Chapter 4 #2
He looked at her through the rearview mirror and frowned. She quietly observed the scenery outside but there was a lost, wounded expression on her face. And he didn’t like it. Not one damn bit.
“You all right back there, rump shaker?”
She swung her head around so fast, air currents seemed to move within the enclosed space frenetically.
Pure rage darkened her face, and he was glad there was a barrier between them. He had no doubt that she would’ve lunged and flayed his face with her manicured claws.
He’d only intended to prod her anger; it was easier to take than that look of despair, but the hellion didn’t seem to know how to do anything in half measures.
There were a lot of things he’d walk away from, but a challenge wasn’t one, not today. Not from her.
She shifted her position, extending her legs along the back seat and dug through her gargantuan purse. Dismissing him.
In the less than five minutes it took him to drive to the station, she hadn’t said another word, so he didn’t say anything about her failing to put her seat belt on and sit in the damn seat correctly.
By the time they arrived at the station, Audrey was standing at the station entry, arms crossed and Roan beside her. Cutter rolled up in his cruiser, early for their shift change briefing before he ended his night shift.
Once Ms. Green was out of the car, Santiago watched her walk into the station and the three women disappeared inside. He didn’t need this fucking shit. He wanted an easy day. Didn’t matter that his impulsive actions were responsible for making it hard.
“A man would die a thousand deaths just to watch Ms. Lauren walk away from him,” Cutter said, leaning against the side of Santiago’s patrol car. He took a bite of a biscuit as he looked longingly at the closed door.
“Not this man,” Santiago stated, sliding on his shades.
“That’s all fine and well,” Cutter shrugged. “She’d probably end up killing you anyway.” He wasn’t one for abusing his subordinates, but in less than one hour he’d burned through his reserve of patience.
He gazed down at the older deputy licking syrup from his fingers and thumb.
“Imagine Ms. Katy’s reaction to you buying dinner and breakfast at Lou’s BBQ before coming home,” Santiago said. “Then imagine what it would be like to be on the chopping block for a forced retirement when these budget cuts the mayor is threatening comes down.”
Cutter snorted. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Santiago smirked and walked toward the building. “Every meal for the rest of your life, sitting across from your beloved wife’s nasty cooking sounds exciting, doesn’t it? See you inside.”
“You’re a low-down evil bastard, Santigo,” Cutter called out.
Santiago’s smile was dark. “Only on my best days.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” Ms. Audrey called out to Santiago as he walked into the station. “You’ve lost another neighbor up there on that cursed lake,” she said, hanging up the phone
“What’s the count now, like nine?” a red-eyed Jessie asked. The young deputy usually worked nights, but he’d come in for swing shift due to the accident and worked through the night.
“In your lifetime,” Ms. Audrey corrected. “But that place has been a revolving door of death since the Moor family massacre over two hundred years ago. I don’t know why they won’t just tear that house down.”
“Can y’all stop your yapping,” Clyde Mason snapped from the jail cell opposite the one Ms. Green had settled in. Santiago should’ve but wasn’t going to be the one to tell her she wasn’t under arrest. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Because people are stupid,” Cutter said from behind Santiago, ignoring Clyde. “There’s always a fool willing to get a lake house dirt cheap, even if it is haunted.”
“I’ve lived there on and off since I was born and neither I nor St. James have a problem with living up there.”
“Well, when you’re born to evil, evil don’t touch you,” Clyde chimed in from the back. “And the serial killer, he probably has sunk a trove of bodies in that lake.”
“Like Dexter,” Derry nodded. The kid watched too many crime dramas.
“What happened to the neighbor?” Lauren asked, reclining on the cot, multiple decorative pillows propping up her back. Her purse was beside her as she perused the Shrouded Times, the towns independent newspaper, like the Queen of Sheba.
Santi pulled off his glasses and looked at Audrey.
“Where the pillows come from, Audrey?”
“I got them out of the basement just in case Ms. Green made another appearance. Which she has. Faster than I thought.”
“You owe me twenty dollars,” Derry said to Cutter, sitting down on the opposite side of Audrey’s desk as the one he shared with Cutter was occupied.
“Sherry Lynn says her momma maybe had a heart attack, or was pushed and hit her head and died.”
“Morning folks,” Roan Gray said, stepping into the building carrying a box from Diedre’s Delicacies. Santiago glared at her. “Audrey called as I was driving in, said Ms. Green was back. I brought her some beignets. Audrey said you hadn’t eaten before you left the bed and breakfast.”
“Drop the damn box and grab your gear, Ms. Congeniality,” Santi snapped, taking the box and grabbing a beignet.
Everyone knew he had a sweet tooth, especially Roan, but did she ever bother to bring him beignets before shift, hell no.
Ms. Green’s treatment was now feeling like mutiny.
“There’s been another fatal incident at the Moor house. ”
Roan placed the box on her desk and strapped on her belt, vest, and coat.
Santiago’s gaze shifted to Lauren’s cell as she set her newspaper aside and stood, walking out of the cell and straight for him with a gaze as flat and empty as the bottom of a whiskey barrel.
The room grew tense, bloated with anticipation as she stopped in front of him, plucked the half-eaten beignet from his fingers and finished it. He blinked in surprise at his empty fingers, then turned his cold gaze on her.
But that wasn’t the end of it, oh no, not for this full-lipped, evil-tempered woman.
No, she finished chewing his food and grabbed his hand.
He let her because all he needed was a reason to lock her up legally.
Then she sucked the powdered sugar off his finger and thumb, picked up the box, and walked back to her cell—because that’s what unhinged fucking women apparently did.
He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe through the storm of emotions whipping through him.
He was no longer in the field of executing enemy combatants. He protected civilians. She was both, and he was having a damned hard time determining what to do with her. But she needed to be punished. He just had to figure out the most efficient, most torturous, yet still legal way.
“You have a bad habit of grabbing my shit, Sheriff,” the hellion called out. “Be very careful, because when I do the same, you might lose more than a beignet; maybe you might even lose your job. I won’t warn you again, mind your hands.”
He looked down at said hand. She’d sucked every trace of the sweetness away.
He tried to turn his mind away from the feel of her silky warm mouth, to ignore the burst of arousal that left him both confused and more irritated.
“You all right there, Sheriff?” Ms. Audry called out, full of dry mirth.
“Not g’on lie,” Cutter responded instead. “That was the most action I’ve had in two weeks and I’m just standing close to you.”
“Kinda nasty though,” Derry said. “No offense to you Sheriff, but Ms. Lauren, you don’t know where his fingers been.”
“In her goddamn mouth. His fingers been in her goddamn mouth. Let me get outta here and go say good mornin’ to my wife,” Cutter said, not bothering with shift change. “Later y’all.”
Santiago let him go because he didn’t trust his voice right now, not with his staff watching and waiting for his reaction.
Placing his shades back on the bridge of his nose, he grabbed his hat and spoke to Ms. Audrey directly because though she was admin, sometimes her word carried as much weight around here as his did. Somedays maybe more.
“Except for Clyde, I want this building cleared of all non-departmental personnel before I return.”
“So, I’m not under arrest?” the hellion drawled.
“Woman you’ve got your car, and you’ve got your breakfast. After you make your way out of my station it’ll be in your best interest to make your way on out of my town.”
“Duly noted,” she said, reclining back on her mound of pillows and opening her newspaper.
“Do I get to go home if I suck your fingers too, Sheriff?” Clyde called out. “Because I will.”
“Shut up,” Santiago snapped, then turned to Audrey. “I said what I said.”
He left the building without looking back, Roan close behind.
Opening the door of his cruiser, he sat down heavily and gripped the steering wheel.
“We got a body under questionable circumstances, League. You ready for a possible hunt?”
“I’m ready Roan. Let’s go hunting.”
He pulled off, heading back toward home.
Calmness descended now that he was out of the station, but the next twenty-four hours would determine if the calmness stayed and a certain outrageous woman left.
He didn’t like leaving his fate to chance, but if she was here when he returned…
he was probably gonna be sued. And fired.