She arched a brow. “It’s a public bar.”
And it conveniently happened to be here? “Go drink somewhere else.” My eyes narrowed on her face. “Unless you’re ready to talk?”
Her attention shifted to the exit door of the function room. I turned around, following her gaze. “So that’s Chief Inspector Valentine,” she murmured, watching Steve walk through the door and head our way.
He slapped me on the back when he reached my side. “Order me a whiskey, son. We’ve already drunk the bar dry back in there.” I signalled for another whiskey as Steve’s eyes fell on Morgan beside me. “And who’s this young lady?”
Morgan held out her hand and I gritted my teeth. “Steve this is Morgan.” Steve shook it. “Morgan, this is Chief Inspector Valentine.”
“Retired,” Steve added. “Well, supposedly.”
“Supposedly?” she questioned as another whiskey joined mine on the bar. I handed it to Steve, eager to usher him away from Morgan.
“They won’t leave a man alone to enjoy his retirement in peace,” he explained after taking a quick sip of his drink.
“We better get back to the party,” I interrupted.
Steve gave her a nod. “Nice to meet you, Morgan.”
We both turned to leave and she called out, “Wait!”
We paused and Morgan handed me the whiskey I left on the bar in my haste to leave. Looking at Steve, she said, “I hear it’s your thirtieth wedding anniversary.”
“It is,” he confirmed.
“Congratulations on a such a wonderful milestone.” She raised her drink. Then she looked at me over the rim of her glass with a glint in her eye. “Cheers.”
My eyes narrowed and she shrugged.
“Thanks, Morgan,” Steve replied, holding up his glass in response. I tipped back my head and tossed the entire contents down my throat and left my glass on the bar. I felt her eyes follow me as we left, but I refused to acknowledge it.
Back inside, Steve peeled away to join Jenna while I headed towards our table, intent on collecting Grace’s bag so we could leave.
Her phone sat by her little evening bag. Four missed calls showed on the screen from her best friend, John, and as I picked it up, he rang again. My eyes searched out Grace. She hadn’t moved from where she stood talking with Cooper, Frog, and Henry. The four of them were caught in a huddle, laughing. Thinking John’s call might be an emergency, I picked up the phone, hit answer, and put it to my ear.
“Grace!” John barked instantly. “Dammit. I’ve been trying to ring you all day.” I opened my mouth to tell him it wasn’t Grace but he kept on talking, his pissed tone putting me offside. My jaw ticked as I listened. “What the hell are you doing? You need to stop playing Russian roulette with your life and get home already.”
Russian roulette with her life? I paused. What the fuck was he talking about?
“Grace? Stop ignoring me. This is serious. You can’t put off coming home any longer. You shouldn’t have even gone in the first place.”
Waves of tension rolled through me. “It’s not Grace.”
“Oh. Shit,” John muttered.
“Tell me what’s going on, John.” My grip on the phone tightened. “Right now.”
“Is Grace there?”
I looked to where Grace stood with the guys, sipping the last quarter of her drink. “She’s nearby. We’re at a party.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “I’m not sure Grace will forgive me for speaking behind her back, but this is bigger than our friendship.”
John’s cryptic conversation was making me lose patience. “Talk,” I barked, needing to know what the hell was going on.
“Grace …” He let out a shaky breath. “Hell … Okay. Grace had a lump removed from her breast exactly nine days before she left for Sydney. Did she tell you?”
“I asked her about it,” I told him, remembering the sudden worry after seeing the fresh scar for the first time. “She said it was a benign lump. I didn’t have any reason to doubt her. She—”
“She lied.”
“What …” I swallowed, my heart suddenly thumping so hard I had to grab the back of the chair behind me to steady myself. “What did you just say?”
“She lied, Casey,” he told me, then paused. “Grace has cancer.”
Blood roared in my ears as the whole world faded away. “No,” I told him, shaking my head. Not Grace. Not my Grace. “You’re wrong. She would’ve told me.”
“Casey … Shit. I’m sorry.”
My eyes fell on her. Henry hugged her close while she laughed at something Cooper was saying.
My heart cracked wide open, memories flooded me instantly.
“What if I want to keep you?”
Grace closing her eyes, hiding them from me. “You can’t. After eight weeks we both walk away, no questions asked.”
Then at the cottage.
“People come and go, Casey. Some crash into your life and leave in the blink of eye, others stay with you for years, but it doesn’t matter how long you have them for, because the way they make you feel stays you with forever.”
I should’ve seen it.
Why didn’t I see it?
John spoke my name but the sound was more like a buzz in my ears because suddenly it was hard to breathe.
The phone fell to my side. “Grace.” My voice cracked on the word and I didn’t realise I’d said it loud enough for everyone to hear until silence fell around me.
Grace looked my way, her brows drawing together. “Casey?”
I fought for air as she started towards me, a million emotions punching through me in turn: hurt, betrayal, and the most crippling one of all—fear. All of it roiled inside me, leaving me sick. I tried to leash it and failed.
“You lied to me!” I held up her phone so she could see it. She flinched, seeing John’s name there on the screen. I turned and pitched it at the wall. Destroying phones was becoming a habit.
Travis started towards me, winding his way through the frozen bodies, all of them seemingly stunned at the violent outburst.
“That was John,” I managed to say, just so she was clear.
“Did he …”
She faltered and trailed off, so I finished the question for her. “Tell me?”
Her head jerked in a nod.
“Yes!” I shouted, feeling raw. “Yes, he fucking told me!”
My raging pulse wasn’t easing and I stepped back, feeling oddly anxious and dizzy. Bumping the table behind me, I spun around, shoving it angrily, and stumbled again. What was wrong with me?
“Casey?”
Christ. Fucking cancer. It was something I couldn’t see, something I couldn’t beat the shit out of, put away in prison, or shoot with a gun. It was something I couldn’t protect her from. I could only hold her hand and watch it happen.
Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“Casey … I’m sorry,” Grace whispered from somewhere behind me.
A sob broke in my chest.
Why?
Why now when I’d just found her?
Why, goddammit!
I clenched my jaw hard enough for my teeth to crack, willing myself to pull it together.
“I can’t do this here,” she told me, her voice trembling. I turned but she pushed her way through the crush of people until she was simply gone.
I blinked, trying to focus, to breathe, to fucking move.
If I wasn’t so disoriented, I would’ve noticed Coby behind me righting the table I’d knocked over. That Jared was calming Henry down from taking a swing at me. That Travis was in my ear, talking to me. But I didn’t see it, or hear any of it.
Without even realising how I’d gotten there, I was out the front of the bar, cold air whipping past my face as I searched for Grace. Catching a flash of gold, I headed for it. She was hailing a cab, standing near the long line of bodies that were waiting to get in the same bar I just left.
“Grace!” I sho
uted.
She spun around just as a cab pulled wildly to the kerb beside her.
“Holy shit,” someone in line muttered. “That’s Grace Paterson.”
Ignoring the people behind me as I made my way towards her, I yelled, “Grace, you can’t leave!”
I didn’t just mean the bar either, or even the city. I meant me. She couldn’t leave me. God, please, don’t fucking do this.
Grace shook her head at me, tears filling her eyes while some fucktard in the line beside us held up his phone and snapped a photo.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I growled.
“Hey!” the guy cried when I snatched the phone from his hand. I hit the trash icon on the screen deleting the photo. Then I threw it because I was becoming a pro at destroying other people’s phones. “Take another photo and I’ll rip your head off. Got it?”
“Casey!” Grace grabbed my arm, pulling me away from him. I stumbled when the world tilted. “You’re drunk,” she muttered.
From three drinks? That couldn’t be right but my head wouldn’t clear enough to work out why. I forced my eyes to her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because this is my fight. Mine!” she shouted, pounding a fist against her chest. “It’s not Henry’s, or John’s, or yours. It’s mine, and I’m not going to allow what happened to my father and to my family happen to you. Don’t you see how much you’ve already lost? Why would you think I’d put you through more of that?”
My vision began to fade. I was hanging on to consciousness by my fucking fingernails. “Don’t you get it, Grace? It’s too late,” I slurred and shook my head. Blinking again, I managed to meet her eyes, my heart shattered. “I lose you and it’s game over for me.”
“Casey.” Grace pressed her lips together, tears spilling down her face. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I love you, but I can’t do this.”
I reached for her but in a split second she was inside the cab and it was driving her away from me. Stepping up to the kerb, I managed to hold up my arm, hailing the next cab passing by. Sliding inside, all I remember mumbling was, “Follow that cab in front of us,” before I slipped into darkness.
My phone rang, the distinctive ringtone telling me it was work. I dragged my pounding head from beneath the pillow with a groan and felt around for it, not willing to risk opening my eyes.
When my fingers closed around it, I dragged it back underneath my pillow with me, answering with a grunt.
“Valentine,” my boss, Inspector Keith Burns, barked.
I replied with another grunt, wondering why he was so alert at whatever the fuck time it was in the morning. Was it even morning? Who even cared right now? I barely remembered leaving the bar last night when Mum and Dad’s anniversary party wound down and my boss had still been there, unsteady on his feet.
I startled at the soft murmur of a female voice beside me. My morning wood twitched happily, liking the sound, but my mind immediately questioned who the hell was in my bed. Was it even my bed?
I lifted the pillow. The familiarity of my own room stared back at me—white walls, navy sheets, and the framed print of Kate Beckinsale from Underworld, complete with fierce eyes and gun in hand, on my wall. The print had been a birthday gift from my sister-in-law Evie and was both sexy, powerful and kick fucking ass.
“I need you in the office, Detective,” Burns ordered in my ear. “I know it’s Sunday and your day off, but this is important, and when I say important, I mean real fucking important, so get your ass in here ASAP.”
It had to be if my boss was in the office on his day off too. I ended the call with another grunt. Tossing the phone, I scratched my balls with a long, drawn-out yawn and rolled out of bed.
“Wha…” came a mumble from somewhere beneath the covers. Getting to my feet, I turned, completely naked with my wood still saluting the morning, and waited for the woman in my bed to reveal herself. She didn’t disappoint. The sheets were shoved down sleepily, unearthing dusky olive skin, long tousled dark hair that reached the small of her back, and an extremely well toned ass. She paused for a moment before rolling over. The front was just as hot. My eyes travelled up her long legs, past a taut set of abs and halted to a jarring stop. A fresh, thick jagged scar marred her ribcage and on her torso sat a tattoo of a coiled, deadly snake, its red eyes waiting for the moment to strike. Beneath the snake in old English font read Black Viper MC.
I also knew her, and as of last night, that intimate knowledge may or may not have been re-acquainted. Events were still hazy.
“Gabriella.”
Her eyes flew open, widening on my cock before slicing up to my face. She flinched, cursing in Spanish. “Mierda!”
Ripping the sheets away, she slid naked from the bed, grabbing for her clothes. I stalked around the bed, seizing her bicep roughly. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Let me go, you cula!” she growled in that husky tone of hers that always got me hard. She yanked her arm free, her gold-coloured eyes shooting sparks. Her nose, covered with a smattering of freckles, scrunched adorably in contrast to her anger. “I must have been off my face on snow to sleep with you.”
My stomach rolled in disgust. “You doing coke now?”
She paused to rake her eyes over me, the look both lazy and suggestive. My cock jerked, not seeming to care about the whole drug thing. At all. Then she shrugged. “I’m doing a lot of things now.”
Including me? I scanned the floor, not seeing any evidence of torn, empty condom wrappers. “Did we have sex?”
Her panties were already on and her bra snapping in place when I asked my question. “If we did, then God save us all, because Hell must have frozen over.”
I couldn’t blame her fury. We’d left things in a bad place. Her sudden appearance last night at the party on the arm of a man I didn’t know had hit me like a solid punch in the gut. Where had she been all these years? With the Black Vipers? How the fuck had it come to that?
I waved a hand in the direction of her torso where no matter what angle I stood, the eyes of the coiled snake glowered at me. “What’s with the tattoo?” I growled. “We went through the academy together, then all of a sudden you disappear, and now you’re running with the Vipers?”
“It’s none of your business,” she hissed, her voice muffled as she yanked a tight black dress over her head and twitched it quickly in place.
“You woke in my bed.” I folded my arms as she yanked her hair from beneath the neckline of her dress. It resettled down the delicious curve of her back. “That makes it my business.”
“Arrghhh!” She threw up her hands. “Eres una cara tan verga!”
The Spanish words rolled off her tongue beautifully, making me realise how much I’d missed it. How much I’d missed her. “What did you say?” I asked as she grabbed her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I said,” she enunciated sarcastically as she jerked the pair of black stilettos on her feet, “that you are such a dickface.”
With that she stood and grabbed her small bag. It began to ring and she rummaged her hand around inside it. Yanking out her phone, she answered with, “Hola!” as she stalked from the room.
Wrenching open a dresser drawer, I tugged on a pair of jeans and a snug long sleeve shirt in dark grey. Gabriella was gone when I entered the living room of my apartment. Knowing I had to get to work, I didn’t chase her down. I might’ve had no idea what her number was or where she lived, but I was a detective and damn good at my job. I’d fucking find her because we were far from finished. I wanted to know how the beautiful, determined, career-driven girl I had adored spiralled into a woman who talked drugs and biker gangs.
Palming my phone, I dialled Tate, my partner with the Sydney Police. “You get the call?”
“Yep, already on my way in,” he answered. “You know what it’s about?”
“Nope,” I replied, tucking my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans and hanging my detective badge around my neck. “You?”
“No idea.”
Twenty minutes later I was at the Surry Hills LAC—Sydney City’s local area command centre, sitting opposite my boss and to the left of Tate.
“What’s going on, boss?” I asked.
“I need you both to make an arrest. A new case. Came up overnight. Probable homicide.”
Tate and I shared a quick glance of what the fuck? Pulled in on a Sunday for something any cop on duty could have handled? The only thing I could think of was that either the victim or the perpetrator was a celebrity and Burns wanted only senior detectives in charge.
“Who are we arresting?” Tate asked, running a hand over his dark, buzzed hair in a tired, casual gesture.
Burns looked directly at me, his nostrils flaring when he answered. “Casey Daniels.”
I stiffened in my seat, the only physical indication of the shock punching through me. That had to be a mistake. The idea of arresting my friend on suspicion of murder was some kind of sick joke. But Burns didn’t play sick jokes, and his eyes were flat, and deadly serious.
My jaw ticked, suddenly furious on Casey’s behalf. “And the victim?”
Burns sat back in his seat and swiped a hand across the stubble on his jaw, the strain in his demeanour showing through. “Grace Paterson.”
“Bullshit,” I growled and Tate tensed at my side. Getting to my feet, I jabbed a finger across the desk at my boss and shouted, “Bull-fucking-shit!”
“Lock it down, Valentine,” he ordered.
Hands on my hips, I paced for a moment. The ramifications of what this would do to so many people I loved weighed on me.
Probable homicide meant there was no body but there was enough evidence to indicate survival was extremely doubtful.
Grace.
I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath. Gaining control, my eyes opened directly on my boss. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
Tate leaned forward in his seat, his jaw ticking.
“You two are not running this case.” I opened my mouth to argue and he kept going, his voice gaining volume in order to deter an interruption. “You’re too close, Mitch. I’ve pulled you both in as a professional courtesy to Jamieson and Valentine Consulting. I don’t believe for a second Casey would do something like this, but the evidence is stacked so high against him that my hands are tied right now.”