Page 101 of Three for a Girl

“You all right?”

Chad glanced at Ally. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m fine … just a bit … I don’t know.”

“Disappointed? We didn’t get to take him in after all. You’re first case here and it’s not gonna end with an arrest.”

Chad frowned, pondering. Was he disappointed he didn’t get to snap handcuffs on Andrew and read him his rights?

No, that wasn’t it.

He was disappointed Andrew had been in the grey.

Giving Romeo the green light to extinguish the life of vermin wasn’t going to be as black and white as he hoped, no one was one hundred percent evil or one hundred percent good. Keeley had told him that the first time they’d met.

She was right.

“Don’t worry. Next time you’ll get an arrest. You’ll get to have your moment in the interview room. That’s my favorite part.”

Chad quirked his eyebrow. “The interview room?”

“When you lead it, there’s nothing quite like it.”

“I’ve never led it.”

“You’ve been in there, though, right?”

Chad shrugged. “I’ve watched—”

“You’ve never experienced that moment?”

“It’s all about the chase, the cuff, the rights—”

“That’s the foreplay. Foreplay is good, necessary, but it’s not what sends you packing with a smile on your face and a tingle through your body.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going…”

“You have all the evidence laid out and you pile it on. Piece after piece until they know they are well and truly fucked, you’ve got them. The tension twists and twists. There’s this look in their eye when they know it’s over. They’ve lost, and you’ve won. It’s … it’s…” Her lips lifted into a wide smile. “It’s the orgasm of detective work.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

The ambulance in front of them blared their siren and Ally switched their police lights on to go with it. The press had gathered outside the hospital, blocking the road. They moved aside, but held their cameras high, attempting to take photos through the ambulance’s windows.

“Assholes, aren’t they.” Ally said.

A man turned his attention towards her and Chad, snapping their picture. Ally responded by giving him a rude gesture with her fist.

She continued to follow the ambulance and parked in front of it in the ambulance bay. The back doors were thrust open, and Andrew was wheeled into the hospital, his destination, the mortuary.

“Does he have any family?” Chad asked.

“He and Zara’s mother divorced two years. Grief tore them apart.”

“It’s hard to know who to feel sorry for in this case.”

“No one. That’s not our jobs. We find out what happened, and why, then hold that person accountable. You can’t get emotional, you know that.”

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