, I tugged on a pair of jeans and a snug long sleeve shirt in dark grey. Gabriella was gone when I entered the living room of my apartment. Knowing I had to get to work, I didn’t chase her down. I might’ve had no idea what her number was or where she lived, but I was a detective and damn good at my job. I’d fucking find her because we were far from finished. I wanted to know how the beautiful, determined, career-driven girl I had adored spiralled into a woman who talked drugs and biker gangs.

Palming my phone, I dialled Tate, my partner with the Sydney Police. “You get the call?”

“Yep, already on my way in,” he answered. “You know what it’s about?”

“Nope,” I replied, tucking my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans and hanging my detective badge around my neck. “You?”

“No idea.”





Twenty minutes later I was at the Surry Hills LAC—Sydney City’s local area command centre, sitting opposite my boss and to the left of Tate.

“What’s going on, boss?” I asked.

“I need you both to make an arrest. A new case. Came up overnight. Probable homicide.”

Tate and I shared a quick glance of what the fuck? Pulled in on a Sunday for something any cop on duty could have handled? The only thing I could think of was that either the victim or the perpetrator was a celebrity and Burns wanted only senior detectives in charge.

“Who are we arresting?” Tate asked, running a hand over his dark, buzzed hair in a tired, casual gesture.

Burns looked directly at me, his nostrils flaring when he answered. “Casey Daniels.”

I stiffened in my seat, the only physical indication of the shock punching through me. That had to be a mistake. The idea of arresting my friend on suspicion of murder was some kind of sick joke. But Burns didn’t play sick jokes, and his eyes were flat, and deadly serious.