“Agh,” he shrugged, unoffended by the captain’s observations, “if you actually read the damn manuals, the job descriptions are all there.”
Doug just shook his head. “Not that I’m going to say no because, well, we could use the extra manpower on this one, but any particular reason?”
For a moment, he wondered how much he should say, but after a few seconds, he shrugged. He knew Doug. More, he trusted him. And better to disclose the fact that he had a vested interest in the case now rather than later. “I have a soft spot for the victim we interviewed last night.”
He shrugged when Doug barked out a laugh. There was no point in denying it; he was inexplicably taken with Lola Michaels and the idea of her getting hurt terrified him on an irrational level. He was…emotionally embroiled? With a woman you’ve met twice and had one personal conversation with?
He was still frowning at the direction his thoughts had taken when Doug said, “Must be some woman,” and coughed into his hand. “McConnell just couldn’t leave out a full physical description while he was debriefing us earlier.”
Jacob nodded but didn’t contribute to the thought. “She’s all alone too. She’s the perfect target.”
Doug sobered instantly, his face transforming into a practiced, calm mask. “Do you think we should put a car outside her place?”
“I want to say yes, but we just don’t have any evidence that it’s the same perp. Maybe add a drive-by every few hours? Increase the police presence in the neighborhood?”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll add her to the investigation, and I’ll reschedule my patrols first thing in the morning. If you’re looking for a reason to stop by and see her, tell her that she should be careful. You know how these guys operate.”
Jacob sighed. “Obsessive. Impulsive.”
“Prone to slip up eventually.”
“Hopefully soon.” Jacob glanced up as headlights shone over where they were standing. “Could you send me the case file?”
“Yeah. We have some paper on this one, so why don’t you come down to the station on Monday? You can review it with Burns and Williams.” Doug glanced down the alley when the Field Investigation Unit pulled their van alongside the coroner’s.
Knowing that he wouldn’t be of any help with the fieldwork, he wrapped up his conversation with Doug, leaving the captain to go and debrief the forensics staff.
He was certain that he had spread himself thin by offering to help out with the case, but he knew that he could still be of value in protecting Lola and any other potential victims. He was a chronic insomniac; he could pull off the extra hours where other cops couldn’t. He’d done it before Lola Michaels, and he knew that he’d do it again, once he had finished working on the case. The case, he realized with no small amount of regret, that Captain Doug Brennan had added Lola too. The case that meant he would not be asking her out on that date after all.
It was probably for the best. He couldn’t afford any distractions, and Lola Michaels, with her quick smile and expressive doe eyes, definitely counted as a distraction.
Chapter 5
Lola was having trouble concentrating. She had woken up at the crack of dawn specifically so that she could work on a commission that was due in two weeks. The painting, a thirty-six by forty-eight-inch oil on canvas of her client’s cabin in Tahoe, was supposed to be nearing completion. Instead, it was sitting against the red brick wall forlornly, a pristine Lake Tahoe with a glorious blue and gold sunrise…and a splotchy, white patch of canvas where the cabin was supposed to go.
It wasn’t that she was struggling with the subject. The client had, after all, flown her to Tahoe for the weekend so that she could take her photographs and plan her preliminary sketches—photographs and preliminary sketches that were now sticking out of the painting’s project portfolio on her desk, untouched in two days.
She wondered if she needed a break. Sometimes, she’d work for so long that her back would start to cramp or her stomach would start protesting at how long she’d gone without eating. She counted the hours since she’d gotten up. She’d been alternating between standing and sitting at her easel for a while, but considering she had nothing to show for the time, she didn’t feel like she deserved one.
Maybe something different to get me going. Pushing to her feet, she walked over to her supplies so that she could pull a blank canvas from the bottom shelf where they were stacked neatly, first by canvas type and then by size. She grabbed a primed, linen canvas, and walked back to her easel, took a moment to prop it up before taking three steps back so that she could stare at it.
It’s so white.
So bare.
White.
White.
White.
White is a weird word.
“Agh!” Frustrated, she raked her hands through her hair and paced back and forth. “This is hopeless.”
When a loud knock sounded at her door, her head whipped up in surprise.
She wasn’t expecting anyone.
She hesitated for a small second and then marched across the studio. It was broad daylight. Nobody who wanted to hurt her was going to do it in broad daylight on a Monday morning. With a solid pull, she yanked the door open and then immediately took a solid step back. “Oh.”
She stared at Lieutenant Jacob Simmone for a whole five seconds, felt her pulse give a few hard kicks in her throat when he grinned at her. A stream of separate, clear thoughts ran through her head. Great. He’s looking all cute and you’re still in your PJs…at two in the afternoon.
I wonder why he came back?
Did he find something?
“Am I interrupting?” he asked. “I can come back later?”
Breathe. Blink. Do something!
She cleared her throat. “No. I mean unless you call shouting at my canvases ‘something’.” She took a step back. “Come on in.”
He smiled at her as he stepped inside and when she closed the door behind them, she became distinctly aware of how small, how intimate the space was. Funny that she hadn’t noticed when both Jacob and the other officer, McConnell, had been inside together; but now, with just the two of them closed in, she couldn’t help but feel his proximity.
She turned, taking in his broad chest, narrow waist and strong legs, felt her body tighten just as he turned away and took a few long strides towards her paintings. Cursing her body’s reaction and her braless state, she casually pulled her sweater off the foot of her bed so that she could move to stand next to him.
He looked at her wall, his hands in the pockets of his slacks like a child in a gift store. No touching. Just looking. “These are incredible,” he said, without turning to look at her.
Stepping to his side so that they were shoulder to shoulder, she glanced down at her work. She’d say that only two of the dozen were ‘incredible’. The first, a Mohave Desert landscape boasting vermillion rocks and rivulets of sand, set against an impossibly blue, cloudless sky. The second, a long, private country road, moonlit in the foreground to show that the road was blanketed in decomposing autumn leaves and lined with gnarled, bare trees, their spear-tipped fingers reaching for the sky.
“Are these all paintings of real landscapes?”