“With Baxter, an APA, and child services. I needed to step out for a minute.”
The hands he’d balled into fists at his sides mirrored the outrage, the disgust in his voice.
“He keeps saying she was being a shithead for dancing around and laughing, that she cheated. So he shut her up.”
“The parents?”
“On their way back from some stupid island. Who leaves a couple of teenagers on their own for ten days, LT? What kind of people do that?”
She didn’t mention the number of teenagers living with worse, living on the streets. Trueheart had come to her from sidewalk sleeper detail. He already knew. “Which APA?”
“Fruinski.”
“He’ll push for adult status. He’ll probably get it. Walk it off before you go back in. Tie it up, write it up, then go have a beer with Baxter.”
“I’ve got a date.”
There were times cops needed cops. “Have a beer with Baxter first.”
He sighed, and the grim faded a little. “Yeah, good idea. Thanks, Lieutenant.”
She opted for the glide as far as it would take her. He’d walk it off, she mused. He’d shake it off. Baxter would help him talk it out. And tomorrow, he’d be back on the job, dealing with the next.
Trueheart was too good a cop for otherwise.
When forced to, she squeezed on an elevator, rode the rest of the way to her level of the garage.
Roarke already waited, leaning back against her car in the magic coat she’d given him for Christmas—still working on his PPC.
“Got hung up,” she said.
“No problem. You drive, as I’m finishing up something here.”
She kept her silence as he worked and she maneuvered through traffic. Glanced over when he slipped the handheld back into a pocket.
“Buy something?”
“Sold, actually, for a tidy profit, a property in Nevada I bought just for that purpose.”
“Why did you buy something in Nevada to sell it?”
As she appeared to want to make small talk—non-cop talk—he obliged. “Because it was being sold well under market value, had considerable potential if updated and transformed with a bit of imagination and money, particularly considering its location. With that imagination and money, we pocket that tidy profit, and look for another underrated property.”
“How do you know about underrated properties in Nevada?”
“The same way I know about them anywhere else.” He smiled at her. “We’ll say I sniff them out.”
“How about if I said why don’t you buy some underrated property in— I have to think of somewhere weird. In Nebraska?”
“Why is Nebraska, in particular, weird?”
“Not in particular. It’s weird because it’s out there.” She gestured vaguely to indicate, he knew, not New York.
“Of course. Nebraska it is. Urban or rural?”
“Urban? Are you sure they have cities out there?”
“I’m quite sure of it, yes.”