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“It’s quiet.”
“Everyone’s on patrol.”
“I thought you’d be in briefings.”
“They staggered swing. Hell, last year they fucked up the entire schedule. And we’re still seriously short.”
“I know. It sucks.”
“We need more good cops. With your background, you’d be fast-tracked.”
“Don’t start again.”
When I left the Army, Jack tried to get me to join Phoenix PD. Being a female and former military and military police was like a trifecta of positives. I seriously considered it after two years of bartending while building my fledgling PI practice, but then I got my first big case and I knew then and there, being a PI was my calling. I’d had enough of the rules and regulations in the military, and being in law enforcement would be more of the same.
I liked my job, I liked making my own hours, and I especially liked not having to follow other people’s rules.
“Can’t help it,” he said with a half grin and logged into his computer. “Let me think about how to do this—what agency, do you know?”
“DPS.”
He typed quickly, but only using four fingers—the middle and index fingers on each hand.
Then he stopped. “I’m trusting you, Margo. Because everything I do generates a record, and I don’t want to have to explain this to my LT.”
“I didn’t commit a crime.”
He turned back to the computer. “Your plates.”
I rattled off my license plate number.
He stared at the screen.
“Yes.”
“Yes, someone at DPS ran my plates?”
“Monday afternoon, just after seventeen hundred.”
“Shit. Is there any way for him to go back and erase his search history?”
“Every search is logged. It can’t be erased.” Rick looked back at the computer, printed the sheet. He stared at it, frowned. “Wait, we had a report come in this morning with this name.” He closed down the database he was in and brought up the briefing sheet. “Trooper Carillo filled a missing persons report on his wife and two kids. Do you know about this?”
The bastard filed a report. I thought he might—when your wife runs away with your kids without a trace, you have to say something to someone otherwise you might be considered a suspect in their disappearance.
But what did I tell Rick? I technically hadn’t committed a crime. Annie was the mother of those two kids, and she was still married to Carillo. If he wanted to fight his wife for abandonment or denying him access to his children, he had to go to court. He’d probably win, but it wouldn’t happen overnight, and by the time he had a judgment, Annie would be deep in her new identity two states away.
“Can I see the report?”
“You promised to tell me.”
“I will. But Rick—you have to make me a promise.”
“What the fuck, Margo? Changing the rules?”
“I know you, and I don’t want you to do something stupid.”
“Are you in trouble?”
