Read Cold Case Recruit for Free Online

sent him.
    Drury watched as Brycen slowed, confirming her assessment. Patience was one of the ingredients to his success. Let the man run. He couldn’t hide forever. If she was that driver, she would be worried right now.
    Delight tickled her insides. She had a great detective sitting across the vehicle from her. Maybe a great something else, too...
    As soon as that thought floated giddily into her head, she struggled to squash it. Falling for her detective was not part of the plan.
     

Chapter 2
    B rycen let the blinds close after peering through the crack he’d opened. Nothing stirred in the street. Still, Drury had a stalker before he’d even begun his investigation.
    “Junior, what’s it going to be tonight?” Drury called from the kitchen.
    “I dunno,” Junior answered absently, hands busy with a video game.
    “You want to go play catch for a while before dinner?” She seemed to slip that one in.
    Didn’t Junior like to play ball, or play outside? Brycen found that curious.
    “No.”
    “You’re not doing homework.” She’d slipped that in, too.
    “Don’t have any.”
    Drury frowned as though not believing him but didn’t press as she flipped a grilled cheese sandwich in the pan. “Then come in here and sit at the table. Dinner’s ready.”
    Junior grumbled but got up and came into the kitchen. She deposited a plate of grilled cheese in front of him. A glass of chocolate milk came next.
    Brycen hadn’t had a grilled cheese sandwich since he was about Junior’s age and wasn’t sure he wanted to break the drought. He was a cute kid, but Brycen would rather not have any kids around while he investigated a murder. And not because they disrupted the peace and quiet.
    Going into the kitchen, he sat before the plate she’d set out for him, a glass of chocolate milk tapping down afterward. He saw her silky black hair float down from one shoulder, dark lashes covering what he knew to be striking blue eyes. She sat down with another glass of chocolate milk, oblivious of the fact that not everyone would consider this meal ordinary.
    Junior drank his milk and set the glass down, looking at Brycen, or more like dissecting him. When Brycen didn’t look away, Junior twirled a superhero figure over his plate and then flew him toward Brycen, going back and forth in front of his face, leaning over the table to get as close as he could, which only reached halfway across the table.
    Putting the superhero down and wearing a smug scowl only a kid could pull off and still be cute, he took a few big gulps of the chocolate milk. When he put the glass down, a chocolaty rim covered his upper lip. Then he dug into the basket of crispy french fries, all the while making sure Brycen still watched. Showing up the adult.
    “So, Brycen. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?” Drury asked with a peculiar glance at Junior. “Since you’re going to be staying on our couch, we should get to know you.”
    He supposed he forfeited his right to keep things professional when he invited himself to stay in her house. “What would you like to know?”
    “Why’d you leave Alaska?”
    She would have to start with that question. “I applied for a job in Chicago.” And that was about all he’d say. Kadin had earned more of his respect having not said anything about what he’d uncovered.
    She stopped chewing a fry. “You just applied for it?”
    “I got a call from an old friend. The climate is pretty close to Anchorage. Days are longer here in summer.” He watched Junior fly the superhero over his plate and out across the table toward Brycen, probably imagining clipping his nose.
    “The climate is what made you move?” Drury asked, clearly accustomed to her son’s play tactics.
    Junior shoved french fries into his mouth, eyes on Brycen, seeing if he’d get a rise out of him.
    “No, the job made me move,” Brycen said to Drury.
    “Do you like Chicago?”
    “I like the big city. It’s a nice change.”
    “No