He swung the cruiser into a parking place at a nondescript bar on the edge of Rockford Falls. I’d never been in it before, and there were only a few trucks in the lot. It was late afternoon, hardly time for the after-work rush. I looked at him hard, gauging his mood. He just seemed keyed up and frustrated, and I decided a beer wouldn’t do us any harm. One beer, something to eat, then back to the station and I’d go home, maybe even cook dinner. My heart was pounding like this wasn’t that simple. I felt like my whole body started to itch and tingle, expectation flowing through me. How many dozens of times had I gone for a beer with the guys in Charleston? And that had been nothing. This didn’t feel a bit like nothing.
I got a table while he ordered us a couple of beers. The place was quiet, dim and cool, a relief after the bright and hot afternoon. When he sat the bottle in front of me, Brody’s eyes fell to my throat. I swallowed hard, wondering if he could see the flutter of my pulse under my skin as my heart flipped like a hyperactive penny spinning through the air. His gaze felt like a touch.
“Thanks,” I said, and hated myself for sounding a little breathless. Putting my mouth to the bottle felt suggestive in itself. I took a drink, nearly choked from watching the muscles of his throat work as he took a long pull off his own bottle. I wriggled in my seat. I was sitting across from him. We weren’t even close, but I slid back a little anyway. Just so our knees didn’t bump under the table, I told myself. I was just being careful.
His hand found my knee beneath the table and our eyes collided, “Hey, don’t be nervous.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
“If you don’t want a drink, it’s fine. I can even radio Clint to come pick you up.”
“I’m just worried about this case, that’s all,” I said, lying through my teeth. I took another drink to cover how flustered I was.
“It’s easy to get fixated, especially when you don’t have a lot of leads to go on. Don’t convince yourself that we’re missing something. You’ll just lay awake nights combing through every last detail.”
“It’s frustrating. I feel like I should be able to figure this out. Like there’s got to be some key piece that I’m overlooking.”
“If we are, we’ll find it. We make a pretty good team.”
“We do. I was meaning to ask you. Do you partner your officers? In Charleston, where we had patrols and designated sections of the city, we had partners. I know Rockford Falls is no Charleston metro area, but I wondered. Because it seemed like Bobby and Clint were paired up, so that leaves Carl and me. I don’t know him as well as the other two, but I’ll make friends. Don’t think you have to babysit me or anything because I’m Damon’s sister.”
“You think I’m babysitting? Or that I take you along with me in the car like I’m gonna show you the fuckin’ Christmas lights or take you to the county fair? Girl, you’re instrumental on this case, instrumental to me.”
I paused and rolled my lips under, thinking. Or trying to think because it felt so damn good to hear him say that to me.
“We don’t do assigned partners because, like you said, it’s not a metro region with clear divisions to patrol. It’s a little town and a lot of spread out rural areas around us. Bobby and Clint ride together a lot because they’re good buddies. Carl used to work with Ray a lot, but they both rode along with me, too. We go where we’re needed. If riding with me is a problem, or if you’d be more comfortable with a formal partnership, I’ll set you up with Carl.”
“I don’t want to be set up with Carl,” I said, a little too urgently, “riding with you isn’t a problem. I just don’t want the other guys thinking I got preferential treatment because you and Damon are close,” I said. It was partly true.
“Do you like working with me?” he asked. It disarmed me, that he even had to wonder that. There was something boyish in the way he said it, like reassurance wouldn’t be a bad thing. It startled me, a confident and commanding man, a chief, was asking me if I liked being his partner.
“Yeah. I like you,” I said. “I mean, I like working with you.”
“Then I want you to finish out this case with me,” he said. “We match up well on this one. We have the same view of things here. I know you understand my concerns and I know you have my back.”