“You can’t hire her, bro,” Clarke said, while Melissa turned red in the face. There were protocols. Things she could and couldn’t do. Like giving out information that had to do with an ongoing investigation.
“Too late. I already hired her,” Travis said, his blue-eyed gaze seeming more annoyed than anything else. “She’s highly qualified, too, and she’s in Paris at the moment.” Travis looked between him and Melissa in confusion, backing up a step, as though they were seriously crowding his space.
“Her father’s a killer,” Clarke said, his tone low, but deadly serious. “We’ve all been looking for her. She’s going to be brought in for questioning...”
And could, for all anyone knew, be involved. With harboring a criminal, if nothing else.
“A... What are you talking about?” Travis wasn’t annoyed now. Shocked, if anything. But he definitely wasn’t happy. “He was cleared of that thing months ago.”
“There’s been another murder in the park,” Clarke said while the room filled with stark silence behind him. “Same MO. And definitive evidence that proves Len Davison was the killer. Randall Bowe destroyed the evidence that would have put him away last time, but it’s a solid this time. I’m sorry, Trav, but it’s seriously not good.”
“And we seriously need to keep this in this room for now,” Melissa said. “We can’t let the press get a hold of this if we can help it. We’ve got to get this guy before he kills again.”
All gazes were glued to their chief, including Clarke’s, and while she might still be his irritating little sister, he was proud of her.
And told her so an hour later, after everyone else had filed out to head wherever they were going to spend their Sunday evenings.
“I’m proud of you, too, Clarke,” she said. “I look up to you far more than I think you know.” She coughed before continuing. “How’s Everleigh?” Maybe he’d known she would ask. Maybe that was why he’d hung around.
“Good, I guess. Your text came through about Larissa when we were still at the prison. She left with her parents.”
She was picking up pizza leftovers. Throwing away the trash. Grabbed a paper towel, wetted it and came back to the table.
“When are you going to see her again?”
“I’m not.”
She nodded. Kept wiping. He hated it when she did that. Refused to react to him. To give him the piece of her mind he knew she had waiting there to dish out.
And then she did. “You’re scared,” she said, moving farther down the table, which pissed him off, too.
“You’re right,” he told her, straightening his shoulders. “Scared of hurting her.”
Melissa stopped wiping, stood up straight, in uniform. If she wasn’t his little sister, he might have been intimidated at the look she gave him. “Why on earth would you think you’d hurt her?”
It wasn’t at all what he’d expected to hear.
“I’m not the settling-down type.”
“You’re here, in the town where you grew up, with a successful career, a vital and present part of the family, here for any of us, no matter what... How much more settled can you get?”
She was his sister. But she’d asked. “I haven’t done well recently with women.”
“Aubrey’s issues weren’t your fault.”
He knew that. But still felt responsible. “She’s only one in a long line, as you well know. I’ve never wanted to commit to anyone.”
“Because you hadn’t met the right one yet.”
“I doubt that... Why?”
“You’re a special guy who needs a very special woman. One who can hold his heart in her hands without trying to tame it. With that kind of woman around, why would a guy ever want another?”
Her words struck him harder than a bullet from her gun would have done. His little sister knew him pretty well, it seemed.
He had an untamed heart. Not a fickle one. He did what he felt was right, not what he was told was right. And he needed a woman who could live with that. Who could be happy living with that. Who’d want to live with that.
His wandering from woman to woman had nothing to do with an inability to be faithful. He just hadn’t met the person who filled his heart to the brim...until now, that was.