“That’s easy enough to find out,” Lacey said. “The main thing is that you remember me coming home and leaving the next morning. Would you be willing to tell the police that?”

“I…”

“Sure, he’s willing,” I said, staring Bobby down. “Right?”

“Y-Yeah. Sure,” Bobby stammered.

“Bobby,” Lacey said, as gently as she could, “this is really important.”

“I know, Ms. Ward. I know.”

“He’ll cooperate,” I said tersely, “won’t you, Bobby?”

Bobby nodded. Not overly adamantly, but at least he nodded.

“Is that a yes?” I asked, again tersely.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Yes, I’ll cooperate.”

“Thank you,” Lacey said. “It means a lot. See you later, Bobby.”

Lacey and I headed back up to her apartment.

“You get it all?” I asked.

She grabbed the phone out of her purse and played back the recording of our conversation with Bobby. “Yeah. Got it all.”

“Good.”

“You do know that this most likely isn’t admissible in court,” she said.

“I know. But it’s good to have it for corroboration anyway.”

“I can’t disagree,” she said. “Now we just have to talk to whoever was on that night and morning.”

“We’ll do it, baby.” I pulled her to me and kissed her forehead. “We’ll get us both out of this mess.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling the tropical scent of her hair…and hoping to God I was right.

54

Lacey

I dragged Rock with me to the soup kitchen for volunteer work on Memorial Day, and when I saw him interact with the veteran heroes, I knew I’d fallen in love with a truly good man. Sure, he’d come off as a douchebag at first, but inside his harsh exterior was a warm and good human being. A good human being who’d been through hell.

The man I loved.

The next day, we were both off to the office once more.

A little over an hour after I sat down, my cellphone buzzed. Rock.

“You’re going to love me,” he said into my ear.

“I already do.”

“Yeah? You’re going to love me even more. Guess what I just found out?”

“What?”

“I had a very interesting talk with the owner of your building.”

“Oh?”

“Yup. Did you know he installed security cameras a couple months ago?”

“No, I didn’t. You mean…?”

“You got it. Everyone who has gone in and out of your building is on tape. We need to get the tape of the night my father was killed, and you’ll be off the hook.”

I let out a big sigh, letting go of tension I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. “Did you call Hank Morgan? Does he already know?”

“You only recently became a person of interest. He might not know yet. Let’s call him now.”

“We can’t both call him.” I jerked as my door flew open.