by Janie Crouch
But he knew how to get that info, too.
Jon grabbed his phone and called the number from the text he’d received yesterday notifying him of the new rape victim. He knew Caroline Gill would know where Sherry was staying.
“Hello?”
Caroline’s voice sounded sleepy. Jon cringed. As a paramedic, Caroline probably worked odd hours. She might have been asleep.
“Hi, Caroline. It’s Jon Hatton. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I’m fine. I have a shift in a couple of hours. Has something else happened?”
He could hear the concern in her voice. She was definitely wide-awake now. “No, no. Nothing new since Jasmine Houze. Actually, I was calling to ask you about your friend Sherry Mitchell.”
“Oh. What about her?”
“I just thought I might stop by to talk to her, if you didn’t mind?”
“You found out.”
“Found out what?”
“About her being a forensic artist. She’s on vacation, Jon. She needs a break.”
Was Sherry really so selfish that she wouldn’t take a day out of her precious vacation to help the Corpus Christi PD and a woman who had been through a hideous trauma?
“I just want to talk to her, Caroline. I don’t want to push or cut into her time off. I’m sure she deserves it as much as anyone.”
Jon tried to throw lightness into his tone. Caroline was concerned about her friend. It was an admirable trait even if he didn’t see much about Sherry worth protecting if she was as shallow as her actions suggested. Obviously she was good at taking care of herself. She didn’t need her perky friend to do it.
Caroline sighed. “She just seems so tired. Maybe that’s not the right word, but I don’t know exactly what is. She’s just...she needs her vacation, Jon. Maybe you should leave her be.”
For just a second Sherry’s face—devoid of color, teeth almost chattering—flitted through his mind. Okay, yeah, maybe she was more tired or stressed or whatever than he was giving her credit for. But he had no intention of letting a forensic artist of her talent slip through his fingers when she was right in town and there was such a need.
Feeling bad, he shifted his tactics with Caroline.
“I do want to ask her professional opinion, but, really,” he chuckled in self-mock, “I’m a little embarrassed to admit this because it’s so middle-school-ish, but I was hoping to ask her out. Nothing serious or that would make her uncomfortable, just a meal or something.”
That was the truth. Last night, before he’d known how self-centered Sherry obviously was, he had been quite interested in asking her out.
Now he was just interested in Sherry getting past her selfishness and doing her job as a forensic artist.
“Oh.” Caroline hesitated, but then finally continued. “Well, that might be good for her. Just, like you said, keep it light.” She gave him the address of Sherry’s house on the beach. “If she doesn’t like you, don’t tell her I gave you her address.”
“Thanks, Caroline. Maybe we could all go out together. Sherry and I, you and Zane.”
Caroline guffawed. That was the only word for the sound that came over the phone. “Yeah, you work on that, Agent Hatton. Let me know how it goes.”
The call ended. Jon had no idea what had or hadn’t happened between Caroline and Zane Wales, but it was obviously complicated.
Jon had much more important things to worry about than romance between the detective and paramedic.
Right now he had a date of his own to get. And he didn’t plan to take no as an answer.
* * *
SHERRY SAT IN almost the exact same place she had sat the day before, umbrella up, blocking her from most of the late-afternoon sun’s rays.
She had her red bikini on again, but once again had clothes over it. This time at least it was lightweight linen capri pants rather than jeans. Much more appropriate for the beach. Her long-sleeved, button-down shirt was still a little conspicuous, but since it was unbuttoned, not too bad.
Sherry was determined not to let what she had seen—or rather heard—at the hospital yesterday cause her to have a complete setback. To do that, she just had to completely shut the entire incident out of her mind.
It was hard. She had picked up the phone a half-dozen times last night to call Caroline and get the number of the handsome Detective Hatton and tell him that she would at least try to help. But every time she did she’d been racked with a cold so vicious she’d felt paralyzed. There was no way she was going to be of any use to anyone.
Even the cold wasn’t as bad as reliving the scene of that poor woman crying as the jerk who called himself a police officer had tried to question her. That was heartbreaking. And knowing Sherry could’ve stepped in and taken over at any time, if she’d just been able to find the strength to do it, was agonizing.
So here she was, on the beach, putting it all out of her mind. It was her only option.
She had her pencil and sketch pad on her lap in the beach chair she sat in. She’d made random lines, nonsensical shapes to the rhythm of the gulf waves crashing a dozen yards away, but hadn’t been able to force herself to do anything beyond that.
At least she wasn’t shivering.
She was tempted to try to draw the face of Detective Hatton from last night, since it kept floating through her mind. She definitely remembered his exact features. Dark brown hair, cut short. Hazel eyes. Chiseled, clean-shaved jaw. Confidence permeated how he held himself; intelligence how he studied everyone around him to understand their motives and actions before he responded. The guardedness of his features probably wasn’t let down very often.
Even without her talents as an artist she’d be able to remember him clearly. It wasn’t a face one was likely to forget. And, Sherry could admit, it was the first time she had felt any heat by looking at a stranger in a long time. Months. Maybe longer.
Then that guy in the hospital room had started belittling the woman and the cold had swamped Sherry again. She’d been almost paralyzed with iciness. It was coming back again now, so she pushed all thoughts of yesterday, even of handsome Detective Hatton, out of her head. She kept her hand on the pencil, but nothing was coming from it.
A few moments later a larger shadow showed up next to her umbrella. Sherry looked over from the drawing she wasn’t really drawing and saw casual brown oxfords coupled with dark khakis. Definitely not a bad style, but also not beach wear.
She shaded her face to allow her eyes to travel farther up and found a blue polo shirt neatly tucked into the pants and then the face of Detective Jon Hatton.
Speak of the devil.
“Aren’t you a little overdressed for the beach?” he asked by way of greeting.
“No more so than you, Detective Hatton,” Sherry responded. She felt at a distinct disadvantage being so far down near the ground with him towering over her. She couldn’t see his face well because of the sun, but her brain was more than happy to fill in from memory whatever she couldn’t physically see.
“Yeah, well, I’m not on vacation, as you so definitely are,” he said.
The use of the word vacation seemed almost venomous. His entire frame radiated tension.
“Is that a problem?” she asked.
“Evidently not to you.”
It didn’t take a genius to see that the detective was mad. And his anger seemed to be directed at her.
“Is there something I can do for you, Detective Hatton? Some sort of problem?”
She could feel her fingers moving with the pencil over the paper, real shapes taking form this time, but she didn’t pay it any mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d drawn something without giving the paper her direct attention.
Her focus was on Hatton, who was still standing so she had to crane her neck to look up at him. No do
ubt it was on purpose. The man was too intelligent, too insightful, for it to be anything but a deliberate measure on his part.
It was kind of making her mad. And...hot.
Not a sexual hot, but a regular, healthy, overheated hot because she was sitting on a Texas beach in the late-afternoon June sun in long pants and sleeves.
“Really?” he said. “You can’t figure it out?”
God, it felt good not to be icy. Even if it took being around a jerk to do it. Evidently her attraction, or whatever she’d had for him in the first few moments she’d seen him yesterday, was way off base.
Sherry sat straighter in her chair. She wasn’t just going to sit here and let him talk down to her, literally and figuratively. She got up from under her umbrella, tucking her pencil behind her ear, sketch pad down at her side.
At nearly five foot eight, Sherry was used to being pretty close to eye to eye with a lot of men, but not to Hatton. She hadn’t realized how tall he really was. He had to be at least six foot three, because she still had to crane her neck to look up at him. Not something she was used to.
“What is it that you want, Detective Hatton?”
She studiously ignored how the blue in his shirt brought out the blue specks in his eyes, especially in the late-afternoon golden sun.
“What I want is to know why you didn’t let me know about that.” He pointed toward her waist.
She looked down at herself. Was he still talking about her clothes? “I get cold, okay? It’s no crime to have on long sleeves at the beach.”
“No.” He closed the few feet between them and took the sketch pad that she held in her hand. “This.”
He was studying the sketch pad. Sherry felt a flush creep across her cheeks. She didn’t want to explain the random lines and doodles that covered her sketch pad. Didn’t want to go into the whole story about her drawings or lack thereof. Whether he knew she was an artist or not, she didn’t want to have to explain the lack of talent evident on that pad.
“Give it back to me.” She reached for the pad, but he took a step backward so she couldn’t reach it, still studying it.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?” He briefly shook the pad in his hand.
That she’d lost her ability to draw?
“Look, it’s difficult to explain...”
“Really? What’s so difficult about saying, ‘I’m a forensic artist. Maybe I can help with the situation’?”
He turned the sketch pad around so what she had drawn was facing her. Sherry was already cringing, preparing to explain, until she got a glimpse of the drawing.
She had drawn Detective Hatton in almost perfect likeness.
Chapter Five
“I guess I’m flattered,” Jon continued, holding the sketch pad.
Sherry just stood there, looking at the drawing. It wasn’t her greatest work, by any means. Really it was just in the preliminary stages—rough lines and edges—but it was definitely him. It was the first work she’d done that wasn’t just absolute crap in weeks.
She’d drawn it subconsciously. Not only was it not bad, but she hadn’t gotten any chills when she did it. As a matter of fact, now that she was out from under the protection of the umbrella, she was downright hot. She took off her shirt and tied it around her waist. The sun on her back and shoulders felt wonderful.
But she wasn’t quite sure exactly what conversation she was having with Jon Hatton.
“Why are you here?” she asked him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a forensic artist yesterday at the hospital?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t generally make those the first words out of my mouth when I’m talking to a complete stranger.” She grabbed the sketch pad out of his hand.
“You saw what was going on with that woman yesterday, how poorly Frank Spangler was handling the interview for the composite drawing, and you did nothing. You ran away.”
Sherry’s mouth fell open before she closed it again. What was she supposed to say? It had been all she could do yesterday to just keep it together. The last thing on her mind had been to offer to help.
Yes, she had run away. She wouldn’t have been any use to anyone anyway. She’d been shaking so hard she’d hardly been able to get her keys in the car door to unlock it.
But, damn, if she had to explain any of that to him. Jerk.
“Believe it or not, I don’t walk around hospitals offering my services to everyone. I was there to pick up my friend. I just happened upon your situation accidentally.”
She could tell right away that wasn’t going to appease him.
“You were so busy with dinner plans that you couldn’t help a woman who had just been through the most traumatic event of her life?”
“You know what, Detective Hatton? There was nothing I could’ve done yesterday. By the time you got in there and got your man out, the damage had already been done. That poor woman wasn’t going to talk to anyone, no matter who the artist was.”
“He’s not my man,” Hatton replied.
“Whatever. He’s on your police force. Your team.”
“No, I’m—”
Sherry held up a hand to cut him off. She wasn’t really interested in discussing the idiot who’d further traumatized that woman. As far as she could tell, everyone employed in law enforcement in Corpus Christi was a jerk.
“Who told you I was a forensic artist? Caroline?” Sherry didn’t think her friend would say anything, but maybe she had done so.
“No.” He shook his head. “I knew we needed a different forensic artist since Spangler has been taken off the case, so I made a call.”
“I’m glad to hear that Detective Spangler won’t be doing any more damage.”
“Me, too. He has no business being around any victims, as far as I’m concerned.”
That made Sherry feel a little better. At least Hatton didn’t defend Spangler. Sherry turned away and began loading up her beach stuff to take back to the house. She knew she wouldn’t be sitting out here anymore today.
“I’m sorry you came all the way to the beach, Detective, if it wasn’t to enjoy the sunshine. Because I can’t help you. For the next two weeks I’m just a tourist not a forensic artist.”
It sounded uncaring and cold even to her own ears. But what could she do about it? Except for the rough outline of Hatton’s features—which really didn’t count because, first, she hadn’t been actually trying to draw him, her fingers had just taken over, and, second, there wasn’t enough detail in it to be of any use for any police work anyway—she hadn’t been able to draw a face in weeks.
She wasn’t trying to be unfeeling; she just couldn’t help Detective Hatton. She couldn’t even help herself.
* * *
JON SWALLOWED HIS ANGER. Just a tourist for the next two weeks? That might possibly be the most selfish thing he’d ever heard. Sherry Mitchell might be drop-dead gorgeous in that red bikini top she was wearing, but it was obvious her beauty was only skin-deep.
If it even reached that far. Such a damn shame.
Jon had read in her file that both her parents owned separate successful businesses. Ms. Mitchell had obviously grown up spoiled, and those tendencies had remained when she became an adult.
Normally, Jon didn’t mind spoiling the woman he was with. Enjoyed all the slightly crazy nuances that made women the mind-bogglingly lovely creatures that they were. He loved the mental acuity it required to discover what it was they really wanted.
But not in this case. Jon was pissed off at how the woman in front of him categorically refused to assist in a situation where she could really help. Now she was just folding up her chair and umbrella as if it were just another day at the beach. Which evidently it was to her.
No, what really made Jon mad was that he was sti
ll attracted to her despite her actions. He might think she was completely spoiled, but he knew that, given the chance, he would be kissing every inch of those shoulders and back she’d exposed when she tied that long-sleeved shirt around her waist.
Jon took a deep, cleansing breath. Neither focusing on Sherry’s selfishness nor her beauty was getting him anywhere.
He needed to focus on how he could talk her into coming to the hospital and doing her magic as a forensic artist.
Jon had considerable people skills. That was one of the things that made him so good at his job at Omega. He kept a level head. He saw things others missed. He could read people, manipulate them when necessary.
It was time to put his distaste away and focus on getting Ms. Mitchell to do her job.
“It’s ‘agent.’”
She looked over her shoulder from where she was packing up her beach items. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m Agent Hatton, not Detective Hatton.”
“Agent as in FBI? You don’t work for the Corpus Christi Police Department?”
So much for thinking she hadn’t wanted to help him because he wasn’t a local cop. She’d had no idea. That made him feel a little less hostile. “No, I don’t work for the local PD or the Bureau. I work for Omega Sector in the Critical Response Division.”
Sherry nodded. “Okay. I’ve heard a few people at the FBI field office talk about Omega. Sorry I called you ‘detective.’”
“Why don’t we just alleviate the problem altogether by you calling me Jon?” He gave her his most charming smile. The one that had always worked on his mom to get him out of trouble.
Sherry paused for just a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Jon. I’m Sherry. But you already knew that, I guess.”
Jon kept his smile up. “I did.”
“I guess that guy, Spangler, or whatever that moron’s name is, really wasn’t part of your team if you’re not local PD, so please accept my apologies for that statement.”
Jon shrugged. “No apologies necessary, but let me assure you that no one like Spangler would ever be on my team, much less be anywhere near a victim.”