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Home is where those fuckers aren’t.
—Quaid’s secret thoughts
QUAID
“Since you’re still on light duty,” Dad said as he stood next to the chief of police, “we’ve decided you can continue light duty, but also consult with Special Agent McGraw to help him in any way necessary.”
I nearly rolled my eyes.
Such formality when the chief was around.
Dad and the chief were great friends.
Had been golf buddies for so fuckin’ long that the country club knew them as the ‘cop couple.’
Truthfully, Chief Austin was somewhat of an enigma to me.
Though he and my dad were great friends, likely because they’d been chief and assistant chief for ten years, and then worked together in the same department for ten years before that, I didn’t know him all that well.
He was a private man, and Dad didn’t share much about him besides superficial information.
I’d always wondered if there was more to him than what was on the surface, but since I wasn’t willing to lose my job to find out the information, I chose to keep silent.
“I’m off light duty as of last week,” I admitted.
Well, I’d been capable of being off of it way before that, but the duties I’d taken over as sergeant over the beat cops had all but slammed me. When I’d been injured, I’d gone from the second in charge of that to the first, and all the paperwork had nearly buried me.
Apparently, the sergeant in charge of it before me, who’d been promoted to his dream job elsewhere in the department after coming back from neck surgery, hadn’t thought paperwork was fun. Consequently, I’d been cleaning up his mess since I’d hurt myself.
I was almost done, though.
That was why I’d taken the shift last week when one of our beat cops hadn’t shown up for work due to a stomach virus.
It’d been fucking freeing, being somewhere other than behind the goddamn desk in my office.
And now he was telling me to keep doing it longer?
Fucking awesome.
“Well, until we get this case solved,” Chief Austin murmured quietly, “you’re going to be warming that chair up. We can’t have a thing like this go amuck in my city. The press already eats me alive because they think I don’t take women’s safety seriously. If they find out that we have a serial killer that’s out here targeting Angelina Jolie lookalikes, they’re going to filet me.”
Angelina Jolie lookalikes.
Jesus Christ.
I mean, the features definitely fit. But they didn’t look much like Angelina Jolie.
The only thing in common Ellodie had with Angelina Jolie were the lips.
God, those lips.
“I’m not arguing with you,” I said. “I feel like I have a personal vested interest in this now. So, I’ll be doing whatever I can to make sure that we find the person responsible.”
Chief Austin nodded, then jerked his chin toward his office door, telling me to get out without saying a word.
I nearly rolled my eyes but stopped myself.
“Hey, Chief,” his secretary said as she barred my way out of his office. “I brought some cookies from this new bakery for you…”
