Steal Me (4 page)

“How the
hell
am I supposed to believe you’re not doing this on purpose?” he asked, glancing up angrily at Maggie.

But to his surprise, the pretty waitress didn’t look appalled, embarrassed, or apologetic. Nor smug. Her expression was completely
wrong
for a woman who’d just dumped a customer’s order all over them for what had to be the twelfth time in three months.

She looked horrified. And scared.

“Hey,” he asked, forgetting all about the sandwich as his fingers touched her arm. An arm that shook as it reached out for one of his papers.

“You okay?” he asked. Stupid question. She obviously wasn’t okay.

Her fingers closed on a piece of paper. Evidence he really shouldn’t have had out on the table in the first place, much less let a civilian touch.

But Anthony hadn’t gotten to where he was by following the rules exactly; he’d gotten where he was by following his instinct. And instinct told him that whatever Maggie Walker was thinking and feeling at this moment was important.

Vital, even.

So he let her pick up the paper.

“Maggie?” he asked as gently as he could, the name feeling strange on his tongue. For as often as he thought it, he couldn’t remember ever saying it aloud directly to her.

“How do you have this?” she asked, her voice small.

He glanced at the paper held between her fingers. It was the police sketch of Smiley. Or what they thought might be him. Hoped.

When Anthony looked at it, he saw an average, nondescript, thirty-something white dude. A guy that could have been one of a million people walking Manhattan sidewalks every day.

But Maggie saw something different.

“You recognize him?” Anthony asked, his voice losing all gentleness in its urgency.

Her green eyes never strayed from the piece of paper.

“You could say that.” She blew out a long, slow breath, as though steadying herself. “Seeing as I was
married
to him.”

W
omen that had tried as hard to be
good
as Maggie had weren’t supposed to know what the inside of a police station looked like.

Unfortunately, good girls didn’t always have good families, and between her father’s DUIs and her brother’s MIPs, she was more familiar with law enforcement than she’d like.

But this?
This
was a whole other ball game.

She cupped her hands around the ugly, generic coffee cup to keep her hands from shaking. “Do we have to do this in here?” she asked.

Detective Browning smiled gently at her. “I know it’s not the most comfortable room, but bright side…at least we didn’t have to cuff you.”

Maggie knew the other woman meant it as a joke, but she could barely muster a fake smile at the stout brunette woman.

Detective Browning’s partner seemed to sense this and leaned forward with a kind smile. “You’re in no way a suspect, Ms. Walker. I’m sure Captain made that very clear.”

Maggie all but rolled her eyes at Detective Poyner. Actually,
Captain
hadn’t done much other than pepper her with a half dozen questions in the diner yesterday, only to growl in irritation when she was too flustered to answer them coherently.

Then he’d
ordered
her to the precinct today, on her day off, to answer some questions about Eddie.
Her
Eddie.

Or the man who
used
to be her Eddie.

“We could have come to your house, but Captain said you didn’t want that,” the male detective said, his voice kind.

Maggie nibbled her bottom lip. It was true. Anthony Moretti had asked her (gruffly) if detectives could come by her place, but she’d immediately said no.

She’d worked so hard to remove Eddie from her life…she didn’t want him anywhere near her home, even in discussion.

So here she was, sitting in a hard metal chair in a dark, intimidating room with two cops who were perfectly nice but also increasingly impatient, if she was reading them correctly.

Meanwhile
he
was nowhere to be found.

A tiny part of Maggie—the selfish part of her—wished that she’d never seen that picture at the diner. Never opened her mouth.

But of course she had to. Because if Eddie was really doing something illegal…

She took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, let’s talk. But first…can you tell me what exactly it is that Eddie’s done?”

Captain Moretti had said burglary, which sounded pretty damn bad, but it also didn’t seem like Eddie. Her ex-husband had always lacked…guts.

And frankly, he’d also lacked motivation and energy. The thought of him going through all that effort didn’t line up with what she knew of the man.

Maybe she’d been wrong.

“Can I see the picture again?” she blurted out, just as Detective Browning was about to answer her question.

Detective Poyner opened the folder in front of him and slid a piece of paper toward her.

Maggie couldn’t hide the wince as she looked at it again. If it wasn’t Eddie, it was a darn close likeness, and seeing those familiar features again brought up a part of her life that she’d been deliberately putting behind her for the past eighteen months.

“Is this your ex-husband?”

Maggie lifted a shoulder. “It looks just like him, but it’s hard to be one hundred percent sure in a drawing, you know?”

Detective Poyner nodded slowly. “But based on what you know of Mr. Walker—”

“Hansen,” Maggie interrupted. “Eddie’s last name is Hansen. I took my last name back when we divorced.”

“My apologies,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed—”

Detective Browning leaned forward. “Ms. Walker, why don’t you just tell us whatever you feel like telling us about Eddie? What he’s like, where he is, the type of man he is—”

“The type of man he is?” Maggie interrupted again, her voice going just slightly higher than normal. “Detective Browning, have you ever been married?”

The woman gave a quick nod, her thick chin-length hair bobbing at the gesture.

“Divorced?” Maggie asked, noticing there was no ring but not wanting to assume.

Detective Browning hesitated, then nodded again. She wasn’t conventionally attractive. Her cheeks were round and smattered in freckles, her forehead broad, and her body gave the impression of being ill-suited toward exercise. But Maggie prided herself in recognizing kindness, and this woman had it, even around her impatient bluster.

Maggie met her eyes and hoped to reach a kindred spirit. “I don’t know what kind of divorce you had. Maybe it was the quiet, irreconcilable differences kind. But mine was…” Maggie pursed her lips and searched for the right word. “
Eruptive
.”

“Your divorce was eruptive?” Poyner asked.

Maggie flicked her gaze to his. To his silver wedding band. “Yes, it was.”

So was the marriage.

But they didn’t need to know that part.

“So you and Mr. Hansen aren’t on good terms.”

“We’re not on
any
terms,” Maggie said a little desperately.

“So you haven’t seen him since the divorce?”

Maggie shook her head. “Well, I guess
technically
I saw him at the grocery store when I was still living in New Jersey, right after the paperwork was finalized, but we didn’t speak.”

Not for Eddie’s lack of trying.

Browning glanced at her notes. “Captain said you’ve been divorced about a year and a half. No contact whatsoever in that time?”

Maggie hesitated, and they both sat up imperceptibly straighter. No dummies, these detectives.

She fiddled with her coffee cup. “The divorce was my idea.”

There was a world of meaning in those words, and she saw immediately that Detective Browning recognized it, either because of her status as a woman or fellow divorcée label.

“He didn’t take it well,” Browning said.

Understatement. Such an understatement.

Maggie shook her head. “No.”

Poyner’s eyes narrowed. “Has he been harassing you?”

“No,” Maggie said quickly. “Not recently, anyway. But for a while there he called a lot. Texted. E-mailed. Facebook messages, the whole deal. I tried to just ignore it, thinking he needed time to come to grips with the fact that we were over…”

“He didn’t stop?”

Maggie’s lips twisted in a half smile. “For a man who couldn’t keep a job for more than a couple months, he was surprisingly persistent.”

Poyner folded his hands on the table and leaned in. “So he’s still contacting you.”

“No. I changed my phone number.”

And my e-mail. And got off Facebook and quit talking to all of our mutual friends who might give him my address…

“Ah,” Browning said, as though she understood perfectly. And perhaps she did. “How long exactly since he last contacted you?”

Maggie took a sip of now cold coffee, thinking back. “I changed my number about eight months ago when I moved to the city. There’s been nothing since then.”

“What about his last known address?”

“He got the house in Jersey when we divorced. I can give you the address, but I have no idea if he still lives there or not.”

Both detectives nodded, and she didn’t think she imagined their look of disappointment. No doubt they were hoping that they’d be able to get to Eddie through her.

Maggie set her cup aside. “Look, I’ve answered all your questions, I’m helping as best I can, but at least tell me why I’m here…what he’s done.”

They exchanged a look before Poyner cleared his throat and spoke. “The picture you’ve identified as your ex-husband is a suspect in a series of burglaries on the Upper West Side. So far there have been eight break-ins, and this sketch is the closest thing to a clue that we have.”

“Eight break-ins,” Maggie said, jaw dropping slowly. “Are you saying that Eddie is
Smiley
?”

Browning flinched. “Gotta love when the media turns a crime into entertainment.”

Maggie hardly heard the detective. Her mind was racing. Between work and writing, she hardly paid attention to the news these days, but there was a TV at the diner that was set to the local news more often than not. It was impossible to miss mention of the celebrity criminal known as Smiley, apparently so dubbed because of cheeky notes left at the scene of the crime.

The details on the guy were sparse, probably because the cops wanted them to be, but even still, that couldn’t be Eddie. Not her Eddie.

Could it?

Doubt gnawed at the back of her mind. The man was lazy as crap, but he was also smart, in a wily sort of way. And she could totally imagine him getting an absolute kick out of earning a name like Smiley while evading the police.

“Ms. Walker, I understand that you haven’t heard from your husband in a while, but if there’s anything you can tell us about him—the way he operates, the way he thinks, you’d be helping us out.”

Her fingers picked up the police sketch again and she studied it. “You really think my ex-husband is breaking into people’s homes and stealing…what, exactly?”

They shrugged. “His MO’s not consistent. Sometimes he takes a computer, sometimes it’s jewelry, other times it’s nothing more than a crystal decanter. Best as we can tell, he seems to be in it for the thrill more than for the money.”

Maggie didn’t take her eyes off the picture. “Oh, trust me, if Eddie really is Smiley, he’s in it for the money. At least partially.”

“What does Mr. Hansen do for a living?”

Maggie snorted. “Drink beer? Eddie was unemployed more often than not, but to hear him tell it, that was never his fault.”

Eddie had always gotten along well with her brother. Eddie and Cory could rant for hours about how The Man was working against them.

“We pulled up his record,” Browning said. “A half dozen unpaid parking tickets, numerous traffic citations, and an altercation at an O’Malley’s pub a few years back, although all charges were dropped?”

There was a question there.

“He’d had too much to drink,” Maggie said quietly, remembering that night all too well. “Got into it with one of his friends.”

Eddie’s “friend” had been Jonah Morton, one of the few decent guys that Eddie hung out with and the only one of Eddie’s crew that Maggie had been able to tolerate. Over beers, she and Jonah, who’d just remodeled his house, had gotten into a discussion about the best method of removing wallpaper—quite possibly the
least
sexy topic in the history of conversation—and Eddie had lost it. He’d accused Jonah of making a move on his woman about five seconds before launching himself across the pub table.

Jonah hadn’t bothered to fight back, but the rest of Eddie’s crew had thrown themselves into the mix. The night ended with four of them in handcuffs.

Luckily, Maggie had had plenty of experience with the whole bail process thanks to an alcoholic father and a delinquent brother. By midnight the same night she’d been driving Eddie home, and he spent the entire next day sleeping it off.

He never acknowledged the incident. Not to apologize. Not to thank her. Nothing.

Maggie told the detectives none of this. She was happy to fill them in on Eddie’s history, but not her own.

“Ms. Walker, it would be extremely helpful if you could put together a list of any way we might be able to get in contact with Mr. Hansen. Family members, mutual friends, favorite hangouts…”

Maggie shrugged. “I can try, but it’s been awhile. I’d like to think Eddie’s moved on from his life with me.”

“All the same, Mr. Hansen is the closest thing we have to a suspect, and you’re the closest thing we have to
him
. The captain wouldn’t have asked you to come down here if he didn’t think you had something useful to share.”

Maggie’s eyes flicked to the mirrored window behind the detectives’ heads, which every cop TV show she’d ever seen told her was likely to be a one-way window.

“Yeah?” she asked, barely keeping the ire out of her voice. “Is that why your
captain
has been staring at me through a one-way window for the past hour instead of having the courtesy to talk or even say hello?”

A
nthony crossed his arms over his chest and continued to glare into the interrogation room. He made eye contact with a very annoyed, very angry Maggie Walker, although she wouldn’t
know
they were actually making eye contact.

Then her eyes narrowed slightly, and Anth had the strangest sense that maybe she
did
know, even though common sense told him that all she was seeing was a reflection of herself.

“Hey, this just in: you’re an ass.”

Anth didn’t even turn around to look at his brother. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Luc came up behind him until they were standing shoulder to shoulder looking into the interrogation room where Maggie was writing down anything she could remember about her ex-husband’s old haunts.

Her ex-husband.

For some reason, it was strange to think of Maggie Walker having been married. And divorced. Although he knew from the contact form she’d filled out today that she was thirty-two, she seemed younger somehow. Her light brown hair was pulled into a girlish ponytail; she was dressed in jeans, basic brown leather boots, and a long-sleeved white shirt that was just fitted enough to be…interesting.

“I repeat. You’re an ass,” Luc said.

Anth finally turned his head to look at his younger brother. “And
I’ll
repeat: What the hell are you doing here?”

Luc turned to face him, the anger on his face catching Anthony by surprise.

“I’m here because Mags called me.”

Mags?

“What do you mean, she called you? When?”

And
why
?

Maggie had called Luc. It shouldn’t have bothered him so much. It was probably nothing…and yet, for reasons he didn’t understand, the fact made him want to punch his brother’s too-good-looking face.

If she’d needed to talk, why hadn’t she called
him
?

Luc’s blue eyes were exasperated as he glared at Anth. “She called me, wanting to know if she needed a lawyer.”

“What the fuck would she need a lawyer for?”

“Exactly!” Luc said, throwing his hands up. “Did you bother to explain to her that she wasn’t a suspect before you dragged her down here and stuck her in an interrogation room?”

Anth felt a little sting of guilt. He hadn’t really told her much of anything. No wonder she hadn’t called him. Still, to call his
brother
…

Too frustrated to sort out his thoughts, and too caught off guard by the unexpected sting of jealousy, Anthony lashed out in the way of older siblings everywhere. He straightened his shoulders and glared.

But Luc was having none of it. “Puff up all you want, big brother. You handled this badly, and you know it. Get her out of there.”

Anthony dimly registered that his brother was absolutely right, which made him fight back all the more.

“This isn’t your case,
bambino
. Hell, it’s not even your
precinct
.”

A throat cleared from near the door, and Anthony glanced over to see Luc’s partner standing there, looking half-fascinated, half-nervous.

Anth glanced back at Luc. “You dragged Lopez with you?”

Sawyer Lopez lifted a finger in agreement. “Dragged is the correct word there, Captain. If it were up to me, we’d be dutifully patrolling Broadway for jaywalkers.”

“Shut it, Lopez,” Luc shot over his shoulder. “Broadway is
crawling
with jaywalkers, and you hate Times Square.”

Luc’s partner grinned, his teeth white against his tanned skin. Anthony all but rolled his eyes. Between his baby brother’s movie-star good looks and Lopez’s exotic, dark-haired charm, the two younger men looked like a TV version of cops, not the real thing.

And Maggie had called Luc.

“Get her out of there,” Luc repeated, his voice quieter as he jerked his head in the direction of the interrogation room.

“Don’t you already have a girlfriend to worry about?”

“Ooh, I know the answer to this one,” Lopez said, raising his hand.

“We
all
know this one,” Anth ground out. His brother was head over heels in love with Ava Sims. So why had he dashed over here the second a diner waitress called him?

And come to think of it…

“How did Maggie even have your phone number?” Anthony asked.

Luc shrugged. “I gave it to her awhile back. She needed someone to go pick up a table she’d bought, and Vin and I helped her out.”

Okay
that
…that didn’t even make sense.

“
Vincent
. You’re telling me that Vincent, the city’s—no, the
state
’s—biggest grump, willingly helped some broad move furniture?”

Luc’s eyes narrowed. “Not some broad.
Maggie
. Good God, man, we see her every Sunday, and Vin and I see her a hell of a lot more than that when we drop in once or twice a week.”

“Mags always talks the chef into adding extra cheese to my sandwich,” Lopez said. “Gotta love her.”

Both Morettis ignored him.

Anthony stayed focused on his brother. “Is Vin interested in her or something?”

Luc’s brows lifted.

“Don’t,” Anth snapped. “I know that look. I invented that look.”

Luc’s only response was to grin.

“I hate brothers,” Anthony muttered, turning back to see that Maggie was still writing dutifully on the paper, her teeth nibbling at the corner of her lip as she thought.

God, had she really thought she needed a lawyer?

He knew he’d been a little intense at the diner yesterday when she’d recognized the sketch of Smiley—or
thought
she recognized—time would tell how accurate the sketch was…or how accurate Maggie’s memory was.

But he thought he’d made it perfectly clear that she didn’t have anything to worry about…that she’d be doing them a favor.

“I offered to send detectives to her house,” Anthony muttered.

“Yeah, because that’s probably a dream of hers. To have a bunch of strangers come invade her personal space on her day off and talk about her ex-husband.”

“Well, what would you have done, Luca?” Anth asked, his tone surly. “She has potentially vital information to my case. I can’t treat her differently just because—”

“Because why?” Luc prompted.

“Because she’s hot,” Lopez said, coming all the way into the room to join the Morettis at the window.

Anthony’s hand fisted at Lopez’s casual comment. “Have some respect, Officer; she’s a witness.”

Lopez and Luc exchanged a glance and Anthony realized he’d walked into a classic trap.

“She’s not
actually
a witness,” Luc said casually.

“Well, she’s an informant,” Anthony said, grasping at straws.

“I apologize for admiring the
informant
,” Lopez said. “I was out of line.”

Anthony scowled at the other man, looking for just the smallest amount of cheek or insolence to reprimand, but Officer Lopez’s face was all respectful deference.

Luc’s expression, on the other hand, was knowing, and Anthony decided to cut right through the bullshit and get it all out on the table.

“Why do I get the feeling that you two second graders have gotten it into your head that I have an attachment to Ms. Walker?” Anth asked.

“Why would we think that? You don’t have an attachment to
anybody
.”

Luc’s words were said in a jesting, younger-brother tone, but they caused a pang of…something. But instead of giving into the forbidden emotion, Anthony clung to an easier one:

Resentment
.

Resentment that Luc could be cavalier about romantic relationships when he’d met his perfect match in an ambitious career woman who understood a cop’s long hours.

Plus, Luc was an officer, who, for reasons Anthony didn’t understand, seemed to be perfectly content staying at that rank for the time being. By the time Anthony was Luc’s age, he was already a sergeant, but Luc had always been blissfully unburdened by titles. Blissfully unburdened by the crushing legacy of following in Tony Moretti’s footsteps…

And then there was Vannah. That beautiful tragedy of a woman had taught Anthony one very important lesson:

He could be a cop…

…or a boyfriend.

Or
was the operative word.

He couldn’t be both.

And he sure as
hell
couldn’t be a husband. Some cops, perhaps, were cut out for the double life. His father had made it work. Luc was making it work. His brother Marco had actually put the relationship
first
, moving to godforsaken Los Angeles for the sake of his girlfriend.

But guys like Anth and Vincent…they had the sort of single-minded dedication that didn’t allow them luxuries like relationships.

Not that Luc and Marc weren’t dedicated to the force. They’d die for the PD. Literally.

But…

Anthony’s wandering mind snapped to attention at the realization that there was movement in the interrogation room. Maggie had handed over her notes to his two detectives and was shaking their hands, a friendly smile in place even though her face looked tired…nervous.

Nervous because he’d made a complete mess of things, because for reasons that made no sense, Maggie Walker made him act like a complete moron.

Luc was moving toward the door, Lopez on his heels, and Anthony frowned. “Where are you going?”

His younger brother’s tone was suspiciously patient. “I’m going to check on Maggie. See how she’s holding up.”

“She’s holding up fine,” Anth said. “For God’s sake, you guys act like I cuffed her and read her her rights. I just asked her some questions. And yes, I put her in the interrogation room, but she chose not to do it in her own apartment—”

“Why’d you have Browning and Poyner ask the questions?” Luc interrupted.

Anthony paused, annoyed at being interrupted, even more annoyed at the speculative look on his brother’s face. “They’re the leads on the case.”

“And you’re the boss. You found the ‘informant.’ You
know
the informant. And you know this case every bit as well as they do. Perhaps better. Why didn’t you ask the questions?”

“It’s not protocol,” Anth responded.

He could have sworn the look on his brother’s face was akin to disgust, but then Luc had turned away, shaking his head and heading out the door. “Lopez, whadya say we give Mags a ride to wherever she needs to go?”

It was on the tip of Anthony’s tongue to remind Luc that that wasn’t his job.

And that as an on-duty officer, he couldn’t just be driving off to Park Slope to give a waitress a ride home.

But he stopped himself before he could issue the order.

Anth told himself it was because it wasn’t his place; he may outrank Luc, but he wasn’t his brother’s captain. Luc and Lopez were in a different precinct. He didn’t issue their orders.

But when his eyes caught on the weary features of Maggie Walker as his detectives led her from the room, he knew his reasons had nothing to do with the chain of command, and everything to do with the fact that Maggie Walker looked like she needed a friend.

Something that Anth could never be for her.

He didn’t even know
how
. But he wanted to be there. Wanted to be the one she called—turned to.

And that bothered him more that he’d ever admit to his brother.

Or himself.