“Yes, Officer…Trevor?”
Oh yeah, definitely cautious. He tapped the badge clipped to his hip. “Detective. Trevor McCade. You okay?”
She stared at him for a moment. Then her gaze flicked down to his detective’s badge, and then over his shoulder, to the scene. “I’ll live,” she said softly.
She would, but he wasn’t liking her pale cheeks or the way her attention kept drifting to the vic. Those eyes said shock. He shot a questioning glance at the paramedic standing nearby. The sturdy brunette nodded and murmured, “We’re watching her.”
“How’s your head?”
She took a moment to process the question. Long blond eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks. “It’s okay. I ran into the Dumpster.”
He ran careful fingers over the bump. “Ouch.”
“It’s nothing.” Those baby blues tried to dart back to the body, but he kept his hand at the base of her head and shifted closer, blocking her view.
In the club earlier, she’d worn full makeup and infused all kinds of crazy volume in her long white-blond hair. Now, wearing no makeup, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked incredibly young and fragile. Light freckles dusted her nose. Full, unadorned lips trembled open as she drew a breath.
Wanting to give her something to concentrate on besides a dead body—which they’d get to soon enough—he said, “You know, I figured you’d made me as a cop tonight.”
Her brow scrunched. “Why?”
“During our lap dance you wanted to keep it legal. I thought maybe I made you nervous.”
“Did I seem nervous, Detective?”
He couldn’t restrain a grin, remembering how she’d gasped and jumped when he’d stood at attention. “Yeah. You might have seemed a little nervous. Why don’t you call me Trevor, since we know each other so well?”
She moved her head away from his hand and frowned. “We don’t really know each other very well.”
He fought an urge to brush his fingers over one smooth, pale cheek. “Oh, you might be surprised. I know you’re Stacy Roberts. You’ve worked at Deuces for two years, and right now, you’d dearly love to be anywhere but here.”
Her expression turned hopeful. “Can I go?”
“Sorry, no.” He watched the hope wilt out of her face, and actually did feel sorry. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened tonight. What you saw.”
She frowned again. “I want to help, Detective. Honestly, I do. But I’ve already told the other officers everything I know, which isn’t much. Someone took my statement. I reviewed and signed it.”
He knew she was tired. Fatigue painted light purple shadows under her eyes. But getting her statement tonight, watching her reactions with everything still fresh in her mind, would be far more valuable than collecting the information secondhand from other officers or arranging an interview tomorrow. “Can I trouble you to run through it again? For me.”
Her shoulders slumped a little, but she summarized her movements from the time she left Deuces until she found the body. When she recounted approaching the victim, her voice thinned and her breathing went shallow. He’d worked homicide long enough to know it wasn’t a good sign.
“Did you recognize him?” He kept his voice low and level, hoping to fast-forward her to a less traumatic point in the evening.
“No. I thought he might work at the club but…” She glanced over at the body and her eyes glazed.
He crouched until they were eye level and slipped his hand under her ponytail so he could rest his palm against the nape of her neck. Sweat covered her cold skin. “Easy, Stacy. Take a couple nice, deep breaths for me, okay?”
She didn’t seem to hear
him. “His face was just a bloody…mess.”
Impossibly, her skin went paler. She blinked, reached out blindly, and grabbed a handful of his shirt. “We have to stop spinning.” Then her eyes did a long, slow roll toward the back of her head.
Hell. Way to go, McCade. “Stacy.” He said it loudly—loud enough to have her dilated pupils looping back to his. Keeping his hand at her neck, he eased her limp body down to the floor of the ambulance. The paramedic hurried over with a dirty look, a cold compress, and some smelling salts. He ignored the look and laid the cold compress across Stacy’s forehead. The smelling salts he pocketed. Hopefully they wouldn’t need them.
“That helps,” she mumbled and closed her eyes.
Her color improved. Trevor took a seat next to her in the back of the ambulance. “Can you open those big blue eyes for me, Stacy?”