Hot Cop: A Brother's Best Friend Romance (Rockford Falls 1)

“Have a seat. I’ll give you rundown,” he said.

“How bad is it? You said it was a missing person,” I said.

“Becky Simms, senior in high school, just turned eighteen,” he said. “She was studying at a friend’s house and didn’t come home. Friend says she left on foot as planned in plenty of time to make curfew. No leads except she broke up with her boyfriend recently.”

“Okay, do we have anything else to go on? Do you know where the boyfriend is?”

“Not yet. I’m going to bring in the rest of the team and organize the search.”

I followed him out into the main room of the station and stood at his left as he called three men over to us. They looked to be at varying degrees of exhaustion. One looked particularly rumpled.

“Carl, I’ve been out to the Simms house and interviewed the parents. I appreciate you going around the neighborhoods by the friend’s house to look for her. You need to go home and get some rest. Your shift was over an hour ago. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Thanks, Brody,” he said, and with a nod in my direction, he shuffled toward the parking lot.

The two other officers on duty looked familiar. I knew one of them used to run track and was a year or so ahead of me in school, but I didn’t remember his name. The other one was Bobby Brewer who used to date Rachel for a while before he got married a few years back.

“Bobby Brewer, Clint Dobbs, you remember Laura Vance? She’s signed on as our newest officer. She’s come home after four years on the Charleston PD. She made national headlines cracking a cold murder case last year and she’s had some accolades from the governor. So you better stay on your toes, boys,” Brody said.

“How’s your daddy doing?” Bobby asked.

“He’s hanging in there. How’s your baby? Didn’t you and Cassie have a baby here a while back?”

“She’s two now,” he grinned, “and we’re expecting a boy in the spring.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Good to have you home,” he said, “and it’ll be nice having a woman around. We don’t have enough throw pillows and curtains around here yet, and I bet you make a great pie.”

I rolled my eyes at him, “I should’ve remembered you were a joker, Brewer,” I said. I smiled to let him know I thought his crap was funny, but I was being careful about my smart mouth around Brody. Clint Dobbs was shyer, not likely to joke around.

“Welcome aboard, Laura,” he said. “I hope you can help us out on this one. The Simms girl used to babysit for my son,” he said. “She watched him all summer last year. This year she was working the cash register at the pharmacy. But she was real good with Cole.”

“We’ll find her, Clint,” I said. “No matter how long it takes. You know I used to get in trouble for doing Sudoku and stuff in class. I can’t leave a puzzle unfinished. So we’ll get on this, and we won’t quit till she’s found.”

“Brewer, Dobbs, go out by the high school and search all downtown. Find out if anyone saw her. Get the security footage from both convenience stores. Vance, you’re with me. We have some local hangouts to search.”

Surprised that he hadn’t put me with one of the other guys and taken a more senior officer along with him, I nodded and followed Brody to the cruiser. The sun was starting to rise, the sky lightening to a purple-gray as we headed out.

“You’ll see not much has changed in Rockford Falls, but the teenagers have a couple new tricks up their sleeve since we were that age,” Brody said. “In the last couple years, some of the high school hookups happen out by Winters’s farm. Since the old man died and the kids haven’t sold the farm yet, some kids figured out it was unoccupied and started using it. Back in our day it was the hill out past Pearson’s where you could see the falls in the distance.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said before I thought. “I never went out there. I was a good girl.” Then I caught myself, “Sorry, Chief.”

“Don’t be. You used to have one hell of a smart mouth. I wondered why you grew up so stiff.”

“In Charleston we joked around a lot, roasted each other pretty savagely. I wasn’t sure if that was in violation of your workplace culture.”

“Vance, we don’t have a workplace culture. This is Rockford Falls. We got a coffee maker and a secondhand fridge. We do poker night once a month and a toy drive at Christmastime. You grew up with most of us. We’re not delicate, and we’re not gonna cry if you bust our balls. In fact, it’ll make us feel better if you do.”