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“What’s happened?” he asked, wondering if maybe he’d missed some major news event as he’d had his head buried in work.
She blinked, then caught her lower lip between her teeth. This vulnerable, almost uncertain, side of her was nearly too much for him to resist. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gave his feet a firm directive to stay put.
“What’s happened, love?” he asked again, the endearment slipping out. It was a common enough one in the UK that hopefully she wouldn’t read too much into it.
She blinked again and looked away, clearing her throat as she did. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
That statement pissed him off more than it should, but he persevered. “You didn’t disturb me. You’re upset. What happened?”
Her gaze drifted to the window, then rising, her body followed until she stood staring out into the darkness while he kept his focus on her. She wore heels and a skirt suit, as she did nearly every day she came to work. She was both a runner and a swimmer, and her legs were long and strong. Her curves made his fingers twitch, as did the fact that in her four-inch heels, she was less than two inches shorter than him. Which made her eminently grabbable.
“Violetta?”
She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder. He wouldn’t force her to talk, but she looked as though she needed to.
The silence stretched between them and just when he thought she might not speak at all, she answered. “I was perusing the news as I was getting ready to leave. Did you hear about that hit-and-run this afternoon? The one that killed the pedestrian?”
He nodded. It was actually a wonder more pedestrians and bikers weren’t killed every day in Boston. Sometimes the only reason he could think of as to why he hadn’t been taken out yet by a Boston driver was all the evasive driving training—and practice—he’d had.
“They just released the name of the victim and he’s…” She cleared her throat again and turned around. Bracing herself against the window, she finished, “He is, or should I saywas, a good friend of mine.”
Chapter Three
Six managedto drag herself into the office the next morning. Since she’d been in on Monday, typically one of her days off, no one would have faulted her for staying home. But she knew herself well enough to know that she was better off doing something productive than sitting at home and remembering her friend, Jeremy Wheaton.
Of course, it didn’t help that she had the mother of all hangovers. On her way home the night before, she’d phoned Cyn to let her know about Jeremy. Her friends, along with Joe, Cyn’s partner, had been waiting for her when she pulled up her drive. They’d brought food and dessert and wine. Lots of wine. Too much wine for a Monday night, but the right amount for a grieving Italian.
It had helped that her friends—except Joe—had all known Jeremy as well. Six, naturally, had been the closest to him since they’d been at Harvard Law School together. But given that Cyn had done her PhD at Harvard and Devil her MD at the same university, while Nora had completed her DVM at Tufts in Boston, they’d all known him. And they’d all been able to share Jeremy stories and reminisce about the amazing man he’d been. Now, as she rode the elevator to her floor, she held on to those feelings—the smiles and laughter—of the night before. Even as she recognized that Jeremy’s being gone still didn’t feel quitereal.
She managed to trudge through the day and get much of her administrative work for the month done—one thing they didn’t teach in law school was that there was more to being a lawyer than the glorified days in court. In fact, as a federal prosecutor, those adrenaline-pumping days of arguing a case only happened a few times a year—maybe a few weeks a year if it was a busy one.
Still, the rote work gave her something to do that she didn’t have to focus on too much, and it kept everyone else out of her office. In fact, no one had stopped by, and glancing at the clock, Six was surprised to see it was nearly five. Which meant that Rosey, who was off work at four thirty, had left without saying goodbye. Not that the woman was prone to interrupting her, but she usually checked in a few times throughout the day to see if Six needed anything.
Frowning, she wondered if maybe Gavin had said something to Rosey about Jeremy, which would explain Six’s uninterrupted day. The thought was quickly followed by a flash of irritation. Gavin had no right to share Six’s loss with her paralegal.
Filled with a sudden need to move, she rose from her desk and walked to the window that looked toward Boston. Cars, bikes, and people bustled on the streets below. Planes were lined up to land at Logan Airport, and a traffic helicopter was visible in the distance.
Jeremy was gone, but life went on.
As that thought seeped into her soul, she recognized that her irritation with Gavin wasn’t quite fair. First, she didn’t know for certain if hehadsaid something to Rosey. But more importantly, if she were honest with herself, her annoyance most likely stemmed from the fact that he’d caught her at such a vulnerable moment. And being vulnerable with anyone other than her friends irritated her to no end. Rosey’s odd behavior served as a reminder of what Gavin had witnessed the night before—something Six had no desire to recollect.
Not that Gavin had been anything other than a gentleman. After she’d told him the news, he’d listened as she’d gone on to talk about how she met Jeremy and what a remarkable man he was. Gavin had even brought her a glass of cold water and handed her a handkerchief when a tear—or two—had escaped. Then, when the pressure cooker of her emotions had released enough for her to feel as though she could breathe again, he’d walked her to her car and made sure she was settled and on her way home before leaving himself. She suspected that if she’d lingered in the parking garage a little longer, he would have offered to drive her. Thankfully, she’d pulled herself together before he had the chance.
Shoving her memories from the night before back into the recesses of her mind, she returned to her desk and closed out her work-related programs. Her mouse hovered over the power button, though, and her eyes darted to the police database application on her desktop. What she knew about Jeremy’s death was limited to what she’d read in the news. Did she want to know the details?
Reading a case file on someone she didn’t know was one thing, but accessing one on her close friend? She knew what it would contain—witness statements, CCTV video of the intersection from when he’d been struck, pictures. Was that how she wanted to remember her friend? Not to mention the fact that it wasn’t entirely ethical for her to open a file that had nothing to do with her caseload.
She sighed, then clicked on the power icon. And hesitated again.
Fuck. She couldn’t do it; she couldn’t let it alone.
Not wanting to risk any censure, she placed a call to a contact of hers in the Boston Police Department and received approval to access the file. Three minutes later, she was staring at photos of the scene and feeling grateful that the first ones she opened were from later in the investigation. Jeremy’s body was covered with a tent, giving Six the ability to pretend it wasn’t the scene of her friend’s death.
After scrolling through the photos, she opened the report and read the witness statements. Eyewitnesses were notoriously unreliable. Remarkably, though, of the six people who’d been interviewed, all had roughly the same thing to say: the car had come from nowhere, seemed to speed up, then took off after impact.
It was possible that the car had sped up to make a yellow light and the driver hadn’t seen Jeremy in the crosswalk. But the conviction in each of the statements caught Six’s attention.
Knowing that what she was about to do, what she was about to see, would be difficult, she braced herself, then opened the file taken from the traffic cam. The video, like most traffic cam video, was grainy, and at first, it was hard to get her bearings. She could see several people standing on all four corners of the intersection, but she couldn’t make out which was Jeremy.
