Bad Boy Ink (Get Ink'd #5) - Ali Lyda Page 0,42

cloud to be seen, the weather cool in the shade and warm in the sun. Bryce had asked if I wanted to meet at the park, and it had seemed like a good idea not to be indoors with him. In close quarters. Where... We'd be close. Too near to each other. Within kissing distance.

Yeah, I was a good actor, and I knew I had convinced Bryce that the kiss meant nothing to me. But it had been lies, lies, lies.

That kiss had been playing over in my mind on repeat since it happened. It felt like the kiss was tattooing itself on my bones. Several times during the nighttime hours since, I'd pulled open my phone and brought up the sugar daddy app hoping to find a distraction.

Each time I shut it down just as quickly.

Bryce was waiting for me at the park entrance. He was wearing a cardigan like he was motherfucking Mr. Rogers. He probably meant for it to be ironic, but it looked decidedly good on him, the jerk. His blond hair was getting long, the curls tickling at his collarbones. The jeans he wore were slung low on his hips and when he shifted, his T-shirt rode up just enough to show off a piece of tattooed skin.

“You look nice,” he said as I approached. Before hello or anything. I felt wobbly inside and tried to not falter in my steps.

I failed. I stumbled. I looked to the ground to see what I had tripped over, but there was just grass. When I meant Bryce's gaze, he looked to be smothering a laugh.

“Don't be a dick,” I snapped.

Bryce slung his arm over my shoulders. “It was just an observation,” he teased. “You shouldn't be so shaken by compliments.”

The last time he had put his arm on my shoulder, I’d shoved him away. I thought about doing it again. But if I were to be honest, the weight of it felt nice. I didn't move away.

He led me over to where he'd placed a quilt on the ground. His bag was resting there, and there were two bottles of water. There were also Tupperware containers containing grapes, crackers, cheese, and gummy bears.

“You brought snacks? Is this a picnic?” I raised an eyebrow.

He sat down and popped a gummy bear in his mouth. “I think best on a full belly,” he said.

When I sat, it was at the opposite corner of the picnic blanket. It needed to be clear to Bryce (and maybe to myself) that this was solely for schoolwork. The warm sunshine and the radiant autumn leaves and the snacks didn't change the fact that we were there to work.

“So we're down to two suspects.” Bryce opened his notebook and pointed to a flowchart he'd created. It looked an awful lot like the whiteboard suspect charts you would see in the movies. I kind of loved it. Not only because it looked good but because his reasoning was now the same as mine.

His chart led straight to the doctor.

“Apparently we're on the same page,” I said. “I told you it wasn't the wife.”

His face lit up like Christmas lights. “Wrong. Look here.” he pointed to a small off section that I hadn't paid close attention to. “We've been assuming that this is down to either the wife or the doctor.” He waggled his eyebrows at me like a cartoon villain. “But if you use the information from the doctor’s front desk receptionist, you'd see that while the wife was scheduled for an alibi at the office, the doctor wasn't there. She saw a new practitioner. And she was late. By over twenty minutes. Plenty of time to murder and get across town.”

Synapses fired and connections were made. I thought about all the text files that we'd combed through. The emails that we’d filtered. We'd been looking for a single suspect with one motive. But Bryce was suggesting...

“You think they were working together.”

Bryce smiled. “Yep. I think it was a crime of passion for the wife, but the doctor premeditated the entire thing. After all, if you looked further in his files, you'd have found a lawsuit. The woman's husband was suing him for malpractice.”

My fingers drummed on my knee. “So, what? You think the doctor seduced the wife? And then manipulated her into the murder?”

“She'd have power of attorney after his death. She’d be able to drop the lawsuit and keep all the offshore money.”

“We need to find the last connection between the doctor and