Page 4 of A Dirty Business
He’d been seductive and coaxing. And then nothing. Frigid cold.
I even shivered, feeling his withdrawal though he hadn’t moved a muscle.
I followed his eyes down to my sternum. My badge was sticking out from my jacket, but when I looked back up, I sucked in my breath. His eyes were on me, and they werenotfriendly. They were hostile. All that flirting was gone in an instant.
“You a cop?” His tone was flat, cutting.
“I’m a parole officer.”
His phone started ringing again, and he fished it out of his pocket. Without saying a word to me, he hit accept and turned to go back up the stairs. “Hey. Hold one moment. I’m heading for the door. Open it for me.”
I couldn’t suppress a shiver as he disappeared around the turn, going up the last set of stairs.
Thump!
The door opened. Sounds from the hockey game filtered into the stairwell, and then they were muted again.
I waited, but nothing.
He’d gone.
What the hell had just happened?
Also, I was still locked in.
CHAPTER TWO
JESS
“Girl.” Kelly was laughing when she opened the door for me. We’d had a good chat while I navigated her to where I was. It had been an elaborate game of Marco Polo, with Kelly laughing as she’d called out the Marco part and me half growling when I’d answered the Polo part. We were in our older twenties, and even though my bladder wasn’t amused, it was a fun game. I guess some part of us would never grow old.
I stepped through, the sounds of the game coming full force.
“How did you end up in there again?”
I’d already explained, so I ignored her, tossing my now-empty beer cup in the recycling bin. “Where’s the bathroom?”
She kept laughing as she showed me, and since we were smack in the middle of the third period, the place was empty.
And filthy. Paper towels were everywhere, some hanging half out of the garbage and a huge pile around the bottom. There was water pooling under one of the sinks.
Kelly went toward the sink area while I grabbed the first clean stall I could find.
It was the sixth one.
“You said there was a guy in there with you?”
I grinned. “In here?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Who was it?”
I didn’t know what to say. This was Kelly. Recently divorced and heartbroken, but she was a romantic at heart. I mention anything about him, his reaction to me, and she’d be building him up to being some wealthy Romeo.
“No one. He thought I was a cop.”
“Why’d he think that?”
“He saw my badge.”
