by Anne Calhoun
You reap what you sow. And he’d sowed nothing but dispassionate deception. He’d doomed any possibility of a real relationship with Eve Webber the moment he walked through the door to Eye Candy as Chad Henderson. For the first time since he met her, the right thing to do was clear.
Save her, then let her go.
“What?” Lyle yelled.
“I’d never work with a cop, Lyle. The Eastern Precinct’s as dirty as the men’s room floor. We all know that.” Matt heard her gasp in pain. She must have sat up, moved her head, all while still trying to find a way to save their operation. They’d underestimated her from the very beginning. “The bastards. They didn’t even ask. Just put someone in undercover. I can’t believe it. Good thing I didn’t let him come upstairs,” she said, delaying, giving Matt time to get to her. Smart, tough woman.
“East Side girl like you? You should have known!”
“I’m new at this, Lyle,” she said, bone-tired. “Cut me some slack, okay?”
Lyle laughed, the noise almost relieved, and for a second Matt thought she’d managed to talk her way out clear. Then his phone went silent for a second, leaving only the echoing noise of the laugh inside the warehouse.
“What happened?” Sorenson’s low voice over the radio.
“McCormick, report,” Hawthorn said soundlessly. “You have line of sight.”
“What’s that noise, Eve?” The audio was back, and Lyle’s voice was menacing again. “Show me your—”
The audio went dead again, and with a sickening flash of clarity, Matt knew what was happening. The battery on Eve’s phone, left uncharged the night before, was beeping the low battery signal. Each time it beeped, he lost audio for a second. Lyle heard the beeps.
“Her phone’s dying,” Matt murmured.
He got one foot under him to start around the end of the Escalade, but Hawthorn gripped his vest and held him back. “Not without the back door cleared!”
“Show me your hands, Eve.”
“Why?”
“He’s aiming at her,” McCormick said urgently. “LT!”
“Where the fuck are they?” Matt growled at Hawthorn, referring to the uniformed officers they needed to secure the back alley, to make sure they didn’t get caught in the crossfire.
“Show me your fucking hands!” A slap, then a cry from Eve, cut off as the audio went dead again.
Fuck this. Matt twisted, trying to shake off Hawthorn’s grip on his flak vest.
“Are you in position?” Hawthorn snapped into the radio.
The excited voice of the young uniformed officer came over the radio in a high-pitched whisper. “We’re by the side door at the back of the building. It’s clear!”
“Where’s your goddamn phone? That fucking thing you’ve always got with you! Where—do you have it?” The sound of scuffling, cries of pain from Pastor Webber and screams of sheer terror from Eve, then, “You stupid fucking cunt!” rang cold and bitter into Matt’s ear as clear as if Murphy stood right next to him. A single gunshot rang out as Hawthorn shouted into the radio.
“Go!”
* * *
Sprawled on her back in the dirt, Eve saw a red mist balloon around Travis as he jerked a hundred and eighty degrees in place, then dropped to the floor. Then Matt and Hawthorn sprinted from around the Escalade’s front end, shouting “Down! Down on the floor! Now! Get down!” at what must have been the top of their lungs but sounded like it was coming from across a crowded, noisy club. The back door flew open and two police officers swarmed down the stairs to the loading dock, onto the open floor, adding their voices to the increasingly distant cacophony.
She crawled to her father’s side and rolled him onto his back. He was paper white, eyes closed, mouth lax. “Dad?” she asked, but the question transformed into a scream of pain as she was hauled to her feet by a fist in her hair. She twisted her ankle trying to get her footing in the heels.
“Looking for this?” he snarled, spinning her in a stumbling circle to face Matt and Hawthorn. He shook her by her hair like a dog shook a toy, sending pain spearing through her cheek and behind her eye before he pulled her tight against his body. “Back the fuck up.”
“Let her go,” Matt said, steely command in his voice.
“Fuck you,” Lyle spat.
Matt and Hawthorn were slowly separating, flanking Lyle, giving him two targets, dividing his attention. He stepped back and jammed steel into her throat. Eve fought back a cry as her teeth clunked together and thick, hot waves of pain burst through her injured cheek.
“Let her go. Drop your weapon. Get down on the ground.” This from Hawthorn, to her right. On her left Matt had gone silent, his face eerily calm.
Lyle jerked her around to face Matt. “Was she good? So smooth and pretty. A nice little bonus after a long day’s work?”
A professional career in bars taught Eve the basics of getting out of a man’s grip. She rammed her elbow into his gut and stomped on his instep with all the power she could put into the four-inch spike heel. It was amateurish but efficient; he yelped and released her hair, inadvertently sweeping her feet out from under her as he doubled over and lifted his injured foot. Eve thudded down hard on her bottom and hands, but she was free.
“Down! Get down!”
Male voices shouted, but not Matt’s. Eve looked at him, but he was focused on Lyle, silent and deadly, gaze and aim never faltering. Eve scuttled away as Lyle swung around and pointed the gun at her, the face she knew completely disfigured by a twisted snarl. She kept moving but the gun tracked her as she scrambled backward, up against her father’s body.
Then, as his finger tightened around the trigger, a sound ricocheted around the vast warehouse. The back of Lyle’s head disappeared in a spray of brain, scalp, blood, and bone. He slumped to the ground in front of her.
A scream formed in her lungs, clawing at her throat, but emerged as the strangled whimper of a nightmare. Matt darted forward, his weapon trained on Lyle, while he kicked Lyle’s gun to the corner of the warehouse. Then he dropped to his knees by Eve and holstered his weapon.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Matt. Oh my God.”
“Shhhh,” he said. “It’s okay.” He was turning her father over as he said it, his fingers feeling for his pulse. “We need an ambulance!” he shouted.
“They’re en route,” Sorenson said. She knelt over Travis, fingers to his throat, holding his jacket over the bullet wound in his shoulder. Officer McCormick was directing the uniforms to kick open every door in the warehouse, searching for anyone hiding from the police.
“Dad.” Her father’s eyes were closed, his skin clammy and paste white against the dirty floor. Eve gripped his hand in both of hers and gave it a little shake. “Dad, it’s over. Matt’s here, with other police officers. You’re safe. Just hold on a little longer.”
He squeezed her hands. The ambulance lumbered down the alley behind yet another cruiser and braked to a halt next to the Escalade. Two EMTs leapt out of the cab and sprinted into the warehouse. Sorenson pointed to each body in turn. “Heart attack. Gunshot wound to the shoulder. Dead.”
An EMT dropped to his heels by her father and snapped on gloves, then did a double take when he saw Eve. “I’ve got her,” Matt said. He slid his arm under hers and helped her to her feet, guiding her out the warehouse door into the sun.
“But Dad—” she started.
“They’ve got him. They need space to work.”
He gently helped her sit at the edge of the open ambulance door, then pulled a blanket off a shelf and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I don’t need a blanket. It’s a hundred and five degrees,” she said. The sun beat down on the alley and on her head. Maybe that was causing the blurry vision, the shimmering sense of unreality.
“When the adrenaline wears off you’re going to be shivering,” Matt explained.
“I remember,” she said, fumbling at the blanket with shaking hands, then pulling it tight. “But I don’t feel anything. For the
first time in my life, I don’t feel anything at all. Is that shock? I felt something after the first shooting. I was angry and scared. I felt something.” She looked at him, heard her voice rising. “Do you live like this? How do you live with nothing inside you?”
Matt put his hands on her shoulders, his warm fingers curving around to squeeze gently as he peered into her eyes. “You’re alive. Your father’s alive. Murphy’s dead. It’s okay now.”
With a shuddering sigh she subsided. Matt reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. He laid gentle fingers along her jaw and exerted just enough pressure to turn her head so he could look at her face. The impact site throbbed, and in her peripheral vision Eve could see the reddened swelling skin. Matt pressed gentle thumbs to the edges of her swelling cheek, testing the bone, then found an ice pack and cracked it to activate it.
“Hold this,” he said, his voice eerily quiet and calm.
“Okay,” she said, and put the pack to her cheek.
“You’ll need X-rays,” he added as he dug through a kit and extracted a pair of tweezers. With gentle fingers he began to dislodge the bits of concrete embedded in her right knee.
“Okay,” she said again, because what else could she say when he wasn’t saying anything? “How are you?”
“That’s my line,” he said, but Eve couldn’t laugh.
“You just killed someone,” she said. His gaze flicked up, and she filled in the rest of the black, black comedy. “Not your first time at that rodeo either, is it?”
Oh, Matt. What do you do with it all, with the horror and terror and exhaustion, with the daily grind, with Iraq and Luke and undercover police work? Where does it go?
“What happened?” he asked.
“I was expecting a package. The UPS guy always drops it, knocks, then takes off. I heard the knock and opened the door. Lyle must have told the delivery driver he’d bring it up for him.”
“So you went with him?”
“He had a gun! You were in the shower! You were naked,” she said, as if this was obvious.
He gave her a look, just a look.
“This is where you tell me you have a black belt in karate and are expert in hand-to-hand combat.”
“I would have stopped him from taking you.”
“Or died trying,” she finished for him.
“Better me than you.” Because I’m already half dead.
“That’s not how I see it.” Because half dead is half alive. “Half” meant room for hope, room for a second chance.
No response. She looked around the increasingly crowded open space between the alley and the warehouse as more police cruisers, unmarked cars, and a fire truck pulled up. Sorenson trotted over and gave Eve what was left of her iPhone. She clasped the pieces with shaking hands and watched Travis get loaded into the second ambulance. “You didn’t…?”
“Kill him? No. When Lyle aimed at you, Travis stepped toward you and McCormick got him in the shoulder, not the chest. I think he was trying to stop Lyle, and it saved his life.”
Sorenson moved away to supervise Travis’s trip to the hospital. Eve considered her ruined iPhone. “He shot my phone. I run my entire life through this phone and now it’s got a bullet hole in it.”
“I thought he shot you.”
“I thought he was going to shoot me.” She stared at the phone for a moment, then felt the hair on the nape of her neck lift. “You got my call.” Obviously.
“Yes.”
“That’s how you knew where I was.”
“Yes.”
Keep going, as painful as it is … “You heard me tell Lyle I love you.”
He bent over a particularly stubborn piece of grit. “You were under duress,” he said evenly.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s happened to me quite a bit lately. But I know how I feel.”
He said something she couldn’t understand over the wail of another police cruiser pulling into the already cramped space. The ambulance driver leaned out his door, gave a piercing whistle even Natalie would envy and shouted, “Move! We gotta go!”
“This isn’t real, Eve,” he finished, picking bits of gravel out of her knees like each one was a tiny bomb requiring precision handling.
“Last night was as real as you’ve ever been with me, Matt,” she said bluntly. “I can handle that. I can handle more.”
“It’s not real,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You can’t trust your feelings in a situation like this. Close proximity, stressful circumstances, and sex all combine to create an unreal environment. You can’t trust it.”
“How do you know whether or not you can trust your feelings if you don’t let yourself feel anything at all? You use protecting as a way to push people away. You wall us off, say you’re keeping us safe, but you’re really keeping yourself safe from the messy emotional reality of life and love.” When he didn’t respond she slapped his hands away from her abused knees. “Stop taking care of me! Stop hiding behind duty and honor and feel what’s between us!”
At that urgent command he looked up and met her eyes. She saw the implacable wall going back up, shutting her out, then he said the word he’d never, ever used before.
“No.”
She blinked at him, not believing her ears, but just then Lieutenant Hawthorn and Officer McCormick strode up. “Jesus, Eve,” Ian said. “Are you all right?”
“Ian,” she replied, just as formal if a little more hysterical, “I’m fine.”
“She’s not fine. She needs x-rays and maybe an MRI,” Matt said as he flung another bit of gravel to the side.
“And you, Detective Dorchester, need to go with Officer McCormick and report in to Captain Whitmore,” Hawthorn said implacably.
Eve followed his glance to a group of uniformed officers, clustered around Sorenson and Carlucci, all watching Matt as he knelt in front of her. He dropped the tweezers on the ambulance floor and stood up. Her face throbbed as she tilted her head back to look up into his eyes. “Don’t go to work for Lancaster Life. You are right where you’re supposed to be. You are who you’re supposed to be. Without you, Lyle sets up shop on the East Side, the neighborhood loses the business park, and the bad guys win. No one else could have done what you’ve done over the last few weeks. Don’t let anyone tell you different, and don’t let anyone guilt or bully or pressure you into becoming anyone else.”
Then he turned and walked away.
* * *
Eve woke up in a hospital bed. A pair of sneaker-clad feet rested near her own, covered by a white sheet and blanket. Very, very carefully, because her head felt like it had been split in two, she turned and looked up the long, denim-clad legs to Caleb’s solemn face.
“Hello, sister mine,” he said, relief flashing in his green eyes.
“Hey,” she said, but her throat was too dry and tight to get the words out. Caleb sat up and poured a glass of water, competently folding a bendy straw and dropping it in the glass, then offering it to her.
“Nice technique,” she complimented after she drank. They’d spent more than their share of time in hospital rooms.
He leaned an elbow on the bed and considered her. “How are you feeling?”
“My cheek hurts,” she said. The throbbing worsened as her attention found it, like a bad-tempered troll and his rough-hewn club had taken up residence, lumbering and grumbling under her eye.
“I’m not surprised,” Caleb replied. “From what I gathered from Detective Sorenson’s terse yet colorful description, Lyle hit you so hard you went airborne.”
“I … I vaguely remember that.” All she really remembered was the explosion of light and pain, then lying in the dirt next to her father. She listened to the silence in the corridor, looked at the old-fashioned clock, then the window. “It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“Sitting with the sick, comforting the afflicted,” he said casually. “It’s better than my other option, which is to find Ian Hawthorn and beat the shit out of him.”
>
She laughed, then regretted it when the troll took a big swing at her cheekbone with his club. “It’s not Ian’s fault. I went into this with my eyes wide open.”
Caleb was silent. Eve figured Ian could hold his own. “I have good news,” he said.
“I could use some good news.”
“Nobody showed up to make payment for the property behind Eye Candy. It’s yours.”
“That is good news,” she said, but really, she couldn’t feel much of anything. In a day or two she’d get excited about it. “How’s Dad?”
“Down the hall and scheduled for bypass surgery,” Caleb said.
“What?” she exclaimed, regretting it as the troll added a vicious kick.
“I guess one side benefit from all of this is that the doctors took a really good look at his arteries. They’ve been clogging faster than expected. You make an impact, no doubt about it.”
She lay back and closed her eyes. “I work with the cops for three months and I get Dad and me kidnapped, and a man is dead, and now Dad has another heart attack.”
“Don’t forget Travis getting shot.”
She’d never forget Travis’s silence as he drove her through the East Side, to the warehouse. Forgiveness felt very far away. “How is Travis?” she asked, trying for Christian charity.
“Two doors down from Dad, recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, with an extremely bored uniformed cop sitting outside his door.”
She couldn’t laugh, but she did muster a weak smile.
“Sorenson and Hawthorn were both here, but one cop, however, is conspicuous in his absence. Where’s Dorchester? I figured he’d have to be pried from your side with a crowbar.”
“He’s gone.” At Caleb’s single raised eyebrow, she added, “Between the siren and the ice pack crackling I was a little distracted, but I put the pieces together in the ambulance. He said something about Stockholm, and this isn’t real.”
Clearly mystified, Caleb blinked, then gave a sharp bark of laughter that reverberated in Eve’s cheek. “Stockholm syndrome, or a variation thereof. Under considerable emotional stress some hostages form attachments to their captors, although the analogy doesn’t hold in your situation.”