Officer Next Door (Lock and Key)

by Ranae Rose

  “That’s because butter is God’s gift to humankind.” Sasha took an extra-big bite of her flounder, as if to prove her point.

  The sound of sandals slapping against cobblestone echoed over Sasha’s noisy chewing. Seconds later, Faye rounded the corner. She held her smartphone aloft, and her blue eyes were bright behind her glasses. “Have you girls seen this?”

  “What?” They all three answered in unison, and even Holden perked up.

  “The latest on those psychos who escaped off the prison bus.” Faye swiped her finger across her phone’s screen and held it aloft so that the other women could see as a video began to play.

  It was only a minute or so long, but by the time it was done, Alicia understood what Sasha had said about feeling cold even when the summer sun was shining. “Injured?” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. “What does that mean?”

  According to the newscaster, one of Riley’s PERT officers had been injured during the chase, and both of the Levinson brothers were still at large.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Faye shrugged and pressed her lips into a thin line. “They can’t catch those two soon enough. Three dead officers – counting the two cops they killed in the first place – and a fourth one hurt? Not very comforting to civilians like us.”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, a shiver raced up and down Alicia’s spine, deepening the uneasiness she felt in every bone, every vertebrae. No, it wasn’t comforting at all. What if the injured officer was Liam? Or Henry or Grey?

  She felt sick to her stomach, and not because of Sasha’s butter-drenched cooking.

  “Hold on,” Faye said, scrolling on her screen. “There’s a breaking update.”

  Alicia leaned forward, an irresistible need to know overriding her dread. “What’s happened?”

  Faye swore. “Someone else is dead.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The sound of tires crunching on gravel snapped Liam out of restless sleep. He rolled and almost fell off the couch, barely catching himself with a hand against the floorboards.

  As he pushed himself back up and sat with his legs hanging over the sofa cushion, everything crashed back down on him. The monumental clusterfuck of a chase, the crack of gunfire and the gut-wrenching sense of disappointment that’d set in before the sound of the single shot had even stopped echoing.

  “Shit,” he announced to his empty house, taking a moment to simply simmer and be pissed at himself before he leapt up and hurried to the window.

  Sure enough, Alicia had just gotten home. She parked her car and stepped out, followed by the little brown and white dog she’d adopted. The mutt leapt around her knees as she strode forward, taking the flight of stairs up to her porch especially slowly.

  God, she was hot. Even in her conservative work clothes – pants and a drape-y white blouse – her figure shone, a beacon of sex appeal that obliterated all traces of grogginess left in his system. Yeah, he was still tired, but he couldn’t have slept if he’d tried. He had to get to her. But first, he had to get dressed.

  His uniform lay strewn across the living room floor, dirty and stained with dry sweat. He’d peeled it off as soon as he’d gotten home from the longest work day of his life, then collapsed on the couch in his underwear. He’d been so tired it’d seemed as good a place as any to sleep, and he’d hoped he’d hear Alicia pulling in when she got home from work.

  Now, he finally retreated to his bedroom, but only to pull on jeans and a t-shirt. Half a minute later, he was shoving his feet into a pair of sneakers that waited by the door.

  She’d already gone inside by the time he reached her house. When he knocked on the front door, her new dog threw a barking fit from the other side.

  “Holden!” Alicia’s voice came loud and clear from inside. “Calm down.”

  When the door swung inward and he got his first close look at her in more than 24 hours, his entire body responded with appreciation, heating from the inside out. Damn, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed that date they’d planned until now.

  “Liam!” She stood in the doorframe, eyes wide, like she was surprised to see him there. “I was going to come over to your place as soon as I got Holden closed up in his kennel.”

  “You were?” Well, that went a long way toward clearing up his fear that she’d be mad at him for missing their date.

  “Yes. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. You’re not upset?”

  “Of course I’m upset – I’ve been watching the news. I’ve been worrying all day that you might be the one who was hurt.”

  He frowned. “You heard about the bus transportation officer who was strangled to death, I assume?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, and then I heard that one of the PERT officers was injured during the pursuit.” She looked him up and down, gaze assessing. “I guess it wasn’t you after all?”

  “Injured? That’s what the news said?”

  She nodded. “What – it’s not true?”

  “Technically it’s true. Henry stepped in a gopher hole while we were chasing one of the Levinsons and sprained his ankle pretty bad. Nobody was stabbed or shot or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  She breathed a long sigh, like a deflating balloon. “And here I’ve been on pins and needles all day, afraid one of you was on death’s doorstep.”

  As he stood on Alicia’s doorstep, the sun beat down on the back of his neck. He was used to the Carolina summers, but after spending hours on end sweating in his gear, he was in no hurry to get drenched again. “Mind if I come in?”

  He still had to apologize for standing her up, after all.

  She stepped aside. “No, not at all. Come on in.”

  “Sorry I missed our date. I would’ve called, but—”

  She laughed; it was a breathy sound that drew his attention to her lips. Shapely and pink, they were lightly glossed and almost impossible to look away from, once he got started thinking of all the places he’d like to feel them on his body.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I was a little confused at first, but then I turned on the TV and realized what was going on. It’s not like I expected you to drop everything and call me to reschedule while you were chasing escaped convicts.”

  He nodded. “Still, it sucks that we missed out.” He couldn’t stop studying those lips, couldn’t stop wondering what might’ve been if their date had actually happened. Visions of her naked silhouette danced through his mind, sending blood and desire flooding below his belt. “I was looking forward to taking you to Wilmington.”

  “And I was looking forward to going. But we can always go on a different day, right?”

  “Sure. Today probably wouldn’t be the best time, but we can go ahead and set a date, if you want.”

  She shook her head. “I get it. I wouldn’t want to go today. Not with those psychos on the loose. I heard about the nurse.”

  In the span of a single heartbeat, Liam’s gut tied itself in about a thousand knots. Yeah, he’d heard about the nurse too, and news of her death had been eating away at him all day. Fact was, he was to blame – at least partially – for her death.

  He’d given the order for Troy Levinson to be shot. And he had been, but the bullet had missed its target.

  Troy Levinson was still very much alive, unlike his latest victim.

  If the shot had been fatal, the nurse would still be alive. But damn it, the bullet hadn’t hit center mass. Instead, it had struck the escapee’s arm. The wound hadn’t been severe enough to stop the escapee from running, but it had been bad enough for him to seek treatment.

  That night, Troy Levinson had followed a registered nurse home from work, assaulted her and demanded emergency medical treatment – presumably upon pain of death. From what investigators had pieced together, the nurse had cleaned and bandaged Troy’s arm with supplies from a first aid kit.

  The murderer had repaid the woman who’d helped him by cutting her throat. She’d been found dead o
n the floor of her own kitchen, in a little house just two miles from the hospital.

  Nobody knew where Troy Levinson was now. Randy Levinson, his brother, was still at large too.

  It was fucked up, and it was Liam’s fault. He hadn’t been the one who’d fired on Troy Levinson, but he’d given the order. The responsibility was his.

  The guy who’d fired was an expert marksman – ex-military. It’d just been shitty luck.

  “Liam?” Alicia was leaning against the kitchen counter. “Is everything okay?”

  He shook his head and told her briefly about his role in the nurse’s death.

  “I don’t see what you could’ve done differently. You had to give the order. Sometimes things just … suck. Fantastically.”

  He couldn’t help it: he snorted. It was almost laughter, but not quite. “You’ve got quite a way with words.”

  She shot him a tiny smile. “That’s just the charm I brought with me from the big city. I’m afraid I’ll never be a Southern Belle, even if I spend the rest of my life in Riley County.”

  “All the same, I hope you do stick around.”

  “Oh?” Her smile grew a little wider.

  “Yeah.” Had he really just gone from talking about the murder he was partially at fault for to flirting?

  There had to be something wrong with him.

  Something like deprivation, or the blue tinge that was likely to permanently affect his balls if he had to spend one more night alone in bed after admiring Alicia’s naked silhouette.

  And looking away wasn’t an option. Not even close.

  “Well, this place is growing on me more every day, despite the ghosts and murderers.”

  “Ghosts?”

  Her cheeks turned a bright shade of pink – he knew he wasn’t just imagining it, because he’d been studying her face ever since he’d walked through the door. It was gorgeous and provided a good distraction from her body, which he had to keep himself from staring at.

  “You know, the spirits at Wisteria,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you bought into all that.” It’d been obvious that her two co-workers had swallowed every Wisteria ghost story hook, line and sinker, but she’d seemed much more bothered by the old plantation’s resident gator.

  “Well, I don’t know if I ever did before I came here, but Wisteria is … convincing.”

  “You saying you’ve actually seen something?”

  “Well…” She looked aside, lips flashing a lopsided smile, making her appear suddenly shy. “Yes. I’ve seen something.” She met his gaze again and shrugged. “What exactly that something was is up for debate.”

  “Okay. So what’s the debate… What happened?” This, he had to hear.

  She took a deep breath and spent the next five minutes telling him stories about seeing someone in her bedroom, hearing someone in her hallway and a strange woman glimpsed on Wisteria’s lawn.

  “Hold on,” he said as red flags popped up every which way in his mind, screaming that something wasn’t right. “You saw and heard someone in your house?”

  The pink tinge hadn’t left her face. Now, it intensified, blazing a trail across her cheeks and even the bridge of her nose. The blush highlighted the barely-there freckles the Carolina sun had spilled across her face, but he couldn’t take time to appreciate the sight. Not after what she’d just told him.

  “Yes. At least, I think I saw someone. And Holden seemed to think he saw something in the hall last night. As for the sounds…” She shrugged. “It really sounded like someone was moving through the hallway.”

  “Were your doors locked?” He couldn’t help glancing toward the front door, a heavy feeling settling in his gut as he imagined a stranger walking through it.

  She nodded. “Of course. I know better than to leave my doors unlocked.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. Locking up is a habit for me, and you know what they say – old habits die hard.”

  Glad as he was to hear that she was in the habit of locking her doors, her proclamation didn’t ease the nervous feeling growing inside him. “What about your locks – did your landlord change them before you moved in?”

  She seemed to think about it for a few moments. “I have no idea, actually.”

  Liam barely resisted the urge to swear. “If he didn’t set you up with new locks, anyone could have a key.” He thought back to the window with the crack in the casing and frowned. Someone who hadn’t even bothered to make such a simple and obvious repair probably hadn’t installed new locks, either. “Jackass.”

  Alicia did a double-take. “Who, me?”

  “No, of course not. Your landlord.”

  She said something about not being sure that he hadn’t changed the locks, but a gut feeling told Liam that they couldn’t take that chance. “Who the hell lets a woman move into a strange new place all alone and doesn’t change the damn locks?”

  “Liam, it’s not like there was an intruder in my house. Whatever I saw – or didn’t see – that morning in my bedroom was gone as soon as I blinked. And I definitely would’ve seen if someone had been in the hall. There was no one.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to argue with her, but on the other hand, he didn’t buy the ridiculous ghost stories people like Wisteria’s owners used to mystify tourists. “Even if there wasn’t anyone, the Levinson brothers were on the loose last night. If they or someone they’re in contact with has a key… Hell, if there’s a spare key out back under a rock or something that you don’t know about, that could endanger your life. Criminals know to look for stuff like that, you know.”

  “I doubt very much that the Levinson brothers have or ever will have a key to this house,” Alicia said, but her little smile had been replaced by a line between her eyes – clearly, she was worried. The realization set something off inside Liam.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said. “Not until your locks are replaced. Especially while the Levinson brothers are at large.”

  Alicia gestured with her hands, looking bemused. “What am I supposed to do – rent myself a beachfront hotel room until all this blows over? I’m on a budget, you know, especially after the expense of moving.”

  “No.” The idea of her holing up at a local hotel didn’t do anything to take the edge off Liam’s worry. “A hotel room isn’t secure, either. You need to stay with someone you trust.”

  Alicia crossed her arms, and a little dent appeared in her lower lip, as if she were biting it. “I guess I could ask Kerry or Sasha to let me stay the night, but I’d feel pretty ridiculous.”

  Visions of the flirtatious blond and serious brunette Liam had met the other day filled his head. That didn’t exactly erase his concerns, either. “You can stay at my place,” he said. “You’ll be safe there.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Alicia raised one eyebrow so high that it nearly disappeared into her hairline. “Your place?”

  Liam held her gaze. What he’d said was bold, but he didn’t care. The guilt over the nurse who’d been slain was bad enough; he couldn’t bear to have Alicia’s blood on his hands too. Dangerous locks aside, he didn’t like the idea of her staying alone with two murderers on the loose in any case. His perma-hard-on for her had nothing to do with it.

  He had to admit though, the idea of her spending the night at his house was satisfying for more than one reason.

  “I know I might seem a little paranoid,” he said, “but give me some credit. I spend just about every day surrounded by these kind of criminals, and I don’t need a news reporter to tell me what they’re capable of. I don’t think there’s a single woman in Riley County who should be staying on her own tonight. Hell, no one should be alone – the Levinson brothers have already killed four people, including three law enforcement officers and an innocent civilian. They’re a danger to everyone and anyone.”

  The dent in Alicia’s lip grew more pronounced. He didn’t feel bad for scaring her, because what he’d said was true – every
word of it.

  “My place is just like yours,” he said. “There’s only one bedroom. You’re welcome to have it though, and I’ll take the couch. You can have the top floor all to yourself.” As much as he liked to imagine them both in his bed – or on his couch, for that matter – together, she needed to know that his priority really was keeping her safe. He wouldn’t lay a finger on her if she didn’t want him to.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I’d feel a little ridiculous imposing on you like that. I’ve been living on my own ever since I graduated from college almost a decade ago, and I’ve always taken care of myself.”

  She looked troubled, and he couldn’t blame her for being reluctant to spend the night in the house of a man she barely knew. At the same time, he knew he’d walk away feeling guilty if he left her alone after dark, knowing there were desperate criminals at large – desperate criminals with a history of brutal violence.

  Quiet filled the kitchen, the only noise coming from the TV in the living room, at the other end of the hall. With neither of them speaking, he could easily hear the news.

  The anchor was reporting on the Levinson brothers’ escape. No surprise there; that was big news, especially in Riley County and the surrounding area. He glanced to the side and saw that Alicia was listening with a nervous look pasted on her pretty face.

  He tipped his head in the direction of the living room. “You want me to go shut that off?”

  She shot him a wide-eyed glance. “No. I want to know what’s going on – I’m just afraid I’ll find out that someone else has been hurt or killed. I mean, after what happened to that nurse…”

  He couldn’t help it – he winced. The mental image of that helpless woman lying on her kitchen floor – imagined, but vivid nonetheless – would likely haunt him for the rest of his life. Maybe if he’d given the order for Troy Levinson to be shot a second sooner or a second later… Had he jumped the gun? Or waited too long?

  “Oh Liam, I’m sorry.” Alicia frowned. “I didn’t mean to bring that up. There’s something you should know about me: I put my foot in my mouth, on occasion.”