The Marrying Kind

by Beverly Bird

  No, he thought in the next breath, he was never going to be able to deal with anything normally again. Everything had changed. Everything he knew about himself had shattered, crashed, with a sniper’s bullets. A woman mattered. This woman mattered. More than life itself.

  “I c-couldn’t shoot. Oh, Gunner, I couldn’t do it, I froze! You should have let me get a new partner. I could get somebody k-k-killed. I could get you killed. Gale was right. Oh, God, Gale was right.”

  She started crying again. Each sob racked through his own chest, tightening around his heart.

  “Shh,” he said again. “It was the first time.”

  “Couldn’t do it,” she repeated, sobbing.

  “It was the first time since Matt.” God knew nobody had ever shot at her up in the Fifth. “It won’t happen again. It’s behind you now. You’ll be fine next time.”

  “Maybe n-not.”

  No, Gunner thought helplessly, maybe not.

  Maybe what had happened to Matt, what had happened tonight, would combine to scar her forever. Suddenly he realized that Benami had gone directly for both of their weakest, most vulnerable points. It really was a game for the bastard. He’d known that even if he didn’t manage to kill them, he’d still cause some serious complications in their lives.

  Gunner knew he was neck deep in Internal Affairs alligators again. That city car was beyond repair. And Tessa. Ah, Tess.

  The rage that filled him was unlike any he had ever known before. Because this was what everybody had expected her to do when she was fired at again. He knew she was stronger, better, steadier than this, but the bastard had ambushed her, taking her off guard in her own home, and Gunner knew that Tessa wasn’t easily going to trust herself again.

  Yes, Benami knew someone who was aware of general department gossip.

  He swore aloud, then felt a fresh surge of adrenaline at the sound of sirens. “Come on,” he urged. “Can you stand up?”

  Tessa tried valiantly. Her legs were still weak. She clung to him for support.

  “It’s the district cops I asked for,” he said quietly. “Come on, pull yourself together. We’ll tell them you never had the chance to get off a shot.”

  Tessa swayed. “I can’t... lie.”

  “Then I will.” He wasn’t even going to try to fight his urge to protect her anymore. He knew, finally and irrevocably, that it was beyond him.

  “What happened here?” demanded a male voice from behind them as one of the district cops came down the hallway.

  With dogged determination, Tessa dragged in a breath, swiped a hand over her wet cheeks and steadied herself.

  “Benami found her before I could get here,” Gunner said shortly. “Stay with her a minute.”

  “No,” Tessa said flatly.

  Gunner turned on her. “What do you mean, no?”

  She had to get her pride back somehow. She choked on a low, moaning sound, unable to bear what Gunner must think of her right now.

  “You’re going outside, right?” she asked, and her voice was thin but stronger. “To see if there’s any trace of him?”

  “Yeah,” Gunner said warily.

  “So we’ll all go. Three pairs of eyes are better than one.”

  “Four pairs of eyes.” Another cop corrected her, coming into the kitchen. He looked at his district partner, then at Gunner. “Radio’s buzzing off the dashboard. Every neighbor in a five-block radius called in about shots being fired.”

  “Good. We’ll separate the area into quadrants, pick over every damn inch of concrete. Except you.” He grabbed Tessa’s hand. “You’re coming with me.”

  The two district cops went up the hallway ahead of them. Gunner detained Tessa.

  “When we’re done here, get that toothbrush you were all fired up about the other night,” he said roughly. “Even if we pick up this guy, you’re staying with me tonight. Your front door is all busted out.”

  Tessa shuddered deeply. Panic tried to scoot through her again. It couldn’t quite get a grip.

  In the end, she only nodded. There were worse terrors tonight than her own treacherous body and heart.

  Chapter 16

  They found no trace of the gunman except for some spent cartridge shells from his semiautomatic. Gunner examined one beneath a street light with gloved hands. His heart stopped all over again.

  It had been a powerful gun. He went cold inside, then hot, when he considered that none of the bullets had hit her. They’d been calling her Princess. Maybe she was an angel. Either that, or she had one sitting on her shoulder.

  “Might as well go back,” he said roughly. “There’s nothing else out here.”

  “No,” Tessa whispered. He looked at her sharply. He didn’t like her tone.

  By the time they got back to the brownstone, her scratches had stopped bleeding. She washed up and they left Forensics rummaging around in the wreckage of her kitchen. She knew they wouldn’t find anything.

  They wouldn’t even find discharged bullets from her own gun.

  She cringed inwardly. Sooner or later, everyone would know that she hadn’t fired. They would send her back to the Fifth, and maybe that was exactly where she belonged. She couldn’t let Gunner lie for her. It just wasn’t right.

  She was silent as they drove to his apartment, too shaken to watch exactly where they were going. When he stopped on South Street again, she looked out the window vacantly.

  Gunner watched her. He wasn’t just worried about her, he realized. He was scared to death. Her face was as white as parchment in the streetlights. Her eyes were too big, and darker than their normal clear blue. Her hands were fisted tightly in her lap, and they had been that way since they had left her brownstone.

  Fresh emotion surged through him. First there was rage again. He’d deal with that later, when he finally got his hands on Benami. Tenderness came second, so new, so strange, that he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. But he finally understood why he had reacted with such pure temper when she had tried to get reassigned, and why he had taken her home with him on New Year’s in the first place. He knew why he had broken one of his cardinal rules and had kissed her when she asked him to, in spite of all his better judgment. He knew why she’d had him turned inside out from the start. She made thunder roll and lightning strike. And right now, she was making him ache.

  “We’re here,” he said finally.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “You live here?” They were parked in front of a flat-fronted, brown brick tenement.

  “No.”

  She finally pulled her eyes away from the street to look at him vacantly. “Pardon me?”

  “This was the closest parking space I could find. We have to walk back around the corner onto Third Street.”

  “Oh,” she said again simply.

  She finally got out to stand on the sidewalk. Just as he joined her, a car backfired somewhere on the street behind them. Tessa jumped and gasped.

  Gunner swore, and the rage came back. “This way.” He took her arm harder than he had to, pointing her in the right direction, and decided that if she didn’t like him touching her, then that was just too bad. He was finished with tiptoeing over and around her little lines.

  But she didn’t protest this time.

  She remained unnaturally quiet as they walked back around the corner. He led her to a coffee shop and pushed his key into a door just to the side of the entrance. “Upstairs.” He pointed.

  He had the whole second floor of the building, Tessa realized. There was no foyer—in fact, there really wasn’t much in the way of rooms. It was mostly open space, with nothing to hem him in. They stepped directly into an immense living area and she looked around. Something inside her began to squirm and come back to life.

  It was so... Gunner.

  The gray carpet was the color of his eyes. The whole east wall seemed to be windows. The blinds where rolled all the way up, letting in the lights of the city. On the north wall there was an entertainment center with every imaginable
electronic appliance. Tessa stepped over to it.

  A television, two VCRs, a stereo, CD player, turntable, speakers. And magazines. Lots and lots of magazines. Everything from Bon Appetit to Field And Track, to Newsweek and Sports Illustrated . They were everywhere, not just on the entertainment center. She looked around in wonder.

  “You can’t possibly be interested in all these subjects,” she breathed.

  “It’s amazing how some odd tidbit of information can come in handy in this business. I like to learn.”

  She finally looked at him. He was watching her closely, looking uncomfortable. Funny, she thought, how as recently as a week ago, she would never have been able to imagine John Gunner feeling awkward about anything. She seemed to bring out the worst in him. She gave a short, high-pitched laugh.

  “What?” he asked too quickly.

  Tessa shook her head and hugged herself. “Nothing.”

  “I would have cleaned up if I’d known you were coming.”

  She looked around again and sighed. “It’s wonderful. Someone lives here. My place used to look sort of like this.”

  Ah, he thought. So the neatness of her brownstone, the sterility, the lack of anything personal there, had been a reaction to her widowhood.

  Gunner cleared his throat. “Hungry?”

  Tessa grimaced. “If I ate anything right now, I don’t think I could keep it down.”

  He flashed one of those crooked grins. It thawed the ice inside her a little more. She went to the sofa beneath the wall of windows and sank on to it with a tremulous sigh. Then she looked over her shoulder and jumped up again.

  “He could shoot right through there!”

  “Not unless he’s on the roof of the building across the street,” Gunner answered evenly.

  “But he could be!”

  Gunner moved around her and closed the blinds. “Better?”

  “A little.” She nodded, embarrassed, but she went to sit in a chair.

  “Want a drink?”

  Her gaze flashed up to him. “I don’t think so. You know what happens when I drink.”

  “Yeah. And I loved every minute of it.”

  Her eyes widened. Twin spots of color came instantly, finally, to her cheeks.

  That was better, Gunner thought.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she gasped.

  “I do.”

  Her eyes widened even more. Her heart began thundering.

  Don’t do this to me, not tonight, Gunner, I can’t handle it.

  She began looking around frantically, as though seeking escape. Gunner crossed slowly to the chair and leaned over to put a hand on the cushion on either side of her head, effectively trapping her.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped.

  “Keeping you from running.”

  “I’m not... I can’t—”

  “No, you can’t go anywhere.” He hesitated. “Not now. Not anymore.”

  His voice was like callused fingers on her skin. Tessa shivered and looked up at him helplessly. Oh, God, she wanted him. All he had to do was get close to her like this to start everything up inside her again, even now. And that was without even considering the implications of his words.

  Gunner held her eyes and thought again of how he had felt when he had turned that corner and had heard gunfire. No more lines, he thought again. She didn’t know it yet, but she was his.

  His heart thudded briefly, then was calm.

  Unfortunately, first things came first. He finally straightened away from her.

  “I’m having a beer.”

  She watched him disappear into the kitchen and stood unsteadily to go after him. It terrified her to realize how unwilling she was to be alone right now.

  “I also have brandy, bourbon and vodka,” he said, peering into a cupboard. “You seemed to do okay with bourbon the other night. I think that was one of the things in the punch.”

  Tessa blushed, then she sighed. It wasn’t worth arguing about. “Fine.”

  He rooted in the refrigerator and mixed it with ginger ale. Tessa peered over his shoulder at the shelves.

  “Gunner, there are things growing in there.”

  He smiled privately. Now that sounded a lot more like the Tess he knew. “Yeah.”

  “What’s that orange stuff?”

  “Mold.”

  “Mold’s green.”

  “Not when it used to be a carrot.” He closed the refrigerator again and turned to look at her, then he sobered. “So,” he began, “the first order of business is to figure out what set Benami off tonight.”

  Tessa shook her head emphatically. “No. The first order of business is how could you?”

  Gunner blinked in surprise. “How could I what?”

  “Wreck another car!” Impulsively, unable to stop herself, she touched a finger to the bandage on his forehead. “Oh, Gunner.”

  Yeah, he thought. This was going to turn out just fine. “Want to kiss and make it better?” he asked, grinning.

  “No!”

  He shrugged but kept smiling. “Maybe later then.”

  He changed gears fast enough to leave her dizzy, and she’d only had one sip of her drink.

  “I was run off the road,” he explained. “Benami came after me first. That’s how I knew that you were probably in danger, too.”

  It was why he had checked himself out against medical advice, she realized suddenly. The room seemed to spin. He’d done it for her, to get to her, to save her.

  Well, she was his partner. But still, it felt bigger, more momentous than that. If he had a concussion, he really should be in the hospital. Head injuries could be scary.

  Tessa dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and sat down hard as other things occurred to her, her brain working fast and furiously now. “Why? Why would he suddenly start attacking us?” Her face paled again. “Gunner, he was trying to kill us!”

  He nodded slowly. “Sure was.”

  “But how could he know? How could he know we were getting close?”

  “Well, now, that’s what’s been bothering me all night. Because I came up with nothing at the banks. I managed to touch base with two of the other guys Kennery gave me. They didn’t come up with anything, either. What nags me is that even if they did find something, how come Benami knew about it before I did?”

  “I found something,” she blurted. “Igor finally coughed something up. Benami is wanted in Nebraska for Murder One. Only he was Conrad Benning there. He killed his first wife, too. Her name was Laurie Arnold. And I found a safe deposit box under the name of—”

  “Don’t tell me. Laurie Arnold.”

  Tessa nodded. Gunner whistled. “Who knows this?”

  She felt like crying. “Melanie, Kennery, Becky...just about the whole unit. I was running around with those fax papers like a lunatic.” Then what he was intimating sunk in. “You think there’s a leak in the department?” She shook her head frantically. “Gunner, I don’t want to believe that. One of us? One of Homicide?”

  He paced to the kitchen window. She was still jittery. It took everything she had not to cry out for him not to stand there. She fisted her hands again.

  “Got to be,” he said finally. “I can’t come up with anything else. Hit me with another answer. Anything. Believe me, I’d be glad to entertain any other reasonable idea.”

  She was miserably silent, unable to come up with anything.

  “Did your brother get the compliance order?” he asked finally.

  Tessa nodded. “But the Ninth District guys haven’t been able to find Benami to serve it.” She hesitated, then went on bitterly, “Now we know why. He was busy running you off the road and shooting at me.”

  Gunner pounded a fist against the wall. Tessa jumped.

  “Somebody told him,” he snarled. “He knew that I had a rep with Internal Affairs for losing cars.”

  “It’s no big secret, Gunner.”

  “That’s my point. And neither is it a secret you spent nine months in
the Fifth.”

  She flinched.

  “He knows this stuff. Common departmental gossip.”

  “It’s not just the police department,” she said weakly. “Gunner, everybody knows that stuff—almost everybody connected with the city judicial system.”

  “Yeah, and everybody knows the compliance order came through, and that Igor finally panned out, and that you found that safe-deposit box. Or maybe even that Dhiry Patel saw him and gave us that statement.”

  “Baum?” she whispered.

  “Sure. Why not? Like you said, it could be anybody connected with the city judicial system. Whatever, Benami knew he could throw his harassment tactics right out the window.”

  “I was standing in Kennery’s doorway when I gave him the update,” she said miserably. “Anybody could have walked past and heard me. I wasn’t paying much attention. But even so, why didn’t Christian just disappear again, like he did ir Nebraska? Why try to kilt us?”

  Gunner shook his head. “Because he’s ticked off?”

  She looked bleakly out the kitchen window. “It’s scary. He could be anywhere out there.”

  She wasn’t going to like this part, Gunner thought, but he wanted to get it over with. “Yeah. So which do you prefer? Jersey or the Pocono Mountains?”

  She looked at him wildly. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “We’re out of here tomorrow morning, Princess. We’re leaving the city until he’s picked up. So which will it be? We can go north to my hunting cabin, but I don’t have plumbing.”

  She kept staring at him as though he had lost his mind.

  “Somehow you don’t strike me as the type who would enjoy roughing it without a toilet,” he agreed as though she had said something. “Jersey, then. My father’s got a fishing cabin on Still Run. That has a bathroom.”

  “Gunner!”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going anywhere! Are you crazy?” She was furious. She realized that it felt a whole lot better than the fear. “I finally worked my way out of the Fifth! I’m not going to run for cover now that my first case is heating up, no matter what happened to me tonight!”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “You are.”