Wrong Question, Right Answer (The Bourbon Street Boys #3) - Elle Casey Page 0,76

up. No.” I’m acting like I want him to go away, but I’m not giving it much effort. Even with his stinky coffee breath, I find him pretty much irresistible.

“Come on. Just one. I’ll close my eyes.” He does just that, his lids going down as his eyebrows arch up and his lips pucker.

I can’t resist. I lean in and lick his cheek before thrusting him away from me.

He opens one eye, letting my hands slide away from his. “Wow. That was a good one. Lots of tongue. Just how I like it.”

“You are so sick.” I turn the key in my ignition and shift the car into reverse.

“Hey, you have to let me out.” He puts his hand on the door.

“Just one thing, first.” I reverse out of the parking space at high speed and then slam the car into gear.

“Oh, shit,” he says, buckling his seatbelt and bracing himself against the door and the dashboard.

“Hang on, hot stuff!” I shout as I throw my car into a righteous donut, sending tires squealing and rubber burning. The outside scenery spins past our windows as I simultaneously brake and accelerate, swinging the wheel around so we’ll burn a perfectly arced three-sixty.

“Ahhhhhhh, you crazy . . . woman!”

Lucky screams like a girl and I laugh like a maniac.

The sound of law enforcement sirens is what finally stops me, but not before I’ve left some serious tracks on the asphalt.

“Hit it!” Lucky yells, pointing at the street.

“Yes, sir!” I yell, coming out of a turn with the car heading toward the exit. We slowly make our way out onto the road, going the speed limit. We’re just calmly turning right at the first stoplight when a cruiser comes around the far corner, headed for the scene of the crime.

I hold out my hand for a high-five and Lucky doesn’t disappoint; our palms meet with a loud crack. We roll down the avenue, both of us grinning like fools.

“Please don’t ever do that again,” he says, coughing after like he’s dying of bronchitis.

“Just had to do it once more, get it out of my system.”

“You ready to be a boring pregnant lady now?” he asks.

I shrug. “Might as well. I am pregnant, after all.”

“Yeah, but you could never be boring.”

I look over at him, wondering if he’s regretting that about me. “I could try.”

His expression is pained. “Please don’t.”

I can’t stop grinning, all the way back to the parking lot so Lucky can retrieve his car and follow me back to the warehouse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Lucky leaves me to finish my desk duty alone. I’m glad he’s giving me space. That moment we shared was a really big deal, and I could use some mindless surveillance data-crunching to get my mind off it. It’s not that I didn’t like it, but it’s more emotion than I generally deal with on a regular day.

Soon enough, I lose myself in the process. Frame after frame of video goes by, and I take notes of anything that I deem significant. Most of the day feels like a waste of time, but near the end of the video feed, after the sun has gone down and the infrared function comes on, the activity picks up at the target house and I gather some usable information. Matching it up with the data Jenny found and what I’m seeing in the police department’s dispatch logs, it’s starting to paint a picture of their operation. It’s pretty slick, if I do say so myself.

Now I can confirm with relative confidence that every time someone in their group tweets that there’s a full moon, someone or several someones leave the house where we saw Marc and drives off within five minutes. When they tweet that the wolves are howling, there’s some sort of gathering happening on enemy turf. And when their messages say the hunter’s got game, Marc’s group has done some damage to their enemy, either a drive-by or a mugging or something. The only problem is that I haven’t been able to identify Marc in all of it. I can’t be sure he’s calling any of the shots.

Regardless, all of the social media messages line up with what we’ve recorded and the dispatch logs we received from the detective in charge of the case. With this information, it’s possible the cops can catch them in the act and make some arrests. Maybe they won’t get Marc himself, but they can put a big dent in his operation, and that’s great news.