Sweeter Than Sin by Shiloh Walker Page A

sporting-goods store—she even knew the brand, although she didn’t know if this was this year’s model or last year’s. It wasn’t anything special or unique, and that would make finding the buyer a problem, unless of course they were lucky enough to find prints.
    And that wasn’t going to happen.
    She already knew it. Jensen was a small-town cop, but she was still a cop and she already knew what she was dealing with—a killer who had thought this through all too well.
    There was no sign of a struggle.
    Harlan had been sitting down when he was attacked. Knew him, didn’t you?
    There was a bottle of scotch on his desk—Crown Royal—and she suspected that was what was in the glass, too. She’d get a sample of the whiskey, from both the bottle and the glass. It was possible the whiskey had been doctored. Either that or Harlan had been really plastered, because it didn’t look like he’d so much as put up a fight.
    One would think you’d struggle a bit when you saw somebody with a big-ass knife pointed at your chest.
    And the knife went through both his chest and the note.
    “Think he was drugged?”
    She looked over her shoulder at the newly minted Detective Thorpe. To say he had been rushed into his position as detective would be a bit unfair, but they definitely hadn’t taken their time. A few weeks ago, he’d been a uniform, brushing up and hoping he’d hit detective.
    And now she was training him.
    To be fair, she’d been working with him for a while, but it had been more on an as-time-allows basis because, they were short staffed even in the best of times and they couldn’t take one of the uniforms off the streets so he could play at being a detective, as a former asshole—now dead—had liked to complain. Of course, Sims had a reason to worry about real cops. He hadn’t liked her and she knew a lot of that was because she was a good cop. He’d written her off because she was female, sexist son of a bitch.
    Thorpe would have been harder for Sims to handle.
    Rubbing the back of her neck, Jenson studied their dead man.
    “Well, what do you think?”
    Benjamin took the question seriously. He was wearing a suit, bless his heart. She barely managed to get out of bed and stumble into a nice pair of pants and a not-too-wrinkled shirt and jacket—granted, Dean had been busy fucking her brains out half the night, so she could write it off to that, but she never bothered to put herself together as well as Thorpe did.
    She wondered how long it would last.
    His blue eyes squinted as he continued to study Troyer, and then Thorpe looked at her.
    “No signs of struggle. No bruising.” He pointed to the floor where there was just a minimal amount of blood. “He died here and I imagine we’ll find out the knife went straight in, killed him almost instantly. If he had been awake and aware of what was going on, wouldn’t he have struggled some?”
    She smiled at Thorpe. “Not bad.” Nodding at the liquor on the table, she said, “We’re already having that analyzed. We’ll get his bloodwork, too, see what happens there. But whoever did this knew him. Of course, this is Madison. Harlan knew plenty of people. But Harlan knew this man, was friendly with him. I say our killer came in here planning to kill him. Especially considering that note.” She grimaced and added, “We’ll have to reach out to the state for help and we need to check the paper, but I bet the note came from here.”
    She looked over and took a second to study the paper. Heavyweight and a soft, pale cream. Not something you’d find up at the Walmart. She pulled open a drawer on the desk, then another and another, and wasn’t surprised when she found a supply of paper that was identical to the paper used for the note.
    Jensen took a moment and read it again.
    It sent a shiver down her spine, and she was small enough to admit, some part of her was almost viciously happy with what she read. She wouldn’t admit it, though. Well, maybe to