Free Red by Kate Serine Page A

assured me. “I promise.”
    I cringed. “Don’t make me a promise you aren’t sure you can keep,” I muttered. “I’ve had more than my fair share of those. Just tell me you’ll help me, that you’ve got my back. That’s enough.”
    Nate gave me a tight nod. “Okay then.”
    Satisfied, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, too angry for any additional conversation. If Nate was right and one of my former lovers was to blame for the attacks, why had he targeted Gran? Seth didn’t know her and Vlad adored her. And even if Caliban hadn’t been in custody, I wouldn’t have believed him capable of such an attack, either—he’d always had a soft spot in his heart for Gran in spite of the fact that she was his primary ratings rival. There was no way one of them would have a reason to attack her.
    Unless it was to get to me.
    All the other attacks had seemed random, crimes of opportunity. But something in my gut told me Gran had been targeted. Was I getting close to uncovering something already? Was it a warning? That theory sounded paranoid even to me.
    Maybe I’d know more once I’d had the chance to question Vlad and Seth. If I could clear both of them as easily as we’d cleared Caliban, then we could look more seriously at who might really be behind the attacks.
    A little while later, the car came to a stop. Anxious to get back to work, I shoved away my musings to mull over later, but when I opened my eyes I was surprised to see us not at the scene of the crime but at Gran’s pale pink Victorian Eastlake. The house was so daintily darling it seemed completely at odds with its more utilitarian bungalow neighbors and had enough fanciful spindle work to make Sleeping Beauty nervous.
    “Why are we here?” I demanded. “Don’t we need to be at the studio, looking over evidence?”
    “The Chief already has Trish on it,” Nate said. “You know if there’s anything to be found, she’ll find it.”
    “That’s beside the point!” I huffed. “Why would you bring me here?”
    Nate looked surprised at my anger, which didn’t help. “I thought it’d be too hard for you to see the crime scene, considering who the victim was.”
    “Who asked you? You don’t know a damn thing about me!” Mad as hell, I lunged out of the car, slamming the door behind me. I was climbing into the Rover, determined to set off on my own, when Nate caught the edge of the door, keeping me from closing it.
    “Don’t know you?” he repeated. “I know all about you, Red. You’re a loner and a rebel and a beautiful woman with a seriously bad attitude. Then there’s this idiotic death-wish behavior of yours. You rush into everything head-on, putting yourself at risk unnecessarily. What I can’t understand is why. What exactly are you trying to prove?” Nate ran his hand down his face, visibly bringing his frustration with me back under control. In a much calmer voice he said, “Now, I told you, Trish is on the scene. If you show up there, you’ll just be in the way.”
    I slammed my hand against the steering wheel, knowing he was right, but feeling like I needed to be doing something, anything. “I can’t sit here and do nothing, Nate—not when this asshole is out there hurting people! I need to be out there hunting him down.”
    “So where are you going?” he asked softly. When I tried to look away, he leaned into the car between me and the steering wheel, forcing me to look at him. “You said you wanted my help, Red. Where were you planning to go?”
    I shrugged, then let my head fall back against the headrest. “I don’t know.”
    Nate held out his hand to me. “Come on. You still need some lunch.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    When I refused to take his hand, Nate grabbed mine anyway and pulled me out of the car. “You’re a bad liar,” he replied. “I thought you might want to take the rest of the day off, all things considered, but if you’re going to insist on being a pigheaded pain in the ass about it,