Jennifer Morey - Taming Deputy Harlow

Kadin glanced around the apartment again and looked through the window. A siren could be heard on the street below.

“This is normal? You’d raise kids here?”

Jamie had to agree the studio apartment and cramped city living wasn’t part of the fantasy. After Aesir, he wasn’t quite ready for suburbia. Or was he?

“Come work for me,” Kadin said. “I need someone like you on my team. I can’t promise you normal, but I can promise you an office and as much or as little travel as you want.”

Professionally, Jamie didn’t know what he’d do with his future now that he had Stankovich off his back. His immediate need drew him back to his roots, close to his mother in New Hampshire, and deep-city living, as Kadin had put it. He planned to take some time off, find a woman and settle down. Other than that, he had a clean slate.

Would joining an elite team such as Dark Alley Investigations give him the kind of life he needed?

“Think it over,” Kadin said.

When Jamie nodded once, he headed for the door.

There, Kadin opened the door and stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Consider moving to Wyoming, would you? This city-living thing is just a Band-Aid. The boutique elevator gave that away.”

As the door shut, Jamie let out a breath of a laugh. Although highly intelligent and perceptive, Kadin acted as though Jamie had already accepted the job. Maybe he had. And without realizing it, he had moved to the city to still feel the connection to danger. Busy streets. Sirens. Gunshots. The noise gave him a sense of familiarity. But he was ready to settle down. He wanted that. Needed that. Craved it. Kadin’s visit only sealed that desire tighter. Kadin had one thing right. No more transition time. No more living in constant danger. Stankovich was part of the past now. Jamie had to make a move for the future.

* * *

Sitting at her kitchen table, Reese Harlow picked up the internet news article with trembling fingers. Hammers pounded and demolition work vibrated around her as she stared at the photo of a powerful man wearing a cowboy hat. He leaned on the back of a pickup truck parked at the head of an alley, shoulder harness exposed, two guns, one on each side. Steely gray eyes met the camera. Without even meeting him, she sensed an extraordinary man looking back at her from the photo.

Her biological mother had emailed her the link to the article titled Cold Case Hero Expands Business. She’d searched herself and found this photo attached with other articles as though it had become a marketing piece. Former New York homicide detective, founder of Dark Alley Investigations. Father. Husband. She ran her finger over the man’s name printed beneath the photograph.

Kadin Tandy. Her father.

And he didn’t know about her...

She had known since she was a young girl that she was adopted. She had good parents who loved her in their own way and were town fixtures, but as she grew older, she couldn’t stop wondering about the identity of her biological parents, as though their identity meant something to her own. Last week, she’d met her biological mother for the first time. While that had been strange and awkward and fascinating, and had consumed her thoughts all week, her mother hadn’t been able to tell her much about her father. She’d lost touch with the teenage boy who’d fathered the child she’d been forced to give up at the age of sixteen. Today she’d sent Reese the link to this article.

If she went to meet Kadin, how would she approach him? She’d read he’d lost his young daughter—to murder, of all things. Reese couldn’t imagine enduring such profound tragedy. Blurting out she was his daughter might come as a bit of a shock. She should tell him, though. She had to tell him. Someone should have told him long ago. How could she do that in a tactful way? She didn’t think there would ever be any good time or any easy way. Maybe she’d get to know him first.

But did she really want that? She’d accomplished what she’d set out to and found her biological parents. She had their names and where they lived. That didn’t mean she had to have them in her life from this day forward. Did it? Maybe she wasn’t quite finished with her exploration.

Exhausted from her lengthy pondering, she bent her head to look down at the article again, not really seeing it as her long blond hair fell forward in its confined ponytail. She had contemplated cutting it into a shorter style, but liked letting it down every once in a while. She retained her feminine side while satisfying a more aggressive one that way. Her best friend in school had called her Cinderella, with her brandy-colored eyes, thick wavy hair, tiny waist and shapely breasts. She had fond memories of her friend’s well-meant teasing. And her friend hadn’t exactly been frumpy. More men went after her than Reese. Probably because Reese had always been more interested in school and her career than boys or men.

The noise stopped and the sound of excited male voices pulled her attention back to the renovation. All the carpenters were in what would soon be her finished bedroom. What were they all in a fuss over?

Reese stood and went down the freshly drywalled hallway. Stopping at her bedroom door, she saw three carpenters hunched over pried-up old floorboards. She moved closer until she saw a faded 1970s tin Star Wars lunchbox that had been removed from beneath the flooring. When the carpenter opened the metal latch to reveal stacks of hundred-dollar bills inside, Reese drew in a startled breath.

A buried treasure? In her house? Nothing this exciting ever happened to her. She was just a small-town girl who’d gone to college and came back to get a job at the sheriff’s office.

“Jeffrey Neville lived here before you,” one of the carpenters said.

She’d discovered that when she’d bought the house. Jeffrey had died and had no family. The home had been escheated to the state and finally sold. He was the last of his line. Thinking about all the losing lottery tickets she’d bought, never in a million lightning strikes guessing she’d stumble upon someone’s primitive retirement fund, she took the lunchbox from the one who’d dug it up.

“How did it get here?” she asked aloud, not expecting any of them to know. Life had certainly stirred up some surprises lately.

“Maybe somebody used the house to deposit their savings,” another one of the carpenters said.

“Jeffrey must not have known about this,” she said.

He lived in this house for more than forty years. Why would he not have used the money for something if he’d known about it? He had no family to pass it on to. He had lived modestly up until the day he died. The way the money had been hidden suggested it hadn’t been meant to be found, and then something had happened to the person who’d put it here. Had it been stolen or otherwise obtained in some other nefarious fashion? Had Jeffrey known the person? A wife, perhaps? Strange, after living in this town her whole life, she didn’t really know much about one of its residents. She’d never thought to ask, either.

“What are you going to do with it?” one of the carpenters asked.

She looked down at the man who’d discovered it, realizing that they were hoping she’d be generous.

“I don’t know, but a small thank-you for finding it is in order.” She tipped the carpenters handsomely and received a thank-you from each. She’d like to find out where the money came from, but first she’d put it somewhere safe.

She looked at each of the carpenters’ excited faces. Nothing productive would get done after this today.

“Why don’t you all take the rest of the day off?” In a couple of hours, it would be five, anyway. And she needed to be alone.

They thanked her again and began to gather their tools.