Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (6 page)

"We'll get a cab. Too many cameras, too many people on public transport."

"R
ight.
Yes. Definitely.
" We walked silently in the dusk. Presumably
,
anyone looking at us would think we were on an evening stroll, or a date.
Adam
and me
. On. A. Date.
When we were a mile from the office, Adam hailed a cab and opened the door for me. I collapsed into the seat, shell
-
shocked, and looked down at my dress.
Oh yuck.
I'd forgotten about the bloody handprint. I shifted my purse to cover it and stuffed the papers
haphazardly
inside.

"Where to?" asked the driver, glancing at us in his mirror. Adam held my clean hand in his lap.
I kept m
y bloody hand concealed.

Adam looked at me expectantly so I reeled off my address and we
headed there
.

By the time we
turned onto my street
, I was shivering uncontrollably. Adam let go of my hand and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into him. He was warm and I snuggled
happily
. Twice in one night. A little bit of me wanted to do a
“
yay
”
but the rest of me felt cold and flat and horrified.
This wasn’t the end of a date.
Somewhere in
Montgomery
w
ere
Martin Dean's corpse and his murderers
,
and I had as
much
as witnessed it. You don't come from a cop family like mine and not know how bad that
sounded
.

"You live alone?" Adam asked when
the taxi
dropped
us off
outside my place. As far as living arrangements went, I'd majorly scored. It was a three
-
story brownstone with white trim
,
owned by my best friend
’s parents
,
who had converted it into
apartments
,
which they rented
to us. Lily had the first floor apartment
,
whi
ch was the biggest and had the
small rear garden. I had the second floor and someone else rented the floor above
me
. Lily's turquoise Mini
was parked
out front next to my
dead
-
as
-
a
-
dodo
black VW. A
lamp
was on
in
Lily’s
living room
. I felt relief. At least she was
close by
. If I screamed, she’d double the noise and
bring
someone running.

I nodded. "My best friend
, Lily Shuler,
lives downstairs," I said as I shakily put my key
in
to the lock. After I fumbled it, Adam took the key, unlocked the d
oor and pushed me inside. He
hardly said a word on the way
over
here and didn't seem likely to get chatty any time soon. He followed me upstairs and unlocked the door to my apartment too. In the little entryway
,
I
dumped my purse and shoes, and
flipped the light on with a
quivering
hand
. I
went straight into the bathroom to wash
up
, trying not to look at the pink water as it swirled away
.

When I came out, and walked down the hallway into the living area
,
Adam was s
itting
on my couch.

"Are you all right?" he asked,
his
concerned eyes running over me as he ran a hand through his hair.

"Not sure."
I flopped onto the couch, next to him.

"Have you ever seen a dead body before?"

"Only Izzie, Natalie and Fi," I replied.

Adam gaped at me. "You found three women's bodies?"

"My goldfish."

"Oh."

"Adam, Martin Dean is dead."

"I was there."

"Did those men kill him?"

"Yes."

"They would have killed us." It wasn't a question. It was a fact.

"Probably," agreed Adam. We were quiet for a moment. It was a lot to absorb.

"We should call the police. Tell them what we saw."

"Lexi, you can't call the police
.
D
o you
understand
me?"

"Why not? A man just got murdered. We're witnesses." Oh God, maybe they'd make us go into the witness protection program. We'd have to live in some horrid town where no one knew us and I'd never see my family again. Bright side: maybe Adam and I would have to pretend to be married.
I was willing to do some very creative pretending.

"Do not phone the police, I'll take care of this." Adam's pocket rang and he pulled a slim cell phone out. He walked over to the window, looking out over the quiet street as he answered it.

"Martin Dean's dead," was the first thing he said. "I saw him get shot... Two of them... No, they didn't see me. They wanted a file... There was another witness. We got out without them seeing us. I'm with her right now." They talked a while longer, Adam giving short, terse answers
before hanging
up and turn
ing
to me.

I had a bad feeling about all of this.
"What's going on, Adam?" I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment
, like he was trying to decide what to say or whether I could cope. I watched him with scared eyes. He
started talking. "I don't work for Green Hand Insurance. I'm a detective with Montgomery PD and I'm undercover in an intelligence op. We've been watching Martin Dean for a while."

"Did Dean know?"

Adam
nodded
.
“Not at first. I spoke to him just before he got shot.”
He stood in front of me, hands thrust into pockets, looking down
with a serious
expression. "It's important that you don't tell anyone."

"Why are you telling me?"

"Because
I know
you're not the ditz you make yourself out to be. I read your file. You're smart and you didn't completely freak out when you saw a dead body. You
concealed your presence and
knew how to get out of ther
e...
and I'm going to make a be
t that no one knew you were in the building tonight either."

I thought about the wedge hold
ing the door open so I didn
't have to swipe onto the floor, the lack of cameras in the elevator and basement library.
The only record of me
was
leaving the
office
at four p
.
m
.
, hours before Dean was killed.

I hadn't been smart.
I had been lucky.

"Uh, thanks?" I said, then. "Wait, I've got a file? And you work for the police department?" What else didn't I know about Adam? Maybe he wasn't the cute slash trainspotting loser
slash management drone
I thought he was.

"Everyone in Dean's office has a file. Yours was the most interesting."

I perked up a bit at that.

"Can't understand why you're a temp.
You have
a
perfectly
good degree." I tried not to look really pleased that he knew I
was a
smarty-pants
,
but when he carried on
,
I had to wipe the smile off my face a bit. "You temp in a bunch of different offices. You're a really good researcher and I know you've spent a total of ten
hours on the last three reports I've given you combined, even
though it's taken you at least a week to turn each one in." Busted again. Though, come to think of it, he had been letting me get away with it.
Despite my fear,
I warmed to him.

"Why are you telling me all this? Is this one of those monologues the evil dude gives before he kills the girl
?
A
nd then paints her in gold as some kind of crazy message?" I started to look around without moving my head. I could probably make it
to my bedroom, lock the door,
jump out the window and
flee
down the fire escape.
Each of my three brothers was a cop.
If I called
any one of them,
the whole of Montgomery PD would turn out in
full
force
and flatten Adam
.

Adam had the good manners to look appalled. "No! I'm telling you I think you did a good job tonight and this isn't James Bond."

"I didn't do anything," I protested.

"Exactly."

"What else was in my file?"

"Just the regular stuff."

The fleeting thought that he might have put the lingerie pics in my file pinged into my head and I went a bit pink.
"You're really a detective?"

Adam nodded. He was quite good at that. Nice strong chin.

"How long?"

"Eight years."

"Wow." Then, "You're not very good at keeping secrets." Why was he telling me this if he was supposed to be a super secret undercover operative? I thought spies
, sorry undercover cops,
couldn't tell anyone about their jobs, except their cats and dead aspidistras. My oldest brother
,
Garrett
,
had done some undercover stuff and he never said a word.

"I am, but you're quietly freaking out and you'll just dig around until you get the truth anyway, so I'm saving you the trouble and me a lot of bother." Actually, he had a point. I would have dug around, and probably blabbed everything to the police in an Oscar
-
worthy scene. "Plus
,
I don't want you to blab and tell the police then get yourself killed before you can make it to the witness stand." Oooh! He was good at this. No won
der he got to be hotshot spy...
and I DIDN'T. Sore point.