Good Girls Don't (Donovan Brothers Brewery 1)

By the time he walked into the Denver P.D. headquarters, he felt marginally better. “Hey, Asher!” one of the guys called out. “Did you come down for some advice from real detectives?” Luke recognized the guy as someone he’d graduated from the academy with and gave him an affectionate one-fingered reply. The other detective didn’t let up. “Did someone steal some tofu from a health food store up there?”

Shaking his head, Luke pushed through the doors to the records department and got to work. He wasn’t the least bit bothered by the jabs. He’d put in his time in Los Angeles, after all, and he’d take the relatively quiet streets of Boulder any day. He hadn’t been shot once since he’d moved back. Or stabbed. Or divorced. Maybe that would be his new mantra.

He downed his cup of clichéd bad coffee and turned his mind to the cases in front of him. Every single one. And three hours later, he’d found something pretty damn interesting.

Tapping his pencil against his forehead, he waited for a call back from his contact in the Denver property crimes division and paged through the files again, just to be sure he’d read them right.

Detective Ben Jackson finally called back.

“So you had a rash of similar robberies starting a year ago?”

“Yep. Nine of them. You noticed that, huh?”

“I did. Computers stolen. Identity crimes followed. And they stopped six months ago?”

“You got it. We could never prove they were related. No fingerprints. No traceable accounts. But of course…”

“Yeah, that’s awfully organized.”

“That was my take.”

Luke tapped harder. “And our break-ins started about a month after these stopped.”

“Hell of a coincidence,” Ben said.

“Yeah. Why don’t you go ahead and solve this case for me, Detective Jackson? Who do you like?”

“I’ve got nothing. Do your own fucking work, man.”

“Interesting,” Luke drawled. “What you’re saying is, Denver couldn’t handle it and you’re looking for a little help from Boulder.”

“Taunt all you like. It’s your problem now. Maybe it was some high school kid who started at the U.”

Luke hung up and tapped his forehead a few more times. He eyed the case files, trying to calculate how long it would take him to fill out all the paperwork to get copies sent to Boulder. Maybe he could just memorize them all.

“Crap,” he groaned. This was going to be more painful than walking away from Tessa had been last night.

An hour and a half later, he finally broke free of the records department, a stack of printed forms in his hand. The trip had worked, anyway. Right now, he’d give anything to be back in Boulder, in his car next to his secretive and pregnant partner, and not having sex with a nonvirgin woman who’d probably never speak to him again.

But since he was only three minutes from his mom’s house, he decided to drop in and say hi.

Yet another bad decision.

Her door was open to the spring breeze and Luke could hear women’s voices from the kitchen. He knocked on the wooden frame of the screen door. “Mom? It’s me.”

He hadn’t grown up in the little 1920s bungalow, so he didn’t feel comfortable walking in. His mom had bought it just five years before. Her first house. He was proud of her.

But when the voices stopped and the two women walked around the corner of the kitchen wall, he stepped back so quickly he nearly fell off the stoop. Yeah, he’d known his mom and his ex-wife were still close, but he hadn’t realized how close.

“Luke,” his mom said as she opened the door. Her round face was tight with a worried smile. “Eve is visiting from California.”

“Yeah, I see that.” He didn’t have any choice but to step inside. Well, he had the choice of looking like a complete ass and walking away, but he was bigger than that. Or small enough not to want to give Eve the satisfaction.

“Hi, Luke,” she said, holding out a hand.

It felt damn strange shaking the hand of a woman he’d shared a bed with, but he shook it, anyway. “You look good,” he said. She did. Her hair was long again, and even back to its old auburn color. Her skin was bronzed and healthy instead of gray with illness. She looked…happy. He was startled by the shot of relief that mixed up with his anger.

“You look good, too,” she said. “Really.”