Page 56 of The Deputy's Secret Double
Would hestilltell the department what was going on?
Price believed JJ’s story. He believed in her without any hard evidence, he had already realized.
Yet, that didn’t mean he wanted to let her out of his sight now.
She was a person of interest.
He just wasn’t sure what to do about that next.
Price handed the egg bowl over to JJ. Winnie was doing her best to change her expression from shock to belief. Price had to admit, this was the first time in her years of living that he’d had a woman spend the night.
He gave her some room to collect herself and took his food to the breakfast bar too. JJ settled down on the last of the three stools on the other side of her.
If this had been the JJ of yesterday afternoon, he wondered if she would have played shy and apologetic on repeat. Instead, she seemed oddly at ease.
“Corrie would have loved the party,” she said after a few bites of her food. “We schmoozed with a lot of people we didn’t even need to, but your dad here was a talking machine. I don’t think there was a person we met who escaped his conversation.”
That made Winnie jump in surprise. She laughed.
“Deputy Little says that Dad is a bad guy’s worst nightmare. He can just talk them into the ground if he needs to.”
Price rolled his eyes.
“The goal of last nightwastalking,” he reminded the ladies. “And, may I point out, Miss Shaw, that you never gave me a code word to help get yououtof a conversation. So, I didn’t see a reason to limit my abilities.”
“Hey, I’m not upset at your chatter,” JJ said. “It meant less work for me.”
Price said he was glad to assist and, unlike the night before, Price simply listened as the two of them dove into small talk.
It was comfortable.
It made their small fight the night before feel like a dream.
“Lawson is clearly playing with fire—his man actually blew up half of a home—so don’t you think we should too? With the department on your side, you’d have more firepower yourself.”
JJ’s reaction had been immediate.
She’d been frowning so deeply that it seemed to pull her entire face down with it.
“The department has rules. Lawson has already shown that he isn’t playing by any. I’m not going to either.” That frown had managed to deepen somehow. “If you really want to help me, by association you’re also breaking the rules. And, if something happens to my brother, or me, it could all come back to haunt you. So, you really need to think about wanting to help me before you agree to follow me into what might happen next.”
JJ had told him to sleep on it. He’d followed her request and had.
It was simple math, really.
He was the law; JJ had been breaking it.
Lawson had done bad; JJ wanted vengeance.
An innocent man was being targeted; an innocent woman was gunning for the one doing the targeting.
Seven Roads was in danger; JJ Shaw had become a ghost to try and fight against it.
A brother was in trouble; his big sister had sacrificed herself to save him.
No matter which way Price ran the numbers, it had always come back to him feeling sympathy and anger.
He didn’t have siblings, but he did have a daughter and there wasn’t a part of him that wouldn’t burn the entire world to save her. Thinking about JJ’s parents having their children’s futures taken from them was hard enough, but now to know that their nightmare hadn’t ended? Now to know that their daughter was shouldering it all alone to try and end it for them?