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Then there were those who treated every scrap of fabric, every bone shard, and every possible piece of evidence with respect and kindness. Kindness that very possibly the person had never received while they were living. These forensic scientists didn’t refer to remains as victims if they knew the name that belonged to them.
Dante suspected Ethan was one of the latter. He also suspected being compassionate took a great deal out of them. Looking at him more closely, Dante revised his age guess down a few years—late thirties, at most.
Dante shook the proffered hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well.” See, he could be pleasant.
“I’ll see you on the front steps in a few minutes,” Ethan said to André before he departed.
Dante was too twitchy to sit, and André would be leaving soon anyway. Plus, he had a proposition for the chief.
“You need help,” he started.
“Nothing new there. No time to see a therapist.”
“Ha ha. What I mean is, you’ve got too many pots and not enough cooks. Let me take some of it off your hands.”
“I’ve got Lani looking into some angles.”
“Obtuse or oblique? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you are two people trying to hold back a shitstorm. Bring me on as an advisor or something and give me access to the department records.”
He held up his hand and ticked off the list he’d made in his head. “You’ve got a missing girl, Blair Cruz. You’ve got a dead local woman, Lizzy Harlow. And now you’ve got more than one set of remains from up on that mountain. Oh, and somebody shooting at you.”
“Thanks for telling me what I already knew,” André snapped.
He’d pissed him off. Well, nothing new about that. Dante enjoyed André pissed off and ready to take names.
Now was not the time.
“What do you know about the chief you took over from?” Dante asked, diverting himself from sexy thoughts. “Did they run a tight ship? Keep good records?”
The heartfelt sigh that escaped André was enough of an answer. Dante was now sure that what he wanted to propose was a good idea. The key would be getting André to go along with it.
“Maybe I can’t help directly with the missing teen or the Harlow case, but I can go through old records and look for patterns that may have been missed.” Or never looked for in the first place. “I’d like to go over the missing persons reports going back as far as the eighties. If whoever is responsible started young—well, you and I both know it’s possible this has been going on for a long time. You don’t have the time or the people power. I do.” Dante wasn’t an investigator per se, but he knew his way around police reports.
André leaned back in his chair to glare at Dante. “Seriously? You’re going to try and interfere with an ongoing investigation?”
The glare was a half-hearted effort, not one of André’s best.
“That’s a damn flimsy argument,Chief. You know as well as I do that you don’t have enough deputies for this. Are you going to enlist Carol now? Where is that other guy? The one who showed up last night?”
“Carol is retiring,” André muttered grimly.
“Ah, that’s lovely. So you’ll be even more short-staffed than you already are.”
Dante moved so he was directly next to the desk and yeah, maybe so he could loom a little. He enjoyed the occasional loom. He watched André, closely spotting when the irritation and frustration began to morph into something else. Something that had Dante’s cock reacting—again.
“I’ll think about it.” André stood from his chair and began to fiddle with the files sitting on his desk. Dante also noticed he still looked tired and like he was nursing a headache, and the damn bandage on his cheek was a reminder he’d nearly been killed. If he’d stepped in a different direction or moved his head, the town would be planning a funeral. André’s funeral.
“Morrison’s going to stick around during the news conference,” Dante informed him.
André looked at him sharply as he edged around the desk. He stopped moving, paperwork in his hands as his lips thinned even further.
“You have it all worked out, do you? You’re going to protect me even if I don’t need protection? You do realize I’ve done just fine taking care of myself for nearly fifty years?”
Dante opened his mouth to point out that he wasn’t the one who’d been shot at, but André just kept talking.
“Aren’tyouthe one hiding out? Don’t you have a niece to watch after? Something better to do than show up and stick your nose intomybusiness?”
Before Dante realized he was moving, he’d stepped directly into André’s space. They were chest to chest now. Dante could feel his heart beating—or maybe it was both their hearts, his and André’s together. He wasn’t so muchinAndré’s space as invading him, claiming André for his own.
