Price gave the girl a genuine smile.
“I’ll go do that then. Thanks.”
Price followed the hallway through two turns and stepped into the surgery suit’s lobby with a growing fire in him. He was angry that Josiah had gone from being fine that morning to needing emergency surgery that afternoon. It also pricked at Price’s guilt. Had he caught the masked man earlier, would this have happened?
It was a what if that he was trying to push aside to focus on getting as much information from the Good Samaritan as possible. They needed to catch who did this to Josiah now.
Not later.
Unlike the emergency room lobby, this one was small and closed in with only one door for guests, one door for staff that led in the opposite direction and one door to the bathroom. The two rows of uncomfortable-looking chairs were empty but that last door opened right as Price stepped inside.
He had already teed up several questions for the Good Samaritan, ready to be fast and to the point. However, he stopped short when the person in question caught his eye.
“JJ?”
JJ Shaw was still wearing her summer dress but, this time, it was stained crimson. Still, she managed another smile that took in Price’s attention and whirled it around all at once.
* * *
Fly under the radar, my butt.
“Deputy Collins,” JJ said in greeting.
She didn’t know what else to say past that. The moment she found Josiah she had known she would be talking to McCoy County law enforcement and, yet, she hadn’t thought it would be him.
Wasn’t he off duty?
“Twice in one day,” he said. “We should get a bingo card going.”
Three times, she thought, but who was counting?
Price’s gaze dropped to her body. JJ resisted the urge to cover up. He hadn’t been the only person to stare at the blood on her dress since she’d arrived. If the cotton was on the other foot, she would have done the same.
“It’s not mine,” she assured him. JJ waved her hand over the parts of her dress most stained. “A few of the emergency staff tried to wrangle me into a room but, like I told them, this belongs to that poor man.” She paused. “I’m assuming that’s why you’re here? I’m the one who found the man in the field.”
Price’s gaze was still on her dress. He nodded absently then held up a finger.
“Hey, I need to ask you some questions, but could you give me one second?”
JJ blinked.
“Um, of course. Yeah.”
He spun on his heel and was out of the room in a flash. If he wasn’t such an easy man to read, she would have been worried that he’d put two and two together. That standing there in her flats, she was the same height and relative size as the person he had fought with that morning. That common sense would make her the top suspect in what had happened to Josiah.
But JJ wasn’t getting the impression that Deputy Collins was ready to bust her.
Still, she decided to keep standing just in case. If he did come back in, cuffs out and accusations flying, she wasn’t just going to stay put.
The houses left on her list could be searched without a backstory or a pleasant smile and a part-time job at a café. Sure, if her cover was blown then it would make things harder. Not impossible, just more complicated.
JJ didn’t need to be JJ Shaw to find her brother.
She was plenty enough, name or no name.
The thought stayed her nerves. She loosened the new tension in her shoulders but made sure not to seem too relaxed. She marveled at the fact that, once again, she had gone from a plan of staying under the radar in Seven Roads to meeting the law three times in one day.
Thesameman too.
