Cal studied her, his lips pursed as he considered her suggestion, his head nodding slowly. “Okay. Should I have plainclothes deputies staked out along his delivery route?”
She shook her head briskly. “No! That’s not the point.Iwant to see what he’s doing. I’m not delegating this to anyone else. I thought I’d follow him after he finished his route, see what he does in his off hours.”
“All right. It’s a date.” He grinned and winked. “I’ll pick you up in time to follow him after work tomorrow.”
A date? Her pulse skittered. Did he have to call it that? Bad enough she found his smile, his bright blue eyes, his muscular physique so distracting without adding a suggestion of aromantic connection. She swallowed hard, trying to squelch the giddy trill tripping through her. A relationship with the sheriff was the last thing she needed to distract her from her obligations to Abby.The sheriff, for pity’s sake!
She cleared her throat. “Okay. We’ll start our stakeout tomorrow. I’d think we should be in place at the distributor’s warehouse by four o’clock.”
She could have Bonnie cover the afternoon shift at the gift shop.
Cal gave a nod of agreement and finished his coffee in one giant swig. “In the meantime, want to spin by the sheriff’s office and see what we can dig up on N-DEx?”
She blinked. “What, now?”
“No time like the present.” He pulled out his keys and jangled them. “As the boss, I have full access to the department twenty-four seven.”
She exhaled and pushed back her chair. “Okay. You’re right—no time like the present.”
Chapter 13
Cal typed in his credentials to pull up N-DEx, a national criminal database for law enforcement, while Jules hovered beside him biting a fingernail. “Do you know his middle name? Date of birth? Anything to help narrow down the results, find the right guy?”
“Middle name is Kevin.”
She waited while he input that information, then she gave him his August birthdate, and he noted she’d memorized this information, hadn’t needed to look anything up on her phone or other files.
“Previous residences?”
She supplied that data as well, and he ran an initial search. Hamilton’s previous arrests quickly filled the computer screen, along with the circumstances for dismissed charges, releases on bond, other complaints filed against him. Jules leaned close to read over his shoulder, and he caught a whiff of a sweet floral scent that tantalized him.
He shoved aside the buzz of his arousal, refocusing on the task at hand. But when she reached past him to tap the screen, her breast nudged his shoulder. His libido shifted into overdrive. His skin tingled as if he’d touched a live wire.
“What’s this? I didn’t know about that.”
Clenching his back teeth, he narrowed his gaze on the monitor where she pointed to an arrest in Idaho for drug possession.
He opened a new screen with details of the arrest and read aloud the highlights. “September of last year. Traffic stop for speeding. Officer smelled marijuana.” He angled a glance to Jules, “that’s probable cause, so he conducted a search of his car. Small amount of marijuana, hydrocodone and drug paraphernalia were discovered. Charges reduced, and Hamilton received only public service.”
She flicked her hand toward his computer screen. “See? He gets away with a slap on the wrist. Every. Damn. Time!”
Cal acknowledged her concern with a grunt, while his mind mulled other angles. If Hamilton was still using drugs, could he have any connection to the local dealers? Was there any chance this side mission to help Jules could pay off with unexpected benefits for Wyatt and his task force?
Jules waggled a finger at the monitor. “Keep scrolling. What else is in there on him?”
They continued reading through Chase Hamilton’s record, finding one other drug charge when he was in high school and the full history of Hamilton’s brushes with law enforcement in relation to his stalking Abby. He could understand Jules’s frustration, since time after time, he was questioned and released.
But the man was on Cal’s turf now. He would not so easily ignore the pattern of repeated behavior. He’d promised Jules to help get a menace off the street, and that was what he intended to do.
Jules was a jumble of nerves all day at the gift shop, feeling especially testy with tourists who left her displays in a mess or who complained about prices or asked questions about things for which the shop had signs displayed in plain view. When she analyzed what had her so jumpy, she had to face the fact thatthe plan to tail Chase Hamilton this afternoon wasn’t the source of her jitters. She, in fact, had a bad case of Cal-Colton-itis. Thoughts of the rugged sheriff had plagued her last night and kept her restlessly turning in bed. Today, her mind wandered to the moments they’d shared at his office the day before, not because of the work they’d done—fact finding as they built their case against Chase—but because of ridiculous details that she’d been far too aware of. His hands as he typed on his computer. The scents of soap and aftershave that hung in his office, branding it his. The cut of his stubble-dusted jaw.
And, most irritatingly, how his hands might feel on her skin. How the tang of his aroma danced through her and left her nerves tingling. How she longed to stroke her fingers along the scruff on his cheeks and graze his lips with her tongue.
“Excuse me!” The somewhat hostile voice roused her from her daydreams of Cal and snapped her back to the gift shop. A man wearing a scowl waved a handful of postcards at her. “Are you going to check me out or not?”
When the hour finally arrived for Cal to pick her up, she wished Bonnie good luck, reminded her to turn on the security lights and lock up when she closed and hurried out to Cal’s Wrangler.
She climbed in the front seat of his Jeep, trying to ignore the whiff of warm, sexy male that greeted her. Bad enough that the mere sight of him now stirred a hum of longing at her core. She tried to push aside all of the distractions Callum Colton presented and focus on the mission ahead. Tonight they needed to track down Hamilton and see what sort of evil he was up to after hours.
