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with
switch
on my own?”
    “No … I—”
    “Never mind.” His face twisted as if he’d just tasted arsenic. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s stuttering inanity. It would have been the perfect metaphor, if I could find the cursed word.” He looked around, as if he hoped to find the answer lying on one of the other cluttered surfaces. “If you take the job, you can start tomorrow. I have papers somewhere.”
    She caught her breath and wondered if she’d heard him right. “I do want the job,” she said quickly. “I can be here tomorrow.”
    “Fine. I’ll have a roll of red tape here for you to fill out tomorrow. We don’t want to give the government another reason to harass me. I have enough to do.”
    “All right.”
    He left his book open and went to one of the stacks, began digging through. “Your job at first will consist mostly of typing several of my earlier books into the computer. I composed those on typewriter, but I’m having them reprinted by my current publisher, and I’ll need them entered onto a computer disk.”
    “I can do that.”
    “I want them exact. No comma out of place. No quotation mark left off. Just as I’ve written them.”
    “No problem.”
    “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    She blew out her relief as she left his cottage but knew she would have to get used to the eccentricities if she was going to work for him. She could do it, she told herself. She’d dealt with difficult types among the guards and her cell mates in jail. Even since getting out, she’d had to adjust to the different personalities at Hanover House.
    Besides, it might be interesting. Certainly not your ordinary nine-to-five.
    She couldn’t wait to tell Sadie that she was gainfully employed.

CHAPTER 6
    T he former Laundromat that served as the police station was full to the brim with cadets from the local Girl Scout Troop, who’d come for a Saturday morning tour. Cade had completely forgotten his promise to Joyce, their leader, to get someone to show them the workings of the police station. It looked like Alex Johnson had stepped in for him.
    In addition to the chattering girls, five computer guys from the GBI were setting up the upgraded equipment the mayor’s office had approved for them and running cables to get them online with the Georgia Criminal Justice Information System Network. Myrtle, the dispatcher, sat at her station with her headphones on, trying to hear the radio exchanges over the confusion around her.
    Cade stepped over some of the cables and touched the Girl Scout leader’s shoulder. “Sorry about the mess, Joyce. I forgot you were coming today. You didn’t confirm.”
    “Didn’t think I had to, Cade. I talked to you three weeks ago, and you said it was fine.”
    He nodded to Alex. “Take them back and show them the jail cells, and then you can lead them out and show them the bells and whistles in Crown’s squad car.”
    Alex winked, understanding that Cade needed them out of the building.
    “Tell Chief Cade thank you, ladies,” Joyce said. “He’s a very busy man with a lot of work to do.”
    “Thank you, Chief Cade,” the girls said in chorus.
    Cade forced a smile, but he felt sick at the thought that they would all soon learn of the murder of one of the town’s teens—a girl who could very well have been their babysitter.
    When the girls left the squad room, Cade looked around at the mess. The computer guys from the state police had opened up the cases of several of the computers, and cards and peripherals lay open on the desks. Two guys stretched belly-down across the floor, running cable along the walls. It was the worst possible day for them to do this, but he’d been so vehement in requesting the upgrades that he could hardly run them out now.
    The moment Jonathan Cleary—Cade’s best friend and Blair’s brother-in-law—had been installed as mayor last year, he’d begun raising funds for a bigger, better police station. So far, it was still a dream. But