Chapter 48

After leaving Ethan’s, I grabbed my pickup from the agencies parking lot, then swung by a twenty-four-hour chain store and bought a pair of slacks and top—I wasn’t about to return to Ethan’s for clothes to work in—then checked into a hotel room.

The next morning, I woke up feeling like shit—both emotionally and physically. My stomach was in knots, and my head felt like it had been used as a soccer ball by a bunch of angry eight-year-olds. But, even though it was against my better judgment, I forced myself to get dressed and head into work.

The look on my face must have told it all because as soon as I walked through the door, my boss took one look at me and told me to go home.

I nodded, not bothering to argue. In the elevator, I leaned against the wall, the weight of the world pressing down on my shoulders. What was I going to do now?

When I exited the elevator, I found myself face to face with a furious Ethan. “Where the hell have you been?”

I took a step back, his anger palpable. “What do you care?” I snapped.

He took a deep breath and visibly tried to calm himself. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said last night. I didn’t mean it. I just... I got scared, okay?”

I raised an eyebrow, “Scared of what?”

“Scared of what this means, of what I'm feeling..." he began, but I interrupted him before he could finish by turning and beginning to walk away.

Though I was shredded inside over his words, I'd made a mistake last night and I knew it. There was too much on the line for Ethan, for me to have pulled such a stupid stunt as I had, so I had to keep up the pretense that he'd been merely a fling. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

He fell in step beside me, the scent of his cologne, washed over me and I inwardly groaned. It was a scent that usually made me feel safe, but today, it only served to remind me of the fiery passion we'd shared in the pool.

“Let’s talk, Nico,” he said, his voice low and gruff. But before I could respond, our phones buzzed, It was a message from the precinct. They’d found another body, and it had the same MO as the others. The sick bastard had struck again.

“We have to go,” he said, shoving the phone back into his pocket.

Ethan’s expression had gone from anger to grim determination in an instant. He knew what the decrease in time between Morales's kills meant as well as I did. We were running out of time.

We drove to the crime scene in silence, the weight of our unresolved issues hanging heavy in the air between us. When we arrived, the chaos was already in full swing. Uniformed officers were everywhere, yellow tape fluttering in the early morning breeze like a grotesque party decoration.

The sight of the body, so like the one we’d found in the field, brought everything back into stark reality. The smell of blood and decay hung thick in the air, mixing with the scent of antiseptic and the faint metallic tang of fear.

We stepped out of the car, and I could feel Ethan’s eyes on me, checking if I was okay. I nodded curtly, and we approached the scene. We had a job to do, and we couldn’t let personal shit get in the way.

The forensics team was already there, snapping pictures and collecting evidence. We stepped aside to let them work, our eyes scanning the area for anything we might have missed.

“We need to find this fucker before he takes someone else,” Ethan said, his voice hard.

I nodded, my own anger rising to the surface. “We will,” I said, my voice equally determined.

We spent hours at the scene, looking for clues, but the Morales had been careful. It was as if he’d wiped the place clean of his presence. The frustration mounted, each second ticking by like a bomb counting down to detonation.

As we stood there, my mind racing with thoughts of the victims and what we had to do, Ethan’s hand brushed against mine. It was a small gesture, but it sent a jolt through me.

I looked at him, his eyes searched mine, and for a brief moment, I saw the man I’d fallen for—the man who’d held me so tenderly just hours ago. But then the mask fell back into place, and he was all business again.

We left the crime scene with more questions than answers, the weight of our failure heavy on our shoulders.

Back at the precinct, I collapsed into my chair, feeling the tension coil through me like a snake. Ethan pulled his own chair opposite of mine, his gaze intense.

“We can’t keep doing this, Nico,” he said, his voice low.

I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to face it. “Doing what?” I asked, playing dumb.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Pretending. We need to talk about...us.”

I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the conversation I’d been avoiding. “There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, my voice firm.

“The hell there isn’t,” he shot back. “We can’t ignore what's there—what we both feel.”

I rolled my eyes, tired of the dance we were doing around each other. “Look, Ethan, you need to get it. I had a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again.”

He stared at me, his eyes dark with a mix of emotions I couldn’t read. Then, with a curse, he stood up. “You’re unbelievable,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “You’re a grown woman, for fuck’s sake. You can’t just ignore what happened. That was more than just a moment of weakness!”

I felt a sting of pain at his words but held my ground. “We have a job to do, and that’s all that matters right now. We need to focus on finding Morales before he kills again.”

Ethan leaned over the desk, his hands braced on the wood. “You’re right, we do have a job to do, but what about us? What happens when this is all over? Are we just going to pretend like nothing happened?”

“We’ll deal with it then,” I said, my voice cold. “But right now, we have a psychopath to catch.”

With a growl, he spun away from me, his fists clenched at his sides. For a moment, I thought he was going to argue further, but instead, he took a deep breath and turned to the board with the case details. “Fine,” he said, his voice strained. “But this isn’t over. We will talk about it, and soon.”

The rest of the day was a blur of paperwork and dead-end leads. The tension between us grew with each passing hour, making the air in the room almost unbearable. We were both lost in our thoughts, trying to piece together what was happening between us, while also trying to track down Morales.

As the sun began to set, we got a break in the case. A witness had come forward with a description of a car seen leaving the area where the last body was found. It was a lead, and a good one. We grabbed our things and headed out the door, our eyes briefly meeting.