Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) by Jo Robertson

parolee before. Her dark shiny hair swirled around her face, tiny threads of gold and copper glinting through the dark curls.
    “It’s always good to start at the beginning,” he offered. “Who’s the parolee you’re looking for?”
    She raised her eyes and met his steadily across the desk, revealing striking gray eyes fringed with thick, short black lashes. Under her scrutiny, he glanced down at the folder in front of him, tapped it to indicate he had something important to attend to.
    Those arresting eyes followed his fingers as if the monotonous tap-tapping hypnotized her. “Cole Hansen. He was just paroled from Pelican Bay. Do you know him?”
    Cruz swiveled to the gray filing cabinet behind his desk and extracted a file. He angled the folder so she couldn’t see the contents and recognized the photo immediately. Cole Hansen, the beaten-down man who’d just registered with him this morning. He closed the file and looked directly at her.
    “I might know him,” he said, “but I’d have to understand what business you have with him.” He shrugged with a small lift of his shoulders. “Confidentiality issues.” He smiled, curious about why a woman like her would want to find a man like Cole Hansen.
    She returned his smile with a wide, bright one of her own as if to acknowledge that he had her there. “I ... knew Cole at the prison,” she began tentatively. “He gave me a message, but, uh, was discharged before I could talk to him.” She leaned urgently across the desk. “I just want to make sure he’s all right.”
    Cruz shook his head. “Why wouldn’t he be? He hasn’t been on parole long enough to get into trouble.” He lifted his eyebrows in question. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
    She frowned again, the tiny line marring the smooth beauty of her skin. “No, probably not. It’s just that ... well, everything happened so fast, and then he was gone.” She examined her blunt fingernails at the end of sturdy well-formed hands. “Do you have an address – or a phone number for him?” A pleading note entered her voice. “Please, I really need to find him.”
    Cruz opened the folder again, knowing the answer already. Cole Hansen was going to be living on the street, which didn’t bode well for any kind of successful rehabilitation. He shook his head. “Sorry. He checked in, but doesn’t have an address yet.”
    He took another careful look at her, knowing the answer before he asked it. “Are you a relative?”
    She sighed in resignation and rose, reaching for a card in her jacket pocket. “No, I’m not. I’m just a – a friend. If you hear from him, will you contact me?”
    She handed over a business card, with a hand-written cell phone number on the back, and turned toward the door. The front of the card bore the state seal, and the information, “Frankie Jones, MD, Pelican Bay State Prison, Crescent City, California.
    Cruz suddenly remembered Hansen’s words about “the doc.”
    What the hell?             
    When he looked up again, however, Dr. Frankie Jones had already gone.

 
     
    Chapter 23
     
    Frankie sat in her car outside the Rosedale Police Station, weighing her options. The parking lot was brightly lighted and in a relatively new part of the city, a safe part of town. Across the street were recently-built condominiums. A quarter mile away, upper-middle-class homes that were constructed about fifteen years ago, looked attractive and pricey.
    Lifting her hands off the steering wheel, she realized she’d been clutching it so hard that indentation marks showed on her palms.
    What should she do? Go in and file a complaint – or drive the long, unwelcome trip back to Crescent City? She’d have to return home sooner or later for her belongings, and now it seemed safer there, even so close to the prison, than in Rosedale.
    If she entered the police station, what kind of complaint could she file? Without evidence the police would laugh her out of the