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But she did now.
There was a black-haired man astride a motorcycle. He looked dangerous with his dark eyes, stony expression, and desperado stubble that seemed to go well past the fashionable stage. He pinned his attention to Rafe and her.
Bree automatically reached for her gun.
Rafe’s response seemed to be automatic as well. He reached for her hand, taking it before she could draw her weapon. Her nerves were already firing hard and fast because of this lethal-looking man, but Rafe’s touch—yes, that mere touch—fired her up even more.
“It’s okay,” Rafe said. “That’s Jericho McKenna.”
Jericho. The hotshot investigator on the Maverick Ops team. That took her off alert, and her nerves settled a little when the corner of Jericho’s mouth lifted in a cocky smile. That softened some of those hard features and made her understand why some of the media coverage about him and the cold cases he’d solved had also mentioned his looks.
The man was certainly, well, hot.
He was so not her type though. She didn’t go for the hotshot, bad-boy vibe. Her type was much more the man who’d sent her nerves zinging simply because he’d touched her hand. The quiet, dedicated protector. The good guy. The guardian angel. Maybe it was her unlucky fate that Rafe seemed to have her hormonal number.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Jericho asked Rafe as he climbed off the motorcycle.
“I got a couple of hours,” Rafe said. “You?”
“None. I haven’t even gotten home yet. Made the mistake of going to see a friend, and while she was fixing me a very late lunch, a tasking came in from Ruby.” Jericho shifted his attention to her. “And I take it you’re Bree, the sheriff. I’m Jericho,” he said, extending his hand.
She shook it, felt the hard strength there. But it didn’t give her body even a smidge of a tingle.
Yeah, Rafe held the reins when it came to her lustful urges.
“Rafe and I just came off a three-week shitshow assignment in Mexico that had plenty of its FUBAR moments,” Jericho explained. “But we pulled it off. Saved the billionaire’s kidnapped wife and brought her back home to her humble abode and her husband’s loving arms.”
So, a success. An apparently exhausting one. “The wife was part of that eighty percent,” she muttered.
“Eighty?” Jericho questioned, but then he waved that off. “Ah, Rafe’s stats, of course. Mine are slightly lower which is why Rafe is Ruby’s go-to man whenever someone needs saving. This wife, well, she definitely needed saving.” He didn’t add more, and Bree didn’t ask. “Heard you two nearly got blown up.”
“Nearly,” Rafe confirmed. “That’s why I asked Ruby to check into anyone who has bomb-building skills who’s connected to us, the construction site or any of the other players in this investigation.”
She hadn’t known Rafe had done that, but again, it was appreciated. Of course, she would do her own search as well.
Jericho whistled and shook his head. “That’s a wide pool of possible suspects. Still, you gotta start somewhere.” He added a shrug before he reached into his pocket for his phone. “Why don’t we go inside so I can show you the tasking I got instead of a late lunch?”
As Rafe and she had done, he made a sweeping glance around them. While this part of the parking lot didn’t have anyone coming and going, and there weren’t any vehicles other than theirs and Ollie’s, it wasn’t a good idea for them to stand outside like this.
“This way,” she said, and they went back into the morgue. “It’s just us, Ollie,” she called out. “We just need a quiet place to talk for a couple of minutes.”
The ME stuck his head around the door, and she saw he was already suited up for the autopsy. He gave her a gloved thumbs up and disappeared back into the workroom.
“Interesting place for a chat,” Jericho grumbled, but he seemed more amused than put off.
He held up his phone so they could see the photo on the screen. It was a grainy shot of two men, and she instantly recognized one of them.
“That’s Gavin McCray.” She moved in for a closer look. Definitely Gavin.
“It is,” Jericho verified. “I used facial recognition on the database we have for camera feeds, and he popped up.”
“Camera feeds?” she questioned.
“Traffic, store security, dashcams of cars, you name it,” Jericho provided. “And, no, you probably can’t use this specific photo if it needs to hold up in court, but I can give you the exact source so you can get your own copy.”
She didn’t care for shortcuts, but Bree focused on what Jericho had said. “If it needs to hold up in court?” she repeated. “Does that mean there’s something illegal happening in this picture?”
“Probably.” Jericho tapped the image of the other man. He was built like a bouncer and had a shaved head. “That’s Buckner. His full name is Callum James Buckner, but he just goes by his surname. He’s thirty-nine and lives in San Antonio. He’s bad news. If you put together a profile of the worst asshole you wouldn’t want to cross paths with, it’d be Buckner. A rich psychopath wannabe militia guy. He owns a nightclub that’s probably a front for all sorts of illegal stuff.”
