“No,” Justice replied. “I wish I had chosen somewhere else to eat, though.”
I choked on a tomato.
Jackson turned his mutinous eyes toward me.
“Where’s your girl?” he asked.
I reached for my water and took a long drink before saying, “Working.”
“What does she do?” he pushes.
I didn’t want to answer him.
But I couldn’t see why it would matter for him to know what she did for a living.
“She works for some authors doing something,” I answered.
I, of course, knew more than that.
But I didn’t want him to know that she was home all day long. I didn’t want him to know anything about her that might give him any insight into her.
“Sounds…inconsequential,” he said, eyeing his wife now.
I looked over at his wife to see her staring at me with something close to worry on her face.
“Is she an editor?” the woman asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She works with a bunch of different authors. Never asked what it was she did exactly.”
Total lies.
I knew that she was the woman behind the scenes. She didn’t edit for the authors, but she did take the books and format them. She also helped promote the authors that she worked with.
There was a whole lot of details in her job, and I tried to listen when she went in-depth, but honestly, it was a lot to take in.
“I’ll have to see about getting her name,” the woman replied. “I write under the pseudonym ‘Peach Jones.’ It’s fun to hear that someone around here is in the same little book community as me.”
I would have to remember to write the name down after Jackson left.
The little meeting had gone beyond uncomfortable and was now in the ‘I would like to leave’ category.
“I’m done,” Justice said as he stood up. “Are you ready to go? I have to go by the bank to deposit my check.”
I gave a jerk of my head and sucked up the last of my water before taking the rest of my sandwich and shoving it into my mouth.
It was about two bites worth, so all I did as I was leaving was wave at Jackson and his wife.
When we finally got out to the bikes, Justice looked at me with a new respect.
“I gotta say,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about Jackson from a couple of other cops. I’m honestly surprised you made it as long as you did with him before leaving. Thank God you’re not having to deal with his shit anymore. His eyes creeped me the fuck out.”
“I know,” I admitted.
And I did.
Jackson had the freakiest looking eyes on the planet, and not because they were a weird color or anything, but because they were devoid of any and all emotion.
I’d heard that sometimes, after being on the job for a long time, that cops become hardened. But Jackson wasn’t just hardened. He was like a robot. The only emotion I ever saw out of him was anger, and that was usually directed toward me.
“His wife is hot, though,” Justice said. “Looks too sweet for him.”
I agreed wholeheartedly.
“Do you really need to go to the bank?” I asked as we reached our motorcycles.
“Yes,” Justice said. “But not right this second.”
“Might as well go,” I said. “That way he won’t see us just driving off.”
Sadly, the bank was across the street, and Jackson would be able to figure out that we’d used the bank as an excuse to leave. Then he’d just give me shit about it the next time I saw him.
“Fine with me,” Justice said. “We have about fifteen minutes until it’s time to get back on shift, anyway. I’m not saying that I don’t want to work, but I definitely don’t want to give KPD fifteen minutes of my time when I don’t have to.”
I knew exactly what he was saying.
Why give the department fifteen minutes—money out of your own pocket, practically—when we could just take the extra fifteen minutes and not give the PD anything for free?
Though, I wasn’t as bitter about my move to this department as Justice was.
Justice was, as you could call it, pissed.
Way pissed.
So pissed, in fact, that I was honestly surprised he was still here.
But, I had a feeling it had a lot to do with the girl that he’d mentioned over lunch.
“Okay, meet you over there.”
I followed Justice over to the bank and spotted a very familiar car in the parking lot.
Grinning like the dumbass that I was, I got out with quite a bit more pep in my step than I had at Subway.
The radio squawked, and I turned it down a little lower so it wouldn’t be like a deafening blast when we walked into the quiet bank.
I noted that Justice did the same as we walked inside the building.
I didn’t spot her at first.
I was too busy allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the lobby to notice where she was.