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Beck was the only thing that broke up the monotony.
He looked at the man across from him now, working on a laptop, his reading glasses on his face. Gunnar looked like such a nerd. Jarrod had his own files to work on now. He was just…not getting anywhere at it. “Anything good?”
“I’m going over the reports on the Mitch Roche case from two months ago. The new tech on second shift ran a different test on the tire iron that was found and may have found something. Madison signed off on it as acting supervisor now. And H. H. Coleson—that’s the tech, I think. Could be…Heather, but I don’t know why she’d be running forensics. Or have doctor in front of her initials. Heather have special skills we don’t know about?”
“I’m sure Heather does. She’s too scary not to. But that H. H. Coleson is Heather’s sister. Hope. Don’t tell me you haven’t met Heather’s baby sister, yet? You should see her—if she ever pauses long enough for you to get a good look. She’s the constant blur of motion running around on second shift now. Transferred in from Wichita Falls a month ago. She looks a great deal like that blue-haired baby sister of Zoey’s, only totally adorable in every way. Hope’s only around twenty-three or -four. She’s about five inches taller than your little rabbit over there, and weighs probably ten pounds less.”
Powell Barratt was around five one and one fifteen or twenty.
“Hell. That’s skinny.”
“You might like the Hope-gremlin, though. She’s thin, pale, dark haired, dark eyed, hot—and as of yet, doesn’t think you are man scum. Of course, she moves so fast—very hyper—a man would have to have a fishing net to nab her first. But a guy would probably enjoy chasing her around…and catching her. Repeatedly.” Jarrod was a healthy, red-blooded male—he imagined it for a moment or two. Heather’s younger sister was a very beautiful and extremely energetic woman.
“And I’m almost thirty-eight years old. Not into young ones like that. I’m not sure I’d be able to keep up. And I will be honest, if Powell hadn’t captured me so quickly, I probably would have just scooped Heather right up the day she walked into our precinct and carried her off to my cave. A woman like that—wow.”
Jarrod agreed. He’d gotten a bit slobbery the first time he’d seen the newest addition to Major Crimes. Most of Major Crimes had. Even good old Daniel had looked a little dazed when she’d walked in with the chief that day. Of course, Daniel hadn’t expected a new addition to the team that day either. That could be what it had been. Although the way Daniel looked at Heather sometimes…well… Then again, they all looked at Heather sometimes. It was hard not to. “If she didn’t scare the shit out of a man anyway.”
Vampire fangs and everything. They were real. He was sure of it.
“There is that. There is that.” Gunnar looked at the women, who were quietly talking there at the end of the couch next to the large window that overlooked the back garden. Powell had printed real estate listings spread out on the sofa next to her and covering the coffee table. There were even two on Haldyn’s lap; apparently, the sofa and coffee table weren’t enough space.
“They are so easy with each other. Differently than the rest of the girl cronies,” Gunnar said quietly. “I’ve never really seen them both away from Zoey and Shelby and the rest until now. They are usually at the back of that gorgeous crowd of women. Almost…hidden. Protected.”
Jarrod had noticed the same thing. Now he wondered why. “They’ve known each other for over a decade, Daniel said. The rest haven’t. That might have something to do with it.”
“I suspect that Zoey and Char protect them a great deal, too,” Gunnar said. “Well, Powell does as well, I think. But it’s harder for her. She really puts on a front.”
“Know her that well, even after admiring her from afar? She still think you are a lunatic? That why she won’t date you?” Everyone knew of his troubles with that woman. Gunnar was seriously interested—Powell was seriously resistant.
Gunnar kept trying though. The man was determined.
“No. She’d heard about the bet. She thinks I was serious. Now she refuses to even acknowledge I exist. At least, before now.”
Jake had challenged Gunnar one day on Shelby’s front lawn. To try to date the next available woman to cross Gunnar’s path. It had been Powell. Not exactly the best way for the guys to be acting, but it had happened.
Then the female part of the equation found out. They hadn’t been too happy.
And they didn’t let Gunnar or Jake forget it.
Jarrod winced. “Ouch. Better fix that, fast. We have no clue how long this rabbit watching gig is going to last.”
“Trust me, I know. Hell, a part of me wants to just scoop her up and take her to my cabin up in the Ouachita Mountains and keep her safe in my cave. While I worry about fighting all the dragons. After I build a moat around it and fill it with radioactive crocodiles to protect her.”
“And let me guess: she stays next to the home fire, roasting a dinosaur for your dinner, and tending your six little cave babies?” Hell, he understood—especially where their favorite girl gang was concerned. Jarrod was half tempted to surrounded Haldyn and all of her friends with radioactive crocodiles until Major Crimes found the answers to the darkness mucking up their city.
“Exactly. Where I know she’d be completely safe from all the dragons out there just looking for women like them.”
There were a host of memories in Gunnar’s eyes. Hurt.
Gunnar had lost his first wife when she had been five months’ pregnant. That kind of hurt, it never really went away. Jarrod didn’t think it ever could.
“Hell, maybe this will be the chance you have with her to make it right?” Jarrod wasn’t a romantic or anything like that, but Gunnar was hurting. He didn’t like it when his friends were hurting. He just didn’t.
Powell looked up. Right at Gunnar, just as that man looked away. There was a wary look on her beautiful face. A host of emotions Jarrod could see from across the room.
She was aware of Gunnar. No denying it. But what was going to happen—Jarrod couldn’t say one way or another. All he knew was one thing. “We’ll keep them safe. That’s all we can do right now.”
15
