Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(9)

“Coughlin,” Preacher said. Not loud, but authoritative enough that Maureen didn’t want to hear him say it again. He would never order her to do something in public, not when she was out of uniform, but when he spoke to her like that, the command was implied.

Maureen glanced at Heath one more time. He stood his ground, staring at her, swinging the golf club through the dead leaves at his feet like a pendulum.

She sighed, turned her back on him, and jogged in Preacher’s direction, her head hung low like a ballplayer on her way back to the dugout, upset with the umpire’s decision. She could feel the heat of her blood as her neck and cheeks flushed. She was not happy, very not happy, about being brought to heel by Preacher in front of Heath. Part of the point in her running by his house so often, she thought, had been to demonstrate her freedom; to imply that she might be more dangerous on the loose than she had been on the job. Now, this moment she had been waiting for, that she had so carefully orchestrated, was backfiring on her. Not the first time that’s happened, she thought.

Maureen and Preacher had been meeting in the park for the last month. They didn’t communicate beforehand to set up the meetings. She ran through the park at about the same time every day. When Preacher needed to see her, he went to the park and waited on the bench. If Maureen saw him there, she stopped and they talked. Usually, he’d have some tidbit of department gossip for her. He kept her apprised of daily life in the Sixth District. Sometimes he had something he’d heard about the Leary case and things surrounding it. What he had most often was no news about that case at all.

Maureen knew, though they never discussed it, that the main reason for the meetings was Preacher’s constant worry about her. He was checking up on her. Until today, she had appreciated the attention. She knew he was taking a risk. They both were.

Maureen and Preacher weren’t supposed to see each other, to have any contact, until she’d been officially reinstated to the police department. Or fired from it. She didn’t know who at the NOPD, if anyone, watched or kept track of such things. She certainly couldn’t see Preacher reporting to or checking in with anyone. And if someone was watching the two of them, there was no way Preacher didn’t know about it. He probably knew the person doing the spying, and that person probably owed Preacher any number of favors. Everyone in New Orleans, cop or not, owed Preacher a favor. In his way, Preacher could reach as deep into the convoluted viscera of New Orleans as the Heaths. They reached down from the top. Preacher reached up from the bottom. Both got results.

Maureen coasted to a stop, stepping off the asphalt track onto the grass to meet him. She plucked out her earbuds and silenced the music on her iPod with her thumb.

“I’m waiting,” Preacher said.

“For what?”

“For you to say thank you,” Preacher said. “Because I just saved you from making a huge mistake.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maureen said, studying the tops of her running shoes.

“We really going to play this game?”

Maureen set her hands on her hips. She puffed out her chest and raised her chin. But she said nothing.

“What you’re doing right now,” Preacher said. “Not talking? You should do more of that.”

Preacher scanned her with his eyes, evaluating her from her head to her feet, as she approached. She couldn’t miss the scrutiny; he didn’t even try to hide it. It was the first thing that happened each time they met. It wasn’t a sexual appraisal. She’d never gotten the slightest kind of attention from him that way. This time, Maureen wasn’t sure what he was thinking as he added up what he’d observed about her. Whatever it was he saw today, she could tell from his face that he didn’t approve, beyond what she had tried with Heath.

“What now?” she asked.

“Do you ever eat?”

“The amount of exercise I get?” Maureen said. “I eat constantly.”

“Not that nuts-and-berries shit,” Preacher said. “Real food. Cooked food.”

“We’ve only known each other a few months,” Maureen said, grateful for the change in subject, “but we’ve spent a lot of time together. You’ve seen me eat. You really think I’m a nuts-and-berries kind of girl? C’mon.”

She bent forward, her hands on her thighs, huffing for breath, sweat trickling from under her headband and down the sides of her neck. She gave Preacher a hard time, goofed at things he said, but she understood his point. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what was happening to her.

She was losing weight. A lot of it. No one needed eyes as keen as Preacher’s to see that. She’d never had much extra weight to spare, she’d always had angles where other women had curves, but during her suspension she had started losing the muscle she’d added over the summer in the police academy and her first months on the streets. Muscle she had worked hard for, that she needed in her arms and shoulders and back and backside to meet the physical requirements of her job. To protect herself on the streets.

She’d noticed this wearing away. She saw it in her hands, which were looking almost like a waitress’s hands again. She saw it in the way her newer clothes no longer fit her. The running shorts she wore had fit when she’d bought them online two weeks ago. Now they sagged on her hips. She studied herself in the mirror after showers. Her ribs showed like they had in her cocaine-fueled middle twenties. Her hip bones were visible, too. For a few weeks there she’d almost had an ass. She was even losing that.