When I don’t say anything, he chuckles and holds his hands up in surrender, the stress ball held against his palm with his thumb. “Look, I get it, you’re into her, and it’s put you in a tight spot.”
I narrow my eyes at him, daring him to continue his thought.
“All I’m saying is that when she went back to her house, I thought she might be fair game. Now I know. It won’t happen again.”
So, he’s going to play it off as him wanting a piece of ass. He’s got to be the slimiest fucker I’ve ever worked with.
My anger is bubbling and threatening to blow the lid off, but I need to control this, so he doesn’t take steps to have me removed or know that I suspect him.
“She’s a witness in protective custody, Sanders, she’s not fair game to anyone.” I take a step towards him. “She doesn’t appreciate the position she’s in right now and is having trouble staying within her new boundaries, she got angry. It took quite a bit of smooth talk on my part, but I got her back into custody. That’s all.” I lift my eyebrows in warning. “If you ever accuse me of unbecoming behavior again, I will have you demoted and removed from my team.”
The smile is still on his face, but I can see the hardindignation in his eyes. “Sounds kind of like a threat?”
“It’s a fucking promise, Sanders.”
He nods and his eyes drop to my badge on my waist and then my gun in its holster under my arm before he looks back up. The smile is gone from his face. “Yes, sir.”
“Ms. Harlow has requested not to interact with you, so from now on, you have no reason to communicate with her. If you need to know anything, you go through me.”
“Sounds like you’ve got her all tucked away, sir.”
“Sanders.” It’s a warning.
“You got it, sir.”
When he walks out the door, he swings it open hard enough that it hits the stopper in the floor with a ‘thunk’.
Fuck.
Watching him from the conference room doorway, he walks to his desk and tosses the ball down as he grabs his phone before he walks away. Something doesn’t feel right, and I wonder where he’s going.
Sitting at my desk, I pull up the notes from the last few meetings to see how he would have known Kinley went back to the ranch. I’m only ten minutes into reading through the transcripts of the past few days when DA Dunn opens his door.
“Abbot, my office. Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
KINLEY
WITH ALLmy painting supplies back at my cabin, I’m once again bored out of my mind at Rhys’s house. This morning before he left, he told me he would take me to get my stuff again this evening after he leaves work, as he handed me a bra that I left in the dirty clothes hamper when I left with Mason last week.
Apparently, walking around Swan with no bra on is one step above a crime, even though he saw me in a bikini last week.
So for now, I’m in another one of his t-shirts and boxers. Swan looked at me funny when he got here, but he didn’t say anything.
While I was looking through the books in the built-in bookshelf on one wall of the living room, I found a recipe book. It looks old, and the recipes are handwritten in formal, slantedcursive on each page.
The first page behind the cover has the name Emilia Abbot with the date 1952 next to it. All the measurements are in metric units, and the recipes are for things like Shephards pie, kidney pie, scones, and bread pudding. I chuckle when I read bangers and mash. What in the world is a banger?
“What’s funny?” Swan gets my attention as he walks into the kitchen to the refrigerator.
With the book open in my hand, I don’t move away from the bookshelf. “What is a banger?”
He stops and sets the jug of orange juice I ordered, which Rhys says is just a container of sugar, on the counter. His neutral FBI face is set, but I can see the humor dancing in his light blue eyes. “In what context?”
Tilting my head in derision, like I wasn’t just laughing for having dirty thoughts, I cock a brow. “Ugh. Get your mind out of the gutter. As in bangers and mash.”
“Oh.” He turns to get a glass out of the cabinet. “Sausages. I think the story is they called them bangers because the casing would burst open when they cooked them. I think they were popular during the World War Two era.”
