She was trying, hard, to be in the moment and not worry about worst possible outcomes, fight the unsettling feeling that the right time was slipping away.
Maybe she should ask Ellie to stay.
* * * *
“I signed a lease,” Ellie said, her voice sounding breathless when Jordan could finally let her hands wander underneath the red dress. She hardly missed a beat in her explorations, pushed aside the pang of disappointment. They had decided this together, said it would be good for their relationship. She didn’t want to talk about it, just be close to Ellie.
“All right. You’re going to show me soon, I guess?”
She pushed the fabric further up and pressing her lips against the warm skin, tracing kisses down Ellie’s stomach, finally settling on her knees as she pulled down her slip. Ellie’s gasp was somewhere in between surprised and blissful.
“Yes, whenever you want. Kate scored the balcony, but I got the bigger…oh. Room.”
“That’s good,” Jordan mumbled, running her hands up and down Ellie’s trembling thighs. “You’ll have room for that new bed.”
“Definitely.”
They suspended their conversation in favor of a more intimate communication, and for all the talk about beds, she took Ellie over the brink before they ever made it to hers.
“Wow, you were in a hurry,” Ellie said as Jordan finally opened the zipper in the back so she could undress properly. “Avoiding any awkward subjects?”
“Like the fact that my parents are conspiring about grandchildren, or that I caught my ex on a date when I really had something work-related to say? No. I just wanted you so much.”
Ellie looked pleased with her answer. “Well, you have me, and I think all those subjects can wait a while longer…You still have too many clothes on.” She didn’t wait for an answer, and so Jordan let herself be undressed by warm tender hands. It felt good to be with someone she trusted, with her body, with her fears, and maybe this was an indication of what Ellie had mentioned before—the right person to start a family with. All those thoughts were fleeing rapidly in a wave of pleasure, heated kisses, a deep connection she hadn’t felt before Ellie, ever.
It had to mean something. “Please, don’t go,” she whispered.
* * * *
For a moment, Ellie was confused, and then the urgency of how they’d ended this evening made a lot of sense. She held on tighter to Jordan, not wanting to destroy a perfect moment. She felt the need to ease Jordan’s mind, though, as much as her own.
“This will be good,” she said. “I promise. It doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on us, no way. It will give us the time and space to figure everything out, even the baby question. Whatever you’re comfortable with. You know, we’re doing damn good considering all the shit that happened lately.”
“I almost lost you.”
Ellie understood what Jordan was going through at this moment, every single detail of it, because she’d felt the same. She had experienced that bottomless fear, even though everyone thought she’d push forward no matter what. She tried hard.
“But you didn’t. We’re both still here, and we’re free to do whatever we want. We’ll go on that vacation. We both keep our own space as long as it’s necessary, and if you want to sell the house at some point and we look for a new place, you don’t have anything to prove to anybody. We’ll take the time we need, and you can too, because I’ll be here.”
After a long pause, Jordan confessed, “I’m a little embarrassed right now.”
“Don’t be. I understand.”
“Yeah, I know you do. Okay. We stick to the plan, go buy a new bed…Would you be okay if we postponed the baby talk for a bit longer?”
“Of course. I want both of the baby’s moms to be detectives.”
They both laughed. Ellie was filled with a warm, hopeful feeling, though it didn’t follow her into her dreams later that night. They were laden with a disturbing mix of vague images, of a man in a sweatshirt stained with eggs, Josh Ward’s bloody face and a moody Daniel Roth behind the counter of the Code 7 watching a blond man with a dice tattoo…watching her.
Ellie woke abruptly, but silently. Beside her, Jordan slept on, and she snuggled into the warmth of her body. Adult decisions weren’t always the easiest ones, but sometimes they made a person appreciate what they had even more. She didn’t want them to fall victim to a lesbian U-Haul cliché. Keeping her house was something Jordan had done for herself, as a way to slay her own demons, and Ellie would respect that. At some point, maybe after she had passed her exam and they had a clearer idea of the future, they would be able to move beyond. First, they needed to find scrawny guy before he wreaked havoc on the city...and find out what Danny Roth’s deal was.
Chapter Seventeen
Jordan had just started the coffee when the doorbell rang, and one look outside told her without a doubt that she was in for a conversation she didn’t care to have, much less so on a Sunday morning. If she’d been alone, she might have ignored Jim Larson until he left, but she didn’t want to wake Ellie or explain what would be a rather silly behavior, so she went to open the door.
“Hey, Jordan.”
All this cozying up to her, text messages from Kathryn who hadn’t given a damn in decades, now a visit from the man who wasn’t even her father…Not that it made a difference, because he had never much behaved like one. Whatever these two were up to, there had to be something in it for them. Jordan couldn’t imagine anything else.
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?”
“It’s early. It’s Sunday.”
“Jordan, please.”
With a sigh, she stepped aside to let him in. “Go ahead. You want coffee? I think it’s ready.”
“That would be great,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I won’t bother you for long.”
“Yeah, sure. I appreciate that.”
Jordan showed him to the kitchen, where she took a couple of mugs out of the cabinet and filled them with coffee.
“You have a nice place,” Jim said. This might have been the longest conversation they’d ever had. Even her relationship with her real father seemed more meaningful, if volatile, in comparison. He, of course, was a criminal, a situation more than awkward for someone whose job was to put those behind bars.
“Thanks. So, what brings you here?”
“It’s about Kathryn.”
“You’re going to what, stay with her, or leave her? I imagine you weren’t too thrilled with the revelations.” If they could mess with her business, there was no reason why she shouldn’t return the favor.
“We’ve been married a long time. You don’t walk away from something like that. We both made mistakes, but…don’t you think she has suffered enough? Can’t you at least talk to her?”
Jordan shook her head, wondering how they were managing to turn around simple facts so that somehow, she was the one to blame—and it was sneaking into her mind. It struck her as curious that she had refused Kathryn’s suggestions while she was sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee with Jim, but it wasn’t hard to see the difference. With him, there was little emotional attachment, even less so after she found out they weren’t related at all. Kathryn was a whole different story.
“Did she put you up to this?”
“No. I just hate to see her feeling bad all the time. Why don’t you give her a chance? She’s your mother!”
Jordan took a sip of her coffee, stalling, to make sure she’d choose the words with the most impact.
“Look, giving birth isn’t enough to make her a mother, just like being there isn’t enough to make you a father. The first years with Jack and Pauline I didn’t know whether I should feel grateful, or smothered, because I had no idea what normal parents were supposed to be like.”
“It’s been a long time. Kathryn hoped that when she helped bring Phil in…and when you came to visit her at the hospital, with your girlfriend, that it might change something.”
J
ordan cringed at the casual mention of another convicted criminal—obviously, Phil Hobbs had been on a first name basis with Jim and Kathryn. She didn’t want to hear any of this.
“What do you think it changes? I understand, it’s been a long time, you two might have laid off the drugs for a while and come to some conclusions. Good for you. That doesn’t mean I need you in my life all of a sudden.”
“What if Kathryn needs you now?”
Enough with the emotional manipulation. “Your time is up, Jim. Nice talking to you. You can tell Kathryn that bombarding me with texts is not helping her case. If I want to meet her, I’ll tell her.”
He got to his feet, hesitated and then awkwardly shook her hand.
“Thank you for this. I hope you can change your mind at some point.”
I hope I won’t.
After she’d seen him out, Jordan returned to the kitchen to find Ellie standing in the doorway.
“That was an early visit,” she remarked. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, sure. Kathryn realizes that the text messages don’t work, she sends him…It won’t make a difference. I have enough on my mind right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. They’ll lose interest soon enough. Are you hungry?”
“I so am. I saw eggs and bacon in the fridge. I could cook that, but I think I’ll go for the waffles first.”
Jordan had to smile though the conversation with Jim Larson hadn’t left her with much of an appetite. “Okay then.”
“One time I threw eggs and coffee at the guy,” Ellie said out of the blue. “He hardly flinched. I don’t know what I was doing provoking him. It took him a long time to bring me food after that.”
Jordan was well aware of her dilemma, the push and pull between them, wanting to be there for Ellie when her own story was still too close, struggling to build a relationship on something that had started out as a rash decision. But she believed that at the core, they had something good, something that would enable them to overcome those hurdles.
“I’ll never let you go hungry. I promise.”
And maybe they weren’t even talking about food altogether, but there was one thing Jordan knew for sure—she had to start keeping promises, if she wanted to be all that different from Kathryn and Jim.
“I know,” Ellie said. “I won’t let go either—and I really want those waffles now.”
* * * *
Jordan’s complicated parental situation was making Ellie aware of several things—she missed her own parents, and she had pushed down those feelings of grief and loneliness for a long time. She had dealt, had to, because there were no other family members nearby to help her, and she had found solace in the friendship and camaraderie on the job. The recent events had made her vulnerable, and maybe it was also love doing that. Ultimately, it would help her find a way to move forward.
There was no news from Bethany during the quiet Sunday she spent with Jordan. Maybe they had both sensed that this was only the quiet before the storm.
Monday morning, Ellie and Casey had barely pulled out of the parking lot when dispatch called all available units to a familiar address: Shots fired outside of Jay Easton’s apartment.
* * * *
“I can’t be here!” Marla Easton, Jay’s wife, cried. “I need to go to the hospital with him!”
“I’ll have an officer drive you there,” Ellie assured her. “Is there anywhere you could bring the kids for the moment?”
“My mom takes care of them sometimes, but she’s at work right now. I already told you, it was Daryl. He came by late last night and yelled at Jay, tried to push him around, but I never thought…You need to find him!”
“What was the fight about?” Daryl, as they’d found out was one of the next door neighbors, Daryl Fray. He had taken off, but couldn’t have made it far. Officers were going from door to door at this moment.
“I don’t know, I was busy trying to calm down the kids!”
“Okay, Mrs. Easton, this is what we’re going to do. Officer Marshall will go with you, and you can tell her everything you remember.” Libby nodded. “We’ll find Daryl. He’ll be held responsible.”
“It’s about time. He’s been terrorizing the neighborhood ever since he got out of prison.”
Fray’s time as a free man was definitely coming to an end, but was this incident related to the questions they’d asked the previous week? After Mrs. Easton was taken care of, Ellie and Casey joined their co-workers on the search, until Kate’s voice crackled over the radio, “…suspect has barricaded himself in a one-family unit, possibly two hostages inside…”
“Is it Monday or what?” Casey muttered when they hurried to join the unit two blocks away.
Kate informed them that Daryl’s ex and her mother were inside the house, all of them in the bedroom in the back of the one-story house.
“No movement so far,” she said. “He knows he can’t go anywhere from here.”
“Yeah,” Ellie agreed. “That’s the scary part.”
* * * *
Jordan had just heard of the shooting and subsequent hostage situation when the lieutenant called her into his office.
“Carpenter, I need you to head over to the Code 7 and assist Dr. Roberts and her colleagues. There’s a new development. Troy Haynes made a positive ID on the man who bought the C4, but I imagine that’s not a big surprise for you.
Jordan ignored the slight jibe. “Wait, what are you saying? I asked her to look into…”
“Daniel Roth, that’s right.”
“Ellie’s kidnapper and scrawny guy are the same person? What the hell does he want with explosives?”
“Haynes ID’d Roth as the man who came to pick up the C4 in Ward’s name. He’s missing,” the lieutenant said grimly. “Carl let them into the apartment behind the bar. There’s nothing new so far.”
Almost all of the frequent guests of the Code 7 were on a first name basis with Roth senior, some had worked with him before he retired to take over the bar. It was probably a dark day for many, but at least it was a big step forward in the case. Sure, Daniel had plenty of opportunity to observe Ellie, but if he was the kidnapper, why had he chosen her specifically—and what was his plan trying to obtain explosives after she had gotten away from him?
Clayton and Hamel had rejected his attempt at friendship, not that it justified the measures he had taken…Ellie, like most of them, hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with him.
“I’ll get over there right now.”
Meanwhile, the standoff with the hostage taker, Daryl Fray, went on. Jordan wished Ellie wasn’t at the scene, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. Contrary to her impulsive outlook on life, Ellie was cautious on the job, not taking any foolish risks. She had to rely on that.
At the Code 7, she ID’d herself to the agent in charge and made her way through the empty bar to the small apartment at the back of the bar where Daniel Roth lived. She could tell from Bethany’s frustrated expression that the results weren’t as hoped so far.
“Nothing to let us know where we could possibly find him,” Bethany said. “Despite his many attempts to make friends, Ward seemed to be the only one he actually socialized with. Mr. Roth has no idea where he might have gone.”
“He’ll emerge eventually. He’s not done.”
“Oh, so you’re the profiler now?”
Jordan held up her hands in mock defense. “Sorry, just a theory. What’s his motive? He had to quit the academy, now he hates cops, wants to get back at them?”
“Yes and no,” Bethany said, as she leafed through titles on the small shelf next to the bed. “He doesn’t like them very much, because they do what he couldn’t, but he also wants to be close. You know he came to Officer Baker’s funeral. He wants a part of this any way he can.”
“Then what did he want from Ellie?”
“I don’t have all the answers right now, Jordan.” Bethany still sounded stressed, though a little less so. “At th
is point, all we know is that he’s the guy we’re looking for. He definitely got some of the C4, and as for the abduction, it fits. He was the stalker in plain sight.”
“The hostage situation! That’s where he’s going to go! He wants to be close to cops, Ellie in particular. He likely has access to a police scanner, so he knows she’s there right now.”
“Jordan, let’s not jump to conclusions…”
Ignoring Bethany, Jordan turned around and called Ellie. After three rings, she picked up, barely audible over the background noise.
“Hey. Fray gave himself up, sometime after the ex took a few shots at a garbage can. No one got hurt. How’s your day going?”
“Ellie, this is important. Roth could be there. Haynes identified him as the buyer. He’s up to something.”
“Roth is the buyer? Scrawny guy? And you think that whatever he’s up to includes me?” Ellie sounded weary at the thought. Jordan couldn’t blame her.
“We don’t know yet.”
“I think now we do,” Bethany said behind her, and Jordan spun around to see her holding up a sweatshirt.
“I don’t know what that’s going to prove. He borrowed it from me,” Carl Roth said, a desperate edge to his voice. “I want to assist any way I can. Danny’s a good man. He was just so disappointed after he left the academy—which was his own choice, but we all agreed it was better for him. I thought having him work with me here at the bar was the closest he could get…”
“Be careful,” Jordan said to Ellie. “Is Doss there? Tell her what I just told you. See if Daniel is anywhere close, better, after you spoke to her, come back to the station.”
“Jordan, I can’t leave here right now.”
“I’ll take responsibility.”
“I’m sure you would, but I’m sorry, I have a job to do. You’re not my supervisor…”
“Then I’ll speak to him. This is not the time. Get back and we’ll go from here. Don’t worry, I’ll clear it with Bristol.”
Before Ellie could answer, Jordan hung up on her. Bethany’s small smile hadn’t gone unnoticed with her, but she couldn’t bother at the moment.
“Can I see?”
Incisions Page 16