No emergency rattled Dominic. He never raised his voice. Nothing knocked him off his stride. Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, he’d retired from the Miami Police Department with more than a thousand homicide cases under his belt. He’d been there and done that, so nothing surprised him.

That was why watching his furry eyebrows creep up on his forehead was so satisfying.

Dominic plucked the top photograph from the stack on his desk. In it, Spenser “Spense” Bailey jogged down the street. The next shot showed Spense bending over. The next one caught him in a classic baseball-pitch pose, right leg raised, leaning back, a tennis ball in his fingers. Which would be fine and dandy, except that according to his doctor, Spense suffered from a herniated disk in his spine. He was restocking a warehouse when a walk-behind forklift got away from him, and the accident caused him constant, excruciating pain. He could frequently be seen limping around the neighborhood with a cane or a walker. He needed help to get into a car, and he couldn’t drive because the injured disk pinched the nerve in his right leg.

Dominic glanced at Audrey. “These are great. We’ve been following this guy for weeks, and nothing. How did you get these?”

“A very short tennis skirt. He hobbles past a tennis court every Tuesday and Thursday on the way to his physical-therapy sessions.” The hardest part was hitting the ball so it would fly over the tall fence. A loud gasp and a run with an extra bounce in her step, and she had him. “Keep looking. It gets better.”

Dominic flipped through the stack. The next photo showed Spense with a goofy grin on his face carrying two cups of coffee, maneuvering between tables at Starbucks with the grace of a deer.

“You bought him coffee?” Dominic’s eyebrows crawled a little higher.