Takedown

by Julie Miller

  Mike rolled his eyes, as if the Monday-Wednesday-Friday sessions he’d been attending for the last month and a half since mid-February would go on forever and ever. “I dunno.”

  “Jillian said if enough of us got together, we could play some hoops. She says there’s a whole wheelchair league in Kansas City.”

  Go, Troy. Jillian had hoped that pairing up her two youngest charges in therapy sessions would boost their mental outlooks as well as their physical training. “With that upper body strength and the hands you’ve got,” she observed, “you’d be a natural.”

  If anything, Mike grew even more sullen at her compliment. “I told you I hate basketball.”

  “Mike—” his father scolded.

  But Troy was back in can’t-touch-this form. He knew how to push Mike’s buttons. “You hate losing, too?” He spun his chair toward the exit and took off. “Last one to the machine buys the pop.”

  A beat of silence passed before Jillian coyly prodded Mike. “Didn’t you buy the sodas last time?”

  “Hey!” With a sudden burst of movement, Mike raced after the other teen, his hands gliding along the wheels of his chair. “Get back here, loser.”

  “I ain’t the one in last place, loser.”

  “Shouldn’t you be walk—”

  Jillian grabbed Michael, Sr.’s, arm, stopping him from going after the boys. His forearm muscles bunched beneath her fingers before he swung his attention back to her. “Shouldn’t he be walking to build up his leg strength instead of getting more used to that damn chair?”

  Jillian drew her hand away from the crisp sleeve and the solid man inside the uniform before her curious fingers dug into that warm flex of muscle. “Let him have a little fun. He’s already put in a decent workout session today. Physically, he’s reached a plateau and I don’t want to burn him out.”

  Michael Cutler’s eyes, as blue and dark as a twilight sky, assessed the shrug of her shoulders before zeroing in on her expression. “He’ll continue to improve, won’t he?”

  “His doctors seem to think so.” Jillian reminded him of the good news without sugarcoating the bad. “Mike needs to build his self-confidence as much as anything right now. He needs to care about moving on to the next stage of his recovery before more strength and coordination training will do him much good.”

  Michael, Sr., rubbed his palm over the top of his hair, making the black and silver spikes spring up in the wake of his hand. “Sorry. It always comes down to the mental game, doesn’t it?”

  Jillian nodded.

  “I just get frustrated that he’s missing out on so much. He’s still only sixteen.”

  “Think about his frustration.”

  “He won’t even talk to me about the night of the accident. I had to read the details in a police report.”

  “Does he share with his trauma counselor?” Jillian’s own sessions with Dr. Randolph, the psychologist who’d helped her through rehab at the Boatman Clinic eleven years ago, and who remained a friend and occasional father confessor to this day, had been invaluable to her mental recovery as a teenager.

  “Not much. You seem to be the only person he opens up to.” Captain Cutler worked the brim of his cap with long, strong fingers before everything about him went utterly still—as if he’d suddenly realized his emotions were showing and he’d shut them down. Such precision, such control. No wonder other cops snapped to his commands. Stop noticing details about the man, already. Jillian focused on what he was saying, made sure she was listening as he slid the cap into his hip pocket and continued. “He doesn’t have to play football anymore, or go to Harvard or get rich. I’d just like him to leave his room once in a while and walk without those damn braces—meet girls and hang out with his buddies and be a teenager again.”

  “Trust me, it’ll happen.” Jillian went to retrieve the basketball Troy had left on the floor. She knew that damaged people healed at different speeds, and that not even a father’s unflinching support could force the process to go any faster. “He just needs time.”

  “Well, I’m glad you have the patience to deal with him. You had him smiling and trading high fives before he knew I was here. Seems everything I say or do ends up in a shouting match or him closing the door and not saying anything at all.”

  Jillian opened the storage bin outside the equipment closet and dropped the ball in. “Just doing my job.”

  Michael Cutler was there to close the lid for her. His piercing eyes seemed to catch the light, even in the shadows from the stands and supports above them. “Working magic is more like it. He likes you. Likes coming here. It’s just me at home since his mom passed away. Some nights, when he’s shut up in his room and I can’t figure out what he needs, it feels like he doesn’t have anybody. I’ve thought about taking another leave of absence from work—like I did right after the accident—but then I think he prefers the time away from me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “Don’t count on it. I’ve negotiated with crazy people, talked kidnappers into releasing their hostages and convinced murderers to put down their guns. But I can’t get my own son to open up to me. Pam—Mike’s mother—she would have known how to talk to him, how to reach him.”

  A wistfulness briefly hushed his succinct tone at the mention of his late wife, making Jillian suspect that the father was missing the woman who’d been lost to cancer two years ago just as much as the son. Though she didn’t know the details of Pam Cutler’s death, Jillian knew the basics after discussions with Mike, Jr.’s, doctor when they’d been planning his physical therapy. And she understood down to her bones how the loss of loved ones could wreak havoc on the family left behind.

  The urge to reach out and offer a comforting touch was powerful. But Jillian reminded herself that they were little more than friendly acquaintances—that it was this man’s son she cared about—and stuffed her wayward fingers into the pockets of her khaki slacks, instead.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Captain.” She called the cops she knew by rank or nickname, the same way her brother, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, her sister the M.E., her sister-in-law the police commissioner and her KCPD brother-in-law did. “I know how hard it can be on family to see someone you love hurt like that. You want to help him—make things right. But you can’t. The reality is, accident or not—Mike’s still a teenager. He’s going to have moods. And he’s going to have to figure out for himself how to make this work. In the end, the best thing you can do for him is love him.”

  Those blue eyes narrowed, silently asking a question. Yes, she was speaking from personal experience, but Mike’s dad didn’t need to know everything about her sordid past.

  When she turned away to get her clipboard and wristband of keys, he followed her, letting her pretend she had no shameful secrets to keep. “He’s got that. The love, I mean.”

  “Mike knows that, down inside. He may not remember it every day, but he knows you love him. Just the fact that you use your dinner break to bring him here to the clinic and pick him up means something to him.” Jillian slipped the elastic key bracelet around her wrist and tucked the clipboard of treatment logs under her arm. Together, they headed toward the gym exit and the hallway beyond. “Look at Troy, on the other hand. He’s fighting most of his recovery battle on his own. Ever since the shooting, his grandmother refuses to leave his brother, Dexter, alone. Either he’s at school or she locks Troy in the apartment with him to keep an eye on him the evenings she works her second job.”

  “It can’t be easy for her.”

  “I’m sure it’s not—and I admire her for supporting her grandkids financially, but it’s almost as if she’s given up on saving Troy and is focusing all her energy on Dexter. If Troy wants to come to physical therapy he has to schedule the appointments himself and take the bus to get here. I’ve been giving him a ride home, at least, trying to give him a little extra attention and ease some of the burden.”

  “You’re driving him home to
night?” The captain stopped, checked his watch. It wasn’t five o’clock yet, and she’d done it more than a dozen times. No big deal.

  She turned at the doorway arch. “As soon as I log in these stats and sign out.”

  “Where does he live?”

  Jillian named the street and apartment area just west of downtown Kansas City. His mouth thinned as he propped his hands on his hips. “At HQ we call that neighborhood No-Man’s Land. It’s not the safest place to be after dark.”

  “Clearly. Otherwise, Troy might not have been shot in the back by that stray bullet.”

  “I’m serious, Jillian.”

  Did he see her laughing? She knew about the dangers of No-Man’s Land—more personally than Michael Cutler would probably imagine. If she could keep Troy from falling prey to them the way she once had by simply giving the kid a little extra time and offering him a ride, she would. “I don’t take chances I don’t have to. But I’m not going to let Troy shoulder his recovery all by himself, either. Somebody always knows when I leave and where I’m going.”

  “And when you get back?”

  Jillian groaned. “It’s just a car ride. I can handle it, Captain.”

  His low-pitched curse followed her into the hallway as she locked the gym door behind them. “I’m not your commanding officer, so why don’t you call me Michael? That’d be a damn sight friendlier than ‘ugh’ or ‘whatever,’ which seems to be all I’m hearing from Mike these days.”

  Jillian relaxed enough to smile, glad his disapproval of her efforts to help Troy had been short-lived. “Captain Ugh. I bet your men would love to call you that.”

  “My men wouldn’t dare. Not to my face.” Instead of heading past her door to get Mike from the break room, he followed her into her office. “Can you spare another minute?”

  “Sure.” Jillian hugged the clipboard to her chest and turned.

  “I wanted to double-check the PT schedule. Mike’s school is having their spring break next week. He’s pretty bummed about making up extra class work while his classmates go on vacation, and since he seems to enjoy his time with you and Troy, I wanted to see if I could still bring him in for his regular sessions—give him a break from history and geometry and…me.”

  “I’ll be here,” Jillian promised. “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Yeah. Be careful driving through No-Man’s Land. My son needs you.” He pulled his SWAT cap from his back pocket and pulled it on over his head. The stern police captain had returned. “Keep your doors locked. If you feel threatened in any way, stay in your car and drive straight to the nearest police station. Run red lights if you have to. If you think someone is following you, stay in your car and honk the horn until an officer comes out to assist you.”

  “You know, I have a big brother to give me lectures like that. You don’t have to.”

  “As long as you listen to one of us. I can give Troy a lift home on the days I’m off duty and don’t have to get back to the precinct.” He adjusted the brim of his cap to shade his eyes. “If riding with a cop wouldn’t cramp his style.”

  “That’s nice to offer. I’ll ask him.”

  “Be careful. Mike’s counting on you.”

  Look who was talking. She dropped her gaze to the sidearm holstered at his thigh. “You be careful.”

  “Always.”

  After he tipped his hat and left, Jillian watched him stride down the hallway. Yeah. Big-brotherly overprotection aside, fortysomething looked good on the police captain from this view, too.

  Savoring the responding skitter of her pulse, Jillian turned to her desk. Her gaze landed on the droopy, fading flower in the glass vase there, and her heart rate kicked up another notch. Would it have killed the sender to include a note? Or even just a name?

  Between friendly discussion and heated debates, she’d forgotten for a few minutes that not all men were as straightforward as Michael Cutler. Maybe she was only crushing on the older man because she was 99. 9 percent certain he hadn’t sent her that mysterious rose. As beautiful and blameless as the deep red flower might once have been, she’d lived with too many deceptions in her life already. The whole secret admirer thing had lost its charm long ago.

  Dismissing the tiresome joke with a shake of her head, Jillian sat behind her desk, pulling up Mike’s and Troy’s files on her computer to chart the updates. But the rose kept taunting her from the corner of her eye.

  It was the sort of apologetic gesture her ex-boyfriend, Blake Rivers, would have made to get himself out of trouble with her. She supposed breaking up with him after an attempt to rekindle a relationship—clean and sober style—had failed qualified as trouble. But she had no proof the flower had come from Blake. No reason to suspect him. She’d left him months ago. He’d moved on to some blond reporter or red-haired heiress, according to the paper’s society page. Jillian was old news.

  And she intended to stay that way. As wealthy and handsome and devilishly clever as Blake might be, he had a reckless streak in him that had enabled her own addiction and nearly gotten them both killed. Jillian had promised her family, her therapist Dr. Randolph and herself that she was never going to go down that dangerous, self-destructive path again.

  But if not Blake, then who had sent her the flower?

  She supposed a phone call to Blake’s office at Caldwell Technologies couldn’t hurt. She didn’t want to send any false signals to her ex, but a few words to put her mind at ease and set him straight on the romance-is-over message was worth the risk. And if the rose wasn’t from Blake…?

  Jillian was leaving a message on Blake’s answering machine, reluctantly asking him to return her call, when Dylan Smith, another physical therapist who worked at the hospital’s outpatient therapy clinic with her, knocked on her door. She waved him into the room as she hung up the phone. As usual, Dylan’s dimpled cheeks and mischievous grin demanded she smile in return.

  “What’s cookin’, Masterson?” He shoved his fingers through his muss of blond hair and sat down. “Makin’ plans for a hot date?”

  “I’m workin’, Smith. Aren’t you?”

  “Hell, no. It’s five o’clock, it’s Friday and a bunch of us are going over to the Shamrock to hit happy hour. If you don’t have plans, come with us.”

  The Shamrock Bar? Fun with her friends sounded tempting, but her drinking days were over. “Thanks for the invite, but I’ve got things to do at home this weekend.”

  “I helped you move into that apartment—up three flights of stairs, I might add—and everything looked neat and pretty and sitting in its place before we all left. Come.”

  Jillian grinned at his pitiful, boyish pout. “My bedroom is only half painted, and the dueling colors have been driving me nuts all week. We’re supposed to have rain this weekend, and if I can’t open the windows and work, I’ll have to suffer through Pepto-Bismol pink and ice blue for another whole week. I need to get started on it tonight.”

  Dylan leaned forward, reached across the desk and laid his hand over the top of hers where it rested on the blotter. Every muscle in Jillian’s fingers froze at the unexpected touch, though she managed to keep her smile in place.

  “Just for an hour or two, Jilly? Please?” Dylan coaxed.

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ve got a bet with that new occupational therapist that I can eat an entire serving of the Shamrock’s fried habaneros and win free drinks for a year. You can cheer me on.”

  “Or bring the stomach pump you’ll need when you’re done.”

  “Very funny. Where’s the love?”

  There was nothing secret about Dylan’s harmless flirtations. If you were female, he flirted. Still, boyish charm aside, Jillian thought it wise to steer clear of romantic entanglements for now, and gently extricated her hand from his. “Sorry. Ask the O.T. to cheer you on. She’s a hottie and it sounds like she might be interested in you. Share your habanero breath with her.”

  “You’ve got to have fun sometime.” Dylan pushed to his feet, his gri
n firmly locked into place. He placed his hand over his heart and made a slight bow. “And I’m your man whenever you’re ready. Oh, I forgot.”

  He reached inside the royal-blue polo shirt that matched her own clinic uniform, pulled out an envelope and set it on her desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “Lulu at the front desk was on her way out. She asked me to deliver it to you.”

  Please, no. Jillian gingerly picked it up. No return address, and though the envelope had a stamp, it hadn’t been canceled. But the name and clinic address clearly belonged to her. An uneasy feeling soured her lips into a frown. “I thought the mail already came.”

  Dylan plunged his hands into his pockets. “It must have dropped behind the counter or something.”

  Jillian shrugged off the perplexing mystery and slid her finger beneath the flap to open it. “Thanks.”

  He nodded toward the corner of her desk. “By the way, your flower needs some water.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” Enough with the torment. Jillian plucked the dead rose from the vase and dropped it into the trash. “I should have sent it over to the main hospital for a patient who’d take better care of it than I did. My bad.”

  His gaze seemed to fix on the fallen flower for a moment before the grin returned. “Not a green thumb, huh? I’ll make a point to remember that next Valentine’s Day.”

  “Bye, Dylan. Don’t forget to take a gallon of milk and a fire extinguisher with you. Good luck, you idiot.”

  The blond charmer left with a laugh. Once she was alone, Jillian took a deep breath, pulled out the letter and leaned back in her chair to read it.

  She slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

  MICHAEL HAD SEEN THAT LOOK on the faces of parents waiting outside a school building locked down because of an armed intruder or bomb threat. He’d seen that look on a hostage-taker who’d gone off his meds and didn’t understand why he’d been shot by one of Michael’s SWAT team.