Swept Away

by Robyn Carr

  Then he let her go.

  She caught her breath. “Oh,” she said. “Not gay. Well, life holds many surprises.”

  “I’ve been divorced about ten years. I’m not currently involved with anyone.”

  “And you don’t want to get into anything with me. Trust me.”

  “Here’s a surprise I don’t want to get caught in. I don’t want to be the rebound guy, even though the guy was a bum. You have to take at least six months, maybe a year before you’ll be able to make an intelligent decision about—”

  “Rebound?”

  “Yeah. You said you left a guy. An abusive guy.”

  “This is true. But Alex, I didn’t love him. I was just with him. That’s why I’m pretty sure I’m not your kind of girl. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who likes girls who can be with guys without loving them.”

  He laughed at her. “Doris, you’re a kick. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you felt for the last guy. Or the last ten. But you’re a little bit right. I don’t like girls who are just with me. So think about it. The ball is actually in your court, not mine.”

  She lay on her back, and as he leaned over her, she looked at his handsome face and thought, you are not going to trap me and hurt me. I’m going to stay at least one emotion ahead of this. But she said, “There weren’t ten.”

  “Well, that’s something. I guess.”

  * * *

  Alex was screwed and he knew it. He liked Jennifer a lot. Over the past ten years he’d had a quiver or two, but no big huge vibrations. There had been lots of fix-ups, something he attributed to the fact that he’d had so many female partners, and as everyone knew—women can’t stand the sight of a bachelor. But aside from some dates, some laughs, some nights on the town, he hadn’t been caught.

  It was so ironic, the way she’d changed from a classy blonde to a down-home brunette with the most desirable freckles he’d ever seen. He’d married one of those sexy blondes ten years ago. She was so damn gorgeous that whenever he’d thought of her back then he’d just about burst into flames. He hated to leave her, couldn’t wait to get home to her. Then one night he found her in bed with one of his buddies.

  He came home early from his job as a cop. With a gun on his belt, he had somehow managed not to shoot them both. To this day he wasn’t sure how he had pulled that off, because the pain of her faithlessness had seared through him with such ferocity he could still call it up and relive it.

  Later, after she’d gone, he had found out that that wasn’t the first time. Of course. Someone who will take that kind of chance has taken it before and will take it again. In fact, she’d been through quite a few men since then, in marriage and otherwise.

  The pain of the breakup had been fierce, but by now the only thing he still felt plenty bad about was how stupid he’d been. There is nothing more pathetic than idiots in love. He’d run into them on the job every once in a while. A woman would call the police department and say the ex-boyfriend or -husband wouldn’t leave. Sometimes it was dangerous, but often it would be some fool sitting on the curb in front of her house, crying. A miserable clod suffering through the pain of being dumped. He’d pull him away, saying, “Buddy, in a couple of years when you’re sane again, you’re going to remember this night and be so freaking embarrassed.”

  Needless to say, his feelings for Jennifer scared him a little. After all, she’d been with a guy she didn’t love—a guy the law had looked at closely many times. So what was to say she couldn’t be with Alex for a couple of years and then with someone else on the side? Déjà vu?

  But there had been something about the way she measured out the details of what she had told him. She seemed to be playing it very safe—almost afraid. And when she did let a little piece of information go, it was clearly the truth, even if it wasn’t particularly flattering. She didn’t have to tell him that she hadn’t loved the last guy she was with.

  Then there was that underwear dance, and it wasn’t just the underwear, although that was dynamite. It was that there was joy in her. Joy that didn’t come out to play very often.

  It boiled down to this: She let freckles grow on her nose, danced in her underwear when she thought no one could see, sang off-key very, very loudly when something moved her, let herself gain ten pounds, cried at the sight of the bighorns grazing close by and took very jealous care of Alice. She was a good person and somehow he knew this absolutely.

  * * *

  Jennifer had gone straight home to the computer, but she didn’t do her usual internet search. She just couldn’t wait to write to Louise.

  Dear Louise,

  I know your advice is good. My new friends are kind, honest people and I must learn to let down my guard a little. Growing up with my crazy mom was both awful and wonderful, but I never knew what to expect. It was like growing up in a minefield. It could be a happy day filled with rewards like ice cream for dinner, or it could be a bad day when all the blinds are drawn and any sound at all would be either weeping or yelling. I learned to walk very gingerly till I knew. I trained myself not to have expectations. I was scared a lot as a kid and I had to find a way to give that up before I became crazy, too. The way I managed was to maintain control. Oh, my goodness, I had so much control. Do you know how hard it is to give up? You can’t imagine.

  I rode bikes with Alex to see the bighorns today.

  He kissed me.

  Love,

  Doris

  * * *

  Alex would have much rather stayed in the grazing park for another few hours, kissing and talking, but he had had to go to work. As he listened to the briefing for his shift, his mind was all tied up in how grateful Jennifer had been for the bike. He was happy about that and was planning for tomorrow’s assault on the girl next door. While one of the robbery detectives was outlining a plan for surveillance of suspects who’d been very successful in ripping off quiet little neighborhood bars, Alex was taking some notes, but he was thinking about freckles. He glanced over at Paula to make sure she was paying closer attention than he was.

  When the briefing was done, his sergeant asked him to come into his office. Paula said she had some things to look up on the computer and told Alex to take his time with the boss.

  “You ran a check on an out-of-state the other day,” the sergeant said. “It flagged the FBI and the bureau would like to talk to you.”

  “Who was it?” Alex asked.

  “Hell if I know. Don’t you know who you ran?”

  “Can’t recall,” Alex said. In fact, it could have been anyone. He was a robbery detective and any suspects would be checked for out-of-state warrants. In Las Vegas, where there were three hundred thousand visitors a day, there were a lot of nonresidents. The way the system worked was that if you ran a check on someone the feds were watching, it would flag them and then they’d get in touch to see what the locals had. If, for example, he did a computer check on the president, the Secret Service would be knocking on the door within the hour.

  In Alex’s case, he’d run a great number of people in the past couple of months.

  “Is this urgent?” Alex asked.

  “I’m not sure. Here,” he said, handing Alex a phone message slip. “Call the guy and ask him when he wants to see you.”

  “Jesus, I hope these guys don’t screw up a perfectly good investigation,” he groused, reaching for the office phone. It happened all the time. They’d be working on a case, have someone pinned down for a crime, start writing the warrants for search and seizure, get a team ready to go in and get the suspects, and the feds would step in and say, “S’cuse me—but we’re looking at them for federal crimes. Dibs.”

  “Dobbs,” said the voice that answered the phone, and Alex was momentarily thrown. Dibs. Dobbs.

  “Ah, Detective Nichols here,” he said. “Metro. Robbery. You wanted a call
about an interstate search?”

  “Yeah. Let’s grab a cup. Starbucks on Charleston. Don’t bring your partner.”

  Right away Alex hated this guy. “Is this about my partner?” he asked.

  “No,” Dobbs said in a patronizing tone. “This is about you. And you might not want to have your partner in on this.”

  If she were an idiot, maybe that would be true, but Paula was a good partner and smart as the devil. Not only would he not chance her thinking he didn’t trust her, he wouldn’t sacrifice the brain power she could add to any situation. “When?” he said.

  “I’m leaving now,” Dobbs said. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  Alex hung up the phone. Although it hadn’t been intentional, now he was glad he had used a Metro phone. The caller ID on the Fibbie’s phone would have revealed Alex’s cell phone number, and he already knew that Dobbs wasn’t someone he wanted to hear from on a regular basis.

  Dobbs. He kept rolling the name over in his mind. He knew a lot of FBI guys. He worked with them regularly and, for the most part, had a good relationship with them. But occasionally some Fibbie would come to town from out of state with some big ax to grind and a real hard-on for some suspect, and the whole process of trying to make an arrest would be a huge, complicated pain in the ass.

  He grabbed Paula and said, “Come on, we’re going for coffee with some fed who wants to talk to me about someone I ran through an interstate search. I guess I flagged them.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Dobbs, but he can’t be from Vegas because I’ve never heard of him.”

  “No, stupid,” she laughed. “Who’d you run?”

  “Hell if I know. I ran a million people last month alone. How about Wollach? He had warrants all over the country.”

  “You have absolutely no idea?”

  He stopped walking. “Did you run someone that lit up the board?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Dobbs told me not to bring my partner.”

  “Then why are you bringing me?”

  “Because you’re my partner. I don’t take orders from the FBI.”

  She just looked at him for a long minute. She was little. Kind of cute. Only thirty and married six months. No one would think she could do much good in a fight but, oh man, if Paula’s job was to back you up, game on, as they liked to say. It was a high compliment if the guys liked working with a particular woman cop, and Paula was one of them.

  She smiled at him. “I never give you enough credit.”

  “Then you better start,” he said.

  They didn’t bother to hash over all the suspects who’d come across their desks in the past month. The Fibbie would tell them who he was looking at, and they’d either work out a way to bring him in, or one or the other of them would let go of the case. Probably Metro would give it up. But then probably the feds would need Metro’s help....

  “God,” Paula said when they arrived at Starbucks. “Do you think he could be more obvious?”

  On the patio, as far away from the coffee-drinking crowd as possible, sat a man in a suit and a black trench coat. He was large, heavy, hair cut in a buzz that left him nearly bald, and he wore telltale thick-soled black shoes, white shirt and thin tie. The local FBI tended to fit in much better, actually looking as if they might be regular citizens. This guy looked as though he wanted to guard the president. In 1965.

  Alex and Paula were not trying to hide their professions. They wore plainclothes—jeans and khakis with badges, guns and handcuffs on their belts. So as they approached the trench-coated man, he looked up and all parties recognized one another. It was seventy degrees outside and Alex desperately wanted to ask Dobbs if he was warm enough in that trench coat.

  “Dobbs?” Alex stuck out his hand. “Alex Nichols. My partner, Paula Aiken.”

  Dobbs had small blue eyes that slowly moved from Paula to Alex to Paula. “Have a seat,” he said. “Unless you want to get some coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Paula said. “It’ll keep me up.”

  “Let’s get to it,” Alex said.

  “Nick Noble,” Dobbs said.

  Where do I know that name? Alex asked himself.

  Paula elbowed him. “That missing person.”

  “Oh, yeah. He reported a woman missing. A friend of the family, he said.”

  “Not exactly. She was his mistress.”

  “Was?” Alex asked.

  “She’s missing,” Dobbs said tiredly. He sighed. It was obvious he disliked having to work with the local idiots. “You ran him. Why?”

  “Oh, that. I found the missing-person flyers in my neighborhood. My neighborhood. I checked the case file. I ran the girl, too—in case I run into her. I took a look at the arrest record for Noble and decided she’s better off missing. What’s your heartburn?”

  “We want the girl.”

  “Oh, really? You want her for...?”

  “Questioning.”

  “Should we be beefing up our search for any reason? Has she done anything?”

  “Noble says she stole money and jewelry from him.”

  Alex laughed. “That’s why I ran her. Her record is clean. Totally clean. But his isn’t. Seems pretty obvious to me that he accused her of stealing to get a little professional help in getting her back.”

  Dobbs was getting impatient. He was clenching and unclenching his fist on the tabletop. “We’d really like to talk to her.”

  Alex tried to keep from rolling his eyes. The royal “we.” “Do you want a little help in finding her?” Alex asked as patiently as he could. “Is that why you invited me here today?”

  “No, I don’t need help! Do you know where she is? Did you have a personal reason for running her and Nick Noble?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Paula huffed. “What the hell’s the matter with you? We’re not working missing persons. He was just checking the status of the stupid flyer. You want something or what?”

  “You were there?”

  “There? You mean at the office while he was doing his search? Right there. We share a computer, as a matter of fact. I saw enough of the results to see we have way bigger fish to fry. We don’t need this missing person for anything.”

  “Dobbs,” Alex said. “We could have done this on the phone.”

  “I need this woman. She may be able to help us. Noble is guilty of multiple felonies ranging from conspiracy and trafficking, to fraud and money-laundering. He has dozens of businesses he runs drug money through. If she was his mistress for two years, she knows things.”

  “According to his record, no one’s been able to make anything stick. He’s not wanted,” Alex said.

  “He’s slippery.”

  “Slippery isn’t illegal.”

  “We’re going to get him. It’s a matter of time. Maybe you could help. Huh?”

  “Is the DEA in on this?”

  “Noble washes up money for drug dealers, but his trafficking is primarily in high-ticket stolen goods, so the DEA is just getting in my way. I was hoping you could take me to this woman.”

  Alex sat back. “That was a stretch, Dobbs. I was just running a check. It’s what I do a hundred times a month.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Hey, don’t be upset. I’ll keep my eyes open. You have a card?” Dobbs fished one out of his pocket and thrust it at Alex. “Are you working out of this field office?” Alex asked.

  “I’ll hang around a couple of days and see what they have, then head back to Florida. This guy. He’s dirty.”

  Alex studied the card. “Dangerous?”

  “Probably,” Dobbs said, standing. “And a regular guest here. Your casinos fly him in to gamble. He loves to gamble. Why they want crooks at their tables is beyond me.”

  “Hey
, I ran him, Dobbs. He has zero convictions. He’s a model citizen. Apparently with a ton of money.”

  Dobbs inhaled sharply, his cheeks puffing out a bit. “Details.”

  Alex remained seated. This guy was rough around the edges and there was no indication he was clever or canny or sensitive. Even if he didn’t know Jennifer, no way would he like turning her over to Dobbs. This was a guy who looked as if he couldn’t wait to just put her on a hook at the end of a line and use her for bait.

  “Call me if anything comes up,” Dobbs said.

  “You bet.”

  He didn’t say goodbye. He left Alex and Paula at the table.

  The patio sat right on a busy street. Birds picked at crumbs on the ground, cars drove by, people talked. Alex studied the card. There was a sudden splat of bird dropping on the table; it missed the card by millimeters.

  “Where is she?” Paula asked.

  “Where is who?”

  “Alex...”

  “Are you asking me in an official capacity?”

  She leaned forward. “I’m a police officer. Everything I ask is official—eventually.”

  Yeah, there was this little rule about withholding. But there was another small factor, and that was that police officers had discretion. The woman had not committed any crimes. Arresting her or turning her over was not an imperative.

  “She’s obviously hiding,” he said. “And it sounds like she has good reason.”

  “You’ve seen her,” she said.

  He swallowed. “I have not met anyone who identifies herself as Jennifer Chaise, missing person.”

  Paula waited a second and then said, “Shit.”

  My dear Doris,

  I’m completely unsentimental, so the fact that you’ve been kissed means as much to me as your seeing the bighorns. One thing, however, is very important to me, and that is Alex. He might appear to be tough and even cynical, but beneath that he carries a very tender heart. Be gentle with him. And for advice about men, see Rose.