“I catch this guy, I’m taking you to dinner.”
Slowly, she pivoted to face him.
“Dinner?” she asked.
With the look on her face, Hix knew she got him.
“Dinner,” he confirmed.
“Hixon—”
“Not now,” he whispered. “Not now, baby. I need this, what you’re givin’ me. Need it to be easy. Need it to be uncomplicated.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
He said what he said but he still held her gaze and made sure she understood him.
“At dinner, you’re up for it, we’ll complicate things.”
Something lit her eyes, her face, making her early-morning, makeup-less beauty awe-inspiring.
Hope, maybe.
Excitement, absolutely.
“I’m up for it,” she told him.
He smiled at her.
She smiled back.
And there was the hope.
Christ.
Yeah.
Awe-inspiring.
“Since that’s gonna happen, sweetheart, feel at this juncture it’s not takin’ it too far to ask your last name,” he remarked.
She stared at him before she busted out laughing.
He was smiling at her because he liked her laughter and it was funny they were where they were and he didn’t know her last name, but he was just glad she also found it amusing, when she quit laughing and shared, “Dare. It’s Dare.”
Greta Dare.
He liked it.
“Bonus, my middle name is Kate,” she went on. “Not Katherine. Just Kate. Apparently my mother wasn’t into too many syllables.”
“It’s pretty,” he murmured.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“Timothy,” he told her.
“Sorry?” she asked.
“Your bonus.”
She grinned then her eyes went strange and her body started visibly shaking. “Ohmigod,” her voice was shaking too. “You’re Sheriff Hixon T. Drake. You totally need to start going by that handle on your CB.”
He liked the fact she shared his and his son’s sense of humor, not to mention got in on a joke she didn’t even know was their joke.
“This has been suggested by my son,” he noted.
She gave him a blinding smile. “Well, that’s two votes.”
He shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”
“Shame,” she muttered, still smiling and turning back to the stove.
“You need help?” he asked.
“Nope,” she told the sausage. “Just need you to pull over the stools and sit your behind on one. You probably won’t be relaxing for a while. You do it over breakfast, get your belly full, you’ll be able to face the day.”
He stared at her back as she moved from the sausage to the counter by the stove, grabbed the handle of a spoon in a big bowl and started beating what sounded like batter.
Then he moved to her. Right to her, right into her space, fitting himself to her back and putting his hands to the edges of the counter on either side of her.
It was batter.
Pancakes.
Like she’d promised.
He dipped his head and set his lips to the skin at the side of her neck.
“Night before last you told me you liked me, and I didn’t share you got the same. But I’ll share more. It’s about pancakes. It’s about the way you sing. It’s about how amazingly beautiful you are, so beautiful, sometimes, if I don’t brace myself, it blinds me. It’s about you knowin’ I really need another bourbon and gettin’ me one when I’m tryin’ to do the right thing. It’s about you knowin’ better what the right thing needs to be. It’s about how hot it is when you fuck yourself on my cock. And it’s about how gorgeous you look when you come. It’s about stud muffins and gum drops. It’s about a lot of things, Greta.”
“That all sounds really complicated, Hix,” she replied softly, her voice breathy.
“No, sweetheart, all that is really fuckin’ simple.”
On that, before it did get complicated, he kissed her neck, moved away and got the stools.
He was ass to stool, sipping coffee, and she was pouring batter on a heated griddle when she commented, “I noted you chose stud muffin and not snuggle bug.”
Hix started chuckling.
She turned to him with happiness, playfulness and a little heat in her eyes, “I’ll admit, I prefer that one too.”
He busted out laughing.
Greta grinned as she set aside the batter.
She didn’t feed him pancakes.
She fed him big, fluffy buttermilk pancakes with sausage links and warmed syrup.
She ate beside him.
She was only halfway done when he’d finished, rinsed his plate, and got himself a syrupy-sweet kiss.
“Meet you on the porch?” she asked after he’d pulled away.
“Definitely.”
“I’ve gotta sing at the Dew tonight, snuggle bug,” she reminded him.
“I’ll see you there too.”
Her eyes gave him a smile.
He moved away but brushed his finger along the smile at her lips.
Then he moved out of the kitchen, sat on a step to pull on his socks and boots, and called out, “Later, gum drop,” on the way to the door.
“Later, stud muffin,” she returned.
He shot a grin over his shoulder at her as he walked out her door.
Mid-morning, Hix, with his ass leaned against the edge of the desk, his ankles crossed in front of him, Larry standing to his left, Donna and Bets to his right, Hal farther away but close to the whiteboard, stared at that damned board.
All their eyes were to it.
Larry had called Faith yesterday with the news they’d found the crime scene and he’d given her a call that morning just to check in.
They’d sifted through a variety of messages Reva and Ida had taken from folks calling in after seeing the website, none of them having anything to do with what happened on 56, none of them pertinent, so they’d also moved on.
They got their report that the slug and the shell casings were from the gun that killed Calloway. They also got their report that there were trace amounts of blood the rain hadn’t soaked away in the soil forensics took from the crime scene and that blood was Calloway’s.
So they had more.
They still had dick.
The slugs were not in the system.
None of the team’s legwork the day before got them much of anything. They didn’t have hardly any homeless problem in McCook so any homeless anyone noted were known, not drifters, not the kind to shoot a man down while stealing his truck, not even the kind to be out on that road, and definitely not being in the position to own a gun.
Regardless, his department couldn’t be seen rousting homeless and harassing them without reason—say a witness who saw them wandering 56 at any time, especially the day of the murder.
They didn’t have that.
No one had seen any drifters.
There were a number of fugitives to look into and Donna and Bets were on that. But unless they could nab them there was nothing they could move on, and they couldn’t deem them a person of interest unless they’d been spotted at least in the county, but better, around the place of the murder or dump location at the time of either.
Other than that, his crew had come up with zilch.
“I need to pay a visit to our meth man,” he said into the quiet room. “He doesn’t deal here but he probably knows who uses and may feel compelled to keep our relationship copacetic by helpin’ out.”
Donna looked to him. “A snake eats a rat, he doesn’t rat on a rat.”