Page 15 of Criminally Yours

Strike froze before jumping back and righting himself.

“Don’t move,” he grumbled as he slammed her door.

He strolled to his side. Millie tracked him through the windscreen. He had the slow gait of a slasher movie killer. Occasionally, his gaze flicked around them as if checking for risks before returning to her. She flipped him the bird.

He rolled his eyes, and the corner of his mouth quirked briefly as he climbed into the car.

She cleared her throat. His comments about his identity piqued her counsellor’s curiosity. “Did something happen in the army to change you?”

“Don’t psychoanalyse me, Doc.”

At her choking noise, he stared at her. Goosebumps rose on her skin.

A wave of her hair fell from behind her ear, and he reached out his hand as if to tuck it back.

Suddenly, he pulled away and gripped the steering wheel.

“You can’t fix me with chat, Mixie. No one can. Get that into your head, as we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. I’m not leaving your side until you’re safe.”

CHAPTER 7

Millie

The journey continued in silence for the next hour. Millie willed herself to sleep, but her thoughts jumped from Caleb-related memories to her present trouble.

As she reached for the radio, Strike grunted.

Her cocked eyebrow earned her a grumble and a sour, “I prefer silence.”

His stone-faced stare pinned on the windscreen left her questioning if he had called her Mixie earlier. But she couldn’t forget his softness when he’d uttered it. It was the nickname he’d given her to rewrite how she hated her parents calling her little pixie. The name Mixie had made her feel cheeky yet strong.

She fiddled with her phone. He didn’t deserve to have any familiarity with her.

“It’s dead,” she mumbled as she tried turning it on. “It must have broken when it smashed against the bed. It holds my only copy of the video of Hugo attacking the guy. Without it, I’ve no evidence.”

“It’s not backed up to the cloud?”

“I maxed out my cloud storage and didn’t want to pay for more.”

Atsknoise sounded from his mouth, and she folded her arms and glared.

“I wasn’t telling you off. I was thinking. The video won’t be saved to the SIM because that’s for basic stuff, not big files, but it should still be on the phone. Leave it for now. You never know who might be trying to hack it. Luke, our tech guy, will sort it out.”

Silence crowded the dark car. Millie swallowed a couple of times, wishing she’d carried her bag into her parents’ house last night rather than leaving it in the back of her car.

She swallowed again, trying to clear the dryness from her throat, as she made a list of the items she was missing. Strike reached behind him, grabbed a water bottle, and thrust it into her hand.

“There’s sherbet lemons, your favourites, in the glove compartment,” he said. “A friend left them there. She’s a big fan.”

She side-eyed him as she cracked open the water bottle, desperate to ask if it was a platonic friend or more but confident he wouldn’t answer.

Gulping down the first half of the bottle, she sensed his eyes on her, and when she glanced in his direction, his piercing stare moved from her throat back to the windscreen.

He licked his lips slowly.

“Thirsty?”

“No,” he said thickly.