Armed and Devastating

Brooke winked back and reached across the island to squeeze Peggy’s hand. “You’re the real smart cookie of the bunch, aren’t you?”

Peggy turned her hand and squeezed back. “You can have Lou’s long arms and legs. My brains will get you further any day of the week.”

“I found it.” Louise beamed with the satisfaction of a fairy godmother admiring her magical handiwork when she returned. Urging Brooke to stand, she pinned a silver brooch with a lapis, turquoise and coral mosaic onto her lapel. “I got this on a trip to New Mexico when I was in college. A young gentleman classmate insisted I have it. There. That brightens things up. Smile for me.” As generous as she was honest, Louise cupped Brooke’s cheek and smiled back. “Now that, my dear, is your most beautiful asset.”

“Thanks.”

Lou twirled her finger into a tendril that curled over Brooke’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Have you thought about one of those short, kicky hairstyles? Maybe some golden highlights?”

“You can’t tell I put in highlights?”

“Leave her alone,” Peggy reproved. “Brooke looks just fine.”

“Fine, sure.” Lou climbed onto the stool beside Brooke and doctored her coffee with a spoonful of sugar. “But what about sexy? Or hot? I mean, I was never drop-dead gorgeous, but I always knew how to work what I have.”

“Enough.” Blushing around her last bite of muffin, Brooke stood and checked her watch. Though she was in no danger of being late, she could only handle so much of her aunt playing Cinderella with Brooke in the title role. “Even if you dolled me up, I could never pull off hot. Besides, I’m going to work, not to some fancy ball to pick up a man.”

Lou cradled her mug between her hands, shaking her head. “All those men in uniforms and badges and she’s not trying to pick one up.”

“Lou…” Peggy warned. “Don’t put that kind of pressure on her. Brooke is just a late bloomer. When the right man comes along, he’ll see her real beauty.”

“Yes, but you know how dense men can be. It doesn’t hurt to help them find their way.”

Brooke’s blush heated her clear down to her toes now. Louise didn’t have a shy bone in her body—she’d never understood how it made Brooke’s perfectly intelligent brain seize up whenever she tried to break out of her shell and try to get a man she was attracted to to notice her.

Buying herself some time to gather her thoughts and slip her newly forged assertive armor back into place, Brooke picked up her purse from the card table that served as living-room furniture, and dug out a tube of copper-colored lip gloss. Only after she’d put her professional game face back in place did she loop her carryall bag over her shoulder and turn to Louise. “Tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you.” She pointed across the main room. “You stay off that ladder and I’ll make the effort to talk to… three…men today.”

“About something not work-related,” Lou qualified, setting down her mug and smiling with hope.

“Agreed.”

“Then you’ve got a deal.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, Lou. But I love ya.” Brooke squeezed her aunt in a hug. She traded another hug with Peggy at the back door. “Love you, too.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep her out of trouble. You just concentrate on the new job and have a wonderful first day.”

“I will. See you tonight.”

Brooke crossed the sundeck that had yet to have a railing added, and bopped down the stairs at the opposite end. The sun was warm on her face as she crossed the yard to where her car was parked at the curb. The tall, broken grass packed into the dry dirt where Truman McCarthy and his construction crew drove their heavy equipment and supply trucks up to the house reminded her to start pricing carports. When winter hit, it’d be a bear to have to trek through the snow or shovel a path out to the street. And the historical value of the church’s turn-of-the-century exterior wouldn’t allow her to attach a modern garage.

But the remodeling notes were only a minor diversion from the real concern at hand as Brooke dug her keys from her purse. She’d made a promise to her aunt. Now she had to keep it. Talk to a man. Pick one up, if Louise had her way. It could happen. Right. Brooke nearly snorted, squelching her ironic laughter.

Think positive. Be positive. The new and slowly improving Brooke could do this. She just needed to break the task down into smaller, less-daunting goals, and not psych herself out over the bigger challenge of transforming into the social butterfly Aunt Lou believed she could be.

Three men. She could do that. “Hi” qualified as speaking to a man, didn’t it? “I’m Major Taylor’s new administrative assistant” could be an entire conversation at a busy office.

Sure, she’d love to have a man notice her for something more than her computer skills, to have him think she was something special. But she’d pick smaller battles, savor lesser victories, instead of setting herself up for failure. She wasn’t going to let Louise’s fairy-godmother fantasies make or break her day. Or her life.

She’d have plenty of interesting things to do at the Fourth Precinct, meeting coworkers and learning new routines. Plus, there was the work here at home. She had love in her life from her aunts and friends. She didn’t need Prince Charming to make her happy or make her feel complete.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt a girl’s ego to…

A subtle, external awareness seeped into Brooke’s thoughts, short-circuiting the endless debate. The sun was already bright in the cloudless sky, yet a chill slunk down her spine and she halted beside her car.

She slowly turned, seeking the source.

It was that same odd sensation she got watching a DVD by herself late at night, when she was reminded of how Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful timing combined with her ever-churning imagination could totally spook her. Only this wasn’t something she could turn off with the remote.

She zeroed in on a dented tan pickup truck parked a block down the street. Brooke adjusted her glasses at the temple and squinted.

Who was that? She didn’t recognize the vehicle or its occupant behind the steering wheel, though she could make out little more than the man’s snow-white hair. But he wasn’t old, not if the ripples of muscle beneath his T-shirt were any indication. He was almost faceless with his head hunched down into his shoulders and his purple K-State ball cap pulled low over his eyes. Was he lost? Sleeping?

Watching her?

He shifted in his seat and Brooke quickly turned away, avoiding any possibility of eye contact by staring down at her fingers on the door handle. “Paranoid much?”

Her nerves about starting the new job had gotten the better of her common sense, that was all. This was a regular old Monday morning in the middle of July, not a Hitchcock movie. And the Wildcat fan was nothing more than a man in a truck.

Brooke lifted her chin, determined to dispel her suspicion. She saw her aunts through the tall, narrow church windows, moving inside the house. There was a trio of boys two houses down, marking the bases for an early-morning whiffle ball game. Farther down the street, she spotted another neighbor, Mrs. Boyer, hanging on to the leash of her Labradoodle puppy as they practiced their daily walk.

All normal. All familiar.

Except…

Him.

“Stop it.” Brooke yanked open the car door and tossed her bag across the seat before she was tempted to look his way again. The man was probably one of Truman McCarthy’s construction workers, who’d shown up early for his shift and was waiting for his foreman to arrive. She was the only one who spent so much time with the thoughts inside her head that she could turn a harmless observation into a threat. No one else in the neighborhood seemed to think anything was out of place. Why should she?

Dismissing the man, the truck and the creepy sixth sense her imagination had concocted, Brooke hiked her skirt a notch and climbed inside to start the car and drive away.

But only a few minutes later, she began to wonder if her imagination had been playing tricks on her, after all. Stopped at a light before turning onto the highway which would take her into downtown Kansas City, Brooke checked her rearview mirror. Her breath hitched and she looked again.

Three vehicles behind her. Waiting to turn onto the same highway.

The stranger in the dented tan pickup truck.

Chapter Three

“I’m familiar with the program, sir.” Brooke hugged two software documentation manuals to her chest, wondering if Mitch Taylor had any idea how much space his broad shoulders and thick, barrel chest took up in her small, freshly painted but otherwise undecorated outer office. “But it’ll certainly be helpful to go through the formal training tomorrow.”

“Good.” His deep, commanding voice seemed to bounce off the safety glass on the door between their offices. “I’m competent when it comes to computers, but I’ll be counting on you to understand all the tricky stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And unless it’s the commissioner, my wife or one of my sons or daughter calling, I don’t want to talk to anyone before the morning briefing.”

“Won’t the watch commanders handle the briefing of each shift?”