Maybe finishing what she had started that night would get Maddox out of her system.Maybe.But until the man who had murdered Chrissy was behind bars, that wasn’t going to happen. She needed to focus and so did he.
Which meant she shouldn’t continue to let him call herhoneyordarlin’or anything else. Wasn’t there some kind of feminist taboo about that? Then again, Maddox didn’t seem like the kind of guy who gave a rat’s behind about taboos.
And the truth was she kind of liked it. Andrew had never used endearments. He thought they were demeaning. She wouldn’t like it in a work environment, but when Jason used those terms, it made her feel feminine.
Blocking any more thoughts of him, Kate went into the kitchen and brewed herself a cup of coffee, then showered and dressed for her visit to Black Spider Ink, choosing black skinny jeans, knee-high, mid-heeled black boots, and a silky white wrap-top that showed a little cleavage. Hey, she was going with Hawk Maddox. There was no rule that said she couldn’t look good.
She walked into her home office and sat down at her computer. Thinking of the websites they had visited last night, she was glad she had first-rate virus protection. She cleared her search history so she wouldn’t have pornographic websites popping up all over the computer, then typedJason Maddoxinto the Google search bar—as she had meant to do last night before Andrew had showed up.
Maddox had a Facebook page, but there wasn’t much on it beyond a basic profile. He was thirty-three years old, born in Lubbock, went to community college before joining the marines. Currently he worked at Maximum Security as a licensed investigator and bail enforcement agent.
Clearly he didn’t use Facebook for social purposes. She figured it was a tool to gain access to other pages where he searched for information on the people he hunted.
Curiosity kept her digging. She followed links on Google to articles about him, captures he’d made and the bounties he had collected, which were often surprisingly large.
There was an article in theHoustonChronicleabout a serial killer he had arrested called the Alpha Man who had escaped from a police vehicle on its way to his sentencing hearing. Maddox had tracked him through a connection to a half brother unknown to authorities. The arrest had earned him a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar reward.
In theLubbockAvalanche-Journal,she found a photo of Jason in marine dress blues, so handsome it made her toes curl. The article mentioned he’d been an honor student at South Plains College in Lubbock, graduating a year early to join the marines, where he’d been honorably discharged from special operations after being wounded in action. He’d received a silver star and a purple heart.
Wow, she thought, and leaned back in her chair. An honor student. Which made sense. You had to be tough to get into special ops, but you also had to be smart. Her friend Cece’s uncle was a navy SEAL. He spoke five languages and was an expert in communications, everything from Morse code to satellite systems.
Apparently Jason Maddox was a lot smarter than the muscled-up cowboy Andrew had dismissed him as. Kate found herself grinning.
She glanced at the clock, grabbed her cell and phoned her office. Her assistant, Laura Delgado, picked up the phone.
“Hi, Laura. Everything under control?”
“Bruce got that consulting job with Mission Textile he’s been after. He’ll be starting tomorrow.” Bruce Bernstein was one of the two consultants who worked for her. Robin Murdock was the other.
“That’s great news. I’ll call and congratulate him later.”
“Other than that, it’s business as usual,” Laura said. “I’ll let you know if anything important comes up. In the meantime, you don’t have to worry about coming back until you’re ready.”
She thought of Chrissy lying dead on a slab in the morgue, the reason she was taking time off, and tears burned her eyes.
“Thanks, Laura.” Kate ended the call and blinked back the wetness.
They would be continuing the search again today. If she was going to succeed, she couldn’t start crying every time she thought of what had happened. If she wanted to find Chrissy’s killer, she needed to keep her emotions out of the equation or she would be a hindrance to Maddox’s investigation instead of a help.
She was getting ready leave when the intercom buzzed. She checked the time, ten o’clock, and her stomach floated up. Maddox was in the lobby.
Kate took a deep breath, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
Jase parked the Yukon in front of Black Spider Ink on Main in Deep Ellum. He and Kate both walked up on the sidewalk in front of a window with a big black widow etched into the glass.
“I hate spiders,” Kate said, shuddering. “Just looking at a picture of one gives me the creeps.”
“I’ve seen some as big as dinner plates,” Jase said.
“When you were in the marines?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you?”
“West Africa.” He didn’t say which country. He didn’t talk about his deployments except in generalities. “Mostly I was in Afghanistan.” He pulled open the door and waited for Kate to walk inside. She was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans tucked into tall black boots, her golden hair loose around her shoulders. She looked good. Damned good.
He noticed a couple of bikers watching her. He hoped the fat guy leaning against the wall didn’t say what his lewd expression said he was thinking. Jase didn’t want an excuse to smash a fist into the guy’s ugly face.
