Read Dark Blue (South Island PD Book 1) for Free Online

couple barstools at the nearby island.
    Elijah snorted. “Best kept secret of law enforcement. We should use it to our advantage, somehow – weaponize it. Sweat’s cheaper than bullets.”
    “You think you could’ve taken down that meth head last week with your stench alone?”
    Elijah grinned. “Only one way to find out. Next time some junkie takes a swing at me with a steel pipe, I’m taking off the vest instead of reaching for the Taser.”
    “You’ll get your skull caved in.”
    Elijah shrugged. “Chicks dig scars.”
    “You’re just sick of everyone on the platoon calling you Baby Face.”
    At twenty-seven, Elijah was only two years younger than Jackson, but there was no denying which one of them looked younger. Not that the veneer of extreme youth stopped Elijah from drawing female attention like a magnet.
    He was well over six feet tall and had the muscle to match. Despite his words, he spent more time lifting weights and hitting the beach than dating. No matter how much sun he got, his light brown skin stayed smooth and flawless, hence the Baby Face moniker.
    Jackson didn’t envy Elijah’s college kid look, but his ability to tolerate the sun well was a different story. As a strawberry blond, Jackson had to lather on sunscreen every spring and let a tan build naturally on the exposed areas of his skin before he was safe from easy burning. Island living was rough on skin as fair as his, and it’d been a pain in the ass back when he’d been working construction.
    “Rogers is the one who started that Baby Face crap,” Elijah said, “and she’s just jealous. Spent too much time lying out on the beach trying to tan that lily-white skin and got those premature crow’s feet.”
    Elijah and Rogers had had a rivalry going on ever since the academy. Jackson had gone through it with the two of them and had witnessed the root of it all: the moment Elijah had accidentally hit Rogers in the calf with a Taser.
    No matter how profusely he’d apologized, she’d never forgiven him.
    “The other day, she asked me what kind of moisturizer you use,” Jackson said. “I told her I didn’t know, and she offered to slip me a twenty if I went through your bathroom drawer and reported back to her.”
    “Seriously?” Elijah met Jackson’s eyes over his beer bottle.
    “No.”
    Elijah succumbed to rough laughter that was at odds with his pretty-boy face. When it faded, the air of joviality died with it.
    “Heard you brought in Sanders today.” Elijah bounced his bottle cap on the table’s glass surface.
    “Yeah.”
    Elijah’s hazel eyes went dark as he frowned. “He really beating up on his wife?”
    Jackson shot his best friend a hard look. Elijah knew he wouldn’t have brought him in if he hadn’t been sure. “He hit her twice in the stomach. She just had a baby, too.”
    “Shit.”
    He nodded. “Sanders looked like he was about to shit bricks when he realized I was going to charge him.”
    Jackson knew very well there were officers who wouldn’t have. So did Elijah. It was illegal for anyone with a domestic violence conviction to possess a gun – if Sanders was convicted, he wouldn’t be able to keep his job.
    “Hey, it’s the thin blue line, not the black and blue wall of silence,” Elijah said. “Fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.”
    “There are too many people who think otherwise.” Integrity was one thing. Loyalty was another. Putting cuffs on someone who was supposed to have your back felt like having your moral compass torn in two.
    “Someone’s gotta be the change.”
    “You sound like a motivational poster.”
    More laughter. “I bet Sanders was pissed when you brought him in.”
    “Yeah, he seemed sure I’d regret arresting him. He even threw a punch.”
    “It land?”
    “No. He was either drunk or hungover – clumsy.”
    “You charge him for assaulting you and resisting arrest?”
    “No. It’d be my word against his, and that was a can of worms I didn’t want to open.