Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) by Annette Dashofy

than just an offhand comment.
    Zoe knew. But as attracted as she might be to him, it would never work. Between the two of them, they lugged enough baggage into a relationship to sink a small yacht.
    She hugged Rose and Logan. Allison had retreated into her shell and didn’t even look up when Zoe stood in front of her.
    “Allison,” Rose said with an authoritative edge to her voice.
    “It’s okay,” Zoe assured her. Then she knelt and touched the girl’s knee. “Anytime you want to come out to the farm, Merlin would love to snuggle with you. And the horses are always ready for a ride.”
    Allison almost lifted her eyes to meet Zoe’s, but lowered them again. Crap. She thought she was making progress with the girl. But she recalled her own struggle with the grief of losing a dad. Time. Just give Allison time.

Zoe left the station through the same back door as she and the kids had arrived. Temperatures were dropping and gray clouds rolled in, crowding out the blue sky. She pulled her collar tighter around her neck and lowered her head against the wind. As her cold fingers fumbled with the keys, she became aware of a gnawing in her gut. And it wasn’t the soda on her empty stomach. She felt eyes on her. Someone was watching.
    She looked up. The wind bit at her face drawing icy tears. At the front corner of the building, Jerry McBirney stood staring at her, expressionless. The chill that rushed through her had nothing to do with the weather. McBirney’s face morphed into a self-satisfied grin. He winked at her.
    Zoe started shaking. She couldn’t breathe. Her keys slipped from her gloved fingers and fell into the wet slop on the ground. She bent down to retrieve them. Clutching the keys, she lifted her gaze to search for McBirney, but he was gone. For a moment, she wondered if he’d really been there. Or had she only imagined him?

    Pete managed to get maybe an hour of sleep after he’d gone home from the station. Thoughts of Sylvia behind bars mingled with annoyance over Wayne Baronick taking charge of the homicide investigation. Pete wanted this one. Nothing would give him more satisfaction right now than tossing that sanctimonious bastard Jerry McBirney into lockup.
    Giving up on his bed, he slipped into a pair of rumpled jeans he found draped over the chair in the corner of the room. He dug an equally rumpled sweatshirt from the dresser drawer and tugged it over his head.
    In the kitchen, he drained a half cup of nasty looking brew from the coffee maker into a clean mug, rinsed the pot, and started a new batch. In the meantime, he nuked the day-old stuff. As he waited for the microwave timer, he thought of Zoe. 
    She was lying to him.
    He wasn’t sure what she was lying about, but she definitely was. Or at the very least, she was keeping something from him.
    The microwave beeped, and he pulled the cup of murky black sludge from it. He took a sip. And winced. God, that was awful. But the fresh pot wasn’t near ready yet. He carried the cup to the round oak table and sank into a chair.
    Pete had long ago grown used to Marcy lying to him. Like the big one. ‘Til death do us part. What a load of bull.
    But Zoe was different. Or so he’d thought. She was painfully honest. Oh, sure, there were parts of her life she kept to herself. Her past relationships for example. He sensed she didn’t want to talk about them, so he didn’t ask. And it wasn’t as though they were dating, much as he’d contemplated the idea.
    Even so, if he did ask, he knew she’d tell him. The truth was he didn’t want to know. He already thought Matt Doaks was a huge waste of flesh and bone. Beyond the obvious—even Pete had to admit Doaks was a good-looking son-of-a-bitch—there seemed little to attract someone like Zoe to him.
    And he long suspected there had been something between Zoe and Ted before Ted and Rose married. But no one involved seemed stressed over it, so he guessed it hadn’t been much. Ted and Zoe acted more like