At least not until Janie was abducted and murdered and raped. In that order.

“So you’re not married?” he said.

“Nah. There was someone, but it didn’t work out.”

“I can’t imagine any man walking away from you.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Mel gave his arm a squeeze, but then cursed under her breath. “He found someone he liked better.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“She was nothing like me.”

“Well, his loss.” He looked over. “Was it recent?”

“Yeah. Very. I’m just getting my feet back under me again. I feel kinda lost.”

As they came up to the club, he took Mel right to the head of the wait line. When the bouncer looked her up and down, it was clear that she was going to get in without a problem, but just to be sure, he made a little arrangement with the guy’s gray matter.

“You sure you can’t come in with me?” she asked.

“No, but thanks.”

“Let me give you my number. Tell me yours so I can text it.”

“You know, it’s been nice catching up, but I’m going to leave you off here.”

He debated whether to go into her mind and clear the memories, but he found himself not wanting to be a ghost to everyone from his past.

“I won’t tell her,” Mel murmured. “Joyce, that is. It’s pretty clear you don’t want to have contact with her. Or you woulda.”

“It doesn’t matter. You do you. Goodbye, Mel—”

“Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

“Maybe.” She seemed rootless and floundering as she stared up at him from out of her beautiful face, and he felt bad for her. “True love’s out there, okay? I promise you. Hell, I never thought I could find it, and if the shit can happen for a loser like me? You’re going to be a piece of cake.”

When she launched herself at him and gave him a hug, he lightly patted her shoulder blades and then stepped back.

“Go on,” he said. “See if your new man’s waiting for you in there.”

“What if I’ve already found him.”

Butch frowned. But before he could say something on that, she gave him a wave and strutted into the strobe-lit check-in area.

The club’s door closed, but Butch didn’t immediately step away. Lifting the sleeve of his leather jacket to his nose, he breathed in. Poison by Dior was all over his sleeve.

Like he’d been marked.

McGrider’s was indeed a local establishment that served a lot of cops and firemen, and, back in the heyday of newspapers, Jo imagined that most of the CCJ’s staff ate here as well. The vibe was scuffed convenience, everything worn down by generations of patrons, the beer signs in the windows Bud Light, Michelob, and Pabst. And as she and the man in leather settled into a wooden booth—or, rather, she settled and he squeezed—her eating companion didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by all the uniforms in the place. Just like he’d said.

“So you have to tell me your name,” she announced. “Before anything else happens.”

Yeah, ’cuz God forbid she chow down a cheeseburger in front of someone she hadn’t been properly introduced to. Evading a police helicopter, fine. But dinner? She had to draw the line.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she said, “What I mean is—”

“Syn,” he interjected.

“Sin.” Jo tilted her head to the side. “As in not a virtue?”

“No, with a y.”

“What’s it short for?”

“Syn.”

His dark, glowing eyes calmly stared back at her across the table, like he was prepared to field a credit check if she wanted to Experian his ass. And the juxtaposition between all that open-book and the sheer size of him wedged into the booth was a contradiction she was grateful for. The fact that he didn’t seem to have anything he was hiding from her made him so much less dangerous.

Plus, again, there was a whole squad of cops around them. If she needed 911, all she had do was pull a “Help!” and a sea of blue would ride up on the guy.

Then again, if he’d wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of chances already.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, leaning forward. “And I don’t want to offend you.”

“You won’t offend me.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is. You will not offend me.”

As he continued to look over at her, the commotion of the busy bar disappeared on Jo. Between one blink and the next, there were no waiters buzzing around with trays of drinks and pitchers of beer. No plates of onion rings or chicken wings being delivered. No men with badges laughing loudly or women with badges telling stories. Privacy bloomed around them, an illusion created by how she felt as he stared at her like that.

Jo cleared her throat. What had she been—oh, right.

“Are you a pro wrestler or something?” she blurted.

“Wrestler?”

“You know, the WWE. Hulk Hogan, although I guess he was doing that in the eighties. I know of him through reality TV. And that lawsuit over the sex tape years ago, thank you, TMZ.” As Sin with a y just continued to meet her eyes, she shook her head, aware she was babbling. “Have you heard of any of those things?”

“I know what a sex tape is, though I’ve never seen one.”

“That makes you party of nobody else,” she said dryly.

“Why would I want to watch someone I don’t know having sex? Or someone I do know, for that matter.”

Now her eyebrows went up. “You have single-handedly disavowed the porn industry, then.”

Make that left-handedly disavowed, she amended to herself. And she would have made that joke out loud, but she didn’t know him well enough. Maybe he was really religious?

“It’s just not of interest,” he said.

“You’ve never watched YouPorn.”

“What is that?”

“You’re not from here, are you.” As if geography might account for him being the one person in the bar who wasn’t familiar with that URL?

“No, I’m not.”

“So where are you from?”

“Not here.”

When she waited for him to fill that one in and he did not, she sat back. “Europe? I mean, you don’t sound American.”

“Yes. Europe.”

Tick-tock . . . no amplification on that, either.

All right, he might have been open to answering anything, but he clearly wasn’t going to help her much on the Easter Egg hunt.

“So you’re not a wrestler—are you a weight lifter? Wait—a Cross-Fit guy?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“So how are you this big?” She shook her head. “What I mean is—”

“Genetics,” he said remotely.

“See, I have offended you.”

“No, I just don’t like where I came from.”

In the pause that followed, a waitress walked up with a pad and pen. As there were no uniform requirements for the bar, the twenty-something was rocking a hipster vibe with mud-colored clothes, a tattooed sleeve down one arm, and some piercings in her face.

“What can I getcha to drink?”

That she only looked at Syn seemed right. Jo would have done the same in her shoes—hell, she was doing the same. Of all the people in the place, he stood out—and yes, the men and women in uniform and plainclothes had noticed him, too. And at least nobody was springing forward with a Taser and some cuffs.

“Water,” he said.

The waitress pulled an “And you?” without glancing in Jo’s direction. Her eyes were too busy roaming around the span of Syn’s leather jacket and the breadth of his chest and what little she could catch of his lower body. Obviously, she was doing sexual math in her head and solving the equation of him naked with all kinds of yes-please.

“I’ll take a Sam Adams in the bottle, no glass,” Jo said.

“You got it. Menus are in the holder.”

Syn didn’t seem to notice the woman’s departure any more than he’d bothered with her arrival, and Jo told herself not to be complimented.

“You’re not going to take your jacket off, are you?” she said as she shucked her own coat.

“I’m not hot.”

Ohhhhhhh, don’t be too sure about that, she thought to herself. And besides, she knew the lack of outerwear removal was less about his body temperature and more about the guns and ammo he was hiding under all that leather.

“I was hoping you’d call me.” Syn linked his hands and put them on the table, like he was a choirboy in spite of his nickname. “But I’m glad you’re all right.”

She thought of what he’d said the night before. About death. “Actually, I went to the doctor’s today.”

“They won’t help you.”

She froze in the process of folding her coat on the seat. “I beg to differ. That’s their job. That’s what they do when people are sick.”

“You’re not sick.”

“Then explain that to my flu symptoms,” she muttered. “And you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on whether I’m ill. FYI, given that I’m in my skin, I have more credibility on this topic than you do.”

“What is Jo short for? I heard you say your name when you answered your phone.”

“Josephine.”

The waitress brought his water over and the bottle of Sam Adams. Then she lingered, like she was enjoying the close-up more than the panoramic view of him—and even though it was inappropriate on so many levels, Jo felt like hissing as if she were a cat. As if both of them were a cat. As if two cats were—

Frickin’ metaphors.

To keep herself from doing something stupid—or something that would land her with a flea collar—she tried her beer. The first draw on the open neck was heaven, so she took another.