Chapter 2

"I hate my own mother fucking generation," I grunt, swinging my legs onto my desk and blowing on the cup of coffee in my hands. "They'll weasel out of and into anything under the guise of being a fucking entrepreneur, won't they?"

My partner, Chase Barnett, grunts over his own cup of coffee across from me and ignores me as he looks between an open manilla folder and his laptop screen. Built like a brick shit house with curly blonde hair, my partner gets more pussy than a cat shelter, and it's how we ended up as partners. The other detectives call us Hot and Hotter, and we got assigned on undercover cases together for our ability to get the drug girlfriends talking and ingrain ourselves as the dealer's drinking buddies. We like to argue over which one of us is Hot and which one of us is Hotter, even asking women on the force. So far, we've heard mixed results.

I was innocently driving to the station for my late afternoon shift when I caught the name of the food truck out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was a regular cupcake truck and thought I'd check it out, only to realize the cupcakes and other baked goods were laced with the devil's lawn. What kind of loser sells drugs out of a truck?

I certainly wasn't expecting her. She seemed like someone I'd swipe right for on Tinder, and I can't help but think that blond hair would look fantastic in my lap as I comb my hands through it.

"Are you going to eat the cupcake?" Chase asks without looking up from his folder. He squints over a mugshot of a meth dealer we've been trying to bust for six months. "If you aren't going to eat it, I'll take it home."

"You will fucking not."

"Why not? It's legal now. It's like having a beer after work."

"Like hell," I grumble. I pick up the cupcake, hold it in my palm, and point to it with my other hand like the cupcake is a prize on Wheel of Fortune. "If you eat this cupcake, it'll send you down a dark and dirty road. Tonight, you'll lick this frosting off, thinking it tastes good and it's just a quick bit of fun. Next week, you'll be licking some guy named Dale's frenulum for a hit of meth. You know this stuff is the gateway to hell."

Chase rolls his eyes and looks back to the folder. "You're not just the drug police. You're the fun police. I think you should eat it and chill the fuck out."

I look at the cupcake and its gorgeous creamy green frosting. As I stare at it, a lone chocolate chip piece falls onto the bottom of the container as if calling to me like a siren song. If there was a perfect cupcake in the world, I imagine it would look like this and be baked by a goddess with long blond hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. "I'm not going to eat it. This is evidence."

Chase laughs. "Evidence of what? Genius ambition?"

It's my turn to laugh. "Since when did you start calling drug sellers genius?"

He finally looks up at me, grinning. "You have to admit some of them are smart as fuck. But is this one really a drug crime lord?"

He's not wrong. Most of the suppliers and upper-level dealers we investigate are candidates for Mensa, and it's usually the guys and gals with the lower IQs that are the ones that get caught and take the fall for the big fish. I've been a drug task force agent for the county for the past five years, and in that same time, I can count on one hand the number of big dealers and suppliers we've caught. Those busts are few and far between compared to the routine traffic stops and random house raids that only yield a couple of low-level sellers tweaked out on their own product.

"Just because she doesn't look like a drug dealer, doesn't mean she isn't. You know that looks can be deceiving."

His smirk gets bigger. "I didn't say anything about how she looks. Exactly what does she look like?" he asks, squinting.

I shrug and sit up in my chair, swinging my feet under my desk and opening my own laptop to get to work for the evening. "Like nothing," I scoff. "Just a girl."

Chase bites his lip. Fuck, he's on to me. "Let me guess. Pink."

"What's pink?"

"The truck." He holds up his hands and makes a waxing motion. "I'm getting a ‘pink curlicues and light green accents on a white background' vibe. She's about thirty with red hair that pops against a pink apron. How'd I do?"

"Blond. About twenty-four or twenty-five. Robin egg blue accents. The apron was white."

"But I nailed the rest?"

"Go fuck yourself."

He giggles and takes a sip of coffee, slurping it loudly since it's still balls hot. "She was pretty, huh?"

"Not even a little." The lie is almost painful as it rolls off my tongue. I understand why they call it a forked tongue now. My tongue nearly splits in half saying that whopper. Fuck, she was pretty. Like…I can't get her out of my mind pretty.

I'll be damned before I publicly admit a drug seller is pretty, though.

"She was pretty," Chase pushes.

"Pretty like your mom coming on my dick last night," I mumble, logging into my system and giving the illusion that I'm working hard and definitely not thinking about the hot woman with the weed truck.

"Going with the mom jokes, huh? She must have been really hot to get you so riled up. If she's the girl version of that pretty cupcake, maybe I'll have to check out that food truck."

I open my mouth to respond that I don't want Chase near that gorgeous drug dealer just as my desk phone lights up. I give Chase the finger and press the answer button. "Lane," I grunt in my best cop voice.

"Liam?"

I pick up the handset so Chase can't hear my conversation. We usually take phone calls so the other can hear it in case it's an informant. But Chase doesn't need to hear my phone call with the woman that gave birth to me.

"What's up, Mom?"

"Honey, can you bring me some Chapstick and ginger ale when you come by tonight? The dry lips are bad this time."

My shoulders slump, and I blow out a deep breath as tears prick my eyes. My mother's fighting her second round of breast cancer and is in the later stages of chemo. "Sure, Mom. Need anything else? I can run by the library if you need more books. I know I don't pick out the good romances. Sorry I'm not there."

"You have to work. You can't be here 24-7."

I cradle the phone between my ear and my shoulder while I type the Lorelei's Blissful Baked Goods information into my computer and immediately click on the About Us icon at the top of the page.

There she is. Lorelei Rogers.

What a beautiful name. Lorelei. I lip-sync it as my eyes scroll over each letter of her name on the screen. When I look up, Chase is squinting at me. "Uh, I'm looking up some stuff for Mom," I shrug, gesturing at the laptop screen. "I'm looking for…ginger ale."

"Try any grocery store, Liam."

"Are you there?" Mom asks through the phone. "Do you need me to let you go so you can catch bad guys?"

"Or girls," I mumble, scrolling back through Lorelei's website. I can't help but notice how professional the website is. It's colorful and tasteful. The road to hell is obviously paved with pink and the money to pay for website development.

"Have you caught a girl? Lordy, I'd love for you to catch a nice one. I was just reading this book about a woman who likes an older man. She doesn't seem like his type, but he does the dirtiest things to her. Smacking her bottom around with a brush like she did something really horrible. He calls it punishment, but I don't think she did anything wrong. I'm very confused."

Mom keeps explaining the book she's reading as I try to block out her daddy-dom book report and flip over to my case system to enter Lorelei's name, crossing my fingers she has a warrant out for her arrest for drug peddling or some other matter. Maybe I can use it to detain her and get her drug-pushing cart of depravity off the streets.

Nothing. She's clean as a whistle.

"Mom, I shouldn't hear this. Besides, there are no girls. You know me. I'm a dedicated bachelor and don't have time for a girlfriend."

"Sure, you do, sweetheart. I know you just go home and watch TV every night and make some popcorn. Unless you come over to see me, you're positively sad."

"Thanks, Mom."

"I'll let you go. Just don't forget the Chapstick. I'm about to rub Crisco on them or something."

"I'll remember, Mom."

"Such a good boy."

I hang up the handset and focus on the website in front of me. She even has a picture on the front page, and it's a nice picture. In my line of work, the pictures of drug dealers are mugshots. Lorelei Rogers blatantly flaunts her ability to sell marijuana out of her truck, and it's packaged as her in a pink dress with a white apron and holding a mix-breed puppy. When the fuck did selling drugs become like something out of a Hallmark movie? When did my job become chasing down a baker?

Fury fills my stomach. It happened with the legalization. Suddenly, marijuana is kittens and fucking glitter. I dedicated years to fighting marijuana use among teens, even teaching the S.T.A.R.T program to fifth graders for the past two years. As soon as it was legalized, every parent in the state had a party and toked up with their other suburban friends. Book clubs hit the bong. Knitting clubs passed the pipe. Every ounce of work done to prevent marijuana use over the last fifty years went up in smoke.

Literally.

Lorelei Rogers flaunts drugs in pretty brownies, and I will destroy her and send a message to anyone wanting to try similar bullshit shenanigans.

I scroll down and grab a block of sticky notes and a pen. Lorelei has a complete list of every concert and event she'll be at for the next month. Bingo. "I'm going to nail her," I say, spitting the pen cap on the desk and jotting down the heavy metal concert and country star tour dates.

"Yeah, you are," Chase says, fist-pumping the air. "Hit that hot drug dealer."

"I meant nail her legally. Not fuck her."

"Fuck the hot drug dealer. Fuck the hot drug dealer." He whisper chants and looks over his shoulder to make sure our coworkers aren't listening. It's not a good look for a drug task force agent to have carnal relations with a criminal.

I stand up and toss the rest of the sticky notes at him. He blocks the throw, and the sticky notes fall into his open coffee cup. "Dick," he says, grabbing a tissue to wipe the splash off his desk.

"That'll teach you." I push in my chair and turn to leave. At the last moment, I turn and swipe the cupcake into my trashcan as Chase sighs and looks longingly after it. "I'll see you later. I have to run errands for Mom."

"Sure, Lane. Errands."

I turn and face him. "What did you hear?"

He shrugs and looks back down. "I didn't hear anything," Chase says, going back to typing up a report for our latest surveillance on the meth dealer. "I sure didn't hear you tell your mom you'd go to the library and find her more daddy dungeon books to read."