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“Of course you can, even if it’s late when you get there. I was going to order a pizza tonight so text me if you’ll be there to eat, and I’ll make sure to put olives only on half,” she says with a mischievous glint in her eye. She knows I hate olives and even if they’re on half, the whole pizza will still taste like them.
“Careful,” I warn, lowering my voice so only she can hear me. “You’re angling for a smack on that perfect little ass of yours.” I can both hear and feel her intake of breath. She still has her hands on my hips, and I’ve wrapped my arms around her shoulders so I can speak directly in her ear. To anyone else, it would look as if I was hugging her.
She looks up at me, those blue eyes shining with lust and fake innocence as she says, “I’d happily take my punishment, Officer.”
Fuck me. My cock is hard in an instant. Which is not comfortable in a police uniform, for the record.
“You’ll be the death of me, you know that?” I ask her. She just smiles up at me, so I kiss her with all of the pent-up desire that’s now coursing through me and make sure she knows how much I want her.
* * *
My eyes are crossed.And blurry.
I look away from the computer screen I’ve been staring at for the last two hours to try and relieve the stress on my eyes. I wonder if they’ll be stuck like this. Oh god, I’m going to have to get glasses.
And now I’m losing my mind.
I’ve been watching security footage of a parking lot where our victim was potentially last seen. We’ve got a four-hour window when it’s likely she’d show up, and that’s all we have to go on. We did finally get a hit on our Jane Doe who is now known as Ashley Delmont. Her mother reported her missing when she didn’t hear from her for their weekly chat and didn’t show up to work.
After we got the ID, we were able to get info on who she was, but most of our leads for how she might’ve gotten here have hit dead ends. Her phone pinged off a cell tower in the area of two rest stops, and that was the last place she was recorded being at. Derek is looking at one rest stop while I’m looking at the other, hoping for something to indicate what could’ve happened or who could’ve done this. Although with my eyesight shot to shit, I’m not sure how much I’ll see now.
“Can you feel your eyes bleeding?” Derek asks, making me laugh.
“I was literally just wondering if I’d damaged my eyesight forever,” I tell him, rubbing my eyes and looking around the bullpen again to see if it’s any better. Luckily it is, but I’m not quite ready to get back into it. It’s quiet right now with the other deputies out on patrol.
“Have you found anything?” I ask Derek.
“Nope, just some questionable behavior from some of the truck drivers, but that’s pretty standard,” he says, rubbing his eyes as well. I nod in response and stand up to grab some coffee. Even though it’s late afternoon, I know I’ll need a pick me up to finish the rest of the footage.
I sit back down in my chair and start watching the footage again. I get another thirty minutes through the feed when I hear Derek. “Chief, I think I may have something.” I jump up from my chair and walk over to the desk where he’s sitting.
“We’re looking for a silver Toyota, right?” he asks, rewinding the footage.
“Yeah,” I say and focus closely when he pushes play. There on the screen, a silver Toyota with matching plates pulls into the parking lot of a rest stop about fifteen miles north of Sonoma. We watch as she parks near the building, gets out of her car, and walks towards the bathroom. The cameras only cover the front of the building, and the bathrooms are off to the left side on the outside of the building.
She exits the frame once she’s around the building, and we wait for her to come back out. Five minutes go by and she still hasn’t returned, making my gut start to churn.
“She’s not coming back out, is she?” Derek asks quietly.
“No, I don’t think she is.” I sigh. We let the video run for several more minutes to make sure she doesn’t come back out, but she never does. “Let’s get a unit out there to pick up her car.”
“On it,” Derek responds as he pulls out his phone to call the crime scene unit.
“Let me grab my stuff, and we’ll head out there to meet them,” I tell Derek, who nods in response.
I grab up everything I need from my office, and text Quinn to let her know I’ll be late getting to her house. She responds saying she’ll go pick up Piper and to be safe. God, I love this woman, and I intend to tell her very soon.
28
QUINN
The jingling of Piper’s collar makes me sit up from the couch. A little buzz of nerves moves through me as I wonder what could’ve alerted her. Ever since the break-in, there’s been this uneasiness sitting in the pit of my stomach like something is not quite right. I have no idea why I feel that way. There’s been no sign of anything amiss and I have no reason to justify those feelings.
Usually, I just brush it off as lingering stress from the break-in. But sometimes, at night, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe things aren’t quite right.
I hear a key in my front door and look over at Piper with a smile on my face. It’s amazing how quickly that pit disappears when he’s so close. It’s why I haven’t told Cooper about my feelings. Anytime he’s with me, which is regularly, I know I’m completely safe and have nothing to fear. Plus, he’d have me moved in with him in a heartbeat if I even hinted that I was worried about something.
As fast as we’ve moved, I’m not quite ready to take that next step with him. There’s something holding me back, an awareness that’s making me pause. I know we have deep feelings for each other, even though we haven’t said the words. I know this thing we’re doing means a great deal to both of us and will for a long time but there’s something nagging me to not take that step.
