Page 18 of Detective for the Debutante (SAFE Haven Security #3)
MURPHY
“ O ’Connell!” Captain Overton’s voice echoes through the office as I walk through the door.
I speed up, not wanting to risk having to be called a second time. No one wants the second time. Not by Captain Overton.
Poking my head in her office, I find her where I expect her—fuming behind her desk.
“Captain?”
Her icy glare meets mine as she drums her fingers on a manila folder on her desk.
“I get you’ve already accepted another job, O’Connell, but do you think you could do a better job with the paperwork to close out your remaining cases?”
“I’m sorry?” I ask, stepping into her office and closing the door.
But not before catching looks—some sympathetic, some amused—by my soon-to-be-former peers.
“I just got my ass handed to me by the DA. They took your word for it that this case was an easy conviction. The fucking Deputy PD got the case thrown out because your report had errors in two major sections.” She tosses the file on her desk, and I crane my neck to see the name.
V. Ellis.
“What? I triple-checked everything before I dropped it on your desk last week. This case was a slam dunk.”
“Not according to Kenneth Scott. Or to the judge who threw out the charges this morning.”
“Then Scott fucking tampered with it. Cap, I promise you, the report was fine when I put it on your desk,” I say, lowering my voice when I realize I’m yelling now too. “What errors?”
Snatching up the folder, I scan through the contents until I find the sections where two of the numbers have been changed and so has Ellis’s middle initial.
“What the fuck? I know Ellis’s middle initial stands for Daniel. No way would I have put the B.”
“But you did, otherwise, how did it happen? Nobody else touches the report from the time I get it until the DA goes to court.”
“What about the electronic file?” I ask.
“I checked it while I was on the phone with the DA. It matches what’s in here.” She taps her finger on the envelope, and any hope I had deflates.
“Michelle,” I say, using the captain’s first name. “You’ve known me for over ten years. I don’t make these kinds of errors.”
Her expression loses some of the angry edges, verging on contemplative. The anger is still there, but less than it was a minute ago.
“Not normally, no. But I know with the move coming up and trying to clear your open cases?—”
I shake my head, slashing a hand through the air to stop her.
“No. Even then. I know how important these are. Ellis needs to be off the street for good. This was going to be the way to keep him off them for a while.” I groan and toss the file back onto her desk and drop into one of the chairs across from her.
“Well, he’s free again. And soon to be somebody else’s problem,” she tells me, shaking her head.
“He should have been put away the last time after he assaulted his girlfriend,” I manage to grit out through clenched teeth.
Fuck. There were times I hated being a first responder.
Showing up at the run-down apartment complex of Ellis’s girlfriend was one of them.
The bruises on her body, the state of her apartment—it made me want to track Ellis down so I could teach him to pick on someone his own size.
I had found him that night, right on his favorite bar stool in the dive bar he frequented.
But it had been to arrest him with the promise he was going away for good.
Only my definition of good was different than the law’s apparently. The bastard had been bonded out—by his girlfriend—the next day.
“Difficult to do when she recants and won’t testify. The DA wasn’t going to touch that one. You and I both know it despite wanting a different outcome.” Her resignation is just salt in the open wound of Vinny Ellis walking free when he should be behind bars.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” I grind out, the anger still bubbling through me.
“What do you want me to do, O’Connell? Go to the DA and tell him the report mysteriously changed? That you know Ellis’s middle name is Daniel and your D looks like a B?” She snorts. “They’ll laugh their asses off and never take me seriously again.”
“Cap—”
“Just double-check your work. Make sure it’s accurate, and hand shit directly to me from now until you leave. Then I’ll review it before turning it in.”
I haven’t had my work reviewed at a detailed point in almost ten years, and the thought that it’s happening now, just before I leave, grates on my last fucking nerve. But I know better than to argue with Captain Overton about this.
“Fine.”
“Dismissed.”
She nods toward the door and I open it, stepping out into the area and nearly running into one of the less experienced detectives.
Spencer Aldridge is a brown-nosing punk who got put in our precinct because his dad is friends with the mayor.
He is a smug little asshole and grates on my nerves, and he is one of the reasons I am glad to be leaving.
“Is she free?” he asks with a nod at Overton’s office.
“Yeah. But, word of advice? You may want to give her some time to cool off.”
He brushes past me, bumping me out of the way.
“Why would I take advice from you?” he mumbles.
“What was that?” The receding anger rises back to the surface.
“I’ll take my chances,” he sneers and steps into her office.
My knuckles crack as my hands clench, the tension in my skull radiating down my neck and shoulders. Now is not the time for paperwork.
Bypassing my desk, I head for our locker room and toss on my workout gear.
The big bag taking the brunt of my frustration has a hundred different faces. Today? It’s Kenneth Scott and Vinny Ellis. And I don’t stop until my arms throb and hang spent next to my body.
“Fuck.” I blow out a breath, leaning my head against the bag that still swings faintly from my latest onslaught.
The job in DC can’t start soon enough.
But when I leave Nashville, Scott and Ellis are still around. To do God knows what.
It’s not your fight once you leave.
So why does leaving sound like they’ve won?
★★★
The neighborhood is just as quiet as every other time I’ve been here, although the last time I was here was when Hannah Grace and Cole were still around. Fuck, that feels like a lifetime ago. More than one after this week.
Striding up the walkway to Leigh’s, I make note of the surrounding houses while an ice cream truck’s tinny soundtrack carries on the slight breeze.
Ringing the doorbell, I wait, shifting my weight from foot to foot as I take in the quiet suburban neighborhood.
The muffled sounds on the other side of the door stop, the solid wood opening after another pause.
The sight in front of me makes me forget how to breathe.
Her blonde hair is down, curled slightly, and my fingers itch with the urge to bury themselves in the silky waves.
She’s wearing a blue V-neck T-shirt, the color bringing out the deeper flecks of blue in her eyes, the fabric showing off her breasts in a way that has my mind going to a no-fly zone—one with more than friendly activities involved to occupy our time.
She’s paired the shirt with a pair of tight stone-washed denim jeans and boots.
She’s temptation in a tiny package, and I have to remind myself of that to keep my smile friendly.
To keep from backing her inside the house and taking what I want.
“Hello,” I manage to get out.
“Hi. Do you want to come in? I just need to grab my purse.”
“Sure.”
I’m not one hundred percent sure I trust myself despite the nod I give her. But I still follow her in, closing the door behind me. I step forward and she retreats, a coughing fit starting as she bends at the waist.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Wrong pipe,” she manages to croak out.
She recovers and shoots me a smile before retreating to the kitchen. Christ, this is more awkward than my first date, and I second-guess my decision to keep our plans as my gaze strays to the frozen screen on TV.
“Is this Searching for Love ?” I ask, pointing at the screen when she steps back into the room.
She groans.
“Sorry. I forgot to shut that off.” She turns, finding the remote to point it at the screen until it goes dark.
“Compass ceremony, right?” I ask.
Instead of roses, the person searching for love hands out compasses to prospective contestants.
“Yeah…” She says the word slowly, not entirely sure about my line of questioning, and a smile twitches at my lips.
“Max’s season?” I ask and her eyebrows shoot up.
“You watch Searching for Love ?” Her question comes out as a squeak.
Heat travels to the tips of my ears and I duck my head.
“I—my sisters got me hooked a few years ago. We even created a dinner night around it. We had it at Quinn’s house and called it dinner and drama.”
“Awww, that sounds adorable. You never hosted?”
He shakes his head.
“Nah. Quinn had my first niece and nephew already so it was easier to just watch at her place.”
Now the level of noise would be too much to try to watch anything not involving animation with a seven-, five-, and two-year-old.
She locks up the house and I walk her to the passenger side of my SUV, opening her door and helping her in.
The heat of her body mingles with mine and I take a deep breath, instantly regretting it as the temptation of whatever perfume she wears teases my nostrils.
Once she’s settled, I close the door softly behind her, using the momentary reprieve to remind myself what we’re doing isn’t a date. There’s no kiss at the end of tonight. No invitation back to her place. But since my body and imagination don’t get the memo, it’s not long enough.
“How many nieces and nephews do you have?” she asks, turning that mesmerizing blue gaze on me until I feel like the center of her world.
I settle into the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel to avoid reaching for her.
“Quinn has two girls now and my nephew and is pregnant with what I’m told is my last nephew from her.”