My palms smarted from the sting of my nails biting into flesh. “I figured it was something like that.”
“Crazy how it feels like I’m right back where I started. The girl or the career. Only this time it’s your call, and I’m on the sidelines. I’m also not a girl.” He gave his head a shake. “I always figured we’d be like Eddie and Harry, two old timers who don’t know when to quit. I had sweet plans for our motorized scooters too. Full decal treatments, light bars, sirens, the whole shebang.”
“I’m not sold on leaving.” I had no choice but to go. “I’m not sold on any of it.” But I didn’t have much say there, either. “I haven’t said anything to anyone yet. Not you, not Dad, not the Trudeaus.”
“We’ll support whatever decision you make. That part’s a no-brainer.” A shrug rolled through his shoulders. “Wherever you roam, you’ll always be my Bou-Bou.”
“What about Nettie?” I asked in a small voice. “I won’t be around as much as we thought if I accept their offer. I would understand if —”
“Finish that thought, Luce, and we’re done with or without the new job.” His gaze hardened, and I pitied the road for taking the brunt to his glare. “You’re my friend. You’re Sherry’s friend. We don’t need a uniform or a paycheck tying us together to still be family. Don’t insult me or my wife by implying we only chose you because of proximity or lack of options or whatever the hell else you’re thinking over there. We chose you, you agreed, and you’re damn well stuck now. I want the best for my little angel muffin, and you, Luce Boudreau, are the best.”
A broken exhale that wanted to be a sob choked me.
“Please don’t start with the waterworks.” He popped open the console, groped around its interior, then passed me a crumpled packet of tissues. “I’ll buy you an ice cream cone. Two scoops of made-fresh-daily plus a handmade waffle cone. All you have to do is not leak until I can palm you off on someone more absorbent than I am.”
Dashing away the moisture under my eyes with a tissue, I blew my nose. “No waterworks here.”
Twenty minutes later, he was placing a warm cone dipped in chocolate, rolled in sprinkles, and topped with two scoops of brookies ice cream in my hand. “What are brookies anyway?”
“The lovechild of brownies and cookies,” he answered around a mouthful of his own cone as he left the drive through lane. “How do you not know these things?”
I used the spoon provided and dug in. “I live at home, and parents force you to eat real food?”
“A spoon? Really?” He sighed in my general direction, a thick ice cream mustache coating his lip. “This is how those rumors about you being found in the swamp started.”
Snorting at his attempt to cheer me, I chewed on a nugget of chocolatey goodness. “Pretty sure those rumors about me being found in the swamp were started based on the fact I was, actually, found in the swamp. Articles were written. There was news coverage and everything.”
“Semantics.”
We reached the Canton city limits, and I ditched the spoon to finish the job with my teeth.
“The thing about Wu I don’t get,” Rixton said between crunches on his cone, “is why he would go to Madison, visit with Summers, and drop your name. He had to know that would get back to you.”
“I’m in an observation period,” I hedged. “He’s probably checking up on me.”
“Why the Madison fire? There are two in our jurisdiction he could nose around in.”
I peeled the paper wrapper down my cone. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Your performance was flawless at the other scenes,” he answered, as if I had asked him a question. “There were a lot of witnesses to your episode at the Madison fire. News must have filtered back to him. It makes sense he might have gone searching for clues, going as far as to chat up officials who had been in contact with you prior to the incident, to figure out what shook you.”
Shook me made it sound like my allergy story had been debunked. That couldn’t be a good thing. Rixton was whip-smart, and given time and distance for the wheels in his head to spin, he would churn out his own diagnosis for my erratic behavior, and that could get dangerous. For both of us.
“What do you plan on doing with the hot papers we’ve got in the trunk?” The segue wasn’t my smoothest, but the way Rixton had left his thought hanging, like I might want to finish it, wasn’t happening. “The Orvis case isn’t ours, but we could start a folder and file a set of copies for a rainy day.”
“Works for me. I’ll leave another set in the car with our hardcopies. That leaves a set for me and a set for you for our personal records.” He finished his ice cream and balled up his trash to drop in the mini can I had learned to keep behind my seat since he was forever snacking and would otherwise junk up my floorboard. “Can you forward me a scanned set of files too? We ought to loop Summers in so she can get that information in the right hands.”
“The scans were grouped as a single file too large to email. The copy shop sent me a link where I can download them.” The real issue was I had to gain access through Miller or Santiago in the first place. “I’ll forward you copies when I get home.”
“I had no idea you were a budding tech genius,” he teased. “No wonder the FBI wants you bad.”
“I’m just regurgitating what I was told.” And probably getting half of it wrong. “I made nice with one of the tech guys from White Horse. He taught me a few things.”
“I bet he did.” He got serious on me in a blink. “Do you need to hear The Talk again?”
“Um, no. Thank you, but no. Once was more than enough. Believe me. I will never forget that talk.” And, if he sprang it on Nettie when she was older, neither would she. Maybe it was a good talk after all. “Why is it so hard to believe I have other guy friends? You’re a guy and my friend.”
“I’m what you call a unicorn,” he informed me, voice solemn. “We’re rare and never spotted in the wild.”
“Are you trying to tell me the only reason why I can see you is because you’ve been tamed?” I fought to smother my grin. “Are the bars enclosing you, allowing me to view your mystical majesticness, your marriage? Do you see your vows as a cage?”
The blood drained from his face, and he cleared his throat twice before he croaked. “You win. I will not pick on you about the guys you date, no matter how many of them there are, and you will never tell Sherry that you mistakenly believed I referred to our marriage as a cage.”
“See, I don’t know. That jibe about no matter how many of them there are makes it sound like you think I’m shacking up with half the town instead of believing me when I tell you I’ve got a lot of guy friends.” I hummed in consideration. “Maybe I should ask Sherry for her opinion on what you meant, since you seem to think I’m so confused.”
“You win, no qualifiers.” He bowed his head. “I am at your mercy. Use your newfound powers wisely.”
Cackling evilly, I rubbed my hands together. “Where would the fun be in that?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Despite the text I’d sent Miller, I didn’t hear back from him before my shift ended. Unsure what had gone down when he confronted Ivashov, I decided to give him space. Calling Wu and demanding an explanation for his meddling in the Orvis case ranked high on my to-do list too, but I wanted privacy for that one. The less Rixton ferreted out about Wu and whose shoes he meant to fill, the better for us all.
Thanks to the pickup service this morning, I rated curbside delivery at the Trudeaus’ house. Call me crazy, but I was starting to feel like a takeout order, and I missed my Bronco.