Page 141 of Gunner

Chuckling, I went to my car parked in the driveway. I’d barely settled in and revved the engine when Gunner walked toward me with a paper bag in his hand. He was barefoot and bare chested like a Viking god with his hair ruffling in the breeze. His jeans rode low on his hips, showing off his body in a manner that woke up something primal and dormant inside me.

This man is mine.

Was this what they meant by humans being evolved from animals? Because at that moment, I wanted to mark my territory like a hominid.

“Dammit, Ben, unless you want me to drag you out here and fuck you across the hood of your truck, stop looking at me like that.”

I blinked, reached for my seat belt, and buckled myself in. “I was only looking at your tattoos.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, right.” He poked his arm through the open window and dropped the paper bag into my lap.

I opened the bag and found powdered sugar donuts. “Donuts because I’m a cop?”

“Donuts because you forget to eat, and they’ll give you energy to get through the day.”

I stuck my head through the window, grabbed his neck, and pulled him down to me for a kiss. He might be a vile citizen, a cop’s worst nightmare, but he was the sweetest, most attentive lover. He slipped his hand into my hair and deepened the kiss, his tongue dancing with mine in a slow, erotic tango.

“You should go. Now,” he murmured against my lips.

I took his hand from my neck and frowned. How had he gotten bruises on his knuckles? I hadn’t noticed them earlier. Had he been in a fight?

“What’s this?”

“Nothing you’d be proud of, so best not to ask.”

“Gunner—”

“Look on the bright side. I didn’t kill anyone.”

But had he left someone maimed? His two options for dealing with the man who’d stabbed me weighed heavily on my mind. Either would have been horrific.

“Stop thinking so much. Go to work and let me handle the things you can’t.”

Slowly, I nodded. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

I backed out of the driveway, my heart heavy. Gunner was proving to be the sweetest, most considerate lover, but he was the bane of a cop’s existence. And I was a cop. Could I really turn a blind eye to his back alley dealings?

I munched on a donut on my way to the mayor’s office. He’d made it clear he needed a briefing first thing today, and I would need all the energy I could muster to get through that meeting. The guy’s campaign hung in the balance, and, in turn, he was intensifying the pressure on me to solve the womb snatchers who were selling babies.

In the parking lot of city hall, I inhaled deeply, taking a couple of minutes to gather myself before I had to face the mayor. I retrieved my phone. Shit, I hadn’t turned it on since charging it. I powered it on. Notifications came in one after the other. As I swiped each away, I opened Alice’s. She had texted me about when she would be in Smoky Vale for her next doctor’s appointment. Another notification was for a voice mail. I didn’t recognize the number, so I punched in the digits to check who had left me a message.

“Chief Witter, it’s Anders from IT. I had a breakthrough in the information you passed on to me. It’s a lot. No wonder they encrypted this shit the way they did. Anyway, I’m off tomorrow, but I’ll drop by the station sometime around noon to explain everything to you.”

Excitement bubbled to the surface. My hands actually shook as I dialed in Anders’s number. The phone rang off to voice mail, so I left him one.

“Hey, Anders, it’s Chief Witter. I just received your call. I’m heading into a meeting with the mayor right now, but as soon as I’m finished, I’ll drop by to have that conversation with you. Also, don’t share the information with anyone.”

I got out of my car and hurried into city hall. Finally, a break. All those women who died deserved to be vindicated.

Don’t get ahead of yourself. It can turn out to be nothing.

The mayor’s secretary announced me, and the man immediately asked me in. He was pacing in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows with an impressive view of the city skyline. Light beamed in, falling on the enormous mahogany desk that commanded the center of the space.

Mayor Getty ended his call with a curse and a glare at me as if I was the one on the other end of the line.

“What do you have for me, Chief Witter?” he barked. “And for the love of god, don’t tell me nothing.”

All I had was the suspicion that someone from the police force was involved, but I couldn’t let that assumption slip without a drop of evidence.

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