Bookplate Special by Lorna Barrett Read Free Book Online Page B

weeks, ever since Angelica had rented her new property.
    “I beg your pardon?” Baker said.
    “You jaywalked across Main Street,” she explained, huddling to keep warm in the stiff breeze.
    “Ms. Miles,” he said, his voice growing somber, “my men found a car several blocks from here, apparently abandoned. It has Connecticut plates and was registered to Ms. Fredericks. The trunk was open and it contents ransacked. If you could look at what’s left, perhaps you can tell me what, if anything, was taken.”
    A wave of fresh grief coursed through Tricia. “I suppose I could look, but I really don’t know what she had, other than the suitcases she kept at my apartment for the past two weeks.”
    “Would you be willing to try?”
    She stared into his green eyes, and her willpower dissolved. What was the hold men with green eyes had on her?
    “Of course. But I need to let my assistant know I’ll be gone for a few minutes.”
    Baker accompanied her to Haven’t Got a Clue, where she grabbed her coat and told Ginny she’d be back as soon as she could.
    Outside, Baker bowed like a gallant knight, and made a sweeping gesture toward the cruiser parked on the opposite side of the street. Then he walked her across the pavement, opened the passenger-side door, and held it open until she’d seated herself, grasping the seat belt and buckling herself in.
    As he walked around the car, Tricia took in the police scanner, the little printer that sat in the middle of the bench seat, and the cup of cold coffee in the beverage restraint device. She’d never sat inside a cop car before. How many police procedurals had she read over the years? How many scenes had taken place in such a car? But the reality was far different from fiction. There was an atmosphere of . . . tension—mixed with stale coffee and sweat and a touch of angst?—that seemed to hang inside the vehicle, and she doubted that even a prolonged airing could remove the lingering scents of stale urine and vomit from within that small space.
    Baker climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He glanced in the rearview mirror before easing the gearshift into Drive and pressing the accelerator.
    “You should buckle your seat belt,” Tricia admonished.
    “The law here in New Hampshire requires seat belt use only by those eighteen years and younger,” he said with confidence.
    “Just because the law doesn’t require you to use your seat belt doesn’t mean it’s not the smart thing to do.”
    He tossed a glance in her direction for the merest part of a second, then focused his attention back on the road. “I think I can take care of myself.”
    She sighed. “Just like a man.”
    Again his gaze darted in her direction. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It’s just that men can be just so . . . stupid. What’s wrong with being safe? Haven’t you read the federal highway statistics reporting the percentage of deaths due to not wearing seat belts?”
    “Officers of the law need to be able to react—to get out of their vehicles at a moment’s notice.”
    “Not if they’re smushed into paste in an accident.”
    “Smushed?” Baker repeated.
    “Yes. It’s a variation of smashed. Smushed is when what used to be a solid becomes almost a liquid. Human flesh can be smushed when it’s contained in crumpled steel and glass.”
    “Smushed,” Baker said once again. “I don’t think I’ve ever considered that.”
    “Well, you ought to. I’m sure the State of New Hampshire has invested thousands of dollars in your training. If you were killed or maimed in an accident, you’d be costing taxpayers like me a lot of money.”
    “Smushed,” he murmured again, turning left onto Hanson Lane.
    Tricia kept her gaze riveted out the windshield. “I’m sure your family wouldn’t appreciate the call telling them their husband and dad was now the consistency of tomato puree.”
    “As it happens, I am no one’s husband or dad, so you don’t have to