Chapter Fifty
“Rick!” A high-pitched voice shot through the haze, too bright, too sharp. Rick jerked upright, hand halfway to his sidearm, before he realized it was only Kitty, standing at the threshold of his office, still in her hat and coat, eyes wide and jittery as a colt.
“Jesus Christ, Kitty.” He groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“You trying to shave a few years off my life?” His neck ached; a knot of muscle pulled tight, the price of spending the night half-folded on the couch.
The blinds were still drawn, the room steeped in that dull gray morning light that made the city look half-drowned.
With a quick snap of the door, the bullpen chatter vanished. “Sorry.” She chewed her bottom lip, fingers knotting together. “Is it true? About Frost?”
Rick swung his legs to the floor, trying to get his bearings. His shoes were somewhere under the couch; his tie a noose loosened at his throat. He raked his hair with his fingers, straightened his suspenders. “What about him?”
“I heard he’s under arrest.”
Rick exhaled slowly, hunting for one shoe in the shadows. “Yeah. We got him. He’s the Sculptor. All the pieces fit.” His voice was still rough from sleep, but the words carried weight.
Kitty blanched, her lips parting like she’d swallowed nails. She hovered near the file cabinet, glancing toward the glass wall as if the bullpen might grow ears. “Rick, I need to tell you something.”
He found the other shoe, dragged it on, and sat up straighter. “Go on.”
She paced the office, heels clicking a nervous rhythm. Once, twice, then she spun around, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m the one who gave him the details.”
That cut through the fog in his head sharper than a razor. Rick shot to his feet, all sleep burned away. “What?”
Kitty flinched at his tone, but pressed on. “The victims. The crime scenes.” Her voice trembled, but there was no stopping it now. “I… I was seeing him.”
Rick’s pulse thudded, hot and ugly. He stepped toward her, fists clenched. “You were what?”
Her eyes brimmed behind the glasses, but she didn’t back down. “We were dating. Quietly. No one knew. He was so…” She bit the word off, shaking her head as the tears came. “He kept asking, kept pressing, and I thought—God, I thought it was harmless.”
Rick’s anger snapped loose. “Harmless?” The word was a low growl, rattling deep in his chest. “Christ, Kitty, you had to know better. You didn’t just compromise the case—you put yourself in his hands. What if he decided you were next?”
Her composure crumbled. With a jerky motion, she yanked off her glasses, dropped them on the desk, and buried her face in her palms. “I feel like such an idiot! He was using me.” The words spilled out between sobs.
“I thought he cared, but he… he dropped me. Two nights ago. Just cut me off. Because he didn’t need me anymore. ”
Rick stood over her, jaw tight, rage still buzzing under his skin.
Every instinct told him to yell, shake some sense into her.
But seeing her like that—small, broken, a kid who’d let her heart blind her—twisted the anger into something else.
He cursed under his breath and put a heavy hand on her shaking shoulder. “Hey.” His voice softened. “Enough.”
She lifted her tear-streaked face, lip trembling.
He gathered her into his arms, solid and unyielding, holding her while she shook. She was nothing in his grip, fragile as wet paper, and it hit him how easy Frost had played her, peeled her open, sucked her dry.
After a long silence, she whispered against his chest, “It’s on me. He knew because of me. I had to tell you.”
Rick tightened his hold, gaze fixed on the window and the gray morning sky. “You came clean. That’s what matters.”
But even as he said it, his mind was already grinding, turning over the evidence, feeling out the new fault lines Kitty’s confession had carved through the case.
Everything hinged on the murder weapon now, that damned scalpel unearthed in Frost’s home.
He needed to know if Gloria had matched the prints on it to Frost’s, and he needed to know now.
Kitty pulled back and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. She slipped her glasses on again, trying to put the pieces of her armor together.
“You gonna be all right?” Rick asked as he grabbed his suit jacket and flung it over his arm.
She gave a sharp laugh that caught in her throat. “Yeah. Give me five minutes and a gallon of mascara, and I’ll be the picture of professional composure.” Her voice wobbled, but she made the effort, and he respected that.
He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, dollface. Go get some coffee.”
“Right. That’s exactly what I need.” She straightened her hat, the sharp little shrug of someone already stacking her walls back up.
They left the office together. The bullpen met them with its low thrum of morning activity, the hum of computers and muted chatter as a couple of detectives traded jokes over paper cups of joe.
A thin haze of cigarette smoke hung stubbornly in the air, mixing with the scent of fresh toast from somewhere down the hall.
No one looked twice at the pair of them, and that suited Rick fine.
“Rick,” Kitty said, soft enough so only he could hear as they walked past the rows of desks. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, sugar.”
He slowed to steer her toward her desk with a touch at the elbow. She sat, drew a steadying breath, and squared her shoulders, her chin high again, as if daring anyone to ask why her eyes were red. Satisfied, Rick turned toward the corridor and went straight into the men’s room.
The tiles were dim under the old bulbs, the space quiet save for the drip of a leaky faucet.
He hooked his jacket on the door, took a urinal, relieved himself, and moved to the sink, rolling his sleeves up.
The mirror showed him a picture of a man who’d spent the night on an office couch instead of a bed: jaw shadowed, eyes puffy, hair flattened on one side and sticking up on the other.
For a split second, the memory rose uninvited—Ash’s lips around his cock, the cramped stall, the reckless heat of it—then he shut it down.
He brushed his teeth, then washed his face until the water ran cold and his cheeks burned pink.
In a moment, he resembled a human being again.
Straightening, Rick ran a hand over his hair and tugged his tie straight.
When he shrugged into his jacket, he looked presentable enough.
A cop ought to at least smell clean before shaking down the lab for answers.
With that thought, he flicked off the faucet and headed for the elevators, hoping Gloria had something solid waiting.
As the car descended, his thoughts slid again where they always seemed to when things went quiet.
Rick pulled his phone out, thumb hesitating over the screen.
He wanted to hear that velvet voice to calm the noise in his head.
But it was still early. Ash would be dead to the world, and Rick wasn’t about to wake him just because he couldn’t keep his own mind straight.
Instead, he typed a quick message—‘Call me when you’re up’—and slipped the phone into his pocket.
The elevator spat him out into the basement hall, cooler than the floors above. The hush was thick, broken only by the hum of vents and the occasional rattle of pipes. A tang of antiseptic clung to the air, the kind of smell you carried on your clothes if you lingered too long.
Rick followed the corridor to the glass-paned lab door and pushed it open. Gloria was at the counter, coaxing a smear across a glass slide with the edge of a scalpel, movements quick and neat despite the early hour. “Morning, G.”
She glanced up, gaze sparkling over her cat-eye frames. “Why, it’s Romeo himself.”
Rick snorted. “Don’t start. I haven’t had coffee yet.”
“Oh, darling, neither have I,” she said, tucking an errant curl into place, her pose ready for a close-up. “But I still manage to look alive.” She punctuated it with a faint flourish of her wrist, the overhead light catching in her heavy bracelet.
He gave her a dry once-over. “Date with the chiropractor went well, I take it?”
She raised her chin, perfectly penciled eyebrows shooting high. “I had a marvelous time, darling, simply marvelous. But I doubt you came all the way down here to hear about my love life.” She peered at him sideways, head tilted in suspicion.
Rick huffed in assent. Enough small talk. “Anything on the scalpel?”
“Plenty.” She set the blade down with a gentle clink and wiped her hands on a towel, the movement practiced, almost stage-ready.
From a tray, she slid out a plastic evidence sleeve.
“Prints came up Frost’s, no question. But…
” Her mouth pinched thin, losing its theatrical lift.
She tapped the sleeve with a fingernail.
“There’s something odd. Ridge detail lines up a little too neatly with the butt we pulled from the last scene. ”
Rick frowned. “Too neatly how?”
“Down to the minutiae points.” She angled the sleeve toward him.
“Same print, same pattern. But even the same finger doesn’t stamp itself twice like that.
You always get little tells—angle, sweat, pressure.
This one’s… well, it’s an identical impression.
” She hesitated, then sighed, the diva dropping to scientist again.
“Could be a fluke. Or contamination. I need more analysis before I can be sure.”
“You think it might’ve been planted?”
Gloria met his look over the rim of her glasses, shrugging one elegant shoulder. “I wouldn’t go that far yet. Just saying it’s off. And you know I hate off.” She returned to her workstation, gathering her tools with small, precise gestures.
Rick studied her for a beat, then nodded. “Keep at it.”
She raised her coffee cup in a lazy salute, already half-absorbed in the slide under her microscope.
Rick moved for the exit, shoes dragging heavy on the tile.
His hand closed around the knob when his gaze slid to something at its edge.
A scarf hung on the stand beside the door, checkered silk draped carelessly over the hook.
The pattern snagged his attention like a wire in the ribs, cold and immediate.
Ash’s vision.
The breath left his throat in a slow, hard drag. He didn’t turn fully, only angled his head toward Gloria. “Hey, G. This yours?”
She glanced over, waved her hand. “Gordon’s. That boy’d forget his own head if it wasn’t screwed on.”
Rick stared at the muffler, a cold drag settling in his gut. “He around?”
“Mm-mm. Another sick day. And guess who’s left picking up the slack.” Her tone was indulgent despite the scoffing. “He’s still the best damn assistant I’ve had, so I gotta cut him some slack.”
“Right,” Rick murmured while his stomach churned. It was too precise. Too coincidental. Too damned neat. “How long’s he been with you again?”
Gloria raised her head, her stare piercing even across the lab. “What’s with the sudden interest in my protégé? Did he spill his coffee on you or something?”
Rick tried to smile at her, but his jaw was clenched too tight. “Indulge me.”
She shrugged, returning to her microscope. “Five months, I think? Came with impeccable references. I swear, if I had ten more like him, this place would run itself.”
Five months. Rick forced his expression neutral. “How well do you know him?”
Gloria huffed a sigh. “Slade, he talks even less than you. Which is saying something.”
He nodded, a tight jerk of his chin, and walked out into the corridor without another word, a weight growing in his gut that no shrug could shake loose. The unease that had been pawing at him since last night sharpened into something colder, meaner—a shape finally stepping into focus.