11. Colin #2
“Not really,” Chloe eventually responds, her words slurred.
She hums as I stare at the black screen until it suddenly lights up, and I’m staring at her face as she squints at the bright screen.
The exterior of a house shows in her background, and I lift my head to the house in front of me, comparing the colors and details.
When I turn my attention back to the phone, Chloe looks dazed, her eyes seemingly unable to focus on the screen.
Something vicious begins gnawing at the pit of my stomach.
It occurs to me I’ve never actually seen Chloe drunk before. Even the times at the bowling alley when I know she’s been drinking, she’s never seemed to have so much as a buzz—beyond the normal buzz of energy she constantly carries.
I keep the sound running in the background as I navigate to the camera feeds I have in her house, scrolling the bar back to the time I left.
Maeve says they’re going to a party and then Stone and Stella leave with a promise to return and pick her up.
Maeve paints the scene where Chloe and I found the deer, but throughout the whole recording, their voices are muffled by staticky music playing in the room. So much for hearing her conversations.
Chloe flits around her house in the hours after that, showering, dressing, doing her hair. At no point does she appear to be pre-gaming, and according to the GPS monitor on her phone, she’s only been at this party for an hour.
So how is she already so drunk?
I click back to Chloe’s camera. “What time is it?” she mumbles.
“Don’t worry about it,” the faceless man says, his hand coming into the shot to brush her hair behind her shoulder.
I’m moving across the lawn before I realize it, my feet burning a path in the grass as I continue past the front of the house to the side gate.
The details of the front and back of the house look the same, and since I don’t see Chloe and this mystery man sitting anywhere out front, I’m assuming they’re in the back.
I come around the corner so quickly, the man jumps when he sees me, eyes wide in surprise as if he’d been counting on having Chloe all to himself for the foreseeable future.
Chloe’s head wobbles as she slowly turns in my direction. It takes her a moment to recognize me, but when she does, her features light up, her lips turning up into a smile.
“Colin,” she whispers.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man growls as I cross the yard and pull Chloe up from where they’re seated at the edge of the pool.
“This is my friend,” Chloe sings, which almost makes me laugh, because we are not friends. “He’s a d—”
“Designated driver,” I interrupt.
“We were right in the middle of a conversation,” the man argues as I pull Chloe by her wrist toward the door at the back of the house.
“Conversation’s over.”
Our arms are stretched about as far as they can get as Chloe struggles to keep up with my pace.
I don’t even know what I was planning to do once I got to this point, but I couldn’t ignore the little voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong, and Chloe was in trouble.
Regardless of how I feel about her, no woman deserves to be taken advantage of.
I couldn’t just sit by and let something happen to her.
Unless…I stop, turning back to her. Is she faking it?
I set my hands on her shoulders, lowering my head a bit to get eye level with her. “How much have you had to drink, Chloe?”
She gasps, her eyes going wide. “I haven’t heard you say my name since high school.”
Surprised by her response, I loosen my grip on her shoulders, standing straight again. “Answer the question.”
She shrugs lazily, her eyelids falling again.
“What’s going on?” I turn from Chloe to Stella who’s looking at me like she’s willing me to go up in flames for touching her best friend.
“I’m taking her home.”
“Like hell you are,” Stella spits. Stone arrives behind her in a flash, his protective demeanor on full display as he rises to his full height and glares at me.
“Mills?” Micah arrives to the group with a casual smile on his face, his eyes shaded behind sunglasses even though it’s nighttime and we’re all inside.
“What are you doing here?” I ask gruffly.
“Just partyin’,” he responds, lifting a cup into the air, his casual smile turning cheesy.
“Yeah, detective, we’re partyin’!” Chloe slurs behind me, lacking the energy I’m sure she intended to display.
The heat in the air cools a bit when Maeve appears next to Stella, even as Stella leans into her and whispers something in her ear. Whatever Maeve says back seems to relax her friend, and Maeve turns to me, trust and hesitancy both reflected in her green eyes.
“Get her home safe,” Maeve demands. I nod, a silent agreement passing between us. Stella storms away with Stone on her heels.
I grip Chloe’s arm again, holding her steady as I lean into Micah. “I think someone drugged her,” I tell him. “Will you make sure her friends get home okay?”
He looks completely unfazed by my suspicion, giving me a lazy salute and a promise that he will watch over Maeve and Stella, though Stone seems to have that covered.
Once I get Chloe situated in my passenger seat, which is more of a struggle than I expected it to be, Micah calls my name, jogging over to me with a small pouch in hand.
“There’s a blood kit in here,” he says, holding the pouch in my direction.
“What do I need a blood kit for?”
He pushes the bag at me, urging me to take it. “Get a sample from her. I’ll have Lindsey run it in the lab.”
I reach for the small black bag in his hand, not processing exactly what he’s saying.
“Get a sam—” I start, but he’s already moving away from me, disappearing back into the house.
I shake my head and circle the front of my truck, climbing inside and pulling onto the street in the direction of Chloe’s house.
When I pull into her cul-de-sac, I bypass Barry’s car at the curb and park in Chloe’s driveway, ignoring him as he calls to me from the edge of her property.
He continues to be low on my priority list of worry, but I don’t miss the flash of his camera or the thought that passes through my head that this will be front page news tomorrow, and my captain will likely see it.
Chloe has gotten increasingly sloppy as the minutes have passed, and it’s only been about twenty since I pulled her from the backyard of the house party.
When we finally make it up the stairs, my hand wound around her waist and hers dangled over my shoulder, she stumbles away from me and flops herself into her cushy bed.
“Should you…change?” I ask, eyes trailing over her skintight dress.
The question is entirely innocent, because, okay—maybe I’m willing to admit at this point that I do want to see Chloe Stark naked, despite the fact she’s at the top of my staged-accidental-murder suspect list, but I wouldn’t want to take advantage of her in her current state. No woman deserves that.
She smiles weakly, but never responds.
I cross her room slowly, eyeing the rise and fall of her chest. Lifting my thumb to her bottom lip, I pull it down, savoring the feel of her soft skin against my finger.
I wonder if kissing Chloe would be as enjoyable as I’ve imagined it to be.
Reckless. Rich. Intoxicating.
I brush my knuckles against her cheekbone, her lashes fluttering against my fingers, and I have the sudden urge to lower my lips to hers. To taste her without consequence. There’s a foreign voice in the back of my head that I don’t recognize, screaming, “She’s yours! Claim her now!”
I remove my hand from her face before I listen to it.
I’ve never seen her like this, so…quiet, for one. But also, so innocent looking. So vulnerable. And I wonder again if I have her all wrong.
Or maybe, it’s myself that I’m misunderstanding. Is it hatred that’s driving me toward her over and over again, or something else entirely?
I head back downstairs to retrieve the bag Micah gave me, returning to her side and dropping to my knees at the edge of the bed where she’s sleeping peacefully. I read the directions that accompany the needle and tube contraption—and thank God there are picture instructions.
I’ve given my mother countless shots over the past year, so I’m no stranger to needles.
But taking blood is something I’ve never done, so I mimic what I’ve only seen nurses do in movies.
I search Chloe’s nightstand for something to wrap around her arm, reaching for a hair tie and sliding it over her wrist and up to her bicep.
It flexes against her toned arm, and the vein on the inside of her elbow slowly comes to life.
I run my finger across it, fascinated with the idea of having Chloe so helpless.
I glance up at her face, and she remains unmoving.
She winces slightly when I poke the tiny needle into her vein, but she’s still fast asleep.
I pull the plunger back and watch the little container fill with her blood before flicking the tab to stop the flow as the diagram showed, gathering everything before pressing a cotton ball to her arm.
Retreating from her bedside, I flip the light off near the door, turning back to watch her breathe as the strand of lights twinkles softly above her head.
And then I leave the room and search her house from top to bottom for the validation I need to prove to myself that she is who I think she is.