The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  The Cisco Kid was disarmed and lying unconscious on the floor.

  No one had even seen Sedge move.

  “Oh, man,” Alex Parthen breathed, “that was so cool.”

  “Restate your position, Detective Waterson,” a voice crackled from the radio. “Your last transmission was –”

  Jacken grabbed the two-way out of Waterson’s hand and then, pop, one quick hard squeeze sent springs, buttons, and internal hardware flying in all directions.

  A hammer would’ve normally been needed to achieve the same results, but Waterson didn’t so much as blink an eyelash. Damned impressive. Jacken almost hated to mess the guy up now. Almost …. Lightning quick, he grabbed Waterson by the throat and hauled the man off the floor, feet dangling.

  “Oh, my God,” Toni gasped. “Please, don’t hurt him.”

  Waterson strained bugged-out eyes in Toni’s direction. “I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  “No,” Toni said, “really, it’s not what you –”

  But the cop had already turned his attention back to Jacken.

  Jacken had to hand it to Waterson, the man was a cool cucumber. Even with a roadway of veins sticking out along his forehead, the detective managed to look more peeved off than scared.

  “I’m going to … kill you … for hurting her.”

  Jacken snorted. “That’s some piss-poor detective work, asswipe. Last thing anyone’s going to do is hurt her.”

  “Just let him go,” Toni pleaded, “please.”

  Jacken cut her a look. “You want me to tuck him night-night into bed and give him a lollipop, too?” What was Toni thinking? Waterson wanted to take them all to jail.

  Waterson bared his teeth in a grimace of pain. “This isn’t … over between us.”

  “It is for me, Hoss.” Jacken lowered Waterson into striking range then smashed a fist into the side of the man’s head.

  Toni watched Waterson drop to the floor, stared at the cop for a count of two, then swung her eyes back up to Jacken. “Are you crazy? You just made an enemy out of the SDPD?”

  “Do you think I really give a –?” Jacken spun around, bringing his fists up as the conference room door crashed open.

  Kimberly stumbled inside. “Sedge! God, where’s Sedge?”

  “I’m here.” Sedge leapt forward, his brow creased with concern. “What’s going on, Berly?”

  She flew into his arms. “I want to go home! Please! Take me back to Ţărână right now!”

  Sedge’s mouth dropped open. The man probably would’ve been more prepared for his wife to ask for a colonoscopy “since we’re here at a hospital, anyway,” than say that.

  “Let’s all get the hell out of here,” Jacken ordered, gesturing the husbands to gather their wives, “right now.”

  * * *

  Earlier….

  Kimberly cut through the ER and headed into the small offshoot room full of the vending machines, scanning the choices. Maybe she’d get a granola bar, too. It was, after all, really morning time to her body. Digging in her pocket, she found a dollar’s worth of change and plunked the quarters into the coffee machine, one at a time. A cup dropped down, and Kimberly absently watched the long stream of steamy brown liquid squirt into the cup.

  A couple of young women ducked into the vending machine room.

  “I can’t believe they brought him to this hospital,” the redhead tittered. “Oh, Gawd, the ambulance is just pulling up.”

  “He’s soooo amazing,” the brunette cooed in agreement. “In a sec we’re going to get to see him close up. I can’t wait!”

  Well, this was interesting. Had Justin Bieber hurt himself getting yet another tattoo? Kimberly grabbed her coffee cup and drew up to the young women, peering over their shoulders. “Who’s coming in?”

  The redhead glanced at her. “Only Seattle’s best running back ever.”

  Kimberly’s hand jerked into a clamp around her coffee cup. Seattle’s ….

  “Tim Armbruster,” the brunette provided.

  The name descended on Kimberly like the shock of a misfiring gun, like a hand blown off, too absolute and horrific to be believed.

  “Weren’t you watching the game tonight?” the redhead babbled on. “He hurt his –”

  Kimberly’s lips parted and her lungs worked in two short pants before the rest of the oxygen clogged deep in her chest.

  “ – knee, and –”

  “OMG,” the brunette squealed. “There he is!”

  The ER’s sliding glass doors swished open and a gurney was pushed in holding a tall, muscular man.

  Yes, there he was. Same dark brown hair and eyes, same square jaw, same athletically perfect body.

  Every muscle in Kimberly’s body locked up – except for the hand holding her coffee. That began to shake violently, splattering hot coffee onto her fingers. Her brain acknowledged the pain, the blistering of her skin, but she couldn’t move. She was stuck, helpless. Powerless. Weak. Vulnerable. Suicidal. Her vision swam as she was thrust back to her college years, some of Tim’s choicer comments rampaging through her mind as clear and hurtful as if he were hurling them at her right now.

  Will you shut up, if I wanted the opinion of a blonde ditz, I’d ask for it.

  And you call yourself a PoliSci major …? Christ, that was the stupidest fucking opinion ever.

  Do you think it’d be too much to ask for you to actually move the next time we screw, or is it impossible for you to do anything right?

  You’re such a little whore … you wanna go bone that guy, is that why you’re looking at him?

  Bile seared up the back of her throat. And then there was the worst memory of them all … the blood gushing down her thighs.

  The Tim on the gurney turned his head toward the vending machine area, and Kimberly slammed back against the wall to hide, her coffee cup slipping from her numb fingers. It hit the floor flat on its bottom and geysered up hot liquid, spraying across the carpet and onto the redhead’s pants.

  “Hey! What the –?!” The redhead broke off. “Whoa, lady, are you okay?”

  Kimberly couldn’t answer. Tears gushed silently and uncontrollably down her face. Her limbs gave way, dumping her onto her butt so hard her teeth clacked together.

  “Oh, my God!” The redhead whirled on the brunette. “Get a doctor!”

  Kimberly’s head lolled to one side. She saw Tim disappear from the ER waiting room into the treatment area, and the breath she’d been holding ripped out of her. She sucked in another breath like a drowning woman, and another. “I need Sedge,” she croaked. Her husband wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. Never, never, never ….

  The redhead bent over her, her expression scrunched with confusion. “Doctor who?”

  Exhaling a pained breath, Kimberly rolled onto her hands and knees, shook her head to clear it, then hefted herself to her feet and ran unsteadily for the elevator.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kimberly slumped on her living room couch, sniffling wetly as she peered through the arched doorway of the foyer into the kitchen.

  Her husband was filling a plastic bag with ice.

  “The house is a w-wreck,” she said through chattering teeth. She wasn’t crying anymore, but had a serious case of the shakes.

  “Yeah, sorry.” Sedge crossed into the living room. “I’m not so great at picking up after myself in the first place, and the week you were gone everything just sort of went to hell.” He sat down next to her. “Or I did.” Taking her burned hand in his, he gently pressed the bag of ice on it. “That okay?”

  Nothing was okay. But she nodded.

  “So you did this with hot coffee?”

  “Yes. It was an accident.”

  “Did someone bump into you?”

  “No. I just spilled it.”

  “’Cause, yeah ….” He cleared his throat. “You came barreling into that hospital conference room looking really upset.” He lifted the ice off for a count of three, then replaced it. “You were really upset.”

 
; “Well, I’d just burned myself.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “C’mon, Kimberly. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I mean, you were begging to come back to Ţărână, for God’s sake.” He peeked briefly under the ice bag to check her hand. “You can’t just leave me hanging about what caused that. Something happened.”

  She glanced aside, imagining Sedge’s expression if she confessed the details of her relationship with Tim. Humiliation seared her cheeks. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Sedge took the ice pack off her hand and set it on the coffee table. “This burn is going to need some ointment.” He disappeared into the downstairs bathroom, then came back carrying a small tube like toothpaste. “If the roles were reversed, you’d want me to tell you what had happened, wouldn’t you?”

  Oh, dirty pool. “Just leave it alone, Sedge. And don’t give me one of your puppy dog looks.”

  He unscrewed the top off the tube. “Did you see your parents while you were topside?”

  Her eyes followed his movements as he set the cap on the coffee table next to the ice.

  “Were they mean to you?” He squeezed white, creamy ointment onto his index finger. “I know they can be sometimes.”

  Her upper lip beaded with sweat. The feel of a python wrapping around her throat, slowly strangling her, pushed tears into her eyes.

  Sedge gently took her burned hand again. “Did you run into somebody you used to know, some bitch from school, maybe?” He smoothed the ointment onto her burns so carefully that the tears in her eyes gathered along her lower lashes.

  Where were you my whole life? She gulped a breath. Why couldn’t I have found you sooner?

  “Maybe some guy you used to date? You and he had a bad break up that –”

  Her hand jerked so hard the spasm made Sedge smear ointment along her thumb. He whipped his gaze up to her face, his lips parting as he watched tear droplets roll off her lashes and onto her cheeks like an avalanche of crystal pebbles.

  “Oh, shit,” he hissed. “It was a guy.”

  She wrenched her hand away from him. “Leave me alone, Sedge.” She slammed to her feet and stormed into the kitchen.

  He trailed after her.

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it, and I mean it!”

  “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Well, for your information, I don’t need your help.” She skirted around the kitchen island and hauled open a cupboard. “I’m just fine, thank you very much.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  She grabbed a water glass and headed for the sink.

  “This is about more than just a bad breakup, isn’t it? I can see it on your face.”

  Her fingers convulsed. The glass fell and shattered on the kitchen floor. “Fuck!”

  “Oh, Jesus. Kimberly –”

  She dashed toward the other side of the kitchen island, aiming for the stairs. She was going to bed and wouldn’t get up for a week!

  “Damn it, would you quit running away.” Sedge reached out to take her arm, moving with the same swift, aggressive grace he used when bearing down on an Om Rău.

  His body heat hit her, tripping panic buttons in her brain. Sedge himself disappeared; she could only see a wide, looming chest coming at her, large flexed biceps. She screamed and flinched away.

  Sedge froze with his arm outstretched, her scream echoing away into nothing but the sound of her heavy breathing. Several weighted seconds stalked past. He dropped his hand, very slowly, dawning realization spreading over his face. “The guy hurt you.”

  She gave her head a violent shake. “No,” she rasped out. “Don’t make me tell you about this. I can’t.”

  Emotion simmered off him. “I’m your husband, Kimberly. This is something I need to know.”

  A lump grew in her throat like a malignancy. “You won’t l-love me anymore.” There it was! Out loud! “You’ll think I was weak for letting it happen.” She was weak!

  “No way,” Sedge came back instantly. “No fucking way. That’s impossible.”

  She just stood there, acid in her throat.

  “Tell me.” Sedge stepped up to her.

  “Don’t –” Her chest clutched painfully, memories smashing through her mind like falling boulders.

  “I promise I won’t –”

  “Stop it!” she cried. “Stop talking to me! Don’t … don’t even look at me!” She smashed her eyes shut and turned aside. “I don’t want you to, do you hear!”

  “Okay.” She heard him back off. “Okay.”

  Tears seeped out from under her lashes. Her lungs compressed and her heart was beating so fast it felt like it might fly out of her chest. After a long moment, she heard Sedge pull out a kitchen chair. She opened her eyes to see what he was doing.

  He met her gaze somberly. “I’m going to sit at this table and not move, all right.” He sat. “See? And” – he transferred the salt shaker from the middle of the table to a spot right in front of him – “I’m going to stare at this the whole time you talk. I won’t look at you, like you asked.” He settled his hands on either side of the salt shaker and gazed steadily at it. He waited, but when she didn’t say anything, he asked quietly, “So will you tell me what happened?”

  She swiped at her eyes with her fist and drew in a fractured breath. Her stomach was in a macramé of knots and the hot taste of vomit sat at the back of her tongue, but somehow she had to force her way through this. Because Sedge was right; he was her husband and deserved to know this.

  “I saw an ex-boyfriend in the ER tonight at Scripps,” she admitted miserably.

  “All right.” A ripple of tension passed through Sedge, but he did a pretty good job of not letting much of it show. “And he … he was the one who used to hurt you?”

  “It didn’t start out like that,” she came back defensively. “He was very charming and charismatic, you know, and I was … so young. I was still in college when we first met and easily swept off my feet by his good looks and stardom.” She hesitated, and Sedge nodded, encouraging her. “The bad stuff began as only these … little things, like he’d take my dessert away from me in a restaurant and laughingly say he was saving my poor hips from becoming battleships. Or he’d make me change clothes before we went out, saying I’d be thanking him later for saving me from that near disaster.”

  Emotions pressed in on her chest, that familiar hateful sense of worthlessness. “And then one night we were at this frat party and I made some remark, a joke, I guess…I don’t even remember what I said. Everyone laughed, and, well …. He must’ve thought they were laughing at him because when we got back to his apartment afterwards ….” Her throat swelled and narrowed, trying to shut off her next words. “He slapped me across the face, hard enough to knock me to the floor, and told me if I ever said anything like that again he’d beat me until I bled from every fucking pore.”

  Sedge stiffened, his nostrils flaring.

  “I … Jesus, I was stunned. I’d never been struck before in my life, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought about breaking up with him, of course, but the next morning, he was so apologetic. He brought me flowers and a diamond tennis bracelet and swore he’d never do it again.” Her voice faded to a whisper. “And I believed him.”

  She swallowed, trying to bring moisture into her mouth. “He did hit me again, and again, but, God, he was always so regretful afterwards and so nice to me for a while that I …. I was so confused, and somehow I just ended up staying with him.” Her hands started to tremble. She flexed them into fists, then stretched her fingers open. “But then his apologies stopped altogether and the real nightmare began: his joking comments turned into outright insults and his slaps became punches.”

  Sedge’s fingertips dug into the top of the table.

  “Over the two years we were together, he told me I was fat, stupid, lazy, and accused me of being a whore any time another man looked at me, no matter that I never provoked it. He
bloodied my nose countless times, blackened my eyes, knocked out one of my molars, cracked my ribs, broke my wrist, mutilated two of my toes under the heel of his boot, and bruised my body in too many places to count.”

  Sedge was sitting rigid as steel at the table now, his chest jerking up and down.

  “By this time, I was desperate to get away from him,” she choked out, “I swear I was, but I was terrified. He’d threatened to kill me if I ever left him, and I knew he would. I didn’t think I could manage it alone, either.” Shame settled over her, as leaden and dark as despair. “I felt so dumb and useless and oafish by that point. I couldn’t do anything without him. And … and then ….” A strangled sound escaped her lips. She couldn’t say this part! The memory was still a jagged piece of glass in her heart. “Oh, Sedge,” she cried softly.

  He shot out of his chair in a heartbeat, his chocolate brown eyes ravaged with pain for her.

  But she held out a trembling hand to hold him off, the terrible words falling one after the other from her mouth. “One night he came home to our apartment drunk, and attacked me in bed, rough and impatient, and I …. I couldn’t say no to him, for the love of God. I wasn’t able to get my diaphragm in and I ended up … getting pregnant.”

  Sedge stood riveted by the kitchen island, his face a tight, grim mask.

  “I was so scared to tell him about that, but then he was … okay with it. Surprised at first, yes, and I thought maybe … maybe ….” An hysterical noise bubbled out of her. “But no, stupid me. A couple of nights later he came home drunk again, raging that the baby wasn’t his, screaming that no way with a whore like me the baby was his. He –” Her lungs strained, ached. “He took me by the throat, rammed me against the wall, and started punching me, over and over.” She exhaled raggedly. “Right in the stomach.”