wondering if Santini was putting her on or if he was serious. His expression made her lean toward the latter, but she found it hard to believe that he would be so unaffected by what he’d just volunteered.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, grateful to turn her attention to something other than Angela’s body on the garage floor.
“No.” Sparing her a glance, he raised one eyebrow in silent query. “Should it?”
On second thought, he didn’t seem like the type to stay up nights losing sleep because he thought someone disliked him. “Most people like being liked,” she pointed out.
“Most people need to be liked,” he corrected. “It’s an overt manifestation of insecurity.”
“And you’re not insecure.” It wasn’t really a question so much as an observation on her part. The man was the picture of confidence, and yet, there was no conceit evident. She would have said that was hard to pull off—until she’d met Santini.
“Nope.” He opened the passenger-side door for her. “Watch your head,” he instructed.
The words made her smile. It was something she knew that policemen said to the suspects they ushered into the back of their vehicles. Her father must have said the same phrase hundreds of times.
“Force of habit?” she asked.
He realized what she was referring to and shook his head. “Small car.”
She was surprised that the department let him drive this little sports car. She waited for Santini to get in behind the wheel. “Regular car in the shop?” she guessed.
Starting the engine, Tony glanced at her waist, to see if she had buckled the seatbelt. Annie had never liked using it. Always said it wrinkled her clothes. In the end, it was her undoing. The first officer on the scene had told him if she’d used her seatbelt, there was a good chance she would have survived the crash.
God, but he wished he could see her just one more time, clothes wrinkled all to hell.
Tony banked down the ache and shoved it away into the darkness. He couldn’t let himself think about Annie.
“This was my wife’s car.” She’d used his car that day, because hers was in the shop. He’d caught a ride to work from his partner. He should have insisted he needed the car and made her stay home.
Married. The man was married. Sasha tried to picture that and couldn’t. Couldn’t envision the man sharing himself with anyone. And, obviously, since he’d used the past tense, he was no longer doing it.
“Let me guess, you got this in the settlement.” The moment the words were out, she regretted them.
A muscle twitched just above his jawline. “I got this at the funeral.”
She’d never heard a tone so devoid of emotion. Or sound so incredibly empty. Beneath that emptiness, she had a feeling there was an endless abyss filled with pain. Guilt tightened her stomach.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound so flippant.” Sasha spread her hands, feeling restless. “I do that when I get nervous.”
She saw him slant a glance at her and it took everything she had not to shift in her seat. “Do I make you nervous?”
Sasha knew he was asking not as a man, but as a cop. She supposed he had to rule out everyone.
“No. But seeing Angela like that did. Does,” she amended, since she was still fidgeting inwardly. “Everybody loved Angela.”
“Obviously not everybody,” he pointed out. “Someone killed her.”
She couldn’t bring herself to believe it was on purpose. Angela had never hurt anyone. But her purse was still beside her body, so robbery hadn’t been a motive. If the killer had stolen Angela’s purse, Sasha thought, he would have found very little in it. A single mother who doted on her daughter, Angela was always struggling to make ends meet. That was why she was hoping to become a nurse practitioner.
Sasha pressed her lips together as they emerged out of the structure. There was no moon out tonight, but the streetlights made up for it. “Maybe it was just an accident.”
There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “You do know something, don’t you?” He looked at her as he turned right at the end of the next block. “Was there an ex-boyfriend in the picture?”
“An ex-husband,” Sasha corrected. Alex was his name. Angela didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Her daughter and the hospital took up all her time. And then, because she knew the detective would find out, she added, “Angela had a restraining order against him.”
“Why?” He fired the question at her before she was even finished.
Angela had confided in her and telling the detective felt as if she was breaking a trust. But death had changed the guidelines.
“Because he couldn’t see his way clear to letting her leave him, even after the divorce papers went through. But he’d never hurt her,” she added quickly. “Not like that.” If you loved someone, you couldn’t just put a bullet in the center of their forehead, she argued silently.
The light turned red. Tony looked at her, his voice steely. “What way would he hurt her?”
She remembered the black eye, the bruises that Angela had tried to pass off as clumsiness until she’d finally been convinced that she was setting a bad example for her daughter by remaining. “He hit her a couple of times. That’s why she left him.”
Tony nodded, doing a little math in his head. “Doesn’t take much for abuse to escalate into something lethal.”
Something in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “You speaking from experience?” she heard herself asking even though it was none of her business. She fully expected him to say as much.
He didn’t.
“Yes.” And then he looked at her as they came to another red light. “I’m supposed to be the one asking questions,” he informed her mildly. “Not you.”
She couldn’t help herself. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she had always pushed the envelope a little further than it was supposed to go, always wanted to know everything about everything. And to help if she could. It was in her nature. In her genes. Nothing had changed with age.
“Who did you abuse, Detective?”
“I didn’t,” he told her tersely.
And he never would. Not after growing up in a house where abuse was as regular as the seasons. Not after having his father beat his mother. He’d jumped to her defense, hitting his father over the head with a frying pan, then calling 911.
After his mother’s death a few days later from the severity of the abuse, he and his brothers were propelled into the quagmire that was the state’s foster-care system, moved around from house to house like unwanted pieces of furniture until his mother’s Aunt Tess came forward to take them in.
“Your father—?” Sasha guessed, only to
