CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The door to the bathroom opened, and Kate stepped out. She wore a towel around her body, tied smartly above her breasts. “Hey, did I leave my hairbrush out here?”
They’d made it to the hotel late last night, and with nowhere to go in the case until they had a list of people involved in both of their victims’ trials, they’d eaten a quick meal and gone straight to bed.
It was now seven in the morning, and they’d finished breakfast. Marcus had showered the night before, and Kate had just finished her shower now.
Marcus looked at her, and his eyes nearly dropped to take in everything. Not that anything was visible. If anything, the towel revealed less of Kate’s body than the slacks and shirts she wore. It was more the intimacy of the circumstances that got to him.
He glanced around the room and saw the brush on the dresser. He thrust his chin at it. “There.”
"Thanks." She grabbed it and entered the restroom, but left the door open. "Anything from PD yet?"
“Yeah, they sent me a list of everyone involved with the trials.”
Kate scoffed. “They didn’t bother to look for who worked both cases themselves?”
“I’d rather go through it myself. I don’t want to risk a mistake.”
“All right, fair enough. Well…” She gave him a dorky grin. “See ya later!”
She closed the door, and he chuckled. Then he looked down.
It wasn’t even the idea of sex that he enjoyed so much about Kate. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t find her attractive, but he found Cheryl attractive too. Hell, if you stood the two of them next to each other during Mardi Gras, Cheryl was the one who would get all the leis.
Kate was just easy to talk to. That admission was what had gotten Marcus into trouble with Cheryl, but it was the truth.
With Cheryl, he always felt like he was walking on eggshells.
With Kate, he always knew where he stood.
It wasn’t always in her good graces, but he never had to guess if something he was going to say would set her off or not.
And she didn’t hold onto anger. That was another thing. Cheryl would act like she’d forgiven him for something, but she’d keep it in her back pocket and pull it out any time they had a disagreement. Sometimes, they’d be having a good day, and she’d just bring up something that upset her.
Remember when you spilled coffee on my brand-new Balenciaga dress that my mother got me?
Oh, I was so mad at you! Remember when I cut my leg shaving, and you laughed at me?
God, you’re a real jerk sometimes! Remember when I called you from work crying because I got passed up for that project, and you told me you had to go because you were working with Kate?
Sometimes, I wonder if you’d even look at me if you’d met her first.
It was like she wanted to fight with him, like she enjoyed reminding him of every way he didn’t measure up. Meanwhile, Kate…
He got abruptly to his feet and walked to the coffeemaker. He needed to stop. He couldn’t keep telling Cheryl that there was nothing between him and Kate if he kept comparing the two of them to each other and pointing out all the ways in which Kate was better.
But she is. It’s getting hard to avoid.
He let that thought slide off him. It was an old technique he’d perfected when he was with the SEALs.
Fear would come, and later, the memories.
He taught his mind to become an oil slick so that the emotions and disturbing thoughts never stuck around long enough to affect him.
It was a good trick, and one he had to use with greater and greater frequency as his marriage with Cheryl approached the breaking point and his feelings for Kate approached the actionable point.
Besides, Kate had given him no sign that she saw him as anything more than a friend.
If he ruined that by revealing his romantic feelings for her…
“Enough, Marcus.”
Speaking aloud managed to finally accomplish what his oil slick technique hadn't. He poured his coffee and got back to work.
The trials for Hammond and Santos née Santana being eight years apart, the list of people involved with both cases had turned out to be very short.
The Assistant DA from the Santos case became the actual DA.
He could be written off. If he’d wanted them punished, he wouldn’t have dropped the Santos case after the mistrial.
The bailiff in both cases was a seventy-year-old warhorse with the wonderful name of Huxley Thibodeaux.
He had retired two years ago at the age of sixty-eight and promptly moved to Bermuda.
Marcus could imagine a world where he would fly back to murder two people years after leaving, but it was a world even odder than the one he lived in, so he crossed his name out too.
A few corrections officers who transferred prisoners from the jail to the courtroom.
Quick phone calls confirmed that two had retired, one had taken a position at the Illinois River Correctional Facility in Canton three hours away, and the only one still in Chicago had been working the night shift during Hammond’s murder.
That left Dr. Rachel Hartwell, a forensic psychologist called upon to testify in both cases.
In both cases, she had testified against the suspects, arguing passionately that both fit the psychological profile of killers and claiming that any verdict other than guilty would be a profane miscarriage of justice.
The bathroom door opened, and Marcus glanced over to see Kate dressed. Black slacks and a modest light blue button-down that nonetheless fit her well and that also set her auburn hair off beautifully. Her eyes, plain brown, shimmered like honey in the—
“Got something,” he said, turning his laptop screen and letting that thought fall off of him.
Kate’s face brightened the way it always did when they had a lead. He wondered if she knew she did that. “Yeah? Tell me.”
He told her. When he finished, she grinned. “Outstanding. Let’s go talk to her.”
That was Kate. Easy to talk to, easy to communicate with, dedicated to her job, sometimes to a fault.
Maybe that was why he was dwelling so much on thoughts of them together.
Cheryl couldn’t understand what it was like to be an FBI agent, what that job required of him.
Kate knew full well the toll the FBI had on both of them.
But Marcus also knew full well that exploring these feelings would only end in tragedy, not just for his marriage to Cheryl but also for his friendship with Kate. Some things just weren’t meant to be.
So, for the final time, he let his thoughts slide away and focused on bringing the latest minion of Elijah Cox to justice.