Chapter 2
Two
Gina
Gina barely felt the January frost as she leaned her back against her car.
DCI Brodie Fraser leaned in and slowly kissed her goodbye in the dark corner of the station car park.
His five o’clock shadow caught her chin.
She wanted to reach up and run her hands through his brown hair and draw him closer but she was outside her workplace and a chaste peck was all they could share.
Her heart already pined for him and he was still with her.
She glanced up at the window where all her colleagues were working, knowing she had to head in for a few hours to file the huge pile of paperwork on her desk.
She caught Jacob at another window, smiling.
He waved and she took a step away from Brodie.
It wasn’t a secret that she’d started seeing Brodie after the last case.
He didn’t even work out of their station but still, she didn’t want to discuss that element of her private life at work.
She hadn’t even told her daughter Hannah, scared she might jinx what they had.
It was early days but there was no denying that she craved his presence every moment of the day.
‘I miss you already.’ His warm hand was still holding hers and his light Glaswegian accent sent tingles through her. She gently let it go, knowing he needed to get home to Gloucester, ready for his early shift the next day. Gina was on the late shift.
‘Same. Roll on the weekend.’
He looked up and an almost sexy expression spread across his face. ‘You know what I’d like to do with you right now, Gina?’
She knew exactly what he’d like to do with her. It would be a repeat of earlier this evening and she tingled inside as she replayed it all in her head. Her face started heating up. ‘That will keep me going for my shift, now go before I quit this life and run off with you.’
He let out a laugh and began walking towards his car.
While watching him go, she undid her coat a little to cool down. No way was she going into the station looking flustered. Professional face on, Gina.
As she started walking in, she caught the back end of DCI Chris Briggs turning away from the window and she swallowed.
It hadn’t been her who broke up their relationship, it had been him and she’d been hurt.
He couldn’t deny her a chance at happiness, surely.
She shook that thought away, knowing she was overthinking everything again.
She hurried in out of the cold and headed up to her office.
While trying to file away the piles of paperwork that had built up on her desk, she straightened up the photo of Gracie, her granddaughter.
She’d enjoyed watching Gracie play the part of the Grinch’s assistant in her primary school Christmas play.
Hannah, her daughter, had emailed her the photo soon after and it now took pride of place on her desk, where Gina could see it every day.
Seeing Gracie looking so happy reminded her that there was some good left in the world.
Her phone beeped. It was Brodie, the man she’d been casually seeing since the last case where he took over as temporary DCI. He can’t have even left the car park yet. She couldn’t help but smile as she opened the message and imagined him saying the words to her.
Hello gorgeous. It’s been five minutes and I’m missing you already. I seriously can’t wait for Sunday. I really enjoyed being with you. You don’t know what you do to me, Gina. Xxx
The message made her pleasantly shudder.
The unknown path she was taking sent flutters through her stomach.
A smile formed on her lips as she hit reply.
It had been years since she’d felt anything close to this.
It was like all her senses had been awakened by Brodie.
This new relationship was with an amazing man and it was one she didn’t have to hide.
With Briggs working under the same roof as her, they’d kept it a secret when they had been a couple.
Brodie was novel and exciting. She replied.
I miss you too. I wish you lived closer, like on my doorstep. X
He was based in Gloucester, only about an hour’s drive, but that felt too far away when they both worked insanely long shifts. He was typing back, already.
I’m thinking about what I’d like to do with you…
She blushed as she read the rest. He was coming to stay with her on Sunday and it was going to be amazing.
She threw her phone on her desk as Detective Constable Harry O’Connor banged on her open office door with his big hammy fists.
His head shone as the light above caught it.
‘Alright, guv. I just thought I’d let you know that Mrs O is attending a patisserie course in Paris all week so any overtime, count me in.
’ He let out a sigh. ‘I miss her when she’s not at home.
You’d be doing me a favour. Night or day, I’m here to help. ’
Gina sat in her chair, hoping that her colleague couldn’t see that her cheeks had burnt up a little.
She cleared her throat and sat up straight.
‘How lovely, the course I mean, not her being away. I’ll see what we have and what comes in.
You’re first in line for all the hours. I know Jacob needs a break.
As for Mrs O and this course, I look forward to sampling some of her new bakes when she gets back. ’
‘And me. She’ll probably be making a million batches up in her unit next week. I’ll bring some in. I’m sure she’ll be looking for people to test them on.’ He glanced around. ‘Do you need a hand with all this?’ He pointed at the piles of paper on her desk.
‘No, I’m good.’ It was her mess and she was going to sort it out.
She’d been so busy, paperwork had taken a back seat.
There were books of notes that she needed to go through to work out what to throw away and what to file away.
‘And thanks, I’ll keep you posted regarding the overtime. Are you okay?’
He shrugged. ‘I hate going home to an empty house. We don’t really spend much time apart. I miss her but at least I’ll be even more excited to see her on Sunday. It’s like a part of me is missing.’
For the first time in ages, Gina felt the same. She had loved having Brodie in her bed this weekend and hated the thought of having to go home later and sleep by herself.
O’Connor checked his watch. ‘I best go, she’s calling me in ten minutes.’
Harry had always seemed close to his wife and that had been something Gina had, in the nicest possible way, not envied, until now.
Brodie was changing her life. Only now could she properly imagine what it might feel like to go home and be all loved up on a couch every night.
Marriage hadn’t been that for her. A flash of fear sent a shiver through her.
She only had to think of her dead ex-husband Terry and what he’d put her through.
The evil in him had seen her with a broken body on many occasions, but her broken view of relationships had lasted for years, way longer than the bruises.
His beatings had lived in her head on replay and they still surfaced now and again, but she’d try to quell that fear and anger by remembering how helpless he’d looked when he’d been dying at the bottom of her stairs after she’d pushed him.
But that was in the past and Brodie Fraser, he was her present and, dare she imagine it, her future.
For once, she wanted to be at home chatting to him on the phone when he got home and she hoped that nothing major would come in.
She had a love life to attend to and she wanted nothing to scupper it.
As she started flicking through a notebook, loud throat clearing startled her.
Detective Chief Inspector Briggs stood at the door frame. ‘Sorry, I could see you were busy.’
Was he going to mention her and Brodie? She hoped not. She already felt awkward around him. A part of her wondered what he really thought. Did he regret ending their relationship? Now wasn’t the time or place. Maybe there never was a time or place for that conversation.
His scent reached her nostrils. He always did smell good and that same scent used to be left on her pillows, long after he left her bed.
Her gaze met his but he gave nothing away.
It was as if they’d never been involved.
She had no idea how he could turn his emotions off so easily but it was exactly that that had made it so easy for her to move on.
She exhaled. That was unfair of her to think.
He wasn’t emotionally bankrupt, she’d seen many sides to him.
The last case had been hard for Briggs. He’d been the accused, then the victim, and now he was back at the helm, DCI of Cleevesford Police Station, heading up major crimes.
He’d done a good job of keeping her distant and she’d accepted that he wanted more than a bit of breathing space.
He’d had enough of her and the complications that came with her past. The last case had been the nail in the coffin for their secret relationship.
Briggs would always be a huge part of her life and past, and they shared their joint secrets.
He would always keep hers and she his. She smiled uncomfortably, knowing he’d seen her in the car park with Brodie. ‘That’s okay. Sit down, come in.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think anyone will be doing any sitting for the time being. We’ve had a report of a missing woman. I’m heading up the briefing in the incident room now.’
Her phone lit up and the message flashed on her screen.
Hey, sexy. Do you want me to go on and tell you how I’d like to…
She quickly turned it over. Briggs straightened up his tie and ran his shovel-like hand through his slightly overgrown hair, shifting it from his eyes, and turned to leave.
She went to call him back. Should she say something?
He’d obviously been hurt to see that message.
Or had he? She might have been reading too much into him leaving her office.
Maybe he didn’t care at all, and why should he?
It had been him who’d turned his back on what they had.
She grabbed a piece of paper, screwed it into a ball and threw it across her desk and straight into the wastepaper bin.
It wasn’t in her nature to upset Briggs.
She’d always care for him. As for the briefing, she only hoped the case was a straightforward one.
She hurried to the incident room to see Briggs standing at the board.
DC Harry O’Connor was seated next to DC Paula Wyre.
Her long black hair had been twisted into a plaited bun at the nape of her neck and she was pulling segments from what was probably a leftover Christmas clementine before popping them into her mouth.
Trainee DC Jhanvi Kapoor was sitting near the door with her coat on.
It looked like she’d been ready to leave before being called back.
Detective Sergeant Jacob Driscoll entered and grabbed a seat, then yawned.
Again, he had his coat on and his normally neat short back and sides stuck up on one side of his head.
It had been a long day for all of them and from the look on Briggs’s face, Gina knew that it was really just the start of their day.
They were all seated, except for Briggs.
‘We’ve had an incident reported by a woman called Ursula Grey.
She owns Chez Ursula’s, a pet grooming salon at the Ferndale shopping strip.
Mrs Grey left and went to her car, that’s when she saw that her employee Mindy Carson’s car was still parked up on the road by the woods.
Mindy Carson’s phone has been smashed. There’s blood smeared on the windscreen and her pet rabbit was left in a basket next to her car.
Mindy left the salon about six this evening, an hour before Ursula.
There have been major problems with the youths that hang around the centre.
When uniform arrived, the youths dispersed but Mrs Grey said that one of them threatened to burn her and her salon down just before she called us. Gina?’
‘Yes.’ She raised her brows.
‘You’re senior investigating officer. I want you to report anything you find directly to me. We need Mindy found as soon as possible.’
She nodded.
He continued. ‘Forensics are en route and uniform are searching the area. PCs Ahmed and Smith have already been dispatched to her house and she definitely isn’t home.
They said that Mrs Grey was upset. She said that Mindy would never leave her rabbit, and that he was her baby.
We are treating this as a possible kidnapping. ’
Gina glanced at O’Connor. ‘O’Connor and I can head to the scene.’ She glanced at Jacob. He was her usual sidekick but she also knew that he’d be thrilled at O’Connor stepping in as he also had a lot of paperwork and other tasks to catch up on. O’Connor smiled.
Briggs nodded. ‘Jacob, can you contact the council, see what CCTV they have in the area? We need to identify the youths.’
He yawned and nodded at the same time.
‘DC Wyre and Jhanvi, could you both look into Mindy Carson’s life, see if we can find out who her next of kin is? Check out her social media.’
Wyre nodded and bunched up the peel from her clementine, ready to throw it in the bin.
‘In the meantime, I’ll alert all units. She has to be somewhere. Depending on her injuries, she might not have much time. There was blood at the scene. She’s likely to be hurt and bleeding which means we need to act fast.’