Thirty-seven hours later, they had nothing more than they’d had before Officer Levi Hall was shot.

Officer Hall went through eight hours of surgery and was expected to recover, but that was something none of them wanted to see any officer suffer. The kid had only been on patrol for a year, and now he’d be taking time off to recover and, most likely, do the grueling work needed to get his head back in the game so he could get back out there. If he ever did.

Captain Scanlon looked at all of them as John, Eric, Rhys, and Mason stood before her. “Go home. Sleep, shower. Be back in four.”

None of them wanted to do it. They hated being told they had to do things like eat or sleep when they had people who were clearly willing to take out a cop on the streets.

“Cap, they went from three weeks between robberies to a matter of days. The violence is escalating. These guys aren’t going to take time off.” Eric spoke for all of them.

The captain gave him a look. “Cantu, you can bet your ass these guys have taken a nap between now and then. And even if they haven’t, I don’t want any of you out on the street without getting some down time. You’ll be a danger to yourselves and others if you try to take these assholes down without taking a break. I’ve got people running down evidence. The work won’t stop.”

Her tone said she wasn’t really debating the issue with him. That was the way she was. Captain Scanlon wouldn’t debate an issue when she knew she was right, but she respected her team enough to give them more than a because I said so answer.

They filed out, and Eric tossed John a look. “Pick me up a coffee on your way back in?”

John passed by their favorite coffee place on his way to work. “Yep. See you in four.”

Twenty minutes later, John stood on Ava’s front step, under the light of a single porch bulb. He knocked on the glass, quietly, telling himself he needed to replace her front door with a solid one. The glass windows in hers might look better, but they made it all too easy for someone to break the glass and unlock the door.

She needed a brighter front light, too. He looked around at the windows that were pretty low to the ground. She needed a lot of things to make this place secure. He’d come over here on the weekend when this was over and take care of some of it for her.

When she came to the door and looked through the glass at him, she was wrapped in a sweater with her hair a little mussed. Hell, it was almost eleven. What had he expected?

“John?” She looked past him when she opened the door, as though there might be some explanation for his presence behind him. “Is everything all right?”

He nodded and leaned closer. He wanted to wrap himself up in her, but he didn’t dare. The other thing on his list for when this case was over was to see if she might be interested in … well, hell, he didn’t know what. In a no-strings relationship, he guessed. Or was that just friends with benefits?

He didn’t know. But he would talk to her about something.

“Everything’s fine.” It wasn’t, not really. They had a cop in the hospital and no leads. The violence of these robberies was escalating and he had a feeling at least one of them was now motivated by thrill-seeking as much as money, or maybe more than money.

Thrill-seeking meant taking risks. That meant going after the kind of target that would present more risk. A target like Ava’s store.

“I can’t stay,” he said.

Ava reached out and put her hand on his chest. “I heard about the officer. Is he doing okay? They said on the news, he’s expected to recover.”

John nodded. It was harder than he thought it would be not to reach out to her. He’d only come to tell her in person he wouldn’t be making dinner the following night. Now, though, his arms itched to pull her into them.

He told his feet to step back. They moved closer.

“He’s going to be okay. I need to go home and shower and sleep for a couple hours. I just needed …”

He stopped.

She stepped toward him, both hands coming to his chest. “Yes?”

John leaned in and kissed her. Softly at first, in question. When she moaned, he let the question fall away and took the kiss to another level, hard and fast. His whole body committed to that kiss, giving in to the pleasure that raced through his senses at the feel of her.

She met him wholeheartedly, and damn, if it wasn’t the same as it was in college between them. There was something so different about the way she felt in his arms. No woman had felt this way before. Not even Lucia.

It took all he had in him to keep control and stop the kiss before it went too far.

He broke apart from her. All he managed was, “we need to talk before this goes further.”

She nodded, looking as shell-shocked as he felt.

“I need you to be careful. These guys are upping their game.”

She furrowed her brow. “What?”

“The robberies. The guys doing them are getting more violent and taking more risks. I know they haven’t been hitting stores like yours, but I need you to be careful. Think about closing early. You should consider locking the door during business hours and having anyone who wants to enter show ID.”

He saw her face fall. Damnit, he was an asshole. One minute, he was kissing her, probably making her think he wanted more than he could give her. The next, he was telling her how to keep her store safe.

“John, I can’t make my customers show ID to get in the door. And I can’t close early. We do a lot of business in the evening when people are strolling around the green.”

He wanted to shake her. Hell, he wanted to do a lot of things to her.

He rubbed his forehead instead. He knew the store was not just her livelihood, but her family’s, also.

“Promise me you’ll be careful? Maybe keep the front door locked, and have your guard unlock it as people approach? It’ll give the guard a few seconds to scan for anything suspicious, and your customers can feel like they’re getting golden glove treatment, or whatever.”

She laughed at him. “You mean white glove treatment.”

He scowled. “Whatever. I want you to be safe.”

“I want you to be safe, too,” she said, coming forward, putting her hand to his face this time.

John knew he was going to let this woman down. He’d probably already gotten her hopes up that there could be something real between them.

He put his hands to hers and pulled them away from his face. “Ava, I need you to know, I can’t…” he cursed under his breath. “This can’t be more than sex between us. It can’t go anywhere other than that.”

She shocked the shit out of him when she grinned and nodded, her eyes sparkling like he’d just told her something fantastic. “I know. Isn’t it great?”

He did one of those comical double takes. “It is?”

If his chest tightened a little at that, he didn’t acknowledge it.

Her amusement was clear. “Yes.” She looked around, as though she thought her dad or sister might be listening in, and lowered her voice. “We were always great in bed together. I don’t have time or room in my life for a real relationship. You don’t want to get married again. It’s perfect.”

John nodded.

Why the hell did it sound like the exact opposite of what he wanted when it was coming from her mouth?

She came up and pressed her lips to his again, just a brief kiss.

She stepped back, gone before he could wrap his arms around her and pull her in for something more. For something that might start to get at what he needed from this woman.

“Go and rest. I can see you need it. And be safe out there. Let me know when this is over, okay?”

“Yeah,” John said, taking a step back. Yeah, he thought. Over. He needed to close this case so he could come back to her.

He watched to be sure she slid the deadbolt in place before he walked away.

He had one more cause to add to the long list of reasons these guys needed to be stopped, fast.