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“Ahem.”
He leaned back in the booth. Good fucking god. He’d forgotten where the hell he was. All he’d been able to focus on was the sweet, kissable spot that he was dying to—
Holy. Shit.
Focus, O’Conner. You’re in the middle of the damn diner.
Glancing up, his eyes locked with Martha’s. The ruler of Ray’s Diner, clad in her trademark bubblegum-pink 1950s diner uniform, was carrying two plates heaped with food and sporting the biggest shit-eating grin he’d ever seen. The woman loved it when she had a scoop for Hudson Island’s gossip mill.
“Now, you must be Alex,” Martha said, placing an ungodly amount of food in front of her. “Ray did say you were a wee little thing.”
He chuckled as Martha set his plate down in front of him. Then, before he could blink, she smacked him on the back of the head. Hard. “Don’t tease the little thing, young man. Last time I checked, you weren’t in elementary school.”
Alex’s eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open. He couldn’t tell if she was horrified or amused. Probably a little bit of both. He rubbed the back of his head and bit down a smile. “Sorry, Martha,” he mumbled.
“Alex, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Martha. If there’s anything else you need, you just holler. Or my little Scarlet”—she pointed across the diner to a young waitress whose brown hair was liberally streaked with teal, pink, and purple—“can help you out as well. Don’t let the rainbow on her head fool you; the sweet girl has a memory like a steel trap. Also, please don’t pay any mind to what my Ray says about Quinn here.”
The woman paused to pat him on the head. Like a dog. “Quinn is just the sweetest thing you’ll ever meet. Granted, he can be as stubborn as a mule and sometimes he makes me want to box his ears, but that’s okay because he truly is a good boy.”
He closed his eyes.Holy shit, kill me now.
“And as you can plainly see for yourself, our Quinn’s not hard on the eyes. Not one bit. Well, I’ll let you enjoy your food. And Quinn?”
To his dismay, Martha smoothed the collar of his shirt and patted his cheek. Like a four-year-old. Heat engulfed his face. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You make sure she eats up. We need to get some padding on those little bones of hers. Winter will be here before you know it. We can’t have her freezing to death.”
He watched as Martha shuffled away, paused, then looked back at them. She shot him two thumbs-ups before disappearing through the kitchen door.
“Why, Quinn O’Conner, are you blushing?”
Alex’s eyes danced with delight. The heat on his face intensified. He cleared his throat and pointed to her plate with his fork. “Eat.”
Face glowing with merriment, she took a bite of her perfectly golden hash browns and closed her eyes in blissful appreciation. His thoughts immediately hit the gutter.
Damn, she was gorgeous.
“‘Winter will be here before you know it.’” She laughed and forked a bite of her scramble. “Good thing I still have time to add on some extra ‘padding.’”
He hadn’t seen Alex this relaxed, this carefree... at all. Not even once.
Embarrassment be damned. He’d let Martha fawn over him every damn day if it allowed Alex to momentarily forget her troubles.
They finished up at Ray’s and walked back to the station. Quinn was well aware of the many local eyebrows that were raised in response to his long lunch and stroll with the town’s mysterious stranger, but he paid them no mind.
Stacks of manila folders greeted them when they entered his office.
“Looks like Chase is earning his keep.” He pressed a button on his landline and called in Deputy Chase. As Alex seated herself at the worktable at the far end of his office, he shot her a wink. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I guess it’s back to bad-cop mean.”
Deputy Chase arrived with his laptop, and they turned to the task at hand.
“What did you find, Chase?”
“Over the past three weeks, there have been twenty-seven calls to the Buchanan house’s landline,” the deputy said, reading from a paper in one of the folders. “Eight of those were either from Doc Buchanan or his clinic. With the exception of three calls, I was able to track the rest to known solicitors and robocall centers. The first unknown call was two days ago on Tuesday at 10:47 p.m. Duration under a minute. The next unknown was yesterday at 8:07 p.m. Again, under a minute. The most recent was this morning at 3:21 a.m. This one was just under three minutes.”
After a few clicks on his laptop, Deputy Chase projected a map of the United States onto Quinn’s whiteboard and marked three cities. “The first call was from Louisville, Kentucky. The second was near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the third was from Sturgis, South Dakota. All calls were placed from different cell numbers—looks like burner phones—but they all pinged near rest stops along the major interstates.”
Pausing, Deputy Chase opened another folder. “Petal Pushers on Front Street delivered the flowers today. Jenny—” He turned his attention to Alex—“she’s the flower shop’s owner. Anyway, she said the order came in this morning via phone. The only thing she could recall was it was a man who placed the order.”
