Page 41 of The Sweetest Obsession

I had no idea she’d been building herself a nest in the Sandersons’ storage shed. Maybe I should build her a proper tree house when the weather warms up, give her a place of her own that lets her run away without actually leaving my property in the middle of the night.

I get that sometimes she needs to be alone.

I’m definitely not the best at playing Dad. So yeah, it’s okay if she just wants to kick me in the teeth and have a little privacy sometimes.

I just need to know my little girl’s safe—preferably without hating my guts.

I’m man enough to admit it.

My heart would bust like safety glass if something happened to her.

No, she ain’t mine, not by birth.

But by life, by tragedy, by fate, she sure as hell is.

Behind all the bluster and iron-fisted rules I make her live by, I just want the best for her.

“Would you look at that,” a voice drawls from behind me, ripping me from my thoughts. “Feels like I’m having a flashback. Last time I saw that look on your face, you were sulking over agirl.” Lucas goddamned Graves smirks as I spin my chair around to face him. “In fact, I think you were sulking over thesamegirl, if memory serves.”

“Fuck your memory, man.” I scowl at him.

That doesn’t wipe the smirk off his face or out of his cat-green eyes. He just folds his arms over his broad chest as if to say,Sorry, Cap, you don’t intimidate me.

That’s the problem with small towns.

Everyone knows everyone and they get way too used to all their shit.

“I’m not sulking, Lieutenant,” I growl. “I’m working out whether to fire every last one of you. We’ve got forty percent more crime reports compared to last year, and eighteen percent fewer arrests. Tell me why?”

From his desk across the room, Micah Ainsley pipes up with a cunning smile. The man glows like a Renaissance sculpture, tall and muscular, his albino skin bone-white. “We have sixty percent more tourists than we did last year, too, Captain.”

Henri Fontenot glances up from reading on his phone, leaning against the wall near Mallory’s dispatch desk. “You mean it was quieter than this last year? Huh. How did y’all not fall asleep?”

“Shut it, city boy,” Lucas throws back. “It’s busy forus.”

“N’awlins ain’t the city,mon ami.It’s just the country grown wild.”

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” I mutter. “Is the peanut gallery done with its bullshit and ready to give me some real answers or what?”

I get an immediate round of cheeky salutes.

Mallory the dispatcher even twirls around in her chair without stopping her rapid-fire typing and throws one at me, too, then blows me a kiss.

Insubordinate brats.

All of them.

I’ve barely been captain of the Redhaven PD long enough to win a crumb of respect and I’m already about to have a stress aneurysm because I’m surrounded by professional jokers.

But I grind my (in)subordinates into line and get down to brass tacks.

Everyone sobers up as we settle down and discuss patrol schedules, throwing around a few theories for what we can really do about the petty crime wave. We talk about pulling together rosters of shop owners, trusted folks we can talk to about setting up more CCTV cameras here and there to catch any funny business.

The cameras are cheap as hell these days and pretty sophisticated. I know a few good systems endorsed by Enguard, the premier West Coast security firm. Home Shepherd has also been making a lot of fancy military grade drones repurposed for civilian safety, but I’m not sure their tech is in our budget yet.

After listening to Micah nerd out over the drones for ten solid minutes, we’re signing off and divvying up duties, with only Henri clocking out when he’s scheduled to be on call overnight while the rest of us pull day shifts around town.

Lucas and I are the last guys out.

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