Chapter 5

Sinead felt like an idiot.

Well, maybe not that bad, but she still felt kind of gross for stepping out of line like she was. She’d been kicking herself since leaving Marc Fornier’s place, and Jules had asked her three times the next day what the problem was and she’d had to play it off.

Asking Marc to do what she did was totally inappropriate. Going to a top suspect’s house, even if he was cleared, was super inappropriate. Promising him a date if he looked through what should have been confidential financial records?

She could get busted down to a street cop again if anyone found out.

So she felt like an idiot.

To be fair, she was also a little concerned about the other thing going on in her head. Marc was smart. Almost too smart to be trusted. He’d known what she was doing, and she felt like she’d been a step behind in the whole conversation. She wasn’t usually so ... malleable. Sinead was the one who was supposed to be in charge of situations. He hadn’t bitten at her flirting at all. She hadn’t caught him staring at her cleavage once, and all of his comments were totally in-bounds for polite conversation. Even asking her to dinner had been...

“Fuck,” she grunted.

“Are you going to tell me what your fucking problem is or not?” Jules asked. They were in the car headed to a petty robbery scene.

“I’m just off today,” Sinead said. “That’s all.”

“More like this month,” Jules said.

“Oh, I haven’t been that bad,” Sinead said.

“Really? Where are we heading right now?”

“Um...” Sinead hesitated. “3rd street, for the robbery scene.”

“Wrong,” Jules said. “We’re going up to Parkwoods for a home burglary.”

“Shit,” Sinead grunted. “Sorry.”

“Just get your head out of your ass, or the clouds, or wherever it is,” Jules said. “I need my partner back.”

“I will, I promise,” Sinead said.

Jules drove them the rest of the way, pulling into a decent little suburb where the housing prices meant even the average family home was worth well over a million, maybe a million and a half despite the same thing going for a quarter of the price anywhere else in the province. Well, maybe half - Sinead had been looking for a new place anywhere inside the Greater Toronto Area and hadn’t found anything that felt reasonably priced.

Just as they pulled into the driveway of the residence Sinead’s phone started buzzing, and she fished it out of her pocket before following Jules out of the car. It was an unknown number, but the message was clear.

“Found what you need. Come by tonight.”

Sinead almost yelped in excitement but managed to keep her eagerness in check. She wanted to jump into the driver’s seat and find Marc Fornier wherever he was, but there was work to do and for all that Jules had been forgiving of her obsession with the Le Français case, she wouldn’t put up with that.

So Sinead bit her tongue and got out of the car, trying her best to bury that text message in the back of her mind where it wouldn’t distract her.

Marc Fornier was, despite Sinead’s best attempts at remaining at arm’s distance from the matter, unfortunately attractive. He was tall, with a thick head of black hair just starting to silver at the temples, and had those piercing green eyes that she’d found so infuriating in the interrogation room and confounding sitting in his kitchen. She felt like they were speaking to her, but in a language she didn’t understand.

He was also fit in that way that someone who was very active but didn’t work out was. He had useable muscles and hadn’t gone and gotten fat with his office job.

To be frank, if she’d met him at a bar and not on the job, Sinead may have considered a one-night stand with him. A flash in the pan, ghost him afterwards, wonder what she was thinking with sleeping with a guy a decade older than her one night stand. But that’s not how they met, and even as she waited for Marc to open his God damned front door she felt a nervous energy at what was going to happen now. He had what she needed, and he had an expectation.

Marc opened the door with that smile of his. God, Sinead found it smug. Not that he seemed to be trying to antagonise her, but there was just something about the way he held himself that wasn’t at all intimidated by her badge that set her off. The only other people she’d met like that were criminals who were either insane or so powerful in their own little worlds that even when she had been part of taking them down they’d felt untouchable and sure that the lawyers would do their work.

“Sinead, thank you for coming by,” Marc said to her.

“You said you had it already?” Sinead asked. “That was fast.” God, she felt like a junky here trying to get her fix.

“Well, when you know where to look,” Marc smiled. “Please, come in.”

At least this time he wasn’t dressed in that fucking robe. He was wearing a pair of dressy slacks with a perfect crease in them, along with a knit sweater that she guessed would have cost more than her entire outfit by itself, underwear included.