A Snow Covered Nightmare: Refuge Series Book Two by Debbie Zello (5)

Chapter Five

Briah began her new job with the same exuberance that she had for everything she did. Her smile was infectious. Her eyes danced with mirth. Her skills spoke for themselves. Ordinarily, the established employees would be standoffish with the new girl. That wasn’t possible with Briah.

Naturally, Aiden knew she was in the building. He had set her up with the job. This was different. They worked on two different floors, yet he could feel her there. It was going to be a long three months for him. His body leaned to her and his mind was preoccupied with thoughts of her.

There was only one way he would get through this. He had to put her behind a wall in his head and keep her there. With his eyes closed, he drew his fingers in a small circle over his desk. He imagined touching her. Then he opened his eyes and slammed down the wall on his thoughts, though he still had a self-satisfied grin on his lips when Pete walked in.

“Somebody had a good night. Care to share?” Pete asked.

“I didn’t do anything special last night. You know everything special happens in here,” he said wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah, right! Have you been drinking?”

“Stone sober, my friend,” he said smiling. He stretched his neck and went back to his computer screen.

He was doing research on the Denver crime family’s history. Being in the homicide division, he had limited knowledge of what went on inside the family. He wanted to broaden his familiarity with the inner workings of the business.

They were deep into much of the political and business ends of the city. Their ties to the community ran wide and bottomless. It was amazing that they could be involved with countless charities and religious organizations while running the drugs, alcohol, gambling, and prostitution.

It was laughable, thinking of the old adage that they were white, Catholic and Italian when he was reading names that ended with -stein and -berg. It appeared their horizons had been broadened.

Briah was using what she had learned in college about the law and its perplexities, to help the detectives she was working with. She was in the fraud division and as such, she was helping to correct the damage done by identity theft.

She went home every day that first week, exhausted. She had worked for Dan for two years and knew her job well. It had become second nature, like taking a bath. You washed in the same order, every time. That is how she approached her job.

The cases that bothered her the most were the predators that preyed on the elderly. She felt they should occupy a special place in prison as well as in hell.

The case she was helping with today was one where a young man would call saying he was the grandson of the victim. He needed money for bail as he had been falsely arrested. Somehow, he had duped seven different people out of thousands of dollars. They simply gave him their banking information over the phone. Then he went to their bank and emptied their accounts.

Briah read with disgust the interview of one ninety-year-old woman. Her grandson was wonderful to her. He would visit her and take her to a movie or out to lunch. She got a call from the dirt-bag and he took over nine-thousand dollars from her. Briah wanted him badly.

“How does he get their phone numbers?” she said aloud. She liked thinking aloud. “How does he know who to call?” She flipped back through the reports. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but still she perused them.

She focused on one report that said the man had recently given away a bedroom set. He was moving to a one-bedroom apartment from his two-bedroom house. He placed an ad in the paper for a free bedroom set. The detectives had cleared the couple who took the set.

Something clicked and she went back to the first victim’s report. She stated that several months prior she had placed an ad to sell her car. Her family had pressured her to stop driving. She had several calls about the car but no one came to see it nor did she sell it. She finally donated it to a local charity. The detectives had cleared the men who had come to pick the car up.

Briah picked up the phone and dialed the latest victim’s number. It rang a few times and then she heard, “Hello.”

“Mrs. Potter? This is Briah Spencer. I work for the fraud division of the Denver police. How are you today?”

“I’m fine dear. Have you found my money?” she asked.

“Sorry, not yet, but that is why I’m calling. Did you place an ad with your name and number in the newspaper recently?”

“No. I haven’t had anything to sell in years.” Briah felt her body deflate. She was so sure she was on to something. She guessed it was too easy to think he just looked in the paper for his victims. “I was on the news a few weeks ago,” she continued as an afterthought.

“What?”

“Yes, my cat Jimmy went up a tree in my neighbor’s yard. He was so far up and we couldn’t coax him to come down. They called the fire department.

“Those nice men came with a big truck and a tall ladder. They just went up and got him. The local ABC news people came out and filmed the whole thing. It was on the TV for the next day and a half.

“They interviewed me and everything. I was a celebrity at the senior center.”

“Bingo! Thank you, Mrs. Potter. I think we’ll be calling you back. Have a nice day,” Briah said.

“You too, dear.”

Briah smacked the air with a high five. She was going to get this son-of-a-bitch. Beat him at his own game. She strode towards the lead detective’s office with the reports in her hand.

Ernie March was sitting behind his desk when Briah knocked on his door casing. He looked up and smiled. He thought Briah was a find. He loved Dina and she was a great secretary, but Briah had something indescribable. Her light burned so brightly you were inescapably drawn to it. “Hey, Briah, what’s up?”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Don’t worry about it, I could use the distraction,” he said smiling. Briah walked in and sat down. She placed the reports on his desk.

“I was transcribing the notes on these reports. They’re the ones about the elderly people that are having their money taken.”

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying.”

“Well, I think I may have found something similar about them. I don’t know if it means anything, but I thought I would ask.”

“Continue, I’m all ears!” he said sitting up in his chair. Briah went through the whole conversation with Mrs. Potter as well as the reports where the victims acknowledged placing the ads.

“I don’t know if the other four placed ads. I just found this too analogous to not say anything,” she said bracing for him to dismiss her idea as ridiculous.

“You just came up with this now? From transcribing the reports?”

“Yes. Then I called Mrs. Potter to confirm.”

“Holy shit! They say fresh eyes see clearer than tired ones. We’ve been working on this case for eight months. None of us thought of this angle,” he said staring at her with deep appreciation. “Clearly, Miss Spencer, you are not just another pretty face. I think we need to place an ad in the paper.”

“I’ll get right on that, sir,” Briah said grinning from ear to ear. She stood, gathered her reports, and walked to the door.

“Thank you, Briah. That was extremely well done,” he said. He was undoubtedly going to have to figure out a way to keep her.

On Friday, of her third week in the office, Briah decided to join her co-workers for a drink at the bar down the street. When she worked for Dan, it was just the two of them, so being part of a large office was a new experience for her. Briah kept to herself, partly because she still feared Connor might find her, and partly because after him, she didn’t trust her judgment in choosing the right guy. She didn’t make friends easily, or have many of them in the first place.

When Aiden looked up to see her walking in, he stilled. His fingers began to draw that same lazy circle on the tabletop. He could feel her skin and taste her essence. Torture…that was exactly what he was experiencing.

She was a material witness in one of his most important cases. She was a co-worker. She was a fucking goddess. Yup…that was what she was. He closed his eyes to adjust his thinking process. After a second or two, he opened them and Briah was standing right in front of him. “Hi, Aiden. How are you?” she asked.

“Good, Briah. How are you? I was told you’re doing a great job for the fraud guys. Not that the news was surprising,” he said stammering slightly.

“I love the job, thanks again. How is Dan’s case coming?”

“Slow, but we have some leads we’re working on. We’re going to get him. It just might take a little time. Thankfully, there isn’t a statute of limitations on murder.”

“Good. I’m ready to testify. I’m suddenly very interested in the justice thing,” she said with a giggle. The charming sound of her laugh traveled through him, settling in an embarrassing spot. It was a very good thing he was sitting down.

“You’ll get your chance. Until then, do try and keep a low profile,” he said as his fingers made the slow slide over the table. If someone had noticed the movement, they might think he was suffering some nervous malady.

Not knowing what else to say that might keep her near him, she just smiled, turned, and walked to the table where the other women from her office were sitting.

Aiden wasn’t cold or abrupt with her but he certainly wasn’t interested in her either. At least that was what Briah believed. His short yet respectful questions and answers told her that much. She’d thought his eyes were saying something else, but she must have been mistaken. She drank her glass of wine looking out the corner of her eye for any indication he might be watching her, but he never glanced her way.

Aiden’s leg was bouncing under the table from the pent-up energy he couldn’t exhibit from the waist up. Why she had shown up at the bar? This was his bastion of relaxation after a hard week at the office. His portal to the normalcy of the weekend. He finished his beer and stood to leave.

Aiden pointedly didn’t look in the direction of the table where Briah had sat. He simply waved his hand as he passed the co-workers and strode purposely towards the door to exit. Once outside, he took a deep cleansing breath, and headed to the parking lot on the side of the building.

He stopped dead when he looked at his car and saw Briah had parked right next to it. Not only parked but also was now standing there searching through her purse. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

Seeing no way around it, he walked over. “Lose something?” he asked.

“My keys,” she said without looking up. “I have this big purse and everything sinks to the bottom. Yet when I fumble through it to the bottom, they’re not there. It’s the story of my life.”

“Want me to try?” he found himself saying before he could clamp his mouth shut. Shaking his head, he thought ‘please, please, say no.’

“Would you please? I’m freezing, standing here. These shoes aren’t very warm.” Naturally, that statement caused his eyes to start a slow descent down her body past her skirt to pause on those shapely legs, then continue to the four inch heels on her precious feet. A fleeting vision passed through his mind of those feet and shoes in the air. He mentally castigated himself for the thought.

He grabbed the purse perhaps more aggressively than he would have ordinarily. He always felt that woman’s purses were a vast pit of vipers. A man should never, and I repeat never, look in one, much less investigate one.

They usually resembled the junk drawer in his kitchen. The drawer where you might find everything from a lone AAA battery, to a wrench, to that rubber thing you use to loosen a jar top.

“Are you sure you put them in here?” he questioned as he felt a tampon. His mind going right to the gutter thinking about the particular place the offending object was going to occupy. Again, he was beating himself up in his mind for the way his thoughts were heading. ‘Please God, help me find her damn keys before something bad happens.’

With a last-ditch effort, he plunged his hand into the far corner and eureka, the keys were there! He pulled them out with a “Ta Da!” as he laughed. Briah grabbed the keys from his hand and wrapped her arms around his middle.

“Thank you. I’m getting a smaller purse tomorrow,” she said holding on, enjoying the moment of contact. He closed his eyes in an attempt to gather his strength. He opened them as she looked up at him. Her eyes had a mischievous glisten to them. Her lips looked so sweet like the cherry pie filling he loved so much. With his resolve evaporating like rain from a car in the afternoon heat of summer, he bent his head and kissed her.