Yours for the Night by Samantha Hunter

lesson: she had to get out of the car, figuratively speaking. He hadn’t sat back, waiting for a shot, he’d walked up to the window and taken one.
    That was how she had to start thinking if she wanted to make it in this business.
    Instead of sitting in the parking lot of the Fall Inn, she’d be spending her time and energy on a real case, and she’d get as up-close and personal as she had to to do it.

5
    T IFFANY WAS DRESSED and headed out to her car by lunchtime, her mission clear in her head. She was wired. She planned to meet Mrs. Hooper and give her the pictures before heading to the first store that had been robbed. Mrs. Hooper seemed surprised at the quick turnaround, and offered to pay, but Tiffany declined, apologizing for it taking so long, and feeling her professional points go up. Mrs. Hooper promised to recommend her if she ever knew anyone who needed a private eye.
    That alone made Tiffany’s morning, and she set out to start her investigation of the robberies with new zeal. She shook her head at her own slowness in realizing that she couldn’t just sit around waiting for the world to hand her jobs. Crimes were all over the place; she wanted to solve them. And hopefully, eventually, people would want to pay her for the work.
    While she had been pouring over whatever she could find in regard to the jewel thefts, her mind had wandered back to Garrett, and a few times she had been tempted to call him. She still wasn’t sure if she wanted to thank him or be angry with him, but if he hadn’t interfered, she wouldn’t have had this epiphany.
    So maybe it was best to just leave it at that.
    It wasn’t real, what they’d had. It was a weekend fling that had found extra time by chance, and that was all.
    In addition to her robbery research, combing over newspaper articles and making lists of people she could contact as well as people who could be the common touch points for access at the stores, she’d given in to doing a little research on Garrett Berringer as well. Unable to resist, Tiffany had also looked up Elaine Berringer on the internet, and what she found told her it had been the right decision to walk away.
    Garrett’s late wife was beautiful in a classic, understated manner, with long, straight brown hair that she’d often clipped back in the pictures Tiffany found. She was slim, serious-looking, though the smiles they both wore in a wedding photo that was posted on Ed’s Facebook page told Tiffany all she needed to know. Garrett had loved his wife, and when you loved once like that, did it ever happen again?
    She was just a fling.
    Ouch.
    And Elaine—Lainey—had been more than beautiful. Accomplished, graduating at the top of her class, having published regularly in legal journals and working as a consultant to several high-profile companies, her intellectual credits were impressive. She had been a budding prosecutor on her first big case when she had been killed, tragically, by the brother of a man she had just helped convict.
    Tiffany couldn’t imagine the pain Garrett must have suffered. She didn’t want to.
    But there wasn’t even a comparison between Garrett’s late wife and herself. Garrett had obviously only been interested in her for one reason. Even though her interest had been the same in him, it still hurt a little. It became clear that there was no way she could ever compete with the memory of Lainey Berringer. Not that she had ever intended to, but it did inspire her to investigate this case even more than before. Tiffany was tired of never measuring up, and she wanted to change that, starting now. Lainey had been accomplished in her career; Tiffany didn’t even have one—yet. If she wanted this to work, it was up to her. Starting now.
    With a renewed sense of purpose, she mentally reviewed her research again, thinking about the auction sites she’d discovered, looking for anything that seemed suspicious. That offered her first clue: she had to know what was stolen at the