They chatted about the past during the walk back by the garage where he’d left the R8, and he was surprised how good it was to plug into those memories of growing up—and by that, he didn’t mean the shit in his household, with his father hating him and his mom being flinchy about everything. He meant the kids stuff. The friend stuff. The school stuff. Not all of his childhood had been bad.

At least not until Janie was abducted and murdered and raped. In that order.

“So you’re not married?” he said.

“Nah. There was someone, but it didn’t work out.”

“I can’t imagine any man walking away from you.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Mel gave his arm a squeeze, but then cursed under her breath. “He found someone he liked better.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“She was nothing like me.”

“Well, his loss.” He looked over. “Was it recent?”

“Yeah. Very. I’m just getting my feet back under me again. I feel kinda lost.”

As they came up to the club, he took Mel right to the head of the wait line. When the bouncer looked her up and down, it was clear that she was going to get in without a problem, but just to be sure, he made a little arrangement with the guy’s gray matter.

“You sure you can’t come in with me?” she asked.

“No, but thanks.”

“Let me give you my number. Tell me yours so I can text it.”

“You know, it’s been nice catching up, but I’m going to leave you off here.”

He debated whether to go into her mind and clear the memories, but he found himself not wanting to be a ghost to everyone from his past.

“I won’t tell her,” Mel murmured. “Joyce, that is. It’s pretty clear you don’t want to have contact with her. Or you woulda.”

“It doesn’t matter. You do you. Goodbye, Mel—”

“Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

“Maybe.” She seemed rootless and floundering as she stared up at him from out of her beautiful face, and he felt bad for her. “True love’s out there, okay? I promise you. Hell, I never thought I could find it, and if the shit can happen for a loser like me? You’re going to be a piece of cake.”

When she launched herself at him and gave him a hug, he lightly patted her shoulder blades and then stepped back.

“Go on,” he said. “See if your new man’s waiting for you in there.”

“What if I’ve already found him.”

Butch frowned. But before he could say something on that, she gave him a wave and strutted into the strobe-lit check-in area.

The club’s door closed, but Butch didn’t immediately step away. Lifting the sleeve of his leather jacket to his nose, he breathed in. Poison by Dior was all over his sleeve.

Like he’d been marked.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

McGrider’s was indeed a local establishment that served a lot of cops and firemen, and, back in the heyday of newspapers, Jo imagined that most of the CCJ’s staff ate here as well. The vibe was scuffed convenience, everything worn down by generations of patrons, the beer signs in the windows Bud Light, Michelob, and Pabst. And as she and the man in leather settled into a wooden booth—or, rather, she settled and he squeezed—her eating companion didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by all the uniforms in the place. Just like he’d said.

“So you have to tell me your name,” she announced. “Before anything else happens.”

Yeah, ’cuz God forbid she chow down a cheeseburger in front of someone she hadn’t been properly introduced to. Evading a police helicopter, fine. But dinner? She had to draw the line.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she said, “What I mean is—”

“Syn,” he interjected.

“Sin.” Jo tilted her head to the side. “As in not a virtue?”

“No, with a y.”

“What’s it short for?”

“Syn.”

His dark, glowing eyes calmly stared back at her across the table, like he was prepared to field a credit check if she wanted to Experian his ass. And the juxtaposition between all that open-book and the sheer size of him wedged into the booth was a contradiction she was grateful for. The fact that he didn’t seem to have anything he was hiding from her made him so much less dangerous.

Plus, again, there was a whole squad of cops around them. If she needed 911, all she had do was pull a “Help!” and a sea of blue would ride up on the guy.

Then again, if he’d wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of chances already.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, leaning forward. “And I don’t want to offend you.”

“You won’t offend me.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is. You will not offend me.”

As he continued to look over at her, the commotion of the busy bar disappeared on Jo. Between one blink and the next, there were no waiters buzzing around with trays of drinks and pitchers of beer. No plates of onion rings or chicken wings being delivered. No men with badges laughing loudly or women with badges telling stories. Privacy bloomed around them, an illusion created by how she felt as he stared at her like that.

Jo cleared her throat. What had she been—oh, right.

“Are you a pro wrestler or something?” she blurted.

“Wrestler?”

“You know, the WWE. Hulk Hogan, although I guess he was doing that in the eighties. I know of him through reality TV. And that lawsuit over the sex tape years ago, thank you, TMZ.” As Sin with a y just continued to meet her eyes, she shook her head, aware she was babbling. “Have you heard of any of those things?”

“I know what a sex tape is, though I’ve never seen one.”

“That makes you party of nobody else,” she said dryly.

“Why would I want to watch someone I don’t know having sex? Or someone I do know, for that matter.”

Now her eyebrows went up. “You have single-handedly disavowed the porn industry, then.”

Make that left-handedly disavowed, she amended to herself. And she would have made that joke out loud, but she didn’t know him well enough. Maybe he was really religious?

“It’s just not of interest,” he said.

“You’ve never watched YouPorn.”

“What is that?”

“You’re not from here, are you.” As if geography might account for him being the one person in the bar who wasn’t familiar with that URL?

“No, I’m not.”

“So where are you from?”

“Not here.”

When she waited for him to fill that one in and he did not, she sat back. “Europe? I mean, you don’t sound American.”

“Yes. Europe.”

Tick-tock… no amplification on that, either.

All right, he might have been open to answering anything, but he clearly wasn’t going to help her much on the Easter Egg hunt.

“So you’re not a wrestler—are you a weight lifter? Wait—a CrossFit guy?”

He shook his head. “No.”