Personal Protection. Julie Miller

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       Chapter Two

      “Hey, Brooke.” Carly Valentine closed the door behind her and crossed the small office over to her friend’s desk. Her pulse thrummed in her ears with more nerves than the adrenaline charge that had raised her heart rate when Dougie Freeland had whacked her in the temple with his big, bulbous head. “Can you give me a clue? What did I do?” She thumbed over her shoulder to the bull pen where the detectives and uniforms worked when they were in the office. “Did those guys in the elevator complain about me or my gruesome twin out there? I swear I didn’t let Dougie touch them.”

      “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Brooke Kincaid looked up from her computer and smiled. The gesture was meant to reassure her, but that smile shifted into an apologetic frown, leaving Carly feeling anything but. “I’m still not sure what’s going on, other than I’ve pulled service records and promised that anything I see or hear can’t leave this office. By the way, are you okay?”

      “Nothing that an ibuprofen won’t cure. I’ve been hurt worse wrestling with Frank and Jesse.” Although, unlike the man she’d brought in for booking, her older brothers hadn’t meant her any real harm. They’d simply been picking on her for getting in their space or being the annoying little sister who’d done her best to keep them fed and dressed in clean clothes after their mother had died. Carly nodded toward the hallway where she’d passed the other two female officers and the geeky-looking guy who’d been flirting with Emily Rangel. “Does it have something to do with them? Am I getting transferred? A reprimand in my file?”

      “I don’t think it’s anything bad.” Brooke stood, resting a hand on her pregnant belly as she circled the desk to get close enough to whisper. “The guy in there with Joe is an honest to gosh prince from a little European country called Lukinburg.”

      “Lukinburg?”

      “I looked it up. There’s a delegation here from his country negotiating trade agreements. They’re even hosting a ball, a fund-raiser for scientific research, while they’re here in the US.”

      “A ball? Like dancing and sparkly gowns? Men in tuxedos?”

      “The same.”

      “What’s he doing here at the precinct?”

      Brooke crinkled up her nose and sat back on the edge of her desk before answering. “Everything’s all hush-hush. The prince called early this morning and asked to see Captain Hendricks as soon as I could fit him into the schedule. You should have seen it when he arrived—he has bodyguards.”

      “I met them in the elevator. That explains why they said, ‘Save the prince’ when Dougie went wacko on me.”

      “He called me madam and he bowed when he introduced himself—Ivan Mostek. He’s no Atticus...” Brooke smiled, referring to her husband, the detective who oversaw the task force Carly was assigned to. “But he’s hot. He’s not soft underneath that suit and those manners. I think he could take care of himself if he had to.”

      Hearing Brooke refer to anyone besides her husband as hot was something new. Bowing and madam-ing certainly didn’t sound like the visitors they usually got around here, either. Carly’s heart rate wasn’t slowing down. “He runs his own country? And he wants to see me?”

      She glanced down at her dirty clothes and ruined steel-toed boots that she’d borrowed from her older brother Frank, who ran a construction business. It was already ninety degrees at lunchtime, and she’d been out most of the morning working her contacts. Dougie had taken exception to her interfering with his gross habit of flashing and had peed on her. The fact that there had been so much traffic through the old burned-out Morton & Sons Tile Works warehouse near the Missouri River had been reason enough to follow Freeland inside. But when she found him strutting his wares with a young prostitute she was certain was underage, Carly had broken her cover and placed him under arrest. Tackling him in a pile of charred debris from the fire and rolling in dust and ash that had been there for four years had turned her disguise from homeless to filthy.

      She held up her hands, admitting the obvious. “I’m hardly looking my best.”

      “Or smelling it.” The phone buzzed on Brooke’s desk and she pushed to her feet. “That’s Joe. He said there’s a time crunch on whatever Prince Ivan needs. You’d better get in there.” Brooke’s nose crinkled up again and she clapped her fingers over her mouth, looking as if she might be sick. “You’re a little ripe.”

      Carly instinctively retreated a step. “Sorry about that. Dougie didn’t come quietly when I arrested him.”

      “The baby seems to make me really sensitive to smells right now.” She turned her head to the side to inhale a deep breath, then reached out to Carly. “Better let me take your coat, at least.”

      Nodding her thanks, Carly quickly shed her brother Jesse’s old duster coat from his cowboy days. That phase had lasted about two months, once he realized that a real working cowboy got a lot dirtier and smelled a lot worse than the ones he’d seen in the movies. Not all that different than what she was smelling like right now. She didn’t have to be pregnant to know how Dougie’s crude attempt to scare her off had left its mark on her.

      She plucked the white T-shirt she wore away from skin that was damp with perspiration and tucked it beneath the belt and holster on her jeans with the holes in the knees. Then she adjusted the chain that held her badge around her neck as if it was a piece of jewelry that could dress up her poor girl from the streets look and gave Brooke a hopeful smile. “I don’t look too scary?”

      “It’ll have to do.”

      Brooke turned her toward the captain’s СКАЧАТЬ