Wildfire

Chapter 37

37. Confess

I hated the look on Diego's face when Georgina told him the news. There wasn't so much as a flicker of surprise, like he'd known all along that Killian would be a dead end, just an edge of resignation that seemed etched into the lines of his face. He slumped down in the back of Georgina's beat-up car and leaned his head against the window, his body squashed into the seat.

I stood on the pavement and answered Marco's questions robotically, my eyes following the scratch of his gold pen as he made notes for his official report. Although he hadn't any emotional stakes in the outcome of this investigation, he seemed as frustrated with the dead end as the rest of us.

When he was done with his questions, Diego pushed open the door to the car and straightened, his back arching slightly as he worked out the kinks from being stuck in such a cramped space.

"Do you want a ride?" Georgina asked him as she moved to the driver's side. Slater had followed us back from Ian's studio and was leaning against a nearby building, face lined with boredom. At the mention of a ride, he pushed himself away from the wall and strolled over, flipping the hood of his jacket up over his head.

"I would prefer to walk," Diego said quietly.

Georgina nodded and looked at Marco. "What about you, Stiff?"

"My hotel is right around the corner." He jerked his head vaguely.

Her eyes landed on me and I shook my head. "Diego's got the keys."

She almost looked — annoyed. I figured out why a second later when she climbed into the car and Slater followed, a smirk on his face. She'd wanted someone to act as a buffer. I watched as she drove away, her car disappearing into traffic.

I was still warm from my workout but the chill in the air was starting to affect my body temperature. The weather was slowly slipping into February and there was a sweetness to the cold now, like the tease of spring in the air. I inhaled slowly and stuffed my hands into my pockets.

"I'll call you when the results from the lab come in," Marco said to Diego. "If anything else arises..."

Diego nodded once, a remote look on his face. He was withdrawing again, becoming listless, and I felt a twinge of annoyance echo through my chest. Not at him — it wasn't like he could help it — but at the world, at the fact that our one lead had come to nothing.

Marco left, his gait so inherently graceful that he looked like he was gliding along the street. I watched him leave for a long moment before I finally faced Diego. My fingers tingled as the urge to reach out, to touch his arm and offer comfort in some way, rose in my mind.

"We'll find out what happened to her," I said instead.

"It won't matter," he said, a surly note in his voice. "She still ran off with the human."

He started to walk away and instead of following, I found myself staring at his back, confusion and unease warring for dominance in the pit of my stomach.

I'm human too...

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It was dark when we reached Diego's apartment. He flicked on the lights as he stepped inside, kicking off his boots. A flicker of amusement ran through me as he grabbed his discarded boots and placed them next to the neat row of shoes in the hallway, like he couldn't stand for them to be out of order for even a second.

"Are you hungry?" I moved into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge. Ordinarily, I would have felt like I was overstepping, rooting through somebody else's fridge, but after my first night in Diego's apartment, I realized his idea of a stocked fridge was vastly different to mine. I'd had to drag him out to the nearest grocery store, so at least half of the items inside belonged to me.