After the report was finished and the s.e.x toy taken away by security, Keira reopened the office door.

"Time and tide wait for no man," she said. "Neither do admissions deadlines."

They went about their day as usual, and as Belle lost herself in paperwork, the morning's incident slipped farther and farther from her thoughts.

The discovery had been weird, even unnerving. But her mind was elsewhere. Apparently, it would take more than an intruder and a big green mystery d.i.l.d.o to get her mind off Jackson.

Which was saying a lot.

CHAPTER 5.

The South Island Police Department was a three story brick rectangle located on the edge of downtown and framed by towering palms. Making his way across the second floor on Friday, Jackson felt like a model reluctantly walking the runway.

"I know I make this uniform look good," he said to Delgado, the nearest patrol officer, "but you're all staring more than usual."

"You brought Sanders in yesterday," Delgado said. "It's all anyone's been talking about all morning."

He nodded. It wasn't exactly a surprise. The weight of his fellow officers' combined gazes felt like a spotlight as they gathered for roll call.

He knew all of them and couldn't say there was anyone he had any real problems with. But he knew they were talking about him, rea.s.sessing their opinions of him.

Some of them would be wary of him. Some might even decide he was a traitor.

It'd been his call whether to arrest Sanders the day before, and he'd acted to protect the victim instead of one of their own.

Jackson exchanged a look with Elijah as the room filled and Sanders' name was spoken several times.

Everyone shut up when the shift sergeant entered, and he quickly a.s.signed an extra patrol to the area just north of a popular fishing pier where one convenience store and a beachwear retailer had both been robbed during the past week. A single thief had acted alone and had claimed to be armed, but neither of the targeted clerks had actually seen a gun. He was to be considered armed and dangerous and had been described as a white male in his twenties.

By the time roll call wrapped up, Jackson was ready to get out from under his platoon members' gazes and into his cruiser.

He and Elijah were almost to the stairs when someone caught his elbow.

"Calder."

It was the lieutenant. "My office for a minute. Come on." She tipped her head to the side, then nodded at Elijah. "Bennett, you can go."

Elijah and Jackson went in opposite directions, Elijah toward the stairs and Jackson to the lieutenant's office.

Once there, she shut the door and turned to face him, standing in front of her desk.

He knew without being told that this was about what'd gone down at Sanders' place yesterday. Trepidation nagged at him, but he couldn't believe Lieutenant Aldred would give him s.h.i.t over it. It was well known in the department that her ex-husband had given her the scar that ran along her jawline. In her forties now, that was years in her past, and she was known for being stern but fair.

"You did what you had to do yesterday at the Sanders' home," she said. "I know you know you'll catch some s.h.i.t over it, but I won't berate you." A muscle in her jaw shifted, straining the thin, white scar. "I just wanted to let you know that Sanders' wife dropped the charges against him."

"What?" The revelation hit him like a punch to the gut, and his spine stiffened.

"She dropped the charges. This morning." Lieutenant Aldred shrugged, her mouth drawn into a compressed line.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. All that, and Kate 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 d.a.m.n 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 doc.u.ment."

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 p.i.s.sed 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 bulls.h.i.t. You either had the capacity to be as s.h.i.tty 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.

"G.o.d, 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 d.i.l.d.o before."

She'd never seen one so large or so green, but that was irrelevant.

"It'd take more than a toy p.e.n.i.s to scare me."

Mariah rolled her eyes. "I know it wasn't your first encounter with a s.e.x 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 s.e.x 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 d.i.l.d.o behind is the kind of thing a real creep would do. A stalker, or something."

"You've been watching those true crime doc.u.mentaries 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 face was flushed pink, and her sea-green eyes glittered. "Belle, so help me G.o.d, I will not let you become a doc.u.mentary special. If you didn't trust me, we wouldn't have been friends for the past seventeen years. You need to listen to me when I say you need to be careful."

"If I carry pepper spray in my purse, will that satisfy you?"

"You're not already doing that?"

"No."

"Do you have any sense of self-preservation? What would you do if someone attacked you?"

"Run, I guess."

"I had gym cla.s.s with you when we were kids, remember? I know you're not going to outrun anyone under the age of seventy."

"I'm probably not going to be attacked by anyone, either." Belle caught the look in Mariah's eye and experienced a pang of guilt. "But I'll get some pepper spray to carry. Better safe than sorry."

Mariah's posture was still rigid, but her expression softened a little. "I'm surprised the cop who wrote the report didn't warn you to be extra careful. He should've known better."

The cop had probably had much more pressing matters on his mind than a mystery d.i.l.d.o, but Belle didn't say that out loud. "If he'd thought we were in any danger, I'm sure he would've said something."

Mariah shook her head. "He was probably a rookie. Either that or just lazy. You should talk to someone who's been doing the job for a while. They'd back me up, and they could probably tell you how to stay safe."

Belle bit her lip to keep from laughing. "So you think I should find an experienced cop, pull them aside and explain that I need advice because a d.i.l.d.o turned up at my place of work and we don't know where it came from?"

Mariah gave Belle a longsuffering look. "Anything sounds ridiculous if you say it in that tone of voice. But basically, yeah."

Jackson came to mind, and Belle had to bite her lip even harder to keep from laughing out loud.

"What's so funny?" Mariah crossed her arms a little tighter.

"Nothing."

"Nothing my a.s.s you're practically turning purple."

Belle sighed. "I ran into Jackson Calder the other day, and he's a cop now. I was imagining what it'd be like to take your advice and ask him to weigh in on this."

"You saw Jackson?"

Belle nodded.

Mariah's eyes went wide. "And he's a cop? Wow, that's unexpected."

Belle admitted that much was true. "He's an officer with the island PD."

"Were you two on a date or something?"

"No. Why would you think that?"

"Because you were obsessed with him."

"I was not. And that was years ago, anyway."

Mariah shrugged. Her eyes still glittered, but the worry there had been replaced with interest.

Belle wished she hadn't said anything about Jackson. Mariah watched way too much TV and would probably expect their reunion to play out like a romantic drama, much as she expected the incident at the college to be the work of a deranged criminal destined for doc.u.mentary fame.

"You never forget your first," Mariah said, confirming Belle's fears, "and don't think I didn't notice someone gave you flowers." She nodded toward the kitchen, where Jackson's bouquet of lilies brightened the table.

Belle decided to come clean. Quick and easy, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Then they could move on to other subjects.

"He pulled me over for speeding. That's how I found out he's a cop. Later, he came by with those flowers as an apology. Nothing else happened."

She barely managed not to roll her eyes, even though her stomach was fluttering.

"Wait did he write you a ticket?"

"Yep."

Mariah snorted. "Wow."

"I know."

"Still..." Mariah uncrossed her arms and tipped her head to the side. "You should sleep with him."

"What?" Surprise arrowed through Belle, quickly followed by a sense of betrayal. Mariah, of all people, should've understood that she wasn't about to casually sleep with anyone.

"He was always smoking hot. I bet he looks great in uniform."

Belle's heart skipped a beat. "So what? Good looking guys are a dime a dozen."

Actually, guys as good looking as Jackson were about as rare as polar bears in the desert, but admitting that wouldn't help Belle's case or soothe her hurt feelings. She and Mariah were different, no doubt about it, but she'd told Mariah everything when she'd come back to the island every soul-crushing detail.

Mariah shrugged. "You deserve a little fun, after what you've been through. And you've already been with him, so you know it'd be good. Seems ideal to me."

"Casual s.e.x isn't my idea of fun."

Mariah arched a brow. "Not even with a hot cop like Jackson? You were into him for years. Don't you think it'd be fun to sleep with him again now that you're more experienced? I bet it'd be even better than before."