“You are,” she said, but slid into the passenger’s seat without further complaint. She buckled up, then leaned back and closed her eyes. “About the only thing I can do on my own, without worrying about pictures showing up somewhere, is get in my car and drive.”
He reversed down the driveway at a speed that made her eyes pop open. “Yikes,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s the car. And the driving course at the academy.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “One of us should have a good time … in this car.”
But she was a little more awake now, looking out the window as they drove through Lancaster to his apartment complex in midtown, close enough to the precinct to make his commute negligible, but far enough away that he didn’t run into people he’d arrested. He parked at the farthest entrance. “Stay close,” he said.
She obeyed, pulling the fur-trimmed hood of her down jacket around her face, so her distinctive hair and eyes disappeared into the shadows. His apartment was on the top floor in the corner, and when he unlocked the door he tried to remember whether the place was a total disaster, or merely messy.
Messy. Really messy.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” he said. He gathered a stinky exercise T-shirt from the arm of the sofa, and dirty dinner plates from the dining set under the pass-through to the kitchen, then dumped everything on the kitchen counter.
“No worries,” she said, standing just inside the door, looking around. “I spent most of the last year on a tour bus with a bunch of dudes. I’m pretty hard to faze. I see you’re not an early Christmas decorator.”
He had no Christmas decorations. Shane’s family went to town with Christmas, and in the past, he’d gone along for the ride. Lately he’d been getting his Christmas fix at the Block. The holidays were a great chance for overtime, picking up shifts for cops with families. “Yeah, no. Not really. Make yourself at home. Grab something from the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
The fridge door opened, bottles clinking, as he ducked into his bedroom and snagged his gym duffle from the floor. He dumped his workout clothes on the bed, then replaced them with underwear, socks, shirts. A second pair of jeans, and a pair of khakis. Would he need a jacket and tie? She might go out to dinner somewhere nice, with the unnamed hipster hookup. He’d have to go along, sit at another table, or maybe hang out in the bar, and watch him seduce Cady, or worse, Cady seduce him. What was the protocol for going out? The department provided extra training to the officers assigned to the mayor’s security detail, but the mayor was the former chief of police and Lieutenant Hawthorn’s dad. It was a cushy assignment, made easier by the mayor’s close relationship with the department. Either way, Conn hadn’t been through it.
He added a button-down shirt, and a tie, then folded his blue blazer and laid it on top of the clothes. He peered out of the bedroom doorway to find Cady standing beside his dining table, an open bottle of beer in her hand.
“Do you mind if I use your workout equipment?” he asked.
“One of us should,” she said, grinning. “I’m taking December off.”
He added shorts and running shoes to the bag, set his laptop and power cord on top of the stack of clothes, then lifted it in one hand and his utility belt in the other. In the dining room he dropped the bag on the floor, then sat down to work his gear off his belt and check it. Badge. He still had that, and he was going to carry it until someone made him give it up. Handcuffs in the case went at the small of his back. Taser on his right hip, just to the front of where his gun would sit.
The equipment made various clicks and thuds as he checked it, then snapped it onto his belt. When he looked up, Cady was staring at him, her bottle of beer halfway to her mouth.
“Didn’t Evan carry?”
She shook her head. “He was a bodyguard, not law enforcement. He had training in martial arts, that kind of thing, but the general idea was he’d get me away from a threat, not neutralize it. I’m not a head of state or something.”
“I’m law enforcement on duty,” Conn said. He pulled his Glock from its holster, checked the safety, ejected the clip, checked the rounds, then shoved it back in. “I’m carrying my service weapon. But between you and me, there’s a ton of paperwork that comes after you fire your service weapon, even more if I shoot someone.”
“With lawyers bearing the paperwork. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.” An amused glint in her eyes, she lifted the bottle and swallowed the last of the beer.
He stood up and clipped his gun to his belt. The badge and gun, the Taser and cuffs, grounded him, counteracting that drifting feeling he’d had since he walked into the conference room and Hawthorn showed him the pictures of his arrestee, brutally assaulted, and said the word “reassigned.” “All right,” he said.