By the time Stephanie and Tom had arrived at Stephanie’s house, both of them were chilled to the bone as their wet clothes clung to them uncomfortably. Stephanie unlocked the door and ran upstairs, briefly searching in her wardrobe to pull out some fresh clothes before locking herself in the bathroom, where she took a quick hot shower. Tom paced the landing outside the bathroom and knocked on the door at intervals, asking if he could come in and share Stephanie’s shower.
“I’ll be out in two seconds. Then you can have a quick shower, but then we need to get back to work Tom. Remember work? It’s what we should be doing round about now. Brick will skin us alive if he finds out we’ve been back here!” she shouted.
“Yeah, yeah but that’s why it would be quicker if you let me in there now,” he reasoned, stripping off his freezing wet shirt and hanging it on the banister at the top of the stairs.
“Too late,” she said, opening the door after having showered and changed into dry clothes. “It’s all yours but hurry up!” she urged.
He saluted her and entered the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Stephanie shook her head in exasperation and then noticed the wet shirt on the banister, dripping onto the floor. She took hold of it and went into the spare room to hang it on the radiator to dry. Looking around the room,she recalled the state of Tom’s bedroom in his apartment and observed that her spare room resembled much the same. Clothes were strewn over the floor and bed in a similar manner and so she moved around the room, plucking up odd garments to tidy away.
When she had retrieved more than she could carry, she kicked his bag out of the centre of the room and bent down to place the garments into it. She threw the clothes into the bag, but just before they covered the contents, her eyes homed in on something sticking out of a side pocket. She froze, unable to believe her eyes, but also not wanting to confirm what she had seen for fear that it was true. She backed away from the bag and onto the landing, where she paused for a moment before walking back downstairs and into the kitchen. She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, staring out of the window. She had been so stupid. She had to stop and think. Everything had happened so fast that she had somehow in the process lost control of the situation. She sat, playing the events of the last week through her head, until Tom joined her in the kitchen.
“Okay, I got ready in record time just for you. Let’s go then,” Tom said at the kitchen door.
Stephanie turned to him. “Sit down Tom, we need to talk.”
He suddenly felt uncomfortable from the tone of her voice and the look on her face.
He sat next to her at the table. “What’s up?”
She looked him directly in the eyes, making him feel even more uncomfortable. “I need you to be straight with me now Tom. What are you hiding from me?”
He didn’t understand the question. As far as he was concerned, she was hiding more than him. “What are you talking about ‘hiding from you?’ All I’ve tried to do is keep you safe. Why would you say that?” he replied defensively.
“Try the gun in your bag Tom. The gun that you brought into my house! Why and how would you get your hands on a gun like that?” she accused.
All the colour drained from his face as he listened to her. He paused to think before he spoke. “I took it to the airfield when I knew that Henry had you. I just wanted to protect us both.”
“Fine, I understand that, but you don’t just pick up a gun from the corner shop. Why did you have it in the first place?”
He sighed and looked to the ceiling, wondering how to explain it to her. “Steph, do you trust me?” he asked, focusing on her.
She searched his eyes and reluctantly admitted to herself that she did. She probably shouldn't but, for some reason, she trusted him completely. “Yes, but Tom, what are you doing with a gun?”
“Look, how about we do a deal here? You answer my question and I’ll answer yours,” he challenged.
She hesitated. “Go ahead.”
“Why does Henry want to destroy your father?”
Her eyes darted away from his and she sat thinking for a moment. “I don’t know. To get back at me perhaps.”
He shook his head. “There’s more to it than that? He seemed to know your father, why?”
“Why the gun?” she came back.
They stared at each other. Checkmate. Eventually Stephanie broke the tense silence.
“We haven’t been thinking clearly over the last few days. You know we can’t trust anyone,” she stressed.
He nodded. “Does that include me Steph? Is that what this interrogation is all about?”
She tutted. “I said 'we' Tom, and it’s hardly an interrogation. Don’t you think I have a right to ask questions considering that I’ve let you into my home? Into my life!”
"Steph, I've told you before, I've been involved in this kind of stuff in the past. I haven't used the gun, but I had it at home for protection, that's all. And that's why I have it here now."
"Well, I'd rather you didn't have it here."
"You wouldn't be saying that if someone broke into here after you again," he pointed out.
"And what would you do? Shoot them?" she asked.
"Too bloody right I would, if they were going to shoot you...or me!" he replied adamantly. She sighed, unsure of what to say next. He thought back to what she'd said earlier. “Okay, so we both trust each other, right? But who have we overlooked in he ‘trusting’ department, because I think we’ve been pretty careful.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Tom, we’ve been shot at, nearly drowned in a boat and I’ve been kidnapped. We can’t have been that careful!”
“Look Steph,” he pointed at her, “the kidnapping...well how was I to...” He stopped, unable to defend himself as he was forced to admit to himself that he had been careless.
She watched the pained look on his face and backed down. “It’s not all down to you, and you’re right, we weren’t to know,but what I mean is that we’ve been distracted at every step along the way. So distracted with all the near misses that we haven’t stopped to see what’s been in front of our noses.”
Tom waited with interest to hear what she had to say. “Carry on.”
“Well, we know that Hugh Carlton is involved in a political campaign. We also suspected that he had something to do with the spate of crimes, but now we know that the crimes were bogus. It’s so obvious! He wants to discredit the government leading up to the elections. The government promised to cut down on crime and now the whole city it plagued with crime, it’s plastered all over the newspapers!”
Tom ran a hand through his hair and thought about what she’d said, acutely aware that he’d been completely blind. His mind began to work overtime.
“But the crimes were not entirely hoax were they? I mean that someone or some people have actually been attempting to make them look real. Attempted burglaries et cetera.” He thought some more, voicing his thought processes. “So imagine your house gets broken into, you phone the police and they investigate it. It’s hardly going to become headline news if nothing serious happened, so someone on the inside, someone in the police, is working with Carlton to cover things up and spread the news that the crimes were serious.”
Stephanie grinned. “Well yes. Think a bit more and you may be at the stage I’m at now.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. How cheeky she was becoming. He smiled. He liked cheeky. “Okay, Mrs Holmes, just give my small brain time to catch up!”
Her grin widened.
He thought again and then it hit him like a bolt out of the blue. “Benton!”
She nodded. “It has to be someone in charge. And who was there after the boating incident? Who was there the night I was kidnapped? But we wouldn’t have seen anything strange in that, right? Because he’s a Sergeant, so we would expect him to be there.”
“Hey you’re not bad at this.”
“Gee thanks,” she laughed, then sobered. “But where do we go from here? We need proof, proof of Hugh Carlton’s involvement, and if Benton is covering for him, how to we get past that?”
“We go above his head,” Tom replied simply.
“That might not be as easy as we think. We need connections, like Hugh has. Someone who will be listened to.”
“We should start by taking this to Brick,” Tom suggested. “He’s a force to be reckoned with. Wait, even better if he can get Hamilton-Brown to stand up and listen. Not only does he own the City Daily but he has shares in most of the major national newspapers too. He must have some pretty influential connections wouldn’t you say?”
“Hmm,” she nodded. “Let’s talk to Brick about it then,” she said, jumping up and heading for the lounge.
She picked up her bag and rushed to the front door, aware of how long they had been out of the office. Tom caught her before she opened the door though and reached out a hand to take hers away from the door handle. She turned around in surprise and found him close behind. One look at his expression and she edged back towards the wall. He had a half smile on his face but his eyes were intense. She’d seen that look before.
“Tom?”
“Stephie?”
“Tom, we have to get back to work.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But I was just wondering...what I wanted to ask was...” he paused, playing out in his head what he was going to say. “Since we are such a great team and all...” Oh god, that sounded dumb. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d expected. “Look, I want to take you out on a date,” he finally blurted out.
She looked taken aback. She hadn’t expected that, and she wasn’t sure how to reply. “Tom, we have to go, let’s talk about this later,” she said, stalling for time.
He put his hand on the wall and leant slowly towards her. She looked wary. “I want to wine and dine you Steph. Just say yes and we can go.”
‘Wine and dine.’ She wondered how many other women he’d said that to. “I’m not sure I want to say yes,” she came back, pressing herself against the wall as he moved closer.
He stopped and watched her thoughtfully. “It’s plainly obvious that there’s something between us, I just want to do things properly,” he reasoned.
She sighed. “Look Tom, don’t you think we’ve got enough on our plate at the moment? Everything has happened extremely fast over the last week, we don’t need any more complications.”
“Complications? I’m just asking you out on a date,” he replied defensively.
She avoided eye contact with him. “We work together Tom. I haven’t been myself since this whole Carlton thing, but when it’s over, we’ll still be faced with each other every day at the office. I just don’t know if us dating is the wisest move.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She turned her head to look him directly in the eyes. “Because we work together,” she repeated.
“So?” he pushed, reaching out to gently tuck her hair behind her ear. He let his hand hover there. She moved her head back further so that it was leant against the wall. She had nowhere else to go and, not only that, she was very aware that she was running out of excuses. But how could she tell him that she couldn’t face the idea of having to work with him when he got fed up with dating her and found himself interested in another woman?
“Steph, this thing between us isn’t going to go away. Okay, so we may be very different in many ways,” he figured that he was a lot more different to the last guy she had dated, “but it works! You’ve got to admit, we’re great together.”
She smiled. “Well yes, we do work great together but let’s not complicate things.”
“Things are already ‘complicated,’” he said, moving his head towards hers and homing in on her lips.
She put a hand between them and halted him. “We have to get back Tom,” she said, desperately. “Brick will be furious.”
“Just say you’ll date me and we can go. Just one date Steph and we’ll see how it goes eh?”
She fell silent.
“Come on Steph, put me out of my misery.”
“Misery?” she questioned.
He gave her a wry look. “Yes, you’re all I’ve been thinking about for months!”
“Months?” He had to be exaggerating.
He nodded. “Why do you think I turned up at the bar that night? It wasn’t just in passing.”
She looked surprised. She hadn’t really thought about that. He continued to stroke her hair back and leant forward to whisper, “Just give me a chance Stephie, please.”
Her willpower broke at the sound of his voice. He actually sounded quite unsure of himself. “Okay,” she said suddenly. “We’ll go on one date and see.”
He moved back slightly and she watched a huge smile light up his face. “We’ll have a great time Steph, you’ll see.” His eyes focused on her lips again so temptingly close, and he moved his head gradually towards her.
“Now let’s go,” she said, abruptly ducking under his arm and moving away from the disturbing sight of his lips edging closer.
He laughed. “Okay, okay.” He opened the front door and they exited the house.
As they walked towards his car, he put an arm over her shoulder. “So Stephanie White, what is your policy when it comes to the end of a date?”
She looked sideways at him in disbelief and laughed. He was incorrigible! “Well Tom Phillips, you’re just going to have to wait to find out,” she said, moving suddenly forward away from his arm and strolling to the other side of the car.
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