“Have you told anyone other than me about what happened?” When she shook her head, I continued. “Not even your parents or the police?”

So slowly, she turned to look at me, eyes narrowed into slits. Her mouth popped open to deliver whatever pissed-off answer she had waiting, but I cut her off.

“No more shields, Sour Patch.”

“I hate when you call me that,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Well, I hate when you act like a bitch as a defense mechanism.”

She stared at me in shock for a full minute before smiling shyly at me and looking away again. “Old habit.” She shrugged.

Grabbing her chin, I forced her to look at me again. “I’m serious, Rachel. When you’re with me, no more shields.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I do,” I told her. “You hide your pain behind them. This is how you think you’re protecting yourself. I’m sure it works with some people, but all you’re doing is pushing them away. If you’re hurting, tell me. I’m here for you, and your bullshit isn’t going to work on me because I’m not going to let you push me away. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Again, you didn’t tell your parents or the police?”

She looked past my head, her mouth open, before shutting it again. And after long moments she finally shifted her eyes back to mine. “No one else knows.”

Releasing her chin, I leaned into the couch but kept my voice firm. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

“No, no—”

“Rach, I know it’ll be hard. But you need to tell someone. And right now, I’m the only one who knows.” She was still shaking her head back and forth. “This is the first step in your moving on. You need to face it. Completely.”

We sat there in silence for a handful of minutes before she softly told me everything that had happened with her and this guy she still refused to put a name to. My years undercover had helped me keep a straight face during the worst situations you can imagine. But listening to this girl tell me what had happened to her . . . my hands weren’t able to relax from their fists the entire time and my body was vibrating with the need to have this guy get up close and personal with my duty weapon. Despite Rachel’s insistence that she hadn’t been raped, that’s exactly what had happened. He hadn’t been able to finish what he started—thank Christ for that and Candice—but that didn’t change what he had done to her. I wanted to kill the son of a bitch.

After she was done telling me her story and had calmed down again, I pulled her into my arms and laid back against the couch. She stiffened at first but soon relaxed.

“I can’t imagine how hard that was for you, Rach. But I’m proud of you.” I kissed the top of her head and continued to whisper, “Not right now maybe, but soon you’ll feel better that you’ve told someone. No one should have to go through that, and definitely not alone. I won’t make you decide anything right now, but I really want you to consider applying at the bar, okay?”

“I will.” She spoke softly against my chest.

“And I want you to think about telling your parents what you just told me.”

Her body tensed beneath my arms again, and when she lifted her head, her eyes were full of tears. “I can’t.” Her words had barely any sound behind them. But I’d understood.

“Just think about it.”

An odd pained look crossed her face and she grimaced. “ ’Kay.”

“I gotta run some errands with Mase this morning, so I need to get going. If you want to apply for the job, Rod is one of the owners as well as the manager at the bar, and he’ll be there sometime before noon. He’s the guy you’ll want to talk to, all right?” When she simply nodded, I sat us back up and pressed my lips to her forehead. “You’re brave, Rach. I’m proud of you. And I’ll make sure nothing like that ever happens to you again.” Before she could respond, I pushed up off the couch and left her apartment.

When I got home, Mason was standing there waiting for me.

“About damn time. I know Rachel put you in the friend zone so I know you weren’t getting any. What took you so long? Painting each other’s nails and gossiping? We’re gonna be late and I really don’t feel like hearing any crap from Detective Ryder today. That guy scares the shit out of me.”

Once I had my wallet, phone, and keys, I turned and faced him. “I’ll make sure to let him know, I’m sure that will make his day.” Lowering my voice once we were outside, I glanced over at the girls’ door and whispered, “Rachel was telling me about what happened.”

Mason stopped walking and turned toward their door. “Ah, shit . . . Rach.”

“Yeah.” Pushing him toward the parking lot, I kept talking. “Sorry, I didn’t feel like rushing that.”

“She okay?”

He and I both knew that was a dumb question; of course she wasn’t. But he was just as worried about her as I was. He loved her too, just in a completely different way.

“She will be. She got it all out for the first time, so eventually. I gave her some things to think about while we were gone today. Hopefully she’ll take them into consideration.” Cranking the engine, I pulled out of the parking lot and switched gears. “Read me the e-mail from Ryder again. I want to know what new things they have on Camden and what we have.”

“They’re thinking he may be getting close to another murder, but at least he’s getting sloppier. The two times he slipped up with using his card last week, it was double what he normally spends. And I checked the receipts—I doubt he’s eating two meals by himself.”

“And those were at the restaurant you work at?”

“Yeah, both nights I wasn’t working though. I reviewed all the cameras we have set up in there and checked them against everyone who came in. The only people who didn’t match up with cards paid in cash. I don’t know how he’s doing this.”

“Waitress or waiter remember anything?”

“Ryder told me we couldn’t question her. She’d served too many people that night, and it’d raise flags if we started questioning staff. What about your bar?”

“I check things when I get there early to see if his card was used and we just missed it. He hasn’t been at my bar in weeks. There’ve been three times we’ve had people leave without paying. First was a homeless guy I see all the time. Next was this ancient woman who comes in almost every day. I don’t think she even realized she hadn’t paid when she left, because she always does. Last was a man in a business suit who took off running out of the bar when he got a phone call. But he came in the next day and paid what was owed. Other than that, I keep a record of the table, date, and time when people pay cash. Every Wednesday I check them on our cameras. Never seen Camden.”

“Shit. This whole two-meals thing is something to worry about, though. And I think that’s why Ryder is calling us in today. Now that Camden might be closing in on someone, I’m sure he’ll want all of us working a lot more.”

“Good, we need to until he’s found.”

Mason lifted his left hand, curled into a fist. “Anything to bring the fuckers down, right?”

We’d been saying that since our first undercover assignment. I smiled and pounded his fist. “Always.”


Rachel

“SO WE NEED to go out and celebrate.”

I rolled over on Candice’s bed and watched as she held up different shirts and studied herself in her full-length mirror. “Oh really? And what is it we’re celebrating?”

“You getting a job. Duh.”

“Candice.” I laughed softly. “Is it really so exciting that I got a job that we need to go out and celebrate? It’s waitressing. It isn’t like I made partner at a firm or—” I broke off quickly when I realized what I’d just said.

Candice was quiet for a second and her eyes lifted to look at me through the mirror. “Are we going to go back to California for the anniversary?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.” Every year Candice’s family went to my parents’ graves on the anniversary of their death. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t even there when they were lowered into the ground. I couldn’t stand the thought of watching them go six feet into the earth. And by staying away from the grave, it kept it not as real for me.

“Are you ever going to go, Rach?”

Swallowing audibly, I dropped my head and studied the details of Candice’s comforter instead. “Someday, maybe. I just can’t yet . . . can we not talk about this?”

“Yeah,” she said softly, then more resolutely, “Yeah! Waitress or not, we need to celebrate!”

I loved Candice so much for being able to get us out of uncomfortable conversations so easily. “Candice, we can go out for drinks anytime. We don’t need a reason, especially not this one.”

“Don’t be lame, Rach. I want to celebrate you getting a job. So we’re going to do it. Are the boys home?”

I grunted what I thought sounded like an affirmation.

“Maybe they can—” She cut herself off when her phone rang beside me on the bed.

“It’s Eli.” I answered it for her and put it on speaker.

“Hey, big brother!” we said in unison, and he laughed.

“How are my favorite girls?”

“Good, but Rachel’s being lame. She got a job and I want to go celebrate. She thinks it’s stupid.”

“Ah, well, we have to celebrate that.” What “we”? I thought. “But can we please take my rental? Because it looks so much better than Rach’s Liberty; don’t you ever wash this thing?”

Candice gasped and hurried to get dressed, but I was already running out of her room and out the front door. I didn’t spare a glance at Kash’s place as I turned and literally squealed when I saw Eli standing in front of my Jeep.