his face completely neutral. “The BOLO will be updated to include Deirdre and her car. We’ll take this from here. You two head back to the office.”
Jonah wasn’t going to ream her for going off unsupervised? “What’s going on?”
“You want me to tell you that you did a good job?” Jonah asked.
“Might be nice.”
“That’s not going to happen. We all want to catch him, and you scored big with Deirdre and the files upstairs. Your actions versus the result, you barely broke even.”
“What?” Hailey couldn’t believe he thought she’d only done enough to outweigh her acting not exactly according to procedure. “But—”
“I get you want to catch Farrell, but this isn’t the way to do it. One of these days this jumping the gun is going to get you in serious trouble.”
Jonah ran a hand through his hair. “Once the team has finished processing the house we’ll run through what they’ve found.” He glanced at his watch. “How long until Kerry gets out of school?”
“You think Farrell’s going to come after my daughter this fast?” Some of the other guys on the task force had wives, kids. Would they be targeted, too? “Maybe we should put a detail on all the families. Just to be safe.”
Jonah folded his arms. “Look, we still don’t know if Farrell was injured last week or not. It depends if he’s already split town or if he’s sticking around to pay us back.”
“This is my lead, and it’s Charles’s weekend. Put someone on his house.”
Jonah strode away down the hall.
“Come on, Hailey.” Eric motioned to the front door.
Apparently Eric thought she’d done the wrong thing, too. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Together they stepped outside. The rain was falling in a steady stream. It felt like she was standing with her face against a sprinkler.
Hailey followed him to the curb, her drenched hair getting plastered to her head. “Jonah’s going to take all the credit.”
Eric looked back at her. Raindrops ran down his face. “You think?”
Hailey swiped the rain from her forehead. She should have grabbed a ball cap that morning. “Of course. That’s the only explanation for why he wants us out of here. Haven’t you learned anything? Jonah is going to make it look like I’m the victim and claim the lead for himself.”
“But Farrell will be off the streets. Isn’t that what we want?”
Hailey wanted to kick the gate. “That’s not the point...or not the whole point.”
“I thought our task force was a team.”
“That might have been in the brochure and all, but guys like Jonah only know one thing. Being top dog.”
Eric frowned. “Well, then, why do you stay if they treat you like this?”
“Why do you?”
“I’m trying to get my life back on track. And if you weren’t so contrary, I’d ask if we could help each other out.”
“Like allies?”
Eric’s lips curled into a smile. “A peace treaty. What do you say?”
Hailey opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. No one had ever offered to stand with her before. She stood on the sidewalk with rain running into the collar of her jacket.
Why couldn’t she say yes? It shouldn’t be this difficult to accept a good offer from a fellow marshal. A marshal who had worked witness protection had to be trustworthy. Why shouldn’t they have a true partnership?
His offer touched something that had lain dormant for so many years. She’d almost forgotten that place in her existed.
His anticipation seemed to fall away. “Forget it. Let’s go.”
Eric poured two coffees and set one in front of Hailey. She tapped a brisk rhythm on the edge of her desk with her pen. He was disappointed she hadn’t accepted his offer of partnership. Why couldn’t she see how much more they could achieve if they simply combined their efforts instead of butting heads all the time?
He typed his password in and brought up Deirdre Phelps’s cell phone records. She didn’t have a landline, but she did have internet service. He wanted to get his hands on her computer, check what websites she or Farrell had been looking at. He’d always loved computer forensics, and now that it played a bigger role in his work, he could add to the short tally of good things in his life.
The office’s double door beeped. A lanky man in an expensive suit pushed it open, and then shook out his umbrella on the entryway floor. His dark hair was shiny, either from the rain or from copious amounts of whatever he’d smeared in it to hold its expensive style.
Hailey lifted her head. “Great.”
Eric rolled his chair toward her desk. “Who is that?”
“His name is Charles Turpin. He’s the mayor.”
The mayor looked at Hailey behind her desk, but didn’t react the way people did when they saw someone they knew. Or someone they liked. Still, he came over, his Italian loafers clicking on the floor. “Hailey.”
Hailey kept her eyes on her paper, her back rigid. “Social visit?”
Eric turned to his computer and clicked on the next page of phone numbers. The digits blurred together, so he rubbed his eyes. He probably should have remembered to bring his reading glasses with him to work, since staring at a screen for more than fifteen minutes gave him a headache.
The mayor said, “I have a meeting with Marshal Turner about preparations, in case there’s any flooding over the next few days.”
Hailey’s eyes widened. “I thought the rain was dying down. It’s supposed to get worse?”
Charles motioned to the door to Turner’s office. “I should get to it.”
She nodded. “Any plans this weekend?”
Eric’s finger paused on his mouse. Were they dating? This Charles guy didn’t seem like the kind of man Hailey would be interested in, but there was clearly something between them. It just didn’t look like, whatever it was, was necessarily good.
Could this be her ex-husband? He’d heard through the grapevine that she was divorced from Kerry’s father. But, this guy? He couldn’t picture it. The mayor was way too suave, and Hailey was way too down-to-earth to fall for that.
“We’re going to dinner at Milton’s.”
“The steak place?”
“Yes.
