TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

by Sharon Mignerey

  "What about your police protection?"

  Dane made a sound that could have been a laugh. "John Lindquist is assigned, and he'll be with us."

  "Has Lily testified yet?" Ian asked.

  "She goes on the stand tomorrow."

  At last, they were nearly at the end of it.

  Dane signed off by telling Ian that he'd meet him at the hospital in a few hours.

  In his arms Annmarie grew steadily heavier, and when Ian twisted his head to look down at her, he saw that she'd fallen asleep again.

  "Ian Stearne?" someone called to him from the vicinity of the admissions desk.

  "Yeah."

  Ian turned toward the voice, expecting to see the security officer who had been at the receptionist desk when they came in.

  A pair of uniformed police officers strode toward him, their shields and insignia identifying them as members of the Juneau Police Force. It had been a long time, but he remembered the look and the stance officers had when they were approaching someone they considered armed and dangerous. These men acted as though he carried a bazooka instead of a sleeping child.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  « ^ »

  "I need to see your ID, sir," one of the officers said, while the other hung back just slightly, his legs spread, his arms folded across his chest.

  "What's this about?" Ian shifted Annmarie in his arms, who stirred with a soft protest, then snuggled more deeply against his neck. He fished his wallet out of his pocket, pulled out his driver's license and handed it over.

  The officer examined the license without answering Ian's question, then gave it to his partner who got on the radio, spelling his name out. Ian studied the two policemen. He figured that if Rosie's dad had called them to provide her with extra protection, they wouldn't be clearing his ID as though he was a suspect for something.

  "You been in Alaska long?" the officer asked, A. Jones, according to his nameplate.

  Ian did a quick count in his head. "A little more than a week." He glanced at the second officer, wondering if his old arrest record would show up—surely not, as that had been fifteen years ago and in Michigan.

  Finally the second officer met his gaze. "Sir, you need to come with us."

  Ian shook his head and gestured toward the emergency room doors behind him. "I can't leave Rosie—"

  "Jensen?" he asked.

  "That's right. She's getting X-rays."

  "And the kid?"

  Ian's arms tightened fractionally around Annmarie. "What about her?"

  "Who is she?"

  "Rosie's niece."

  "You still need to come with us, Mr. Stearne." Jones moved as if to lift Annmarie from his arms. "We can leave the kid with her aunt."

  "I'm not going anywhere," Ian stated. "Not without Rosie and not without Annmarie."

  She stirred at the mention of her name, muttering softly.

  "They'll both be fine right here. Leave the kid with one of the nurses…"

  Raw alarm surged through Ian. His experience with cops was they got things the way they wanted—with force or without it. No way was he going to be separated from Annmarie and Rosie.

  "Maybe you didn't understand me." Ian looked from one man to the other, sifting through possibilities. These officers were imposters; they were the genuine article and somehow on a mob payroll; they were the genuine article and somebody had reported their arrival, and Ian could almost imagine the report—a man accused days ago of abducting Rosie and her niece was seen at the hospital. That made sense. As soon as Rosie was able to talk to these men, they'd understand. "Rosie will be done in a minute—"

  "And you're not leaving," the second officer finished. His nameplate identified him as J.D. Sawyer.

  Ian met his gaze. "That's right."

  Sawyer stepped forward to take Annmarie out of Ian's arms. "Come along with us, Mr. Stearne, and we'll discuss it at the station."

  Ian twisted away, shielding Annmarie. "We can discuss it here. I'm not leaving Rosie."

  "You're concerned that she'll be worried." Jones nodded in a gesture intended to be placating. It wasn't. "We don't want that, either." He glanced toward the desk where the late-night watchman had returned to his post and watched them with avid interest. To the watchman Jones said, "You can take care of that for us, right? Tell Rosie Jensen that we've taken her boyfriend down to the station."

  "That will be real damn reassuring," Ian muttered. He thought about simply running from these guys—surely they wouldn't shoot at a kid. Never mind that he was a much bigger target. It was the first of many stupid ideas that raced through his mind, each of them filled with pitfalls that would bring down a whole platoon, much less one man. Getting in deeper would only endanger Annmarie and make things worse for Rosie.

  "You do have a nurse or someone who can watch the child, don't you?" Jones added.

  "Sure," the security officer said, standing up and ambling toward them.

  "I am not going anywhere," Ian repeated, stepping backward.

  Sawyer followed. "Look, buddy. We can do this the hard way or the easy way—your choice—but you're coming with us." He shrugged as though the choice meant nothing to him. "It all pays the same."

  "And you've not given me one good reason why I should go anywhere."

  "You giving us attitude, sir?" Sawyer demanded. "Hand over the kid, and let's go."

  "No."

  When Sawyer reached for Annmarie, Ian gave him a hard shove. Sawyer neatly clamped a handcuff around his wrist, and Jones pulled Annmarie from Ian's arms. Sawyer pressed Ian against the wall, and kicked his legs apart, all the while keeping pressure on his arm and digging his fingers into a nerve that shot a spasm of pain clear to his neck. He swore. In fifteen damn years, some things never changed.

  Annmarie began to scream.

  "You're under arrest, Mr. Stearne," Sawyer said, pulling Ian's other arm down and clamping the handcuff around it.

  "What are the charges?" Despite asking, Ian knew from experience it didn't matter.

  "Interference, for starters." He pulled Ian's weapon from the holster at the back of his waist. "Carrying a concealed weapon. You have a permit for this?"

  "In my wallet," Ian said tightly.

  Annmarie continued to scream, crying out Ian's name and reaching for him. Furious at the situation and at these officers, Ian clamped down on his temper and decided it was probably a good thing he was handcuffed. Otherwise he would have hit somebody.

  "I'm not taking any screaming kid. She's your problem," the security officer said, and strode through the swinging door that led back to the emergency room.

  Ian shook off Sawyer's restraining hand and walked toward Jones and Annmarie, who struggled with all her might to be let go.

  "Annmarie," Ian said.

  She practically leaped from Jones's arms and ran toward Ian. He dropped to one knee, and when she reached him, she clasped him tightly around the neck, her face awash in tears and her cries nearly deafening in his ear. He would have given everything he ever hoped to own to put his arms around her and reassure her.

  "Annmarie, look at me."

  She continued to sob.

  "Petunia, come on, we're partners, right?"

  She shook her head, her crying not abated a bit.

  He glanced up, looking from one officer to the other, then pressed his cheek against the top of Annmarie's head. "We have to go for a little while. We'll go talk to these men, and then we'll come back for your aunt."

  "Don't be making promises you can't keep," Sawyer said.

  "I don't want to go!" she cried.

  "You don't have to go, little miss," Jones said to her. "You can stay here."

  "No!" She stamped her foot. "Nonononononono. I want Mr. Ian. You're bad." She lifted her face to Ian. "Make them go away!"

  "I wish I could, petunia."

  Above him, he could hear the two men talking, evidently deciding to take Annmarie with them.

  "Okay, miss, you get to go with us.
" Jones picked up Annmarie, who instantly began bawling at the top of her lungs again, her face soaked with tears.

  Ian wondered if Rosie heard her. She'd be terrified if she did. He shook his head in disgust. If she knew the cops had them both, then maybe she'd know to be on her guard. Or maybe one of these guys would at least agree to stay after talking to her. Acting on the thought, he stood and headed toward the emergency room door.

  Sawyer caught him by the arm and swung him in the opposite direction. "This way."

  "If you'll just take a damn second and talk to Rosie, you'll know this is a mistake."

  "We'll talk to her. In due time." Sawyer steered him outside to the cruiser, where he opened the back door and pushed Ian inside. Jones put Annmarie in the back seat with Ian and fastened the seat belt around her. She promptly slipped out of it and crawled onto Ian's lap, sobbing as though her heart would break. Ian was sure his would.

  If that weren't enough, he knew without a doubt that leaving Rosie here alone was the absolute worst thing they could do.

  "She really is in danger," he said to Jones, who was again trying to fasten Annmarie into the seat.

  "The kid?"

  "Her, too, but I'm talking about Rosie." He waited for Jones to look at him. "Her sister is in protective custody until she can testify in a mob case down in California. When they sent guys up here to use her family as leverage, they came after Rosie and after her folks. The state police sent somebody to keep an eye on her parents—Dane and Patty Jensen in Peterburg. Just call them. Call the state police. Please."

  From the front seat Sawyer responded, "We'll check everything out, Mr. Stearne." He glanced over his shoulder. "Including the report that you're the one who abducted this little girl and Rosie Jensen."

  Ian made a point of glancing at Annmarie, who still cried and still reached for him.

  Sawyer shook his head. "She wouldn't be the first kid to identify more with her captor than her rescuer."

  Annmarie's cries became louder.

  "Can't you see she's scared?" Ian demanded.

  The instant the officer let go of her, she again scrambled into Ian's lap. "Leave her alone." He held Jones's glance for a long moment while Annmarie continued to cry. "Please."

  Damn, but he hated begging, hated the suspicions of him that made him feel like the punk he had once been and had worked so hard to leave behind. Finally Jones nodded and closed the door.

  She snuggled closer when Jones got into the car and it began moving. She tucked her head beneath Ian's chin, her sobs accompanied by a torrent of tears that soaked into his shirt.

  "Shhh," he murmured. "You're okay."

  She shook her head. "Aunt Rosie is all alone. You promised we'd be there. Make them take us back."

  Ian remembered the promise, and the knot in his middle tightened another painful notch.

  "I don't like these policemens," Annmarie stated with a sniff, giving up crying in favor of talking. "They're not helping, and Mommy told me they would. And they're supposed to be nice." When Jones turned around to look at them, she glared at him. "You're not nice," she repeated. "And I don't like you."

  To his credit Jones ignored that. "I have a little girl who is about your age. Are you four?"

  Annmarie turned her face toward Ian's chest and said, "I'm not talking to him. Okay?"

  Ian hoped someday he'd smile about this as he brushed a kiss against the top of her head. "It's fine with me, petunia."

  She sighed, a ragged catch that rattled through her small body. "I keep telling you and telling you. I am not a flower."

  They pulled in front of the police station, which was scant blocks away from where Ian had left the boat

  "Jones, make me a promise." Ian waited for the man to acknowledge him, which he did only by meeting his gaze. "Don't let her out of your sight. Her grandparents are on the way to Juneau—Dane and Patty Jensen. Don't let anyone else take her." He swallowed. "Please."

  Jones nodded. "You have my word."

  The minute he picked her up, Annmarie began to scream again. Each cry stabbed through Ian as Sawyer ushered him through a narrow hallway and into a small holding cell. The building wasn't that large, Ian realized, when he could still hear Annmarie's cries in the lockup. Sawyer locked him in the cell after taking off the handcuffs. He came back to the door a moment later with a manila envelope.

  "Time to empty your pockets."

  Ian remembered this too well. The last time, he'd carried a switchblade that he'd thought made him a tough guy. Then he'd been nothing more than a hoodlum with a chip on his shoulder. Sawyer wrote down each of the items without comment, and Ian bit against his old resentments of the police. He had a lifetime of experiences between then and now. The feeling was the same. Anger that made him want to hit someone. Fear that threatened his control and made him sweat. Last time he'd picked a fight with anyone who got close, punk behavior that kept him in jail while his brother was buried, while his mother disowned him, while others decided his fate. This time he'd hang on to his temper if it killed him. This time he'd be out in hours—minutes if he had his way—instead of days. Getting back to Rosie … that was all that mattered.

  She'd be worried, then scared. And finding out that he had been hauled off to jail—Ian closed his eyes and wrapped his hands around the bars.

  "You really do need to send someone back to check on Rosie."

  Sawyer didn't even spare him a glance. "So you keep saying." He opened Ian's wallet and listed out loud each of the items as he wrote them down, beginning with the permit for Ian's gun. He counted out the money, one bill at a time. Twelve hundred and forty-seven dollars. "That's a lot of cash for a guy who used to be a punk in Detroit."

  Ian bit back the first retort that came to mind. "Used to be."

  "Need your belt, too," the officer said.

  Ian took it off, hoping the officer wouldn't examine it closely at all. Hidden inside was another ten thousand dollars. Sawyer coiled it up and put it in the envelope with everything else.

  In the far background Annmarie continued to cry, her sobs more and more upset. The sound tore through Ian. He was exactly where he'd sworn never to be again for as long as he lived, just as helpless to assist the people he loved as he was the last time. The stupidity of this situation and his impotence to do a damn thing about it gnawed a hole right through him.

  At least, he reasoned, as long as he could hear Annmarie crying, he knew she was in the building. Still, he would have rather endured a beating than listen to her cry.

  Sawyer had just obtained his signature on a sheet of paper with the Miranda warning when the door burst open and another officer came through the door.

  "The desk sergeant wants this man in an interrogation room."

  "He can be questioned right here." Sawyer motioned toward the holding cell.

  The other officer headed back toward the door. "He's tired of that kid screaming for Mr. Ian. You really want to tell the captain you put a little girl in a holding cell?"

  Two minutes later Ian was ushered into a room with a table and a couple of chairs, where a female officer sat. Next to her was an empty box, and toys were scattered around the room as though Annmarie had thrown them. She stood in a corner as far from the officer as she could get, crying so loudly she didn't notice him come in. Sawyer greeted the officer, warned Ian to be cooperative, then left.

  He knelt and held out his arms. "C'mere, petunia."

  "No, nononononono!" she wailed. "I want Mr. Ian."

  "Annmarie."

  Suddenly she looked at him. Instantly she stopped crying and marched toward him. A foot away she crossed her arms over her chest and scowled.

  "I'm mad at you," she stated, thrusting out her lower lip. Her chin quivered, and she pressed against it with her hand to make it stop. "You left me, and you promised Rosie that you wouldn't."

  "I know." He dropped his arms. "Does this mean we're not partners anymore?"

  She bent her head, then shook it.

  "Need a h
ug?" In truth, he needed one.

  She nodded and put her arms tight around his neck when he reached for her. The female officer sitting at the table caught his glance over the top of Annmarie's head. She smiled slightly.

  "There's two things you need to do," he said to Annmarie.

  She loosened her hold on his neck and leaned back to look at him, her eyes as suspicious as Rosie's had been that very first morning. "What?"

  "Well, first you need to apologize to this nice lady for all your screaming."

  She glanced at the officer. "Sorry," she whispered.

  "And you need to pick up these toys you threw all over.

  The scowl returned. "I didn't throw them."

  "Did she?" He nodded toward the woman.

  "Um…"

  "You pick up one, and I'll pick up one, okay?"

  Just then the door opened and another woman came in, this one not in uniform, carrying another box, little mewling noises coming from it. She smiled and held it toward Annmarie.

  "I think you'll want to see what one of the men found." She set the box down.

  Inside, there was a tiny kitten with a plump little body and a tail that stood straight up.

  "Oh," Annmarie breathed, squatting next to the box. She touched the kitten, the last of her tears vanishing within a wide smile. She looked up at Ian, who grinned back at her. "Can I hold it?"

  "Sure."

  She sat down on the floor and picked up the kitten carefully with soft little murmurs of reassurance. The kitten clambered out of her arms and gamboled away, its tiny legs wobbly. "Ohhh, aren't you just the sweetest little thing," she cooed. "A little sweetie pie." She picked up the kitten again, a tiny ball of mewling calico fur and milky blue eyes. "See how it looks like she spilled milk on her nose?"

  "I do."

  The kitten batted at Annmarie's finger, and she giggled.

  "I'm glad that worked," the woman said, giving the uniformed officer a brief wave as she left. "Hated to see that little one crying so hard."

  The officer extended her hand to Ian. "I'm Officer Higgins."

  Ian shook her hand. "I'm not going to say, 'Nice to meet you.' I'd rather not be here."