Page 14 of Blood Bearon
There was only one area of the warehouse she hadn’t explored yet, and Rachel moved there now, trying to push her feelings of betrayal aside. She was furious at herself for trusting him, for thinking he would actually act like her work partner. How dumb could she be? He’d taken full advantage of her and left her vulnerable.
“Clear,” she said after exploring the final area, not that it mattered. There was nobody around to hear it.
“Detective.”
Rachel shrieked in surprise and whipped around, gun coming up to bear on the source of the voice.
“It’s me, Detective,” the stranger’s voice said, even as a hand shot out and stopped her arm hard. His grip was like steel wrapped around her wrist, immobilizing it so strongly, she couldn’t even shake it.
“Let go,” she snapped.
The pressure released and he stepped out of the shadows. “Everything okay?” he asked cheerfully.
“I nearly shot you again, you idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
He smiled, revealing twin rows of pearly white teeth. “I went around the back. Then I came back in. You were so lost in thought, I walked right up to you and you never noticed.”
“You went around the back,” she repeated, trying to contain her anger. This is why she shouldn’t work with amateurs. Idiot. “Just like that?”
“Yes.”
She sighed, rubbing her temples with her middle finger and thumb of her free hand while holstering her weapon. Then she switched to massaging the stress area with both hands for ten long seconds before speaking again.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
The big man came up short. “Uhhhh.”
“That’s what I thought. If you want to work together, then you have to do just that. You have to workwithsomeone. You don’t just go off and do your own thing. You have to communicate. To build trust.” She threw up her hands. “Why am I even telling you this? You’re probably the one responsible for all this. You should be in the back of my car!”
“You seem stressed.”
Rachel wanted to shriek, but she bit her lip, keeping quiet. The man was infuriating with his calmness and direct words.
“Do I?” she asked. “Maybe it’s because I’m trying to clear out a crime scene, where a bad guy could be lying in wait to hurt me, and you jump out of nowhere and scare me.”
“But there’s no danger,” he said cheerfully. “Everything is okay.”
“Ididn’t know that!” This time she did lose her cool a bit. “How can you say it’s safe?”
“Why? Because I made sure of it,” he said, the statement so plain and justified that she almost believed him.
“Right.” Walking past him, she exited the warehouse, giving the little office area at the front another quick glance, but nothing seemed out of place. A more thorough investigation would have to wait until things in the rest of the town were more under control. For now, she needed to get back to her car, cancel the Fire response and move on to the next place she was needed.
Walking outside, she saw her car.
“What the fuck?!” she shouted, her self-control slipping as she saw the damage to the door, which was ajar. “What did you do?”
“Don’t worry about that, Detective, I’ll pay to have it fixed.”
“Damn right you will.” Rachel turned away, forcing herself to go through the meditative breathing rituals she’d learned years before, pushing out the stress. The seeming nonchalance that this man took toward her job was beyond infuriating. She’d worked extremely hard for this position and wasn’t about to let him flush it all away.
“You know what,” she said weakly. “Just go away. Please. Leave. Go back to your headquarters or something. I’m not arresting you anymore. I just want you gone. Far away.”
“Oh.” To her surprise he seemed genuinely crestfallen by her words. “What are you going to do?”
Despite her best judgment, she answered him. “Probably work the rest of the night.Alone,” she said, stressing the word. “I suspect every cop, retired cop and security guard in town is being called in to handle this.”
“I thought you were off duty?”
