Dark Blue (South Island PD Book 1) by Ranae Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

Sanders had caved. She’d made Jackson at least one solid enemy in the department, and – worse – she’d put herself and her child in danger.
    “She was telling the truth,” he said. “She was terrified – she was there crying with her screaming baby.”
     Anger bubbled up inside him like toxic sludge.
    “Apparently, she had a change of heart.”
    Jackson knew damn well that the situation had to be chafing at the lieutenant too, but she barely let it show.
    “Is he back on the job?” he asked.
    “He would’ve been suspended and subjected to an investigation, but with no charges, that’s not an option. His wife didn’t have any obvious marks or wounds when she made her statement yesterday, so there was no physical evidence for us to document.”
    Jackson bit his tongue before an obscenity could roll out. “Lieutenant, he beat the mother of his newborn child. Imagine what he might do to a stranger who pissed him off.”
    If Sanders had ever been fit to wear a badge, that person was gone now. Personally, Jackson didn’t believe Sanders had ever been cut out for law enforcement. There were those who said the stresses of the job changed people over the years – drove officers to behaviors they never would’ve fallen into otherwise.
    It was bullshit. You either had the capacity to be as shitty as Sanders or you didn’t. It was a matter of nature, and if it was there, it’d come out eventually, no matter what you did for a living.
    “There’s no excuse,” he said.
    Lieutenant Aldred’s jaw tensed. “I know that, but the department’s hands are tied. If his wife refuses to admit that anything happened, then nothing happened as far as the law is concerned.”
    He knew that. He knew it, and it grated.
    His nod was a stiff jerk of the head, one that left him with an ache in the back of his neck.
    The lieutenant dismissed him and he started his shift with the knowledge that everything he’d done the day before had been undone, reduced to nothing in the eyes of the law.
     
* * * * *
 
    “God, Belle, I can’t believe you aren’t freaked out!” Mariah sat up straight on Belle’s couch, arms crossed over her chest.
    Belle stared back at her best friend, the woman who’d stuck with her through thick and thin since the fourth grade. They’d visited each other occasionally during Belle’s years away from the island, and when she’d moved back four months ago, it’d been as if they’d never been apart.
    “I’m twenty-seven years old,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a dildo before.”
    She’d never seen one so large or so green, but that was irrelevant.
    “It’d take more than a toy penis to scare me.”
    Mariah rolled her eyes. “I know it wasn’t your first encounter with a sex toy.”
    Belle’s smiled as she recalled the party she and Mariah had attended together at the house of one of Mariah’s co-workers a couple months ago. It’d been similar to a kitchenware party, only instead of kitchen goods, everyone had oohed and ahhed over sex toys. Thinking back to some of Mariah’s remarks, she wanted to laugh, but her friend’s deadly-serious expression warned her not to.
    “That’s not the point,” Mariah continued, tucking a strand of honey-brown hair behind her ear. “Breaking into a place just to leave a dildo behind is the kind of thing a real creep would do. A stalker, or something.”
    “You’ve been watching those true crime documentaries on the ID Channel again, haven’t you?”
    Mariah’s gaze didn’t waver. “Always. And trust me, you should be watching your back. Who knows what the freak who broke into your office might be plotting next?”
    Belle shook her head. “It’s not like someone broke into my house. They didn’t even break into my office. They left the surprise on the table in the waiting area near the reception desk. It was probably just a prank – we are an admissions office, and we do have to turn people down.”
    Mariah’s