I snorted. “Maybe it’s your gut telling you that whatever expedition you were sent here to suss out is a joke. And that fake cop that was just here was your primary objective.” I paused. “Was the other guy a fake cop, too?”
“I’m not,” the good cop from earlier said as he came in. “I was ‘just assigned’ that man as my partner today. Yet I wasn’t told that he was my partner from the head brass. Which should’ve been a red flag, but I’m on hour forty-nine of a twenty-four-hour shift, and my brain isn’t working in tip-top shape right now.”
I immediately felt sorry for him.
I knew that if I didn’t get the correct amount of sleep, I was a right cow.
I couldn’t imagine working a forty-eight-hour shift.
Or a twenty-four one, for that matter.
I’d learned early that a structured schedule, with eight full hours of sleep, was best for me.
The guy standing in front of me looked like he’d had eight full hours of straight coffee.
My heart would be going gonzo right now if that were me.
“I’m Officer Dremmel,” he said. “I’m with the sheriff’s department. You’ve met Jarome?”
I nodded.
“We’re here to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts last night,” he said. “We know that you’ve already told us what you know, but we’d like to go over it one more time.”
I rolled my eyes, then went over it not once, but three more times.
By the end of the third round, I stood up.
“I know that you’re trying to find justice for children,” I said stiffly. “But right now, I need a break. He needs to rest. I need to get the blood that’s caked in his hair out. I want to clean his scrapes. And you’re bothering me. Don’t make me call my daddy.”
Jarome shifted, his eyes narrowing.
“Your father wouldn’t happen to be Nico Pena in Kilgore, Texas, would he?” he asked, seeming slightly alarmed.
I tilted my head. “Yes. Why?”
He swallowed. “Your mother Georgia?”
I blinked. “Yes.”
Jarome sighed. “She’s telling the truth here. I don’t need any further questioning from her.”
I blinked. “You don’t? Why?”
He slowly lifted his arm, then did that sexy thing men do when they roll the sleeves of their dress shirts up. The thing that always drives women wild.
I was so entranced with the movements of his fingers that I didn’t notice the scar until he said, “Your dad saved me from my own kidnapping when I was four. My arm was caught in a car door and I was drug for thirty feet before I fell free. He sat with me in a hospital for over eight hours before my parents were able to arrive in a private plane he’d gotten for them from Michigan.”
I understood instantly.
“You’re him,” I said. “My dad had nightmares about you for years after that.”
Jarome nodded solemnly. “Not my favorite thing in the world to remember. But I do remember being thankful that Nico was the man that found me. And, saying that, I’m now more than convinced that you wouldn’t be marrying a man that would allow that.”
I looked over at Bruno’s comatose form.
“No,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t.”
Fifteen minutes later, after being informed that the man that’d been posing as a cop had been apprehended, they both left, leaving me alone with the man that I couldn’t stop staring at.