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“No,” said Josie. She took a tentative step closer. “How long did you say he’s been in here?”
The creak of a chair sounded behind her. Mettner said, “I came back from lunch around two and that’s when I noticed it was closed.”
Noah said, “It’s after six o’clock now. Should we make sure he’s still alive?”
“If the boss can hear voices, then he’s still alive,” Mettner said.
What seemed like an eternity ago, Josie had served as interim chief for a couple of years before the mayor had hired the current chief, Bob Chitwood, whose door she now stood before. Josie had taken the position after exposing a series of devastating instances of corruption from the lowest levels of city government to the highest. Her tenure was marked by a rebuilding of both the department and the trust of those who stayed on. Most of those people had taken to calling her “boss”, and even after years under Chief Chitwood, they still said it. Josie had tried correcting people, but it didn’t take.
Noah said, “Maybe he’s talking to Daisy?”
“I don’t think so,” Josie said. “It sounds like two men’s voices.”
Daisy was the Chief’s much younger half-sister that he had taken custody of six months earlier. No one had known of her existence before that. It was only after Josie’s team cracked a case tied to the Chief’s past that Daisy had come to light. Her upbringing had been bizarre, at best. A teenager being raised by an older half-sibling in his sixties was an unusual arrangement but so far, it worked. Since the Chief was single, he often brought Daisy with him to the stationhouse rather than leave her unsupervised. He had even set up a small desk in his office for her to do schoolwork while he worked.
Mettner said, “Daisy’s with Gretchen and Paula today, remember?”
“Oh right,” said Noah. “The concert.”
Gretchen Palmer was the oldest and most experienced on their team, having come to Denton after a fifteen-year stint on Philadelphia’s homicide unit. She and her adult daughter, Paula, who lived with Gretchen while she attended grad school, had started out helping the Chief look after Daisy, and now it seemed to have developed into a much more meaningful relationship. At sixteen, Daisy had never been to a concert before. When Paula found out, she’d made it her mission to remedy the situation. The result was a weekend trip for the three of them to Philadelphia to see Lizzo. Gretchen’s absence was the only reason that Josie and Noah were working instead of attending Harris’s basketball game at the rec center adjacent to the city park. He’d just taken up the sport and they tried to make as many games as possible.
“I guess I could just knock on the door,” Josie said. “See if he wants coffee or something.”
“He’ll see right through that,” said Mettner.
“So what?” said Josie. She walked toward the door, her hand outstretched, reaching for the knob when it suddenly swung inward.
Behind her, the typing stopped.
A large bloodhound sauntered out of the Chief’s office. It stopped in front of Josie, tail wagging at the sight of her. Its adorable, saggy face looked up at her expectantly. It wore a black harness.
Mettner said, “Did a dog just open that door?”
Josie’s stomach plummeted. She only knew one bloodhound, and in fact, he did know how to open doors. She adored that dog. It was the dog’s owner that was the issue. Peering down at the sweet, eager face, she willed him not to be that dog.
She said, “Blue?”
His tail thumped more enthusiastically. Josie bent and scratched the top of his head. He nudged his wet nose into her palms, his tail now wagging at warp speed.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Noah was beside her, smiling down at the dog. “You know this…dog?”
At that moment, Josie’s former fiancé, Luke Creighton, stepped into the doorway. His broad, six-foot-one body filled up the frame. He wore jeans and a polo shirt which stretched over his massive chest, muscles rippling beneath it as he stepped toward them. A full beard covered his angular face. He’d grown his brown hair long, almost to his shoulders. From beneath a hank of it, he looked from Blue to Josie and grinned. Josie felt Noah tense beside her. There was a charge in the air suddenly that hadn’t been there before.
“Hey,” said Luke. “Great to see you guys.”
He addressed both of them, but kept his eyes on Josie, like they were old friends. While the last time they’d seen one another they’d parted on good terms, their history was a complicated one.
After Josie’s first marriage failed, she had been engaged to Luke. At that time, he was a state trooper. When they met, he was someone who was very serious about the job and always did everything by the book. She should have known by the one small, harmless favor he’d done for her when she asked that he had the capacity to lie, but she had not seen it that way. That favor had almost gotten him killed. After spending the better part of two years nursing him back to health, Josie had watched the relationship disintegrate before her eyes. Luke not only betrayed his oath to uphold the law, but he’d deceived Josie as well. He had gotten caught up in a terrible situation that quickly spun out of control. Instead of coming to her for help, he’d tried and failed to handle it alone.
The fallout for his decisions had been brutal and the evidence of what he’d gone through was visible as he extended a hand to Noah to shake. During the case that had ended Luke’s career and relationship with Josie and sent him to prison for six months, he’d been tortured. Both of his hands had been shattered. Surgeons had done their best to piece them back together but even now, seven years later, the silvered scars running along his fingers were bright lines across his skin. Two of the fingers on his right hand were flattened and misshapen. On his other hand, the pinky finger bent outward at an awkward angle.
If Noah noticed, he didn’t let on. Shaking Luke’s hand, he blurted, “What are you doing here?”
Luke’s smile faltered for only a split second. He returned his gaze to Josie. “I’m here with Blue,” he said, gesturing to the dog, as if that explained everything.
The Chief’s voice boomed from behind Luke. “Don’t give him a hard time, Quinn! I just hired this guy!”
