Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Carol Ericson (beginner reading books for adults .txt) 📗

through Keara’s mind during a restless night of sleep and again duringher drive into work this morning—when she wasn’t distracted by memories of kissing him. She’d been attracted to him from the start, so she’d expected to enjoy those kisses. What she hadn’t expected was the intensity.

The man kissed with a singular focus, until she’d felt consumed by the feel of him, by the taste of him. He might not have been law enforcement, but after plastering herself against him, she suspected he worked out with his agent colleagues, because his chest was rock-solid.

It was better that he’d stopped it before things went too far.

He was a colleague. He was also her best chance at connecting the Luna bombing to her husband’s murder—if in fact they were connected.

He was also dangerous. A fling was one thing. A fling was temporary, a distraction from the fact that she’d chosen a profession that sucked away a lot of her personal time. A distraction from the fact that even if she had more personal time, she had no one to spend it with. But a single kiss from Jax and she’d felt herself wanting. Physical wanting, of course. But emotional wanting, too. And that was territory she didn’t want to revisit.

“Everything okay, Chief?”

Keara looked up from her desk.

Tate Emory was standing in her doorway, too-perceptive concern in his dark eyes. He was the closest thing she had to a friend on the force. Not that she didn’t like just about everyone on her team, but Tate was different. She knew his secret, had given him a job in a tricky situation, so it was easier to share things with him in return. She’d kept his confidence, so he’d keep hers.

But not this. Not the guilt that filled her like nausea when she thought about kissing Jax when she should have been focused on getting justice for Juan.

She forced a smile. “It’s been a tough week. We’re four days out from that bomb and neither the FBI nor the Luna police have much more to go on than they did when it went off.”

By Wednesday morning—a full ninety-six hours after the bomb had detonated—she’d expected a solid suspect, maybe even an arrest, but at the very least, a manhunt. Instead, the FBI’s semiregular news conferences beside Luna’s police chief focused more on reassuring a scared public that they were working on it, and asking them to come forward if they had information that could help.

What the public didn’t know—what Keara had learned from talking to her colleagues in the Luna Police Department—was that the FBI still had a long way to go. They still had no idea who or what the intended target was, or what goal the bomber was trying to accomplish. Was there a message? If so, no one knew what it was. They still weren’t even sure if the bomber had been going for a bigger death toll by waiting until the impromptu soccer game happened or if that was unintentional and he’d expected few—or maybe even no—dead.

“Hey, at least it’s finally May,” Tate said, his tone more enthusiastic than the forty-five-degree weather warranted.

It would be a while before they hit temperatures that didn’t require a coat. But at least it was sunny.

She gave him a halfhearted smile, acknowledging his attempt to cheer her up.

“I’m going to take a trek up the mountain today,” Tate said, apparently giving up on that.

“Take Lorenzo and Nate with you. I doubt we’re going to magically run across someone who knows something, but let’s be honest. If Desparre is a good place to hide out, the mountain takes it to the next level.”

The mountain that separated Desparre from Luna was a great place to get lost, even more lost than the relative isolation offered by the rest of Desparre. Five years ago they’d discovered kidnappers had hidden five kids on that mountain for many years. They’d also found a murderer, running from a decades-old charge in Kansas. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine a bomber hiding there, too.

All of her officers were using their extra time between calls to chat with citizens, both to reassure them that the bombing investigation would be solved and also to see if anyone had useful information. So far it hadn’t borne any fruit, but there had to be a reason the bomber had targeted such a tiny park. Luna and Desparre weren’t that far apart, at least not in Alaskan terms. So there was a good chance someone around here knew something, even if they didn’t realize it.

Lorenzo Riera was one of her veterans, a steady officer who’d once faced down a grizzly bear who’d gotten a taste for people food and wandered downtown four years ago. He’d just as readily had her back at a more standard bar fight breakup last month. His partner, Nate Dreymond, had barely passed a year on the force. Since Tate’s partner, Peter, had left a few months ago, Nate was the force’s rookie.

Having Lorenzo at his side would be good backup for Tate if he ran into trouble, and having Nate tag along would give the rookie a chance to watch two great officers at work.

“Got it,” Tate agreed. “But you know, maybe you should reconsider the K-9 unit. If I had a K-9 partner, you wouldn’t have to keep putting out those failed job postings for another officer.”

It was a request Tate had been making almost from his first day on the force. Usually, Keara cited their lack of funds. But after seeing Jax work with Patches, she wondered if the cost might be worth it. “I’ll think about it.”

Tate’s mouth opened and closed, as if her response had totally thrown him.

“Let me know if anything pops,” she said.

He nodded and took the cue to leave.

She should do the same. Being chief meant a certain amount of politics and paperwork, but in a town as small as Desparre, it still required her to be out on the streets, too. Or maybe