That Touch of Ink Read Online Free Page B

there.”
    We said goodbye, and I hung up quickly, preventing him from saying anything else. I had surprised myself by asking to see him, but something about tripping over a body had affected me. Brad wanted to talk to me, and I didn’t want to be alone. Something about Tex’s cold request that I make this phone call affected me too. I was an inconvenience to his crime scene. He was getting me out of the way. He was a cop, and he was there to do cop things.
    Watching Tex work, I was reminded that his mind was not limited to only the most basic of male triggers. He was alert, constantly processing his surroundings, driven by a problem-solving obsession that made him an excellent detective. If I had been an anomaly in his landscape of women, he was the same to me. We were different but alike. An unanswered what-if hung between us, like a helium balloon at a party. But eventually the what-if lost its buoyancy and slowly descended, like a relic of a party that never happened.
    “Yo, Night!” called Tex. He walked toward me. I stood and met him halfway.
    “Did you make your phone call?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “How’d it go?”
    I didn’t know how to tell Tex how I felt about seeing Brad again. I was barely able to answer that to myself. Questions assaulted me. The kind of questions a single woman in her late forties shouldn’t have to answer.
    “I don’t want to talk about it.” I waited for a couple of seconds. Tex didn’t move. “I’m seeing him tonight. We’re meeting at Trader Josh’s.”
    I looked past him to the edge of the property where the gravel parking spaces gave way to grass that had turned a bland shade of brown. When I looked back at Tex to gauge his reaction, I got nothing.
    A slight breeze swept past us, lifting the hair from his forehead. The door to my car knocked into the back of my legs and I fell forward. Tex put his hands out to catch me. I fell into his chest. His arms wrapped around my body as I pressed against him. Heat seared between our clothes. I pulled away and looked at his face. His pupils had dilated in the darkness, and his blue eyes went dark, smoky. He didn’t move right away, and, selfishly, neither did I.
    “You okay? He asked.
    “I’m fine.
    “Good.”
    “Fine.”
    I stepped back. He reached into the car and pulled out the towel, opened it up, and wrapped it around me. I pulled down the bottom of my sweater and looked up to find him staring at the gingham boat appliqué on the front of it. I took the ends of the towel from his hands and secured it around my waist to cover the stains on my pants and keep them from getting onto my car’s interior. Another cop approached us and Tex made a brief introduction. Before he left me to make my statement, he leaned in and whispered, “I’ve missed you, Night.”
    I didn’t remember driving back to the apartment. My mind was otherwise occupied and my internal auto-pilot got me to the building, through the back door, and into my apartment. Already I regretted making plans with Brad. I wanted to pick Rocky up from my neighbor’s apartment and cradle him all night, but I knew if I didn’t confront the issue, he’d show up on my doorstep a second time.
    There was a note lying just inside the front door. Madison, I took Rocky out to White Rock Lake. Can you pick him up tonight? Anytime after nine would be good. Thanks, Effie.
    Effie was a teenager who watched Rocky for me when he was a puppy. Now that he was trained, I knew I could leave him alone, but he’d traded his habit of knocking over lamps for chewing on shoes, and besides, Effie loved his company as much as he loved hers.
    The note was time-dated seven thirty. I checked the clock on the wall. It was twenty after eight.
    The first thing I did was take off the pink corduroys that were stained with marinara and blood. I balled them up, put them in a plastic grocery bag, knotted it shut, and set it by the front door. My left thigh held a six-inch-long scratch from the