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you really think it was a good idea to approach that mob when everyone knows you’ve taken up with Ida Belle and Gertie?”
    “You forgot the part about my being a Yankee.”
    “I thought that part was a given.”
    I frowned. “In hindsight, I suppose it was a bad idea.”
    “It was a horrible idea. Look, I know you care about Ida Belle and you’re worried about what’s going to happen, but you’re only going to make the situation worse if you incite an already high-strung crowd to another level of stupidity.”
    I knew he was right, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up the charge. “Has it ever occurred to you that you incited that crowd by hauling Ida Belle down here for questioning? Couldn’t you have been more discreet?”
    “Ha. Yeah, because this town thrives on discretion. Short of interrogating her by text message or sending professional kidnappers to whisk her away to a private island, no way could I question her without everyone in town knowing within minutes. This isn’t the big city, Fortune. Nothing goes unnoticed here.”
    “Except murderers.”
    His jaw twitched and a dark flush crept up his neck.  
    Okay, so it was a low blow, but I was pissed off.  
    “I know it may seem to a big-city girl,” he said, “that we’re nothing but a bunch of hicks who can’t walk without tripping, but I assure you that no one is going to get away with murder on my watch. Regardless of your confidence in my ability, I promise you, I will do my job.”
    Okay, so that made me feel a little guilty.
    “I’m not questioning your ability…exactly. But I don’t understand why you hauled Ida Belle in here when you and I both know there’s no way she murdered that man.”
    “My personal beliefs have no bearing on the job I have to do. The state prosecutor doesn’t give a damn what I know. He only wants facts to make a case. It’s my job to collect all those facts so that he can make an educated decision about pursuing prosecution, regardless of whom he chooses to indict.”
    “Even if those facts point to an innocent person?”
    “This job didn’t come with any guarantees that I’d love it. But I promised to uphold the law and that’s what I have to do, with a belief that the system will work properly. I can’t choose to do my job only when it makes me happy. Maybe one day, you’ll understand that.”
    His words hit me like a bucket of cold water, completely knocking me off my high horse. How many times had I been schooled not to get personally involved when I was undercover? The reasons were numerous and varied, but all boiled down to the same thing—personal involvement equaled a conflicted assassin, and conflicted could equal hesitation, which could equal death.
    In other words—mission failure.
    In all my undercover assignments with the CIA, I’d never even been tempted to get personally involved. The people I’d associated with hadn’t merited my interest, but I’d been incognito in Louisiana less than a day before I’d formed alliances with locals. Granted, I didn’t have a target in Sinful, so it was a different sort of undercover than what I was used to, but you boiled it right down to basics, my life would be a lot easier if I’d kept the same standards about personal involvement.  
    For the first time in my life, I’d made real friends and now, everything was complicated. This was exactly what Carter dealt with every day—investigating people he knew, people he had relationships with and probably liked—every time a crime occurred. They couldn’t all be domestic disputes and fishing violations. Sometimes, he’d draw the difficult case. The case that made him take a hard look at people he’d known his entire life and ask himself if all this time he’d been unaware of the monster that dwelled within them.  
    Immediately, I felt guilty for giving him such a hard time since I’d arrived. I’d thought him narrow-minded and rigid, but the reality was, he spent every single day