Paw Enforcement 02 - Paw and Order by Diane Kelly Page A

“Turn around,” I told the guy. “Put your hands behind your back.”
    â€œNow wait just a minute.” Clint stepped up close, though his towering over me didn’t so much intimidate me as excite me. “This collar is mine.”
    â€œ My partner took him down.”
    â€œAnd my horse took a hit to the ass.”
    Our gazes locked in a challenge, his eyes searing into me like lasers. Though I fought to control them, my breaths came hard and fast. But when Clint ran his tongue over his lips in overt seduction, a laugh escaped me and I acquiesced.
    â€œAll right.” I stepped back to allow Clint to cuff the guy. “If you need this collar that bad you can have him.”
    The deputy pulled out his cuffs and slipped them onto the guy’s wrists. Click-click.
    Before hauling the guy off, he gave me a sly smile. “Nice doing business with ya’.” A wink followed. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that ride.”
    Heck, I hadn’t forgotten about it, either.
    As Clint headed off with his horse on one side, his prisoner on the other, the crowd dispersed. A dispatcher’s voice came over my shoulder-mounted radio. “Officer needed at the arena ladies’ room.”
    The male cops on site quickly deferred to me, their voices coming through loud and clear over the radio.
    â€œSounds like a job for you, Luz,” one said.
    â€œGirl problems,” said another. “I’m out.”
    Derek was even more direct. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m going in a ladies’ room.”
    I rolled my eyes and pushed the mic button. “I’m on it.”
    Minutes later, Brigit and I found a blond, fiftyish woman dressed in upscale western attire standing outside the ladies’ room. Her skin bore a light flush, as if she’d had a glass or two of wine. Tipsy, but not drunk.
    Brigit snuffled around for a moment on the floor around the woman’s feet, then raised her head high, her nose wriggling. She looked off down the hall.
    â€œSomebody stole my purse!” the woman cried. “It was hanging on the hook in the stall and then a hand reached over and”—she threw her hands into the air in a magical poof gesture—“it was gone!”
    â€œDid you see the person who took it?”
    â€œOnly her hand.”
    â€œWas there anything identifiable about her hand or arm that you noticed? A ring maybe? A tattoo or scar? The color of her sleeve?”
    The woman squinted in concentration. “I think her sleeve was dark. Leather, maybe? And it seemed like maybe her nails were painted pink. But it happened so fast it’s hard to say for sure.”
    I nodded to let her know I understood. “When you exited the stall, was there anyone else in the bathroom?”
    â€œTwo girls,” she said. “I told them my purse had been stolen and asked if they’d seen the person who’d come out of the stall next to me. Both said no. They’d been washing their hands and hadn’t gotten a good look. I’d called out when I saw the thief take my purse but I guess the girls couldn’t hear me hollering over the sound of the running water.”
    â€œAny chance one of them could have taken it? Maybe hidden it inside their coat?”
    The woman shook her head again. “They were both in jeans and those fitted knit jackets the young ones wear these days. There wouldn’t have been anywhere for them to hide my purse.”
    â€œThese girls,” I said. “How old were they? Teens? Younger?”
    â€œNo, not that young,” the woman said. “I’d say they were in their mid to late twenties.”
    I supposed that would make them “girls” to a woman her age, though I was in my mid-twenties, too, and considered myself a full-fledged woman. Hear me roar. “What did you do then?”
    â€œI tried to run after the thief. Took me a second or two to get around the