Free Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance by Charlotte Raine Page B

woman…it could have been made to throw us off her tracks.”
    I shake my head. “She should still be at whatever hotel she chose. I just can’t see her doing that.”
    “I looked up hotels that had doorman nearby the police station,” he says. “If she is involved with the murders, she might not have stayed at one, but I figure it’s worth checking out.”
    I yawn. “Alright. Just give me thirty minutes to get ready.”
    He nods. “Just so you know…I hope I’m wrong. I know you like her.”
    “Thank you,” I say. I can hear the sincerity in every syllable he says, and it makes me feel more cared for than I have ever felt.
     
    ~~~~~
     

Tobias
    WE DON’T FIND Jasmine in her usual spot near the Greektown Casino. We return to the police station and the FBI uses the station’s surveillance cameras to get a snapshot of Jasmine’s face. They transfer the snapshot onto their computer and it compares the image to driver’s licenses. We watch the laptop’s screen as it shuffles through thousands of photographs and assigns each one a percentage as to how close it matches Jasmine’s image.
    I pace back and forth in the break room as Lauren chews on her lip.
    “If it turns out that she’s the killer and we let her loose…” she says, voicing my own fears.
    “It doesn’t matter,” I say, trying to reassure myself as well. “We have her now.”
    The air in the room is stifling, but I don’t want to leave Lauren alone with her thoughts. I don’t want to be alone either. It’s like we have assimilated into one mind and share the same emotions. I feel her fear and confusion like a dagger, while she feels my anger and shame.
    “I can’t breathe,” she says, standing up. I nod, glad that she said it before I did. We walk out of the building, our movements synchronized. As soon as we’re outside, Lauren kneels on the ground, no longer able to stand.
    “I was kind to her, Tobias,” she says. “I gave her money. I felt bad for her. I thought…I thought she was a good person despite her circumstances. I got everything wrong about her.”
    “You don’t know that yet,” I say. “There could be other explanations. I could be completely wrong.”
    She shakes her head. “It’s Friday night. She would have been at her corner…but she’s not because she knew we were on to her. She knew we were closing in on her, so she ran.”
    “She’s been a con artist for a long time, Lauren,” I say. “I’m sure she has convinced a lot of people that she was the victim.”
    “I’m a detective,” she says. “And an expert at reading body language. I should have been able to tell when she was lying.”
    “We will find her,” I say. “We will get her to confess whatever she knows…if she is even involved.”
    “She won’t be where she’s living,” she says. “She’s probably out of the state by now.”
    “The FBI will track her down then,” I say. “As much as I hate it, that’s their job. But we can get into her house and apartment, search it over…see if we can find anything that hints at where she went.”
    Before Lauren can respond, an FBI agent rushes out toward us, waving a piece of paper.
    “We have her address,” the agent says. “Her name is Nina Wayland.”
    Lauren beats me to my car by a second. My heart beats hard in my chest and I can almost feel Lauren’s thrumming right beside it.
     
    ~~~~~
     
    The FBI crashes through the apartment door first. I raise my gun and quickly scan the hallway. I see two FBI agents stop in the doorway of another room, their faces changing from confusion to disappointment and then to sadness. I make it to the doorway as the two of them walk into a bedroom.
    I spin around and grab Lauren before she can see. I pull her back toward the entrance door.
    “What?” she asks. “What’s going on? Did she save body parts of the victims or something? Are there photographs of me?”
    “No,” I say. “Jasmine wasn’t the killer.”
    “Nina,” she corrects.