Judging Joshua. Mary Wilson Anne

didn’t look at her as he crossed to the small table by the cot. “I don’t know what I thought,” he said as he reached into the bag and took out a foam carton and a small covered cup.

      “Whatever,” she murmured as he turned and crossed to where she was sitting.

      “Why are you sitting on the floor?” he asked. “Were you dizzy again or sick or something?”

      She had to crane her neck a bit to look up at him. “Just thinking,” she said.

      “The bed’s not too uncomfortable, and I can bring in a chair if you need a place to sit, a place to think.”

      She shrugged, then brushed at the denim on her legs. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

      He shook his head, as if he questioned her sanity. “Well, there’s hot soup and a sandwich over there when you want it.”

      She was silent.

      He frowned at her. “You know, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And personally, I prefer the easy way.”

      “Easy for you,” she said, and got quickly to her feet.

      Her movement caught him off guard and she accidentally bumped into his shoulder, rocking her backward. He caught her just before she would have struck the bars, and held her with both hands, gripping her shoulders. For a moment they were inches from each other and she could see a flare of gold in his hazel eyes. “Steady?” he asked.

      She hadn’t felt steady since she’d first heard the siren and seen the flashing lights. “Sure,” she lied. “I’m steady.”

      He hesitated, then let her go, but didn’t move back to give her any space. “Let’s make this as easy on both of us as we can, okay?”

      “Okay, okay,” she said on a sigh. “Coffee sounds lovely if it’s convenient for you and you don’t have to go out of your way to get it.”

      “I’ll get it,” he said, and for a moment she thought he was going to smile. There was something in his eyes, maybe a shadow of humor at his lips. She wasn’t sure. “Coffee it is.” He crossed to the cell door, then turned back to her. “Cream and sugar?”

      “No, thank you very much.”

      This time he did smile, a quick, quirky expression that took years off his features before it was gone. And he was gone, leaving the cell door standing open. She thought of her crack about making a break for it, and if she’d had any place to go, she might have considered it. But she didn’t have anywhere to go.

      So she checked on the food—a turkey sandwich on some wheat bread and a small cup with a lid. She opened the cup, found some sort of fragrant vegetable soup, then took it back with her to the corner of the cell and dropped down onto the floor. She sat cross-legged and hardly noticed when Joshua returned.

      She didn’t look up, but stared at the soup and listened to him cross to the cot. When he came over to her, she glanced at his boots, at the scuffs and obvious wear. They certainly weren’t your regulation-issue cop shoes, that was for sure. He cleared his throat and said, “Coffee’s on the table.”

      She expected him to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he crouched in front of her. “The easy way is for you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

      She sighed heavily. “I told you what happened. That’s it.”

      He was silent for a long, nerve-racking moment, then said, “I know what you said, now how about the truth?”

      Chapter Four

      This time Riley didn’t bother to control her reaction. She rolled her eyes and sighed with heavy emphasis. “Oh, is this your bad-cop routine? Getting coffee and food was a good-cop routine?” She could see the anger in him now and she didn’t care. “I think I should tell you that it really works better with two people to act it out.”

      “Very funny,” he muttered, but didn’t leave.

      She’d wanted him to stay, just to have someone else here, but now she wanted him gone. “Tell you what, why don’t you go and play some childish game like ding-dong-ditch and leave me alone?”

      He still didn’t leave. “Listen to me, all I’m trying to do is find out the truth.”

      “I told you the truth. And the more I think about it, I think I was set up, that I’m the pawn in some huge stolen car ring and you’ve got the wrong person.” She really expected him to either go or to laugh in her face, because she knew she was doing a huge what-if that was even hard for her to buy. “Oh, just forget it,” she said, looking back down at the soup that was getting cold.

      He still didn’t leave. Instead he said, “Not so fast. Stranger things have happened. Being a cop, you see all sorts of weird things.”

      Her eyes shot back to his. “What?”

      He shrugged. “I’m willing to consider anything.”

      Riley didn’t let herself hope for much in her life, she never had, but in that moment she felt the nudging of what she suspected was hope. “And?” she asked.

      “I think it’s worth looking into.”

      Riley felt a flutter of hope. He believed her? “You think so? They set me up? Here I’ve got the car, and if I get stopped, I’m arrested, and if I’m not stopped, they get their car and no one’s the wiser?”

      “It’s happened before,” he murmured.

      She couldn’t read his expression and she desperately wanted to. No, she wanted affirmation that he was starting to take her seriously. “It all makes some weird sense, you know. Maybe that’s what happened, or maybe it’s just a big misunderstanding. Some weird confusion. Could there be some confusion about the car being stolen, being on the list by mistake?”

      He shook his head. “No, that’s a fact.”

      “But you believe me that I didn’t steal the car?”

      She literally held her breath and the flicker of hope was gone when he shook his head. “No. I told you, I’m willing to consider options. All I know for sure is, the car’s stolen and you were driving it.”

      She sank back against the bars, horrified that it had meant so much to have this man believe even part of what she’d told him. “The facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

      “That’s about it.

      “If a friend of yours was caught like I was, and they told you it was all a mix-up, a mistake or some sort of nefarious plot, would you believe him?”

      “That isn’t the point,” he said with unerring logic. But it was for her. He’d believe a friend anytime. Not a stranger. “People let you see what they want you to see.”

      “Sometimes it has to be the truth.”

      “In this job, it’s usually not.”

      That drew the lines completely. He was the cop, she was the crook. “Your job stinks.”

      He didn’t take offense. “More times than not,” he said as he stood.

      She crooked her neck to look up at him, her soup all but forgotten. “Then why do you do it?”

      He flexed his shoulders, as if to ease his muscles, and didn’t answer her for a moment. At first she thought he was just going to ignore her, then she realized he was thinking. “Good question,” was all he said. He looked down at the cup of soup in her hands. “Anything else you need?”