Page 14 of Unbearable

“None that we found. I doubt the kids who found him rolled him either.” Her gaze shot up to meet his smirk. Sean Ryan, one of the medical examiners for the City of Boston, stood with his arms folded over his muscled chest. His arms almost split the sleeves of his shirt. Better looking than any medical examiner had the right to be.

“Autopsy?” she asked, ignoring the deep brown eyes studying her.

“Let’s say one this afternoon. I know you’ll be on my ass if I don’t rush it.”

As much as she wanted to comment on other things she could do with his ass, she resisted. This was a crime scene, and she was a professional.

“I’ll be there.”

“I’ll save you a seat then.” With a wink, he turned his attention back to the body. His assistants moved in to ease the body into a bag for transportation to his office.

She stepped out of the makeshift tent to organize the search of the grounds. As much as she was certain no one at the school had anything to do with it, she had to follow procedure.

“Do you want me to handle the school while you find out who he was?” Danny asked. Danny had been her partner from the first day she reported as a detective. He was fifteen years older than her and kept joking about moving to cold cases. The idea of doing this without Danny’s experience to fall back on made her shiver with apprehension.

“Sounds good. I need to deal with something for a couple of minutes anyway. I’ll start looking for missing persons and meet you at the autopsy at one.” With a nod, Danny walked toward the door to the school while she looked over at the thing that needed to be dealt with. Standing at the fence with the rest of the curious was a giant man with bright green eyes and a ponytail.

“What are you doing here?” she growled when she reached the fence.

“Looking for you,” he growled back. She nodded for him to follow her down the fence line until they were away from the onlookers.

“How did you find me?”

“Memphis.”

“How?” She held her hand up when he started to answer. “You know what, never mind. Why are you looking for me?”

“Come on, Dover. I flew all the way up here to meet you. Surely you can spare a little more than one quick breakfast. Memphis and I went to Fox’s apartment last night. His girlfriend was out with friends. I don’t get a good feeling about her. I want to make sure y’all are all right before I go home. I have an open-ended plane ticket. I can always change it.”

“Fine,” she said after considering him for several beats. “But I don’t have time right now. Come by later tonight.” She pulled her notebook out of her pocket and wrote her address down. Tearing the page out, she passed it to him. “I’ve got to go. I have a dead guy to identify.”

“See you this evening.”

“Yay,” she mumbled, walking quickly toward her car. Reaching for the door, she remembered she had ridden with Danny, and he still had the keys in his pocket. “Hey,” she yelled at Knox’s back.

“What?” he yelled back.

“Give me a ride back to the office?”

“Yeah, come on. Little sisters are such a pain in the ass.”

“Fuck you. I’ll take the bus.”

“Get in,” he said with a grin. He pointed a fob at a small car halfway down the street. With a sigh, she met him by the passenger door. “Are you always so uptight?” he asked when they were both inside. How he found room to drive, she had no idea.

“Only around men who show up claiming to be my long-lost family.”

“Fair.” He pulled out into traffic. “At least I haven’t asked for money yet.”

“Don’t bother. No one gets rich on a cop’s salary.”

“Nor a math teacher’s salary,” he answered with a hearty laugh. “We’ll just have to be satisfied being the poor relations.” They drove for a block in silence. “Speaking of, what is up withthat medical examiner? The women on my side of the fence were starting to swoon.”

“How is that speaking of? Speaking of what?”

“Speaking of relations. Relationships. Get it?”

“Not really.”