Needed Lucky’s help? If it got him away from the rookies for even a heartbeat, he’d take whatever. “Any idea what kind of case?” Last time she’d requested his help he’d wound up at a strip club for his birthday, watching Bo strip.
Bo stripping as a birthday tradition? Oh, yeah.
“No, she just said she wanted to talk to you.” Bo made a face. “Somehow, now that she thinks I’ve climbed up the food chain, she doesn’t talk to me as openly as she used to, except about work and such.”
“She talks to you. Without me?” She hadn’t talked about Lucky, had she? Somehow the idea of Rett and Bo discussing him didn’t sit well. If those two combined forces, he’d never know what hit him.
Bo gave a sheepish shrug, palms up. “Sometimes.”
“Did y’all talk about me?” Please, no.
“Now why does everything have to be about you? Besides, I just said she asked about you.” The pink tinge of Bo’s cheeks confirmed Lucky’s suspicions of talk being about more than work-related. Fuck. “Anyway, you might want to look her up soon.”
The rest of the meal passed peaceably, with stories of Ty’s day, soccer practice, classes, and the co-worker’s daughter Lucky secretly hoped his nephew would outgrow.
No such luck. Although asshole Keith still growled occasionally, for the sake of his daughter, he curbed his open hostility. Then again, they had teamed up in a fashion for Lucky’s last case. The guy liked Bo, and backed him for Walter’s replacement, so he wasn’t the total moron Lucky used to believe him to be.
Still an asshole, though.
For the rest of the evening, the question loomed: What did Loretta want?
CHAPTER FIVE
The scent of coffee caught Lucky’s attention before he’d even entered his cube. A giant of a woman sprawled in his chair—one of two people who managed not to be thrown by the Hell Bitch—red fingernails wrapped around a Starbucks cup while another cup sat on Lucky’s desk, flanked by several empty and semi-empty cups.
She wore the distinctive dark blue polo shirt emblazoned with the SNB logo, the short sleeves straining over her inked biceps, and dark blue pants, with sturdy boots on the barge-sized feet she’d parked on the desk.
No one would ever accuse Loretta Johnson of being petite, not at over six feet and as solidly built as a Mack truck. She wore her hair in braids today, dozens of tiny plaits hugging her scalp, and not a bit of makeup. With her healthy, glowing skin, she didn’t need enhancement to be a beautiful woman.
The clean-scented fragrance she wore might make a nice birthday gift for Charlotte. He’d have to ask for particulars later.
He took a sip of coffee from the cup she’d left on the desk and glowered, if for no other reason than to keep up appearances. He’d let his guard down around her too many times for her to believe the heartless asshole routine he easily sold to others at the SNB.
“How’s it going?” She leaned back farther in the chair than Lucky dared try.
Lucky glanced right and left to ensure privacy before answering. No one here but Rett, Bo, and Walter needed to know his business. “I’ve died and gone to Hell in the form of some really hopeless rookies, my nephew didn’t say a word to me on the way to school, and my sister still isn’t pregnant by my partner. Which makes it pretty much same shit, different day.”
“You know,” she drawled in the Texas accent she only pulled out occasionally, “for anyone else that’d be too damned much information. What does it say about our relationship that the details of your life don’t shock me in the least?”
Lucky released another snort. “That you’ve been hanging out with my sister.”
“Yeah, there is that.” The woman who’d persisted past growls and sarcasm to become his friend toasted Lucky with her cup. Thank goodness she’d transferred some of her attention to Charlotte and eased back on mother-henning Lucky all the time.
They drank in silence for a moment. For her not to come straight to the point must mean something gawdawful. He’d wait, enjoying the few seconds of not knowing whatever the hell had her stalking his cube before he’d finished at least two cups of coffee.
Sooner or later she’d have to get out of his chair and get to work, but she didn’t seem inclined to start the conversation. Her shoulders were hunched, and the tell-tale agitation wrinkle hadn’t formed between her brows. Must not be too bad.
Lucky’s patience only went so far. “Out with it. Bo said you wanted to talk to me about something.” Please, Lord, let it not be about her former boyfriend, that useless waste of skin, Philip, currently trying to get out of a prison sentence.
Lucky had been the reason for his arrest.
Slowly, she lowered her feet off the desk and sat the chair down, which put her more or less nose-to-nose with his five-feet-six-inch height, and glanced right and left. In a husky murmur, she said, “I know it’s not our case, and might be nothing, really, but I have reason to believe there’s something shady going on in my neighborhood.”
He let out a snort. “You live in Atlanta. There’s something shady going on in pretty much every neighborhood.”
“Not like this.” Now came the tension to her shoulders and the steely glint to her eyes.
Okay. She’d gotten his attention.
