by Nora Roberts
“Dave, Dave.” She sharpened her voice to keep him with her. “He’s a cop? You’re saying he’s a cop?”
“SWAT. Was SWAT. Burned out? Transferred? Don’t know. Can’t think back. Walker? No, no, Walken. Had a beer with him once, retirement party. Beer at the bar, talked about the ball game. Walken. Walken,” he said again, and looked into Phoebe’s eyes. “Go.”
She dashed to the door, called for a nurse. “He’s awake, and he’s starting to hurt. You.” She jabbed a finger at the guard on the door. “You don’t move from this spot, you hear? I don’t care if there’s an earthquake, a rain of frogs or the Second Coming, you don’t budge until your relief arrives. And nobody gets inside that room you don’t check their ID and go in with them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Duncan.” My God, she thought, it was something to have a man who didn’t leave. “I bet that Porsche can really move.”
“Damn right.”
“You’re about to put that to the test. I’ve got a name,” she said, and rushed for the elevator with Duncan beside her.
28
Walken, Jerald Dennis. Phoebe had the full name after a five-second conversation with Commander Harrison. And with Harrison pushing the buttons, she had Walken’s last known address within three minutes.
“He won’t be there.” She snapped her phone closed. “He’s too smart for that. He won’t be there, but they’ll send a team in to make sure of it. He’ll have another place by now. Another place where he’s dug in deep. Go here,” she told Duncan and rattled off an address.
“What’s there?”
“He was tight with Michael Vince, trained with him, Harrison told me. I want to talk with Michael Vince. Well, God!” She blew out a breath when he whipped around a corner. “You know how to drive, don’t you?”
“Make a hell of a martini, too.”
“You can mix me up a whole batch when we finish this.”
“Gin or vodka?”
She laughed, just put her hands over her face and laughed. “Dealer’s choice. Duncan, when we get there, get to Michael Vince’s, would you wait for me? Would you call my house and tell them that Dave woke up and I talked to him? Would you tell them he’s all right?”
“I’ll tell them. I’ll wait for you.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Oh yeah, a whole bunch of things to say to you later.”
Vince lived in a trim little house on the near edge of the south suburbs. He opened the door wearing a pair of blue-checked pajama pants and an irritated expression. The expression went neutral when she held up her badge and gave her name.
“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”
“I need to talk to you about Jerald Walken.”
“Jerry? I haven’t seen him in years. He moved to Montana. What’s this about?”
“I’d like to come in a minute.”
“Sure, but we just got the baby down—again. I need to keep it quiet. I swear, the kid hears me scratch my ass two rooms away.”
“How old’s the baby?”
“Six months. He’s teething, which means me and my wife aren’t getting any sleep. I’ve been on with you on some crisis situations. That Johnson deal, that was a hell of a thing.”
“It was. Do you know how to get in touch with Walken?”
“No. I never heard from him after he left.”
“I heard you were friends.”
“We were. I thought we were.” With a shrug, Vince sprawled onto one of the living room chairs, yawned hugely. “Sorry. Have a seat. Jerry was supposed to be best man at my wedding, but he took off two weeks before. Didn’t even tell me he was turning in his papers till it was done. Sent me a fucking e-mail—’scuze me—an e-mail a couple days later, said he was going to find his soul or some such crap. Two weeks before my wedding, he’s going off to find his soul. I’da figured he was just drunk if I hadn’t heard he’d left the unit.”
It was apparent that the guy was dopey with sleep deprivation. Phoebe remembered those days—nights, endless nights with a fussy baby. “Did Jerry drink a lot?”
“He could tie one on. You do the work we do, you need a little release.”
“What about the married woman he was involved with?”
Vince pokered up. “What’s this about?”
“You were on the Johnson situation. It was Walken who fired that shot.”
The sleepy eyes sharpened as he came to attention in the chair. “No fucking way.”
“You heard, I’m sure, about the incident in Bonaventure. It was Walken who chained Roy to that grave and killed him. Captain Mc Vee was seriously injured today.”
“Mc Vee? How? What happened?”
“An explosive was rigged to the front door of his house. Circumstances swung in our favor, and Captain Mc Vee not only survived, he saw and identified Walken. Now if you know how to contact Walken, you need to tell me so we can bring him in before anyone else is hurt.”
“I don’t. Christ almighty. Jerry?” Vince slumped back in the chair. “Captain Mc Vee said it was Jerry?”
“He did.”
“Jesus. Jesus. He’d been on the edge the last few months on the job. Sometimes the edge works for you, but…”
“You had some concerns?” Phoebe prompted.
“Yeah, I guess I did. But, you know, I had a lot going on myself, the whole wedding thing. We didn’t hang out as much after a tour. But he was a good cop. Jerry had a cool head on the job. Could be hot off it, but on? He was solid.”
“There was a woman.”
“Yeah.” He blew out the word. “He got tangled up with her, and it was like all he could think about. Had this idea they were going to head off together out West—where men were men, and all that. Get themselves a ranch in Montana. I figured that’s what they did. He and the woman took off to Montana.”
“What was her name?”
“He called her Gwen, or Guinevere. He kept her to himself. I worried…”
“What did you worry about?”
“This doesn’t feel right, Lieutenant. I gotta say, it doesn’t feel right. He was a cop, a teammate, a friend.”
“Captain Mc Vee was in surgery more than three hours.”
“Okay.” Vince scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Okay, okay. Listen, it was just when he’d had a couple too many or he wasn’t able to see her for a while that he got jumpy. And maybe sometimes he went off on a tangent.”
“Such as?”
“He talked about how it’d be easier to just put a bullet in the guy—her husband. He didn’t mean it, and he’d get right off it again, talking about how they were just going to wait until they had enough money put by for the ranch. Already had a name for it.”
“Camelot?”
“Yeah, yeah, ’cause she was Guinevere. He was crazy about her. She was probably stringing him along, and that’s what sent him off.”
“No, I don’t think she was stringing him along. Other friends, family?”
“He got along with everybody in the unit. Thought of them like brothers. He’d even say brothers-in-arms, you know?”
And not a single police officer had been hit when Charlie Johnson’s body was riddled with bullets.
“Family outside the job?”
“He had—has, I don’t know which—a mother and stepfather, but they weren’t close. I think he said they’d moved out to California when he was in his twenties, and he stayed here. He got along,” Vince repeated, “but I’d say, except for me, he was kind of a loner. I think he was put out some when I hooked up with Marijay. My wife. Then he got tangled with this woman, and that was it for him.”
Phoebe got to her feet. “If he contacts you or if you see him, you need to contact me immediately. You understand that?”
“Lieutenant, if he did what you’re saying, he’s got to be out of his mind. I’ve got a wife and a baby. You can believe me when I say, I hear from Jerry, you’ll hear from me. I won’t take chances with my family.”
Phoebe pulled out her phone as s
he walked out of the house. She saw Duncan leaning against his car, hands in his pockets, looking up at a sky where stars were trying to light through the thinning clouds.
She leaned back against the car with him while she spoke to the team commander, then to the hospital to check on Dave’s condition, and finally to Sykes to bring him up to date.
When she was finished, she pocketed her phone and stayed where she was another moment, looking up at those persistent stars.
“You’re an awfully patient man, Duncan.”
“Most things are worth waiting for.”
“In an awful way, that’s what Walken thinks, too, and he’s been waiting a long time for this. The man in there? That was his closest friend. In fact, reading between the lines, I’d say he was Walken’s only friend. A loner who got along, hot-tempered off the job, liked to drink, didn’t much care for it when his friend got engaged. But he hasn’t once gotten in touch with his only friend in going on three years. He has no friends now. That’s the way it is for him. That’s the way he wants it now.
“We have to dig him out, because he’s somewhere in this city. This isn’t what I do, not what I know how to do best.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “So I have to be the patient one, and wait for others to do the real digging.”
“I liked to play baseball when I was a kid.”
Confused, she looked over. “Sorry?”
“I liked to play, and I could wing a ball out of far right and pinpoint it to the cutoff man, even right into second. And I could run like the wind. But I had a bat as green and limp as old celery. So I had to depend on somebody else to hit in the runs. We do what we do, Phoebe.”
“I love him more than I did my own father.” She rubbed damp and tired eyes. “I hardly remember my daddy. Horsie-back rides and tickling and how he smelled of Dial soap. But I can’t hear his voice in my head, and I have to look at his picture now and again to keep his face in there. When I think of fathers, I think of Dave first.”
“Come on, baby.” He took her hand. “Let’s get you home.”
“There’s nothing more I can do tonight. Just nothing.”
“You’ll get some sleep, then you’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”
“You’re going to stay with me.” She got in the car, looked up at him. “You said you would.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
He expected to bunk in Ava’s son’s room again, so Duncan was surprised when after peeking in on Carly, Phoebe took him by the hand and drew him into her bedroom.
She pressed a finger to her lips as she closed and locked the door behind them. “You’re going to have to be very quiet while you make love with me.”
“You’re the noisy one.” He backed her toward the bed. “But if you get too carried away, I’ll just gag you.”
“Try this instead.” She rose on her toes, found his mouth with hers. “God.” She let out the word on a sigh. “God, God, I want you all over me. Inside me, around me, on me and under me. I want to be surrounded, Duncan. Surrounded so I can’t think of anything else.”
He eased her down on the bed, brushed the hair back from her face. His lips brushed her brow, her cheeks, her jaw. Then they sank into hers.
He could feel her relax, inch by inch. A little tremor in the shoulders, then a melting. Her arms lifted so he could slip her shirt off and away. And his hands ran down her sides. Bumped into her gun.
“Ah, I think you’re armed and dangerous.”
“Crap. I forgot.” She tapped him back so she could roll, unhook her weapon. She set it, in its holster, on the nightstand.
“You don’t just leave it out like that, with Carly around?”
One more little flutter to the heart, she thought, and cupped his face. “No. I have a lockbox, top shelf of my closet. But I think, as the door’s locked, it’ll be fine there for a little while.”
“Okay. Let’s see, I think I was just about…” He pulled her back. “Here,” he said before his lips took hers again.
They spoke in whispers as they undressed each other. Then didn’t speak at all.
He surrounded her, just as she’d asked, with touch and taste, with heat and motion. In the dark, her hands and lips slid over his skin, and she found what she needed.
Little thrills rising to gnawing aches, aches soothed back to silky pleasures. Time ticked away, and maybe those stars were burning now—but she didn’t need their light. All the terror and tension of the endless day drained.
She lifted to him, and he could hear her sigh and sigh as he filled her. Then it was she who surrounded him, took him in, trapping him in that glorious heat until he was swamped.
He could see her eyes gleaming in the dark, watching him watching her through that exquisite merging of bodies. The thrill of skin to skin, though the rhythm stayed slow and easy, rise and fall. And lips met with a quick and fresh hunger to muffle moans, to swallow gasps.
When the rising peaked and the fall was a dive in the dark, he pressed his face into her hair, to draw in its scent like breath.
She should get up, stow her weapon so she could unlock the door. But, God, it felt so good to just lie there naked, body to body with her mind all fuzzy and her heart still thudding.
How had she done without this for so long? The intimacy and pleasure, thecontact? How had she done without him? The conversation and support, the humor and understanding. Wasn’t it amazing that at this point in her life she would find someone who fit? Just fit—body, mind, heart.
Maybe she was feeling sentimental and shaky, under siege and out of control. But she’d found someone who helped keep the ground steady under her feet. Someone else who could answer the questions or point the way—because, oh Jesus, she hadn’t realized how tired she’d been of carrying the whole load alone.
“You make me feel sturdier, Duncan.”
“Good. I think.”
“It’s very good, for me.” She ran her hands down his back all the way to his ass and back again. “Very good. Maybe it’s just postcoital euphoria, but right now I feel like I can handle what’s happening, and what has to happen. It’s going to be all right because it has to be.”
He said nothing for a moment, then trailed a finger over her shoulder. “I rehired Suicide Joe.”
“You…Hmm.”
“Phin’s going to be pissed, but it’s just part-time. A few hours a week. He’s not so crazy, and he’s getting therapy.” Duncan lifted his head, looked down at her. “You save lives, Phoebe—you saved his. That’s what you do. How many people can say that? That saving lives is what they do. Yeah, it’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t know if I want to save his. Walken’s. I’ve never felt that way before, as if—even for a moment—I wouldn’t regret someone’s death. All these years, I’ve never drawn my weapon on anyone. I’ve never discharged it outside the range. But I know I could, I know I wouldn’t hesitate, if I walked out the door and he was there. It doesn’t even weigh on me, Duncan, the knowing that.”
“Why should it?”
“Because it’s not what I do. All those years ago, when Reuben had us, I thought if I could get a knife from the kitchen, or somehow get the gun away, I’d hurt him. Kill him if I could, for what he was doing to us. Keeping us scared and trapped, that blood on Mama’s face, and the fear on Carter’s. That’s the only other time in my life I felt like this. But when it was over, when it was done, I was so relieved he wasn’t dead. He’d go to prison, and that was good, that was just fine, but he wasn’t dead. No one died in that house. I don’t know, when this is over, if I’ll feel the same.”
“I haven’t picked a fight in…well, that little scuffle with Jake’s stupid cousin doesn’t count, so in fifteen years or so. Haven’t cracked my fist into anyone’s face or gotten that rush of whipping someone good and proper. But if I had the chance, if I could get my hands on Walken, I’d beat him bloody. And when he was done, his eyes rolling back, I’d beat him some more.
“It’s not what I do,
Phoebe, but knowing I would doesn’t weigh on me, either.”
She stared at him because however calm and easy his tone, she knew he meant it. He had that in him. “Well. Well. We’re just a couple of violent individuals, aren’t we?”
“Somewhere in there. The difference is we don’t set out to be. Tell you what, if you get the chance, you draw on him, and you hold the gun on him till I get there. I’ll beat hell out of him, and when he’s down, you can give him a couple of good kicks.”
She snorted out a laugh before she could stop it. “God, that shouldn’t be funny, and it sure as hell shouldn’t make me feel better. But it is, and it does. And with this current mood, I’m going to put that gun in the lockbox where it belongs.”
She wiggled out from under him, picked up the gun from the nightstand. Then blinked against the sudden light when he switched on the bedside lamp.
“Had to see.” He tracked his gaze over her, a lazy sweep of dusky blue. “Naked redhead with a gun. I believe that’s stirred me up enough I could go another round.”
She only shook her head, walked to the closet. “A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could end the day here, like this. Life is a strange ride, as someone commented recently.”
“I like the ups and downs of it. Which reminds me of something I was going to ask you. When this is done, how about taking a few days off, taking a little trip with me?”
It was hopeful and human to project, to plan, Phoebe knew as she took down the lockbox. She smiled a little as she imagined Paris or Rome, Tahiti or Belize. “I might be able to swing that. Where’d you have in mind?”
“Disney World.” She dropped the gun into the box with a little thud, then simply stood in the closet, staring at nothing.
“You want to go to Disney World?”
“Big dream of mine when I was a kid. I used to sit in bed and think about it. It all seemed so happy there. Color and music and fun, life-sized cartoon characters walking around. Never got there, not when I was a kid. Been a couple times since, just to say I did.”
Carefully, she set the box back on the shelf. “And was it happy? All you wanted it to be?”