Chapter Twenty
“You have a bruise under your eye,” Jess said the next morning when he came downstairs for breakfast. This morning she’d rolled out of bed early for a trip to the grocery store with Spike.
“Yea.” He padded barefoot to the coffee machine and poured a cup of swill. He looked like hell, in a cute way.
As promised, there was a one-person tent under a tree in the backyard and no sign of Calvin. The agreement had gone off to a good start. She’d placed a bag of vegan pastries outside of his tent as well as one large reusable water bottle and had returned to the house to see if Wheeler was in a better mood today.
She’d resigned herself that he couldn’t help the way he was. He liked to knuckle drag and boss her around. At the conclusion of the case, he’d be another woman’s problem.
That conclusion changed when he’d let Calvin stay. There were signs of cracks in his crusty exterior. Would she like a softer, gentler Detective Wheeler?
“Were you in a bar fight?” She stirred the almost done scrambled eggs and added a fistful of grated cheese. “When a beer mug flies toward your face, you’re supposed to duck.”
He sent her a sidelong glance. “Is that so?”
Her stomach flipped and her self-control took a beating. The man was too damn sexy.
“It is.” She dumped some sliced green onions and a few packaged bacon bits into the eggs for flavoring. She wasn’t the best cook out there, but she could handle the basics. “Would you like to share the story of the eye?”
“Nope.” He went to the small pantry closet and collected paper plates. Forks followed. He set the table and took a seat. “That smells good.”
What a frustrating man. Him and his secrets. Well, she had secrets of her own. Let him try and pry them out of her.
“We’re having fancy scrambled eggs. And if you make a comment about your arteries, I’ll hit you with my spatula.”
He grinned.
The bruise was round-ish and about the size of a quarter. It notched up his bad-boy cop image. She wanted to kiss him again, only this time, with more enthusiasm.
From the look of his mouth, she suspected he was very good at kissing. A guy like him would be. He’d have had lots of practice.
As much as she tried to reconcile this attraction to the fact that she hadn’t been kissed in months and he was convenient, she knew that was untrue. There was more to Sam than just a warm body with lips. He touched something inside her long gone dormant. She wanted him. Badly.
Dear God, why?
Jess turned off the burner and removed the pan from the stove. After shoveling most of the eggs onto his plate, she portioned hers out and sat across from him.
“Today, I’d like to check on Irving, then question local gun dealers for any sign of our sniper.” Jess tasted the eggs. Excellent. “It’s unlikely she’d purchase the gun locally, but ammo isn’t traceable unless she buys with a credit card.”
“Michigan is a concealed weapon state so she wouldn’t be the only woman seeking out weaponry.”
“True,” Jess said. “But there might be something memorable about her. The witnesses said she was pear shaped and had a pointed chin.”
“Her and every third woman in Michigan.”
The fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “I know it’s lame, but we have nothing else. Unless you heard something I didn’t?”
“Nope. We got nada.” Wheeler dove in for a big second bite. “A large hairy wart on a scarred cheek would be helpful.” He paused from chewing. “These are really good.”
“Thanks.” After they finished up, she put the pan and spatula in the dishwasher. “I’m going up to shower, then head out. What are your plans for the day?”
“Apparently I’m visiting gun dealers.”
The man was like gum on her boot. No amount of diligent scraping on the edge of a curb was getting it out of the tread.
Jess took his fork from his hand. “Just so we’re clear. Do you intend to follow me around all day, every day, until the sniper is caught?”
“That’s the plan.”
She did an eye roll and sighed. Yes, working together had been her idea. But she hadn’t meant 24-7 for days on end. And that was before he took up bodyguard duties, and she started living with him. Too much closeness was just, well, too much.
There was nothing to do but accept that he’d be her ball and chain until the resolution of the case. Still, she had to try one last attempt to cut him loose. She needed a breather.
“We can cover a lot more ground if we occasionally investigate separately and share notes after.”
“We could do that. But our SUV’s guzzle gas. We’ll save a couple of penguins each if we ride share.”
Penguins? How could she win that argument? “Am I allowed in the bathroom alone?”
“As long as you don’t try to crawl out the window and escape.” He disposed of their plates as she dropped his fork into the dishwasher. “Look. I have no doubt of your abilities as a kick-ass PI in hand-to-hand combat. This is a whole other situation. This woman likes covert attacks. We’ll have better odds of catching her if we work together.”
The detective had a point. She hated when he was right.
He continued, “Besides, with my brains and your muscle, we make one hell of a crime fighting team.”
This brought a smile. Wheeler lacked nothing in the muscle department, all angles and planes in the right places. He could probably take down Alvin. “Don’t you mean my muscle and my brains? You’re just here to look pretty.”
Wheeler chuckled and rubbed his chin stubble. “I can live with that.” He stood. “I’ll meet you in the foyer in thirty.”
Jess watched him walk away, appreciating the view. He did fill out a pair of worn sweats nicely.
She cleaned up the remnants of breakfast and took Spike out for a mini-walk. Since Calvin was in the backyard, she pulled out a leaf-collecting bag, grabbed the small shovel Sam had found for her, and headed out. Step. Sniff. Step. Sniff. Spike did not miss anything sniffable. At that rate, they only got half a block down when they had to turn around.
“Can’t you walk faster?” She tugged his leash and had a feeling he was walking her. “I hear there’s a cute poodle at the end of the street who likes tough guys like you.”
Spike ignored her in favor of a patch of yews. He wasn’t plotting his next defiling but rather staring off, tense, with his nose in the air.
Something hit her in the back of the neck. “Ouch!” The sting brought her hand up to rub the spot.
Not again!
Expecting a wasp or bee, there was nothing. A second sting hit her neck again. “Damnit!” She spun around. The street was empty, with no signs of an insect attack.
A low doggy growl followed.
It was early enough that sunlight had not yet made an appearance between the houses, shadowing the tall rows of yews or other bushes along the fence lines, and the house on the right had a For Sale sign in the yard.
On high alert, Jess leaned to Spike. “What is it boy? A wasp? A rabid bat?” Or something bigger?
Before Jess formulated a plan to find out, the dog was off, nearly dislocating her shoulder in the process.
He bolted between the two houses behind them, dragging Jess. She flailed her free arm, trying to not pitch forward on her face. Trapped by her hand—she couldn’t get free of the leash—there was nothing she could do but try to remain upright or be dragged.
Why hadn’t she picked a smaller dog!
In the distance, she heard the sound of something big hitting the fence beside the For Sale house and a gate crashing open. “Go! Go,” she yelled, fully expecting to see a giant raccoon making an escape. Instead, the yard was empty.
This didn’t stop the dog who ran for the back fence, huffing the entire way. He danced back and forth, annoyed that he couldn’t get over.
Whatever it was, it had vanished. It was probably for the best. She didn’t want to tangle with anything sporting sharp teeth. “Sorry, boy.”
Spike wasn’t finished. He nosed the grass and came up with something in his mouth. It took her a second to see what it was before he gulped it down.
A half-chewed beef jerky.
Yuck. He’d probably get E. coli.
She turned to pull him back in case more jerky was in the grass when she spotted a shirtless middle-aged man, with a furry Santa belly, standing in the yard behind them, holding a garden hose clutched in one hand and a cigar in the other. Worse, he wore only a pair of throwback 1970s too-short shorts and black socks with open-toed sandals.
“Um, hi,” she said, trying to control her dog.
“Hello.” He gnawed on the cigar. “You chasing that kid? Is that a police dog?”
Kid? “What kid?”
“The one that went over the fence just now.” He pointed to where Spike had returned to leaping at the fence behind her.
Jess went still. “Can you describe him?”
The guy turned off the nozzle and walked over. “Not tall. Wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.”
She had a bad feeling about this. “Could the kid have been female?”
He scratched his furry belly. “Maybe. I didn’t get a good look. He was moving fast.”
Shoot. If the kid was the sniper, then she knew where Jess lived. That meant she’d followed Jess to Sam’s house. That also meant that she’d probably been tracking Jess for who-knew-how-long. Maybe Irving, Summer, and Taryn, too.
And had set the fire at her apartment.
She had to get back to Sam. “Hey, thanks.”
Dragging Spike, she headed back to the street. The neighbor’s voice followed. “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”
Not a chance.