by Ladew, Lisa
Unauthorized Obsession
by Lisa Ladew
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Copyright © 2015 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved
Book cover by: http://www.stunningbookcovers.com/
Dedication/Acknowledgements
Thanks to my beta readers: Lisa Howard, Joy Sward, Johanne Poirier, Bridget Koan, Sharlena Biron
and my Advance readers: you guys are the best.
and ALL my readers. Without you, there'd be no point.
Contents
Unauthorized Obsession
Dedication/Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
“You promised,” Joe said, a note of irritation in his voice.
Kara Price sighed and stood up, heading for her uniform, which was laying on a chair in her bedroom. She shook the pants free of the heavy duty belt that held her holster and started to pull them on, balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder.
“I know. I will. I’ll go in to work early and talk to a detective today.”
“Good, I’ll meet you there.”
Kara could hear the relief in her partner’s voice but she chose to ignore it in exactly the same way she was trying to ignore her own anxiety. She'd been desperately hoping to never hear from whoever this man was again, but now that she had, she was handling it. It couldn’t be a big deal. It didn't fit in with her plan for her life. Besides, they didn’t even know if it was her stalker that her neighbor had seen slinking around her driveway at four in the morning. He hadn’t sent her anything for almost five months now - the last thing she had gotten was the boxful of hair. She grimaced just at the thought of the hair. Luckily, it was at the police station in the evidence locker now.
Since she hadn’t gotten anything in so long, she had been hoping he had given up and moved on to someone else. Or maybe died. Or maybe fell in love. She laughed at the thought of a stalker falling in love with someone who actually returned his love and healed him from the inside out.
“Did Duke bark?” Joe asked.
“Nah, but he’s not much of a barker. At least I don't think he barked. I slept straight through it. I never would have known at all if Bea hadn’t left me a voice mail message this morning.”
“She should’ve woken you up.”
“She said she tried. She knocked on my door and called my phone. I’m a heavy sleeper.”
Joe was silent and Kara could physically hear the weight of that silence. He was thinking about all the things that could have happened to her if she had slept through someone breaking into her house. He worried about her too much and she hated that. If he was worried, it was hard for her not to worry.
She fastened her pants, buckled her duty belt, and leaned over to pull her boots on without making a sound. If he could just get out all of his worries, maybe he wouldn't fuss and fret over her all day long and possibly follow her home this evening. The last thing she wanted was a bodyguard. She was a cop. Cops weren't supposed to need bodyguards.
“She should have called the police,” he said sounding surly, like a petulant child who wasn’t getting what he wanted.
“She did, Yeager and Simmons responded. I talked to the desk sergeant already and he said they checked all the doors and the neighborhood and didn’t find anything suspicious.”
Joe stayed quiet for another few moments while Kara finished putting on both of her boots and headed to the kitchen, pressing the phone to her ear to see what he would say next.
Finally he spoke again. “But you’re going to talk to a detective today? Promise?”
“I promise. I’ll be at the station in an hour. You can come with me if you want.”
“I don't need to come with you Kara, but I don't want you to blow this off anymore. A stalker is a big deal and just because our investigation didn’t find anything doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to find. I’ll feel better when we catch this loser and put him in the slammer.”
Kara grinned at his word choice. “And throw away the key?” she teased, glad to make the moment lighter.
“Throwing it away isn’t good enough. We’ll melt the key down to a little metal blob,” Joe growled and Kara laughed.
“What about the cameras?” he asked, his voice serious again.
“I watched the videos already, they don't show anything but Bea knocking on my door and Yeager and Simmons checking around. The guy didn’t get within their range. Which makes me think it was just some random guy walking home or something - nothing to worry about.”
Joe grunted. “Or he knows you installed the cameras, so he was staying away from them.”
Kara didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to think about that.
This time it was Joe who sighed. He knew how resistant she was to taking this guy seriously.
Finally, he relented. "See you in an hour," he said and hung up.
Kara pressed the END CALL button on her phone and put it down on the counter. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside, seeing nothing that jumped out at her and said eat me, but Duke didn’t share her sentiments. Like always, as soon as the noise of the refrigerator door opening made it to his ears, he was up and sprinting into the kitchen to see what he could grab out of the cold depths of delicious food storage before she could get the door closed. Kara heard him coming and swung her body around to get in his way, then slammed the refrigerator door closed. She turned to him, laughing, and knelt to pet his over-sized head. His tongue snuck out and caught her full in the face. Ew, dog slobber.
Duke was her black and tan, four-month-old Rottweiler mixed with Great Dane puppy who desperately needed obedience school. He had been a gift from Joe after she had started rehabilitation on her leg and found herself being uncharacteristically depressed. She thought back to almost five months ago when she had been shot in the leg at a stupid loud party call. The only silver lining she’d ever been able to find to being shot in the leg was that she never would’ve discovered she had a half-sister if it hadn’t happened. She never asked herself very closely if she would choose to be shot in the leg again if it not happening meant that she would never have discovered her relation to Ivy. Was discovering you had a sister worth the pain and suffering that she had gone through? She considered Ivy’s dark eyes, so much like her own, and Ivy’s whip-smart personality and sweet, but sometimes dark disposition. Her father’s face swam in her mind. Her father wh
o was trying so hard to make it up to Ivy that he had never been around during her childhood. He even bought her a car, something that embarrassed Ivy greatly, but also pleased her. He had insisted it was twenty-four years of missed birthday presents all rolled into one.
Kara was happy that she had found a sister, but she was even happier for her father. He seemed overjoyed that he had another child to spoil. Yeah, maybe she would choose being shot in the leg again …
Kara straightened up and felt the twinge in her hip that she always felt these days when she moved that leg. It wasn’t awful, but she did sometimes miss her click-, twinge-, and pain-free body that she had before the shooting. Then again …
She shooed Duke out of the kitchen and put him on the back porch, closing his doggie door so he couldn’t get inside, then went back to the refrigerator. She decided on eggs. She would eat and then give Duke a bit of extra attention before she headed off to work early. Maybe throw his stuffed bear for him a few times in the backyard.
Her neighbor, Bea, would be home in a few hours and would play with him the rest of the evening. Bea loved Duke as much as Kara did and had volunteered to take care of the dog while Kara was at work. They had even installed a doggie door in the fence that divided their two yards so that Duke could go between them whenever he wanted. Bea worked road construction during the day, driving a front-end loader, and was always home in the evening when Kara was at work, so it worked out well for all of them. If Duke was alone for too long he dug holes in the yard. Kara was afraid one of these days he would dig under the fence and escape if he got too bored, but Bea did her best to keep him busy so that didn’t happen. She walked him, played with him, and let him curl up on her couch with her while she watched Lifetime movies and fed him tiny pieces of dog treats.
Kara quickly cooked her eggs and ate them in silence while she thought about what Bea had said she had seen. Bea got up early every morning, before the sun rose, in order to get to work by 5 a.m. She had gone out to get the paper and had startled a man who had been standing in Kara’s driveway, behind her car. The man had been dressed all in black with a dark baseball cap pulled over his face. Bea said she couldn’t see anything of his face at all. She described his body type as tall, almost six-foot, a bit chunky around the waist. Bea had retreated inside to grab her phone and when she came back to the door the man was gone.
As Kara finished her eggs, Duke started to get restless. He didn’t bark, but she could tell by the noises coming from the doggie door that he was chewing on the outside of it. She rolled her eyes and walked outside to see the damage.
“No! Bad dog!” she scolded him, pointing at the deep grooves he had made in the plastic. Duke hung his goofy black head and looked at her sorrowfully. She relented immediately and dropped to the ground to pet him. “Where is your bear, Dukey?” she asked in her best aren’t-you-the-cutest-puppy-in-the-world voice. Duke immediately ran across the yard, sniffing the ground as he went, to find his bear. Kara watched him and was struck by how big he had gotten in such a short amount of time. She’d only had him for six weeks, and when Joe had placed him in her arms, assuring her that he would help take care of him, Duke only weighed about sixteen pounds, which was still huge for a puppy. Now at four months old, he was almost sixty pounds. And there was a good chance he would double that weight before he was done growing. So far, he was still thin and gangly, all legs, like a deer. She knew he would fill out soon and become quite an imposing dog. Daily, she wondered how much he would eat and if she could afford it.
As she watched him flounce back to her, his stuffed bear between his jaws, a sudden realization shot across her brain. Joe had known she was open to getting a dog but never had because of indecision about what breed to get. He knew she didn’t mind big dogs, but he had gone out and gotten her the biggest dog possible – not as a companion, but hoping the dog would protect her. She remembered back to his irritation today when he had thought she was going to try to worm out of going to see a detective again, and realized that protection had probably been his plan all along.
Well the joke was on him. So far, Duke was all clumsy legs, floppy ears and sloppy kisses. He didn’t bark, and he loved everyone he met. No bark and no bite makes for a pretty poor guard dog.
Duke skidded to a stop in front of her and almost knocked her over. She laughed and pulled the stuffed bear from his jaws, then threw it across the yard almost to the fence. As she watched Duke run headlong into the fence she knew she didn’t care if he was a poor guard dog. Like she’d said, she could take care of herself. She hoped.
Chapter 2
Kara opened the back door of the police station and marched inside, relishing the feel of the place. The cold white tile and sterile cream walls sucked the life out of the inside of the building, but the men and women in blue uniforms hurrying down the hallway and seated behind the desks at the computer stations more than made up for the aseptic decor.
Kara greeted everyone she passed with a smile and a kind word. Even the few officers that weren’t her favorite people got the same treatment. It was damned hard work being a cop and every single officer in here deserved her friendship and respect so she always tried to extend it. She ducked behind the sergeant’s desk and found Joe sitting at a computer station. He looked up when she came in, then rode his chair across the room to the printer that was boxed in between radios and emergency satellite phones. He grabbed several sheets of paper off the printer tray and handed them to her with a flourish.
“Here’s all the reports we’ve made so far.”
She bent to kiss him on the cheek. “Thanks.” He smiled at her and she was struck by how handsome his smile made him. He had a mouthful of straight, white teeth, with only one endearingly crooked canine on the left side. He was one of those men with thick dark hair who always looked like he had a 5 o’clock shadow, no matter how often he shaved. His eyes were dark and kind and his smile came easy and often. She always wondered how he seemed to have such bad luck with women. He just wasn’t very good at picking them. His last two girlfriends both had cheated on him and left him devastated. Especially the last one. He’d been thinking about proposing to her when they came upon her on her knees in the parking lot of a bar one night. The man she’d been in front of hadn’t even had a chance to tuck himself back into his pants before she was up and swearing that it wasn’t what it looked like.
Kara shook her head. Those women didn’t know a good thing when they had it. Joe Bristow was one of the kindest, most thoughtful, caring men she had ever met. Plus he was handsome and funny. At least she thought so.
“Where is everybody?” she asked. Usually the room was swamped with uniforms this close to shift change.
“Out on calls. It’s slamming. There is a twelve car accident on the highway and a murder-suicide in the industrial area. Everybody that has come in so far for third watch has been sent out on a call.”
“Damn, I better get upstairs before they send me out too. Any of the recruits show up yet?”
“No. But the assignments are on the board. You’re going to be pissed.”
Kara pursed her lips in irritation. Great. Normally she and Joe rode together, but tonight was the first night that the recruits hit the road. She and Joe were both field training officers which meant they would be split up for the next five months while they each rode with a recruit. She stalked to the board and ran her finger down the row of officers and their assigned recruits. Next to her name it said Seth Howell. She thought hard. Wasn’t that the guy with the red hair and stutter?
Joe was right, she was pissed. She had a standing agreement with the Chief that she would be paired with a female recruit, and that she could cycle through all of the female recruits for at least a day. It was hard work being a cop but it was doubly hard work being a female cop. The public treated you different, the other officers treated you different, even the dispatchers gave you a heavy workload because they didn’t think you would complain like the guys did. She’d seen several female offic
ers who weren’t prepared for this quit before they’d even been on the road for six months. Add to that the fact that even the strongest woman was likely not as strong as most of the men they were going to be arresting and they needed some extra tips and tricks to be sure to come home safe from each shift. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, then there was the emotion. Kara had seen it time and time again, even experienced it herself. Female cops didn’t want to admit or think that they were any different than the male cops, but emotionally, they did react differently, especially during that time of the month when the hormones were running high. But Kara had been around long enough that she knew how to steer the female recruits into reactions that would work best for them, and keep them out of trouble. She thought the department needed as many female cops as possible - one reason was they balanced out the heavy handedness of some of the men - and so she had made it her personal mission to talk to as many of the female recruits and evaluate their street style with an eye towards helping them be as safe and effective as possible.
She gritted her teeth and looked through the rest of the list. Ivy’s name was with Joe and that almost made up for the fact that she had a male recruit. Almost. Ivy would be on third watch with her and Joe would keep her as safe as was possible. Checking the list again, she found Jen’s name: with Yeager. She grunted her disapproval. Yeager was a bit lazy, and definitely heavy-handed. Then she found Ryker. Ryker was with Casey. Casey was OK.
Kara gritted her teeth and glanced at her watch. She only had thirty minutes till her shift started. She’d better get upstairs.
When she turned around Joe was grinning at her. “So was I right? Are you pissed?”
“Yes. I’ll have to have a talk with the new Chief. But at least Ivy’s with you. That makes me happy.”
Joe waggled his eyebrows licentiously. “Yeah, I get to take your little sister out every night.” he said, his voice full of innuendo.
“You better not let her boyfriend hear you say that.”