by D. D. Ayres
CHAPTER SIX
“Let’s haul ass!” James swung open the door and Bogart bounded into the passenger seat of his pickup.
What should have been a mere formality at the sheriff’s office had turned into an all-day marathon of waiting while the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department “checked” their facts in the matter. He suspected this was his chief’s way of expressing disapproval of the manner in which he had rescued Bogart. His unit leader was going to tear him a new one, too, when he got home. That didn’t matter. Bogart was back where he belonged.
As he tightened the seat harness especially designed for dogs, Bogart happily licked his face.
“Oh, now you want to make up.” James playfully pushed his muzzle away. “I don’t forget that easily, you turncoat. You chose the pretty girl over me.”
Bogart tilted his head to the side, black eyes regarding James with soulful interest. This meant, James knew, that Bogart was trying to figure out his partner’s state of mind.
For the year and a half they had been together James had been continually surprised by his dog’s intelligence. Bogart would often sense and size up a situation as quickly as he did, sometimes more quickly. Yet they were still figuring each other out. One veteran of the K-9 force had warned him that Bogart was his “learner dog.”
“It won’t be until you’re working with your second dog that you’ll feel as if you know what you’re doing most of the time.”
James stroked Bogart’s back, an action that was almost second nature when they were together. While he hadn’t liked to hear it, he was beginning to understand what the seasoned handler meant. For instance, he didn’t quite get why Bogart had sided with Shay Appleton, even after he appeared. Was it because he had sensed which of them was more in need of his support?
Or was his partner feeling abandoned and untrusting of the man who’d allowed his at-the-time girlfriend to give him away?
James winced as regret sucker-punched him. What the hell had he been thinking to let Jaylynn into their lives? He’d let her screw up everything.
No, he wasn’t going to think like that. He and Bogart just needed to get back to their routine and they’d both be fine.
James took his dog’s muzzle in his hand and wagged it. “Okay, you win this one. I might even have been tempted if Shay Appleton had looked at me the way she looks at you.” He scratched his partner behind the ears. “But that’s over now. ‘Prince’ has had his day. Bogart is a working stiff. We’re going home where we belong.”
The ringing of his cell phone caused him to pause before climbing into his truck.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, James. How are you, sweetheart?”
“Great. What’s up?”
His mother hesitated and James came instantly alert. His mother wasn’t the type to let small things bother her. Something was wrong. “I just wanted to remind you about Thanksgiving. It’s at my house this year.”
James frowned. “It’s always at your house, Mom. Thirty-something years.”
“That’s just it. Allyson has got it into her head that, as the eldest daughter, she should have it at her house this year. She said something about all the preparations being too much work for me.”
James had never thought about that. “Well, is it, Mom?”
“I’ll have you know I can hoist a twenty-pound turkey in each fist. I don’t go to the Y three times a week for nothing. I can certainly handle a meal for nine adults and two children. Of course, we’ll probably include a few last-minute people, too.”
James smiled. That sounded like Thanksgiving at the Cannon house. The numbers increased as the day drew closer. “So, great. I’ll have my feet under your table on Thanksgiving.”
There was a pause. “You won’t let Allyson change your mind? You know she’s not the best cook but she can be very persuasive about things she wants. She’s got almost three weeks to work on everyone.”
“Sic her sisters on her.”
“Yes. I could do that.” There was that hesitancy again.
“Is there something else on your mind, Mom?”
“I was just wondering how you’re doing, son. Alone.”
James frowned. “What’s with the sad tone, Mom? Given how you felt about Jaylynn, I thought you’d be jumping for joy that I’m single.” Before his mother could respond he glanced at Bogart. “Oh, great news, Mom! Bogart’s turned up. Just this morning.”
“Really? James, that’s just wonderful! A miracle. How did it happen?”
James gave her the quick, clean version of Shay having taken his partner in at a shelter in Raleigh and then him finding out about it. No point in laying out the whole shitty mess that involved Jaylynn’s part in Bogart’s disappearance.
“So, is he all right?”
James scrubbed Bogart hard behind the ears and he barked in response. “Hear that? He’s fine.”
“Okay. You be careful driving back to Charlotte. It’ll be dark out.”
James smiled. He was a cop. He carried a gun. His life involved the daily possibility of danger. Yet his mother worried about him driving a major highway after dark. “Sure thing, Mom. Love you.”
James hung up with a smile on his face. The family always ended every call with “I love you.” Only in his teens did he balk. A guy couldn’t say “love you” to his mother—forget his dad—if anyone else was around. But he’d always known he was loved, and surrounded by enough family to make a man sometimes wish he could hide out from them. But mostly it was just good to know that they would always have his back. Time to go home.
Yet once behind the wheel, James just sat without putting the key in the ignition. He couldn’t forget the look in Shay Appleton’s gaze as they walked away. She looked more than defeated, she looked abandoned.
The setting sun slanted down through the trees in the parking lot, highlighting the warm colors of the autumn leaves. The colors reminded him of her dappled gold and brown eyes. Those eyes held secrets he didn’t begin to understand but they moved him just the same. The look said she didn’t have options, or someone to back her up. And that resurrected an old and painful memory he thought he’d successfully buried.
It happened his first year on the job. A domestic-abuse call from a neighbor who’d heard a woman’s cries coming from the apartment next door.
He’d responded with his senior partner to find a young woman, plain and thin and wearing little more than a man’s shirt, and a bruise the size of a fist that had spread across her cheek to swell her eye shut. She wouldn’t let them in and wouldn’t answer any questions except to say that she had fallen over a toy and struck her face on the coffee table. There was a small child crying in the background. If there was a man behind that door, menacing her, they could only speculate.
His senior officer had tried everything to get her to open that door, cajoling her, offering to settle the crying child, to take her to the emergency room. She wouldn’t budge. But the gaze of fear and pain from her one good eye had branded James.
As they turned away, he’d been hot with frustration, calling his partner unfeeling.
His partner had waited until they were back in their squad car to speak. “You got emotionally involved. That’s not the job. If they don’t ask for our help, we can’t force them. If they say no, then you leave a card and walk away. They aren’t your problem anymore.”
His seasoned partner would repeat this speech several times in other vastly different circumstances his rookie year, but he never completely bought it. It didn’t help that, a few weeks later, they were called back to that same address to find a dead mother and child.
James massaged his brow in weariness. Shay Appleton didn’t want his help. She couldn’t have been clearer about that if she’d told him to eat dirt and die.
“You leave a card and walk away.”
His murmur drew a whimper of response from Bogart.
James shook his head as he gazed at his partner. “You don’t get a vote this time. You’ve bec
ome emotionally involved.”
He started the truck. He had become a good police officer. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to win a spot on the K-9 force after just three years on the force, the minimum. That required the hard-won ability to be unemotional in emotional situations. And to know when to step away from a situation when it didn’t call for his intervention. Shay Appleton wasn’t his problem by any stretch of the imagination. He was out of his jurisdiction. Hell, out of his emotional comfort zone. He had only one obligation at the moment, and that was to get back to Charlotte to square away the details of his actions so that he and Bogart could return to active duty.
Still, the sight of her standing on the porch as they drove away, clutching the railing as though without it she might collapse, made him feel like one cold bastard.
During the course of the day the deputy had offered his opinion of Shay being a “high-strung little gal.” Later the sheriff confided that Ms. Appleton had lived in the cabin for a time during her teens. Later, whenever she came up, which hadn’t been in more than three years, she always made calls about some nuisance or another. One year it was a supposed lurker. Another time a stray rock had been thrown through a window. When pressed for the reason for her fears, he ducked his head, saying only, “She’s city folk now. Crickets and such make ’em skittish.”
James sighed. Law enforcement officers, himself included, were often too jaded to see a stray rock thrown through a window as anything more than mischief. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the sheriff, deputy, and Ms. Appleton weren’t being completely honest with him. Something lay just under the surface of the events of the day that none of them were willing to discuss.
Not that they should confide in him. After all, he had been the one to wage war on her doorstep. Besides, he had his own secret. He hadn’t told them about the stalker of the night before.
Because he didn’t want to be further involved.
James’s conscience jumped up to body-slam him. Ms. Appleton had handled his intrusion with more grace and courage than many a suspect he’d arrested. She didn’t seem the victim type. Nothing like that worn-out young mother, in too deep to crawl back to life before it was too late. Yet her wary gaze held the suspicion of someone who had been through something hard, and no longer trusted the world to be on her side. Did it have something to do with the man in the truck?
Something nudged the back of his mind. The fact that she’d seemed prepared for trouble. If not from him, then from something equally unpleasant. Yet that, too, was none of his business. She had Deputy Ward to watch over her.
Life was tough. He had his own problems.
He rolled down the windows for a breath of country air, put his truck in gear, and headed down the rural lane that led back past the lake to reach the highway. He didn’t need to pass Shay Appleton’s cabin to do that. He could have taken the shorter route.
Ten minutes later, when the cabin came into view through the trees, he could have swerved right and hit the tarmac and headed toward Interstate 85 and home. Instead, he stepped on the brake to roll past at a speed that barely registered on his odometer.
There was a truck in the yard. It looked suspiciously like the one that had been parked at the edge of the woods the night before. Of course, it might be coincidence, or his imagination working overtime. Or a maintenance man, or a—
Bogart suddenly lunged forward in his harness; his ears pricked forward, and from deep within his chest came a low guttural growl. He’d caught a scent.
“Shit!” James turned into her drive. Bogart on alert was good enough probable cause for him.
* * *
The door was ajar, wide enough for James to see inside before he even reached the porch. In seconds, he took in every pertinent detail.
A tall man in jeans and a blazer stood facing the far wall, legs apart as he leaned forward. Shay was behind him, forced tightly against the wall by his body. James’s pulse ticked up at the sight. Was this a threat, or a sexual encounter he was about to disturb?
The man was speaking, his voice so low James couldn’t pick out words. Shay suddenly turned her head away as if to avoid looking at him.
James saw her expression. It was one of a small animal cornered by a larger one. Before James could react, the man seized her shoulders and her head snapped back against the wall with a sickening thud. “You stupid bitch!”
James tensed, equally angry and relieved. The man’s threat gave him every right to enter without invitation.
He released Bogart’s leash and said firmly, “Geh weiter.”
Bogart shot through the opening, barking in alarm.
The sounds of an angry dog stopped the man from shaking Shay. He glanced around and into the jaws of a snarling Belgian Malinois.
He whipped his head back to Shay. “You said your dog wasn’t here.”
Without seeking to explain Prince’s appearance, Shay seized the moment to try to free herself. “Let go of me, Eric. If you don’t, he’ll tear you to pieces. I swear.”
“Shit!” Eric shoved her away, freeing her.
James pushed the front door wide, his gaze fanning the perimeter of the room as he entered. Satisfied no one else was present, he gave his partner a new command. “Pass auf!”
Ordered to guard the man, Bogart moved in, head low.
James watched his canine doing his job. Bogart was getting details he couldn’t sense, like the odor of pheromones flooding off the pair. The man would be running high, giving off pheromones of an aggressor. Shay would be shedding fear. The man began backing slowly away.
“I’d stand still, if I were you.” James kept his voice calm though his own emotions were running high.
The man stilled, eyeing the dog warily as Bogart sniffed his pants leg. When he gave a soft growl and bared rows of flesh-tearing teeth, the man involuntarily stepped back in alarm. “Call him off!”
James waited a beat, just to make certain the threat had been delivered and received, before giving the command to back off. “Fuss!”
Instantly obedient, Bogart trotted back over to James.
“Good evening, Ms. Appleton.” He spoke to Shay as a courtesy. His attention was focused totally on the man beside her.
“What is this?” Eric’s head swung from Shay to James. “Who the fuck are you?”
James braced his legs apart, arms slightly flexed. “I’m the police. Who the fuck are you?”
Eric shifted toward Shay. “You tell him.”
Shay shook her head.
James kept his gaze on Shay’s guest. “Step away from Ms. Appleton. Now.” When the man had moved grudgingly a couple of feet away, James spoke again. “I’m going to ask you one more time, nicely, who are you?”
The man smiled a professional’s smile, all charm and confidence-building. “I’m a friend of Shay’s.”
That brought a sound of derision from Shay as she rubbed her upper arms. “We’re not friends, Eric.”
James shifted his weight. “Want to try again?
The man’s smile dissolved. Obviously, charm had a short half-life with this guy. “I don’t have to answer your questions. I haven’t done anything wrong. She let me in. Tell him, Shay.”
“Why do you keep telling Ms. Appleton what to say?” James cocked an eyebrow. “Afraid she might say something not so flattering about you?”
The man’s gaze narrowed as it moved from James to Shay, and then the dog. “What’s going on here?” He looked back at Shay. “Is this guy really a cop? He’s not in uniform.”
James moved back the edge of his camo jacket to reveal his badge, hung on his belt, and then the gun on his hip. The man’s demeanor changed from intimidating to nervous. A muscle flexed just below his left eye while, at his sides, his hands began flexing and unflexing. Maybe he was the kind of jerk who saved his rage for women.
“Is that your truck outside?”
The guy’s gaze shifted toward the door. “Why?”
James reached into his pocket and
retrieved his police notebook. He thumbed through it until he found what he was looking for. “I’ve got a partial of a license plate and a description of a vehicle just like the one you’re driving. It was reported as a prowler in this neighborhood last night.”
The man sucked in a breath and turned to Shay. “Unbelievable!”
James let a smile ease into his features. He had the bastard. “Ms. Appleton didn’t make the complaint. Added to that, I just witnessed you shaking her in a manner that could constitute assault. I need to see some ID, Mr.—”
The man let out a heavy sigh as he reached for his wallet. “Eric Coates.”
James took his time as he made a note of the information on the license, letting the man stew as he pondered what he was going to do next. So far, Shay had contributed four words to the conversation. He was going to have to get rid of the guy to get her side of the story.
When he raised his gaze from his notepad he was pleased to see a sheen of sweat had formed on Eric’s upper lip. Definitely nervous. “You need to know I can arrest you right now for harassment and assault.” He waited a beat to allow the man time to absorb his situation. “If Ms. Appleton wants to press charges, I’ll be happy to add a laundry list of other offenses.”
Eric’s head swiveled toward Shay. “You can’t do that. Not if—” He seemed to catch himself before he finished.
James glanced at her. “Shay?”
She offered a stiff lift of one shoulder. “Stay away from me, Eric.” She looked at James, a small frown pinching her brows together. “No charges.”
James didn’t take his eyes off Coates. “But Shay—”
“I said no charges.”
James suppressed his annoyance with her decision while noting that relief flooded Coates’s expression. “In that case, I’m issuing you a citation.” He signed a sheet and ripped it off his pad and held it out.
Looking smug, Eric took it, then turned to Shay. “Remember what I said. We’ll talk later.”
“I wouldn’t advise that.” James came up behind Eric, close enough to make his physical presence a direct threat. “On a personal level I’m telling you to leave Ms. Appleton alone. Permanently.”