Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) Rachel Caine (best e book reader for android .txt) 📖

straight at me. I hold up a hand to keep him at a distance. I’m not sure if that works, or if it’s the fact that Javier steps in his way, blocking his access.

“It’s not ma’am,” I tell him. “Detective Kezia Claremont, which I guess you already know, since you dragged Detective Prester out to come at me this late.” I fix my partner with a look. “You ought to be home resting.”

“Ought to be,” he agrees. “I took your father home to get some sleep. Boot’s with him. Don’t worry.”

It does help knowing Boot and Pop are together and, I hope, not stressing over me right now. I just wish Prester had stayed home too. I love the gesture, but he looks worse than I do.

Meanwhile, there’s man-drama going on behind Prester, and that keeps me from asking him to go and get himself in bed.

“Back off,” Javier says to Heidt, who’s standing way too close to him. Heidt locks stares with him for a moment, and I take back my first impression of a missionary. Now he looks more like one of those white-bread paramilitary types.

But he steps away, after a long enough pause to make it clear it’s his own idea. He looks past Javier at me.

“Detective,” he says, “what the hell do you think you were doing out there, meddling in our investigation? Again?”

“What investigation?” I ask. “You’ve had plenty of time to follow up with that truck stop and get the video. You didn’t. I was just cleaning up after you. Did you get the trash? The video?”

“We did,” he says. “We found a disposable phone in there that traces back to that 911 call. But you shouldn’t have gone out there. Not by yourself.”

I see Prester take that personally. He’s here, I realize, because he feels guilty about letting me waltz off into danger without him. And that makes me mad.

So I take it out on Heidt. “Just trying to move things along, since your team wasn’t getting it done. We got a missing woman and two dead kids, and it’s my case from the start. So don’t tell me I was off base. If you got questions for me, ask them.”

He takes out his notebook and starts firing them at me. I have to concentrate, but the questions are easy enough. He walks me through my actions leaving the truck stop, spotting the SUV, the chase, the crash. I give him as much as I can remember about the make and model, and the fact the license plate was obscured.

Heidt asks me if I saw anyone and whether I can give him a description. I concentrate, but that part is a frustrating blur. I think I did. Didn’t I? But if it was ever there, that memory’s gone now. I know that happens in head injuries. Maybe it’ll come back. Maybe not.

I finally tell him no.

Heidt snaps his notebook shut and stuffs it in his pocket. He doesn’t have much of a range of facial expressions, but he manages something that looks like a scowl. “Okay. That’s all I need. Detective, I don’t know how many ways to say back off, so I’ll just put this out there straight: if you continue to interfere in this investigation in any way, I’ll put the full weight of the TBI on you. You’ll get busted back to uniform so fast you’ll wish you’d stayed in that bed. Same goes for your little friend Gwen Proctor; if she wants to keep that PI license, she’d better stay out of our way. Understood?”

I was ready to let it go. I was. But this only makes me want to pick it up again, because I get the feeling that at the very least, he just wants full credit for solving it, and at most, he’s covering something up. Or maybe it’s just pure stubbornness on my part. I don’t like his tone much, and neither does Javier from the way he shifts and centers his weight, like he’s getting ready to throw hands. Last thing I want is a fight in my damn hospital room, so I say, “You do what you got to do, Detective. I expect we’ll hash this out somewhere else.”

“Oh, we will,” Heidt says grimly. “Count on that.”

He turns to leave and finds Prester standing in the doorway, blocking his exit. It looks accidental, but I know the old man well enough to know it isn’t. Prester looks Heidt up and down and says, “Son, you don’t know shit about who her boss is, because her boss is me, and you can complain all you want. Now, I already told her that we’re going to step back, but your ability to threaten anybody in this room is full zero. Clear?”

It’s really, really rare for Prester to be that blunt, and for a second I think it’s going to backfire . . . but then Heidt turns and looks at me, shakes his head, and says, “Locals,” like it’s a plague on his house.

Prester moves into the room. Heidt leaves, and the door silently closes behind him. “Staties,” my partner says sourly. “Can’t work with ’em, can’t kill ’em. Kez, he’s right. We are done with this case. I’m going to take my tired self home and get some sleep. You rest. That is an order.”

He leaves, too, and Javier takes my hand again. Squeezes. “You all right?”

“Sure,” I say, and yawn. “I got all the good drugs. Hey, who sent the flowers? You?”

“I would have, but I didn’t want to stop to do it,” he says. “Now I feel shitty because you’ve got a better boyfriend.”

“I’d rather have you here than flowers any day.”

Javi goes over to retrieve the card from the bouquet and hands it to me unopened. My name is label-printed on it: Det. Kezia Claremont. I flip open the envelope and pull out the small, flat card inside.

It’s a graphic of a sad teddy bear, and the printed message says, Choose to let