Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

on sweatpants and one of Martín’s hoodies. After tying her hair up in a ponytail and washing her face with cold water, she tramped down the stairs for coffee, which she could already smell brewing. Martín was at his usual place in the kitchen, sitting on a stool at their breakfast nook with a coffee in one hand and his cell phone in the other, reading the news.

“Buenos días,” Elle said as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Morning.”

“Late shift today?”

He nodded, not looking up from his phone. “I swapped with Dr. Phillips so she could get out of town early for the weekend. Blizzard’s coming.”

Elle pressed her lips to his temple and stroked the back of his head, fingers tangling in his curls. “Okay, no problem. Guess I’ll fend for myself for dinner—been a while since I did my standard apple, cheese, and wine like in college.” When he didn’t laugh, she pulled her hand away. “Hope your neck doesn’t hurt from the sofa cushions. You were so out I didn’t want to wake you.”

“It’s fine.”

She took a step back. “Everything okay?”

Martín set his phone down and looked up at her. “Where’d you go last night? I was worried.”

She pulled out the stool next to him and sat down. “I got an email on my show account. This guy, Leo Toca, said he knew who TCK was. I talked to him on the phone, and he wanted me to come over so he could give me the information.”

Martín’s eyes widened. “You went over to some strange guy’s house late at night because he said he had a clue about a serial killer?”

“I took my gun.”

“Dios mío, Elle. That is so dangerous.”

She took a drink of black coffee. “Well, obviously I’m fine.”

“Just because you weren’t hurt doesn’t mean it was okay to go by yourself.”

Her hands tightened on the mug. “This is my job, Martín, and I don’t need a babysitter to do it. Nothing happened to me, see? You don’t always have to imagine the worst-case scenario.”

“Dealing with people who got caught in the worst-case scenario is my job,” he snapped.

She knew that, of course. Martín had always maintained a sense of humor about his gruesome line of work, much like the cops and social workers Elle knew. It was the only way to keep their heads from exploding with all the pain they saw in the world.

But when it came to Elle’s work, Martín’s humor ran short, and since she’d started the TCK case, he had been more on edge than usual. It was understandable, but she wasn’t going to stop putting herself in dangerous situations—it came with the territory, when you were trying to catch a child killer.

After a few moments of silence between them, he put a hand on her arm. His voice was soft as he said, “Elle, don’t you understand how much it scares me to think of you getting hurt?”

“It was about TCK. I had to go.”

He squeezed her arm. “Well, obviously you’re in one piece. What did the man say?”

“Um.” Elle took another long drink.

“Elle. What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Why not?”

She looked at the dark liquid swirling in her cup. “Because he was dead when I got there.”

“What?!” Running his fingers through his hair, Martín let out a growl of frustration. “Pues, claro que sí estaba muerto en la casa. How? What happened? Who killed him?”

“I don’t know, but it looks like probably the guy who ran off when I got there.”

A vein above Martín’s right eye bulged. Elle swallowed hard. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. “You went to a stranger’s house in the middle of the night, found someone standing over a freshly murdered body, and you didn’t call me? Didn’t tell me when you got home?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.

He let out a bark of laughter and scrubbed his hands across his face. “You didn’t want to wake me. ¡No manches!”

She pulled at his hands so she could look him in the eye. “Look, I get why you’re upset, cariño, I do. But we’ve talked about this. You know I don’t do anything half-assed. If I’m going to catch this guy, I’m going to have to take risks.”

“Not stupid ones like this, you don’t.” When Elle bristled, his expression softened. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

“I know you’re pissed, but I’m not stupid.”

“I know you’re not. And I’m not pissed, I’m worried.” He put his hands on her shoulders, held her at arm’s length as if to examine her for wounds. “You’re sure you’re not hurt? Carajo, mi amor, I can’t believe this. So, you walk in and the guy’s dead and the other one runs off. What happened next? You didn’t try to stop him, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. I called the police.” Elle explained the rest, including the subsequent interview with Sam and Ayaan, although she left out the part where she searched Leo’s corpse for evidence. She’d given Martín enough to deal with for today. By the time she finished, he was sitting across from her again, their knees touching and hands clasped, coffee growing cold on the counter.

“So, what are you going to do now?” he asked at last.

“I need to see if I can find someone who knew Leo well enough that he might have trusted them with the information he was going to give me. If I’m really lucky, I might be able to figure out who he suspected just by meeting them, but I’m not banking on that. Hundreds of people have thought their weird uncle or their abusive father was TCK over the years; it’s possible Leo was just another one of those, but I have to investigate it.”

He nodded and met Elle’s gaze. Reaching out to cup the side of her face, he leaned forward and captured her lips with his. It was a deep kiss, stronger and more passionate than she expected. She let herself get lost in it for a moment.

When