Only now it looked like one had followed me, instead.
I reached into my jacket and slid my Glock from its holster, caressing its roughened grip against my palm. I held it out in front of me and stuck the toe of my shoe into the crack in the door, silently kicking it open. As it swung wide, I let my finger caress the side of the gun. My dad had always taught me you never let your finger tickle the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. I’d always stood strong with that advice. When I saw her, I almost wished I’d tickled the trigger, and then let it shoot.
Shelly Punter stood across from me, her feet spread wide, her arms lifted where she pointed a SIG Sauer P238 at me. My heart tripped in my chest.
She let out a breath, lowered her weapon, and laid it on the outside corner of my desk. “What are you doing here?” she barked. Then she crossed her arms and glared at me.
I lowered my weapon when I saw that she’d discarded hers, but I didn’t put mine away. This was fucking Shelly Punter, it was the middle of the night, and she was in my office.
“This is my office,” I reminded her, scratching the stubble on my chin. “How did you get in here?”
She glanced toward the doorknob and shrugged. “Oh, I picked the lock.”
I looked toward the same lock. “Why?”
“Well, you weren’t here.”
And for some reason, she thought it was okay to break in. “Where did you learn to pick a lock?” It was a dumb question and I knew it as soon as I asked.
She shrugged. “Here and there.”
I nodded my head. “So why did you pick the lock on my office door in the middle of the night?”
She looked around. “Well, it wasn’t the middle of the night when I got here. It was about nine o’clock, and you weren’t here and I knew you needed help in your office with filing and…other stuff.” She looked around and I finally realized that my office was neat and tidy, not at all like I’d left it. When I’d left, I’d had paper all over the place, littering every surface of the room, and file folders had been stacked on the corner of my desk.
“Where did you put all my papers?”
“Where they belong,” she chirped. She danced from side to side. I suddenly realized that her stocking-clad feet were buried in my carpet, her high heels discarded near the door.
“You’ve been here all night?”
“Only since nine. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop.”
I nodded and swiped a hand down my face. “Shelly—”
But she held up a hand to stop me. “I know what you’re going to say.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “What was I going to say?”
She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Well, you were going to say thank you, silly.” She narrowed her gaze at me suddenly. “And you weren’t going to say another fucking thing aside from ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Shelly.’”
“That’s not what I was going to say.” I bit back a groan.
She shrugged again. “Close enough.”
Jesus. I knew she was different, but damn…
“You can say thank you now,” she prompted.
I looked around. “Where did you put all my paperwork?”
“I filed it.” She pulled open a file cabinet I’d never used and pointed inside. “Old cases, cold cases, invoices, receipts.” She swiped her finger around, pointing out the other files. Then she dusted her hands together. “I can work on your invoicing system next. It needs some serious work.”
“Shelly.” I heaved her name out on a sigh. “I’m not hiring you to work in my office.”
“I know. I’m doing it for free.”
Fuck me. “Why would you want to work for free?”
She rolled her eyes at me again. “I have a trust fund that would allow me to buy whatever I want. But it won’t let me buy myself a job. And I kind of told Lynn that I would try to be respectable, now that I’m an aunt and all.”
She looked so serious that I almost bit back my laugh. Almost but not quite. I coughed out a sputter.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, her brow furrowing.
“You want to work for me? For free? So you can be respectable?” I barked out another laugh. While I chuckled, I tucked my Glock back into its holster.
“Is that so hilarious?” The vee between her eyes grew deeper.
Yes. Yes, it was. “No,” I said. “I just don’t need office help.”
Her features softened. “Tell that to someone who didn’t just reorganize your filing system.”
I raised my hand to run it through my hair, but my side hurt like hell, so I brought my arm back down.
“Why did you just wince?” she asked, her eyes sweeping up and down me like she had X-ray vision.
“I didn’t,” I muttered. I did. I hurt like hell, but there was no reason for her to know that.
“Yes, you did.” She reached for my arm, her slender fingers sliding across the tender skin on my wrist.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I fell.”
“Did you break something?”
“No.”
Her fingertips tickled up my side until she poked a spot that made me wince. “You might have broken a rib.”
“I don’t think so.” I’d done that enough times that I’d know. She continued to poke around until I grabbed her fingers. “Please stop poking me where it hurts.”
“Oh,” she chirped. She winced. “Sorry.”
She didn’t pull her fingers from mine, and our stare-off turned quickly into an uncomfortable moment. I cleared my throat as soon as I realized it and she jerked her hand back.
“You should go,” I said. And don’t come back. I was going to kill Mason for suggesting she come and work for me. “Why don’t you just ask Mason for a job at the hospital?” Mason and both his parents worked there. It should be easy.
“I can’t work with psychiatric patients.” She waved her hand in the air. “Something about me being a little psychotic once upon a time. A lack of remorse. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
“You know legal work and medical work kind of have similar rules, right?”
“You don’t do legal work. You surveil stuff. You detect. You investigate.”
I shook my head. “I do legal work. For the police department. When I’m not ‘surveilling stuff.’” I drew air quotes around her ridiculous phrase.
“Oh, well, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.” She walked across the room and slipped her feet into her high heels. Then she walked back to the desk, picked up her gun, flicked the safety, and put it in her purse.
“Shelly,” I said slowly.
She raised her eyes to meet mine. “What?”
“Is that gun legal?”
She nodded. “I have a permit.”
“And you know how to fire it?”
“Of course. And I can fire it accurately. With precision. Perfect aim. I’m a gun prodigy, they told me at the firing range.” She said it all without even cracking a smile. She was serious, and that was disturbing.
She hitched her purse strap onto her shoulder. She was still wearing the dress I’d zipped for her earlier today. Suddenly, a vision of her almost naked flashed in my mind’s eye again.