Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan)

by Leslie A. Kelly

  Chapter 8

  Ronnie checked herself out of the hospital the next day.

  Everyone had argued against it—the doctors, her mother, Daniels, even her lieutenant who’d come by at lunchtime to check on her and bring some flowers from the squad. She hadn’t let anybody talk her out of it, not only because it was killing her to not be working on the case, but also because staying in this miserably uncomfortable bed wasn’t doing her a bit of good.

  She’d finally gotten her way, promising to check-in with her regular physician to get the staples out of her head in a few days. The other concession she made was to agree not to drive anywhere—which was why Daniels was behind the wheel. Frankly, that made her even more dizzy than the concussion. There was a reason she usually drove and it had nothing to do with her being a native of D.C. and knowing the streets better than he did. He drove like a maniac, would never stop for long at an intersection if there was a way to turn on red, preferring to go blocks out of the way rather than sit still for a light.

  She supposed his driving was a good analogy for his life. Impatient, quickly irritated, not content to watch and let things develop. He was utterly exhausting. But she’d given her word, so he was the one she’d asked to drive her home, rather than her mother, who would have moved in and not left for days.

  The one person who hadn’t been around to ask for a ride—though, of course, she’d never have asked him—was Jeremy Sykes. The FBI agent had stopped by again last night but hadn’t been back since. He’d called early this morning to update her on the case, telling her Leanne’s head had been removed to Phineas Tate’s state-of-the-art research facility outside the city. He also admitted he was calling from Philadelphia, having caught an FBI chopper up there just after dawn, though he wouldn’t say why. He merely told her he’d fill her in when he could, and promised they’d get to work together as soon as he returned.

  Well, that remained to be seen. She wasn’t willing to concede defeat, even though her phone calls to her O.E.P. supervisor at the National Department of Law Enforcement hadn’t changed a thing. Because of the high-profile nature of this case, they wanted their two top investigators working on it together. He told her to suck it up, work with Sykes and like it.

  Ha. Fat chance. She had a narrow window of opportunity to work without him hovering over her shoulder, speculating in her ear, when what she would want was utter silence. Damned if she wasn’t going to take it.

  “Keep going,” she said when Daniels flipped the turn signal to head to her place.

  “You need groceries?” he asked, a cautious edge in his voice, already preparing to argue against whatever she had in mind.

  “I’m all right. It’s time for me to get back to work.”

  “Ronnie, you had brain trauma.”

  “I’m more concerned about the trauma Max is going to do on me if he sees my hair,” she said, trying to tease him out of his tense mood. Max, her next door neighbor, was also her hair stylist, and the guy was going to lose it when he saw Ronnie’s new hacked-off-in-the-emergency-room look. “Come on, I can’t go home until it’s dark so he won’t look out his window and see me.”

  “Scared of your hair-dresser. Pathetic.”

  “Yep, that’s me all right.” She pulled down the mirror and glanced at herself, wincing. Her dark eyes were made darker by circles of weariness and pain, though the rest of her face was pale. She had a few scratches on her right cheek either from hitting the floor or from the brush of the two-by-four against her face as her assailant pulled it away.

  But the real coup de grace was the hair. It was pretty impossible.

  Fortunately, a nurse had removed the big, bulky bandage this morning, covering her staples with a much smaller one that was paper thin. Thinking about it and considering the long strands falling down over her left shoulder, she fished a comb out of her pocket and carefully—oh, so carefully—parted her normally right-down-the-middle brown hair on the left. One big swooping comb-over later, and she looked only half as dreadful as before.

  “Not bad,” Daniels said, watching her from the driver’s side. “You look like my Great Uncle Ralph. He tries to hide his bald spot just like that.”

  “Oldest trick in the book when you’re having a bad hair day. Or a no hair day. Anyway, it’ll do. Now, head up to the beltway and hit 270.”

  “You’re supposed to go home and take it easy.”

  “No, I’m supposed to help solve Leanne Carr’s murder.” She turned in the seat, moving carefully, still dealing with a faint headache that flared into a major one if she moved too quickly. “Plus, Sykes will be back sometime today. I want to get a leg up on him.”

  As she’d expected, Daniels sneered at the mention of Jeremy’s name. “The great Agent Sykes. He was about what I expected.”

  “I told you.”

  “Not everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Daniels hesitated, opened his mouth as if to respond, then snapped it closed. “Forget it.”

  She didn’t prod, mainly because she feared she knew what he didn’t want to say. He’d noticed the sparks between her and Sykes. Hell, everybody in the room had to have noticed when the two of them had gone after each other about the case, him insisting he was getting to work on the chip as soon as the data was made available, her threatening his life if he started without her.

  Daniels, her partner, was probably the only one who’d understood the real reason for the vibes between them, though her mother probably had hopes in that direction. God knew the woman was forever trying to get her involved with some man. She’d taken a look at Sykes and lit up like the night sky on the 4th of July.

  Still, she wasn’t sure anybody other than Mark had correctly interpreted the scene as involving something other than dislike on Ronnie’s part. She wasn’t about to call it liking. But the sexual tension between her and Jeremy was thick enough to spread on toast. Maybe the fact that she and Daniels had done it once made him more attuned to her response to another man.

  Another reason to despise herself for that one moment of weakness. She hated this thin veil of tension between them that had lasted almost five years. She’d hoped Mark would forget about what had happened between them, as she’d tried to. But he almost seemed to be getting worse instead of better. As if he’d understood it was just sex back then, but was now wondering if it might lead to something more.

  Huh-uh. No way. Never gonna happen.

  Ronnie didn’t do the love thing. Oh, she loved Daniels as a partner and a friend. But romantically? Well, she had absolutely no interest in romance. She never intended to settle down, had ruled out any kind of domestic tranquility for herself when she’d seen how that had worked out for her family. Her mother would never get over the loss of her husband and children. Her brothers’ widows had ostensibly moved on, but whenever Ronnie saw them, she noted the look of haunted sadness that had never quite left them.

  Nope. Not for her. Better to be accused of caring too little than to be flattened for life because you cared too much. Going it alone was safer, smarter and the right thing for her. Besides, she and Daniels worked far too well together as partners, not as lovers. Their one sexual encounter had been born out of tragedy, not genuine passion, and would never be repeated. He was just going to have to accept that.

  “So where are we going?” he finally asked, cruising past her exit.

  She settled into the seat, relieved he’d changed the subject himself. “Bethesda.”

  “Lemme guess. Dr. Tate’s version of Disneyland?”

  An apt description. Ronnie had visited Tate’s scientific research facility a few times and every time was left slack-jawed over some of the projects going on there. The man definitely had all the toys a geeky science nerd would ever want. Or an O.E.P.I.S. investigator.

  “It seems like the logical place to go since we don’t have any other real leads.” Wondering if he’d learned any more about the person who’d attacked her, she asked, “Any luck with the second
ary crime scene? Did you hear back from forensics this morning?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh.

  “And?”

  “Nothing. No prints, no fibers, no footprints. Definitely no forgotten driver’s license or confession note. Sonofabitch is like a ghost.” Daniels tightened his hands on the steering wheel, gripping it like he had the assailant’s neck in them. “We’ll get him though; no doubt about it.”

  “I know.”

  Clearing his throat, and staring straight ahead, Daniels continued. “Hey, listen, there’s something else you should know. Lieutenant Ambrose told me this morning that while you’re temporarily partnering with the FBI dude, I’m supposed to team up with somebody else.”

  Her heart dropped; her jaw did too. “They can’t break up our partnership.”

  He didn’t look happy about it either, but had obviously accepted it. “I won’t be able to help with a lot of the top secret O.E.P. stuff you two’ll be doing, and they need me to run the standard D.C.P.D. side of the investigation, which you won’t have time for.”

  Maybe not, but the idea of losing Daniels as a partner, even temporarily, was enough to shock her into silence for a few minutes. They’d been together since just after she’d left the academy. He’d bitched and griped about taking on a twenty-one year old young woman and she’d jabbed right back about being stuck with an “old” geezer—the ten years he had on her seeming a lot bigger back then.

  Knowing she wouldn’t have Daniels by her side throughout this investigation made her feel like someone had chopped off her left arm.

  “Hope Sykes is worth it,” he muttered.

  “He’s not my partner.”

  “For now he is.”

  “Well, for now, he’s not even around. So let’s keep working this.”

  He considered, then nodded once. “Guess we can do that, at least until you’re officially snatched out from under me.” Then, because he was Daniels, and because he obviously wanted to smooth over the seriousness of the moment and not let on how he really felt, he wagged his eyebrows. “Although, you can crawl back under any old time.”

  “In your dreams, perv.”

  He laughed, and she joined him, but still found herself wondering how it would be to work with someone else for the first time in her career. She and Daniels were like an old married couple by this point, they thought alike, reacted alike, anticipated each other’s moves.

  Jeremy Sykes was an unknown quantity. Considering he already made her feel edgy—not to mention slightly inferior—she honestly didn’t know what to think.

  “You’ll be fine,” Daniels said, knowing her well enough to know what she was dwelling on. “You can hold your own with anybody, Ron, including some highbrow FBI agent.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you know I’ll be on speed-dial the minute you need backup or just somebody to bounce ideas with.”

  “Or a ride?”

  “Yeah. That, too.”

  The tension lifted, they began to talk about the case, sharing some thoughts, Ronnie again apologizing for not having come and gotten him the other night before investigating those broken Exit lights. Daniels was certain he hadn’t heard a soul when he’d been looking for her, which made her think he hadn’t actually scared-off the guy with his presence. Probably a pretty good thing she’d called out both their names, making the perp at least consider the possibility that someone else could be coming into that room right behind her. That bluff might have saved her life.

  Fortunately, they were heading opposite traffic and rush hour hadn’t kicked into high gear yet. The trip might have taken hours if they’d started it at four p.m., but was only twenty minutes now at two. When they reached the Tate Scientific Research Center, Daniels insisted on pulling up in the drop-off loop out front and helping her out of the car, rather than letting her hoof it from the expansive parking garage. He made a big production of ordering her to stay put until he came around to open the door for her, and insisted on taking her arm and leading her to a bench sitting in front of a merrily gurgling fountain.

  “Stay here. Just sit.”

  “Woof, woof.”

  He snorted. “I mean it, Ron, if your ass is off that seat when I get back, I’m tossing you in the car and taking you home.”

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “All we need is for you to stand up too fast, get woozy and fall on your face. You wouldn’t be much use in the case if your jaw’s broken in three places.”

  She sat. Folding her hands on her lap, she pasted on a placid expression.

  “That’s better.” He turned to leave.

  Before he got too far, she called out, “Hey, Daniels?”

  He glanced back over his shoulder, a long-suffering look on his face, as if he expected to see her turning cartwheels. When he realized she was not, his shoulders visibly relaxed. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks again.”

  “For?”

  “You know. Saving my life. Saving my jaw. The usual.”

  He flashed a wide grin that removed ten years and a lifetime’s worth of jadedness from his ruggedly handsome face. “Maybe I shoulda let the jaw thing happen. You can’t bitch at me too much if your mouth’s wired shut.”

  “Don’t count on it,” she retorted. “We took that sign language class together, remember?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could ream me out without ever saying a word, couldn’t you?”

  “Bet your ass.” Growing serious, she repeated the most important part of the conversation. “Seriously. Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t mention it, partner.”

  He got into the car and drove around the long, sweeping driveway, heading for the nearest parking garage. Ronnie stared after the car, thinking again how lucky she was that she’d drawn him for a partner. If he hadn’t found her in the basement the other night, she could have bled to death. He’d apparently picked her up and carried her through the darkness, upstairs, bellowing for help, and had refused to be kept out of the ambulance that had taken her to GWU Hospital. He’d hovered as much as her mother at her bedside, and while she knew he’d been angry at himself for being out of the room when she’d regained consciousness—leaving Sykes there to be the one she saw first—he’d managed to hide it pretty well.

  Though they’d promised each other never to keep count, she knew this latest incident now put him one up on her in the saving-the-life-of-your-partner routine. She’d hauled his ashes out of the fire twice. The White House attack had made the third time her partner had done the same for her.

  She owed him. Big time. Not for the first time, she wished she knew what, exactly, he wanted from her. Then again, fearing that he wanted something she was unable to give, perhaps it was just as well.

  Never the most patient woman, she shifted on the uncomfortable stone seat, peering through the trees toward the parking deck, watching for Daniels. She did not, however, try to get up for a better look. Claiming she was fine was all well and good. Standing up and proving she wasn’t would be a sucker’s move.

  “Well, hello there Detective Sloan. I’m surprised to see you—and very glad you’re all right. You don’t look much the worse for wear.”

  “Mr. Tate,” she said, eyeing Phineas Tate’s son, Philip, who’d just emerged from the building, a golf bag slung over his shoulder. Accompanying him was another man, about the same age, blond, also carrying a golf bag. He looked just as wealthy, jaded and lazy as Phineas’s son.

  Tate was dressed in lightweight pants and a light colored shirt, his hair artfully messed, his glasses designer, his smile plastic. She wished she could like the man, especially because she so liked the father. But there just wasn’t much to like, as far as she could see.

  “A little hot for golf, isn’t it?”

  “I like to get nine holes in a few afternoons a week. Do you play?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.” Then he pushed his sunglasses up onto the top of his hea
d, stepping over to eye her closely. “You really were hurt, weren’t you?” he murmured, as if just noticing her gauntness and the crazy-ass hair-style. And the fact that she was just sitting outside the building as if she’d lost the use of her legs. He glanced back at his golfing companion. “Detective Sloan was injured on the job. She’s quite the hero on the D.C. police force.”

  The other man murmured something appropriate, still looking bored.

  Ronnie shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Terrible things happening,” Philip said, shaking his head and frowning. “Awful things.”

  But apparently not awful enough to interfere with a golf game. Check.

  “Listen, I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said. “I want you to know I am at your complete disposal. If you need me to run interference, or even serve as an interpreter, don’t hesitate to ask.” His words were accompanied by a hint of laughter.

  “Interpreter?”

  “My father and Dr. Cavanaugh are wonderful, brilliant people, but they’re, well, I suppose you’d call them eggheads. They tend to talk above everyone else and it can sometimes be hard to pin them down. They talk in big pictures, in concepts. I know as a police officer you’re probably more interested in detail and fact.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, not liking to agree with the younger Tate, because of her loyalty to his father and her belief that the son was being slightly critical. That said, she knew Philip was right. Phineas Tate was a big picture person who sometimes seemed as though he lived in a very different world. They didn’t speak the same language.

  “We’re going to miss our tee-time, Phil,” the man’s companion said, impatience seeping into his voice.

  “Here,” Philip said, ignoring his friend. He dug into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a solid gold business card case. Flipping it open, he retrieved a pristine linen card and handed it to her. “My work, home and cell numbers.” His lips curled up a little in the corners. “Call me any time, day or night.”

  She supposed that charm—and his looks and money—got him lots and lots of phone calls from just about any person he gave his card to. But she doubted he usually gave it to people like her. No, she definitely suspected his tastes ran in other directions.