Armed With Steele

by Kyra Jacobs

  “And besides,” she said, opening a cupboard overhead to put the dish she’d just dried away, “he was a hundred times better than that Neil guy.”

  I couldn’t argue with her there. Neil had been a longhaired, tattoo-covered, impromptu blind date lined up by Grace right after graduation. He and Grace’s date played in a local heavy-metal band. She’d seen the light with her lackluster date within a week. It took me a few more months to get the wake up call. Literally. He’d called early one morning, in between a gig and his day-job at Burger Heaven, giving me the “it’s not you, it’s me” spiel. For once in my life, I was actually relieved to hear those words.

  “So,” my mother said, interrupting my flashback, “tell me about this new guy.”

  Bulging biceps, brilliant blue eyes, thick, dark hair. “There’s not much to tell, really.” I handed her the sparkling clean casserole dish. “No one you know. Met him last week. Lives nearby.”

  “Mmm, hmm. And what does he do?”

  “He’s a cop.” The story rolled effortlessly off my tongue. I pictured Jiminy Cricket on my opposite shoulder, telling me I was surely going to hell.

  “A police officer?” She stopped drying and stared at me. Searched my face for any hint of bullshit. But I had my game face on today. The same one I’d perfected in high school under this very roof. “Name?”

  “Officer Steele.”

  “That’s what you call him when you go out,” she said flatly. “Officer Steele.”

  “No,” I said, scrambling to remember his first name. Damn, what was it? It’d been on his business card. Thankfully, it popped into my head a second later. “I call him Nathan. But to everyone else, he’s Officer Steele.”

  “Nathan,” she said, trying it out for herself. “Sounds like a wholesome young man. He is young, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, Mom.” I chuckled. “It’s not like I hooked up with some crusty old, donut-loving cop or anything. I think he’s around my age.”

  Her left eyebrow hiked up a notch. “You don’t know?”

  “Mother!” I feigned shock. “Why is it that men aren’t supposed to ask women their ages, but you think it’s okay for me to ask him about his?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Nope. Does that bother you?” I handed her a clean dinner plate and worked to suppress a smirk.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, it does. I don’t want my young, innocent, little—”

  “Okay, stop.” I reached for a nearby towel and turned to face her. “I’m not some clueless teenager anymore, Mom. I run my own business, pay my own rent.”

  I found strength in those words—a strength that had abandoned me this past week.

  “And if I can do all of that, then I ought to be capable of selecting a decent guy to date.”

  A medley of looks crossed my mother’s face—surprise, then indignation, and finally defeat. “You’re right, dear. But I’ll always worry about you. It’s what mothers do.”

  I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze.

  “I’m not asking you to stop caring, Mom,” I said, my voice softer now as I drew back and met her watery gaze with my own. “I’m just asking you to trust me.”

  Even as I stand here, lying through my teeth about an imaginary boyfriend, I thought with a twinge of guilt.

  She placed a hand on my cheek. “Alright, dear. I’ll try.”

  * * * *

  By the time I reached the alley behind our house, it was well past dark. I carefully navigated the usual obstacle course of trashcans and lazy parking jobs as best I could, then hit my garage door opener button as our lot came into view. The door began its ascent, and I watched as the light inside flickered on and then promptly died.

  Just my luck. I pulled inside, guided only by my car’s headlights, and came to a stop. Our tiny garage was usually a tight fit. But with Grace’s car being God-knows-where the past week, I had a little more room to maneuver. A good thing, since I couldn’t see where the heck I was going.

  I shut off the ignition, grabbed my purse and got out of the car. Its interior light faded to black, and I was left to fumble for the back door in total darkness. I debated going inside to get a flashlight and replacement bulb, then decided it might be best to wait until morning when I could actually see what I was doing.

  Preoccupied with the annoyance of my bad luck, I stepped out from the garage and pulled the door shut behind me. The lighting outside the garage wasn’t much better, with our backyard lit only by the hanging bug lights from the neighbor’s house. I rubbed at my eyes, and turned to start the short journey up the path leading from the garage to our back door.

  A hand reached out and grabbed my arm. I sucked in a breath to scream, but a second hand flew up to my face and clamped my mouth shut. I tried to break free, but it was no use. Whoever it was had me easily out-muscled.

  I was trapped.

  Chapter 6

  I planted a heel in my assailant’s shin and heard him bite back a howl. He pulled me in tighter against him and hissed into my ear, “Damn it, it’s me—Officer Steele. Stop…fighting…me…”

  I froze. Struggled to make sense of the situation.

  He mistook my paralysis for compliance. “Thank you. Now listen, I’ll explain everything in a minute, but I need you to stay quiet. If I take my hand away from your mouth, do you promise not to scream?”

  The more he spoke, the more convinced I was that the voice did in fact belong to Officer Steele. I nodded, eager for his explanation. After nearly giving me a heart attack, it’d better be a good one.

  He slowly withdrew his hand from my mouth. His grip on my arm lightened as well, but he didn’t release me. I suddenly became very aware of the warm breath on my neck and firm chest pressed into my back. But even that wasn’t enough to allay my extreme irritation at being ambushed in my own yard.

  I turned my head toward him and whispered, “You know, usually our visitors just ring the doorbell.”

  “Or climb in through your open windows,” he whispered back.

  “Huh?” My gaze shot to our back kitchen window. Grace’s yellow gingham curtains rustled in the autumn breeze. “Shit! I knew I forgot to do something before I left.”

  “Maybe next time you could spring for a radio advertisement. Get a real thief to come by instead of the kid that’s prowling around in there now.”

  I didn’t appreciate his tone. Or his accusation. I yanked my arm free from his grip and whirled around. Would have been nose to nose with him if he hadn’t been several inches taller than me. “And how do you know someone’s in there?”

  Even in the dark, his brilliant blue eyes pierced right through me. “Because I stopped by to talk about the Sullivan case. You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I checked to see if you were out back.”

  He’d come to talk about Grace? At this time of night? The fact that he was sans uniform had me confused. Not that I minded the view—Officer Steele managed to make even casual street clothes look sexy as hell.

  “I didn’t see you back here,” he continued, his eyes moving to the window. “But as I turned to walk back to my car, I spotted some scraggly kid shimmying through your kitchen window. Your open kitchen window.” His eyes returned to mine. Narrowed.

  “Yeah, we already went over that.” I rubbed my arm, still smarting from his earlier grip. “So…what do we do now?”

  “I already called it in, and my backup should be here any minute. Until then, you stay here and keep an eye on the side door. I need to move in closer to block his escape route—we don’t want him sneaking off with your possessions. If you see that door open,” he said, pointing toward it, “you yell ‘door!’ as loud as you can. Got it?”

  “Why ‘door’? Why not ‘fire!’ or ‘red alert’ or—”

  “You gonna follow my directions or not?” he growled.

  I put my hands up in defeat and nodded like a bobble head doll. Officer Steele took a step away from me, leaving me unprotected. I felt sc
ared, vulnerable. Without thinking, I reached out and snagged his arm. “But what if he comes after the crazy lady yelling ‘door’?” I whispered.

  He looked back and grinned. “Then you scream at the top of your lungs and run like hell.”

  Not exactly the answer I’d hoped for. “Great. Just promise not to shoot me.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a million times. We’ll have him caught in no time.”

  I unclenched my hand from his arm and remained at my post, watching helplessly as Officer Steele slunk stealthily across my back yard. He paused halfway to his post and glanced back at me. I gave him a shaky thumbs-up and tried not to look as terrified as I felt.

  He’d just made his way to the other side of the kitchen window when I saw movement near the front of the house from the corner of my eye. I inhaled, ready to yell “door!”, then realized it was his police reinforcement making their way up our front walk.

  Officer Steele rose up upon hearing my exaggerated intake of air. I quickly gave him the universal incomplete pass signal, then tilted my head in the direction of the front porch. He nodded and lowered himself back into position.

  A moment later the uniformed officer knocked on my front door. The noise startled our burglar, and the muffled sound of shattering glass directly followed. My hands balled into fists as I pictured the thieving idiot inside bumping into my favorite flower vase. A twisted part of me hoped he would slip and end up with an ass full of glass shards.

  The officer on the front porch knocked again. “Police! Open up!”

  Our kitchen curtains fluttered, then parted.

  “I’m going to give you to the count of five!” the officer shouted from the porch. “One! Two!”

  A bag of my possessions dropped from the open window.

  “Three!”

  One leg poked through the open window, then another.

  “Four!”

  The young man came into full view now as he scrambled out the window and held tight to its frame.

  “Five!”

  The burglar let go of the window ledge, dropped to the ground, and turned to collect his bag of goodies. My goodies.

  Officer Steele tripped the unsuspecting kid with a quick sweep of his foot, and had him pinned to the ground a second later. “Here, let me help you with that.”

  “Hey!” the kid yelled in surprise. “Get…off me!”

  “I’ll take it from here, Nate.” I turned to see the uniformed officer enter the backyard, handcuffs bared. “Nice work.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you, Frank. And the counting routine? Loved it.”

  “Yeah?” he said, cuffing the kid. “Just added that this week.”

  I stepped out from the shadows and into a small patch of light.

  Officer Steele came to stand beside me, the bag of my nearly-stolen belongings in hand. “You alright?”

  I nodded in silence, my eyes focused on the young thief. His head hung in defeat. It was sad, really, that he’d resorted to this. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “Would you like to press charges, Miss?”

  I shifted my gaze to Officer Frank. “And if I don’t?”

  “I take him down to the station, lecture him for a while, then have his parents come pick him up.”

  Officer Steele handed me my belongings. I peered inside the bag at his pitiful booty—some mail-order costume jewelry and a handful of DVDs. “Sounds like enough of a punishment to me.”

  “It’s not like she had anything good in there, anyways.”

  I looked up in surprise, and took a step forward. “Why you little—”

  “Easy there, Jessica,” Officer Steele said, holding me back. “We saved your things. Let’s not turn this into an aggravated battery case.”

  I shook free from his grasp and glared at the kid as Officer Frank led him away. When I turned back around, Officer Steele gave me an apprising look. “What?”

  “Remind me not to piss you off.”

  I narrowed my eyes, in no mood to be teased. “Remind me again why you’re here?”

  “I told you—to discuss the Sullivan case. And besides, I just caught your burglar. Don’t I at least get a ‘thank you’ or something?”

  “Oh. Right.” I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and ate some crow. “Thank you…for coming to my rescue.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Um, would you like to come in?” I hitched a thumb toward the door. “I might even have some leftover dessert in there somewhere.”

  He grinned, eyes shining in the dim light. “Well now, how could I possibly turn down an offer like that?”

  * * * *

  “Be careful, it’s still hot. “

  I set a steaming bowl of apple crisp on the table in front of him, then walked around and settled into an empty chair. He held out for all of five seconds before caving to his sweet tooth.

  “Wow,” he said, then reached for his glass of milk and took a quick drink. “I thought those cookies of yours were pretty good. But this? Damn, you can cook.”

  I shook my head. “Bake.”

  “What?”

  “I can bake. I’m no good at preparing actual meals, but desserts I can do.”

  “Well, whatever you call this, it’s delicious.”

  I appreciated the compliment, but that wasn’t why I’d invited him in. I wanted an update on Grace’s accident investigation. Tempted as I was to bring it up, though, I let him finish his dessert uninterrupted. After all, he had just come to my rescue.

  Besides, it wasn’t often—hell, it wasn’t ever—that I had a man this handsome all to myself in the kitchen. He got to eat. I got to enjoy the view.

  He inhaled the last bite, and I piped back up. “So, did you come here to con me into feeding you again, or did you really want to talk about the accident?”

  “I came by to talk about the case. Although, now that I know you’re the neighborhood Martha Stewart, I might have to stop by for leftovers more often.” He chugged the last of his milk and set the glass down with a satisfied, “Ahh.”

  “Hmm. Well, if you promise not to lurk in our shrubs and scare the crap out of me every time I come home, I might consider saving some for you from time to time.”

  He chuckled. “I promise. But in all seriousness…” He pointed to the now-closed kitchen window. “You really need to do a better job of protecting yourself.”

  “Okay, Mr. Friendly Neighborhood Police Officer, we—”

  “Nate. Please, when the uniform’s off, I prefer to just go by Nate.”

  “Alright then, Nate,” I said, and rather enjoyed how his name rolled off my tongue. “We’ve already been through the ‘Jessica is a dumbass and needs to learn how to lock her windows and doors better’ lecture. It won’t happen again, so let’s move on.” I leaned forward in my seat. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  His gaze locked on mine. “They closed the Sullivan case yesterday.”

  All that waiting while he ate just so he could serve me up a big dish of disappointment? Thanks for nothing. “I thought you were closing it after we talked last weekend.”

  “That’s what I thought they’d planned to do. But I shared your information with the lead detective on Monday, and we kicked your theory around. About there being another car. Maybe something linked to Maxwell Office Solutions.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Even got some buy-in from his Sergeant. But then we hit a roadblock. One we can’t seem to get around.”

  “Which is?”

  Nate’s eyes darkened. “It’s an election year.”

  “So? What, are the owners of Maxwell some big campaign contributors or something?”

  “Bingo.”

  My jaw dropped open. “Seriously? We’re being overridden by small town politics?”

  He leaned back in his seat. “On the books? Yes, we’ve been overridden.”

  “On the books?” I tipped my head to the side. “What other option do we have?”

  “
That’s what I came here to talk to you about. I hate being told to walk away from this case, especially when someone might be getting away with attempted murder. So I have another idea. One that’s a little less orthodox.” His eyes now glowed with a sense of purpose, determination.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think we should re-open the case.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Not the department. You and me. We,” he said, motioning back and forth from me to him, “should reopen the case.”

  “I…don’t get it.”

  Nate leaned forward, making me an unwilling captive to his intense gaze. “Jessica, how badly do you want to know what really happened to Grace?”

  I wanted to look away, to avoid whatever trap he was setting. But I couldn’t. “More than words can describe.”

  His voice took on a darker edge. “And how far would you be willing to go to find those answers?”

  “Whatever it takes,” I whispered, my mouth working in conjunction with my heart. Which, unfortunately, was running about a millisecond faster than my brain.

  “That’s what I was counting on.” He leaned closer and unleashed the full power of those brilliant blues on me. “How would you feel about going undercover to help me get those answers?”

  And there it was. Only, that wasn’t some little mousetrap he’d set for me—it was a freaking bear trap! “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Undercover?” I leaned back. “Seriously? I don’t know the first thing about working undercover.”

  “You don’t have to. All you need to do is apply for Grace’s old job at Maxwell—I can teach you the rest.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  “Sometimes the legal system breaks down,” he said, his gaze working to reclaim mine. “This is one of those times. But if we team up, we can get you your answers. The ones I know you desperately want. All we have to do think outside the box.”

  “No, we don’t.” I got up and walked over to the counter. Needed to put some space between us so I could think more clearly. “Look, Sherlock, in case you forgot, I already have a job. I’m a web designer—I don’t do police work, and I sure as hell don’t know anything about being an administrative assistant at a large company.”