Prologue
ROBYN
One year ago
Boston, Massachusetts
The rain lashed our patrol car as we sipped our coffees, waiting for a crackle on the radio.
I was enjoying the peaceful lull created by the sounds of raindrops on metal when a pop of color in the overwhelming gray beyond my window caught my attention.
On the sidewalk, a woman in a navy coat, one hand holding a black umbrella, the other a leash, was halted by the dog on the end of it. From here, it looked like a Lab. The dog wore a bright red raincoat. And he’d sat his ass down on the sidewalk as if to say, “I’m done with this shit. Make it stop.”
I laughed under my breath as the woman gesticulated wildly, as if to reply, “What the hell do you want me to do about it?”
Her arms thrown wide, head bent toward the dog staring back up at her, became a snapshot in my head. I wished I had my camera. I’d use a wide aperture and my 150mm lens to blur out the gray, movement-filled background and focus on the woman and her stubborn dog.
“Jaz thinks you should dump Mark.” My partner, Autry Davis, yanked me out of the mental photography processing in my head.
Smirking at the comment, I ignored the uneasiness that accompanied it. “Oh, Jaz thinks that?”
Jasmine “Jaz” Davis was pretty outspoken, but Autry had made it clear he didn’t like my boyfriend Mark from the moment he’d met him.
“Sure does.” Autry stared out the window at the passing traffic. We were parked on Maverick Square in East Boston, near a bakery we both liked. They did good coffees. And Boston creams. Not that we were trying to live up to the cop cliché. We allowed ourselves a Boston cream once a week. It was our treat. “She thinks he thinks what he does is more important than what you do and that he never prioritizes you.”
That did sound like something Jaz would say.
Mark was a prosecutor and very good at his job. His success was appealing because I found hardworking guys sexy. But lately he’d been pushing me to make a change. He thought I should work my way up, apply to become a sergeant detective and then move up to lieutenant.
He didn’t understand I didn’t want that because he was the most driven son of a bitch I’d ever met. Like I said, that was hot until he tried to make me into someone I wasn’t.
“Well, you can tell Jaz I’m breaking up with him.”
Autry tried not to look too happy about that and failed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s too much like hard work.”
“Not that I want to talk you out of dumping the guy, but you do realize relationships are hard work. Right?”
I snorted. “Says the man with the wife and kids he adores.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t hard work.”
“I know that. But you’ve got to want to work hard at it, and I don’t want to with Mark. Last weekend, he blew up at me for buying a fish-eye lens for my camera. Told me an expensive ‘hobby’ was a waste of my mediocre income, and he wasn’t about to indulge me in a pastime.” My skin flushed hot with anger at the reminder. I’d emotionally and verbally shut him out ever since.
“He said what?” Autry frowned. “Yeah, you need to dump his ass, pronto. Shit, can you imagine Jaz if I tried to condescend to her like that? He’s lucky he’s dealing with you and not my woman. He wouldn’t have come out of it alive. And I’m not telling her what you just told me, ’cause he still might not. Damn, Penhaligon. Life is too short for that bullshit.”
“The sex is pretty good, though.” I said it mostly to be funny. No sex was worth being with a guy who made me feel small and unimportant.
Autry cut me a warning look. “Don’t want to hear it.”
I laughed under my breath and sipped my coffee.
Straight out of the academy at twenty-one, I was introduced to Autry Davis, my beat partner. A tall, good-looking man seven years my senior with a quick sense of humor and a warmth that could melt even the coldest soul. I’d developed a crush on the man. A crush that soon faded into friendship and trust. Especially when I met his wife Jaz and their two young daughters, Asia and Jada. In the last six years, the Davises had welcomed me into their family. Autry now was like an older brother. Like any brother, he didn’t want to hear about his little sister’s sex life.
And like any little sister, I deliberately ignored his pleas to stop torturing him with the details.
“I mean, there’s room for improvement, but he’s definitely better at it than Axel.” Axel was the guy before Mark. A musician. Self-involved. Selfish in bed. And out of it. When I was sick with a bad head cold, he didn’t opt to check in on me or offer to buy me groceries so I could stay in bed. Nope. He disappeared and said he wouldn’t be back until I was well again. Jaz and Autry took care of me. Axel didn’t come back when I was well again because I told him not to. Mark wasn’t that giving in bed either, to be fair, but at least with him, I reached climax.
“I can’t hear you.” Autry scowled out the window. “I am no longer in the car. I am someplace where the world is good and right and the Celtics are winning the season.”
“So the land of make-believe, then?”
“Don’t you come at the Celtics.”
I chuckled, opening my mouth to continue teasing him when the radio crackled.
“Domestic disturbance. Lexington Street, apartment 302B. Neighbor called it in.”
Autry reached for the radio. “Gold 1-67. Three minutes out.”
“Roger that.”
I’d already started the engine and was swinging the car into traffic.
“What do you think it is this time?” I asked.
“Affair.”
“You always guess that.”
“Because I’m nearly always right.”
“Last time you were wrong.”
“What was last time?”
“Oh, Davis, you’re getting old,” I teased. “Girlfriend found out boyfriend had gambled all her savings. She beat the shit out of him.”
“Oh yeah. That was a nasty one. That man will never be able to have children after what she did to him.”
Unfortunately, probably true. I winced at the memory.
Only a few minutes later, we pulled up to the apartment building on the corner of Lexington. It had the same architecture as all the buildings in this part of Boston—narrow with wooden shingle siding. This one was painted white years ago and was in dire need of a repaint. It had two entrances, one for the downstairs apartment and the other for the upstairs. A woman in bright yellow pajamas, her hair covered with a matching bandana, stood outside the first-floor apartment door. She approached us as we got out of the car.
“They’ve been yelling up there for the last thirty minutes, and then I heard things crashing and she started screaming and crying.” The neighbor looked shaken. “He’s shiesty as fuck, that one. Think he’s into drugs. Thought I better call it in.”
I gave her a reassuring smile and was about to speak when a terrified shriek sounded from above. Autry hurried to the door. Turning back to the neighbor, I ordered, “Please return to your apartment, ma’am.”
As I watched her do this, Autry banged on the door to the upstairs apartment. “Boston PD, open up!”