But it wasn’t all that great on my love life.
I’d dated a few times in high school, but every boy I’d been with broke it off. They’d told me I was too into things they weren’t interested in. Like following in my father’s footsteps and becoming a cop.
They didn’t know that I hadn’t really had much of a choice. Well, maybe that wasn’t completely true. Dad would never have forced me into police work if I’d hated it. But I idolized him, wanted to be just like him. And since he was also a bridge for transferring god power to those lucky few mortals who could become vessels for it, just like me, I felt the closer I fitted my footsteps into the path he’d chosen, the more likely my success would be.
Luckily, I loved being a cop. So did Myra and Jean. We loved taking care of Ordinary. Not just the creatures and vacationing gods, but all of our other neighbors.
“You know I’m in an unusual line of work, right?” I asked him. “Telling Ryder the secrets of the gods and creatures, and everything else isn’t the same as something he might not want to tell me.”
“You don’t think a mortal could be hiding a dangerous secret?”
I flipped on the blinker and waited for a gap in traffic to take the turn up to Old Rossi’s place on the hill.
A little girl, probably six, wore a mini-umbrella hat. I noted with surprise, that her mother did too.
“Lookee, lookee,” Crow said. “Wouldn’t catch on, you said. Stupid hat, you said.”
I ignored him. “What kind of dangerous secrets do you think Ryder might be hiding?”
“You read the headlines. You get the police department chatter. Humans are capable of all sorts of terrible things.”
I laughed. “So...what? You think Ryder’s part of the mob? Or is dealing drugs or has suddenly decided to take up human trafficking as a side business?”
Crow was quiet a moment, as if trying to decide how he was going to answer me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m listening. I’m trying to hear you and not judge what you’re saying.”
“That,” he said. “Say that to Ryder. Tell him you’ll listen.”
“And find out he spent eight years in and out of jail?”
“And find out what he spent eight years doing. Really doing. With whom.Forwhom.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, he got his degree and says he worked for an architecture firm. Have you followed up on that?”
“His work history? We brought him in as a reserve officer. We checked his background.”
“Everything on the record.”
“What do you think there was to find off the record?”
Crow rubbed at his mouth and his eyes narrowed. “Delaney, this isn’t...you’re making it hard for me to decide what to say. So I’m not going to say anything. But I am going to ask you a couple questions. Okay?”
Seemed like a lot of people liked playing the Q&A game lately. “Fine.”
“Does Ryder act more like an architect or a law enforcement officer?”
“A cop? You think he’s a secret cop?”
“Just. Answer.”
“He runs a building business. Of course he’s an architect.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Okay, so the question was: Did Ryder act like he was in law enforcement? The image of him striding into the room when I’d been held at gunpoint, the easy way he not only checked over the situation, but also kept an eye on any other possible threats. His calm under pressure and that flash of hard light in his eyes that settled like a granite edge when he was talking about certain things and people.
Yeah, he acted like he’d had training. Myra had even said the same thing to me a few months ago after the Rhubarb Rally. Since my sisters had done a lot of work to keep Ryder’s schedule and duties far away from my own shift, I couldn’t say I’d seen him in cop-mode much these last few months.
But the feeling that I’d been shoving to the back of my heart for too long was more than just intuition. It was knowledge.
