Priceless

the roof of his mouth. He didn’t fight me, and for a split second his lips softened on mine, the taste of mint lingering on my tongue as I pulled away from him. O’Shea swayed, and then scrambled away from me, dark eyes wide. His hand went to his gun.
    “I think you just like to follow me around so you can watch my nice tight ass wiggle. You’ve been watching it for nearly ten years, haven’t you?” I blew a kiss at Mini-Me and hopped into my Jeep.
    The kiss did what nothing else could have, what nothing in ten years had managed. It shut him up. I’d be buggered, Milly was right! I left from our encounter whistling a tune, a smile on my lips.
    *-*-*-*
    “Slackers,” O’Shea shouted, and then muttered under his breath when Martins, his new partner, scuttled away to his desk with wide eyes. O’Shea knew he was the talk of the office, knew the other Agents looked sideways at him for taking this obsession with Adamson to a whole new level. Ten years he’d followed her, ten years he’d learned her habits, her training, even her taste in food. All so he could drag her down. He didn’t care what the other agents thought, never had, but knew it made life just that much more difficult when it came to getting the higher ups to agree to requisitions. Taking slow breaths, O’Shea calmed himself, not wanting to admit the true reason for his anger.
    That kiss had set him on fire. He could still feel it, the pressure of her lips, the dainty flick of her tongue over his. He let out a groan and slid into his chair. The worst thing possible for any officer of the law was to get hung up on a suspect, and that’s what Adamson was, a suspect. It didn’t matter that the case was cold. It didn’t matter that there was literally no proof she’d killed her sister; he had a gut feeling something was off about her, and he was sticking with his instincts.
    “Hey, partner.”
    O’Shea lifted his eyes to see Martins fiddling with his tie, nerves coming through with every twitch of his fingers. “I was thinking, maybe we should tail her. See where she goes.”
    Shaking his head, O’Shea pointed to a tracking device on his desk that blinked a muted red. “I’ve already tagged her Jeep. Goes on the fritz now and again, but we can follow her anywhere. If it’s working.”
    Martins lit up like a freaking Christmas tree. “Awesome, let’s go then.”
    God, O’Shea hated the young ones. Had he ever been that ridiculously eager? Like a dog just waiting to be set on a bird?
    The last thing O’Shea wanted was to see Adamson again. Auburn hair, gold, green and chocolate eyes that could skewer a man at ten paces, not to mention a body lean and hard from the rigorous regime she followed. He could still feel the brush of his hand under her breast, and he clenched his fingers to fight off the sensation.
    Fuck!
His pulse hammered. He’d been after her since she was sixteen; what had happened this time that was so different? He’d frisked her before. Running his hands through his hair, he tried to think about how she’d killed her little sister, but all he could see was the pain in her stunning eyes when he’d accused her of the crime. How soft and vulnerable she’d looked in that moment.
    Adamson’s little sister’s body had never been recovered, but Adamson had run from the scene, gone into hiding for two weeks before they found her. Of course, they couldn’t make any of the charges stick, but he’d been trained to see guilt. And that was the whole crux of it. Adamson was guilty. He knew it, she knew it; the only problem was he just couldn’t prove it.
    Making a decision, he stood up. “Martins, let’s go. She’s not going to slip past us this time.”
    No matter how good of a kisser she was.

~3~
    B efore I went any further with the search, I did what had become more than a habit for me—something closer to a ritual. I had two stops to make. The first one was the local toy store, “Hannigans Shenanigans,” where I purchased a large stuffed elephant. It was my required gift for the second location I was headed to.
    The house I parked in front of could barely be called a house. A shanty or a shack was a better description; it had just enough insulation to make it through the coldest part of our winters here in the badlands. The whole thing was on a slant, tilted crazily to the left, seemingly propped up by the pile of junk reaching the eaves on that side of the house. The floorboards groaned under my weight and the