He shook his head and made a back-and-forth slicing motion at his neck.

Thirty minutes later, Avery stood in a hot shower. Even though everything but her toes was hurting, she started to laugh. “Hey, Mom . . . guess what? Your dream came true. Can you come bail me out of jail?” Adeline would have a stroke.

Avery bit her lip and continued talking to herself. “Lori, what’s up? About those lawyer services?”

Brenda would be all, How did he get close enough to punch your face?

And Liam.

Avery’s smile started to fade when she thought of him.

There wouldn’t be a Liam to call.

Oh, well. At least she wouldn’t disappoint him.

Again.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You’re probably deleting these messages before listening to them. That isn’t going to stop me from trying. I’m sorry I cornered you. I know you’re going through a hard time, and I want to help. Please, Avery. Let me help. I miss you and I’m worried.” Liam hung up the phone and leaned against the bed of his truck as he stared down his new project in Santa Monica.

Never in his life had he made this much of an effort to stay attached to a woman. Not that he was the one to bug out at the first sign of conflict in relationships, but Avery all but told him to go to hell by hanging up and not returning his calls.

He felt marginally better when his daily check-in with Reed told him no one had heard from her.

Liam booked a flight to New York that would leave on Sunday. He’d given her enough time alone.

He wouldn’t let her work her way into another week of this journey without him.

Avery checked three more clubs off her list.

Maybe she was going at this the wrong way. Although, there had been a few people she’d asked who said they had seen a similar tattoo but didn’t remember the face it belonged to.

“Here ya go.” A waitress slid a full plate of food in front of Avery, refilled her coffee, and scurried away.

She was starving. Her nights had been too busy for her to think about food, and her lack of a breakfast habit was making her weak.

Avery looked at the eggs, potatoes, bacon, and toast like she’d not seen such a delight.

Digging in like a trucker, she felt her energy seeping back into her veins. Her fork was halfway to her mouth when she felt a hand grab her shoulder.

She jumped, dropped her fork, and looked over her right shoulder as her elbow swung up. It stopped less than an inch from Detective Armstrong’s chest.

“Easy, tiger.” He took a step back and looked down at her.

“Not smart to sneak up on people, Detective.”

“I can see that.” He slid into the chair opposite her without invitation. His eyes found the bruise on her face. “New makeup fad?”

She didn’t dignify him with a response. “Did you find him?”

“No. Did you?”

Again, she sat silently and picked her fork back up. “Seems you had no problem finding me in this ocean of people. You should channel that energy into finding Spider.”

He leaned forward on his elbows. “Funny, it wasn’t very hard learning where you were. Would you like to guess why?”

He was here to lecture her. If there was something she’d gotten used to since she was a teenager, it was authority dominating over her. She wasn’t going to escape it, so she kept eating and let him rant.

“Apparently there was a bar fight on the East Side the other night, and guess whose name came up on the list of participants?”

The potatoes stuck in her throat. She washed them down with coffee.

The waitress stopped at the table, and Armstrong encouraged her to pour him a cup of coffee.

Great, he wasn’t yelling and then leaving promptly.

Avery kept eating, no longer tasting her food.

“What do you hope to accomplish, Grant?”

“Unlike you, I’m going to find him.”

“By kicking the shit out of everyone you come across in the process?”

“I haven’t shit kicked yet.” She shoveled a forkful of eggs. Although the last fight did give her the opportunity to throw a few punches. Catching a couple was to be expected.

“What happens when you take a knife to a gun fight?”

“I don’t carry—”

“Not my point and you know it! I don’t see any of this ending well for you if you keep this up.”

She placed her fork aside and knew she wouldn’t be able to finish. “Asking around in a few clubs isn’t a crime. Stopping someone from touching what doesn’t belong to them isn’t a crime.”

“It is when people get hurt and property is damaged.”

“I think it was you who said jail time for assault was laughable.”

“That’s not what I said—”

“No, but that’s how it translated in my head. So I’ll take my chances and defend myself if I have to.”

“Defend yourself? Is that what you call picking a fight and then rearranging men’s testicles?”

“They touch my ass, I touch their balls. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

“You won’t be happy until you’re in jail, will you?”

“Maybe I’ll find a lead there.”

“You’re going to end up in the hospital again. You know what happens to people when they go around searching for a bad guy?”

She was getting pissed now. “Oh, I don’t know . . . find him?”

“They put a target on their backs. If this guy is out there and he learns of you kicking up smoke, there is no telling what he’ll do to you this time.”

She couldn’t stop the smile from reaching her lips. “I’d like to see him try.”

Armstrong leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Then there is the guy that sees a pretty little thing like you asking questions and he’s all, ‘yeah, baby . . . I know where he is.’ Or the guy that has a similar tattoo on his arm and thinks you’re looking for him. Only he has a gang of ten on his side. What about that guy, Avery?”

Those things hadn’t happened.

She clenched her jaw and hid the fear he put in her head.

“I’m going to offer some free advice.” He stared her in the eye. “Go home. This man stole a year of your life. Don’t give him the power to take the rest of it. Let me do my job.”

“What have you done other than lecture me?”

Armstrong sat farther back. “His ink isn’t coming up in our database.”

“What does that mean?”

“Any number of things. He’s never been arrested. Due to the brutality of your attack, I have a hard time believing that. So he isn’t from around here. Probably not even in the city.”

She smelled smoke. “You just want me out of town.”

Armstrong nodded. “Absolutely right. I want you back in your cozy life in LA, where I can look for this guy and not look after you.”

Avery rolled her eyes. “I can clearly look out for myself.” She swung her legs out from under the table and dropped some bills on the surface. “Thanks for the pep talk. I’ll let you know if I find any leads.”

“Damn it, Grant.”

She ignored him and walked out.

Armstrong glared at her uneaten food. He couldn’t do anything but wait and watch for the pieces to fall around her. Protecting her from herself wasn’t on his job list, and he was way out of his jurisdiction.

What he needed was backup.

Where was her posse of friends that had been so attentive a year ago?

He retrieved his phone from his pocket and started scrolling through phone numbers. He found the one he was looking for and put the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Is this Reed?”

“Who is this?”

“Detective Armstrong. We met last year.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, ‘oh, shit.’ Where the hell are you guys?”

Liam met Reed at a coffee shop a few blocks from the condominium complex.

When the text came through that Reed had information about Avery to share, Liam dropped his work in Carlos’s lap and left the job.

“Is she okay?” Liam asked the question the second he noticed the drawn expression on Reed’s face.

“Yes. Before I start, know I already have boots on the ground in New York. My critical player will be there in a couple of hours.”

Liam kept his fear in check, his jaw clenched.

Reed took a deep breath and began. “Avery’s memory of what happened to her last year came back.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“Normally, yeah. Except the details she remembered about the guy who attacked her didn’t line up with the dead man pinned as her attacker.”

Liam turned an ear toward Reed. “Come again?”

“They had the wrong guy. The one who attacked her is still out there.”

His fist clenched. “Oh, no.”

“Avery is running around Manhattan with a picture and asking questions. According to the detective that was on her case last year, she’s searching the nightclubs, from sleazy to snazzy. At the same time, she’s making quite the name for herself. While no one has seen the guy she’s looking for, everyone has seen her. She’s making enemies daily,” Reed said.

“You mean she’s kicking ass.” Liam recalled the first time he saw her at Pug’s. It didn’t take an expansive imagination to see her doing that all over New York City. He itched to leave the table and drive straight to the airport.