The Detective

by Adrienne Giordano

  “Oh my...”

  Brodey held his hand out. “What do you think? Are you mad?”

  Was she mad? For two years she’d been wishing she had the time to clean out the garage. And after the torment they’d faced in there, she’d all but decided that damned garage would continue to be her own personal purgatory. “You did this all today?”

  “Yeah. Well, I had help. Jenna and Brent took a day off and my mom and dad helped. With the bum wing, there’s no way I could have gotten it done in one day. I wanted to start yesterday, but I didn’t know if you’d be home. Today, I knew you’d be gone all day.”

  “Where’s all the stuff?”

  “Uh, in the trash. Most of it wasn’t usable. We saved everything else and moved it to the storage place down the block. Figured you’d want to go through that yourself. At least now you can use the garage for something positive. Put the...uh...other stuff behind you. Did we overstep?”

  She reached for him, squeezed his arm. “Of course you did. But I love it. It’s amazing. Thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Brodey—”

  He faced her, grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “Wait. Please. Just one second. Let me talk and then if you want me to go, I’ll go. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Great. Perfect. Just have a little patience. I pretty much stink at this.”

  “You don’t stink at it.”

  “Yeah, I do. Anyway, here goes. I know I hurt you. I’m sorry for that. It was shortsighted. I should have thought it through and explained why I couldn’t tell you about Brenda. Should have had that conversation early so you’d know certain things are off-limits. I could give you every reason I’ve come up with about why I couldn’t tell you—and it’s a long list.” She smiled and it pushed him forward. “But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I hurt you when I didn’t mean to. I realize that now. I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I do. I didn’t before. Shame on me. Now I know you need the communication. Whether it’s what you want to hear or not, you need it.”

  Five days ago, she’d have dropped to her knees and thanked heaven above for this gift. She might still. Was she a fool for wanting to believe him? The old Lexi would say yes. This Lexi? The one who saw Brodey’s face every time she looked at the sofa wasn’t sure. “I need to know I can trust you with everything.”

  “You can. Look, I’ve never...I don’t know...I guess I’ve never had someone who cared about my job. I’ve had relationships, sure, but none that, well, mattered. I came and went and that was it. This situation is new to me. And I screwed up.” He waved his hand around the garage. “This is my way of showing you I’m sorry. Whether you give me a second shot or not, I wanted to show you I can take care of you in every way. I get it. It’s about physical and emotional security. My keeping the Brenda Williams thing from you was about my job. I didn’t put you first. If I could go back, I’d handle it differently. I’d tell you things were happening with the case that I couldn’t share, but that you needed to be prepared. I’d warn you just like you asked. I’m hoping you’ll tell me that’s good enough. What I do is hard, I’ll always have secrets, but...”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Jenna told me about life with a cop. I see it from the other side now. Before, I couldn’t. I wanted you to understand why I was mad, though. It wasn’t about the case. Not really. It was more that the case was the catalyst.”

  He nodded. “I get it now.”

  She grabbed his jacket and squeezed. “Thank you.”

  “For the garage?”

  “For everything. I’ve missed you. Every time I looked at the sofa, I wanted to put the thing out for trash. All I could picture was you sitting on it, and it hurt even more.” She inched closer. “Promise me I can trust you. Please. I need that.”

  “You can. Absolutely. No doubt. We’re good together.”

  “Even when you’re lecturing me?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Even then. Heck, maybe you can teach me to lighten up. See what’s good in the world instead of what’s not so good.” He backed up. “Oh, gotta show you something else.”

  What now?

  He dragged her to the workbench and the unopened box on top of it. The box was about fifteen inches long and had a picture of a ship on it. The Titanic. God help them if he wanted to compare their relationship to the Titanic. She glanced up at him. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”

  “I bought that. It’s a model-ship kit.”

  “And?”

  “You told me to get a hobby. To take up something that relaxed me. Like you have with sketching. I took your advice. I’m going to build model boats. I may even get this one done before I go back to work. So now you have your sketches and I’ll have model boats. We can do it together when it’s quiet. What do you think?”

  She picked up the box, read the contents. “It’s a lot of pieces.”

  “Yeah, but I like putting pieces together. If I could do it with you next to me, even better. What do you say, Lex? Want to build boats with me and show me what things can be instead of what they are?”

  “Oh, boy, Detective. That sounds like fun.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “I hope so because, honey, I’m just getting started.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from SURRENDERING TO THE SHERIFF by Delores Fossen.

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  Surrendering to the Sheriff

  by Delores Fossen

  Chapter One

  Sheriff Aiden Braddock shut the door behind him, tossed his truck keys on the kitchen counter.

  And stopped cold.

  He didn’t hear anything unusual. The whir of the A/C and fridge. The April breeze rattling the oaks outside the window over the sink. All the sounds he should be hearing, but he still got the gut feeling that something wasn’t right.

  Since that gut feeling had saved his butt a time or two during his time as county sheriff, Aiden listened to it.

  He drew his Glock from his holster.

  Aiden didn’t move yet. He just stood there a few more moments. Listening. And then he heard the thing that didn’t belong. A whisper, maybe. Or somebody breathing. Because he lived alone, there darn sure shouldn’t be anyone else whispering or breathing in his house.

  “Mom?” Aiden called out just to make sure. Though it’d been longer than a blue moon since she came out to his place. Too far in the sticks, she had always complained.

  “Laine? Shelby?” Aiden added in case it was one of his sisters. Again, a serious long shot, since they rarely visited, either.

  No answer. But he hadn’t expected one.

  Whatever was going on, this likely wasn’t a social visit and could even involve some attempted bodily harm. After all, he was the county sheriff and had riled more than a person or two over the past decade. One of those riled people had perhaps come to settle an old score.

  Aiden huffed. He was so not in the mood to bash some heads, but he might have to do just that
.

  “Let’s make this easy for you,” Aiden called out. “I’m a damn good shot. Plus, I’m hungry, tired and not feeling up to any idiot who’s stupid enough to break into a lawman’s house.”

  “Aiden,” someone said in a hoarse whisper.

  Even though the person hardly made any sound when she spoke, Aiden thought he recognized the voice.

  Kendall.

  But that didn’t make any sense. This was the last place on earth she’d come.

  Especially after...well, just after.

  Aiden didn’t lower his gun, but he inched his way toward the sound of her whisper—in his living room. It was just a few yards away past a half wall, but he kept watch all around him. Kept listening, too. Until he could move into the arched opening that divided the rooms, and he snapped his gun in the direction where he’d pinpointed Kendall’s voice.

  His heart slammed against his chest.

  Because it was Kendall O’Neal all right, but this definitely wasn’t a social visit. She was on her knees in the center of the floor, and there was a hulking man on each side of her. The men were wearing black ski masks, and both had automatics pointed right at her head.

  “Drop the gun, Sheriff Braddock,” the bigger one on the right growled.

  Aiden held on to his Glock, trying to figure out what the devil was going on here. He didn’t get many clues from Kendall. She only shook her head. Like an apology or something.

  But that was pure fear in her wide eyes.

  He didn’t see any signs of injury, but then most of her body that he could see was covered with a pale blue shirt, skirt and business jacket—her lawyering clothes. However, her hair was a mess, her blond locks tangled on her shoulders.

  So maybe she’d been in a scuffle with these guys after all.

  Kendall wasn’t the messy-hair type. Nope. All priss and polish for her and never a hair out of place. People didn’t call her the ice princess for nothing.

  However, that wasn’t an ice-princess look she was giving him now.

  “What do you want?” Aiden asked the men.

  “Your gun on the floor.” Again, it was the one on the right who answered. No unusual accent. He was a Texan. And the nondescript dark pants and T-shirt didn’t give Aiden any clues, either.

  “Do it now,” the man added, and he jammed his gun against Kendall’s head. “Or else she’ll pay the price.”

  The last thing any lawman wanted to do was surrender his weapon, but Aiden was wearing his usual backup gun in a boot holster. Maybe he’d be able to get to it in time if things turned uglier than they already were.

  Of course, things were already plenty ugly enough.

  Aiden didn’t make any fast moves. He eased his gun onto the floor. “Now, what’s this about?” he demanded. Thankfully, he still sounded like a sheriff even though it was hard to sound badass and in charge with guns pointed at Kendall.

  “You’re going to do us a favor,” the gunman said. Even though the ski mask covered most of the gunman’s face, Aiden could have sworn the guy was smirking. “And if you don’t, then we’ll hurt Kendall here. Won’t kill her at first. But we’ll use her to make sure you cooperate.”

  The threat was real enough—the real guns were proof of that—but Aiden had to shake his head. “You do know that Kendall O’Neal and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, right? Everybody in town knows it. So why use her to get me to do anything for you?”

  But his question ground to a halt, and Aiden’s gaze snapped back to her.

  “This is some kind of sick game, isn’t it?” Though he couldn’t imagine why Kendall would be playing it with these two armed thugs. “Is this connected to your sister?”

  Aiden didn’t wait for an answer. His attention went back to her captors. If they were indeed linked to her sister and not paid help trying to trick him into doing something crazier than what they were already doing.

  “Just in case you don’t know,” Aiden told the men, “Kendall’s half sister, Jewell, is about to stand trial for murdering my father twenty-three years ago. If this was a real hostage situation, you’d have taken someone that I actually care a rat’s you know what about.”

  Kendall flinched at his stinging remark, but she quickly recovered. The fear, or fake fear, was still in her green cat eyes, and she hiked up her chin in that way that always riled him to the core. She looked darn haughty when she did that.

  “There are things you don’t know.” Her voice cracked on the last word. A nice, theatrical touch.

  “Clearly,” Aiden said with a boatload of sarcasm. “But let me guess. You’re a thousand steps past the desperate stage, and you’d do anything to save your precious, murdering sister. So you want me to try to fix the trial or something.”

  Aiden rammed his thumb against his chest and had to finish through clenched teeth. “You picked the wrong mark, Kendall. I don’t break the law for anybody, especially the likes of you.”

  And he got another lightbulb moment.

  A very bad one. One brought on by the likes of you comment. It hadn’t been that long ago that he said those very words to her.

  Not in the heat of the moment like now.

  More like after the heat.

  Yeah, Kendall and he had had the hots for each other since middle school. Forbidden fruit and all that crap. Aiden had always resisted her because he’d known it would tear his family apart.

  Until three months ago.

  He’d had to kill a man that day. A domestic disturbance gone wrong. Then he’d had a run-in with his mother. Then another run-in with one of Jewell’s smart-mouthed daughters. To make matters worse, he’d dropped by the Bluebonnet for a drink or two. Which had turned into four. All right, five.

  And he’d run into Kendall.

  Aiden hadn’t asked her what kind of bad day she’d been trying to erase with those shots of high-end whiskey she was downing like water. But the drinks had dumbed him down just enough that he’d gone over to talk to her. A mistake.

  A big one.

  Because the next thing Aiden knew, they were doing more than talking. They’d landed in bed for some drunken sex, and he’d committed one of the worst mistakes he could ever have made.

  Did that night play a part in this, too?

  Aiden hadn’t been very nice to her the next morning what with his hangover and regret. That was where the likes of you comment had come into play. Because he’d wanted to leave immediately, find a big rock and hit himself in the head with it. But maybe Kendall thought she was a woman scorned, and paired with her obsession to clear her sister’s name, perhaps the desperation had spilled over to this.

  “Get out,” Aiden ordered them, and he reached down to pick up his gun.

  Aiden didn’t get far before the shot blasted through the room and sent his ears ringing. The bullet hadn’t been aimed at him.

  But rather at Kendall.

  She screamed out in pain. Not a whimper, but a full-fledged, blood-chilling scream. For a good reason, too. The bullet had gone into her arm, tearing through her jacket sleeve and into her flesh.

  Almost immediately, a bright red patch of blood started to spread over the fabric. She struggled, trying to clamp her hand over it, but he realized then that her wrists had been bound behind her back with plastic cuffs.

  Aiden’s instincts were to rush to her, to make sure she was okay. He would have done that for anyone. But when he started toward her, the guy on the left shifted his gun to Aiden.

  “Move and she gets another bullet in the other arm,” the man warned him.

  Okay. So maybe this wasn’t fake after all.

  “You’ve got my attention,” Aiden said. “But let’s hurry along this little chat so I can get an ambulance out here for Kendall.”

  The talking guy shook his head. “Her injury isn
’t serious. Just a flesh wound. That doesn’t mean the next one will be, though. We need her alive but not necessarily in one piece.”

  Aiden’s heartbeat hadn’t settled down since he first saw Kendall kneeling on the floor, and that didn’t do much to slow it to normal.

  “What do you want?” Aiden repeated.

  “For you to destroy evidence lot BR6847-23.” The guy didn’t hesitate.

  Normally, Aiden wouldn’t have known what evidence that was. But he did in this case. It was recently found bone fragments.

  His father’s bone fragments.

  And it was key evidence in the murder case against Jewell.

  “So this is about your sister,” he said to Kendall. Even though he no longer believed Kendall had orchestrated it. Not after taking that bullet.

  She moaned, the sound of raw pain, and clamped her teeth over her bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t know who hired these men,” Kendall said, her voice shaking. “I was leaving work late, and they grabbed me in the parking lot. They brought me here.”

  Even though there weren’t a lot of details in that, Aiden could almost see it, and it turned his stomach a little. Kendall wasn’t a large woman, and these two goons towered over her. She had to have been terrified.

  Still was.

  No one was that good an actor.

  “Jewell’s daughters could be behind this,” Aiden said just to see what kind of reaction he’d get from them. No one argued. But then, he didn’t see anything in their body language that he’d hit a home run, either.

  Of course, who else would it be?

  Jewell had abandoned her husband and three sons all those years ago when she left town under the cloud of suspicion of murdering Aiden’s father. The suspicion had finally been confirmed when the case was reopened, and those bone fragments had been discovered. Jewell was finally where she belonged.

  In jail.

  And she hadn’t exactly mended fences with her own sons and ex-husband.

  Still, she had two daughters, a stepson and a now-shot half sister on her side. Once Kendall was safe, Aiden would go to Jewell’s spawn and step-spawn and demand answers.