Page 3 of Hard Game

I stare at him as he nods at the glove box like he wants me to thank him. His stick-thin wife is watching her weight? And he’s telling me because he thinks I’ll have an opinion. Which I do, naturally, just not on his wife.

“What if I’m watching my weight?” I ask lightly, resisting the urge to tear open the glovebox and demolish every Hershey’s Kisses I can find.

The snort of laughter that leaves Taron’s mouth makes me want to snap his neck, but instead, I pull my phone out. There’s only one person who can get me through this shitstorm, and it’s my partner.

Elijah.

Lauren: Ask me why I’m in a cruiser with Taron when I should be asleep.

Elijah replies within seconds, confirming that he’s a workaholic.

Eli: Are you on drugs?

Lauren: No. Worse.

Eli: You’re having an affair with him.

I scrunch my nose and make a face before replying.

Lauren: I’m going to slap you when I see you, Eli. The Lockwood ring.

This time, Eli doesn’t reply instantly. He takes a good minute and a half to reply, and I flip my phone in my hand repeatedly until the screen alerts me to a text.

Eli: Fuck. Do you need me?

Yes, I probably do. I think, but this could be nothing. It’s unlikely that it’s nothing, but it could be. It’s pointless dragging Eli downtown when he’s got enough paperwork to swim in.

Lauren: Nah. But seriously, Carmen said she had intel. I’ll call you later.

Eli: FUCK!

Elijah worked the case with me—it haunts him, too, but not as bad as me. I try to shake off the bad vibe pouring out of every pore, but it’s like a second skin clinging to me.

“—and I told her, there’s nothing wrong with your body, man. You look like a twenty-year-old cheerleader.”

I scowl at Taron, who chuckles to himself.

“So fucking hot.”

“Taron,” I say through gritted teeth as we slow to a stop beside a field. “Shut up about your wife and focus on the case. What do we know?”

Taron lets his eyes slide over my face, grinning like he loves what he sees: my flaming cheeks and wide eyes. Jealousy, that’s what he’ll think it is.

I don’t have the energy to tell him I hate how he objectifies women, how fucking superficial he is, and how much I want to sock him in the jaw.

“Seventeen years old, brunette?—”

I’m halfway out the door when he speaks, and I whirl around to gasp.

“Seventeen?!”

Taron nods grimly. “Yeah.”

My heart sinks. Only the Lockwood Ring would do this to a seventeen-year-old. Yet another nail in the coffin.

“They cut out her tongue.” Taron slams the car door behind him and tuts. “Vicious bastards, huh?”

I don’t answer him because I can already see the sheet covering the body from here, and it doesn’t matter how many times I see a corpse; it still knocks me for six. We walk closer, my boots sliding in the mud. It rained heavily today, which doesn’t bode well for evidence and timing of death. I can only pray that the forensics team finds something to help us nail this bastard. Or bastards, if the Lockwood Ring theory is accurate. I await the telltale stench of death to hit my nostrils as we tug on the shoe coverings held out by a member of forensics. I walk closer, my heart thudding against its cage desperately as I crouch to my knees beside the victim, pulling the sheet back.

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