Chapter 1
Sapphire
* * *
The front door slammed open, hitting the wall with a crack that was loud enough to wake the drunk sleeping it off in the back cell.
“I want that bitch arrested! Today! Right now!”
I glanced at Nate. He was on the phone, but he bulged his eyes at me in a sorry-but-I’m-stuck-on-this-call glance.
I pushed out of my seat and marched toward the noise.
Bruce Henderson filled the doorway like a bull that had crashed through into the wrong paddock. The man was a brute. Big, ugly, grubby, red in the face, and with rage radiating off him like a firestorm. Disgusting sweat patches spread from his armpits across a shirt that was losing its battle with his gut. His straining buttons were one deep breath away from surrender.
I stopped a pace back from him. Bruce was a big bastard. Hands like dinner plates, shoulders that barely cleared the doorframe. He stepped toward me, snarling.
The stupid brute thought his size was enough to intimidate me. He was wrong.
“What’s wrong now, Bruce?” I glared up at him. He had at least a foot on me. Probably twice my body weight, too.
“What’s wrong?” He jabbed a thick finger at the air between us. “I want you to arrest that fucking bitch, Cassidy Branson. She wrecked my ute.”
I knew about his ute, all right. Everybody in Winton knew what had gone down at the Rusty Swagman, and the car chase that followed. Bruce’s ute was still sitting in the paddock near that pub, its front end crushed in like a beer can.
Secretly, I wished Cassidy had done a whole lot more than just damaged this idiot’s truck.
“The way I see it, Bruce, you’re lucky Cassidy doesn’t have you arrested for attempted murder.”
“You fucking—” Clenching his jaw, he swung at me. A big, sloppy punch, all shoulder and rage, aimed at the side of my head.
I ducked under it, caught his wrist, and used his own momentum against him. One sharp twist, a sweep of his ankle, and Bruce Henderson was face-down on the floor of Winton Police Station with his arm wrenched up behind his back and my knee planted between his shoulder blades.
The whole thing took less than two seconds.
Behind me, a chair scraped hard across the floor, and Nate charged into the waiting room.
“I’ve got this,” I said, without looking up.
Nate stayed close but didn’t intervene. He knew me well.
“Let me go, you bitch!” Bruce thrashed side to side, trying to shake me loose. So I ground his face harder into the linoleum.
I yanked his wrist higher up his back, and he made a sound somewhere between a roar and a groan—the kind that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with wounded pride. Taken out in under two seconds by someone half his size. And worse, a woman. That’d sting for a while.
Good.
“That was a really dumb move, Bruce.” I pulled my cuffs from my hip and pushed his wrist up another inch. “Assaulting a police officer.”
“Get off me! Get the fu?—”
“You’re under arrest.” I snapped the first cuff over his wrist. “If you keep resisting, I’ll add that to the charge sheet, too. Nod if you understand.”
He didn’t nod. “Piss off. I’m gonna get you for this.”
“Fantastic.” I snapped the second cuff home. “That’s threatening a police officer. Thanks for that.”
A guttural groan tore out of him, and he thrashed beneath me like a landed fish.
