by Anne Calhoun
And all the while, he watched her. He had a low, terse conversation with Lieutenant Hawthorn. He conferred with Sorenson. He watched her with a frighteningly alert, focused gaze. She stared back, not bothering to hide her rage. The Lancaster Police Department had been lying to her, which, to be honest, she’d somewhat expected. Ian Hawthorn trusted no one but his tightly knit circle, and she wasn’t in it. But she’d never expected Chad … Matt … to lie to her the way he had. With his body.
With hers.
Raised voices, scuffling outside on her landing, then Detective Sorenson quashed the commotion with a quiet “Let him in.”
Caleb pushed his way through the crowd and into her apartment. He wore jeans and a loose button-down, his unruly black hair tousled from sleep. He shouldered aside a flat-footed uniformed officer, sat beside her on the love seat and pulled her into the circle of his arm. “My God, Eve. Are you okay?”
“I’m pissed as hell,” she snapped. “Someone tried to kill me!”
Caleb’s gaze sharpened, and he scanned the room. Apparently Dorchester’s Eye Candy T-shirt hadn’t registered with her brother. She’d woken him out of a sound sleep, and even with an adrenaline rush spurred by her shaky words, it would take Caleb a few minutes to put all the pieces together. Eve dreaded the explosion coming when Caleb’s excellent brain became fully functional. For the moment, ignorance was bliss.
“Ian, what the actual fuck?” Caleb said to Hawthorn, going for the only familiar face in the room.
“We need to talk,” Ian said, voice even. Eve was once again reminded of how different Ian was from the boy she’d passed in the halls in high school. His expression was wary when it wasn’t entirely closed off.
Caleb looked around at the uniforms and the CSI team. “Somewhere quiet.”
“Use my office,” Eve said, and eased up out of the love seat she would sell at the earliest opportunity. She shoved through the officers and waited while Caleb, Sorenson, Hawthorn, and Detective Matt Dorchester, LPD, filed into the room after her. Caleb stood across from her, his eyes flickering between her and the police officers. Dorchester leaned against the back wall, as far away from her as he could get. No one else sat down, so Eve stayed on her feet too. Sorenson closed the door on the activity in the apartment, and for a minute, everyone looked at everyone else.
She felt Detective Dorchester’s eyes boring into her. He stood with his back to the wall, arms crossed over his chest. The gun, that damn gun, was back in his ankle holster. Knowing it was there made the Eye Candy T-shirt look ridiculous on him. No wonder he had such physical presence. How could she have mistaken him for a bartender?
Because he was an undercover cop.
Oh dear God. She’d offered to help him get a job.
A dark flush of humiliation crawled into her cheeks, blending with the anger simmering in the middle of her chest. She brushed her hair back out of her face and focused.
“Goddammit, someone start talking!” Caleb snapped.
“Lyle Murphy asked me to launder money for him,” Eve said, too angry to care about what the cops wanted kept quiet. “I told him I would, then went to the cops. They asked me to be an informant. Ian is my contact.” She looked at Detective Dorchester as she spoke, the implication clear. And who the fuck are you?
The cops looked at each other, engaging in some kind of unspoken communication. Still unusually silent, Caleb also waited, but Eve could see his shoulders tense as the puzzle pieces clicked together in his head.
Caleb knew Eye Candy well because he acted as Eve’s attorney. Sorenson and Hawthorn were in street clothes.
Detective Dorchester wore the Eye Candy T-shirt reserved for bartenders.
He’d been in her apartment when the shots came through the windows.
At two thirty in the morning.
Caleb leapt to the worst possible conclusion in a split second. His gaze went dull agate green. “You son of a bitch,” he said and surged toward Matt.
“Caleb, for God’s sake,” Eve said resignedly.
Lieutenant Hawthorn interceded, muscles bulging in his arms as he held Caleb in place. “Settle down, Caleb.”
Dorchester didn’t move, didn’t step into the scuffle or back away. Nothing in his expression or stance changed as Caleb shook off Hawthorn but held his ground.
Sorenson, the shortest, slightest person in the room, stepped up. “Settle down, Counselor,” she said, using the same words Hawthorn had, but in a much quieter, much less confrontational tone. Caleb looked at her for a long moment, then favored all three LPD officers with a venomous look, but stepped away, hands on hips.
Dorchester remained unmoving through the entire altercation, but Eve knew it wasn’t from fear. Even across the room, even without looking at him she felt energy seething under his skin, his muscles tensed in restraint. All that tightly leashed sexual energy would mix combustibly with adrenaline from the gunfire. Fear and shock eddied across her back, roiled in her gut, but deep underneath those reactions something inherently female inside her responded to Dorchester’s energy.
What would happen when the fear and shock wore off, and the desire surged to the surface again?
Caleb didn’t miss a beat. “How the fuck long has this been going on?”
“A couple of months,” Eve said.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“He said not to tell anyone,” she said, nodding at Ian.
He swung to face Ian. “You put my sister in danger? Did you not trust her to finish what she started? Or is this some fucked-up idea of police protection? Either way, the lawsuit’s going to be spectacular. Lengthy. Public.”
“Caleb,” she said resignedly. “I’m not suing anyone. That won’t help. The point is to help.”
“They’re helping themselves, Eve. It’s what cops do.” The words, fueled by Caleb’s short, bitter experience with criminal law, were directed at Hawthorn. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ian! What kinds of games are you playing with Eve’s life?”
“No games, Caleb. There’s a hit out on her life.”
“Why didn’t you tell her? Or me?”
Hawthorn lifted one eyebrow, taking in Eye Candy, reminding without words of Eve’s impulsive reputation, Caleb’s temper. “Because I knew her. And you.”
“Motherfucker,” Caleb spat. “No way is all of this effort for a chickenshit East Side drug ring. Hooked yourself a bigger fish?”
Eve looked around. The cops had all gone suspiciously blank.
“Tell them,” Dorchester said quietly.
“We’re not just after Murphy for the East Side,” Ian said. “The FBI and the DEA hope he’ll roll on the people above him. If he does, we’ll take out an entire distribution arm for one of the worst gangs in the country.”
“We have a winner,” Caleb said, and pointed at Hawthorn. Eve saw him run through all the shit he could sling at Ian—son of the former chief of police, brother to a Navy SEAL, looking to make his mark in his little corner of the world—then think better of it. Eve breathed a silent sigh of relief. One of these days Caleb’s mouth would get him into trouble his brains and fists couldn’t get him out of. “You didn’t want to run the risk that she’d screw up your precious operation,” Caleb spit. His finger swung to Dorchester. “He’s using any means possible to keep an eye on your best witness. Any means possible, right?”
“We believe one of Murphy’s men saw Eve walk into the East Precinct. That could mean more pressure on you, or you just flat-out disappearing. She needs protection,” Dorchester said, not rising to Caleb’s bait. “Getting shot at only proves that. Eve wasn’t supposed to know who I am. Ever.”
His voice sounded emotionless, as flat and still as a puddle after a rainstorm, but Eve knew better. She took a deep breath to restrain herself from picking up the stapler on her desk and hurling it at him, doing anything to shatter the invisible suit of armor he wore. “What I need,” Eve said precisely, then paused when a knock came at the door.
“Come in,” Eve and Ian said
at the same time. She narrowed her eyes at Ian, who shrugged and turned to see who was at the door.
A vaguely familiar uniformed officer with shoulders like a steer and an uncompromisingly hard face peered around the doorframe. Eve mentally swapped the uniform for street clothes and came up with one of the customers from the night she saw Sorenson. “I picked up the car a couple of blocks from here, threw down the tire strips but he took off on foot. I chased him as far as the alleys but he disappeared into one of the warehouses by the river. I could have had him, LT. Let me go back and—”
A muscle jumped in Dorchester’s jaw. “No way were you searching those warehouses by yourself, McCormick. You could have been walking into an ambush.”
McCormick’s flat expression somehow managed to convey exactly what he thought of this valid concern. “The K9 Unit is here.”
“Send them through.”
McCormick stepped back and let a gorgeous dog and his nondescript handler into Eve’s office. The evening just took a left turn into the surreal. Eve took a couple of steps closer to Caleb. For a long, ridiculous moment, everyone in the room silently watched the dog sniff in every nook and cranny, going up on his hind legs to nose at Eve’s laptop and phone, then again at the safe, before turning for the door down the spiral stairs to the club. “Nothing yet,” he said, then shut the door behind him.
In sync, Caleb and Eve turned to look at Ian. “Are you seriously searching my club for drugs?”
“Murphy has had access,” Ian said. “If he’s storing the drugs here without your knowledge, you take the fall in more ways than one. It’s better if we know up front that there’s nothing here.”
A muscle popped in Caleb’s jaw. To forestall the imminent explosion, Eve said, “What I need is for everyone to leave. All of you. It’s been a very long night, and I’m exhausted. Take your crime scene techs and your uniforms and your dog and your undercover detectives and get out of my bar.”
Caleb looked at her if she’d lost her mind. “Evie, you can’t stay here,” he said gently. “Someone tried to kill you here. You don’t have any glass in your windows.”
She’d forgotten. In the adrenaline rush and the argument between Caleb and the cops, she’d actually forgotten what triggered all of this. It would take a while to adjust to the new normal.
“I’m taking you to my house,” he said firmly.
Not an option. “Caleb, I’m not endangering anyone else. Not you, not Mom and Dad. They can’t know anything about this.” She tried to remember the extremely small number in her petty cash account. Eye Candy’s success depending on her living rent-free in the apartment, but given the circumstances, dying in her rent-free apartment was a very real possibility. “I can swing a hotel for a few nights,” she started.
“I’ll pay for the room,” Caleb said impatiently, “but you can’t be alone. I’m in court on Monday. Quinn can stay with you for a while—”
“Quinn’s an intellectual property attorney. I’ve got better streetfighting moves than he does. I’m safer on my own.”
“Come home with me,” Dorchester interrupted.
Dead silence greeted this statement. Eve stared at him. She couldn’t go home with him. She didn’t know him.
Except, two weeks ago—an hour ago—she would have quite cheerfully gone home with him. Slept with him, in fact, then be-bopped on her merry way. And he was surely more qualified to protect her from whomever was trying to kill her—Lyle, a rival gang member, some random East Side kid making trouble—than an ex-surfer white-collar defense attorney.
“Is Luke real or did you make him up?” she asked, because right now she trusted nothing Matt Dorchester had ever said to her.
“Real.”
Matt Dorchester spoke no more than Chad Henderson did. “No,” she said flatly. “I’m not putting my family or yours in danger.”
“He’s out of town this weekend. After that we’ll figure it out.”
Initially flabbergasted into silence, Caleb rose to his feet and found his voice. “No way in hell,” he said, biting off each word.
“It’s not your decision to make, Counselor,” Detective Dorchester said, his voice even as he looked at Caleb. “She needs protection and I can give her that. I’m already undercover in the bar and people think we’re a couple.
“It’s possible that my presence triggered this,” he said to Eve. Matter-of-fact. Maybe he was used to people shooting at him. She wasn’t.
“All the more reason for the two of you to never see each other again,” Caleb said triumphantly.
“Your sister’s a target. Leaving her unprotected isn’t an option,” Dorchester replied.
Detective Sorenson spoke. “Ms. Webber, if you’re not comfortable with this, we will make other arrangements.”
Eve was beginning to appreciate Sorenson as the voice of reason. She thought about it for long moments, her eyes locked with her former bartender’s. During the entire discussion he hadn’t moved from his original position at the back of the room. He looked as impenetrable as a steel door, his entire demeanor subtly different. The way he held his shoulders, his stance, the way he not so much retreated as walled off, leaving only a shell.
The considerable physical presence couldn’t mask flashes of emotion flickering deep in those hazel eyes, as if someone she might know was locked away inside. One thing was clear. Anyone willing to go as far as he had for information took his job seriously. And if he wasn’t going to back down from this, then she wasn’t either. She’d come too far to do anything that would jeopardize her role in the operation.
“I’m not committing to anything other than a safe place to stay until I get the glass replaced,” she said, mostly to appease Caleb, then added, “I assume you have a spare room.”
“You can have Luke’s.”
“I’d sell my soul for a bed right now.” She looked at Detective Dorchester. “I can handle it if you can.”
He nodded. “Pack a bag.”
CHAPTER NINE
Caleb turned to Sorenson and looked her over from head to toe. Matt’s partner was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a fitted zip-front running pullover, with her hair back in a messy ponytail and her gun on her hip. She returned Caleb’s stare without a hint of expression. “What about me?” Caleb said. “Is there a two-for-one special on this particular brand of police protection?”
“Caleb, for the love of—” Eve said, then grabbed Caleb’s arm and hustled him out of her office. Matt heard “Stand there and keep your mouth shut,” then the sounds of drawers opening and closing.
“That went well,” Ian said.
“I take it you know him,” Matt said.
“We went to high school together,” Ian said. “And if you think he’s an obnoxious, mouthy motherfucker now, you should have seen him then.”
Sorenson just rolled her eyes. It would take more than a snarky come-on from a defense attorney to ruffle her feathers, but Matt had a bad feeling he hadn’t heard the last from Caleb on this subject.
Twenty minutes later Matt watched from beside his Jeep as Eve walked down the stairs from her apartment, her brother at her side, and got into the backseat of a Crown Vic. Hawthorn and Sorenson waited until she was inside, then got in the front seat. Caleb leaned in to say something to Eve, then closed her door. The maroon car reversed out of the alley, executed a tight circle in the empty parking lot, and pulled out onto the empty street. A plain black suitcase was tucked in with the equipment bags brought by the crime scene investigators; someone would drop it off at Matt’s house in an hour or two. To all appearances it looked like Eve was going to the station to make a statement; her bartender/boyfriend, Chad, accidentally caught up in all the excitement, would get in his black Jeep and drive off in the opposite direction, giving both of them some protection in case anyone was watching.
Caleb didn’t slide into his Mercedes. Instead he strode across the parking lot toward the Jeep. Matt straightened and squared up for the coming battle.
“Eve to
ld me she’s practically been throwing herself at you, but I think that’s bullshit,” Caleb said in a flat, featureless voice that was more unnerving than emphatic posturing. Matt used that voice himself on a fairly regular basis. “She hasn’t had to throw herself at a man since she was fifteen years old, although why she’d protect such an unethical bastard, I can’t figure out. If she gives me the slightest indication anything, and I mean anything, happened that makes her even sniffle with regret, I will make so much noise you’ll never get another job in law enforcement again.”
“Think twice about that,” Matt said evenly. “I did my job, and this is bigger than what went on between me and your sister. Smart money’s on Lyle Murphy behind two attempted murders, one of a police officer, and the Feds have him pegged for some very bad shit. This isn’t going away. Right now I can still finesse the reports and downplay the personal side of the relationship. You go after me and I lose control over what becomes public and when.”
Caleb didn’t step back, but his energy switched from confrontational to calculating before he said, “Detective, I suggest you pray our paths never cross in a courtroom. I’ll make you wish you’d never been born, let alone met my sister.”
He spun on his heel and strode to his Mercedes. The most direct path to his car was straight through a cluster of uniforms, minus McCormick, who had zero patience for standing around bullshitting and was probably back on the street, heading for his next call. Tall and moving with a purpose, Caleb didn’t say a word, break stride, or turn to avoid them.
The group parted for him without a word.
It had already been a long fucking night, and it wasn’t over yet. Matt took a circuitous route home, the almost nonexistent traffic making it clear no one was following him, then rendezvoused with the Crown Vic idling outside his dark house. Luke was gone, so he parked his Jeep in the driveway, got out, and closed the door.
Hawthorn and Sorenson were waiting outside the car. Matt crossed the lawn and quickly looked in the back window. Eve sat staring straight ahead, her hair a gleaming black curtain against her cheeks. Hawthorn’s gaze was trained down the street, his jaw set. Sorenson, facing the opposite direction until Matt approached, looked at the bent figure in the car, then at Matt, lifting one eyebrow as she did.