Page 2 of Falling For You

"We thought sex worker," I said. "But there's a tattoo on her left wrist. Trafficker's mark."

Zeus didn't answer. He walked past me to the body, crouched, and went quiet for a long time. He started at the wrist and worked outward to her neck, arms, and the bruising around her ankles.

"This isn't a sex worker who got unlucky." He stood up slowly. "Good eye, Walsh. I'm calling Vice and the trafficking task force."

He pulled his phone out and made the call right there.

Elliot watched the entire exchange from six feet away with his arms crossed.

I knew that look. I saw it at the Christmas party, when a detective from Vice spent half the night at the bar asking my take on something from his caseload. It was there two months ago, when a patrol officer from swing shift walked me to my car talking about a call we'd worked together. And every single time Zeus Alexander showed up to a scene I was working.

After Zeus stepped away to confer with the crime scene unit, Elliot came over.

"He's really making a habit of that."

"Of what?"

He didn't answer. His eyes were on Zeus across the tape.

"It's just work, Elliot." I said it through my teeth, barely moving my lips, managing my secret boyfriend's ego on a crime scene with a dead woman ten feet away.

I'd had this same conversation with him before. At first the jealousy registered as endearing, even flattering. My boyfriend, not wanting other men near me. When he made sergeant and had input on partner assignments, he paired me with Doug. Everyone knew Doug was devoted to his wife. He wouldn't dream of looking at another woman. But the police force was still ninety percent men. I still had to talk to them, work with them, stand next to them at crime scenes. Somewhere along the line his jealousy became something I managed.

"It pisses me off." Elliot walked off to meet the second unit that had just pulled in.

He let it go. He always let it go, eventually.

After the detectives took over, the radio sent us to a trench collapse. That was patrol. You cleared one scene and the radio was already sending you to the next. On a quiet shift, we'd run twelve calls. In summer, it could hit twenty. Las Vegas didn't take breaks and neither did we.

West Sahara was backed up for two blocks when we arrived. A utility crew had been cutting into the road to get at a water main. Open trench, broken asphalt, orange cones pushing traffic into a single lane. A section of the wall had collapsed and a worker was in the hole, waist-deep in dirt.

Doug and I were there to keep traffic moving while the fire engine blocked half the road. I was rolling my eyes before my feet hit the pavement. Engine 110. A-shift. I knew exactly which crew was on scene.

"Any call becomes a good call when Officer Walsh rolls in."

Blonde hair, blue eyes no woman with a pulse could pretend she didn't notice, and a devastating smile he never had the decency to put away. Wyatt Brooks would have been easier to ignore if he wasn't so damn annoying.

"Brooks." I kept walking toward the perimeter. "Is anyone hurt?"

"Worker's stuck in a trench collapse, waist-deep. Stable, talking, just can't get himself out. We're rigging the extraction now."

I could acknowledge that Wyatt Brooks was good at his job. We'd crossed paths a dozen times on shared scenes. Car accidents, structure fires, the overlap between cops and firefighters that Las Vegas generated on a daily basis.

On one of those early scenes, I missed a detail on a safety issue with the perimeter I'd set. It was minor, nothing that made the report, but Brooks caught it before it became a problem. I was grateful. I respected the competence. Then he opened his mouth and started flirting, and the competence disappeared behind the charm. After that, every time he showed up on scene, all that registered was the grin.

"I'll take the west end," Doug said. "You take the east."

We directed traffic while the fire crew worked the trench. By the time the traffic thinned enough for me to look back, the worker was out. Muddy, embarrassed, sitting on the back of the ambulance while a paramedic checked him over.

I walked to the engine to exchange information with Captain Thompson for the incident report. He signed off, thanked me, and turned back to his crew. I was heading back to the cruiser when I heard that voice.

"Looking forward to the next one, Officer Walsh."

I didn't turn around. "No, you're not."

"I always am."

I got in the cruiser and closed the door. Through the window, I watched Wyatt Brooks walk back to his crew. He said something that made one of them shove his shoulder, and when he laughed I caught the flash of a dimple I didn't need to notice.