And waited.
Five minutes later he was pretty sure Amelia had forgotten him.
And then there she was, back at the door. “I’m sorry, young man,” she said, smiling at him as she handed him a cup filled with what smelled like chocolate. Ironic after the day he’d spent researching choclatiers.
Or fitting.
The photo he’d given her was nowhere to be seen.
“I made a phone call to make sure you are really a cop and then put on water for some of my homemade cocoa mix. Would you like to come in?”
He had hours of work ahead of him, things to do before he was due back on shift in the morning.
“I’d like that,” he said without hesitation, and with a short movement forward, he stepped back in time.
CHAPTER FIVE
L ucy waited a day and a half before making another trip to the lockup without obtaining permission to be there. Amber Locken might not have agreed to let her at her perp if she’d asked. Amber had made no secret about the fact that she thought Lucy was too emotionally connected to the case to have any official involvement. Their captain had agreed.
Amber and the captain didn’t know Lucy well enough. She let herself into the jail just after the dinner hour on Wednesday, swiped her detective badge, made it through the next set of doors, swiped her badge again and then requested a visit with prisoner 281.
Two-eighty-one was housed on the long-term-stay, dangerous-crime block. He was a man who had not yet been sentenced to prison. But he would be.
Sloan Wakerby agreed to her request to see him. And why not? He didn’t have anything to lose.
Used to interrogating suspects—dangerous ones—Lucy nonetheless second-guessed the advisability of what she was doing when the guard left her alone in the room with Sloan Wakerby. But the armed officer was just on the other side of the glass, watching every move that was made. She was perfectly safe.
She wanted Wakerby alone. The guy didn’t respect women. He’d had a smirk on his face every single time she’d asked him a question the one other time she’d had a go at him. An official go. Ramsey Miller had been present that time. He’d flown in specifically for the interview.
She’d asked Ramsey to come. But that was before Lucy had had a full handle on Wakerby.
Her new theory was that if there were no men around, Wakerby might get cocky enough to give her something.
She wasn’t choosy. Any little thing she could work with would do.
“You ever hear of a woman named Gladys Buckley?”
“If you think you’re pinning something else on me, you’d better give it up, lady.”
“Gladys wasn’t raped.”
“I don’t give a…”
Lucy tuned out the rest of the man’s colorful reply regarding his lack of caring.
“She’s an older woman,” she said instead.
“I don’t have to talk to you without my lawyer present.”
“That’s right, you don’t. I’m here to talk. You just listen.”
Wakerby’s stare was harsher than the string of words he’d just hurled her way.
“You were made,” she said as she set down her portfolio and took the cold hard metal seat across the scarred conference table from the slime who’d ruined her mother’s life.
Wakerby grinned—an expression that only engaged half of his mouth—and shrugged.
“You’re going to prison for the rest of your life. At the very least.”