“That seems like she’s an accomplice in murder right there,” Brianna muttered under her breath.
I shot her a look of anger. “She did not help with that murder. She was explaining the intricacies of something that happened on the television. I know the show she was watching, and the episode. I went and did my own research after that episode. If Hester hadn’t asked Cannel, then she wouldn’t have had to look far to find out the answers. The information is readily available all over the internet.”
Brianna said something under her breath, and I suddenly wondered what I saw in her.
Though Brianna was beautiful, she was ugly on the inside with her attitude.
She’d already gotten three partner transfers in her career, because each of those partner’s wives hadn’t been able to stand having their husbands work with her.
The partners had threatened to quit if they weren’t transferred.
And now I was starting to think that there was a reason nobody wanted to work with Brianna.
I’d seen the anger and the resentment, as well as the overall attitude of Brianna all this time, but her pretty face had been enough to distract me from seeing the truth.
And it wasn’t until today, with Cannel, that I understood.
Brianna was a jealous woman. When someone prettier than her was around, she put up a front.
CHAPTER 2
When nothing goes right, go left.
-Text from Haggard to Cannel
CANNEL
“Hey, honey. How are you doing? How’s work at the new job?”
I smiled at hearing the warmness in one of my good friend’s voices.
“I’m doing well,” I admitted. “The new job is… boring. I’m on the ICU floor, and they don’t really have anything truly exciting going on there just yet. I’m still on probation until the fourth of next month.”
“I guess that’s to be expected at a new job,” Beckham admitted. “Did you go out with your friends from work like they wanted you to that first night you were there?”
I groaned. “No.”
Beckham sighed. “I know that you’re new, but you have to get back out there, sweetie. Holing up in your apartment isn’t going to help.”
It might not, but I couldn’t very well just ‘go out.’
The last time I’d just ‘gone out’ I’d ended up kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking.
Literally.
The one saving grace out of that whole experience was that I’d been sold to someone that hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with me.
The man who’d purchased me had been a very virile man. However, that man hadn’t actually been interested in women like me. He’d been interested in girls like his daughter.
In the end, I wasn’t actually sure why that man had purchased me. But I was glad that he did because I’d saved his daughter from being used more than once by him and had the battle scars to prove it.
“I’ll get there,” I lied. “This is my first month out of Traci’s home and on my own… I’ll get there.”
After being rescued, I hadn’t gone back to my fiancé’s place like I’d always dreamed about doing.
Why?
Because my fiancé, to get me back, had tried to do the very same thing to Beckham that had been done to me. He’d tried to sell her to the sex traffickers to find out where I was, and it’d backfired.
He hadn’t actually found out where I was, and he’d left a pregnant Beckham there to fend for herself.
Neither her nor I, had spoken about anything that had gone on, just like Traci, my best friend in the whole wide world, hadn’t asked. But I knew that, if she even experienced it for half a second, that was way too long.
And it was something I hadn’t been able to forgive my fiancé for.
So I’d broken up with him.
It was something he still wasn’t quite able to come to grips with.
He tried, multiple times a day, in fact, to still get into contact with me.
I’d change my phone, and he’d have the phone number within the hour—something that his money and his connections gave to him.
At this point, I just blocked him every time he called from a new number and hung up on him when I heard his voice.
It’d been exactly two years since I’d made it home, and two years since I’d officially called it off with Toot, but neither of us could move on.
At least, I thought I couldn’t move on.
I thought that I would be in love with Toot—Beau—forever. I thought he was going to be my one. The father of my children. The man that I spent the rest of my life with.
I’d thought that I wouldn’t be able to get over him, that I’d be stuck, broken forever.
That was until I met Detective Schultz today.
The moment I’d seen him walking across the parking lot next to his partner, something weird and fluttery had started happening in my chest.
The normal ‘panic’ that I had when I met someone outside of four protected walls—when I was too far away from a man that I knew would protect me if needed—had subsided.
And somehow, without even getting a clear look at his face, I knew without a single doubt in my mind that Detective Schultz would protect me with his life if I ever needed him to.
“I have a reason for calling.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, met a man today.”
Beckham gasped. “You what?”
“I met a man,” I repeated. “A detective.”
Beckham made a squeal that had her husband, Trouper, asking her what the hell was wrong.
Beckham ignored him and said, “What do you need from me?”
She knew me so well.
“I need to look into his background,” I admitted.
I need to make sure he’s not a fucking serial rapist, sex trafficker, or murderer before I sleep with him.
“You found the one, huh?” she asked.
The ‘one’ was the man that I planned to burst through my wall with.
Or, maybe, the one that would bust through my wall for me.
Someone that would hopefully help me get over Toot, as well as help me move on from this awful sense of doom that always seemed to cling to me wherever I went, and through whatever I did.
“What’s his name?” she asked when I didn’t comment on her ‘one’ comment.
“Detective Schultz of the Paris Police Department,” I answered, giving her everything that I knew.
The card he’d given me had been noted as Detective W. Schultz, Paris Police Department, and then a phone number.
But I hadn’t given her the phone number.
I wasn’t sure if it was a department issued one or not, so I’d let her do her digging.
“Oh, he’s hot as hell,” Beckham mused.
I remembered back to yesterday, when I’d seen him walking across the parking lot toward me.
Toot… no, Beau, I corrected myself. I refused to call him by that stupid name. Beau had been attractive, but quite a bit shorter than me. Shorter than me by at least six inches.
But Detective Schultz had been tall. He’d towered over his partner, who appeared to be around the same height as me.
His long, wavy black hair had been the second thing I’d seen. The waves were longer than I’d seen any man wear lately, almost as if he could give less than a shit about what he looked like. As long as it was comfortable to him, and under department protocol.