Once a Hero

by Lisa Childs

  But if she left Lakewood, she wouldn’t be able to prove her brother’s innocence. At the same time, she wasn’t certain how to do that even if she stayed. For the past year she had investigated Kent Terlecki and had found out very little about him besides what she’d read in police reports. His fellow officers and friends would answer no questions about him. She didn’t even know why they called him Bullet, so how was she going to find out if he had framed her brother? Overwhelmed with frustration, she pounded her fists on the keys.

  “Writing not going well?” A blond head popped over the top of the fabric divider that separated Erin’s desk from those of the other reporters in the “pit.”

  Relieved to get her mind off Kent and her job, Erin smiled at Tessa Howard. “So did you get it?”

  “The Chronicle account?” Tessa patted her ever-present black briefcase. “Of course I did. We’re going to handle all your telecommunication needs from now on. Thanks for the reference.”

  “I’m sure you got the account all on your own,” Erin assured her. “My reference wouldn’t mean a whole lot around here.”

  “You’re the star reporter—at least one article in every issue and now a columnist, no less,” Tessa said. “I’m sure your opinion carries weight around here.”

  On the contrary, Erin thought. She was carrying more guilt that she wasn’t doing more, that she couldn’t help Reverend Thomas or talk about the real purpose of the Citizen’s Police Academy.

  “No.” She lowered her voice and replied, “Not many of my coworkers are happy that I have my own column after working here just a year.”

  Tessa shrugged. “Don’t let it bother you. Sure, I’d like my coworkers to be friends, too, but they’re really just competitors.”

  “I can understand that in a sales job, but…” She swallowed a sigh of self-pity. She had never indulged in that, not when she was fully aware of how many people were in worse situations than hers.

  “Make friends somewhere else,” Tessa suggested. “Like class.”

  Erin laughed. “You’re one of the few people in the CPA who doesn’t hate my column.”

  “Few?” Tessa asked, skeptically arching a blond brow as she grinned.

  “Only.”

  “Is that why you didn’t come by the bar after last night’s class?” Tessa settled onto a corner of Erin’s tiny metal desk.

  She shrugged. “I needed to get home to my nephew. My mom doesn’t like driving back to East Grand Rapids so late at night.”

  “I have some accounts in Grand Rapids. It’s a long drive,” Tessa agreed. “If you ever need someone to watch Jason, you can bring him by my house. My mom’s taking Wednesday nights off, so she can watch the kids.”

  Tessa didn’t have children of her own, but she had taken on much of the responsibility for her younger siblings to help out her single mom.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Erin said, “but Jason’s…” Her heart swelled with affection. “He’s a really sweet, shy boy.”

  “He would have to know someone awhile before he’d be comfortable staying with them,” Tessa surmised, with her usual quick understanding. “That has to be tough on you, though, with your folks living over an hour away. My mom’s pretty much always been on her own, but she had her mom until Nana died.”

  “And now she has you,” Erin said, wondering how much of her life Tessa had sacrificed to help out with her family. She was right. You didn’t have to look much further to find someone who’d made more sacrifices or who was in a tougher situation than you were. She smiled. “I’m sure no one missed me at the Lighthouse, anyway.”

  “I missed you.”

  Warmth lifted Erin’s flagging spirits. “Thank you.”

  “I mean it.” Tessa grabbed her hand and squeezed. “But, hey, I know you’re busy here—” she gestured toward the keyboard “—pounding out your next column. I also understand that you’re busy at home with Jason, but if you ever need a friend…”

  Since moving to Lakewood, Erin hadn’t had time to make friends or to renew her relationships with the ones she’d left behind in East Grand Rapids when she’d gone off to college, then the Peace Corps.

  “I could use one,” she freely admitted. “I just can’t believe you would want to be my friend.”

  “The best part of the CPA has been getting to know people,” Tessa said.

  Erin wondered if she was including Lieutenant Chad Michalski in her statement. At the last class, she had seemed less resentful of what she’d considered his manipulating her to the join the academy.

  “I know there’s more to you than this column,” Tessa continued. “You’re obviously devoted to your nephew. You’re a good person.”

  “Thank you.” She’d needed that endorsement, because she didn’t feel like a good person anymore. She had changed into this bitter, vengeful one even she didn’t like.

  “You’re a little misguided maybe,” Tessa said with a teasing chuckle, “but still a good person. Do you want to grab some lunch?”

  “I’d love to,” Erin said, yearning for the companionship, not the food. “But I need to finish this.”

  “Another time then,” Tessa promised as she slid off Erin’s desk and left. She had only been gone a moment before Herb Stein poked his head around the partition.

  Erin swallowed hard, aware that the editor-in-chief rarely visited the “pit.” He usually had reporters summoned to his office. She didn’t know whether to be flattered or afraid.

  “How’s the column coming?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  “So what’s your focus this week?”

  “Sergeant Terlecki wasn’t at last night’s class,” she warned him. “Lieutenant Michalski, the department’s emergency vehicle operation expert, explained the pursuit policy and had us participate in simulated traffic stops.”

  Herb exaggerated a yawn. “You’re not writing about that. You must have seen Terlecki since last week’s class.”

  At her dinner table. In her kitchen. Up close and way too personal. “He spoke at an assembly at my nephew’s school.”

  Herb nodded. “There has to be some angle you can work there.”

  The truth. That Kent had been wonderful with those kids. But she suspected telling him that would put her boss to sleep.

  “Hell, every time I turn on the news I see Terlecki’s face.” The older man swiped a hand down over his own face, his jowls jiggling against his neck, then focused on Erin. “He sure is a handsome devil.”

  Hell, yes. She masked her real feelings with a shrug and an outright lie. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Plenty of women have.” Herb grimaced. “Even my own wife. And like you pointed out in your last column, he uses his charm to get good press from the networks.”

  She suspected now that was only because the mayor didn’t own them.

  “That was a strategic move on the chief’s part to put Terlecki in charge of the media,” Herb said. “But I’m glad the Chronicle has one reporter who can’t be fooled.”

  She wasn’t certain she could still claim that distinction. “I’d really like to write more about the class,” she persisted. “I think the public would be interested in why an officer sometimes chooses not to pursue a fleeing vehicle.” Often the risk to the community was too great and because a high-speed chase could endanger pedestrians or other drivers.

  “I haven’t been wrong about you, have I?” he asked, a threat apparent in his sharp tone.

  She thought of Kent’s sensitivity with Jason that first night when his raised voice had scared the little boy, and then how diplomatically he’d answered Jason’s question at the assembly and how he’d talked to him during dinner.

  How could she keep writing horrible things about a man like that? Maybe, just as she wasn’t the same idealistic girl who’d served in the Peace Corps, he wasn’t the same ambitious young officer who’d possibly framed her brother.

  “I knew I was taking a chance hiring you, but then I took an even bigger chan
ce giving you this column…” Herb Stein shook his head and grimaced in disgust. “Maybe there isn’t a place for you here.”

  “No, sir, I won’t let you down,” she promised.

  Her boss studied her through narrowed eyes. “Terlecki’s not getting to you like he has those other reporters who fawn all over him?”

  Tightening her jaw, she shook her head. “He hasn’t gotten to me at all,” she promised. “I’ll give you a column you’ll like.”

  But Kent wouldn’t. He’d said before he didn’t hate her, but she knew it was just a matter of time before he would.

  THE WORDS GREW JUMBLED as Kent rubbed his eyes, unable to read any more of Erin’s column. She had even turned around the school assembly to make him look bad. He read the last line aloud, “‘Trying to make impressionable kids believe he’s a hero…’”

  “If you really wanted to do that, you’d tell them about the bullet in your back,” the chief commented from where he leaned in the doorway of Kent’s office. “Better yet, you’d tell her.”

  “I’m not going to do that.” Mainly because he didn’t trust himself to talk to her at all right now. He was too damn mad. He also didn’t want any more people to know about his injury and especially not about Mrs. Ludlow’s role in it. The woman had suffered enough.

  “So you still think it’s better that she doesn’t learn the truth about you?” Frank Archer asked.

  Kent shrugged. “If learning the truth about me means learning the truth about her brother, I’m not sure I can do that to her.” Even as pissed off as he was…“Then there’s her brother’s kid to consider….”

  “Ms. Powell is not a little kid,” the chief pointed out. “She should know the truth. And after writing this trash—” the chief waved the paper disdainfully “—she doesn’t deserve any consideration from you.”

  Kent winced as he rose from his chair to pace the small floor space around his desk. “Her mom is the one who told me about her brother being in prison.” He’d promised Kathryn Powell that he wouldn’t tell Erin where he’d learned that information.

  “Her brother is in prison because of you,” Archer said. “I mean, because of your arrest.”

  “Erin sees it the other way,” Kent corrected. “That it’s my fault—and only my fault—that her brother’s in prison.”

  “It’s his fault,” Frank said. “He’s the one who broke the law.”

  “She can’t bring herself to admit it.” Kent remembered what else her mother had shared with him—all of her and her husband’s regrets that they had paid more attention to his students than their own children, and that they had worried more about what the school and the church community thought than about their kids. “She idolizes her brother.”

  “Like the rookies idolize you.”

  Kent shook his head. “She’s worshipped her brother her whole life. Her dad and mom were always busy with school stuff. Her dad’s a teacher, so Mitchell spent the most time with Erin while they were growing up, and he doted on her.”

  “Spoiled her,” Frank commented.

  “Loved her.” Kent sighed. “And she loves him. He has her completely convinced that he’s innocent and that I framed him.”

  Frank ran a hand around the back of his neck. “So no matter how much proof you give her, she’s never going to believe you over her brother.”

  “He’s her hero.”

  “But you’re the real hero.” The chief patted Kent’s shoulder. “And if she learns that, she might realize that her brother is not the man she thinks he is.”

  “Right.” That was another reason Kent was reluctant to tell her. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than her brother being in jail already had.

  “That’s not your problem.” The chief waved the paper once more. “This is.”

  “I know.” Kent winced again, but the pain wasn’t in his back. “I know it’s my job to handle the media. So I will understand if you decide to replace me with someone else.”

  Frank straightened away from the jamb, his long body tense with shock. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “She’s not going to stop writing about me until her brother either admits the truth or is released from prison.”

  “That’s why you need to tell her—”

  “We already agreed she’s not going to believe what I tell her,” Kent reminded his boss. “And hell, if I try to convince her that her brother’s lying…”

  “She’ll lash out more. What if you showed her the files?”

  “She’s already seen everything.” Kent was positive.

  “Her brother has her brainwashed,” the chief said with a snort of disgust.

  “She’s loyal.” It was one of the things Kent admired about her, even though it also infuriated him. Not only was she loyal, she was loving. If not for her brother’s arrest, she still would have been that idealistic girl who’d entered the Peace Corps out of college.

  “The department can’t afford the bad press right now,” Kent said. “The only way she’s going to lay off me—and the department—is if you let me go.”

  “That’s not going to happen, son,” the chief said, placing his hand on Kent’s shoulder.

  “But you have to think about what’s best for the department,” Kent insisted.

  “I have to think about what’s best for you. You should give an interview to one of the networks. Maybe that red-haired reporter,” Archer suggested. “Tell her, on camera, what’s really going on at the Lakewood Chronicle. That Powell on Patrol has a vendetta against you for arresting her drug-dealing brother.”

  Maybe the chief should have been doing Kent’s job all along. “I can’t do that….”

  “Why are you so worried about Erin Powell?” Frank asked. “Do you have feelings for her?”

  “That would be crazy,” Kent said.

  Archer nodded. “Yeah, it would. As crazy as me letting you go.”

  “I’d rather leave than…” Hurt Erin or Jason. They’d both been through enough already.

  “Then do that interview.” The chief furrowed his brow, studying him. “You must really care about her.”

  Catching the disbelief on his boss’s face, Kent nearly laughed. Frank clearly thought his public information officer had lost his mind. God, maybe he had. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her, about that day in her kitchen and her kisses?

  “Her brother’s son lives with her,” Kent shared. “Here in Lakewood, where that interview you suggested would air.”

  Archer nodded with sudden understanding. “So she wouldn’t be the only one to get hurt if her true motives came out. The boy would suffer, too, with everyone knowing the truth about his dad.”

  “Kids can be cruel. And with his small size and health problems, Jason’s already an underdog.”

  “Jason?” The chief whistled. “Wow, you might not have been in the field the past three years, but you still remember how to do a thorough investigation.”

  “I’ve met him. He’s a neat kid.” Kent’s heart warmed just thinking of the brave little boy asking the question he had. “He’s already lost so much.”

  “I can’t afford to lose you,” Frank said, his voice raspy with emotion as he probably remembered the time he nearly had lost Kent. “You’re not going anywhere. So you better figure some other way to handle Ms. Powell.”

  He’d like to handle her again—to hold her in his arms and finish what they had started that night in her kitchen. But glancing down at the paper the chief dropped on his desk, Kent realized the best way to deal with Erin Powell was to stay far away from her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Erin shivered as she stepped outside, though it was actually warmer in the cool night air than it had been inside the Lighthouse. Except for Tessa, everyone hated her, but not nearly as much as Erin was beginning to hate herself.

  She didn’t know how much longer she could keep up the “tone” her boss wanted for the column. After how sweet Kent had been with Jason, she had to struggle to hang on t
o her anger and resentment.

  But confusion clouded her judgment and her vision. Was she betraying Mitchell with the doubts Kent had stirred up in her along with her attraction to him? Or was she betraying herself by continuing to write a column so far removed from the reporter she had wanted to be back in college and the Peace Corps? The one who would rather have written about Reverend Thomas’s shelter for runaways, or Rafe Sanchez’s after-school youth center, than Kent’s visit to Maple Valley Elementary.

  Guilt tugged at her. He’d been so sensitive when he’d answered Jason’s question, but she hadn’t included that detail in her latest column. Instead, she’d been snarky and had deliberately misconstrued his intentions. She blinked back the threat of tears and reached out toward her van with the remote keyless entry switch, opening the locks.

  No one had walked out with her; no one had offered. The only comments she’d gotten at all tonight had been that she’d stepped over the line. But now she heard something like the scrape of shoes against cement, and she reached inside her purse for her canister of pepper spray. She whirled around, but could see no one in the deep shadows.

  “You want the truth about Bullet?”

  “Who’s there?” she called out, her voice cracking with nerves. She’d received plenty of complaints by e-mail, letter and voice mail about her columns. Was someone actually going to confront her physically now? Her grip tightened around the pepper spray.

  The man, tall and wiry with dark hair and a beard, stepped into the light. “Do you want to know how he came by his nickname?”

  “You’re vice, right, Sergeant Halliday?” she asked, recognizing the man from the first class of the CPA and from the night she’d eavesdropped on his and Kent’s conversation at the bar. “You’re a friend of Sergeant Terlecki’s.”

  “Yes,” Billy said with pride, “but Kent is friends with everyone who really knows him.”

  “And you really know him?”

  “We share a house,” he explained, “when I’m not undercover.”

  “So if you’re such good friends, why would you talk to me?” she wondered. “Why would you tell me anything, especially something that Kent has been working pretty hard to keep from me?”