Chapter 17
Seventeen
RIOS
“…and unless you’re planning to charge either of us with something, Chief, this is where you let us go.” Madden’s voice was cool and precise, every word edged in steel.
Carson bristled at that, color rising in his cheeks as he shoved his hands on his hips. “You’re not an ADA anymore, Counselor. And he—” a jerk of his chin at me “—isn’t law enforcement. Whatever you two think you’re doing, I suggest you remember where your authority stops.”
“Since we have none, our authority stops right here on this sidewalk. Where you have no legal cause to detain us further.”
It took everything in me not to smirk. Or applaud. Or both.
The marsh hummed in the mid-afternoon heat beyond the parking lot, indifferent to a dead man on a bathroom floor.
Behind Madden, crime scene tape already blocked off Willie Sanders’s apartment.
CSU was inside, and an officer was posted by the door.
He looked vaguely familiar and kept glancing our way.
At first, I’d thought it was at me, but it was her he was watching, his mouth drawn into lines of concern.
Carson scowled at the pair of us. “Get out of here, and stay out of my way.”
“Trust me,” Madden murmured under her breath. “I’d love to.”
He stalked off toward his cruiser, shoulders tight, barking something at one of the uniforms. I watched him go, a familiar cocktail of resentment and weary contempt twisting under my ribs.
Half of me had been braced for cuffs. For the old dance of “just come down to the station so we can clear a few things up,” which somehow never applied to anyone but me.
Having Madden there—calm, controlled, clearly stating the timeline and making it crystal fucking clear we’d had neither means nor opportunity—had been a shield I hadn’t known I’d get to have.
She’d been clinical with her answers, precise with her terminology, and absolutely ruthless about procedure.
Her willingness to use her expertise in my—our—defense said more about her inclination to trust me than perhaps anything else.
Beside me, she’d gone very, very still. Shoulders drawn in a fraction. Mouth a line. I knew that look. Now that the immediate threat was past, her adrenaline was wearing off, leaving the crash behind.
“Come on. Let’s get you home.”
“I’m fine.” Automatic. Brittle.
“Sure,” I agreed. “You can be fine on your boat.”
Madden cut me a sidelong glance but didn’t argue when I began steering her toward the truck.
“Madden.”
We both turned at the voice. It was the cop who’d been posted at the door. He shot me an inscrutable look before focusing back on her.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, Grant.”
Grant. My brain filtered back through years and names, even as I glanced down and saw WILLOUGHBY on his name tag.
“Are you? What the hell were you even doing here?” He glanced at me again, at the hand I still held at the small of her back, and the with him was implied.
Madden’s shoulders squared. “The job your boss refused to do.”
Grant opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “We have to go.”
I resumed steering her back to the truck.
The moment we were shut inside, she tugged on her seatbelt. Or tried. Her hand trembled, and she struggled to slot the tab into the latch. Carefully, I closed my fingers around hers to stabilize it and pushed until the belt engaged.
Madden didn’t meet my gaze as she muttered. “He was my high school ex.”
I hadn’t asked, but I didn’t point that out. Instead, I said, “Ah,” and released her hand to crank the truck.
The drive back to the marina was quiet. She said nothing as she stared out the passenger window, one hand clamped white-knuckled around the strap of her purse. The muscles in her jaw worked, like she was chewing on words she didn’t trust herself to say.
I let the silence sit and pushed down my own urge to replay every second between stepping through Willie’s sliding door and finding him on the bathroom floor.
The smell. The angle of his arm. The cold under my fingertips when I’d checked for a pulse myself, just to be sure.
Too late for CPR. Too late for anything but the call.
He’d wanted to do one thing right.
Now he was a body at a crime scene, and whatever he’d seen behind Home Port had died with him. Unless he’d left something behind we hadn’t found yet. Not that we’d get the chance to search his place under the circumstances.
I turned into the marina lot and pulled into my usual spot. “Come on. I’m clearing your boat.”
She blinked around like she’d forgotten where we were. “I don’t need—”
“Humor me. The guy we were supposed to talk to turned up dead. I’m not leaving you alone in a place that could be compromised without making damn sure it’s safe.”
She opened her mouth like she was going to argue, then stopped. Some of the fight bled out of her shoulders. “Fine.”
I walked the dock ahead of her, habit making me sweep the surrounding boats with my eyes for anything out of place.
Nothing but the usual evidence of life—lines creaking, flags flapping, someone hammering on a distant deck.
No watchers. No shadows diving out of sight.
Only a bright island afternoon, with no one any the wiser that a few miles away, a man had died.
She unlocked the cabin door of the Second Wind and stepped back to let me go in first.
I moved through the space methodically, checking the tiny head, the closet, the storage compartments where someone could’ve tucked themselves if they were really determined and really bendy. No signs of intrusion, no shifted shadows, or new smells. Nothing.
Satisfied, I stepped back out. “All clear.”
“Good.” She ducked around me to get inside, setting her bag down with more force than necessary. The neat ponytail had loosened, until curls escaped on either side of her face. My fingers itched to tuck them behind her ears.
Opening one of the galley cabinets, she retrieved a bottle of something amber and two short glasses. No ice. She poured, handed me one, and dropped onto the bench opposite the table like her strings had been cut.
I slid into the seat across from her. For a moment, we simply stayed there, the small space filled with the soft creak of the hull as she wrapped both hands around her glass. She stared into it like she could find answers in the reflection.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her laugh was short and humorless. “Define okay.”
“Not in shock. Not about to pass out. Not planning to go find Carson and eviscerate him with pure rage alone. For starters.”
She swallowed a mouthful of whiskey with only a slight tightening around her eyes. “I’m not in shock. And I’m not going to faint, because I’ve never fainted in my life, and I’m not planning to start now.”
“And Carson?”
She tipped her head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Can I reserve the right to eviscerate him later?”
The dry delivery had one corner of my mouth kicking up. “Always.”
Silence settled again, heavier this time. The kind that buzzed with unsaid things.
“You did good out there, with Carson. You protected the scene; you were clear on the timeline. You kept him from railroading us into an interrogation room because his favorite suspect happened to be on the premises when a body turned up.”
Her gaze cut to mine, sharp and incredulous. “I… did my job. My old job. Muscle memory.”
“Sure,” I said. “But it mattered. Having you there mattered.” More than I’d realized it would.
She looked away, throat working. “You mean having someone else there mattered. Someone whose name isn’t synonymous with ‘unsolved murder’ in these parts.”
She wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t all of it.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “That too.”
She swallowed more whiskey before setting the glass down with exaggerated care. “We found a dead man. A man who was supposed to help us find a missing woman. And the chief of police would rather we disappear than admit he should have been paying attention to either.”
“That about sums it up.”
Her lips trembled, barely. She pressed her lips together until it stopped.
The crash was coming in fast now. Color draining, shoulders sagging. I could see the fight between hold it together and I can’t do this anymore happening right behind her eyes.
“Madden.” I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on the table rather than reaching for her hands as I wanted. “Talk to me.”
She shook her head once. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
“I’m pretty sure I do.”
Her laugh scraped out again, rougher this time. “What if it makes you hate me again?”
That hit me in the sternum. Because at some point I had stopped hating her. “I’m not really in the habit of hating people who help me find the truth. Even when they’ve been wrong about me before.”
She flinched as if I’d struck her. “That’s just it. I’m starting to realize exactly how often I’ve been wrong. And how many people paid the price for it.”
Ah, here we were.
I sat back, gave her space, but kept my voice steady. “California.”
Her fingers tightened around her glass. The amber liquid rippled. “Yeah. California.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Honestly, no.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
She stared at me across the table, eyes dark and tired and raw.
“Because you keep showing up. You keep doing what I always told myself I did—chasing the truth, no matter how ugly it is. And because I saw yet another person die around the margins of a case where the system should’ve protected them.
And if I don’t say this out loud, it’s going to eat me alive. ”
I nodded once, because that was a sentiment I understood. “Okay.”
“In California,” she started, fingers tracing the condensation ring on the table, “I had a case. Big one. High profile. The kind of thing careers are built on—or wrecked by.”