had. Mom usually had. She achieved varied success with others, and it looked like none whatsoever with Quint Foster.
Aw, she’d really like for him to find her adorable. If not him… She remembered the other officers she’d seen when they’d come in. Good-looking, every last one of them. Hopefully, between work, she’d manage some play on this trip, too.
“Along with a pair of binoculars, a map of the city, a camera, a large cup of coffee and an empty bag from Ted’s Doughnuts.”
JJ was impressed that Quint had been so observant. With those dark glasses he’d had on, of course, she couldn’t see where his gaze was directed, but it had felt as if it was on her the whole time. Obviously not.
“Didn’t take her long to figure out where the best doughnuts in town are, did it?” Douglas murmured.
Though the comment wasn’t directed at her, she responded with a little shrug. “Cops and doughnuts. What can I say?”
He smiled briefly at the stereotype, then opened the laptop and began clicking away. She’d never had a chief who was anywhere near her age, but she would bet Sam Douglas was even a few years younger. He didn’t wear a uniform—Chadwick always wore a uniform with four shiny gold stars on his collar to ensure everyone recognized him as the head honcho—but instead was dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. A soft-looking gray cowboy hat was on the file cabinet to the left of his desk, leading her to expect cowboy boots on his feet if she could get a peek.
You’re definitely not in Carolina anymore, JJ.
“Okay, Detective Logan—we don’t stand on ceremony much around here. All right if I call you JJ?”
She nodded.
“I’m Sam, and he’s Quint.”
Wow. She’d never had a chief who was that casual, either. Even the last one, her mentor, had never invited her to use his first name. He’d believed in good work relations, but there was a line that should never be crossed.
“You didn’t ask what we know, but we’ll tell you anyway. You have the address of the house Maura’s renting. You know she drives a little red car that cost more than a lot of people’s houses around here. I’ve never met her myself, but my officers have handled four disturbance calls at that address for loud parties and given her three—no, four citations for speeding.”
Disturbance calls at that big house at the end of that lonely street. Those must have been some parties.
“Quint gave her three of those tickets.”
She shifted her gaze to Quint. He hadn’t changed position—he still leaned against the table—but his posture seemed fractionally more rigid, his expression harder. She was half surprised he could open that taut jaw to add, “I also answered one of the disturbance calls with Ben.”
Sam frowned. “Why was Ben answering a disturbance call?”
“He was in the office when it came in. Loud party, forty or so people, lot of booze.”
JJ called to mind the area across the hall that served as reception, dispatch and detective squad, including a very tall, very broad-shouldered muscular man. “I’m going to guess Ben is the big guy out there at one of the desks.”
Sam nodded. “Six foot four, solid muscle, can make you confess to anything just so he’ll go away and stop looking at you. No matter how drunk people are, they never want to take on Ben Little Bear.”
She envied that. When she was in uniform, all the drunks had wanted to take her on. She’d been forced to perfect her combat skills and had developed quite an affection for her nonlethal resources: baton, pepper spray and Taser.
“When was the last time you saw Maura?” Sam asked Quint.
“The day I gave her that last ticket.” Quint’s scowl was slightly more fierce than his normal expression. “About two months ago. She was doing forty-eight in a twenty.”
JJ smiled faintly. “That sounds like Maura. The day her parents gave her that car, she got stopped for speeding in town and again in the county. Notice I said stopped, not ticketed. The officer and the deputy let her go when they realized who she was. I wrote her father a ticket once. Got called back to the station and royally chewed out.”
“Must be nice to have so much influence.” Cynicism made Quint’s voice dry as parched sand.
“I can live without it.” She crossed her legs and let her foot tap air a few times. “At home, we have a dispatcher named Carla and a patrol officer named Patrick who know everything there is to know about everyone in town.”
Quint and Sam exchanged looks before the chief answered. “That would be Morwenna and Lois. Quint, why don’t you show her the conference room and I’ll get them.”
Quint straightened to his full height easily and fluidly. She, on the other hand, felt the stiffness of two days’ driving and another few hours’ sitting. While she was here, she needed to make time for regular runs, long walks or—her gaze slid from his golden hair over his chest, his narrow waist and narrower hips, down long legs to the black tactical boots he wore—ah, yes, physical activity of some sort.
Without realizing it, she’d registered at some point that, unlike Sam, he wore no wedding ring. She had only two hard-and-fast rules in her romantic life, and one was that she didn’t dally with married men. She’d pulled enough enraged wives off their husbands’ girlfriends, hands filled with hair and fingernails leaving deep gouges, to know the best sex in the world wasn’t worth that.
The other rule was that her butterflies had to twirl and her heart had to pitter-patter.
Check on the butterflies. And—she caught the slight increase of her heart rate—check on the pitter-patter.
But what were the odds she’d be here long enough to thaw him out?
Showing JJ to the conference room took about five seconds: out the door, turn right, go to the next door. Quint flipped on the overhead, then went to open the blinds on the tall windows. The light flooding the room illuminated the intricate crown molding, original to the building, along with the battered table, cast-off chairs and unwanted desks bunched against one wall.
“Interesting room,” she remarked as she made her way to a chair. “The marble floor is gorgeous, and the moldings are incredible.”
“But everything in between sucks.”
“Except for the windows, pretty much.” She sat at the far end, where sunlight filtered through the blinds. The position would give her a good look at everyone else while she would be shadowy when they looked back. He bet she had all kinds of similar tricks up her detective’s sleeve.
He should ask Sam if he could go now, but Sam hadn’t included that in his instructions. For whatever reason—probably because Maura lived in Quint’s patrol district—he wanted Quint to know all this, and because Quint was damn grateful to have his job, he was going to obey. But he’d still rather be outside, alone in his vehicle, with nothing for company but the radio broadcasts.
JJ’s chair was pushed back from the table, leaving her room to cross her legs again. Her spine was straight, barely touching the back of the chair, and except for the heavy jacket, her clothing clung, shirt hugging her breasts just short of straining the buttons, denim stretching over her thighs. Most women he knew with that kind of posture had suffered through years of ballet or gymnastics. He tried to imagine her in leotards or tights, tumbling or pirouetting on her toes, but the image wouldn’t form. Swinging a baseball bat or breaking a board with her bare foot seemed far more likely.
She brushed her hair back, and sunlight flashed on a stone on her left hand. It was on her ring finger, fiery orange set in gold. A nontraditional engagement or wedding ring, or just a piece of jewelry she liked? He wouldn’t find it hard