by Alicia Scott
He suddenly slammed his fist into the table. The motion startled them both and did little to alleviate his rage. The anger had sneaked up on him and dug its claws in deep. He didn’t know where it had come from. He hadn’t expected it to hit him so hard. But now his hands were trembling and his chest was too tight and he could feel the veins bulging along his neck.
Sandra was staring at him white-faced. As if she’d never seen him before. And that made him feel worse than angry. That made him ashamed.
She said hoarsely, “I trust you, Mike.”
He shook his head tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck now and wishing he could make this whole scene go away. “You’re just saying words, Sandy. Take it from a Cajun, words don’t mean a thing. Every night when I came home, you drilled me like a Marine Corps sergeant. How was my day? Any arrests? How’d they go down? How was the case shaping up for court? Did I feel prepared? What about Koontz? What about my lieutenant? What about my arrest record for the week? Hell, half the time I simply wanted to sit down with a cold beer and my wife. I didn’t want to think about my day. No suspects or crime scenes or kids killing kids. I wanted to just be. In my home. With my wife. A little reward for a job on the front lines. You couldn’t allow me that much, though, could you, Sandy?” He looked at her with genuine hurt. “Why was it so hard to trust me when I said things were fine?”
“Because ‘fine’ was all you ever said, Mike! Then Rusty would call, or your father or your brother and you’d talk for hours. I never doubted you as a cop. My God, I loved you for being a cop. I was proud of you. I just wanted… I just wanted to be the person you talked with for hours. I wanted to be your best friend, Mike, not simply the woman you took to bed.”
“You were my wife. How could you doubt your importance in my life?”
“Because I did. Because that’s what wives do. We worry, Mike. We doubt. We get married and the first time we discover we’re still lonely, we get scared. Then I’d try to reach out to you. I’d seek reassurance. And you would simply say, ‘Fine.”’
“But I—ah, hell.” Mike pounded the table again, then twirled his glass of cola. He didn’t know what to say anymore. Half the time he looked at this woman, all he could think was good things. Then he’d look at their marriage and, God, what a mess. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how to fix it.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like an outsider, Sandy,” he attempted at last, his troubled gaze locked on his glass. “You’ll discover it for yourself soon enough. After the really long days on this job, you come home empty. And you can’t talk about it. You can’t angst about it—hell, you can’t even dream about it. You gotta just sit and recharge, let the good wash away the bad. That was all it was ever about.”
“But Mike, if that was the case, why could you talk for so long to Koontz?”
“Because he’s not part of my home, Sandy. He’s not sanctuary. He’s the freaking job. Don’t you get it yet? All Koontz and I do talk about is police work.”
“Oh.” Sandra nodded shortly but still appeared subdued. Their collegial dinner had deteriorated, and he could tell she was as self-conscious as he was about the turn things had taken.
“Well, in the spirit of sharing,” she offered haltingly, “I wasn’t asking about your day because I didn’t trust you. I’ve always thought you were a good cop. And I didn’t become police chief to tell you what to do. Well, okay, so that was one appeal…” She shrugged, smiling wryly.
“You have to admit, bossing around your ex…”
“Yeah, yeah. Revenge of the matrimonial impaired. I get it.”
She sobered up again and said slowly, “This job…this job means a lot to me, Mike. I was raised to believe in giving your best and I was raised to believe in community. Except my family gives their best to their own company and donates money to the community. I wanted to do something more direct. I wanted…I wanted to be something more that Howard Aikens’s daughter, spoiled little rich girl taking over her daddy’s company. This position is the first job I’ve ever had that’s been all mine and I like that. I want to be my own person now. To not just be successful, but to feel successful.”
“You’ve always been a bit different from your parents, Sandra. It’s not too hard to understand you wanting to go your own way.”
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “I’m thirty-four years old. Seems a little late for rebellion.”
“Ah, being chief of police isn’t rebellion, ma chère. Marrying me, now that was rebellion.”
She granted him a smile. “Not to add insult to injury, Mike, but all that episode earned me was a lot of ‘I told you so’s.”’
“And still you went out on your own. That takes guts.”
She laughed. “Yeah, yeah. I suppose so.”
“Mike?” she said quietly. “One more thing. On the subject of the east side. I didn’t bring up going into the east side with you because I doubted you. I want to go for me. So I can meet these kids and learn about their lives. Koontz is right. I’m a west-side girl from a west-side world. To succeed at this job, I have to fix that. I need to honestly learn how the other half lives.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Mike said immediately. “Vee could open fire again at any time.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m going in with a very experienced detective.”
“I can’t focus on interviewing a crowd of gang members and look after you.”
“Who says we’ll be targets? We both wear street clothes, and we don’t drive a patrol car. We can look like a young couple asking for directions.”
“A young, white affluent couple in the east side.”
“Mike, please. You need a second person. I need the experience.”
“Maybe Koontz won’t bail,” he said stubbornly, though he didn’t really believe that would be the case. “This whole conversation could be moot.”
“If Koontz will go with you, I’ll back off,” Sandra promised. “But if he doesn’t…”
Mike looked at his ex-wife’s pleading blue eyes. He exhaled sharply. “If Koontz doesn’t come,” he granted at last. “But then you gotta listen to what I say, Sandra. You go in as a rookie, following my lead, obeying my orders, and getting the hell out of sight at the first sign of trouble.”
“I can do that.”
He gave her a look.
“Well,” she amended, “I can try to do that.”
“That’s more like it.” He had to smile, though. Then he wondered what she’d do if he leaned over right now and kissed her. He said, “Come on, ma chère, I’ll walk you to your car.”
Outside, the night air was cool and crisp. Stars studded the sky and a pale waxy moon rose up to the west. They’d been in the restaurant for over an hour and now it was late. Traffic had slowed down. Few cars populated the parking lot. The area had grown quiet.
“Still no news,” Sandra murmured, and Mike knew she was thinking about Vee.
“Maybe he’s studying books for a change, instead of loading up his gun.”
“Maybe.” She sounded unconvinced. He escorted her over to her Lexus and held open the door. She didn’t get in right away, though.
“It’s hard to believe sometimes,” she said, looking out over the peaceful area, “that just fifteen miles from here there exists a virtual war zone. Some young girl is preparing right now to go work some corner of the street. Some mother is probably fighting cockroaches to get dinner on the table for her family. Some boys like Vee are gathering on someone’s porch, contemplating who to fight, what to do. Here we are. There they are. Is it any wonder there are so many rifts in this community?”
“White liberal guilt,” Mike said quietly.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Maybe, but you can’t drive yourself crazy over it.”
“Somebody ought to.”
“Sandra Aikens,” he murmured. “You never give up. But then, that’s what I always liked about you.”
He l
owered his head. At the last minute, he saw her eyes widen in surprise, but she didn’t pull away. Shock or acquiescence? He didn’t know and didn’t care. He took command of her lips and drew out the kiss leisurely.
This was the taste of Sandy Aikens’s mouth. This full bottom lip here, this tender corner there. This ridge of sharp white teeth, this sweet duel with her tongue. Her body shifted, turned into him wordlessly and he deepened the embrace.
She fit nicely against him. Her rib cage felt small and fragile beneath his hands, but her heart pounded powerfully. Her legs nestled against his passively, but her hands dug into his shoulders. He could feel her growing tension and desire. The shifting in her hips against his groin, the swelling of her breasts against his chest. The way her head now angled back on its own and she opened her mouth wider for him, gave herself over to his kiss.
He plunged his hands into her thick hair, anchoring her head in place, and though he’d told himself this was going to be a controlled experiment, he devoured her lips wildly. He suckled on her lower lip, tormented her mouth with his tongue. He grazed his teeth along the delicate line of her throat and pursed his lips around her earlobe.
She rewarded him with a low mewling sound that sent his blood soaring.
He straightened. He set her back from him a bit so she wouldn’t know exactly how strongly she’d affected him. And then he dropped one last kiss on the tip of her nose.
“What…what was that all about?” she asked breathlessly.
“Collegial kiss. One co-worker to another. Good night, Chief Aikens. And sweet dreams.”
He sauntered away. And he knew how well his experiment had worked by the low oath that escaped his ex-wife’s lips and by the ferocity with which she slammed her car door. A moment later, her Lexus whipped by him in the parking lot and headed out onto the street without looking back.
Mike remained standing by his pickup truck for several moments more. He needed the cold night wind to rein in his throbbing body. He needed a quiet moment to organize his thoughts.
She had responded to the kiss immediately. Even after last night’s “we must be friends” speech, she had never held back. Surely that had to mean something. And he could have sworn that, for one instant, when she’d seen him standing in the doorway of her office tonight, she’d been happy to see him. At yesterday’s shooting, she’d also been grateful to have him there.
Sometimes, he knew for certain that his ex-wife was a lonely woman. Smart, controlled, capable, but also isolated on the inside. Not the type to be overly outgoing, slow to make friends. The opposite of himself in many ways.
Except they were both loyal to a fault. To their families, to their friends. And in Mike’s case even to his defunct wedding vows. He’d never tell Sandy, but he’d had very few dates since the divorce. He joked about it, he laughed about it, but he never actually did it. Date another woman. It just never seemed right.
He’d once had Sandra Aikens as his wife. And as he’d come to learn years ago, as he grew certain of tonight, her taste still fresh upon his lips, after having had Sandra Aikens, no other woman would do.
Chapter 7
“So what do you think happened to Vee last night?” Mike asked his partner the next morning. “Think he had a change of heart?”
“Dunno. Maybe he and his gangbanger pals decided to pick on someone their own size.” Koontz turned a corner, read the address out loud and grunted. “Damn, where can this office be?”
“Three blocks back,” Mike said dryly.
Koontz made a face. Since picking Mike up at eight that morning to interview a plastic surgeon, he’d grumbled about the traffic, grumbled about the roads and grumbled about the frost still daring to coat the streets. Then he’d lit up a cigarette, even though he and Mike had a deal about him smoking in the car. Something was on the man’s mind. Mike figured if he was patient, sooner or later Koontz might even tell him.
“Think it was Sandra’s letter in this morning’s news paper?” Mike dared to ponder as Koontz stubbed out his cigarette in the car’s ashtray, then drove around the block.
“Yeah, right. If writing letters was all it took to stop crime, Ann Landers would be a Supreme Court justice. My guess is the closest Vee comes to answering our fearless leader is burning the paper in the trash.”
“I liked the letter,” Mike said mildly. “Didn’t preach, didn’t whine. Just talked to Vee matter-of-factly. Seems a good approach for a thirteen-year-old boy.”
“No offense, but Sandra Aikens could knit a handgun right now and you’d be so smitten you’d carry it around in place of your side arm.”
“Hey, I like my Beretta.”
“Yeah?” Koontz slid over a deceptively sleepy look.
“Did you take it out for Chinese food last night?”
“Actually, I did.”
Koontz exhaled sharply, his fingers thrumming the steering wheel. “Dangerous game, man. It’s a small department and you know the walls got ears. One dinner and the whole place is already buzzing. Where can this lead, Rawlins? Let’s say you do get back together. On the one hand, the whole freakin’ thing falls apart, except now you gotta work with her. Or on the other hand, the whole freakin’ thing works out, except now your fellow officers are gunning for your hide. ‘Rawlins is sleeping with the boss. Rawlins gets the good cases ’cause he’s literally greasing the wheels.’ Either way, you’re burned.”
“I’m a Cajun. I don’t mind heat.”
“Dammit,” Koontz said. “Where is this stupid office!”
“One block behind now. You were so busy lecturing me, you drove right by.”
Koontz scowled, pounded the brakes and brought the old sedan to a screeching halt. The narrow avenue was technically one-way. After eight years, however, Mike knew better than to point that out as his partner shifted into reverse. He simply hung on as Koontz slammed the gas pedal to the floor. They rocketed backward at approximately forty miles per hour. Another car, coming up an intersecting street on the left, saw them and had the audacity to honk its horn. Koontz gave the driver the bird.
Then he neatly swung the car into an empty curbside parking space. “Ha,” he said. “Now that’s driving.”
Mike raised a brow but climbed out of the car without saying anything. It was going to be a long day with Koontz.
Inside, the news didn’t get any better. Yesterday, they’d called Medicade and gotten a list of plastic surgeons authorized to perform reconstructive surgery. The list was small, and the number of permissible operations limited. Medicade would only kick in for “necessary reconstruction,” meaning the disfigurement had to interfere with the patient’s health, not be merely cosmetic. Mike and Rusty weren’t sure if a gunshot wound to the face was considered cosmetic or not.
They started their search with Dr. Morgan. He also donated time at a free clinic downtown, making him the most likely candidate to have met Vee’s sister.
Dr. Morgan was waiting for them in his office, reviewing notes for an upcoming surgery and clearly in a hurry.
“What’s the time frame again?” he asked, slapping two X-ray slides onto a lighted board and frowning at the glowing shapes. Cheekbones, Mike realized. The man was studying someone’s cheekbones.
“We don’t have a time frame,” Mike said.
“Female, you said?” Dr. Morgan prompted, cracking his X-ray slides as he yanked them down and threw up a fresh set.
“Yes.”
“Age?”
“We don’t know.”
“Extent of damage?”
“We’re not sure. The letter describes the wound as leaving her with a scar in one cheek, so maybe the bullet didn’t pass all the way through.”
Dr. Morgan snapped off his light-board and faced Mike long enough to give him a skeptical glance. “I thought on the phone you said she was the victim of a drive-by.”
“That’s what we think.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Officer, but not many drive-by shootings are done with small-caliber weap
ons. And a large-caliber gun is going to do significantly more damage than scar one cheek. The least you could hope for was it passing through her open mouth, making a clean line cheek to cheek. But frankly, that would make it a case for the record books. Far more likely, the bullet ricocheted off her teeth, maybe her jawbone, shattering bones and teeth and shredding the tongue before lodging someplace in the soft palate or throat. I’ve seen bullets lodged behind someone’s septum. I’ve seen bullets nestled right up against the aorta. Either way, you’re talking extensive reconstruction work.”
“This would be covered by Medicade?”
“Certainly. A damaged tongue can swell and block airways—it would need to be repaired or possibly even replaced. Likewise, a shattered jaw would have to be fixed for the patient to be able to eat again, and that might require a bone graft. Finally, a damaged palate or soft tissue of the gums might also need to be rebuilt before it could hold bridgework. Depending on the extent of the injuries, we could be talking many follow-up surgeries, not just one.”
Mike frowned. “But you haven’t handled a case like that?”
“I’ve handled four cases like that. All males, however, and you’re looking for a female.”
Koontz was perplexed enough to turn away from a poster of model noses decorating the wall. “We’re talking the east side, a family without much money. Who else could they go to?”
“No one else. And not just because I’m the best plastic surgeon in the city, gentlemen, but because my price is right. A case like that, I would’ve done for free.”
“But she was wounded,” Mike murmured. “We got the letter.”
“Unless the letter is a hoax,” Koontz grunted.
“The shots fired on Johnson and Fletcher didn’t feel like a hoax to me—”
“Gentlemen, the letter. May I?” Dr. Morgan held out his hand. Belatedly Mike dug out a folded copy of the letter from his breast pocket and handed it over. The doctor needed only a minute.