Page 6 of K-9 in Pursuit

“Maybe your mistake has been treating her like one,” Connor said. He clapped Brian on the back. “We’ll get this straightened out. Try not to worry.”

But he would worry. It was another aspect of being too nice. He worried about hurting other people. Except now, he was the one who stood to end up damaged. All because he couldn’t be what one troubled girl wanted.

Chapter Two

Sharee never entered a room silently. She swept in singing, or already talking to whoever she assumed was there. This evening, she clomped up the stairs to Chloe’s apartment, warbling misheard lyrics to a popular ballad, something about loving someone so much she thought she would die-i-i! Her key turned in the lock and she pushed open the door and stopped short. “What are you doing here?” she asked Chloe.

“I live here, remember?”

Sharee dropped her backpack on the floor and shed her parka. “You spend way more time at work than here,” she said. “I thought Tuesday was your late night.”

“Nadia is closing for me tonight.” Chloe stood and came to stand beside her sister. Sharee was five inches taller, not to mention curvier, blonder and more charismatic. She took after her mother, their father’s second wife, a former model and amateur actress. Chloe had their father’s dark hair and eyes, legacies from his Egyptian grandmother. “You and I need to talk.”

Sharee rolled her eyes. “You mean you’re going to lecture me about something else that’s wrong with me.” She moved past her sister and headed for the kitchen. “I’m starving. What do we have to eat?” Not waiting for an answer, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a container of leftover lasagna. She popped the lid off and started eating it, cold. Chloe started to object that she had been saving the leftovers for her lunch tomorrow, but what was the point?

“I need to talk to you about the ski patroller you’ve been following around,” Chloe said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Brian. Good-looking, brown-eyed blond?”

“What about him?” She spoke around a mouthful of lasagna.

“He says you’ve been following him around. That you have a crush on him.”

“A crush?” Another eye roll. “As if I’m in third grade.”

“You’ve been following him around,” Chloe repeated.

Sharee ate the last of the lasagna and slid the container into the sink. “He works at a ski resort. I ski. Of course we’re going to run into each other.”

“You’ve been flirting with him.”

“I talk to him. Men always think I’m flirting, but that’s only because I’m pretty. They wish I was flirting with them.”

She tried to move past, but Chloe blocked her. “Sharee, you need to stop,” she said. “You don’t want another situation like last time.”

Sharee pouted, lips pushed out, cheeks round. She even looked beautiful doing that. “You talk like what happened with Cameron was all my fault,” she said. “But it wasn’t. I can’t help it if men are attracted to me. It’s so typical that they get away with anything and I get all the blame.”

“Cameron Douglas didn’t do anything wrong,” Chloe said.

“So now you’re on the side of the patriarchy.”

Chloe fought the urge to imitate Sharee’s eye roll. “He was your teacher. A married man. He had documentation of the harassment. You were caught on video camera.”

“How do you know?” Sharee asked. “You weren’t even there.”

“I know because Dad and Darinda told me.” Sharee’s mother had described the thirty-year-old chemistry teacher as “very attractive, but completely freaked out by the suggestion of any impropriety.” Chloe hadn’t asked, but she assumed the man was probably friendly. Sharee’s type. Maybe he had even been flattered by attention from the pretty teenager. But he had been smart enough to document every encounter with Sharee as soon as he sensed there could be trouble, and the school’s security cameras backed him up: Sharee waiting for him outside his classroom and in the school parking lot. He saved the notes she sent to him, their content increasingly suggestive. And Sharee’s own cell phone records showed the calls she had made to his personal cell, though he had never instigated any of these calls.

Ultimately, Douglas had gone to court to get a restraining order against Sharee, and she had been expelled from school. Their parents had decided it would be best to send her to Colorado to live with Chloe. She was supposed to be studying for her GED, but Chloe hadn’t seen much sign of that. Instead, Sharee spent her days skiing and evenings out with friends. And she had apparently found a new man to fixate on. Chloe’s suggestion to their parents that Sharee might benefit from counseling and therapy had fallen on deaf ears.

Chloe decided to take another tack. “What would you think of coming to work for me at the salon? Just a few hours a week.” Chloe owned Moon Glow Salon and Spa, in the ski village.

Sharee looked wary. “Work doing what?”

“Whatever needs doing. Answering the phone. Tidying up. Helping the stylists. You’d be good with customers.”

Sharee narrowed her eyes. “Is this your way of keeping an eye on me?”