by Anna Sugden
After the extra “work” she’d completed at the post tonight, the last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself. That was the problem with starting a life of crime, or something incredibly close to it—now she would always be watching her back.
Shane didn’t seem to mind the attention, but he didn’t have a “borrowed” police file hidden under a blanket in his trunk, either. He grinned as he hung up his coat and shook the snow out of his hair.
“You know how bad the roads were tonight,” he said.
“Yeah, those few big snowflakes were a real hazard,” Kelly Roberts chimed.
“And think of the many fine young female members of our community you had to pass just to get here,” Vinnie said.
“We all have our crosses to bear.” Shane shot a glance toward the long white counter with vinyl-covered bar stools. “Speaking of which, is she here tonight?”
“Back off, Hormone,” Grant Maxwell called out to him. “She’s not going to give you the time of day.”
“You think you’ve got a shot with her?” Shane said. “You’re smoking something strong if you think she’s going to climb in that new pickup you blew your whole inheritance on and ride off with you into the sunset.”
“The sunset?” Vinnie said with a guffaw. “He was probably just looking for a sunrise. He won’t be getting that, either.”
Everyone laughed, but no one bothered asking who “she” was or argued that the petite blonde waitress, who emerged from the swinging door to the kitchen, would pay attention to any of the troopers. In fact, the young woman barely made eye contact with them as she moved around the tables, efficiently jotting down orders, and then hurried back into the kitchen.
“Thanks, Sarah,” Shane called after her just as the door swung closed.
“Sorry, Sarah,” Lieutenant Scott Campbell said, although she probably wouldn’t hear it. He turned back to the others. “Stop harassing the waitstaff, or they won’t let us come back.”
“Yeah, guys,” Delia chimed in. “How many all-night diners do you think there are in Brighton?”
She was surprised by how easily the words came. Maybe getting to know her colleagues wouldn’t be as difficult as she’d thought. On the other hand, maybe talking with them seemed easy tonight because she was getting so used to lying that she’d bought her own story.
“Diners in Brighton?” Vinnie said as the waitress delivered their drink orders. “That would be a big, fat one. Otherwise, why would we come here? We don’t even know who this Casey is.”
Nobody mentioned that they’d been hanging out more at Casey’s lately because it seemed strange returning to the Driftwood without Ben. But then there were a lot of changes they weren’t talking about tonight, including that Delia had suddenly become almost part of the gang. Was it too much too fast? She wasn’t sure, but she hoped Ben would be proud of her. Not only had she met with her coworkers twice this week, she’d also begun thinking of them by their first names. That was progress, right?
“Someone was being an overachiever today,” Kelly said.
Delia waited for one of them to come up with a pithy response to that until she realized they were all looking at her. Her throat tightened before she could fully process the words. They couldn’t know, right? She’d checked once, twice, three times to ensure no one caught her slipping the file from the commander’s office and then returning it after she’d made a copy. Maybe she hadn’t been as careful as she’d thought.
“What are you...” she began, and suddenly she understood. “Oh, you mean the arrest.”
Kelly grinned. “What else would I be talking about? Nice haul. Like a mini pot plantation. How’d you pick that one out?”
“It was no big deal,” Delia said automatically. “If any of us hand out enough traffic citations and run enough plates, we’re bound to get lucky eventually.”
Delia shrugged, stirring her fork in the scrambled eggs she’d chosen for a late-night breakfast. A few weeks ago, she would have been happy to have the spotlight focused on her. Now all she wanted to do was blend in.
“The guy made it too easy,” she said. “The lesson here is if you’re wanted on a bench warrant and have a trunkful of baby marijuana plants, don’t drive around with a broken taillight and a car that smells like a gange bash.”
“‘Gange,’ huh?” Lieutenant Campbell—Scott—said with a laugh.
Chuckles spread along both sides of the two booths.
“Wow, you sound just like—” Vinnie stopped himself, but it was too late. It was as if the very person they were all avoiding mentioning had just walked in and planted himself atop one of the tables. “Well, except for the drug street name.”
The waitress filled the awkward pause by returning with their orders. She distributed the dishes as everyone returned to their conversations about NCAA men’s basketball matchups, the upcoming Daytona 500 race and the new putters eager to be baptized on area golf courses once the snow melted.
“Has anyone heard anything about the case?” Kelly asked.
The woman hadn’t raised her voice, but her question stopped the other conversations as effectively as if she’d shouted. Delia choked on her bite of eggs and coughed into her napkin.
If they only knew.
At least this time she didn’t have to worry about everyone watching her. They were all dividing their attention equally between Kelly and Scott.
The lieutenant shifted, crossing his arms, and then glanced at each of them by turns. “We shouldn’t be talking about it. You heard Polaski. I know it’s hard, but we need to stay out of it.”
“We can’t do that,” Grant said. “I’m sick of sitting around. There has to be something we can do.”
“Yeah, something,” Jamie Donovan agreed, though he barely knew Ben at all.
Kelly leaned forward so she could get a better look at her superior officer. “Have you even heard much about the case?”
Scott opened his mouth as if to admonish them once more, but he only closed it again and shook his head. “They’re keeping us out of the loop, too.” He shrugged. “Ben’s a friend.”
Delia wasn’t the only one who nodded at him then, but she was the only one who knew the truth. After all of their pledges of support and help, Scott was the one person who’d even made an attempt to put those words into action. Well, besides her. So much for their brand of friendship. In fact, with the exception of Scott, she was annoyed with all of them for Ben’s sake. If they weren’t going to really step up to help him, then she wished they’d just stop pretending.
The last thought made her straighten her posture. In some way, nearly everyone there was pretending. And what about her? Was she pretending that she still wasn’t sure if Ben was telling the truth? Was she sure? No. Of course not. She still had no reason to rule him out as a suspect. Yet with each conversation, every time she looked into his eyes, and with that kiss that made her nerve endings zing, she was having a harder time believing he could be guilty. And he really could be guilty.
She took a drink of her water to force her bite of food down. She couldn’t lose control over her judgment. Right and wrong was all she had. The only things that made sense to her. The gray areas of this secret investigation were difficult enough for her to navigate without her betraying her black-and-white views on guilt and innocence. She wouldn’t do it. Not for Ben. Not for anyone.
“Penny for your thoughts, Dee?”
Whether it was because someone had caught her daydreaming or that he’d called her the same nickname that Ben had used that night, Delia wasn’t sure, but she startled, dropping her fork on the table. Reaching for it, she glanced up to find Trevor Cole watching her and smiling as if he knew a secret. Her secret.
“Just daydreaming. Sorry,” she managed over the sudden clog in her throat.
She hoped her grin was convincing because she was so uncomfortable she could barely sit still. Instead of looking away, Trevor just kept watching her with one of those long, slow gazes she usually rese
rved for suspects. So different from when Ben had stared at her, Trevor’s unblinking gaze gave her the creeps.
What did he know? Her thoughts flashed back to last week when she’d been almost certain he was watching her. At the time, she’d dismissed it, figuring she’d been behaving too suspiciously not to draw attention. But why now—what had she done? An icy tremor flicked up her spine.
Did he have something to hide? Just what did she know about Trevor Cole, anyway? Did he have secrets back at the Manistique Post?
“It’s always hard to decompress after a big arrest, isn’t it?” he said finally.
“Did you have a lot of those back in Manistique?” she couldn’t help asking.
He lifted a brow. “You know about that?”
“Yeah, of course.” Delia frowned. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew about his transfer. They all knew he’d been reassigned from one of more than twenty posts that closed due to state budget cuts. But now she probably appeared too interested in his background. Would she ever get this investigation right?
“Not that the arrest today was a big deal or anything,” she said to fill the pause when he didn’t say more.
Was he trying to avoid answering questions about his time in the UP? Did it have anything to do with the investigation involving Ben? Come to think of it, when they’d all expressed their concern and support for Ben, Trevor hadn’t spoken up as much as the others. Sure, he didn’t know Ben as well as some of them, but then neither had Jamie, and Jamie had chimed in several times. To be fair, she hadn’t said much herself, but she knew which side she was on.
“I’ve had my moments.”
She looked up at him, surprised that he’d answered after so long. “Now you have me curious.”
He lifted a shoulder and then lowered it. “The pace was slower in the Upper Pennisula. We didn’t have five-car pileups during rush hour, but elk-vehicle accidents were a dime a dozen.”
“Sounds a little dry.”
He nodded. “We had polls around the post over how long it would take certain patches of grass to grow.”
She smiled at his joke, but her thoughts continued spinning. She didn’t bother pointing out he hadn’t answered her question, unless he was talking about arresting those wayward elk. What was he not saying about his time in Manistique, three hundred and fifty miles from Brighton? Were there irregularities regarding evidence there, too? It was easy to see how a connection might have been missed since the facility was closed now.
Was she seeing connections where there weren’t any? Maybe, but it was a lead, and she was desperate for one of those. At least she would have something to tell Ben when she saw him Monday night. It would also give her something else to think about besides how perfect his lips had felt when pressed against hers and how much she had loved being in his arms.
If she couldn’t keep her thoughts on the task at hand instead of ways she would like his hands on her, she would be of no help to Ben. The clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time until state investigators determined if they had enough evidence to charge, and she suspected that they might. She had to find something, anything, to help him clear his name, before it was too late.
CHAPTER TEN
BEN TYPED AS quickly as his hunt-and-peck fingers would allow. If only he’d taken the keyboarding class that Polaski had suggested three years before. The digital time on his laptop screen told him it was after seven. Delia would be there in less than thirty minutes, so he needed to get off these sites soon.
The last thing he needed was to have her catching him researching her past when she’d made a point of hinting that there would be nothing to find there. But the more he read about Lloyd Jackson and his wife and stepdaughter, the more curious he became. Particularly since Delia wasn’t volunteering any details.
As he scrolled down the page of search engine results, he rubbed his upper arms over his Henley pullover. It did nothing to stop the chill that seeped from the eight-foot windows along Novi Public Library’s west side. Nothing could be done about that, though. He always sat with his back to the wall, and he wasn’t about to change that now.
Just behind the carrel where he sat, the stacks stretched to the building’s south wall. Off to his right, a sprawling open area was filled with long tables, carrels and even two sofa seating areas, large enough to fit two basketball teams, complete with subs. And adults and high school students had claimed nearly every available spot. The place was loud enough to be a college library and active enough to provide anonymity to a pair of police officers who weren’t supposed to be working together.
From this vantage point, Ben could see all the library patrons as they stepped off the staircase across the room onto the second-floor landing. Thankfully there was no sign of Delia yet. Even after five days, he still wasn’t sure he was ready to work with her again. Would he be able to keep his mind on the case once she was right next to him, where he could smell the floral scent of her shampoo and be reminded of how incredibly sweet her lips tasted?
To distract himself, he focused on the search results and then clicked on the link for a headline.
Scandal Prompts County Commissioner’s Resignation
He’d already read a few similar articles in the Detroit Free Press and the Oakland Press, but he hoped this one from a local weekly newspaper would tell him something new.
Jackson, who faces charges of racketeering and mail fraud involving Oakland County contracts...
The article began just as the others had, so he scanned further down the page.
Why hadn’t Delia told him about her family history? Especially after he’d shared all those gory details about his dad. She could have said they both had criminal fathers. Unless he’d sounded too pitiful, and she didn’t want to share anything in common with him.
Maybe she was just ashamed that her stepfather was a corrupt politician. But this was Michigan. Had she never heard about Detroit’s notorious former mayor? Didn’t she realize that after the scandals and convictions of several Detroit city officials, that her stepfather’s charges weren’t all that shocking or even unique? Of course, maybe she was more embarrassed that Jackson had avoided conviction. He couldn’t blame her for that.
“You didn’t tell me you’d be on the second floor. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
At Delia’s loud stage whisper, he startled, frowning down at the laptop screen as he quickly backed out of the page and the search. He’d nearly been caught in the act of snooping into her past when he should have been looking for information to save his own neck. But that was only one reason he was so anxious right now. The rest had to do with the woman standing only a few feet away from him. He’d hoped for a few more minutes to mentally prepare himself before meeting with her again.
“And you didn’t tell me you’d be almost a half hour early.” He made a point of touching his eyelid to adjust his contact lens instead of looking up from the screen. So what if he was stalling? He deleted his search history and closed the browser.
“Is it a problem?”
“That you’re early?” He shook his head, still avoiding looking up. “I just meant that I didn’t get the chance to text you with my location. I would have done that in a few minutes.”
“Well, I would have been grateful...in a few minutes.”
Ben straightened his shoulders and finally looked up at Delia, who was grinning over her joke. His breath caught at just the sight of her. How naive he’d been to think he could just pretend that nothing had changed between them. And preparation? Nothing could have prepared him for the jolt of seeing her again.
She’d gone back to wearing her tight bun, which reminded him of a helmet in her protective armor. But he already knew how silky her hair felt and how soft she could be in his arms. Her absolute-coverage turtleneck under her open coat might as well have been a negligee for how ineffectively it shielded images of her curves now imprinted on his tactile memory.
As if she could read his thought
s and was shocked by his depravity, she yanked her coat closed and crossed her arms in an exaggerated shiver. “It’s cold in here.”
That she licked her lips in a nervous gesture didn’t help. It had him thinking about her tongue, which only led to more forbidden thoughts. How was he supposed to forget about the other night? To pretend that kiss had never happened when he could still feel every feature of her mouth? How was he supposed to wash from his memory those touches that he’d cataloged among the best in his life?
“It’s just cold by the window.”
“And you had to be by the window at the back of the room.”
“Training,” he said with a shrug. “I have to sit here.” And he needed to keep right on sitting, too, because if he stood up now, he might embarrass them both.
“Sometimes the training is downright inconvenient.”
She made a production of opening her satchel and pulling out her own laptop. Sitting opposite him with her right shoulder nearly touching that chilly glass, she didn’t look up as she plugged the computer into the outlet built into the desk. He waited for her to say something, but she only logged on and started typing. She didn’t even peek over at him though he watched her, just to be sure.
If he’d ever needed a reminder that it had been a bad idea to kiss Delia, she was providing him a hands-off signal now. Had it just been wishful thinking when he’d convinced himself that she’d been a willing partner in that kiss? Now she seemed determined to forget that anything had happened between them, something he just couldn’t do. It was like unlocking a box, filled with all of the things he shouldn’t want and could never have. Now he was supposed to lock it up again and destroy the key.
But he did want. More than he’d ever wanted anything or anyone.
Delia didn’t want him, though. She’d made that abundantly clear. He could deal with rejection, but something about the way she’d reacted to their kiss hadn’t sat well with him the other night. And it still bothered him. She’d seemed too upset about something as insignificant as a kiss, even a great one. Stranger than that, she seemed more upset with herself than even him.
