Chapter 27
Reed
I keep the grin where she can see it, that’s the face.
Under it, my Alpha has his hackles up. Somebody walked onto my property and put their hands on our stuff.
But Luna’s standing six inches off my shoulder with a hard hat sliding down over her bun, and she won’t spend one second of her time stressing out. Not while I’m breathing.
So I keep my game face on. Time to catch a saboteur and have fun doing it.
I set the steel bolt down on the corner of the nearest pallet, and pull my clipboard off the seat of the Gator, tipping my head at the mess of premium bins.
“Come on, Chief. Let’s look at the evidence.” I nod at the floor between us. “Watch your step.”
I guide her around a split pallet board, my palm resting against her elbow. Even through the sleeve of her jacket, the touch sends a jolt straight up my arm.
Damn. She does that to me just by existing.
“So,” she says, stepping up to the stacked bins. “Walk me through it.”
Straight to business then. I drop the banter for a second and scan the bins, then point to a gap in the staging.
“See that?” I step into the space. “Whoever moved these didn’t know the system. Look at the numbers.” I hand her the clipboard.
She studies the page, then the bins.
“Dock four,” she says. “These were supposed to be staged at dock four.”
“Right. But they got pulled off the dock-three line. And stacked three high.” I tap the top bin. “Nobody on my crew stacks three high in this bay. Ceiling’s too low, the forks can’t top-load that without coming down on somebody’s head.”
She’s quiet a second, working it. “Okay. So this isn’t random.” She taps the clipboard. “They moved the premium bins off their line so the wrong truck loads them. If this shipment goes out like this, two of your buyers get the wrong stuff, and you get hit with cancelled contracts.”
“Look at you, Chief.” I grin. “A natural.”
I step closer, letting my shoulder brush hers. The honey-and-gooseberry scent thickens, and for one second I want to back her against the crates and taste her.
Down, I tell my Alpha.
“Could it be one of your crew?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “None of them did this.” I gesture at the stack. “Anybody here knows better than to go three high. Whoever did this comes from the outside.”
She nods and crouches at the base of the mis-stacked bins, head tipped, reading the floor.
I watch her instead of the bins. The line of her back as she leans in. She’s gotta be walking around wearing my scent now, and she doesn’t even know it. I feel stupidly pleased about it.
“Reed,” she says, her voice quiet.
“Yeah, baby?” The name slips out before I can stop it.
She doesn’t blink and just points at the ground, nudging a drift of woodchips aside with the toe of her boot. “Tell me your crew wears these.”
I crouch next to her. There, pressed into a damp patch of soil where the chips had it covered: a footprint. Small. Narrow. A flat rubber sole with a diamond tread.
A sneaker. Size eight, maybe.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a man’s foot,” Luna says. She’s still studying it, head tilted.
“Agreed,” I say, my throat suddenly dry as I stare at the tread. “Definitely a woman or a teenager. Excellent work, Inspector.”
Luna is still crouched there, one corner of her mouth ticking up. “You’d be surprised how much of a librarian’s job is just obsessive research and noticing the details everyone else glosses over.” She rises, brushing chips off her knees.
I don’t bother hiding the pride. Or the heat rising up my chest. Damn if competence isn’t the sexiest thing she’s pulled on me yet. I lean in until our noses are an inch apart. “I’m keeping you on retainer.”
Her breath catches, her honey and gooseberries spiking.
“What’s the retainer fee?” she says, quiet.
“We’ll negotiate.”
She lets me hang there a second... then she steps back, the look on her face shifting. Sharper.
“I think whoever did this is coming back,” she says. “Probably today.”
“What makes you say that?”
“People who do this once always do it twice. In my line of work, if someone steals a book, you don’t go chasing them down.” A small, dry smile. “You just wait until they come back and try do it again.”
I look at her. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“I work at a public library,” she says, deadpan. “You’d be amazed at the crime syndicates that operate in the stacks. We had someone stealing paperbacks of the same Regency romance series for six months. He’d slide them into a giant trench coat and walk right past the desk.”
I stare at her. “A Regency romance thief?”
“He was very dedicated,” she says, tipping her head. “But I caught him.”
“How?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” she smirks, gesturing toward the utility cart. “Let’s use that trusty Gator of yours, get back to the cottage, and grab a few things. I’ll show you exactly how a librarian catches a fae.”