“No. I was just having a meeting down the hall.”
She took a deep breath, calming herself. “I was just organizing your schedule for tomorrow.”
“Have you found a new assistant?”
“I have a few interviews lined up for tomorrow.”
He studied her a moment longer, watched as her eyes fell to the top of the desk before peeking at him over the top rim of her glasses. He wanted to smile, wanted to tell her just how beautiful he thought she was. He wanted to pull her into his office and finish what they’d begun the other day. But logic reigned now that hormones had gone back to accepted levels. He knew that was the last thing he should do.
But he needed to let her know that he understood that.
“Could we have a moment in my office?”
She blushed, but she immediately got up and led the way. He caught her shooting a glance over at the couch where they’d been locked in passion before they were interrupted, but then her gaze shifted, and she settled on the edge of one of the two chairs set before his desk. Durango took the other; his knees close enough to hers that they nearly touched.
“I wanted to talk about the other day.”
She shook her head. “It’s not necessary. I know I was out of line. I should never have said—”
“That’s not what I meant.” He leaned forward a little, tilting his head so that he could see her face even when she tried to look down. “I meant about the . . .” He gestured toward the couch with his head. “I took advantage of the moment, and I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No,” she said softly. “You didn’t take advantage.”
“I just don’t want things to be weird between us now. I need you to understand that now is a bad time for me to get involved with someone. All of this stuff that’s going on because of Kyle and Detective Hyde—”
“I understand.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Gracie. But I can’t draw you into this mess I’m in.”
“It’s fine.”
He sat back, his eyes moving over her as he once again found himself amazed by just how beautiful she was. Regret was like a bout with food poisoning, making his guts cramp. He never expected to care about another woman. Not after Sarah. And he didn’t know if the way he felt for Gracie was anything like that. But he’d like to find out.
With this mess hanging over his head, though, he didn’t think it would be wise to be that kind of selfish. Gracie deserved so much better than him.
She stood.
“If that’s all—”
She stopped as she turned to leave, tension bolting through the length of her. Durango stood and was not surprised, but also not terribly thrilled, to see what had caused her tension.
Detective John Fedor was standing in the doorway to his office.
“I don’t know how you keep doing it, Masters,” he said, his words a little slurred, his stance a little unsteady, “but I will prove it’s you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Fedor gestured over his shoulder at nothing, stumbling forward as the movement made his unsteady hold on his balance even rockier. “Your fucking assistant! You couldn’t kill someone a little less connected to you? Are you just trying to make us look like damn fools?”
Gracie glanced over her shoulder at Durango, then rushed around his desk and typed into his keyboard. A second later, she turned the monitor around to reveal a news article that announced the murder of Heidi Warby, an employee of Mastiff Security.
Fuck!
“I don’t know what you think you are,” Fedor continued. “You’re not some sort of god. I will find the proof we’re lacking, and I will make sure you go to fucking prison! When the DNA comes back on Hyde . . .” He shook his head as he made his way into the office, but he was staggering so hard that he fell onto his side. Durango went to him, tried to help him up, but he slapped Durango’s hands away. “Don’t fucking need help from you!”
“You’re drunk, Fedor.”
“Yeah? Maybe that’s because you killed my partner, and my captain took me off the damn case. He says I’m too close to it. But I know it’s you, you fucking asshole! I will prove it!”
“You do that, Fedor. Maybe it will finally put us all out of our misery.”
Fedor didn’t respond to that. Now that he was flat on the floor, sleep took over. He was passed out before Durango had even finished speaking.
“We should get him home.”
“I’ll take care of it. You should go.”
Durango shook his head. “You can’t move him on your own.”
“And you shouldn’t be seen alone with him. You’ve got enough tongues wagging around here.”
He knew she was right, but he didn’t like it. “Let me call Axel. He’ll—”
“Go home, Durango. Please.”
He could see the fear in her eyes. For her, he’d do what she’d asked. He went to her, took her face between his hands. “Thank you,” he whispered before pressing his lips to her forehead. “But please be careful.”
She nodded. When she looked up at him, there was something in her eyes that physically hurt him. He wanted to make it disappear, wanted to say the words that would replace that darkness with the light he’d seen so many times before whenever she looked at him.
He hated this, hated this situation. When was it going to end?
His fear, however, was that it wouldn’t. This was never going to end until he ended it himself. And that was unthinkable.
He left, feeling less than a man, wishing everything was different than it was.
Chapter 14
Chicago, Illinois
Astoria Hotel
Ryder could hear the shower running in Kelly’s room. He paced his room, exhausted beyond words. He hadn’t been able to sleep knowing she was in the next room. He wanted to go in there, wanted to talk to her. He wanted to apologize for all he’d done, wanted to make things right between them. But he knew he couldn’t do that. What he’d done was too big to fix with words.
That night played over and over again in his mind, the shots the kid fired, the decision to pull his gun free of its holster. The words they spoke to each other.
“I can’t go to jail!”
“No one’s going to jail, kid. You just forgot to signal back there!”
“You don’t know what I’ve got here. But I can’t go to jail. I can’t let my mom down, my brothers! I can’t let them know what I’ve done!”
It was Ryder, or it was that kid. There was no other option that night; his choice had been so clear in those moments, but it wasn’t so clear in the aftermath. They say that hindsight is 20/20, but not in this. If Ryder were to survive, he had to fire that gun. The kid was too close; the bullet proof vest wasn’t going to hold up forever, not at that range. It was a miracle it had taken the one bullet the kid put into it. But . . . should Ryder have been the one to survive intact that night? Would the world have been better off if that kid had been the one to walk away?
He was just sixteen! He’d made a mistake.
But Ryder knew better than that. The kid didn’t just make a mistake. He made a choice. Several choices. And Ryder was the innocent bystander in it all. But did that mean he had the right to shoot the kid and leave him disabled for the rest of his life?
That was the thing. The kid hadn’t died. If he had, maybe it would have been better for everyone. But he didn’t. Ryder shot him in the arm, a wound that allowed him to disarm the kid and get him medical help quickly. The problem was, the bullet lodged in an artery and blocked the blood flow to the kid’s brain. By the time the doctors figured out what had happened, the kid had been without oxygen for far too long. He had the kind of brain damage that allowed his body to heal, but for his mind to revert to toddlerhood. He couldn’t feed himself, couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything for himself.
It was a damn nightmare for the kid’s family. They never asked for that.
And then, barely days after Ryder got that news, K
elly began to bleed, and the doctors said the baby no longer had a heartbeat. Fourteen weeks. They were supposed to go in and learn the sex in just a few days, but all their hopes for the future were dashed with those words. He stood by her while they evacuated her uterus, the doctor giving them statistics and false hope. Most miscarriages are no one’s fault, and there was no obvious reason why they couldn’t try again.
Fourteen weeks. They’d just begun telling people. The teachers who worked with Kelly were planning a baby shower.
It wasn’t right. It was a punishment for what Ryder had done, but Kelly shouldn’t have gotten caught in the middle. Kelly never hurt a fly.
One day, Ryder was a cop, doing the job he’d wanted to do since he was old enough to hold a toy gun, married to a beautiful, perfect, high school English teacher, expecting his first child.
A boy. It was a boy.
And then it was all gone in a blink of the eye because he chose his own life over a kid’s.
His name was Jordan Alvarez. He was a star pupil who was expected to get a scholarship to Stanford. Now he was a sad, drooling child living on his mother’s couch. A mother who could barely afford the three healthy children she had before this, who was now struggling just to pay his medical bills.
Choices had this way of radiating out, of hurting more people than the person making those choices could ever imagine. If Ryder had made a different choice, if he’d left his gun in the holster and allowed that boy to fire at him as many times as he wanted, Kelly would still have their baby to cling to, and Jordan would still be looking toward a future in sunny California. And Jordan’s mother would be no worse off than she’d been before.
Kelly choosing to come to him now, that was one of those things that radiated, too. It made him remember what it was he left behind, made him wish he could turn back the clock. It made him wish he could go back to his mother and tell her how sorry he was he hadn’t been there for her after his father died. He should have been. Five years ago, they’d been a whole family. But then his father died not long before he came home from the military. Ryder was so focused on getting into the police academy and marrying Kelly that he hadn’t been there for her the way he should have been. And then the shooting . . .
He’d let everyone down. How could he ever go back knowing that?
Kelly told him she’d be there when he got over his self-pity. He didn’t see it as self-pity. But maybe it wasn’t protecting them the way he imagined it was.
He stopped pacing, making a decision he should have made two weeks ago.
“I called Mastiff,” he told Kelly as he stepped out into the sitting room. She was at the dining room table eating a breakfast of fruit and eggs, slowly buttering a bagel as she watched him walk toward her. “They’re sending a replacement operative.”
“Why?”
She asked the question, but she didn’t seem terribly concerned. Maybe she was ready for Ryder to go.
“I think it would be best if I wasn’t on this case anymore.”
“Then you’re abandoning me again.”
The words hung in the air for a moment. She continued buttering her bagel, not looking at him. Ryder dragged his fingers through his hair, more frustrated than he could possibly express.
“After what happened yesterday, I just thought it would be for the best.”
“Just admit it. You’re running out.”
“I’m not running! I’m trying to make things easier for you.”
She set down her bagel and sat there for a long moment, her hands in her lap and her eyes on the table top. Finally, she sighed.
“Do what you want to do, Ryder. I’m tired of trying to talk you into doing what’s right.”
“This is what’s right.”
“No. This is you trying to remove yourself from an uncomfortable situation. It’s you recognizing that you left a train wreck in your wake, and you don’t want to deal with that.” She stood and brushed passed him as she strode back to her bedroom. “You do what you want,” she repeated. “I’ve got an appearance in fifteen minutes. We should probably go if you’re still willing to stick out this much of our deal.”
“I’ll stay until my replacement arrives.”
“That’s kind of you.”
There was sarcasm dripping from her words. She disappeared for a moment, then came back into the room with a shawl that she draped over her shoulders. She was dressed in a green sweater dress that hugged every curve of her body, black boots, and that black shawl. Her hair was pulled back, twisted into a braid that fell to the center of her back. She wore a sparse amount of makeup, just lip gloss and eyeliner, just enough to highlight what God blessed her with.
She was so beautiful it made him ache. He wanted to tell her so, but she was marching toward the door, determined to get as far from him as possible. But they were stuck together for the next twelve hours, for better or for worse.
He made sure the door locked behind them and followed her to the elevator, standing guard as he watched both sides of the corridor while she stared up at the moving numbers. It was the same inside the wide box; they were both occupied with things that didn’t matter in the long run. The SUV was waiting at the front door, but she wouldn’t let him help her inside. She climbed in without his help and stared forward until he was behind the wheel.
This morning’s appearance was at a local mall. Ryder had thought that bookstores had gone the way of Radio Shack’s and Blockbusters, but there seemed to be quite a few still open and working. The manager of the store led Kelly back to a private office and explained what they had planned for her visit. Just like her other appearances, Kelly was to read a passage from her book, answer a few questions, and then sign books. And then they’d be moving on to another bookstore in another part of town to do the whole thing over again for another set of customers.
Ryder stayed close, watching the crowd for any surprises. He was the only one to get a surprise during the morning appearance, however. He’d expected Dane to show, but the man’s face was nowhere to be seen.
Ryder found himself hoping all the rumors he’d heard about Dane Hood were untrue. The last thing he wanted was to leave Kelly in the arms of a man who was going to use her and toss her aside when he was done. He wanted happiness for her. That’s all he’d ever wanted.
And if he couldn’t give it to her, he wanted to know that the man she chose could.
Ryder walked around the bookstore while Kelly gave her reading, worried because there were three sets of doors to keep an eye on. Most of the crowd was in one wide section of the store that had been cleared of shelves and miscellaneous junk. But it was an open store, and customers were browsing the shelves in other sections. There was a young man in his early twenties doing just that, studying comic books and fantasy novels. But he didn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to the books themselves. But he wasn’t paying much attention to Kelly, either.
Ryder decided he was checking out one of the counter girls. She was about nineteen, twenty, a redhead with big green eyes. She was standing not far from the podium where Kelly was speaking, watching Kelly rather than her register. She moved away only when a few customers came over to pay for their purchases.
Just a horny kid.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew the kid. There was something familiar about him. What that was, he couldn’t put a finger on it. But something.
He made a mental note and moved on, continuing to monitor the entrances.
When Kelly began signing autographs, her right wrist still in a brace, he moved to stand behind her. He wasn’t going to allow anyone to touch her again. He checked out every person who approached the table, stepping forward whenever someone looked suspicious or as though they might be annoyed by the long wait. But everyone was cheerful, just happy to meet their favorite author.
It blew Ryder’s mind to watch this. He’d always known Kelly was a good writer. He’d been her first reader when she wrote the first books of her previous series. S
he wrote those in college, back when the potential of becoming a writer was still a dream. After they were married, she would pull them out and tinker with them from time to time, but when he suggested she send them to a publisher, she’d laugh.
“They’re not good enough. They’d just find some nice way to tell me I suck.”
But, clearly, that wasn’t what happened. People loved her books, and they loved her. And he couldn’t have been prouder of her.
He found himself watching her, watching the way she smiled brightly with each person who walked up to greet her as though that person was the first she’d spoken to all day. She was kind and gentle, getting up to walk around the table and greet a small child who insisted she was going to be a writer just like Kelly when she grew up. There was a woman who was very pregnant, and Kelly once more got up and signed the woman’s belly because she asked. And then she touched the spot where the baby’s feet were pressing against the woman’s uterus, speaking to the child in a low voice so that only she and the unborn child could hear. Ryder caught her eye as she came around the table again and he was pretty sure he was the only one who saw the grief that still lived there for the child they’d lost.
But then she was smiling again, laughing at something one of her many fans said to her.
It wasn’t until an hour later when they were driving away from the mall that she revealed the energy the morning had taken from her. She slumped back in her seat and stared out the window, one hand propping up her head, the other pressed against the top of her thigh.
“We should stop and get something to eat.”
She didn’t respond, but he drove to a nearby restaurant just the same. She ordered a chicken salad, picking at it when it came rather than eating.
“You’re going to be too tired to make this other appearance if you don’t eat something.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You know how you get when your blood sugar is low.”
She pushed the salad away and stood. “I’m going to the restroom.”
He watched her cross the restaurant, pretty sure she wasn’t going to use the facilities, but to get away from him. And he couldn’t blame her. He was kind of annoying himself. He sat back and looked out the window, watched people come and go on the sidewalk. His phone rang, and he seriously thought about ignoring it. But habit forced him to pull it from the inside pocket of his jacket.
Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 48