Page 13 of Welker

The occupant of the second car walked toward them, huffing out a laugh and looking…smarmy. “Christ. Leave it to Bliss. This place is a fucking mess.”

Who were these pricks, that they derided Moira before even seeing to her well-being?

Welker couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “Yeah. Clearly, she did it on purpose; had that MC make a shambles of her shit just to yank your chains. And all this after getting targeted for the job she did for your department, single-handedly breaking open the 227 MC case, then testifying against the assholes.” He barely drew a breath. “Luckily, she’s smart; and figured out on her own that they might be coming, even though her department should have had her back, so she was able to get up onto her roof and avoid being murdered.”

Yeah. He’d said “murdered”. There was no way he was softening his rhetoric for these douchebags.

Pickenstahl scoffed. “Bliss can take care of herself.” He clearly gave no weight to Welker’s words. Welk looked over toward Moira where she remained silent, but it warmed something inside him to stick up for her.

“It’s a good thing she’s more than competent,” Welker continued in a growl, “since nobody from your department thought she might need surveillance.”

Sin pranced over from where she’d been listening.

Hah. She was pissed, too. Welk could tell by her gait. She gave the pair of sheriffs a wide smile that was so blatantly fake, it almost made him wince. “Whatdaya say boys? Can I show you two around, now that the hard stuff’s been taken care of?” She batted her eyes at them as if she hadn’t just insulted their pitiful asses.

Welker could see the pair bristling, but with one glance at Mason’s granite face, they turned their resolute, but irritated countenances to Sin. “Sure. We need to take pictures,” the deputy finally agreed.

“Excellent,” Sin replied. “Let’s start inside.”

Smart woman.

Sin knew if she let them linger in the yard any longer, they might say something that would piss off Welker to the point of him becoming…physical. Explosions with Welk rarely happened, but the team knew that once his uber-long fuse was finally spent, the resulting blast could equal the damage of a ten-megaton bomb, and clearly Sin was taking no chances.

The trio crossed over the threshold into Moira’s house.

“Close one,” Mason teased him.

“Not close enough,” Welk growled.

“You’re going to get written up,” Moira grunted. “Pickenstahl doesn’t like anybody stepping on his toes.”

“Well, he’s an asshole, and he can waste as much ink as he wants. I don’t give a fuck.” Welker wouldn’t apologize, and he was shocked… No, amazed when one corner of Moira’s lips actually turned up. “You agree, huh?” he asked with a grin, the anger that had been bubbling within him laid dead-to-rest by her uncustomary quirk.

“Off the record, yes,” she agreed, then cleared her throat. “On the record, no comment. But, uh, thanks for coming to my defense, LT,” she managed.

Welker gaped. Had Moira just offered him kudos?

He felt like he’d just won the biggest fucking prize at the county fair.

CHAPTER FIVE

Moira didn’t know what the fuck had just happened. First, she’d agreed—albeit silently—to stay at Welker’s. Second, she’d actually thanked him for sticking up for her. If she didn’t know better, she’d say she’d suffered a blow to the head. This wasn’t her; accepting help, letting her feelings show.

And now…?

What the fuck? She and Welk would simply ride off into the sunset…or sunrise as the case would soon be?

Dammit. Maybe it was her fatigue getting the better of her after being awake and vigilant all night.

Her fantasies were not reality.

But what if, just this once, she let her guard down?

Moira needed to admit it to herself. She liked Welker. A lot. But that aside, she was also damned curious about his living situation. She may have, a time or two, out of mild curiosity, driven by his property and glimpsed—from afar—an A-frame that was under construction several hundred feet back from the street.

She knew that he’d moved because, living in the same direction out of town, she’d spied his truck a time or two, turning into the driveway. She’d also seen lights on at the property after dark, making the assumption that he’d given up his digs in town for the more private location. She’d asked Mason about it, and he’d confirmed her suspicions.

The triangular shaped building she’d been able to glimpse as the leaves of summer had dropped, made her think of ski-lodges or Swiss chalets. Not that she had any experience with either of those, but she watched TV.

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