“All right.” Myles rubbed his hands together, a maniacal gleam in his eye. “Well, move it. We want to get a move on. We’re going to go patrol the highway later today. Set up a roadblock for a bit and maybe a speed trap. Write some citations.” He went to smack her butt, but at the last second, Staff Sergeant Wicks walked by, so he let his hand travel past her hip and land on the table.
“Everything okay in here?” the staff sergeant asked, wandering into the small staff kitchen.
“Everything’s just peachy,sir,” Myles said with a serpentine smile. “Matthews and I are on highway patrol today. Friday at four o’clock on a weekend is sure to nab us a few speeders.” Myles was all grins. It didn’t help that he looked like one might expect a serial killer to look. And not like the type of serial killer that hides in a dark alley or storm drain and uses a machete to hack their victims into tiny bite-size pieces.
No.
Myles Slade was the kind of serial killer that was handsome. His smile was almost too big and too perfect for his face, and his features were masculine and sharp. Tall and blond with square shoulders and a round face. It was easy to see why several of the women at the precinct fawned over him. And his cheeks held that forever rosy glow, liked he’d just come in from the cold outdoors.
But none of that mattered when you looked into his eyes. They were the eyes of a predator. The eyes of the devil. So brown they were almost black. You couldn’t see the pupil—ever. Not even in a dim room or under a lamp could you find the pupil. It ceased to exist. More often than not, Krista found herself turning away from his stare, avoiding eye contact at any cost, because the longer she held his gaze, the more it felt as though Lucifer himself was staring back at her. Soulless, vacuous holes—demon eyes.
“Good, good.” Wicks chuckled. His eyes briefly flicked to Myles, and Krista almost missed it, but there was a hint of what looked almost like unease there before he masked it with a big smile. “All right, well, be safe out there.” Andwith a nod and smile so fake not even the coffee maker was believing it, he left the room.
“Is this everything for you?” the teenybopper with overdone eye makeup behind the checkout asked. “You managed to find everything you were looking for okay?”
Brock Hart grunted, nodded and tossed cash onto the counter and then, without even waiting for the receipt, headed out the door to his big black pickup truck. Why was he so angry about a burned-out headlight? It happened to everyone, and yet for some reason, the inconvenience of it had him seeing red.
Though if you asked those closest to Brock, they’d all say the man only seemed to see the world in various shades of red. And not the rose-colored glasses kind of red. More like the “I hate the world and everyone in it” kind of red.
He pulled out of the parking lot and gunned it onto the road, hitting the highway in no time, where he really let the rage inside flow. Weaving in and out of traffic like a Formula One driver. Horsepower and metal his to command. The windshield wipers were on full bore and the roads were slick from the sudden rainstorm. They still had a week or so left of summer, but fall seemed to be rearing its ugly head early.
He noticed the speed trap up ahead easily enough. Enough cars had flashed their lights as a warning, so with another grumble, his big size thirteens applied pressure to the brake before he tossed on the cruise control.
Snorting, he shook his head. She was right out in plain sight, way, way up ahead, radar gun pointed directly at oncoming traffic. Anyone coming toward her would see her and have time to slow down before she got a read on their speed. Heavy rain and gray sky be damned, she was easy to spot.
Must be a noob.
She stood on the side of the road with her hip cocked and the radar gunpointed directly at his truck.
Better luck next time, sweetheart.
Then she waved him over.
What the fuck.
He glanced behind him. She couldn’t be waving him over. He was going the speed limit. Had been for the last eight seconds. But when he looked back, she snagged his eye and pointed at him. Directly at him, ordering him to pull over.
What the fuck. He’d never been pulled over before.
He slowed down and pulled over, bringing his window down in the process, ready to educate her on her error, when he came face to face with sex in a uniform. All dark red hair tucked up into a no-nonsense bun and the most piercing blue eyes he’d ever seen. And the body, holy jeez, if she looked half as good out of her uniform as she did in it, any man privileged enough to take her to bed wouldn’t last long.
Where the fuck were these thoughts coming from?
“Good afternoon, sir. License and registration, please.” Her voice was like smooth chocolate, but there was also a slight tremor to it.
Did he make her nervous? Was this her first ticket? Was he going to pop her ticket cherry? He handed her his license and then dug the registration out of the glove compartment.
“Do you have any idea how fast you were going …Mr. Hart?”she asked, the shake still in her voice and now in her hands as she continued to avert her eyes and read over his information.
“In fact, I do. I had the cruise control on.”
Her head snapped up from the registration, and her perfect little mouth widened. “You did? How fast did you have it set at?”
“The speed limit … of course.”
She grabbed the radar gun out from under her arm and studied it intently, as if it were a piece of scripture and she was trying to quickly commit it to memory. Brock raised his eyebrows patiently, getting a kick out of how clearly flusteredthis little champion for justice was getting.
She appeared cold. Water dripped off the brim of her hat and tips of her lashes, and her cheeks burned a bright pink. He remembered cold, wet nights out in the field on missions. All was well until his underwear got wet. Once his drawers weren’t dry then he was a more miserable fucker than normal.
