by BJ Bentley
“Oh my god! What the heck happened?”
I narrowed my eyes at my fellow detective, noting the way he hesitated to answer.
“Got rear-ended. Smacked my face on the steering wheel. No big deal.”
“Well, you should at least put some ice on it.”
Heath sighed. “Pop. Amelia fussed over me all night long, I don’t need your coddling too. I’m okay,” he stressed, looking her in the eye with a very calm-the-fuck-down expression.
She relented but not before muttering something about calling Amelia and making sure.
I felt a weird pang in my chest at her fussing. Heath got a minor black eye and she acted like he suffered a life-threatening injury. I was in her bed, and I couldn’t even garner an honest conversation.
“Poppy and I were just heading to lunch,” I said.
“Yeah, are you hungry? You should come with us.”
I gave Heath a nearly imperceptible head shake when he glanced my way. Thankfully, he understood and declined Poppy’s invitation.
“Nah. Got some paperwork to catch up on, so I’m going to eat at my desk.”
Poppy deflated. “Oh. Okay.”
I took Poppy’s elbow and propelled her to the door.
“Later,” I said to Heath, ignoring his smirk. He hadn’t made detective by being oblivious. I was sure he knew about me and Poppy, and even though he had every reason to hate me for it and demand that I keep my hands off her, he was amused with our little byplay.
I chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth and escorted my woman to lunch where I was determined to get some answers.
I threw my wadded up napkin down on the formica tabletop and leaned back in the booth, fighting the urge to unbutton my jeans. If there was one thing the Aspen Falls Diner did right, and truth be told, there were several things on the menu I wouldn’t mind having a lifetime supply of, it was their mac and cheese. They made it to order in pretty damn near any combination you could imagine. I got the bacon and onion bowl while Poppy, after ten minutes of deliberation, ended up finally fucking ordering the turkey sausage and scallions bowl. We each got a side salad and a buttered roll, and neither of us had any regrets except for maybe the fact that our pants were now sitting just a little too tight.
“Did your check-in with the captain go okay?” I asked, now that we had full bellies and a modicum of privacy in our dark green patent leather clad booth in the corner.
“It was fine.”
I gritted my teeth. I was no fool. When a woman said something was fine, it most definitely was not. “That bad, huh?”
With a furrowed brow, she actually looked at me for the first time in ten minutes.
“You said it was fine. So, clearly, it was not.”
One corner of her mouth hitched. “No, really. It was okay. He asked me if I needed anything, and I told him I was good.”
That couldn’t have been all there was to it. “And?”
“And?” she echoed before rolling her lips between her teeth. “Maybe he might have asked me how we were getting along, and maybe I might have gotten a little flustered thinking about all the ways we shouldn’t be getting along.”
“And you feel guilty because by-the-book Poppy Leighton has turned into a little rebel,” I surmised.
“No! Yes. Maybe.” She heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. I guess, a little.”
“Is that why you’ve been so distant with me these past couple of days? Regretting all the ways we…got along…over the weekend?”
Her eyes grew in her pink-tinged face. “I haven’t been distant,” she denied.
“Poppy—“ I was cut off by my phone ringing. “We’re not done,” I growled before answering. “Brody.”
I listened to Micah rattle off something about a body found in an abandoned warehouse on the fringe of town.
My lunch felt like a lead weight in my gut. “Another kid?”
“Not this time,” Micah said. “Adult male. Maybe twenty-five to thirty, but it’s hard to say.”
“You got an ID?”
“Working on it. Guy looks like he took a beating before the perp finished him off, and we haven’t been able to find a wallet yet. I don’t know, Vance, there’s just something off about it. Think you should come take a look.”
I flicked my gaze to Poppy who was watching me with undisguised interest. “We’ll be there in twenty,” I said and ended the call. “We gotta go.”
“Okay. What did they say?”
I tossed some cash on the table and tipped my chin toward the door. “In the car.” I didn’t have any details to share, but that didn’t mean I was about to discuss a dead body in the middle of the lunch rush.
“Vance?” Poppy asked once we were buckled in and pulling out of the parking lot. “You’re acting kind of weird. What is it?”
I fought to relax my jaw before I broke a tooth. “I don’t know. That was Micah. Said they found a body in an old warehouse. No ID yet, and not much else to go on except the victim was apparently beaten before he was killed.”
“Okay,” she prompted.
“Micah sounded tweaked on the phone, and Micah may be a uni, but he’s got excellent instincts, and he’s smart as a whip, so if something about the situation has got him tweaked, it’s for a good goddamn reason.”
“And that has you tweaked.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s got me fucking tweaked.”
We made it to the crime scene in almost half the time I’d told Micah it would take us. My gut was telling me something was very wrong, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to go from bad to worse. I just had no idea how much so.
Poppy and I got out of the car and approached the door that had two officers stationed outside, one flanking each side, just as Micah exited the building.
“Vance!” he called. “We got an ID. You’re never gonna believe—“
Micah’s words were cut off by the sound of gunfire.
“Get down!” I yelled, throwing myself over Poppy, tackling her and slamming us both into the gravel of the busted up parking lot.
“Stay low,” I ordered as we shuffled toward the hood of the car, both of us pulling our weapons and trying to keep our heads down while also scanning the surrounding area for our shooter.
Another round of rapid gunfire rang out amongst the shouting and crackling radios of the officers calling for backup.
“You hurt?” I barked.
“No. You?”
“I might have thrown my back out during that dive, but I’ll live,” I grumbled, going for levity. Poppy’s face was a startling shade of white, and I didn’t like it one fucking bit.
Bullets were once again littering the pavement around us. Ascertaining that the shots were coming from a third story window in the building across the street —another abandoned warehouse, of course— Poppy and I returned fire.
“Where the hell is backup?” I shouted over my shoulder.
“Another ten minutes out!”
“Ten minutes? What the fuck—“
“Vance,” Poppy’s urgent plea and her hand on my arm stopped my ensuing tirade.
“What?” I swung my head to her, making sure she wasn’t injured. “What’s wrong?”
Her face was still pale, but this time for a different reason. “Micah.”
Cries of “Officer down!” went up, piercing the air, the sound more terrifying than any amount of gunfire.
I spun around, shoving Poppy between my back and the front end of the car.
And saw Micah lying in a pool of blood.
18
Poppy
“Fuck. Right. Yeah. I’m on it.”
I’d watched Vance’s face harden as he listened to whomever had called him before biting out his mostly one-word responses and finally ending the call.
“What is it?” I demanded, wanting —no, needing— something, anything to occupy my mind other than the worst case scenarios that plagued me while staring at the pale gray paint on the walls of the
hospital waiting room. Those same walls were starting to close in, and that was just another reason I needed the distraction.
Vance scrubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw, refusing to answer.
“Vance,” I warned. “Is it Micah? Is he out of surgery?”
“No. They’d come out and tell us in person if that were the case.”
“Vance!” I shouted, earning a dirty look from the registration clerk behind the desk, before lowering my voice. I didn’t want to get kicked out before I got a chance to see Micah.
“Poppy,” he said, his tone weary and his voice rough with the oncoming adrenaline crash.
“Whatever it is, I can take it.”
He seemed to wage an internal war before glancing at the clerk and taking me by the elbow. Once we were ensconced in a cubby in the corner as far away from the other waiting room occupants as we could get, he dropped his bomb. “That was Heath.”
My heart stuttered. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He’d gotten the plates on the vehicle that rear-ended him last night, but when they ran them, they didn’t match. They were stolen. But apparently, the CSU team was able to run the paint sample left on his bumper.”
“Okay.”
“They found the car.”
That was fast. “And? Just spit it out,” I hissed.
“Custom paint jobs are a hell of a lot easier to trace, luckily for us. They found the car abandoned on the side of the road on Route 199 heading out of town. The VIN number belongs to one Clay Granger.”
I hated to admit that the implications took longer than they should have to sink in, but when they finally did, I gasped. “Heath was targeted.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed.
“Because of me.”
“Fuck, rookie.” He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me.
Instinct had me leaning into his embrace, but frustration at my helplessness had me pushing him away. I knew I was sending him mixed signals, and I knew he was getting irritated with the arm’s length I’d put between us, but I didn’t think I could tolerate even his gentlest touch when all I wanted to do was rage against the injustice of it all.
For whatever reason, Clay Granger had chosen to target me, and to get to me, he was going through my family and friends. What did he want?
The automatic double doors at the end of the corridor breezed open, and two uniformed officers hustled in, heading straight for us.
“Mulcahy. Rogers,” Vance greeted each of them. “Officer Forrest is still in surgery.”
“No other news?” Rogers asked.
“None, yet.”
The men exchanged a look.
“No news is good news,” Mulcahy muttered.
Rogers tipped his head. “Forrest is a good cop. A good man. Hope he pulls through. Anyway, that’s not why we’re here.”
Vance dropped his hand from my arm, belatedly allowing me to maintain the physical distance I was striving for, and faced the two men. “Talk to me.”
“Well, in the melée at the warehouse, we didn’t get a chance to tell you what we found out. Or, rather, what Officer Forrest found out.”
Mulcahy and Rogers already had my attention, but now I was on high alert. “Just before the shooting happened, Micah was going to tell you something,” I said to Vance.
He spared me a pensive glance before prompting Rogers to continue.
“We got an ID on the body.”
Vance’s body strung tight and the air went wired. “Who?” he clipped.
“Body at the warehouse is Mark Santulli.”
Vance bit his lip, his head tilted back, eyes closed. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Mulcahy confirmed. “Ran his name and pinged back to an open case. Your case. Thought you’d want to know ASAP.”
“Thanks.” His one word effectively dismissed the two officers who both looked like they wanted to be anywhere else but there, though being the men they were, still wanted to be present for their colleague who was presently fighting for his life on the operating table.
At any rate, there was nothing they could do that Vance and I weren’t already doing, that was, sitting around and waiting, and they still had a job to do. I envied them their ability to be useful.
“We need to get to the M.E.’s office.”
My entire body jerked with the suggestion. “Not until we know if Micah’s going to be okay.”
Vance’s hands cradled my face. His voice low, he said, “Baby, it’s quite possible that whoever killed Santulli is the same person who took shots at us today. Who did manage to shoot Micah. If you want to be here when he wakes up, I don’t blame you. I do too. But more than that, I want justice. So, I need to go to the M.E. 's office and see what she knows.”
I swallowed down my protest, not wanting him to leave and knowing that he had to do whatever he had to do. Besides, someone needed to work the case. Right now, that needed to be Vance. “I can sit with the captain,” I said, flicking my gaze to Captain Griffin who sat alone as close to the doors to the OR as he could get.
Vance glanced over to where the captain sat and nodded. “Keep your phone on. I’ll be in touch.”
I closed my eyes and savored the soft kiss he planted on my forehead. It was the one small bit of comfort I allowed myself to indulge in. He walked me to the empty chair at Captain Griffin’s side, and all too soon he was gone. I watched his long legs carry his tall form out down the fluorescent lit hallway to the doors until he was through them and out of sight.
“You hangin’ in there, Leighton?”
“Yes, sir.” I declined the styrofoam cup he offered, hospital coffee no doubt just as bad, if not worse, than precinct coffee.
“You know, he does what he does, and there’s no one better to do it.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Brody.”
“What about him?”
Griffin chuckled. “You haven’t stopped staring at the door since he walked out.”
“What? Yes, I have.” I willed the heat in my face to dissipate, knowing my blush would give me away. The curse of fair skin.
Griffin’s skeptical look would have been humorous under different circumstances.
Settling back in his chair, he let out a long breath and then launched a sneak attack I had no hopes of recovering from.
“You know, your father saved Brody’s life once.”
“What?” I breathed, my mind reeling from hearing the last thing I’d expected.
“Maybe not in the literal life-and-death sense, granted, but saved it, nonetheless. Brody’s brother died young. Tragic accident.”
“Yeah. He told me.”
Apparently, it was my turn to shock Griffin because his brows shot up. “He did? Huh. Well, anyway, after that happened, Brody became a bit too much for his parents to handle. Started gettin’ into trouble. Typical teenage rebel stuff, mostly. Until one day he fell in with a guy named Clifford Bright, known on the street as Big Red.”
Griffin rolled his eyes at the nickname.
“Bright was barely five foot six and a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. But he had a temper that burned as bright as the red of his hair, and he could be mean. So, I guess he fancied himself as the big dog on the street.”
He stretched out his feet, crossing his ankles and settled into his story. A tiny voice in the back of my mind said that maybe I should let Vance tell me his story, but there was a louder voice demanding to know everything there was to know about Vance Brody and demanding to know it now, so I let the captain continue.
“So, Bright, he dabbled in a variety of illegal activities, but his main hustle was carjacking. So, your father, working patrol at the time, witnessed Bright and his crew jacking a brand new Bentley parked on the street outside that pediatrics clinic downtown. You know the one on Stevenson Street?”
I made a noncommittal sound, not wanting to interrupt or let the captain get sidetracked.
“Well, your father sees Bright. Sees his crew. And sees Brody playing lookou
t on the corner.”
I nearly bit my tongue in an effort to keep my questions to myself. Brody had been involved with criminals? He didn’t have much respect for the rule book, but he wasn’t that much of a rebel, was he?
Griffin continued with a chuckle. “Of course, he wasn’t much of a lookout, seeing as how he never spotted your dad until it was too late. Bright and his crew scattered, but there was one soul who couldn’t escape Fred Leighton.” He smiled as though reliving a fond memory.
“Vance?”
“Yeah. Your father brought him in to the station, but instead of booking him and charging him with a crime, he cut him a deal. Brody’d let your father help him clean up his act, and in return, Brody had to promise to forsake a life of crime.” Griffin laughed in earnest. “Even made him sign something. Told him it was legally binding, and if Brody didn’t hold up his end of the deal, your father’d cuff him himself.”
My lips twitched with stifled laughter because that was totally something my dad would have done. “So, my dad helped keep Vance out of jail.”
“More than that. He mentored Brody. Took him right under his wing. Made sure he got into the academy. Made sure he didn’t screw up.” He sighed. “Fred Leighton was a good man and an incredible cop. It’s a damn shame that he was taken from us like he was as young as he was. But I take a bit of comfort in the fact that even though a man like your father was taken from us, at least he left behind a legacy. Three more incredible cops to carry on.” His head swiveled and he looked me in the eye. “Vance is just like him. Your brother, Heath, in his own way, is just like him. You’re gonna be just like him, too, I can see it.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth. “Not sure that’s the case, Cap, but I appreciate you saying so.” I blinked away the moisture threatening to flood my eyes.
Griffin peered at me as if he was trying to solve a puzzle. “Well, in any case, you needn’t worry about Brody finding whoever shot Forrest. I may not always approve of his methods, but he had a good teacher. He’ll do what needs to be done.”
Now, that was something I could believe in. Knowing Vance had the same guiding force in his life that Heath and I did, made me look at him a little bit differently. I still wasn’t sure what we were doing together or what we were to each other, but one thing I could be sure of was Vance Brody was an excellent cop, and with or without my father’s help, I was sure he would have found his way eventually. He had a good heart, and that wasn’t something someone could have given him. It was just who he was. I knew he’d find who shot Micah, and I knew that person would be so very sorry when Vance Brody came calling.