Cindy Dees - Navy Seal Cop

She pulled out her cell phone and Detective Leblanc’s business card. Reluctance roared through her. He was an authority figure and scary to boot. But he’d been adamant that she call him if she found anything new and that he would be mad at her if she didn’t call. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m., though, and he’d been at her place until after three. Maybe she should let him sleep?

No. He’d said to call any time.

She dialed the number before she could second-guess herself.

“Detective LeBlanc.” He sounded alert and not half dead like she would if she were woken from a deep sleep.

“It’s Carrie Price. I found Gary’s computer and figured out his password. I’m into his email.”

“I told you to stay out of his place.”

“His laptop wasn’t in his apartment. It was in our van.”

“And you failed to mention this to me last night why?”

Crud. The detective sounded pissed. “I forgot,” she confessed. “I didn’t remember that Gary had put a duffel bag in the van yesterday until I was eating breakfast this morning.”

“I need you to bring the laptop down to the station immediately.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt about the prospect of seeing the hot detective again. Particularly at a police station full of cops. He was definitely pretty to look at. But. Cops. No bueno .

“Umm, okay,” she managed to mumble.

“I’ll meet you there in half an hour,” he declared.

She wrote down the address he gave her and left the house right away. She still didn’t have the knack of navigating New Orleans’s copious one-way streets, back alleys, dead ends, and random pedestrian-only streets thrown in for fun. Parking turned out to be a challenge, as well. But, she found a spot a block away, ran for the police station and, exactly thirty minutes after her call, careened into the precinct, red-faced and breathing hard. Her cotton blouse clung to her back.

“Can I help you?” a cop behind a tall desk asked her.

“I’m here to meet with Detective LeBlanc.”

“Name?”

“Carrie Price. He’s expecting me.”

“Elevator to the second floor, turn right when you get out, last door on the left at the end of the hall.”

She more or less caught her breath in the elevator, and then lost it again when she realized she was about to see the hot detective who smelled like heaven.

The panic ultimately won out, erasing all thoughts of hot guys from her mind. Gary was definitely in big trouble. He never spent the whole night out. He always crawled home, his back teeth awash in beer, and slept it off, snoring like a chainsaw. If she’d had any doubt last night about the authenticity of his kidnapping, that doubt was fully erased this morning.

She stepped into a loud, messy squad room with a dozen desks in it, all of them piled high with papers and manila folders. Men and women talked on phones or talked to each other, and zydeco music twanged from a low-quality radio somewhere.

A few men spotted her and eyed her up and down while she scanned the room nervously for Detective LeBlanc. She didn’t see him, however.

But then a big hand cupped her elbow from behind and she jumped about a foot in the air.

“Easy, darlin’. It’s just me,” a familiar voice drawled behind her. Detective LeBlanc. “Let’s go find ourselves a nice, quiet spot where we can talk without these guys ogling you like a bunch of Neanderthals.”

The tone in his voice was fond. Affectionate, even. He liked his coworkers. Huh. So ice didn’t run in his veins, after all. It was one of the first signs of genuine humanity she’d seen in him, other than his reluctant flashes of compassion last night.

Shouts and insults came back at LeBlanc in response to his remark, and he responded in kind. Then he shook his head, grinning, and guided her out of the squad room.

She liked this more relaxed version of the good detective, although she didn’t know whether to be complimented or embarrassed that he’d pulled her away from the other officers.

He escorted her down the hall and opened an unmarked door, poked his head in, then stood back to open it fully for her. He slid a plastic sign that said In Use into a slot on the door, and ushered her inside.

It smelled like a urinal that had been cleaned with scented bleach in a failed effort to mask the underlying stench. The detective pulled out a metal chair for her and held it while she sat down. A metal bar stretched across the table in front of her. LeBlanc sat opposite her, and she set the computer on the table.

“What’s that for?” she asked, gesturing at the bar.

“We handcuff violent suspects to it.”

Oh, crap . Was she a suspect? Is that why he’d brought her into what was clearly some sort of interrogation room? It even had the big glass mirror on the wall that everyone knew was a one-way window. She glanced up, and sure enough, there was a camera in the corner near the ceiling.

“Why don’t you show me the computer?” LeBlanc suggested.

Right. Gary’s laptop. She opened the screen and quickly typed in the password. Then she handed the device over to him. He took it without comment and spent the next few minutes browsing through it. She thought she was going to explode with impatience before he finally looked up at her again. Surely there was some sort of clue on it that a detective could spot right away. They had to find Gary before something bad happened to him.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Food? He could think of food at a time like this? Heck, she could hardly remember to breathe. “Excuse me?” she mumbled.

“Are you hungry? You know. Desirous of partaking in food to break one’s fast or to satiate hunger pains?”

She rolled her eyes at him, and then took personal inventory. “I guess I could eat.” She’d forgotten to do so last night after she’d gotten home, and a half slice of dry toast this morning hadn’t done much to satiate her hunger pains. Gary’s kidnapping had been a wee bit distracting.

“Lemme pass this laptop to the tech boys and then you and me, we’re gonna go get some breakfast.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t use police resources to track down Gary for two days.”

“I think we can make an exception given that we have actual film of the abduction. Which reminds me, I’ll need a copy of that to pass to the forensics guys.”

“I thought you might.” She dug in her purse and came up with a thumb drive. “I copied the video footage onto that.” She dug again. “And here’s the list of people who work on the show in New York. I tried to call the producer a while ago, but he didn’t pick up his phone. When I hear back from him, I’ll check to make sure I didn’t miss anyone.”

“Perfect.” He took everything from her and swung by the squad room to drop off the list. He handed it to an attractive female officer who made Carrie feel completely inadequate. The woman detective was tall, confident-looking, and curvy. All the things Carrie was not. The woman even joked around casually with Detective LeBlanc. If there was a nice big rock anywhere around here, Carrie would just go ahead and crawl under it now.

Unlike the female detective, she completely sucked at being around other people. Some people even accused her of being antisocial. She preferred to think of herself as a loner. Not that she’d always been that way, of course. She’d had lots of friends in high school. And she and Shelly had been inseparable—

LeBlanc touched her elbow again, and again, she jumped. Lord, that man made her nervous. He ushered her upstairs to a lab of some kind. A harassed-looking guy jotted down Gary’s password and took the laptop and thumb drive off the detective’s hands with a promise to get to them as soon as possible.