Chapter 14: The Curb

Rhys's POV

I got off shift at six and drove the last block to my own street with the window down.

Two calls that night had been bad ones.

Neither of them was why I couldn't stop thinking about a woman's forehead against a hotel window.

I kept hearing her say it.

You let it run.

She was right, and I had known she was right since the first night.

I had stood at my window with the phone in my hand and watched two guards take her by the arms.

Then I heard Natalie's voice crack, and I started recording and ran down the stairs.

I told her about the running and left out the standing.

Tonight she made me say the standing, and I said it.

That was the first honest thing I'd done in this whole business, and it had cost me the one person I wanted to be honest with.

I turned onto her block and slowed.

A man sat on her curb under the dead streetlight with his head in his hands.

His good suit was soaked through, his tie was gone, and one shoe was off.

I parked and got out slowly.

I had answered enough calls to know what a drunk man does when someone walks up fast.

"Dalton."

He looked up, and for a second he didn't know me.

Then he did, and he tried to stand and slid back down.

"You," he said. "You're the one with the video."

"I'm the one who lives here."

"She won't open the door."

"It's six in the morning. She's asleep."

"I've been here since two," he said. "I rang the bell forty times."

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