“Uh-huh. Stand forewarned, if breaking and entering are on your agenda, you can turn around now. Loretta doesn’t need you in jail.”
“You don’t think I know that? I like to stay on the good side of the law as well as anyone. But Iknowthis town. Geoff Hayes isn’t a killer. He coaches boys’ baseball, for pity’s sake. And Bernice may be a bit of a bitch at work, but her cookies carry the church bake sale.” She set out on a zigzag path in the direction of town.
“I’m pretty sure the council is not handing over the keys to let you go ghost hunting.” Jax wasn’t falling for her distraction.
She scrunched up her pert nose. “Look, you’re not going to like what you’ll see. Just turn around and read contracts and figure out what Swenson wanted. I won’t be breaking anything.”
“Even the law?”
“Is using a key breaking the law?”
“Probably, if the key doesn’t belong to you.” Jax thought that might be a gray area, but he pressed his argument. “And there’s the small matter of an alarm system. And once you’re in there, it’s probably trespassing. And then there’s a ghost who throws things—”
“Either shut up or go home. I can’t read contracts. I can read auras. Let me do what I can do and you do what you do best.” Evie turned down a side street of offices closed for the weekend.
If she thought she was hiding from public notice, she should have worn a hat. Jax wasn’t about to explain camouflage to an orange-haired genie in bright blue short-shorts and a red tank top sayingI’m not ignoring you. I’m just not paying attention.Looking at her short-circuitedhisattention.
He studied the neighborhood as if this were a military reconnaissance. She’d certainly chosen a deserted path. “What if assisting you is what I do best?”
“Hogwash.” Evie took a shortcut through an alley behind an abandoned gas station.
“I’m not just a desk jockey,” he reminded her. “You need to learn to trust me.”
“If I didn’t trust you, I would have lost you a few blocks back. Trust isn’t the problem. A general difference in how we approach life is the problem. Trustmeon that. You’ve had decades of practice in closing in on yourself, shutting out others. I don’t do that. I literally, physically, cannot shut myself off.”
Now there was an insight to ponder. “I thought you could turn off that third eye thing.” And now he was believing in chakras and auras and third eyes. Was that lust or insanity?
“Most of the time. Not all the time. Iseeyou. That’s how I know how uptight you can be. And when you let yourself go... Well, then I’m usually better occupied than watching your aura. Once I know what to expect of a person’s aura, it sort of becomes a part of them I can’t turn off.”
That made his skin itch.Better occupied?As in, when he was kissing her? Jax hoped so. “That’s why two heads are better than one. We can examine a problem from different perspectives.”
“Maybe,” she said with doubt, before slipping through an opening in a wooden fence too narrow for Jax to fit through.
As if that would stop him. He yanked off another plank and squeezed through into an alley behind city hall.
She shook her head in disapproval but only indicated the trash-littered space. “One of former Mayor Blockhead’s complaints was the lack of parking—he couldn’t squeeze his Escalade back here. So he tore down an entire trailer park to create a parking lot. Clancy and the rest of the town council encouraged him so they could force the public off the street and make them pay for the privilege of visiting city hall. And then they reserved the choice spots out front for themselves.”
“Ward can’t bring back the trailer park,” he warned. “She’s likely to have her own agenda that will set Clancy’s sort in an uproar.”
“Yeah, but that will be fun, and maybe we can hope we’ll push Afterthought one more step into the here and now instead of yesterday.” Crossing her arms, Evie scanned the litter-strewn alley. “Either somebody hasn’t been doing their clean-up chores, or the trash cans have been emptied.”
Jax picked up a few wads of paper and straightened them out. “They could have recycled these by printing on the other side. These are just memos.”
“The office shares a printer. Not practical. Afterthought needs a trash company that recycles. I wonder what they were looking for?” Not bothering to check the trash, Evie ran her hand over the top of the door frame, coming up with nothing.
“A dog could have turned the cans over.” Jax watched her scout around until she found a large rock and overturned it. From her frown, he assumed she’d been hoping for a hidden key. “Surely no one is daft enough to leave the key to city hall under a rock? And what about the alarm code?”
“Jax, adapt,” she said impatiently, glancing around, presumably for more hiding places. “Small town. The criminal activity around here isinsidethis building, not outside. I daresay I could enter every house in Afterthought, given enough time. I’m pretty certain no one stored this key at the front door like half the places I know, but back here, yeah, it’s gonna be here just to keep them from locking themselves out when they empty the trash.”
She ran her fingers over the decorative cement blocks surrounding the bins, held up a key, and crowed her triumph.
Jax muttered and checked the alley to be certain no one was watching her do this. “Tell Ward to hire R&R to change all these damned locks if she wins.”
“Will do.” She craned her neck to look inside the block. “Yup, there’s the code. The Sharpie ink is fading. I thought that stuff was permanent.”
Jax rubbed his eyes in disbelief but said nothing as she applied the key to the door, then reached in and pushed the code she’d found. When nothing clamored, he gave up. It looked like city hallwantedto be robbed.
“I could have just watched Helena key in the code the other night, but I was being polite.” Evie slipped inside.