that? She didn’t recognize the vehicle or its occupant behind the steering wheel, though she could make out little more than the man’s snow-white hair. But he wasn’t old, not if the ripples of muscle beneath his T-shirt were any indication. He was almost faceless with his head hunched down into his shoulders and his purple K-State ball cap pulled low over his eyes. Was he lost? Sleeping?
Watching her ?
He shifted in his seat and Brooke quickly turned away, avoiding any possibility of eye contact by staring down at her fingers on the door handle. “Paranoid much?”
Her nerves about starting the new job had gotten the better of her common sense, that was all. This was a regular old Monday morning in the middle of July, not a Hitchcock movie. And the Wildcat fan was nothing more than a man in a truck.
Brooke lifted her chin, determined to dispel her suspicion. She saw her aunts through the tall, narrow church windows, moving inside the house. There was a trio of boys two houses down, marking the bases for an early-morning whiffle ball game. Farther down the street, she spotted another neighbor, Mrs. Boyer, hanging on to the leash of her Labradoodle puppy as they practiced their daily walk.
All normal. All familiar.
Except…
Him.
“Stop it.” Brooke yanked open the car door and tossed her bag across the seat before she was tempted to look his way again. The man was probably one of Truman McCarthy’s construction workers, who’d shown up early for his shift and was waiting for his foreman to arrive. She was the only one who spent so much time with the thoughts inside her head that she could turn a harmless observation into a threat. No one else in the neighborhood seemed to think anything was out of place. Why should she?
Dismissing the man, the truck and the creepy sixth sense her imagination had concocted, Brooke hiked her skirt a notch and climbed inside to start the car and drive away.
But only a few minutes later, she began to wonder if her imagination had been playing tricks on her, after all. Stopped at a light before turning onto the highway which would take her into downtown Kansas City, Brooke checked her rearview mirror. Her breath hitched and she looked again.
Three vehicles behind her. Waiting to turn onto the same highway.
The stranger in the dented tan pickup truck.
Chapter Three
“I’m familiar with the program, sir.” Brooke hugged two software documentation manuals to her chest, wondering if Mitch Taylor had any idea how much space his broad shoulders and thick, barrel chest took up in her small, freshly painted but otherwise undecorated outer office. “But it’ll certainly be helpful to go through the formal training tomorrow.”
“Good.” His deep, commanding voice seemed to bounce off the safety glass on the door between their offices. “I’m competent when it comes to computers, but I’ll be counting on you to understand all the tricky stuff.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And unless it’s the commissioner, my wife or one of my sons or daughter calling, I don’t want to talk to anyone before the morning briefing.”
“Won’t the watch commanders handle the briefing of each shift?”
“They’ll handle the briefing. But they’ll meet with me first.”
“Yes, sir.” Brooke jotted the note on the pad at her desk. Watch commander meeting—no calls but the ones that count. She set down her pen and looked up. “Any other daily routine items I should know, Major Taylor?”
“Today, just handle the phone. Get your feet under you, unpack these boxes, and we’ll figure out the rest as we go along this week.”
“Yes, sir.”
A smile softened the rugged line of his jaw. “It’s Mitch. You don’t have to use the Mister or Major or sir when it’s just us talking.” He extended his long arm across her desk. “Welcome to the Fourth, Brooke.”
She reached out to shake his hand, “Thank you, sir—” Her shaky smile relaxed into the real deal. “Thanks, Mitch.”
“That’s better.” He seemed to approve of her effort to blur the line between efficiency and informality. Pulling back the front of his jacket, he propped his hands at his waist, subconsciously emphasizing the badge clipped to his belt, and giving her a glimpse of the gun and holster he wore beneath his right arm. Mitch Taylor was clearly a man who led men, but he seemed to have a little more teddy bear in him than his grizzly reputation had led her to believe. He surveyed her office, stopping when he spotted the plants she’d set on one of the empty bookshelves. “I see you have a fan club.”
Way to impress the boss, Hansford. He’d left flowers on her desk for when she arrived that morning, and she hadn’t said boo about them. Brooke set the stack of manuals on the corner of her desk and crossed to the shelf, fingering the delicate white petals and reading the attached card that welcomed her and wished her luck.
“Thank you for the daisies. They’re…” A lovely gesture. A bright addition to the office. One of my favorite flowers. “They’re nice.”
Nice? With her back to her boss, Brooke rolled her eyes. A dozen eloquent thank-yous had run through her head, and all that came out of her mouth was They’re nice? No wonder Louise worried about her ability to carry on a personal conversation with a man.
“Glad you like them. Though, I will confess, my wife, Casey, thought of them.”
“She has good taste,” Brooke stumbled on, fighting to get her thoughts ahead of her words. She turned to face him. “Tell her thank you, too.”
“I will.” Including his wife seemed to please him, which pleased Brooke. “We’d better get to work then, hadn’t we?”
“Yes, sir.” He held up a cautionary finger, and Brooke almost laughed. “Right, Mitch,” she corrected herself.
With a wink, he opened the adjoining door between their offices and left her to get acquainted with bookshelves and file drawers, a state-of-the-art computer system and boxes of supplies that needed to find a home.
That was one. Louise better not be climbing that ladder. Brooke had only two more conversations to go.
Standing a little straighter and smiling more easily, Brooke opened the blinds covering the windows of her outer office, spying on the stream of uniformed and plain-clothes officers outside. The shift must be changing for there to be so much traffic leading from the bank of elevators to the sergeant’s desk and main room beyond. From her hallway, cubicle walls blocked her view of the detectives’ desks and interview rooms. And she already knew the conference and break rooms were around the corner down another hall. Mitch Taylor’s quick tour this morning had already familiarized her with the layout of the Fourth’s headquarters building, if not with all the people on the other side of that glass.
Turning away before her confidence wavered, Brooke took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. She resumed organizing file cabinets and her desk in a way that would be most efficient for her. After depositing an armload of paper onto the bottom bookshelf, she paused to stretch and admire her flowers.
