Page 19 of Playing With Danger

While I was coming up with a proper response to his friends declaration his phone shrilled with three long tones. Or at least I thought it was his phone until he pulled a pager out of his pocket.

When his attention came back to me he was frowning.

“Sorry to cut this short. I have to get to work.”

“Of course. Sorry to hold you up.”

“Sophie?”

He was no longer frowning but the seriousness on his face gave me pause.

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t hold me up. I asked you to coffee, so don’t apologize for giving me the gift of your time.”

He hadn’t asked. He’d dragged me inside and bought me coffee. I didn’t get a chance to remind him, and not only because he was standing. The full weight of what he’d said hit me. It was heavy, it was kind, it was all kinds of sweet, and it was something else. A feeling I couldn’t place. All I knew was it felt good and warm and I wanted more of it. I wanted to snuggle under the heaviness and stay awhile.

“Have a good day, babe.”

“You, too, Valentine. And be safe out there.”

That earned me a smile and the warmth grew.

“Careful with that latte. There’s enough caffeine in there to turn you into an over-energized honey badger.”

“I make no promises.”

I watched him walk out of Hot Java, thinking he had a really great ass.

Two hours later I was bouncing around my apartment with more energy than any one person should have. The kind of energy that made it impossible to concentrate on any one task. In the middle of loading the dishwasher I noticed the windows in the living room were dirty. I stopped loading dirty dishes to clean the windows. In the middle of wielding the Windex I noticed the bottom sill was filthy. I abandoned the glass to clean the sill. Then I went on to check the sills in my bedroom but as soon as I entered the room I saw the dirty piles of clothes I’d separated earlier and decided I should throw in a load. And if I was doing that, I should grab the towels and floormats in the bathroom. That led to me to noticing the ring of soap scum in the tub. So I attacked the bathroom with a bottle of Soft Scrub, forgetting about the laundry.

I’d done no work and hadn’t completed a single task.

I was going to kill Valentine.

7

“Jacked up about that kid,” Shiloh Marcou grumbled from beside me as we walked through the precinct.

Sunny wasn’t wrong, it was fucked up Brian Hamilton was beat to shit and in the ICU.

“But it was cool of Ethan to keep Cap up to speed on the case.”

It was cool but I knew Ethan Lenox didn’t brief our captain out of the goodness of his heart. The detective had better things to do, namely tracking down the person responsible for beating a fifteen-year-old kid. Further from that, Ethan had no obligation to keep Cap up to date on an attempted robbery case that didn’t involve SWAT. However, it involved me, and Ethan being a friend and Cap being the type of man who was all about keeping his finger on the pulse of his team, he gave us an update.

“Not a coincidence Ackerman gets bonded out and within hours the kid’s beat to shit,” Sunny went on as we hit the back exit of the station.

She wasn’t wrong about that either.

Dale Ackerman was Lenox and Jase Taylor’s prime suspect. He was also in the wind.

I swung the key ring looped around my finger, catching the key to the SUV in my palm as I spotted today’s ride.

“You’re awfully quiet today,” Sunny noted. “You’re not still pouting I kicked your ass during quals are you?”

It was cute she thought grown men pouted.

“That was a week ago and we’re all used to you showing off,” I told her, purposefully evading her comment. “Though not all of us have twenty-four-seven access to Triple Canopy.”

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