Page 35 of Dominion's Guard
I keep my hands on the notebook and my voice level.
"Ridgewater knows Dominion from the inside," she says, and the way she steers the conversation back to the case tells me she felt the weight of whatever just passed between us and chose to step around it. "He knows the membership, the routines, the social dynamics. He knows which members have the most to lose from exposure, and he can gauge who will pay and how much they can afford. Lawrence was wealthy and discreet. Susan was comfortable and private. The other two fit the same profile." She pauses, and something sharp and self-aware moves through her expression. "He's selecting victims the way a burglar selects targets. You choose the ones with the most to protect and the most to give."
The comparison lands with a specificity that comes from experience, and she knows it as soon as the words leave her mouth. She holds my gaze, steady, unapologetic, a woman whospent years taking things from people now using that knowledge to help me find a killer.
"You're good at this," I say.
"I'm good at thinking like someone who takes things from people. That's not a compliment."
"It is from me, and it is tonight. Take it."
The command sits between us, low and quiet and shaped like something that has nothing to do with the case. Her chin lifts by a fraction, the reflex she has when I push into dominant register, the one that says she felt it land and is deciding whether to fight or fold. The air in the kitchen shifts, or maybe that's just blood moving differently under my skin.
"Fine," she says. "I'll take the compliment, but I'm charging interest."
"You would."
I flip to a clean page and start writing out the timeline. She leans forward to read my handwriting, and her shoulder comes within an inch of mine before she settles into the position and stays. The citrus from her soap reaches me first, followed by warmth from her body, present and unmistakable without contact. My hand stops moving on the page for a beat before I force it to continue.
"Your handwriting is terrible," she says. "How does anyone read your reports?"
"They're typed."
"Thank God for that." She tilts her head to decipher a word. Her hair falls forward, brushing the table surface near my wrist, and the accidental contact sends a jolt up my arm that I refuse to acknowledge with anything more than a shift in my grip on the pen. "Is that a six or a zero?"
"It's a six."
"Write like a grown man, Broussard."
The use of my last name is a deflection, a door she closes when the proximity gets too warm, and I recognize the retreat because I've been mapping her escape routes since the first night she called meDetectiveto keep me at arm's length. She's sitting near enough for me to count the freckles on her shoulder where the tank top doesn't cover, and she went toBroussardbecause the alternative was staying in the space where my name isAndyand the distance between us carries a different weight.
"If you can read safe specifications in the dark, you can read my handwriting," I say.
"That's a generous comparison. Safes follow logic."
We work through the timeline together, her memory pulling up specifics about Ridgewater's work schedule and his habits and how he positioned himself in the club. Her recall is exact. Her analysis is sharp. She anticipates where my questions are going and meets them with answers that save me the trip, and the rhythm of it, the back-and-forth of two minds working the same problem from different angles, builds a cadence that feels less like collaboration and more like something I don't have a safe word for.
"We need to find out where Ridgewater is living now," she says. "If Margot scrubbed his access, he's been operating from outside the club's systems for some time. He needs a base with equipment for remote access and storage for the footage archive."
"I'm working on his last known address. It's a Metairie rental."
"When you pull those transfer records from Blanchard's house, the financial trail should lead you to him. If he's smart, there will be layers, shell accounts and intermediaries." She picks up her mug and drains it. "Even smart people leave patterns in how they move money, though."
"A former burglar is giving me lessons in financial forensics."
"This former burglar knows that the hardest part of stealing isn't getting in. It's getting the take out without leaving a trail." She sets the empty mug down near mine, ceramic edges almost touching. "Speaking of leaving trails, you should eat something. You've been running on bad precinct coffee and adrenaline since this morning, and your fridge has the contents of a man who thinks protein bars count as dinner."
"I eat."
"You eat like a cop, which is to say you eat like someone who considers nutrition an obstacle between meals." She stands, and the motion puts her hip level with my shoulder, heat from her body reaching me through the thin cotton of my shirt. "I made food earlier. There are leftovers."
"You cooked in my kitchen."
"I heated things in your kitchen. Cooking implies your pantry has ingredients, which it doesn't. We're going to have a conversation about that."
She moves to the fridge, and I watch her navigate my kitchen with the territorial ease of someone who has already claimed it, and the possessive awareness that moves through me in response is heavy and warm and entirely inappropriate for a man who is supposed to be focused on a murder investigation. She pulls containers out and assembles a plate with the efficiency she uses behind the bar, and when she sets it in front of me she stands where I can see the small scar on her wrist and the pulse beating at the base of her throat.
"Eat," she says. "Then you can tell me the rest of the Ridgewater theory."
