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“We’re at work,” he reminded her. “And I’m your boss.”
“Then you should act like it,” Annie said, stepping back, pleased with herself for getting him to make her point for her. “I’m no different than any other employee coming back from time off. Youwouldn’t have Deebo or Chaz in here, asking them if they were tired from five hours of nothing much.”
Nick arched a brow. “ ‘Nothing much’? I hear you suddenly have a missing persons investigation going on, and you somehow managed to arrest someone this morning. Me, I wouldn’t call thatnothing much.”
“I’m a highly productive member of your team, then. You should be so pleased.”
“Tête dure,” he grumbled, going behind his desk.
“My hardheadedness is what you love about me,” Annie said, taking a seat.
“Not at the moment,” he muttered, settling into his chair.
“I’m concerned for your well-being as your boss, and, yes, as your husband,” he confessed. “And I admit I’m having a hard time drawing the line between those two roles just now, which is a bigger problem than you want to realize.”
“I do realize,” Annie said quietly.
The issue sat between them all the time, like a small elephant only they could see. The night she had been injured on the job, he had made several decisions as a husband rather than as her superior. Decisions he would not have made if the fallen officer hadn’t been his wife. Nothing that had changed the outcome of the case, but those choices bothered him, nevertheless. The walls between his carefully constructed compartments had been breached, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“We’ve made this work for a long time,” Annie reminded him. “And work well.”
He had recommended her for the detective squad when she had still been in a uniform. He had mentored her. They had worked hundreds of cases since, all without a problem until that one night.
Don’t go there without me…
But she had.
He said nothing for a moment, and she couldn’t read him. Shedoubted he was thinking anything positive, but in the end, he just moved on.
“Tell me how you came to be involved with this missing person situation,” he said, “after you promised me you would behave yourself if I let you come back to work.”
“I didn’t go looking for trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Mais non, you never go looking for trouble, ’Toinette,” he said, “but when trouble comes calling, you are seldom out of earshot.”
“I swear I was minding my own business,” Annie said. “I was on my way to HR. This woman was literally on the floor in front of Hooker’s desk, sobbing, begging for help to find her son. Was I supposed step over her body and keep going?”
“This is a missing child?”
“No. He’s an adult. Hooker needs his ass kicked, by the way,” she added. “Today was the second time that woman had come here looking for help. He turned her away last week.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He told her it was a BBPD matter because she had gone to them first.”
“So this is their case?”
“They don’t want it,” Annie insisted. “There’s no missing persons report anywhere. They didn’t do anything more than a welfare check and put out a BOLO on his car. Dewey Rivette couldn’t be bothered to return the mother’s phone calls, for God’s sake. He never asked her for the most basic information.”
“So you just snatched their case away from them.”
“What case?” Annie challenged. “They weren’t doing anything! Dewey as much as told me he thinks this is an addict who just took off, and God knows he’s probably holed up somewhere doing drugs or he’s already OD’d, and he’s dead someplace. And that may well be true, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find him.”
“You spoke to Rivette directly?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s happy to have us take this over?”
