She was gone so long, Scott decided to check on her. He found her leaning over the kitchen sink.
A slow warmth spread through him at the sight of her bending over the sink in a way that pushed her hips back in his direction. One of the first things he’d learned about her was that she liked to wear very feminine panties under her uniform. Lacy near-nothings. She said she did it to remind herself that she was, at the end of the day, a woman. Once upon a time, he had enjoyed the privilege of peeling off her uniform and showing her just how very happy all parts of him were that she was female.
His body responded instantly to thoughts he probably shouldn’t be having. Confirmation of that thought came as he clocked the exact moment she became aware of him. She spun around and stood upright, eyes wide with wariness.
Maybe she had a right to be nervous. He was now swinging serious pipe.
Hoping to distract her from that realization, he gestured back toward the other room. “Look, about before.”
“I’m good.” She lifted her hand and pushed it palm flat into the air between them, as if it was a solid thing against which she could pit her will. Officer Jamieson was back on duty.
Scott nodded. He had seen her in action at the scene of more than one murder when she was D.C. police. But this was different. Nikki had a soft spot for innocent creatures, especially dogs, and he had deliberately played into that. Looking back into her hard eyes and too pale lips, he felt like a bully. He knew how to intimidate and how to apply pressure. But maybe he’d gone too far. Nikki wasn’t a suspect. He needed to give her back her pride. But he knew enough about her not to come at it directly.
He slanted a look at her kenneled partner. “Enjoy your patrol last night, rattling doorknobs and checking locks?”
“We do more than that.” A flash of temper. Temper was good.
“Yeah. Saw a recent background photo of you on guard duty at an event where Miss Maryland put in an appearance. Tough job. Must have required all your skills.”
Definitely the Kate Winslet stare. “A week ago we were called in to track and arrest an abusive husband after he got away from the responding officer.”
“Fun, huh?” He smiled and nodded. “A chance to really show what you could do?”
He watched her gaze go inward as she reached up and touched her wounded eye. Then a tiny smile tugged her mouth.
He leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs at the ankles. He saw her gaze slip for an instant and realized his action had practically served up his hard-on for her inspection. She didn’t seem impressed or intimidated. Either she didn’t care, or she’d mastered nonresponsive behavior to provocative situations. For pride’s sake he chose possibility number two.
“You and Hugo are wasted as glorified security guards. You can do more.”
Instead of answering, Cole reached to unbuckle her rig. The fact that she sometimes thought that herself didn’t make it any easier to accept coming from him. She wasn’t going to share her new hopes and dreams with the man who’d once wrecked her life. But he had roused her curiosity about the DEA project.
“How long has that been going on?”
Scott glanced back in the direction of her nod. She was thinking about the photos. Good.
“Using dogs as drug mules? There’ve been reports since the nineties in Belgium, the Netherlands, even France and Italy. Most of those dogs were imports from Mexico and South America. It’s tougher to import dogs into the U.S. but we’ve caught a few cases in the last decade. Even cattle moved up from Mexico have been found to be stuffed with drugs after gelding. However, the pictures I showed you are an entirely different matter. These dogs weren’t imported. They were used to move product around the U.S.”
“Why would anyone go to all that trouble? The surgery required to implant the drugs would seem to make the practice problematic.”
Scott waited to see where her thought process would take her. Besides, she had drawn her weapon and was in the middle of unloading it. No need to distract her.
When she finished, she leaned her hips back against the sink and crossed her legs at the ankles in imitation of his pose. “Must be cocaine. Nothing else on the street is worth the effort.”
Scott smiled and straightened away from the wall. “Forensics found traces of cocaine in the incision sites. The stuff was very pure. The potency alone should leave a near permanent trail, if you know where to look. We didn’t, until this happened.”
Her frown deepened into two exclamation points between her brows. He longed to smooth them away with his thumb. Wanted, really, any excuse to touch her again.
Cole stared off into the distance. “Who goes to all that trouble and then leaves a slaughter as evidence?”