Page 7 of Somno Slave

My stomach tightens.

This isn’t routine.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

The man in the middle finally speaks. “Rheda Ainsley?”

My eyes narrow. “Yes?”

“My name is Detective Peter Holmes. May we come in?”

His name echoes around my mind louder and louder until recognition lands like a bullet.

Peter Holmes.

Peter Holmes has always felt like the kind of name that exists above everyone else’s pay grade. He delegates, observes, appears only when a case has already begun to rot from the inside. Intake rooms are beneath his notice. He sends people likemeinto rooms like this. He doesn’t step into them himself.

He was a name without a face until this very moment. And the fact that he’s here at almost six in the morning, with a forehead scrunched into layers, makes my spine straighten before my mind can catch up.

Startled, I push back my chair and stand.

“Detective Holmes,” I greet him quickly. I step forward to shake his hand and realise too late that both of his are occupied with files. My hand stalls awkwardly in the air before I lower it, heat creeping faintly up my neck.

“Excuse my manners, Sir. I didn’t recognise you.” I add quickly.

His mouth quirks. It’s not quite a smile, but something close enough to register as warmth. “Stand down, Miss Ainsley.”

He steps past me and kicks out the chair beside mine, sitting down with a quiet finality.

Not across from me.

Beside me.

The movement unsettles me more than it should. I glance at the empty chair across the table, then back at him, a crease forming between my brows.

“Are you taking the room?” the wordmyis on the tip of my tongue but I swallow it down just as fast.

“We’re joining you. Yes.”

“You’re... sitting in?” I say, keeping my voice level.

He exhales slowly and leans back, folding his hands loosely in his lap like he’s settling in for a long conversation. “Afraid so.”

I note the way the muscles in his face flex and then relax as though he’s forcing calmness, but the fracture in the corner of his lip reveals something different. He pauses before breaking the silence again.

“I’ve been looking at your file. It seems you have quite a knack for making people talk.”

I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question, so, my lips stay pursed.

“Six hundred and seventy-three cases,” his eyes sharpen. “All of them a success.”

My heart skips a beat. “Yes, Sir.”

He opens the file in his lap, and I glance down at my name scrawled across the top of the page. Below it, there’s a picture of me on my first day. My eyes are bright; cheeks flushed with excitement.

My CV has been pinned in the file, too. It’s grubby and dirty with fingerprints staining the sides, and words have been highlighted, illegible comments sprawled in the margins by the interviewing officer.

“Do you enjoy what you do, Miss Ainsley?” He asks.