He Will be My Ruin

Grady takes the foil packet from my fingers and tears at it with his teeth until it comes apart. I slide the condom on for him, and the second I’m done, he thrusts into me.

It’s easy to forget that we’re outside, on a rooftop in Manhattan in winter, as our breath and tongues tangle, and our bodies grind against each other with a new fervor, not at all the slow and steady pace from before.

True to Grady’s word, we don’t topple out in some embarrassing half-sexed heap on the cold tar roof. He keeps us centered as he pushes into me, hiking one leg up with a hand under my thigh, getting impossibly deep. What I thought would last two minutes goes on much longer, and he grinds expertly against me until I feel my body finally relenting, my own need building slowly in my lower belly, tingling along my spine.

I come a few seconds before Grady does, the sound of my moans quickly echoed by his own. We lie there in comfortable, satisfied silence for a stretch of time, watching the flames burn bright, then shrink to embers, until we have no choice but to either stoke the fire or go inside to avoid freezing.

With hasty movements, we tug our clothes back on and scoop up the blankets.

Grady walks me to the third-floor entrance from the stairwell. “You okay from here?” he whispers.

I smirk. “You afraid that Ruby will find out?”

He checks his watch. “She is awake at unpredictable hours.”

I stifle my laugh and stretch to my tiptoes to lay a kiss against his scruffy cheek. “Thank you, for tonight.” I quickly clarify: “For lending me your ear.”

He grins and dips down to steal one last deep, intense kiss that could easily spark round two. “Thanks for lending me your other body parts.” He takes off, climbing the steps two at a time, back to the fourth floor.

It’s too late to go back to sleep now. Back in Celine’s apartment, I box all of her diaries back up. Except for the latest few. Those, Detective Childs needs to see.

CHAPTER 13

Maggie

“Enjoying the cold?” Detective Childs drags a piece of toast through the runny egg yolk coating his plate.

I slide into the booth seat across from him, shrugging the hood back off my head. The sun streaming in through the window is deceptive. The temperature has dropped at least ten degrees since earlier this morning. “Not especially.” I gaze around at the strings of tinsel and sprigs of mistletoe that hang from the ceiling. The elderly man sitting near the door was waiting with puckered lips and a big grin when I walked in. I might have humored him with a kiss on the cheek, had I not just had sex on a rooftop with a near-stranger only hours ago.

I think I’ve filled my kissing quota for the day.

Still, I’m happy that Detective Childs suggested meeting at this fifties diner—with its big windows and delicious smells and jukebox charm—instead of the stuffy precinct. “Thanks for making time for me.”

“Well, you’re much better company than the fella I just left over there,” he murmurs, nodding toward the caution tape wrapped around a convenience store across the street.

“Not a big talker, was he?”

“Not anymore.” His smile is easy, like he didn’t just leave a crime scene with a dead body. “What is it you needed to talk to me about so urgently? You look tired.”

“Yeah. Late night.” I set Celine’s latest diary on the table, the entries outlining her “dating” exploits marked with Post-its.

He takes his time wiping his hands on his napkin—Detective Childs doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush to do anything—and then, slipping his glasses on, he flips through the pages, running his index finger along the side as he speed-reads Celine’s most private thoughts. He gets through four of the marked pages before handing the diary back to me. “So she was a working girl.” Not even a hint of shock in his voice.

“Yeah. And I had no idea.”

“Family and friends usually don’t. Most of these girls are very discreet.”

“She wrote a diary entry almost every single day since she was thirteen, and yet the last book ends in July.”

“Hmm . . .”

Oh fuck. Here we go again with the hemming and hawing. “It doesn’t make sense. There has to be a current one. Was there a diary in her bedroom when you arrived? Maybe by her bedside?”

“I can’t recall offhand.”

“No wonder people get away with murder in this city,” I mutter, earning a flat smile in return. I roll my eyes, more at myself. I’m not going to get help from him by being an asshole. “She did know the guy in the picture, by the way. His name’s Jace Everett. He paid her for sex. See? Right here.” I open up to the last page.

“Where does it say Jace Everett here?”

“Well, it says Jay. That’s short for Jace. And I just . . . He’s an investment manager who works in her building, and here she is referencing him talking to people at work. His father is the governor of Illinois. What do you think his dad would say if he knew his son paid prostitutes?” Based on what I read up on Governor Dale Everett this morning, he has taken a very vocal stance against the sex trade industry in the past, going so far as to call it the downfall of family values and an industry that must be dismantled. If he decides to run in the next election, this would be one hell of a missile for his opponents to lob against him.

“Did this Jace Everett admit all of this to you?”

“No! That’s the thing! He lied and told me that he didn’t know her.”

Detective Childs sighs and leans back in the booth. “You’re connecting a lot of widespread dots to paint a picture that you’re desperate to see.”

“Can’t you just look into him?”

“Why? Because you think he paid for sex and doesn’t want anyone to know about it? There’s no prior history of this guy harming or threatening your friend, or even knowing her. We don’t have the resources to chase down hunches.”

I was afraid he’d say that. “Okay. How do I get something compelling enough for you then?”

He hesitates, offering a “Thank you, Tiffany” to the waitress who sweeps in to clear his plate. “You could hire a private detective and have him look into it. Maybe that would get you the answers you need. But I have to warn you that most PIs are overpriced and lousy at anything but catching cheating spouses.”