Chapter 5 #2
“I’m sure that going out with me isn’t considered normal.” He said that he thought that they could have a good time. “I’m sure we will, but you said that with a cook, you’d be eating at home more. What happened to that?”
He laughed. It was fun when she put him in his place, and he wanted to get to know her better. The restaurant aside. There were things about her that he knew already, but he wanted to know it all.
Getting her to get dressed, the two of them decided to have burgers at the local joint. She didn’t have anything to get dressed up in, and he wanted to get that for her. He knew that she’d not like to be a kept woman, but he was willing to go broke to make her happy.
It occurred to him that he could easily fall in love with Hailey.
She was everything that he’d ever hoped for in someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
As they were leaving the house, it occurred to him that he was about halfway in love with her, and he had to stop moving or trip himself up.
Looking at her when she asked if he was all right, all he could think about was that she could be the one he spent the rest of his life with.
“I’m fine. Something just occurred to me.
” She nodded but didn’t ask, and he was glad.
It was much too soon for him to confess his love for her, and he didn’t want to scare her off.
He decided to be careful from now on until things were settled with the restaurant.
He knew that he could wait that long and was happy that he’d been able to come to some conclusion.
“I just realized that it’s been a while since I’ve eaten and I’m starving. ”
“I am too. I’ve been wanting a burger and fries for a while now and can’t wait to sink my teeth into one. I might even have a milkshake while I’m at it.” He said that she should. “I might. It depends on whether they can make it with chocolate. I so love chocolate milkshakes.”
Dinner was fun, and they both ate more than he thought they would.
She had a second burger, and he had three.
He’d not realized how hungry he’d actually been until he took his first bite.
Skipping breakfast and lunch in favor of getting some work done, he decided not to do that again.
It was fun getting work done, but he was too hungry to enjoy his dinner with a beautiful woman. And she was too.
After dinner, the two of them decided to walk around town.
They’d walked to town together, and it was fun walking around the little town.
They made their way to the Dari Bar to have an ice cream cone.
She hadn’t had a milkshake with dinner, and she told him this was her way of making up for it.
They walked around town holding hands, and he thought that was just about the best thing that could have happened.
Taking her to the door, he turned her into his arms and kissed her.
~*~
Daniel couldn’t believe that he was in jail.
He’d never had anything in his life but a parking ticket when he’d been sixteen.
Now here he was locked up in a jail cell with his other officers, like he was nothing but a criminal.
When his lunch was brought to him, he tried talking to the agent who brought it to him.
“Hey. Can you tell me what’s going on? I’m the chief of police around here, and nobody is telling me anything about why I’m in jail.
” The man grunted at him and turned away.
“I’m going to be suing all of you when I get out of here.
There isn’t any reason that I should be in jail at all.
You’re making a mistake, I hope you know that. ”
Still nothing. One of his officers told him to be quiet before he got them all in trouble, but he shouldn’t be here. He just knew that it had to do with that thing out at the restaurant, and he was going to make sure that heads rolled about it other than his own.
He’d made mistakes. He knew that. In addition to moving the bodies around—he shouldn’t have done that, he knew—he also messed up the crime scene that was well over his head when he walked in on all the bodies and blood.
Then, when he’d found the meth in the basement of the place, he should have called someone in who could take care of that for him.
But he’d already messed up the scene by walking all over the place, and he would have been in trouble had they come in then and seen what he’d done.
Christ, he was going to be in big trouble if they figured out only a third of what he’d done to the crime scene.
He’d let his officers run around like they were at home.
Eating what had been prepared and fixing themselves something more.
He’d thought it was a routine homicide and that he’d be able to figure it out in no time.
But the meth…well, that was going to get him arrested.
Or, since they’d already arrested him, get him in prison time.
He wouldn’t make it in prison; he was just too pretty for that.
“It’s that damned woman named Candy Petree.
” She was the only one left alive at the scene that day.
Gloria Simon had been the only other person who had been left alive in the whole scene, and she’d overdosed not three days later.
He figured that she had taken a great deal of meth for herself or to sell and had done herself in.
Candy was the only one, besides his men, who would have known half the mistakes he’d made with the bodies.
And they’d better not say a word to anyone, or he’d have their asses on the firing line.
It didn’t bode well that the FBI was in his offices right now.
Nor did it seem to be a good thing that they were asking questions of his men.
He’d been drilling into them that the way he handled things was the right way, and they’d better not be giving him any backtalk about it. He was in charge, damn it.
Daniel ate his meal but held onto the tray so that he could try again to talk to the agents.
They had to know something, and he wanted to know what they did.
He’d never been so worried about anything in his life.
When the officer next to him, he’d never learned his name, thinking that he was going to fire them all and have his own crew in the stationhouse, was taken away, he knew that he was going to be in big trouble with the law.
Not to mention all the men who had been out there with him on that fateful morning.
The call had come in that there were shots being fired at the Golden Sheep. He’d gone down there with five men, thinking it was going to be a prank or something. As soon as he walked through the door and saw the first of many bodies, he called in the rest of his men to follow him inside.
The bitch Candy had been there before them, and they just shoved her into the restaurant right along with them.
Mistake number one, as far as he was concerned.
Number two had come when he held her on the floor next to the body of the dishwasher for so long, then letting her go.
He’d asked for her name and address, but even that had been a fuck up.
She would have seen that the bodies had been moved; hell, they were moving them out of the way to get to the stove to cook themselves steaks on the hot grill.
And since there was no way for them to get a good look at the body in the dishwashing area, he’d had it moved to the kitchen so that he could see it better.
That was mistake number five thousand, he thought in the grand scheme of things.
And that had been in the first half hour of him being in charge of the situation.
When they came to pick up the trays, the officer beside him still hadn’t returned.
Asking the agent again about the reason he was arrested got him nothing.
He was trying to think of ways to get himself out of trouble since he’d found the meth area that they were using, and going out to the scene daily had netted him nothing but questions on how he’d done things.
Once he started lying, the deeper he got into it.
Telling them that the bodies were like that when he arrived was something he wished he’d never said.
Now he had to stick with it, or he’d be in prison for sure.
It was late when the officer returned. Asking him what had been said to him got him no answers, so he resorted to threats.
He was still his boss, and he’d better be talking.
It didn’t get him anything either when the man just snorted at him.
Like he knew something that Daniel didn’t.
He probably did. Daniel was in the dark about everything that was going on right now.
Lights out was at ten, and when they were plunged into darkness at that time, he knew that he was safe for one more night. There had been a total of fifteen officers of his who had been arrested; five of them had been brought in from their homes.
No one was fighting the arrests, for which he was nervous, and he thought that if they only kept their mouth shut until it was his turn to talk, he could get himself out of this thing.
Just tell them that they’d done it all wouldn’t look good, it meant that he couldn’t control his men, but he’d be off the hook.
Or at least he hoped so. He just didn’t want to be in jail with all this time on his hands.
It was making him think of things that he’d done wrong, and there were just too many to count at the moment.
Christ, he was going to prison for sure if things turned out the way his mind was working on them to be.
Not sleeping well, he didn’t know how they expected him to sleep with all this on his mind; he was up long before the meals were brought to him.
The man in the cell next to him was taken away again, and he thought of all the things that he could be saying about what had happened out at the restaurant.