Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1) Read online

  “I’m at Squeal’s,”he interrupts before I can tell him Ang’s dead.

  “What?”I say. Before I can stop myself, I lose it and start yelling, hating myself for acting just like Berta Colby. “At Squeals? You have no business there. When are you coming home? What about your dental appointment? What about your meeting with your probation officer—?

  “Rob?”

  He’s hung up on me. What does he care that I’ve taken time from my schedule to find him a dentist who’ll take him in and fix his meth-head teeth? That I’ve just learned my best friend has been murdered?

  I punch in his number. He doesn’t answer. I text him. No response.

  “Damn you!”

  Cursing every male Colby ever born, starting with my brother and going back to our first ancestor, I limp from the bathroom. Should’na kicked the trash can so hard. Now my good foot’s aching, too.

  * * *

  “You okay?”Aidan asks, when I come limping back into the copy room feeling like a wounded, pissed off coyote.

  “Fine.” I snarl, shrug his hand from my shoulder, and watch his green eyes wince. I don’t need or want his sympathy. Detective Aidan Hawks could never understand how I’m feeling. How could he? My friend’s been murdered. Robin’s hanging with Squeal, who deals meth from alleys behind Omar’s, a dump site for Meera’s body and for all I know for Ang’s, too.

  “I’m sorry,”I say. “It’s . . . I’m not feeling so good.”

  Officer Barbie’s cold blue eyes search my face with the hardened indifference of deep space probes. “Can you take another look at the photos?”

  You are the amateur, if you think I’m talking to you.

  I blow her off with a shrug as indifferent as her gaze, but I know from growing up as a Colby, and from my criminology background, that this is just the beginning. I’ll be questioned plenty when Officer Barbie and Aidan Hawks start digging deeper into Ang’s murder.

  Anxiety over Ang, and now Robin’s phone call, nags me. Where has my brother been? What have he and Squeal been doing? I trust Robin, but the meth makes him do crazy things. And Squeal’s the worst kind of low life.

  Dammit.

  Cringing, I imagine my brother in prison—for murder. He asked me to trust him. I’m trying, but what if he’s involved in Ang’s murder?

  What’m I gonna do?

  I think back to happier times, times before the drugs got him. We sat up nights talking. Rob wanted to become a podiatrist, or if that didn’t work, a vet working with race horses. “So I can work on feet,”he used to tell me, explaining bones in my foot and how surgery could—and could not—help my birth defect.

  What’s with men and their foot fetishes? I recall with a deepening chill the“feet”patterns on Ang’s shoulder, making the connection I’ve been struggling not to: my brother’s addiction to feet, and the fact he dated my now dead friend, Angie Miller.

  Worse than any fears I have about Robin’s sexual perversions, I know he’s a meth-head. And I know he acts a little weird at times. But—

  Is my brother a killer?

  Impossible—

  Maybe.

  Aidan pulls me gently toward the stack of copy paper boxes. “Alaina, I know this is hard for you, but I’ve got questions I’ve got to ask—”

  I refuse to sit. Brick’s fled to his lab. Aurelia’s been put on notice not to come near me. Officer Barbie’s stuck like a fly on sticky tape to Aidan.

  “DeeDee,”Aidan says, noticing me glaring at her,“call Wes and get a ride back to the station. I’m going to finish questioning Alaina and then drive her home. I think she needs time alone with this. . . .”

  All the time, he’s looking into my eyes. I just learned my friend’s been murdered, but I want to kiss him, to bruise his lips, inflict pain. It’s sick, a rogue thought, but it’s real. I’m hurt—hurt bad—but attracted to this cop in ways I can’t explain.

  Maybe it’s the pain of just learning I’ve lost Ang. Or maybe it’s a lifetime of pain, of feeling like I can’t win no matter what I do because I was born to a poor white-trash heroin addict. But being completely honest, maybe it’s my issue with self-esteem. Am I good enough for Aidan Hawks?

  I want to believe he’s attracted to me. I’d told myself earlier that he was, but so what? Even if he is, nothing can happen. How could it, with Berta Colby warning me never to bring home a cop?

  I’m gonna end up alone, just like Berta.

  And then I think of my razor blade.

  This is all too much. I want to cut. I need to cut.

  “I’m not going home,”I say, planning every detail of how I will cut. There’s a spot on my arm that’s raw, cut so deep the scar tissue has built up. I’ll begin there. It used to hurt when I first started cutting, but now I have to cut deeper into the scars. That’s what I decide to do.

  “I’m going to work,”I say, certain Omar needs me to dance Ang’s shift tonight, but secretly needing to get rid of the LEOs and go cut. “I mean, at my other job at . . . Omar’s.”

  It hits me then: Ang won’t ever dance again. I choke back a sob.

  “Oh, Jee-sus,”Barbie snorts, like she can’t bear girls who cry.

  “I could use a ride to my friend’s house,”I add, glaring at her, wanting to slap the arrogant smirk off her face. Hasn’t she ever had reason to cry? Hasn’t she ever lost someone she loves? “If I can get to his house, he’ll help me get to work,”I say, fighting back tears. No way am I giving Officer Barbie the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

  Picking up on the death’s head glares I’m shooting Officer Barbie, Aidan says,“Detective Laws, go call Wes . . . now.”

  She ignored his previous command, but this time Aidan’s commanding tone gets her moving. Already on her cell phone calling Wes for her ride, she strides in a huff from the copy room. I’m secretly pleased.

  “Do you feel ready to talk now?”he asks.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Anger and frustration causes me to resent the empathy in his tone. An empathetic LEO? Not! I mean, who’s he think he’s dealing with? I’m a freakin’ Colby! Like I should trust a cop?

  “I’m fine,”I say. “Where’s that photo? I want another look.”

  * * *

  I can’t bear seeing those bites on her shoulder, but I’ve made Ang a promise. Standing close to Aidan Hawks and feeling sweat pooling in my armpits, I only hope I can keep it.

  “Try to relax,”he says, touching my shoulder lightly. I let his hand rest there this time. “I just need to know a couple of things.”

  Like where my brother is and if he murdered my best friend?

  “I’m okay,”I say,“Really.” Liar,a little voice shoots back, my shoulder burning where Aidan touched me. The attraction is definitely chemical, and it feels mutual, or at least I tell myself so. Disturbed by my physical reaction—it’s all happening so quickly that it feels like a dream, a fairytale—I step away from him. My friend’s dead. This isn’t good timing. Standing closer to the copy machine, I stare at the photo, trying to make sense of the bite marks.

  “They look like bird tracks,”I say, peering at the funny looking bite wounds,“or feet.”

  “Good,”Aidan says, glancing over my shoulder, so I feel his nearness, the comfort of it, the heat. “That’s what they are. They’re feet.”

  “What’s this pervert trying to prove?”I ask. “Why would anyone do this to her?”

  “They’re part of his signature,”Aidan says,“It’s—”

  “I knowwhat signature is,”I interrupt. “I’m a criminology major.”

  “Sorry, I know you are,”he says, then changes the subject to hide his discomfort, I’m guessing, with my shrill, discordant tone.

  Trying to do a better job of controlling myself, both physically and emotionally, I take mental notes. Detective Hawks has obviously ran a background check on me. I would. Yet feeling automatically guilty, like I’ve got something to hide, makes me even angrier with myself. Why should I care? I’ve got a clean record.

 
Then my little insecure Colby voice says,“But your family’s record is pretty black.”

  “Do you have any idea who could’ve done this, Ms. Colby?”

  “It’s Alaina, and no,”I say, warding off a bolt of fear. I can’t rat out Robin, can I? “No, I . . . don’t.”

  He shifts, and I smell a whiff of clean shaven skin, the leather of his holster, the starch of his shirt. This copy room is just too freakin’ small to handle the primal conversation our bodies are having. Out of anger, I’d wanted to kiss him earlier, to bruise his lips. Goosebumps prickling my neck, I avoid looking into his eyes, sure he knows I’m lying about knowing who I think might’ve murdered Ang.

  But am I?

  I gaze at the photo, unable to tear my eyes from Ang’s pulpy shoulder.

  Could Robin have done this?

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Uh.” I swallow. Is he trying to trap me into revealing details about Robin and Ang? What does he already know?

  “I . . . not very long,”I say. “We met in my dance class last semester. She’s a dancer, uh, she was a dancer at Omar’s, like me.”

  “Did she have any boyfriends?”

  I tense. In between guys last semester, she’d dated Robin. But I can’t mention this without rolling over on my brother. “Um, she told me she did last week, but I don’t know his name, his real name, I mean,”I add, aware offering a tidbit of info is better than offering nothing at all. “Everyone calls him Suds.”

  “What about enemies?”he asks, letting my evasiveness drop, for now. I know he’ll jump right back on this when he wants. I’ve taken several classes on interviewing suspects, potential perps, witnesses. “Do you know if she had anyone who’d want to harm her?”

  I stare at the photo. My friend’s dead. Ang’s truly dead. Somebody wanted her that way. I cringe, thinking of the pain she must’ve endured. Did she have an enemy who’d want to do this to her, or was my friend just someone like me, a college co-ed trying to make a living, but who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  I shrug. Maybe whoever did this hadn’t targeted Ang specifically—it’s too early to tell—but he was definitely someone I’d consider her enemy. “She had at least one enemy, didn’t she?”

  “I guess that’s it, then,”he says, folding the photos into a manila folder.

  His effort to hide a quick frown at my non-answer tells me he’s picked up on my evasiveness. LEOs can pick up on the most seemingly insignificant gesture, a slight shift in body stance, a change in tone of voice. This, I also know from my background, and what I’ve learned in class.

  He pulls the folder from the copy machine and stares down at me with that incredibly sexy snarl curling his lips, a smile of disappointment, maybe, his green eyes questioning and his gaze boring into me. “Come on. I’ll drive you to your friend’s,”he says.

  My gut flip-flops. I know I’ve been busted, but I can’t roll over on Robin, so I look for alternatives.

  Stoke. Angie hated Stoke. Wouldn’t Aidan find this fact interesting? Saying nothing, I give him the address to Stoke’s apartment. I don’t know who killed Ang, not for sure. I do know this, though: if Robin did, I need to get to him before Aidan Hawks does. And who better to help me find Ang’s killer than Stoke, a criminal justice major, same as me?

  Chapter 21

  “Your friend lives here?”Aidan asks, pulling to the curb in front of Stoke’s apartment house. “Damn! The place needs some rehab work, doesn’t it?”

  He thinks this is a dump? I could show him a real dump, my house in Goshen. I fold my arms and stare at the bleak brick building with its crumbling concrete steps. This place reminds me of our trailer park, the bare muddy yard pocked by motorcycle parts and even in November, blanketed by grimy snow. So grim. What would Aidan say if I took him home to that? How would he react?

  “This place’s not so bad,”I say, defensive, scoping out the two-story brownstone, its red brick façade smoked a purplish black by age and pollution, the exhale of a city busy being industrious. “Lots of nice folks probably live here.”

  “Are you shittin’ me?” he asks, raking his gaze across my body. “Maybe John Wayne Gacy . . .”

  Unable to help myself, I giggle. It’s uncanny how comfortable he makes me feel, how desirable. “Don’t let the dope deal going down on the corner fool you,”I joke. “This is a high-rent neighborhood.”

  Joking about dirt and poverty isn’t cool, but it helps release my anxiety. Aidan laughs, too, and our gazes catch and lock. I enjoy his masculine voice with its gravelly edge, the way his eyes don’t ask but take possession of my body, and the way we slip into comfortable with a capital“C,”despite the warning my heart keeps sending.

  I’m definitely flunking Berta Colby 101: no LEOs.

  “Good thing I’m not with Cinci Vice,”Aidan says,“or they’d be downsizing this rat hole in a hurry.”

  “You’re right. It’s awful,”I agree, sighing. At what point should I tell him what I know about Ang hating Stoke—and about my suspecting Robin?

  An ice cube pricks the base of my spine. It was a bad idea to plan to attempt to seduce Aidan Hawks back at Verbote Dental. He’s an alpha dog. Even in the short time I’ve known him, it’s easy to see he likes to call the shots with women. I’m okay with that. I like strong men. In fact, I’ve always imagined my grand daddy, the young musician hitch-hiking to Cincinnati to perform a gig in some dive, was strong. I only wish Grandma Colby had told him about the child, my mother, who he’d fathered. I’m sure he would’ve stepped up to the plate and taken responsibility for his child. Maybe my mom’s life would’ve been vastly different—

  Maybe mine would be, too.

  “I’ll need to ask you more questions,”Aidan says, jolting me back to the present.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stick around,”I say. “I intend to find out who killed my friend.”

  His look turns serious. “No. Stay out of this. It’s police business.”

  “My friend’s dead,”I shoot back. “That makes it my business.”

  “It’s not safe, Alaina. Don’t meddle. You could get hurt. You could be—killed.”

  “Thanks for the ride.” Ignoring his warning and grabbing my backpack, I open the door of the Buick, an obvious unmarked—way too clean and sedate for Aidan Hawks—and scoot across the seat toward the door, hoping against hope he’ll ask for my phone number.

  But what chance do I have? I’m a Colby. Goshen Gimp. Crip.

  Stop. Stop short-changing yourself because of your family, because you’re a Colby—it’s unfair.

  If I want him, why shouldn’t I have Aidan?

  “Alaina—”

  The way he says my name, the touch of his hand on my shoulder, shocks me. I struggle with my emotions, my need. I’m aching for this guy. He’s solid, not stick-in-the-mud solid, but steady-as-she-blows, Viking-hot-seaworthy solid. He’s built for the stormiest wild waves, a ride I’m having no difficulty imagining.

  His hand lingers.

  I think he wants me. If I’m reading him right, his smile, the way he keeps throwing sideways glances at me, touching me. . . . Our gazes meet, a new experience for me. I’ve never before felt intimacy this deep, especially not this quickly. This time, I’m certain the chemistry’s there for him, too. The front seat of his Buick shrinks to a small torrid piece of real estate, although not half as hot as the fire scorching my insides.

  “I liked you the second I saw you,”he says. “I don’t want to feel like this, but I feel like we’re the only two people in the world right now. Is that wrong?”

  I know what Berta would say. “No, it’s not wrong, just another LEO and his white-trash snitch.”

  How difficult is it to have front-seat sex in a Buick?

  “Not as difficult as it is to have sex in the bucket seats of a Mustang,”Berta Colby would also advise,“but still fun with just about anyone—except a cop. No cops.”

  I’m her genetic clone, but Mom and I differ in one huge w
ay, and that’s with regard to a particular cop: this one. We barely know each other, but our bodies keep talking sweet-talk. It’s a phenomenon, a chemical attraction called“love at first sight.” I’ve heard Ang talk about it, but never felt it until now. Waves of desire flood parts of me I’ve not known I had, awakening me to new physical sensations. The April sun reflecting through the Buick’s windows washes over me like hot milk, adding to my body’s warmth.

  “You don’t understand what I’m about to say,”he says, leaning toward me,“but—”

  Eyes closed, I lean across the seat, push my body toward him—slightly—since this has to be his idea—Mr. Alpha Dog’s—and then I wait expectantly for his kiss.

  I feel his hand fall from my shoulder to my breast.

  Oh my God!

  For one heartbeat, he lets it linger there, his grazing fingers so light I think I’m imagining it. He quickly moves his hand to my face and cups me under the chin until, opening my eyes, I gaze into his.

  “—this is a homicide investigation, Alaina. Other than as a possible witness, you’re out of this. Got it?”

  You could knock me over with a feather. “What?”

  He pulls back, removing the nearness that’s making me ache in ways imaginable only in the trashy wet dreams of a sex maniac like Tater McClosky. Or a certified nymphomaniac like my mom. It’s doubtful she would, but if she ever did do a cop I’m sure she’d insist on doing it in the cruiser, just to heighten her enjoyment. She’s that kinky.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you,”he says. “It’s . . . wrong.”

  I didn’t imagine it. He’s apologizing, feeling awkward, unprofessional, maybe. “No, it’s not—” I’ve already made up my mind: I will have sex with a LEO—thisLEO—in the front seat of this Buick, right here. Right now.

  “Alaina, I respect the fact you’re a criminology major, and I know how you feel, but—”

  The moment of heady brilliance, of complete nonverbal communication, the physical attraction we’ve just shared, evaporates. Poof! Gone! I want to jam his hand back onto my breast, but instead I say,“You don’t think I’m up for the job of helping find Ang’s murderer, do you?”