“Wow. Admitting I’m right. Make note of this Diego.”
“Noted.” Diego checked the air before shoving the rest of the donut in his mouth.
“We need to find your perp,” Rapp said at the same time she thought it.
“I saw a tattoo on his neck. Let me run that down.”
“I’ll help you.” Rapp wrapped the rest of his fritter in a napkin. “I’m going to go change.”
“Into someone more professional and approachable, one can hope,” Jane muttered.
Diego guffawed but quickly quieted at a dark look from Rapp.
He returned quickly, dressed in jeans and a jacket, looking dangerous but less Fed-like. “Diego, see if you can find out what the police know. Maybe offer to help with their IT problems.”
“I don’t know if I can legally do that.” Diego shrugged in apology. “At least not for the next ten years.”
“Do it. Call if you need me. Jane and I are going hunting.”
Since waitingon the database wouldn’t yield them answers for a few days, they made a detour.
It turned out Rapp had a few contacts in the city, one of them being a tattoo artist who knew everything about everyone. In lessthan half an hour, they arrived at a tattoo shop then had to wait for the owner to arrive.
“We need to talk about your safety,” Rapp said while they were outside, the sun warming the cold wind that continued to whip Jane’s hair around.
“Excuse me?”
“Explain the bruise.” He pointed to her cheek. “I can see some purple there.”
“Shoot.” She grabbed her phone and took a picture of herself, then zoomed in to see a shadow of color under her concealer she thought she’d fixed earlier.
“Boyfriend do that?”
She couldn’t read his neutral expression. But she didn’t have to. “Oh please. If a man tried to hit me, it would be the last move he ever made.”
Rapp grunted. “Well?”
She didn’t want to tell him on the off chance he got super pushy and tried to take her off the case “for her own good.” She’d heard enough of that from Uncle Chris through the years though he wasn’t even her boss.
“Jane, I demand transparency from everyone I work with,” Rapp said in a firm voice. “It saves a lot of headaches further down the line. I want my people safe.”
Technically, she workedwithhim butforGambol. Rapp didn’t seem to see the difference.
“Fine,” she growled. “When I left McGrath’s the other night, after you helped me out with Matthew Scott, some idiot nearly ran me down in the parking lot. I landed on my face.”
He studied her but didn’t otherwise react. A good sign. “And last night?”
“I had to get gas, and it was just my luck to head into the gas station that Neck Tattoo robbed.”
“You put him down hard. I like that.” Rapp nodded, still staring at Jane and starting to make her uncomfortable. “But you never mentioned the McGrath’s incident.”
“Because I couldn’t be sure it was connected to our case. Could have been a drunk driver. No one got any plates. No one followed me home or did anything else suspicious. Trust me. I’ve been checking.”
“Good.” He kept staring.
“What?”
“You didn’t do a bad job, but you need to stop rubbing your face.” He put a gentle thumb under the bruise and frowned. “It’s bigger than it looks. Does it hurt?”
