Chapter 7
MINKA
Ilay in my bed and watch the clock crawl torturously slowly toward a new day.
Six-oh-one.
Six-oh-two.
Six-oh-three.
Sweat makes my skin tacky, and my sheets, sticky.
There’s no cross-breeze in this apartment unless I leave my bedroom window, bedroom door, and living room window open, and even those measures work only when there’s a breeze outside.
There rarely is, considering the long line of buildings making up a street equal parts residential and not.
Six-oh-four.
Six-oh-five.
Six-oh-six.
I count every lift of my chest. Every exhalation of hot, humid air.
My brain obsesses on an annoying edge of my toenail, the pointy corner catching on my sheets until I’m marched to the brink of insanity, and since my knee is still healing, the small scabs left behind after the removal of a dozen stitches mean my sheet catches on those, too.
Six-oh-seven.
Six-oh-eight.
“Fuck.” I sit up with a groaning sigh, my belly exposed beneath my sweaty sports bra and my legs bare under a pair of Archer’s silky boxer shorts.
Glancing to his side of the bed, I glower at how utterly undisturbed it is.
His pillow, untouched. His sheets are crisp and flat.
Anger burns in my stomach because I can’t help but feel like he set me up for this.
He promised, over and over and over again, to never leave.
But more aching than the anger is sorrow. Longing. The devastation I couldn’t even avoid while I slept.
I dreamed of him. I dreamed of Jamaica in the summer, a big-ass boat and lazy days lying in the sun with the man I married. Twice. But my subconscious refused me even a single moment of peace, because he left in my dreams, too.
He didn’t want me. He grew tired of me. He became intolerant, just like I always knew he would.
Drawing a deep breath through my nose, I drag my feet over the side of my bed and set them on the floor, and though my bladder aches after hours of lying here awake, sipping water to combat the oppressive heat, I reach out for my phone first, unlocking the screen and navigating to my text inbox.
Empty of all things Archer. And that… is a first for us.
Shaking my head, I swipe across to the app Sophia set up for me, clicking on the icon that is, literally, Steve’s drooping, smiling face. I scan the details Mary already input this morning.
His blood pressure is exactly how it should be.
His meds have been administered. Yesterday’s exercise was logged: a nice walk in the garden, times two, and the trip into town to see his specialists.
She details when he showers, when he evacuates his bowels, how often he pees—though I doubt he realizes she keeps such close track of his activities—and there, with an added note, is a severe spike in all his stats.
Blood pressure rose. Pulse raced. Mood tanked.
‘Doctor Mayet left the premises,’ Mary wrote. ‘Patient confronts Detective Malone. Mary removes the patient and assigns him to his private quarters. Stats remained elevated for approximately one hour.’
Steve was pissed… and snapped at Archer about it.
“At least someone misses me.” I roll my eyes and try my damnedest not to notice the lack of texts and calls from literally anyone else. Aubree…? Nothing. Cato? Nada. Felix? Nope. There was a time, not so far in the past, I considered these people too close. Too noisy. Too involved in my life.
Joke’s on me.
Tossing my phone onto the mattress and pushing to my feet, I head into the kitchen and pour beans into the coffee machine, fill it with water, then I flick the button on the front to get the whole contraption fired up.
While the caffeine brews, I spin on my heels and make my way back along the hall and into the shower.
My third—fourth?—since arriving here. Because it’s so damn hot, and standing under the ‘cold’ tap as it spits out lukewarm water is the closest thing I have to relief.
Better yet, for those five minutes each time, a woman who prides herself on never crying, can cry, and there’s no one on the planet who can prove the droplets on her cheeks are tears when an alternative explanation is so close.
I strip off and do my thing, but I don’t get my hair wet, since blow-drying in this heat might be the final blow before I simply give up on life.
Five minutes after stepping under the cool-ish spray, I exit again, head to my room, get dressed, and scowl at what, under normal circumstances, would be a fat white cat sleeping on Archer’s pillow.
I would call her a bitch. She would slow-blink and taunt me.
I’d make sure Archer wasn’t close enough to overhear us, then I’d sneak across and give the feline whore a scratch behind the ears, and she, shamefully, would purr and enjoy it.
A thirty-second moratorium.
After that, we’d return to mortal enemy status, competing for the attention of the one man we both love.
But she’s not here, and he’s no longer interested in the things I want, so I brush my hair into a ponytail and snatch up my phone.
Shuffling back into the kitchen, I pour a to-go cup of coffee and discover—for the second time—my broken-down fridge, so I go without creamer, cap my piping hot, black coffee, and all the while, I do everything I can to ignore the time on my phone.
Unsuccessfully.
It’s only six-seventeen.
Kill me now.
Groaning, I scoop up my bag and slide my feet into a pair of shoes, and making my way to the door, I swing it wide, only to skitter to a stop. Not because Harrison is in the hall, but because there are two of them now, and the other one isn’t nearly as in control of his resting bitch face.
“Uh…” I stand on the threshold and look from one man to the other, blinking, blinking, swallowing. “You’ve multiplied since last night.”
The larger one—Stovic—inclines his chin. “I’m leaving in a moment, Chief. We’re heading back to New York at noon.”
“Oh… cool.” Choke it down, Mayet. Choke all that rejection down.
This is your dessert after eighteen months of gluttony.
“It’s best that everyone go back to normal life now that the wedding is done, and…
” I close my door, wiggling the handle to ensure it’s locked.
“Ya know, the Cordoza stuff is settled.” I meet Harrison’s stare and force a smile in farewell, then I turn and make my way downstairs.
“I appreciate the time you’ve dedicated to driving me around these past few days, Mr. Harrison. ”
Both men follow me, their steps almost silent, despite the weight they each carry.
“Felix, Micah, and the women are leaving, Chief. As are my colleagues. But I’m staying in Copeland a little while longer.”
I round the third-floor landing and keep moving. “Felix assigned you here to ensure the Agosti stuff doesn’t blow back on the Copeland Malones in his absence? Smart.” I shrug. “I guess.”
Second floor.
First.
It’s only… fuck, it’s only six-nineteen… but as I push past Steve’s door and the hug I would usually stop for, then through the heavy glass door leading into the street, I walk face-first into a wall of heat. Humid, horrible, oppressive heat.
It’s already in the nineties. Easily.
“I officially loathe the summer.” I turn left and charge straight past Tim’s bar, my morning walk historically a nice chance to breathe fresh air and savor the crisp early morning before work.
But not today. Not this month. “Was everything good at the house last night?” I don’t bother peeking over my shoulder, and I sure as shit don’t turn, allowing my followers a chance to see the desperation in my eyes. “Steve is well?”
“Mr. Morris is well,” Stovic answers, his shoulders broad and puffed, his gaze scanning the not-very-busy street. “He slept well, and his recovery is on track, according to Mary.”
“Excellent.” Was Archer there all night? Is he okay? Does he have a new, better wife yet?
I cross one block and move onto the next, but a few doors before the hospital, I cut left and stride into the twenty-four-hour pharmacy I scouted out on the second or third day after moving to this city.
When a woman depends on three-times-a-week medication to stay alive, she knows to line her supply chain up quickly.
Stalking to the very back of the long, rectangular store, I stop at the prescription counter and paste on a fake cheery smile. “I have a script waiting for me. My name is Minka Mayet.”
“Of course.” The clerk checks her computer, click, click, clicking until she finds my file. But then the easiness in her expression falls. Her brows pinch. Click. Click. Click. “Ah, I see Doctor Kurbonov has already called it in and explained…” Click. Click. Click. “Oh… hmm.”
“What?” My stomach flips with nerves, twisting as I lean onto the counter and attempt to peek at the screen. “What’s the problem? I know she’s out of state, but—”
“There’s a note here, Ms. Mayet. We’re instructed not to run this script through insurance. Since you’ve already had this medication filled.”
“Yeah. It’s fine.” I straighten out and set my coffee down, rifling through my bag in search of my rarely used purse.
The kind with cash and cards and whatever else I’ve hardly thought about in the last few months.
“I expected I’d have to pay for this one myself.
” Snagging my credit card, I present the plastic with a triumphant smile. “How much?”
“Uh…” The poor woman clears her throat, uncomfortable and grimacing. Instead of saying a number out loud, she nudges the computer screen around.
I scan the details with a fast sweep of my eyes, sliding my focus down to the bottom line…
literally and metaphorically. And then I laugh.
It’s a little unhinged. A little disbelieving.
And dangerously too close to hysteria. “You’re shittin’ me, right?
” I blink, blink, blink, like doing so will move the decimal point a little further to the left.
“Forty-five thousand dollars.” I slam my credit card onto the desk and guffaw. “Forty-five thousand?!”
“Ms. Mayet—”