Page 60 of Murder Notes

“Turning me into a monster doesn’t make your guilt go away.”

“Pretending you’re my hero won’t make it go away either.”

“I didn’t kill him,” he reminds me. “I just cleaned it up.”

“You bastard,” I say.

“You needed a reminder.”

“I have them every night, I promise you. I can’t believe I ever—”

“Loved me?”

“Fucked you.” I yank my arm away and start walking.

And I don’t look back. I can’t think about Kane or myself. All I can think about is Kane’s words about Nelson being so low-down and dirty that he would, and has, shot a partner in the back.

My father’s involved in this. Kane is involved in this. I have the protection of being my father’s daughter, and like it or not, Kane’s perceived woman. Greg does not, and I’m worried I’ve just put a target on my ex-partner’s back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I call Greg a half dozen times during the taxi ride to his shitty apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, and he never answers. Once I’m at his building, the same applies to the buzzer I need him to hit to allow me up to his floor, but I’m resourceful and simply follow someone else in the door. I trek up the ten narrow floors, for a good morning workout, and reach his door, hitting the buzzer a few times before I start pounding.

Five minutes later, the door opens and some alternate version of Greg stands there. Yes, he’s still linebacker huge, both tall and wide. Yes, he’s still the good-looking, thirtysomething guy that I have absolutely no sexual chemistry with at all, which only makes me love him more. And yes, he’s wearing Greg’s standard white T-shirt, but this one has a stain on it, and his favorite faded jeans have also been replaced with plaid pajama bottoms. Not to mention this guy standing in front of me has unruly hair and all kinds of scruff on his face, when my Greg is always clean-shaven and well groomed. “Where did you put Greg?”

“What the hell are you doing here, Lilah?”

“Nice to see you, too, sweets. Are you sick?”

“Sick? I’m sick all right.” He turns and walks away, leaving the door open behind him.

“O . . . kay,” I say, entering his apartment that is one big, usually clean, room that now has pizza boxes on the kitchen table, as well as random trash, while he has now plopped on his back in the center of his unmade bed.

Shoving my hands in my coat pockets, I move to the end of the mattress by his big-ass bare feet that I’m guessing stink right now. “I repeat,” I say. “Are you sick? Do you need soup?”

“And you’re gonna make me soup, Lilah? Ms. Get Your Own Fucking Takeout?”

I crinkle my nose. “I’m offended. I got you takeout often when we were partners. I just don’t like stupid people who can’t order right. So if you’re sick—”

“Sick and fucking tired.”

I eye the whiskey bottle by the bed. Usually he sips wine like a girl trying to lose two pounds she can never lose. “What the hell is going on?”

“IA is what’s going on. They’re up my ass and taking my career through the dark hell of my colon.”

“Gross and why the hell would IA be up your anything? I mean, you? Mr. Rogers himself.”

“No one knows who Mr. Rogers is anymore, Lilah, unless they are sixty.”

“Opie then.”

“Him either.”

“Stop,” I say. “What the hell is going on? You’re one of the good guys.”

He sits up and scrubs a hand through his unruly dark-brown hair. “Yeah. Well, apparently not good enough.”

I sit next to him. “Talk to me. What happened?”