He buried that as he shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked again at her.
“I also need you to bag a book he’s stolen and bring it to me,” he told her.
Her head cocked slightly to the side and she asked, “Why?”
“’Cause he might have hit the system. We can lift prints, we might find out who he is which might lead us to where he is.”
“Oh,” she again whispered, then another, “Right. Okay. I’ll do that.”
“Try not to handle it too much.”
“Uh… Chace, our books, at least some of them, are handled a lot.”
“We’ll sort out what we find, don’t worry about that.”
She nodded again.
“I need a physical description of the kid too. I’ll give it to the boys. They can keep their eyes peeled.”
More nodding then she described the kid and his behavior. Nothing she said struck him as familiar to any kid he’d seen. Seeing as everything she said was not good, if he’d seen him he would have noted him.
When she was done speaking, he started.
“I’ll talk to the boys, see if they’ve seen anything or heard anything. I’ll also do some digging to see if any reports were made. Way things were, they could have been ignored or buried. I’ll do what I can to uncover it if they have. Tomorrow, I’ll call Child Protection Services to see if they’ve had any reports we haven’t acted on or any at all. I’ll also swing by the school to talk to the principal and ask him to talk to his teachers to see if any of them have concerns, either reported or unreported. In the meantime, you bag a book he stole and call me. Tell me when you can bring it in. When you do, I’ll have an artist here who can take your description and give us a picture we can go on. That all good with you?”
“A police artist?” she asked, again looking at him with that expression of adorable, effective wonder.
“A police artist, yeah,” he answered, expending not a small amount of effort to ignore her look. “You might not think you’re good at describing someone but they’re trained to pull it out of you and they’re good at what they do.”
“A police artist,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Chace replied.
“And fingerprints.” She was still whispering.
“Yeah, Faye, got no clue who this kid is. Gotta do something to find him, find out what’s happening to him and put a stop to it. We don’t have a name. We don’t have an address. So we have to work with what we’ve got.”
She was still whispering when she repeated, “Put a stop to it.”
Now, Chace was confused. She seemed stunned. Not in a bad way, that wonder was still clear in her expression. But stunned all the same.
“Uh, yeah, Faye. That’s why you came here and reported this, isn’t it? To put a stop to bad shit happening to a kid. So, let’s set about doin’ that, yeah?”
He stopped speaking and she said nothing, just stared up at him, those blue eyes big and locked on him.
But Chace was done. Done with this conversation. Done with gathering info and giving detail on what they were going to do. And especially done with being in a private room with the town’s pretty librarian looking at him like he parted the Colorado River so she could get to the other side without the unnecessary hassle of getting wet. Something only her own personal miracle worker could offer her.
But Faye Goodknight was not done.
He’d know this when suddenly she was not two feet away but in his space. So far in his space, her soft body was pressed the length of his, her arms were around his shoulders, one hand curled around the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, putting pressure on to bend his head. And last, her mouth was pressed hard to his.
What the f**k?
He put his hands to her h*ps to push her away, his mind filled with how he could do that as gently as possible when her tongue came out and the tip touched his lips.
And at that, Chace’s body and mouth made another decision before his mind could catch up. This being his arms closing around her tight, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue spiking out, pushing hers back into her mouth and then he kissed her, very hard, very wet and very, very deep.
She didn’t taste like bubblegum.