kit and heading for the door at the back of the room.
Uncomfortable at the idea of leaving Mac alone when someone had so recently tried to kill him, CJ hesitated, her gaze immediately going to him, but he smiled and waved her off. “Go on. Mrs. Dupree will keep me safe.”
When CJ raised one eyebrow dubiously, he added, “I saw those glares she was casting at you. The lady has a mean streak. I suspect everyone in Sandford knows that and few would cross her. I should be safe enough with her.”
The words made CJ’s lips twitch with amusement and she quickly turned to follow Simpson to hide it from Mac.
A hallway stretched out ahead of them once she followed Simpson out of the bullpen. The first door on the left led to a large room fitted out with a kitchen and three round tables for eating at. The door on her right was labeled Men. The next door on the right, though, read Ladies.
“There you are.” Simpson nodded to the door and then simply continued down the hall to the next one on the left. When he turned in there, CJ supposed it must be the evidence room, but her attention was on a metal door she could now see at the end of the hall. It had a very small glass window that she could see bars through. The cells, she realized, and turned to slip into the ladies’ room.
She wasn’t surprised to find it was a one-person bathroom. This wasn’t a huge police station, and as far as she could tell there weren’t a lot of females in it. The only one she’d seen so far was the captain’s wife, though there might be a secretary or receptionist during the day. There may even be at least one female officer. She supposed she’d find out eventually if that was the case.
Locking the door behind her, CJ tended to her business, washed her hands, and then took a minute to check emails and messages on her phone. She even quickly answered an email from her mentor at the SIU to let him know how things were going. She had started to answer another from a friend when she realized she was just delaying having to go back out to the bullpen until she was sure she wouldn’t be alone with Mac. CJ was finding herself distressingly susceptible to his cheerful charm, but didn’t like to think of herself as a coward, and that was what she was being right then.
Stopping in the middle of the second email, she saved it to Drafts and put her phone away. She then paused just long enough to take a deep breath, before leaving the ladies’ room and heading back up the hall to the bullpen.
CJ had expected Simpson and Mrs. Dupree to be back from their tasks when she entered the bullpen, but neither of them were, although Mrs. Dupree had obviously returned at some point. Mac was still seated in the desk chair the older woman had insisted he settle in, but now had a heavy woolen cardigan draped over his shoulders and a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. CJ could smell the whiskey in it from ten paces away. It didn’t look like he’d had any of it yet. He was just holding it in front of his face, allowing the whiskey-infused steam to fill his nostrils, a miserable look on his face as he peered down into the liquid. He cheered, though, when he saw her walking toward him.
“I thought you’d slipped out the back door to avoid Mrs. Dupree,” he teased in a low voice when she stopped in front of him.
“Everyone in the business is a Mrs. Dupree when it comes to SIU agents. I’m used to it,” CJ assured him, and then glanced around before asking, “Where are Mrs. Dupree and Simpson?”
“Mrs. Dupree is in there,” Mac said, nodding toward the office she’d guessed was the captain’s. “As for Simpson, I think he left.”
“Left?” CJ asked with alarm.
“I think so,” Mac answered with a shrug. “He came back, went into the office, and then left with Mrs. Dupree shooing him off like he was a kid who’d stayed up past his bedtime. She told him to . . . ‘skedaddle,’ I believe was the word.”
CJ was trying to absorb that when he added, “He only left a minute ago. I am surprised you did not pass him in the hallway on the way