I fall into step a short distance behind her, my blood pumping, adrenaline punching through my veins. I let the damn cookie thing get personal. What the fuck was that? I don’t do personal on the job. And yet, at multiple times today, I’ve damn sure been thinking about pulling her hair free from the prim and proper braid she wears to work and kissing the fuck out of her. And I damn sure have my eyes on both our surroundings and her tight little heart-shaped ass.
One block. Two. Three. She weaves in out of the clusters of bodies that thicken as we near the DA’s office. I keep pace, ensuring that she is never out of sight, but then, I have back-up. Finn, a new guy, and an ex-Chicago detective himself, is in the surveillance van and I have Adam, king of disguises, and ex-Navy SEAL on foot. Both are connected to me with the earpiece in my ear that I turned off when talking to “the detective” as she wants to be called, and turned back on when we’d started walking. I told myself I’d done that to protect her privacy, but I’m not one to fool myself long. I’d done it to protect both of our privacy.
Jewel, Detective-Fucking-Carpenter, I mentally correct, crosses the street, and I’m not far behind her. She’s just reached the other side, stepped over the curb, and is now in the last block of her walk as I step into the road, when a homeless man lunges at her. I move quickly, doubling my pace to save her, but then she’s no damsel in distress. She uses a judo move I know she learned from her pre-karate college days and with a kick of her leg, the man is on the ground. She then reaches into the bag at her hip, tosses money down to him, and then moves along. As if it never fucking happened, which reminds me that she was a beat cop for two years before moving into a detective training program.
I head toward the homeless man, but a gut feeling, and the certainty that Adam is watching Detective Carpenter, has me pretending to throw something in a trash can, and then tie my shoe to watch him. He lifts to his elbows, grimaces at the money, and looks in Detective Carpenter’s direction. He then stands up and begins to follow her, pulling a phone from his pocket and placing it to his ear. He’s on that call all of thirty seconds when the phone is back in his pocket and he cuts right into an alleyway. Agile, comfortable, not a homeless person who is malnourished and weathered in ten different ways at all.
Suddenly, my gut feeling that there was more to that man and to the threat against the detective than meets the eye that I’ve had from the beginning is feeling pretty damn validated. “Did you see that?” I ask, speaking to my team through my mic.
“I’m on him,” Finn assures me.
I double-step and catch up to Jewel just as she reaches the door of the DA’s office building. I stop walking and step to a wall beside a bank to give her room to enter and head to the elevator. A man exits as she intends to enter, tall, dark, good-looking enough for a guy I decide, one I place around forty-ish, and he’s impeccably dressed. He greets Jewel, and it’s clear in the way his expression lights that he knows her but she doesn’t react with recognition, but rather the kind of obvious hesitation she didn’t show with me. But then, anger drove her reaction to me and damn she’s sexy when she’s angry.
Fuck.
Where did that come from?
I refocus. The man offers her a well-manicured hand, the kind that has never seen a hard day beyond a golf club and a bar in a fancy fluffed-up gym. I have an overwhelming desire to stop her from taking that hand. Maybe it’s that gut feeling about danger that I’ve had all week, or maybe it’s me having a thing for this woman that I shouldn’t have, but the result is the same: I don’t want her to touch him.
But she does.
Jewel shakes his damn hand and he holds onto her longer than he has to, giving her a smile. She doesn’t smile back, but rather tugs her hand free. She disappears into the building and the man grimaces, his expression almost angry. Adam sounds off in my mic. “I’ll find out who he is, but that leaves you the detective’s only coverage.”
“I’ve got her,” I say, pushing off the wall, reminded of telling her the same damn thing, when even that phrasing wasn’t as professional as I’d expect from myself.
I walk toward the building and I intentionally head straight for Mr. Manicured Hands. Once he’s almost directly in my path, with people are on either side of us, I knock the fuck out of his shoulder. He curses at me, and my lips curve with a satisfied smile. I cross the short space to the building and open the door. I walk inside the compact lobby that isn’t much but walls and an elevator, since security is on the upper level. I find the front and rear exit and until I have my team on board, I’m staying right here. I claim the only bench in the place and have a seat.
“Jacob.”
“Yeah, Finn,” I say.
“Our homeless guy walked into a restaurant. I followed and he’s not here. I checked the bathrooms and even the kitchen.”
“Did he exit a back door?”
“He could have exited the kitchen, but I have a hard time believing the joint would allow that. There’s only two options. I missed him and that didn’t happen. Or—”
“He changed clothes and is unrecognizable.”
“Exactly,” he says.
And just like that, my gut feeling is validated. I’m not ready to say that Detective Carpenter is under imminent threat, but I’m not willing to say she’s not at this point, either. Which means I’m not pulling my team back and I’m keeping her real damn close.