Hold Your Tongue (DI Eve Hunter) by Deborah Masson

Author:Deborah Masson [Masson, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473567887
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2019-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Mearns hid in the toilet cubicle and sat on the closed lid of the seat, reading the words on her mobile-phone screen again, looking at the smiley emoji at the end of them. Thinking of you. Want to do it again?

Mearns had never been short of male attention, and that hadn’t changed since her move to Aberdeen. But she’d always said no. No time for anything else but the job – wanting to make sure she held respect as an officer.

Why had she given in this time?

That night when Eve had given her a lift home from Cooper’s, the night she’d finally taken a good long, hard look at herself. She’d yearned to make her guilt and her feelings of failure disappear, to simply feel wanted and that she was a good person. She’d waited until Eve had driven away and then texted him to meet up, feeling more and more pathetic as she waited for him to reply. Thinking he was never going to. And then the relief when he had, and she’d gone to see him.

She’d awoken the next morning feeling regret, desperate to make excuses to leave, but he’d been standing there, a full tray of breakfast held in his hands, that side to him he kept hidden. She’d surprised herself by pulling him back into bed.

The last couple of weeks had been out of character. Letting someone in. She wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. Maybe she was using him to feel better about herself, to cope with the worst job she’d ever been on. She’d seen things on this case that she knew would never leave her and was more committed than ever to finding the bastard who was doing them.

But for the first time ever she’d been able to step away from the job, if only for a short while. Not to forget about the job exactly – she couldn’t ever forget about the women who had lost their lives – but able to find something for herself in amongst the horrors of what she did for a living, to find a little sanity in a world that sometimes seemed mad.

She read the text again. Was she using him? Was that why she hadn’t mentioned anything to Cooper and Eve? She sensed it upset him that she wanted to be secretive. It was complicated. Private. Not important compared to what they were working on. At least that’s what she’d told him but she knew it was bullshit.

The truth was, she wanted Eve to respect her. And that revelation when it hit her was like a truck – as far removed from how she’d felt when Eve returned to work as she could’ve ever imagined. And she knew he wouldn’t understand, not after everything that had been said about Eve.

It wouldn’t hurt to keep things quiet, to make sure it wasn’t some whim, that she did care for the guy. Then and only then would she tell anyone.

‘Mearns, you in there?’

Mearns jumped up from the toilet lid, opened the door to answer Cooper.

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