Page 36 of Wild (Chicago Underground 4)
“But she’s…”
He looked lost in thought, bewildered.
“I don’t know what she is. She seems so young, and yet she’s clearly old enough. She’s innocent, but she swears like a sailor. She wants to have sex, but she doesn’t… She hasn’t…”
“A virgin. I think that’s the word you’re looking for.”
“Christ. Is she really?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How unsavory.” He looked fascinated.
“Hmm. You remember that you promised to keep your hands off. Do I need to fit her with a chastity belt around you?”
His arousal thrummed through the air. “Only if you want me to physically pry it from her body and fuck her raw.”
Of course, if her purity turned him on, it made sense that chastity would too. Apparently he’d found a new fetish, although whether his trigger was purity or just Ella, I wasn’t sure. “Never mind. We’ll just have to rely on your honor.”
“We really are in danger.” He grew serious. “I want to keep her, but if I did… If she were really with me, she wouldn’t be able to go back.”
“She doesn’t belong here. She’s not like you and me.”
“So get her the hell out of my house,” he snapped, but his anger deflated quickly.
I spoke quietly. “I don’t see why you’re in knots over her anyway. You were like meat on a slab to those women when we went out. And yet you never fucked any of them.”
“I had you,” he said.
My heart melted a little at the simplicity of that statement. As if he had no reason to look elsewhere when he had me. As if we had been a real couple.
“You could have slept with other women when we were together. It’s not like I would have quit.”
“I wouldn’t have. I thought of you as my girlfriend.”
His honesty was touching and guilt inducing. Sure, it had been the girlfriend experience all the way. He hadn’t just taken me out on dates. I had lived here. The envelope that appeared on my bedside table could have been an allowance in a certain kind of relationship. And I had cared about him. I still did.
But if it was possible to cheat on him emotionally, I had done so. All along, I had wanted another man. From the look on Philip’s face, self-deprecating and a little weary, he knew it too.
Chapter Eighteen
Jeans and a Bears cap flattened me into just another Chicago citizen. Anyway, no one would expect me to sniff around at the station while on the CPD’s most-wanted list. Even I was a little surprised that I dared. It was almost like I wanted to get caught.
But I had reasons for coming here, and they weren’t only about seeing a certain cop. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jade had said. It niggled at me, the way Jenny was connected to Henri through her boyfriend. The way she had been targeted for her relationship to him.
Henri kept a few girls in his inner circle, and she was one of them. So was I. What if I had been targeted the same way?
I had dismissed the idea at first. I hadn’t had a druggie boyfriend who could have screwed Henri over. I had just been a dumb blonde in need of large quantities of cash. Open and shut. No mystery. But the thought had come back, worrying and worrying at me until I had to come here just to prove it wrong.
The old colonial building bustled with distracted cops and jaded public attorneys. A rumpled suit held the door open for me, and I walked in, hiding in plain sight, immersing myself in the spill of sweaty worker bees. Some people might think a prostitute would get nervous here, but what was a police station except a brick box of men with something to prove? Criminals, law enforcement officers. Customers, all of them.
I didn’t quite have the audacity, or the suicidal fortitude, to walk straight into the detective’s bull pen. Instead I exited the flow near the back offices. A shudder ran through me as I passed the double doors to the morgue; I preferred my marks alive, thank you very much. Ah, there it was: the evidence room. Possibly the safest place in this joint and definitely the friendliest.
A small bulletproof window had an opening at the bottom, like one of those banks from the eighties that screamed “we don’t trust you” to their customers. At least they were honest.
I rapped on the window. A few minutes later, Chase appeared. His face went slack with disbelief when he saw me. I imagined he would have gone pale too, if his skin weren’t practically obsidian.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered, his white teeth flashing. Not a smile; a grimace.
