In Safe Hands (Search and Rescue #4)(15)
After poking at her phone again, Lou tucked it into her back pocket. “No whiteboard.”
Daisy snorted. “I got that.”
“Do you have a notebook or a piece of paper or something?” Lou asked. “I know I’m not going to remember everything.”
“Sure.” Daisy retrieved a small notebook and a pen from the junk drawer in the kitchen and offered them to Lou before taking her seat on the couch again.
“Perfect. Thank you.” Lou flipped open the notebook cover. “Now tell me everything.”
Chapter 4
They went over all the details multiple times. Instead of making Daisy more certain about what she’d seen, it only increased her doubts. Repeating the story over and over made what happened sound so outlandish and unbelievable.
“What if there’s some stupidly simple and innocent explanation for this?” she finally asked Lou. “I’m going to feel so dumb that I’ve wasted your time and Chris’s and—”
“Stop.” Lou cut off her torrent of words. “If that’s true, then Chris will see it in the call log, and we’ll all be happy that no one is dead. But can you really think of a good reason for someone dressed in black to be shoving something shaped like a dead body—including a boot!—into a sheriff’s squad at three in the morning?”
Daisy had been trying all day to come up with a logical explanation, and she hadn’t succeeded. She shook her head.
“Me neither. It’s not like we’re going to do crazy things with this information. We’re just going to add it to the other facts on the whiteboard and see if it snaps together with any of the other puzzle pieces.”
“Okay.” Daisy let out a long breath.
Lou’s cell chirped, and she glanced at the screen. “Callum is leaving Station One right now and is headed over to pick me up. He should be here in five minutes or so.”
Glancing at her watch, Daisy was shocked to see that they’d been talking for almost two hours. Now that Lou was about to leave, disappointment swept over Daisy. It had been so nice having someone new—and female—to chat with, even if that chat had been about a possible dead body. “Did you want to see the rest of the house? The quick tour takes less than five minutes.”
“Definitely.” Lou bounced to her feet.
As Daisy led the way through the lower level, she felt simultaneously flustered and excited. There was also a tinge of embarrassment that she was so thrilled to have found a new friend, since she probably should have outgrown that level of enthusiasm in kindergarten.
“This is the… I don’t know what exactly to call it. The gym? Training room?”
Lou made a beeline to Max. “No matter what you call it, this place is awesome!” Wrapping an arm around the waist of the grappling dummy, she looked around at the rest of the equipment. “No wonder you have a body like…that.” She gestured at Daisy, who flushed and resisted the self-conscious urge to wrap her arms around herself.
As she tried to look at the home gym with a stranger’s eyes, Daisy had to admit it was really nice. Her dad had knocked down the wall between two rooms to give her a lot of space. She had a treadmill and an elliptical machine, free weights and benches, a pull-up bar, a variety of heavy and speed bags, and plenty of mat space for sparring. Plus, Max was pretty awesome in and of himself.
“Who trains you?” Lou asked, leaving Max with a pat on the rump to explore the rest of the room. “Or do you just use YouTube videos or something?”
“Chris, mostly, although I do have some DVDs, too.” She grinned. “And maybe a few YouTube videos.”
Instead of laughing, Lou gave her an interested look. “So, you and Chris…?”
“No. I mean, we’re friends, but not…” Daisy waved a hand, her blush brightening. “We’re friends. So…no.”
“Uh-huh.” Lou’s voice was skeptical. To Daisy’s utter relief, Lou’s phone chirped, interrupting whatever else the other woman was about to say.
“Callum?” Daisy guessed.
“He’s at the front door. Apparently,” Lou smirked, “he’s been knocking.”
“Oh!” Hurrying out of the training room, Daisy said over her shoulder, “I should have a doorbell, but I normally don’t get that many visitors, so it hasn’t really been an issue before.”
“Don’t worry about Callum.” After a final, longing look at the fitness equipment, Lou followed her to the front entry. “Standing outside for a few minutes won’t kill him. I keep telling him that patience is a virtue.”
“Um…okay.” Daisy pushed the unlock button for the exterior door. There was the usual thump-click as the outside entrance relocked, and her hand moved to the first dead bolt. A heavy knock on the interior door made her jump.
“Hold your horses, Cal!” Lou bellowed right next to her ear, startling Daisy again. “There are a bazillion locks, so it’s going to take a minute.”
The only acknowledgment from the other side of the door was a masculine grunt, but the knocking didn’t resume, so Daisy assumed that Cal had held his horses, as requested. Her hands shook a little as she unfastened the dead bolts and chains. It seemed like a long time before she managed to open the door, revealing a big, stern-looking man wearing a baseball cap.