“Darius said they were headed back from the hospital with the paperwork for the request, but we all know it’s going to be a pain in the backside. Last time…”
Rose’s words trailed away as she and Deputy Gavin made it to the department’s front steps. Their retreating backs took the hope that had been snuffed out by Mrs. Jane and fanned it back to life.
The hospital.
Lane Medical.
With only one road connecting it to Seven Roads.
Eve jumped into her hatchback and was off in a flash toward County Road 22.
If she’d had a phone, if she’d had his number now, if she knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t hang up on her the second she asked—
Eve growled out in frustration again.
The only chance she had was to look Darius Williams right in the eye and remind him of one old, simple truth.
Darius was hers.
And she needed his help.
The second Eve was on County 22, she pressed the gas pedal to the floorboard.
Chapter Two
Darius Williams was late getting on the road because, despite years of working relatively solo, he had begrudgingly taken on not one buttwobusybodies under his worn, tired and slightly annoyed wings.
Annoyed, not because they were a handful by themselves.
No. Annoyed because Oil was sitting in the back seat and arguing with Water in the passenger’s seat.
The water portion of the problematic duo was sitting shotgun and rolling her eyes. She had a notebook open on her lap, notes neatly written out in tight rows and a fancy book bag at her feet. Winnie Collins, the little girl that the McCoy County Sheriff’s Department had watched grow up alongside her young and extremely talkative father, Price, through the years.
Now she was about to graduate college, a budding professional in a pantsuit and a shocking reminder that time did indeed go fast when you weren’t paying attention.
Though Darius couldn’t help but see the preteen in her at the added huff she sent toward the oil portion of the duo in the back seat.
Darius hadn’t watched Theo Weaver grow up, but he had caught the tail end of his teenager years after the sheriff had taken him in. Now he was a year out of college and had been officially adopted by the Weaver brood.
Which meant that Darius had somehow gone from the only detective in the county to the only detective in the county whohad been talked into helping the oldest children of the McCoy County Sheriff’s Department’s most beloved.
Some of the newer hires might have balked at the pressure.
Darius, thirty-six, no kids and single, simply wanted turn up the radio to drown out their bickering.
Instead, he kept quiet as Winnie went for another pound of flesh from Theo in the back seat.
“Listen, I’m not sayingyou’rewrong,” she said. “I’m just sayingI’mright. So do you want to keep talking about it or just agree to move on with the facts?”
“Thefacts?” Theo repeated, voice pitching higher and not at all showing signs of moving on. Darius heard the resulting rustling of the laptop bag that had been constantly glued to the boy’s side. “Do you need to see the data again? I have it all right here, in plain textandcode. All you have arefeelings.”
“Feelings?” Winnie shot back. “You mean myexperienceswith other human beings? You know, those things you can’t talk to without getting on every single one of their nerves?”
Darius finally made it out onto County Road 22, but he knew the ten-minute drive to the sheriff’s department would be the end of him if he didn’t stop the young’uns from slandering one another.
So he cleared his throat.
Despite their drive to prove the other wrong, both Winnie and Theo quieted in an instant. At times like this Darius didn’t mind the reputation he had gotten as the stonehearted dealer of death, an extremely dramatic depiction of a homicide detective, if you asked him.
