Page 5 of Forged in Steele

“Thanks for your help,” Jared managed to utter and tried not to gape at the woman as he stepped into Coglin’s path to hold out his ID and introduce himself.

“Roderick Coglin, administrator.” He shook hands with Jared.

Jared turned his attention to the woman and forced himself to take a long look. He hadn’t been conjuring her up from his past. She was here in the flesh. The woman he’d once loved and left.

“Jared? FBI? Really?” She didn’t introduce herself, but she didn’t have to.

Bristol Steele, his former summer girlfriend, stood before him. Just as gorgeous as she’d been that summer. All tan and toned. Now a woman. A fine-looking woman.

Words failed him. What could he say?

He resorted to a nod and gave her another once over. A bulge under her suit jacket could only be a sidearm. Did she go into law enforcement after all? She hadn’t wanted to, but her family pretty much expected it.

“This is our jurisdiction.” She hadn’t possessed such confidence the summer when they’d served as counselors together at a Christian middle school camp.

“Our?” he asked.

“Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. I’m a deputy.” She met his gaze and held it. “How did the FBI get an agent here so fast?”

“I was visiting a friend in the other wing.”

“Someone who just had a baby?”

His tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth, so he nodded again.

She lifted perfectly plucked eyebrows over the big brown eyes that had mesmerized him under starry skies for two long months. “You’re not here in an official capacity, then?”

Right. Get it together.Your brief romance was how many years ago?Nine, ten? So what? Time didn’t seem to matter. She had the same ability to disarm him and turn him into a babbling idiot as she’d done back then.

You’re an FBI agent for Pete’s sake. Act like one.

He took a breath. “All it’ll take is a phone call to my supervisor, and we’ll be offering our services. I’ll also be lead agent.”

She tilted her head and eyed him. Did she think the FBI didn’t have a place in local investigations or was her non-verbal message a nod to their past? He would stick with the present because delving into the past would cause them both a world of hurt again.

“We have a missing baby,” he said, putting the self-assurance he’d earned in his four years as an agent into his tone. “We need to throw all resources at it and quickly.”

“I agree,” Mr. Coglin said. “We’re on our way to interview the mother. Please join us.”

“Hold up.” Jared lifted his hand. “No one goes in that room without booties, Can’t risk scene contamination.”

Coglin turned to the nurses. “One of you get surgical shoe covers, stat.”

The younger nurse scurried away.

“While we wait,” Jared said. “We can get started on arranging technical items. We’ll need to set up our command post for the initial investigation. Do you have a conference room we can use? One with access to a printer and copier would be best.”

“I can arrange that. Excuse me.” Coglin dug his phone from his suit pocket and turned his back on them to make the call.

Jared kept an ear out for Coglin’s conversation in case it revealed information he might need and gave Bristol a surreptitious look. Her professional suit resembled the ones female agents at his office wore, but her shoes looked like the designer types his sister liked to spend big chunks of her money on, and the heels were much higher than the women’s at work. Bristol had been wobbly as she walked, telling him she didn’t wear them all that often.

“You’re staring,” she said.

He liked her blunt approach. “Sorry. I just can’t believe it’s you.”

“Right back atcha.” Her tone dropped into the same husky pitch it had taken when they were making out down by the lake, and his heart tripped faster. She didn’t appear at all flustered. Or at least not as deeply as he was. Could be because he’d hurt her when he broke things off, and she was still angry.

He sure wouldn’t bring that up. He needed to get moving forward on finding out what happened here, and her lack of uniform told him she wasn’t on duty. “Are you here as a deputy or some other reason?”

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