Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  She picked up her bacon, tore off a piece, and ate it. She didn’t say a word.

  “Still think I’m trying to get in your pants?”

  “Still trying to decide if I want your help.”

  I chuckled. “Well, even if you don’t want my help, I’m still going ask around for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said I would.”

  “Guess you’re a man of your word, then?”

  “Most of the time.”

  She smirked. “At least you’re honest.”

  “You mean, ‘at least you’re honest most of the time.’”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Tell you what,” I said after chewing my last bite of egg and wiping my mustache. “How about you go look around town, see if anyone recognizes that postcard or remembers her. And I’ll go into work to keep my boss happy.” I dug into my back pocket and grabbed the notebook I still kept on me, because old habits die harder than old dreams, and a pen. I scratched down The Elk – 2 PM. “Meet me there when they open and I’ll buy you a beer, and we’ll start looking. We should probably exchange numbers, too.”

  “Beer?” she teased. “Numbers?”

  I smiled. “Strictly business, Elise.”

  She sighed and crossed her arms. “Okay. Still don’t know if I trust you.”

  “Still don’t have to. Trust me after I help you find your sister.”

  She nodded a little. “Yeah. Okay.”

  We exchanged numbers, her taking mine down and sending me a text. “Two,” I said. “Don’t be late.” I got up before she could reply and went over to our waitress, got her attention as I pulled some cash from my wallet. “Mine and hers, I got it.”

  “You sure?” she asked, dubious as she looked past me to Elise still sitting at our table.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said with a grin. “If I don’t pay first, she’ll never let me.”

  Barbara laughed and took the money. “Sweet on this one?”

  “Nah, just met her.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me and gave me a look that said, “Sure, honey, tell yourself that.”

  I opened my mouth to say something about how I just liked the way she smelled, then I realized how easily that would get misconstrued. Better to just ignore her. “Have a good day, Barbara.”

  “You too, Jake.”

  “Two PM,” I called over to Elise as I left. “Remember.”

  “I will,” Elise said, already getting up from the booth we’d shared.

  I slipped out onto the street and hopped back into my truck. I started it up, and the temp gauge hopped immediately to warm. I headed off to the office, my thoughts locked on Elise Moon.

  Just like she’d immediately picked up on my innate cop habits, I knew something about her was different. And it just wasn’t the smell of the desert on her jacket. Or that she had a lost little sister that needed to be found.

  No, it was something else entirely.

  Chapter Four - Elise

  “Nothing?” I asked the old codger, Zeke, behind the counter at the hardware store.

  He frowned and shook his head. “No, ma’am, sorry. Checked over that gift shop and art gallery, down across from the McCrary’s postal shop? Might help you.”

  “No, not yet. Just got into town last night, and they aren’t open yet.”

  “Yup, I’d probably check over there. Seen Sheriff Peak yet? Maybe he could help.”

  I swallowed and shook my head. I’d been avoiding doing just that, I realized. The idea that something really bad might have happened to Eve while she was here, I couldn’t bear the thought of that. Even after the way that cop Jake had been talking. “No, not yet.”

  Zeke clucked his tongue. “Well, makes you feel any better, I ain’t heard about anything bad involving a girl. I mean, other things happen, but nothing like that.”

  I nodded, put my phone away. “I’m going to be in town for a little while longer, I think. If you remember anything…”

  “Here,” he said, slapping a legal pad down in front of me with a pen, “write your name and phone number down. I recall something, I’ll call.”

  I scrawled my number down and pushed the pad back to him. “Thank you, Zeke. I really appreciate it.”

  “World’s a scary place, ma’am. Decent folk gotta stick together out there.”

  I left the hardware store to wander around town. I spent the next couple hours wandering around as much of the town as I could on foot. Every store I went into that had postcards, though, no one remembered seeing her. I even stopped in front of the Sheriff’s office but I still couldn’t bring myself to go inside. There was just something about cops.

  I mean, Jake was okay, I guess. But he didn’t seem like other cops. He seemed more like a normal human being. A normal human being with a sexy little swagger. A normal human being that paid for my breakfast before I could object.

  Bastard.

  But regular cops? Small town cops? No thanks. This Sheriff Peak was the last person I wanted to talk to.

  Finally, I wandered back over to Main Street, back to the Curious Turtle and the little gift shop next door. They’d opened up just a little while before, and I slipped into the gift shop side.

  The store was almost like a boutique. It was laid out well, with displays that showed off the curios and little gift items: mugs, shot glasses, hand-knitted scarves, pottery, arrowheads. It was like all the gift shops I’d seen around New Mexico growing up, but actually tastefully done.

  “Be right with you,” called a young woman’s voice from the back.

  “Take your time,” I called back.

  I threaded through the myriad of table displays and wandered from shelf to shelf, looking over a smaller set of—you guessed it—crystal and ceramic turtles. Or were they tortoises? I could never tell the difference.

  The floorboards behind me creaked as a set of flats walked across them. “Can I help you find anything, miss?”

  I turned around to face the clerk, a gorgeous woman about my age. She smiled out at me from between curtains of wavy blonde hair. At first. “You.”

  I took a step back at her accusatory tone. “What? Me?”

  “I thought we told you not to come back here.”

  “What? I-I’ve never even fucking been here!”

  She stepped closer, arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed. She shook her head as she got a better look at me. “Oh, I’m so sorry! You look exactly like a girl we had to kick out of here a couple months ago for shoplifting.”

  A girl who looked like me? A couple months ago? I quickly pulled my phone from my pocket and brought up Eve’s picture. “Is this the girl?”

  She looked down at it, then back to me. “Yeah, that’s her. She was trying to steal some of the nicer jewelry we have. Is that you next to her?”

  I frowned. I couldn’t believe Eve was getting caught shoplifting. Not that she was stealing, but that she was actually getting caught. During all the times I’d seen her in stores, I hadn’t been able to catch her even when I knew what she was doing.

  “She’s my younger sister. Last time she contacted me, she did it from this town, so I came up here to try and find her.”

  The woman frowned. “I know what it’s like to have someone go missing. Believe me. It’s a real mess.”

  “So you caught her stealing jewelry?”

  “Well, my boyfriend did. He’s got a nose for those kinds of things.”

  I nodded. “About how long ago was it?”

  “Oh, geez, I couldn’t tell you the exact date or anything. Like I said, it was a couple months back.”

  “Didn’t press any charges, I take it?”

  She shook her head. “No. She seemed real sweet, just kind of lost. I didn’t want to cause her any problems, I just didn’t want her in the store anymore.”

  That definitely sounded like Eve. With a flash of a smile, a sad look in her big, puppy dog eyes, most people caved. Even Mom and Pops didn’t punish her when she got in trou
ble. Not truly punish, at least.

  “Anything else you can remember about her? You said she seemed lost.”

  “Well, lost, I mean, like some of the kids that come in here. Bum around, season to season. White water rafting one season, skiing the next. Lots of people do that in The Rock.”

  “Lived here long?”

  “Off and on for the last decade. More permanently the last few months, though.”

  I nodded. “Can you show me some of the jewelry she tried to steal?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

  She took me over to a small display with bracelets and necklaces with all turquoise and sterling silver, typical southwestern designs. Growing up, I hated that kind of crap. Not Eve, though. She loved it.

  “Not these exact pieces, of course. But you get the idea. Oh, and this one here.” She pointed to one piece that was in the seventy-five dollar range, a necklace hanging from a mannequin display of a disembodied chest and neck. It was an intricate design of a dragonfly with a piece of amber set into its thorax. Definitely more my taste than Eve’s.

  I lifted it from its display with the tip of my finger and brought it closer as I leaned down to get a better look. It was beautiful. Just the kind of style I’d love.

  “That one still hasn’t sold, so I know it’s the one she tried to steal.”

  I nodded and gently placed it back on the necklace display. “Yeah. I could see her going for the other ones. Not that, though.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Three months.”

  “Oh. So, October, then?”

  “Yeah, right around then.” She skipped out right before Halloween, and Pops and I had just let the pumpkins we bought for carving jack o’ lanterns sit and rot. Scooping the insides of orange squash into a bowl just isn’t much fun when you’re worried to death about your younger sister.

  She scrunched her lips tightly together. “Well, this happened in early—maybe mid-December, during the holiday season.”

  My eyes widened and I pulled my postcard out, checking the date on the postcard. November 10.

  “Oh, hey,” the woman said in surprise, “I recognize that card. That’s one of the ones we sell.”

  I glanced back to the jewelry, to the dragonfly with the piece of amber. No..she didn’t. Did she? “Excuse me?”

  “The card you have? That’s one of the ones we sell.”

  I nodded and stuffed the card back in my pocket.

  So, not only was she probably here in early November, she was here about a month later, just before Christmas. Trying to steal jewelry I would probably like. Maybe she’d meant it as a peace offering?

  “Anything else she might have been looking at?”

  “Frank caught her over by the belt buckles, but she hadn’t taken one of those.”

  I nodded. Dad had a pretty big collection of belt buckles. Even though he was from back east, or maybe because he was from back east, he’d always loved them. Funny ones, horrible ones, beautiful ones. All big, shiny, and incredibly out of place with his Ramones and Sex Pistols t-shirts.

  “Any chance I could speak to your boyfriend?”

  “Maybe. He works down at this security place, over on the edge of town. Him and a few other guys.”

  I just blinked at her and nodded. This was becoming a trend. “Frost Security?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that’s them. Need their number?”

  Jesus Christ, how many of these people were there? It seemed like I couldn’t set foot anywhere in this town without stepping on one of them. “No thanks, already have a card off their computer girl, Lacy. Ran into her across the street. And then I met some guy named Jake down at the diner, who I guess works for them.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, they’re not necessarily an institution around here, but they help out people who need it.”

  “Good guys, then?”

  She nodded, grinning, a knowing look in her eye. “Actually, they’re kind of the best. None of them would hurt a fly. Well, not an innocent one, at least. That’s how I met my boyfriend, in fact.”

  “Jake did seem decent enough.” For a cop, I mentally added.

  She smiled, her eyes searching my face. “Yeah. He’s a nice enough guy, I suppose. Kind of a dick sometimes, but also kind of like a duck out of water here. Not that he’s alone in that. I’m from New York, and it’s taken me a while to get used to living full-time in Enchanted Rock. But, you know, he’s got his pack—I mean his buddies, you know.”

  “Think they can help?”

  She shrugged. “If they can’t, I don’t know who around here can. They really are good people over there. And something special.”

  I nodded, biting my lip uncertainly. Maybe I could trust him. Maybe. “Okay. Thanks for the help…”

  “Ashley,” she said helpfully. “Ashley Maxwell.”

  I smiled. “Elise Moon.”

  “Nice to meet you, Elise. And, uh, sorry about yelling earlier.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “You two really could be twins.”

  I gave her a wan smile. “Yeah, we get that a lot.”

  After we said our goodbyes, I left with a little bit of hope. At least the morning hadn’t been a total waste.

  I knew she’d been here as recently as two months ago, which meant someone was bound to have seen her since she first arrived. And now all I had to do was find out who.

  Chapter Five - Jake

  “Captain?” I asked as I knocked on the door to Peter Frost’s office. “Got a minute?”

  He didn’t even glance away from his computer screen. “Sure wish you’d stop calling me that, Jake. Been a while since I was in the service.”

  Peter had been a Captain in the SEALs. When I’d mustered out and joined LAPD, that old rank and file got even more ingrained. Now that I was doing work that was pretty much off-the-books cop business, the terminology just stuck.

  “Force of habit, Cap.”

  Frowning, he turned his attention to me. “What can I do for you?”

  He sat in his office chair, not even bothering to release his hand on the mouse. Behind him on the wall was a painting of a wolf that he’d bought down at the shop Richard Murdoch owned with his fiancée, the Curious Turtle. An image of Elise, both her face and smell, popped into my head as I glanced at the little potted cactus sitting on the corner of his desk.

  “Was wondering if I might be able to take some time off. Maybe.”

  “Maybe take some time? What’s that mean?”

  “Well, I had something that kind of dropped into my lap down at Dixie’s. Figure I might have to step away and take care of it for a while. It’s a big maybe, though. Not sure if I’ll even need the time off.”

  “How much we talking?”

  “A week? Can’t imagine it would take any longer than that.”

  “Someone from back home?”

  I shook my head. “No. Girl I met at breakfast this morning.”

  One corner of his lips twitched. I couldn’t tell if I’d pissed him off or he thought it was funny.

  “A girl, huh? Snow bunny got problems with her boyfriend? ‘Cause that shouldn’t take a whole week, even if you do have to lay low from Peak.”

  I chuckled. “Not quite. Girl who came into town last night, looking for her sister who disappeared from home and came up here a few months ago, right after our problem with the Russian and the cartel.”

  He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled at the tips, elbows on the armrests. “Uh-huh. And you think you can help her? Trail like that goes cold for that long, it gets harder and harder to pick up.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Think I can. I mean, if I can’t, what other choice does she have?”

  “She interested in coming in to talk to us?”

  I shook my head. “Honestly, no. Surprised she’s even letting me take her around to the bars tonight.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Uh-huh. Bars.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Cap, you know what I mean. Her
sister’s twenty-one. Where would you go at that age in a town this small?”

  “Sure, Jake.”

  “Look,” I said with a sigh, “we don’t have any big cases going right now, right? And I don’t have any hearing I need to testify at till end of the month. That gives me a couple weeks to at least see what I can do. Besides, I know I have vacation time.”

  “That you do. And you’re right, we don’t have anything big goin’ on right now.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Guess so. Can’t tell you what kind of stupid shit you can or can’t get up to on your own time, now, can I? This isn’t exactly the service.”

  “Thanks, Frost. I’ll let you know if I need the time or not.” I turned to go.

  “Jake?”

  I stopped. “What’s up, Cap?”

  “This thing starts to get bigger than you can handle, you let me know, alright?”

  “Aw, shucks, Cap. Thanks for the concern.”

  “Can it, Wayne. I’ll bust your ass back down to private.”

  “Thought this wasn’t the service?” I asked with a grin.

  “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here. Make sure all your paperwork’s off your desk before you leave today.”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned back to him. “Right, that reminds me. I need to cut out of here right around two. Told Elise I’d meet her then.”

  “Elise, huh?” He glowered at me, then turned back to his computer screen. “Guess you better get your ass to work then, huh?”

  I gave him a mock salute. “Yes sir, Captain, sir!”

  “Get outta here, Jake.”

  Joke was on him. My desk had been clear since the day before. I’d stayed a little late the night before finishing out all the billing sheets and dossier information I needed to. The only thing I’d been planning on doing today was watching a Liverpool FC match. I stepped out of his office, weaving through our maze of little glass offices that we’d installed in this old saloon.

  Coming from a guy who was used to old, shitty, bureaucratic offices built back in the 60s and 70s, the Frost Security office building was both staggering in both how old it was and how new. Peter and Richard had purchased the old saloon, refinished the inside, then rewired and built out our little glass offices. Biggest change? Here, I actually had an office. Back in LA, it was more of a bullpen.