“I know that face and it’s not okay.”

“I’m fine.”

Now Michelle just laughed. “It’s about Avery?”

Much like his dog, Michelle didn’t give up when she was onto something that had anything to do with emotions.

“She’s out of town. Working. Not a lot of time to chat.”

“In other words, you miss her.”

He missed her, worried about her, and thought about her all the time. The dreams were as vivid as the memories. “Yup.”

“Sounds pretty normal.”

“Yup. Like I said, nothing wrong.” Except that before their explosively sexual weekend she would drop a text in the middle of the day with something completely random. An emoji or a picture of a jacked up truck with a comment like Where is the ladder to get up in this thing? While it might not have been all that personal, the texts told him she was thinking about him, and he’d grown used to that instant smile.

“Call her. Tell her you miss her.”

“You’re such a girl.”

“So is she.” Michelle ducked back into the house the way she’d walked out.

Liam tossed the ball to the back of the fence.

He snagged his phone out of his back pocket and stared at the damn thing. Now who was acting like a girl?

He pressed Avery’s number and put the phone to his ear.

The line went to voice mail on the fourth ring. “You’ve reached Avery Grant. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as possible.”

“Hey, Princess.” Oh, damn . . . what should he say now? Miss you sounded needy. Thinking of you was obvious. He should have sent a text. “Do you like dogs?” Where the hell had that come from? “I mean. Never mind. I hope everything is going well in Seattle. Call me when you have a second.”

He hung up.

“Do you like dogs?” He might as well have asked if she liked suburbia and white picket fences.

Liam grabbed his beer and jogged down into his yard.

Her cell phone startled her awake.

Avery plopped a hand on the bedside table to answer the rattle. “Hello?”

“Ms. Grant?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Detective Armstrong.”

She woke up quickly, hearing his name. “Hold on.” She tossed back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She glanced at the clock. Nine in the morning. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Okay. I’m back.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I overslept. What did you find, Detective?”

“We looked over the pictures of our suspect.”

She knew what was coming even before he said the words.

“And?”

“He didn’t have any tattoo of a spider on his body.”

Avery crossed to the windows and pulled the light-blocking blinds open. She winced. “So what do we do now?”

“We’re reopening the case.”

There was some satisfaction in that.

“I need to caution you . . .”

“Caution me about what?”

“Tattoos are circumstantial at best. Unless there is something else to identify your attacker, the chances of being able to arrest, let alone prosecute, anyone we find with that mark is minimal.”

“What does that mean? You’re not going to look?”

“We’ll look. But . . .”

“But what?” It was too early for her to be this upset.

“Ms. Grant . . . we want men that do the things this guy did to you off the street just as much as you do.”

“I doubt you want it more than me.”

“Okay. Maybe in this case that’s true. Most of us got into this profession because we want to protect and serve. This case is almost a year old, and without a physical description outside of a tattoo, he is going to be impossible to find with the resources we have.”

Resources . . . that was what this was all about. “You mean it’s not a priority.”

“I mean we need more than a spider tattoo. An image that can be repeated on any arm, every arm, from here to Jersey.”

She started to pace. “What if I do remember this guy’s face and I give you a description?”

“Now we have something to work with. We give our friends in Manhattan the description. We search the prison database. If he is here, we’ll eventually find him. Then we can bring you back here to identify him.”

The tone in Armstrong’s voice told her there was something he wasn’t saying.

“And then?”

“We give the case to the DA and hold him as long as we can.”

“What does that mean?” She was starting to raise her voice.

“Ms. Grant—”

She was getting tired of hearing her name. “Avery.”

“Avery, this guy assaulted you. People are mugged and assaulted every day in Manhattan.”

She closed her eyes, her breath coming fast. “I was in the ICU for a week.”

“Which will weigh on the case. You have a lawyer friend, right?”

Lori. “Yes.”

“Ask her what the chances are of this particular perpetrator doing any serious time for your attack. There are always exceptions, but my guess is your friend will break this down to a few months, maybe a year or two.”

“So I’m just supposed to turn my back on him? He fucked me up, Armstrong. I’m not the same person I was before he stomped my head into the pavement.” She was seething.

“I’m going to look for him, Avery. Give me a description. Let us do our job.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Give me his face, and if he is still here, we will bring him in. But finding him is not going to give you the satisfaction you seek.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I watch the face of victim after victim when we have to let their assailants back on the street. We go from hero to asshole in one day in cases like this.”

Where was the fairness in any of this?

Since when did she think life was fair?

“I’m sorry, Avery. I really am.”

“This is hard to accept.” She refused to.

“I know. How long are you in the city?”

Until I find him. “I don’t know. I have some work here,” she lied.

“If you remember more while you’re here, give me a call. I’ll come to the city, and we’ll sit down with a police artist and get his face in every station. But don’t put your life on hold. We can do this remotely.”

Out of sight, out of mind.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

Avery jumped on the subway and made her way downtown to where the majority of tattoo shops were in Manhattan. After a night of research, she’d learned a few things about the industry and its history.

Sometime in the 1960s, tattooing a person had been banned. The prohibition had lasted over thirty years and was legalized in the late nineties. Like any prohibition, the law wasn’t followed, but the places that offered tattoos weren’t advertised. Which meant that there weren’t as many tattoo parlors in the city as she thought. Of course, there was no guarantee Spider had gotten his artwork done in Manhattan. Still, it was a start. Avery felt better looking for this guy than letting him haunt her dreams any longer.

She walked into the first tattoo parlor just before noon. The walls were filled with examples of what could be permanently placed on your body for a price.

“Good morning,” the clerk greeted her.

Avery approached the desk with a smile. “Good morning.”

“Looking to get some work done?”

“No, uhm . . . I’m looking for some information.”

The guy’s smile dimmed.

Avery pulled her sketches out of her folder. “I’m looking for someone who has this on his arm.”

The heavyset man rubbed his beard and glanced at her. “You a cop?”

“No.” She was taken aback. “I’m . . .” I have a vendetta against this asshole probably wouldn’t get her anywhere if, in fact, he was a paying customer at this establishment. “I’m interested in the artist who did this.”

The man took a breath and pushed her picture back over the counter. “Yeah, right. Never seen it before.”

Even if he had, he wouldn’t tell her.

“Okay, thanks for your help.” Asshole.

The next parlor, she took a different approach.

This time a woman was behind the desk, said her name was Zelda. Which fit. Zelda was full of ink from her neck to her fingertips and wearing a spaghetti strap shirt to show it all off.

“I need a little information about your services.”

“Thinking of getting some work done?” Was this a standard question?

“Not for me. My boyfriend.” Avery presented the pictures. “He likes spiders and was talking about adding to his arms.”

“We can definitely do it.”

“Do you have an artist here that has done work like this before?”

“Yeah, we all have.”

“With this much detail?”

Zelda smiled. “We can show you examples of our work to assure you it can be done.” She twisted the image around, looked at the back. “Who sketched this for you?”

Avery smiled. “A friend. How long would it take to do something like this?”