Forgiving Lies

I face-planted into his chest and let him lead me into my bedroom. Letting me go for a moment, he flipped off the lights, quickly undressed until he was only in his boxer-briefs, and walked back up to me. Grabbing the comforter off the bed, he had me let go of the wet towel and let it fall to the floor before wrapping me up in the comforter. I climbed onto the bed after him, and he got under the sheet and pulled me close to him, his arms tightening around my shaking body.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered against the top of my head. “You’re safe.”

My eyes shut and my body melted against his. I focused on nothing but his arms holding me close, the sound of his steady breaths, and his soothing words. Nothing else mattered as long as I was in his arms.

Kash

MY FEET SLOWED their pounding against the concrete as I turned into our breezeway and stopped completely when I saw him.

“What the hell?” I breathed, and got closer. “Can I help you?”

The man looking in Rachel and Candice’s windows jerked back and faced me. “I’m sorry, do you live here?”

Uh, no. I ask questions. “Can I ask what you’re doing looking in windows?”

“I was trying to see if I had the right apartment.”

“Same question. Different answer, or I call the cops.” They’ve already been alerted. But that’s just a technicality and I’d rather not use my job around here.

He laughed awkwardly and brought his hands up in front of him. “No, no! I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m here visiting my daughter. I came to surprise her, but she isn’t answering the door. I was just making sure I had the correct apartment.”

“And you didn’t think to call her? Who’s your daughter?”

“Oh, if you live around here you probably know her. Rachel Masters?”

Who the fuck was this guy? I kept a straight face, but every inch of me wanted to pull him into my apartment and interrogate him. “Heard of her. Not sure which apartment is hers. And to be honest, I don’t feel comfortable with you going around looking in windows. So until your daughter is here to show you which apartment is hers and let you in, you’ll leave. Or I’ll call the cops. And I can assure you it won’t take more than a few seconds for them to get here.”

His phone started ringing and I watched as he answered with an overenthusiastic “Hey, sweetheart! Whatcha doin’?” He pointed at the phone and mouthed daughter. “Oh, you’re out with Candice, huh? That’s great. When are you go

Did this dumbass really just forget telling me he came here to surprise her?

He put the phone back in his pocket and pointed in the direction of the parking lot. “She’s having breakfast with a friend. I’m going to go meet them there.”

“You do that.” I smiled and watched him walk back to the parking lot. As he got in his dark green Explorer, I took in as much as possible and waited for him to leave before pushing through my door. Mason was standing right there, arms crossed, expression furious.

“That motherfu—”

“Stop!” I hissed, and searched for a pen and paper. God, why is it that you can never find both! Giving up, I grabbed a cereal box and wrote down the license plate, make and model of the car, and every detail I could remember about the creep. Once I was done, I turned to Mason. “You heard that?”

“Yeah, and we had a real similar conversation when I came back from working out.”

“Shit.” Walking quietly, I opened my bedroom door and blew out air I hadn’t realized I was holding in as my eyes landed on my sleeping girl. Thank God we’d both come back to my apartment last night. I already hated knowing that she’d been there alone while Mason and I were both gone, but I would’ve been sick if she’d been in her place and that guy had been trying to find a way in.

I brushed the top of her head with my lips, grabbed her phone, and walked back out to the living room, closing the door silently behind me. I wasn’t dumb; I knew Rachel hadn’t called that guy, whoever he was, but I needed to know if someone was trying to contact her. Sitting on the couch, I started going through her calls and texts as Mason kept an eye on the window. When I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, I went back to the counter and grabbed the cereal box and my phone.

Detective Ryder answered, and after giving the information on the car and what had been going on with the man, I told him to e-mail me the findings and hung up before facing Mason again.

“Who do you think he was?” Mason asked.

“I have no idea. But he’s sloppy. Even if I didn’t know Rachel’s dad was dead, I would have thought something was weird with the guy. There were too many contradictions in his story. And whoever he is, he obviously doesn’t know that Candice is at cheer camp during the week.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too.” He sighed and roughly ran a hand through his hair. “We gotta keep a watch out for him. I told him to leave, and not twenty minutes later he was back and looking through the windows, trying the door.”

“He was trying—” I caught myself and took a few deep breaths before lowering my voice. “He was trying the door?”

“Yeah, I called you to see where you were, but you left your phone here and as soon as I started calling the cops, you showed up.”

Ru

“I agree, the farther we’re getting into this case, the more I’m with you that we need to stay as undercover as possible. Not including the meetings at the department.”

I nodded. “So now, if he comes back . . . do we call the police, or do we watch and take down everything?”

“I don’t know, man.” Mase sat down on the opposite couch and sighed heavily. “If you didn’t know who was living in that apartment, what would you do?”

“Call it in to dispatch, see if he is who he says he is . . . and if he came back I’d arrest him or call APD and get them to do it.”

“But because it’s Rachel and Candice?”

“I wa

He didn’t respond for a while and we both continued to look out the window. “If we have him arrested, we can see if Ryder will let us question him. Or at least watch it on the cameras while someone else does it.”

“You know he wouldn’t. He’d want to know why we were so interested in this. Just like Rachel doesn’t know about that part of my life . . . that part of my life won’t know about her. I need to make sure they don’t have a possibility of colliding.”

“All right. I get you. Let’s watch. If he even comes back over the weekend, we’ll watch everything he does and then decide.”

“Sounds good.” I heaved myself off the couch, walked over to the door, and glanced into the parking lot. The spot the Explorer had vacated was still empty, and I didn’t see any sign of him. But if he’d waited twenty minutes after Mason confronted him, I was betting he’d wait a while longer before coming back after both of us had. “Go

My phone chimed, and after checking and forwarding the e-mail to Mason, I read off everything about our Peeping Tom.

“Marvin Cross. Five feet eleven inches. One hundred and ninety pounds. Caucasian, black hair, brown eyes. Born in sixty-eight . . . Texas resident, no priors. Fucking awesome. I’ve never seen him before at the bar; either he’s checking on Rachel for someone, or she knows him through the school somehow.”

“If you hadn’t just met the bastard who raped her last week, that would’ve been my first line of thought.”

“Mine too. Let’s open the windows and keep the blinds cracked. The sun goes right into our windows, so it should keep him from seeing us, but I want to hear him. Whoever called him played along with that bullshit about her and Candice being together. If he gets another call, I want to know what’s said.”