A/N: Thank you to everyone that has been encouraging me to keep posting, it has helped me get through the anxieties! :) Enjoy!
Distractions
The office door clicked closed behind us after I had let Clary into the office first with me in tow. My lip still pulsed from Simon's right hook and was reminded that the redhead had also taken a gnarly hit. "Come here," I ordered, striding closer to the woman sitting in her swivel chair.
"Why?" she asked cautiously, twisting her fingers in her lap. I grabbed her face in my palms and turned her toward the light coming through the window. Her jawbone was blotchy with redness below the skin.
"I'm sorry this happened," I mumbled, stroking a thumb against the angry spot.
"It's not your fault." She shifted out of my hold and directed her attention back to her laptop in avoidance. Perhaps she was finally enforcing the rule of 'no touching or kissing or being charming'. Regardless, I still tensed at the cold shoulder. "You said something about the locations having the child theme, but I feel like I have to disagree," she said with a huff.
Ah, she's all business now. I supposed doing my job should be my main priority right now. I thumped into my chair and laced my hands behind my head. "I figured you would disagree, but I need some reasons."
"The chessboard was at a children's park, yes—but I wouldn't classify chess as a child's thing. Otherwise, he would've been killed in the sand or the jungle gym itself," she bit her bottom lip in thought while glaring at the glowing screen. "And the car, there isn't much of a connection there."
"Didn't you play chess as a child? It's definitely a kid thing," I reasoned.
"I thought we established that I'm not typical," she scoffed.
"Simon played, too. I heard your dad mention it."
"Yeah, well, he kinda did everything I did. He had to put up with a lot of my bullshit to be my friend," she grumbled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The fact that she didn't grow up with a lot of friends wasn't new information, but the way she talked about herself like she was a nuisance to handle made my chest hurt.
"Just like you have to put up with a lot of mine?" I asked with a smile and kicked my shoe against hers. She gave a small laugh with an eye roll, but a laugh nonetheless. "And about the car, I know it isn't necessarily a kid thing and I'm willing to admit I'm grasping for straws on that one. Did Ethan ever say anything substantial to you?"
The happy light in her eyes faded slightly at the mention of her new friend. "Not really, no. Can you run a check on him? I'm assuming he has no family if the other two victims didn't. I can check Jacob."
As much as I wanted to tease her that she's telling me how to do my job, the look on her face stopped me and all I really wanted to do was comfort her—but I knew I couldn't. With a nod, I tossed Ethan's name into the system and immediately came back with results. Clary wasn't lying about the guy being in jail a week and a half ago—got caught in a public tussle but was released the next morning. Other than that, all he really had was a couple parking tickets listed to a car that most definitely wasn't the one he was found dead in.
My brows furrowed. The guy didn't have a car registered in his name through the DMV. Maybe he stole the one he was in? "What was the plate number from the car, princess?"
"D201646," she recited without hesitation.
I typed the numbers into the DMV search and came up with nothing. That would mean that plate wasn't registered with the state of Oregon. "What state did the plate say?" I asked, idly chewing on a couple candies.
"It didn't say," she responded distractedly, thin fingers tapping away on the flat keys of her computer.
"What do you mean it didn't say? What color was it?" My mind instantly drifted to the thought that it could be a foreign plate, those usually didn't display states or countries.
She looked up, snapping from her daze with a shake of her head. "Uhm, it was paper. I see them around sometimes but I don't know why some are paper and some are metal."
"Paper? Like a temporary plate? Those are usually given when a car is recently purchased while the metal one comes in the mail."
She shrugged. "I guess? I don't really know about any of that stuff. Did you find anything?"
"It must've been a fake plate, I'm not getting any results. I'm thinking Ethan stole the car and made it look like it was registered to avoid paying his parking tickets," I sighed, hitting yet another dead end at least with the car situation. I clicked back on Ethan's profile and did a double take. "Did you know Ethan has, like, a whole family?"
She was taken aback. "I suppose I didn't talk to him enough to ask. All he mentioned was a friend he fought with in the street." She paused. "That's a different detail than the rest, because Jacob has no family just like Mr. Thompson."
"Two victims without family, one with. Maybe the family thing was just a coincidence that we have been focusing too hard on." My hands scrubbed heavily down my face.
Another three hours of scouring the internet came up with zero, zilch, nada for both of us. Clary contacted the Social Security Department to inquire about Jacob's disability checks, but that had also led to a dead end of irrelevant information. While we had been investigating, a scrawny female forensic technician delivered the results for both the skatepark and the car but the folders were just as sparse as the chessboard scene, giving us nothing to work with. The only real solid pieces of evidence were the roses. Orange, green, and yellow.
Clary's voice startled me through the elongated silence. "I'm feeling a little bit guilty." Her lip was red and puffy from worrying it. Had I noticed, I would've stopped her, but I had been lost in thought for hours. I felt a pang of my own guilt for that.
"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting back in my chair and giving her my full attention.
She stared down into her lap and twisted her fingers. "I'm not superstitious, but what if I…I don't know, what if I manifested these killings? Like, I practically begged and whined that I wanted a puzzle to solve but I didn't think about the fact that people had to die for it. Now I feel like garbage that I wanted this, but now want nothing more than for it to all be over."
I closed her laptop and grabbed one of her hands in mine. "Clary, princess, none of this is your fault. You have a passion for solving things. You didn't want anybody dead, you just wanted to catch one of the many bad guys that roam the city. There's nothing wrong with that."
"But—"
"Think about it this way: people who prepare for disasters or the end of the world, do you think they want those things to happen? No, they don't, but they're prepared for when and if it does. You're just prepared to avenge the lives taken." She chewed her bottom lip once more, driving me to reach out and tug it from her teeth with my thumb. I lowered my hand afterward to avoid breaking her rule.
"Thanks," she whispered with a weak smile. I gave her hand a squeeze but didn't take it back regardless of the rule. "I also feel bad that you got roped into dinner at my dad's house."
That made me recoil, sliding my hands from hers and shoving them into my jacket pockets. "It's no big deal," I said, but it came out strained.
She watched me with stitched eyebrows and tugged at the hem of her sleeves. "If it really bothers you I think I can try to convince my dad that you had something come up." Despite her kind voice, she still seemed to deflate a little bit and the guilt that had been riding on my shoulders since I met her grew heavier. It was only a matter of time before she found out the truth and being in that house would surely speed along the progress—but the Captain made it clear that I had no choice.
I had no choice for Clary's sake. I needed to be there for her. "No, it's alright. Just nervous," I lied.
"I know," she frowned sadly but straightened with a sigh. "I don't feel good about it, either. Half an hour, then we can leave." If the truth came out, I was confident she would take back the offer to sleep over and never talk to me again. I probably deserved that. "I'm gonna go to my dad's office, do you need me for anything?" she asked as she stood, shuffling papers back into their folders.
"What? Why are you going there?" A twang of panic flickered in my gut.
"I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I just need a couple hours to nap before I'll be able to form functional thoughts again." The heels of her palms sleepily rubbed into her eyes.
My keys jingled as I took them from my pocket and abandoned my seat. "Let me take you home and I'll come back here to keep working on finding us any clues."
"No, Jace, it would just be a bunch of driving back and forth."
"We talked about this, princess," I warned. "I don't want you out of my sight."
"You can't make me follow you everywhere all the time." She stepped closer.
"You think you're following me?" I smirked, knowing damn well that I was the one wrapped around her finger. Up until a few days ago, I vehemently denied the fact with every waking thought and was growing tired of fighting it.
She swallowed nervously. "Regardless, I'll be fine. It's my dad."
"That is in no way a valid excuse, baby." I gently grasped her chin in my fingers.
"Ok, first of all," she started with a stifled smile and pushed my hand away, "don't call me that—'princess' is demeaning enough. And second, we both know he's only violent when he's…you know." The smile faded with the reasoning.
I chewed the inside of my cheek and scanned her face. Dark circles underlined her dull green eyes as they tiredly looked up at me. Her typically pink cheeks were pallid aside from the welt caused by the backhand—I had to restrain myself from killing the guy when I saw her curled on the concrete spitting blood.
She wrapped a hand around my forearm in a reassuring gesture. A deep exhale left my chest. "Promise you'll be alright?"
"I promise I'll be just fine." A squeeze of her fingers accentuated her verbal promise.
I fought to keep my hands in my pockets. "Okay. Text me if you need anything." With a nod, she detached from me while I walked her to the door and held it open.
"I'll see you in a few hours, detective," she called from down the hallway with a cute wave.
After a painfully silent hour at my desk with little to no progress on the crime scenes, I decided going anywhere else—doing anything else—was a better use of my time. I had half a mind to go to the second floor and check on Clary, but refrained from hovering like a possessive prick. My brain had no specific direction in mind as my legs took me out of my office and to my car. A glimpse at the sidewalk as I passed made me cringe with the sight of a dried puddle of dark brown blood, knowing it was from the aftermath of the strike to Clary's cheek.
She had been trying to break Simon and I apart amidst our scuffle when the accident happened. I blamed myself, because I felt her desperately tugging on my jacket to detach me from her friend but I was too self righteous to make myself stop. If I had listened, she might not have tried to pull Simon away and gotten hurt.
My car jostled as I heavily plopped down into the seat. The car I had driven a million times before suddenly felt foreign without Clary, I felt foreign without her. We had spent upwards of twelve hours a day together for a week and a half, and that's not including the time I slept over. Hooks of attachment were deep in my flesh, tying me to her despite my attempts of pulling on the barbed metal. It was a frustrating feeling not being able to have what I so desperately wanted.
With a groan, I swung my arm over the seat and looked out the back window to reverse from my parking spot, but froze. Her black bra splayed on the backseat bench, nearly camouflaged against the midnight leather. I lifted it by a finger and my dick twitched in my jeans at the memory of our intimate moment in the alleyway. Before I could get any ideas about giving in to public indecency in the middle of the lot, I tossed it onto the floorboard of the passenger seat so Clary could collect it next time she accompanied me.
I managed to zone out until my muscle memory deposited me into the parking lot of a gas station. Without a second thought—or even really a first, I got out of my car and strolled inside. The ding of the bell alerted the clerk I hadn't seen in over two months.
"Oh, hey man, it's been a little while, huh?" He gave a small wave and leaned against the countertop as I passed by to the candy aisle.
"Hey, Ashton," I greeted and distracted myself with the multitude of colorful sugar. "Just been busy as Hell, you get it."
"Yeah, man, I heard about the crazy shit going down. Are you investigating it? It's a new serial killer, isn't it? How many bodies?" The barrage of questions was a stark reminder of my failure with catching the killer, making my insides roll and my jaw tighten.
I snatched a bag of M and tossed it in front of the awaiting cashier. "I can't really talk about it but it's being worked on." A small swivel stand sitting on the counter beside me caught my eye. I snatched one of the keychains and gently set it beside the candy.
"I get it," he replied dejectedly. "Anything else for you, man?"
The wall of tobacco products behind him taunted me, I could practically smell the sweet scent from my position at the counter. My lungs burned for it, begging for a drag. I rubbed my fingers together where the buttend would usually sit. "A pack of Marlboro."
"You got it." The machine beeped and threw a number at me, but I was too stuck in a trance to care how much the total was. In all honesty, it could've asked for my soul and I probably would've paid it for what I was getting. Ashton broke me from the visual standoff with the red and white carton by tossing it into a small plastic bag. "What should I do to stay safe?" he asked with worried features.
I took the bag from his hand. "Carry a gun," I said simply and stalked out with only one real thing on my mind.
Nicotine was my drug of choice to keep me from flying over the edge of oblivion. Detective work was not for the faint of heart no matter how simple TV shows made it seem. Tobacco was my best lover—the only thing that supported me, calmed me, didn't leave me through hard times. The smell of a fresh stick was enough to get my balls in a vice, which was precisely why I hadn't stepped foot inside a gas station for months due to the temptation I knew I would easily give in to.
Once I was in my car, my hands unwrapped the plastic and a wave of tobacco polluted the space, making me sigh in relief. I deeply inhaled the filter ends before pulling out a stick and setting it between my lips. The action was so familiar it didn't feel like I had been clean for 67 days beforehand—especially as I used the car lighter to fire the end with a deep drag.
The taste was awful, I was willing to admit that. But the feeling, the buzzing that coursed through my nervous system was borderline euphoric. Any stress I had weighing on my shoulders was momentarily held up for me while I rode the high.
Moments like these made me wonder why I ever stopped. My job consistently drove me into the earth—and I thought it was a good idea to quit the only thing that brought me peace? How foolish.
How would Clary feel about my relapse?
I pushed the thought away, knowing she was part of the reason I had let go. That woman felt so much better than nicotine, but I knew I couldn't have her the way I craved.
Almost as if she knew I was thinking about her, her contact scrolled on my phone screen with shrill rings. Quickly, I tossed the half finished cigarette out my window and blew the cloud away from my interior before rolling up the glass as if she would be able to smell the smoke through the phone.
"Hey," I answered awkwardly, cringing at how dry my voice sounded.
"Hey," she answered mid-yawn as if she had just woken up. "I'm going to hitch a ride with my dad to his house in a minute so I can start cooking, is that okay?"
Despite the way my stomach coiled in anxiety, I knew it was probably for the best since my car now smelled of ashy smoke. Plus, I highly doubted she would let Valentine shoot up while she was there. I cleared my throat. "Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"
"Oh, I don't know. I was just making sure you didn't need me for anything, I guess," she seemed disappointed, but that could've just been my hazy mind. I wanted to tell her that I needed her, the urge to create a fake scenario just to have her be with me was strong—and extremely toxic, I knew that. So I refrained.
"We're all good for the day, princess," I reassured more gently.
"Okay, cool. I'll see you in an hour then?" she asked. I looked at the clock on my dash—sure enough, the red numbers flickered 6:30 at me angrily. I must've been wandering around longer than I thought before I got to the gas station.
"An hour. Can I bring anything?"
She paused for a moment. "Just you."
Oh, god, I thought, she's going to be the death of me.
"Sounds like a plan." I was not excited for this dinner.