Partner-Protector

by Julie Miller

  Pretty bold move considering she should be negotiating her escape rather than making a plea for more information. Or just running like hell and driving as far away as fast as she could.

  Edgar seemed to actually consider the deal. But as her hopes rose in one direction, she neglected to pay close enough attention to the other. Mort moved with surprising speed for a man who’d been too tired to get up when she’d first walked into the place. He reached across the counter and jerked her bag off her shoulder. “Pretty stones, huh?”

  “Hey!” Instinctively, Kelsey spun around to retrieve it. Edgar grabbed her arm and yanked her back to her place. Her elbow smacked against the counter. “Ow!” Tingles of pain and numbness radiated toward her fingers.

  “Let him look.”

  She twisted inside Edgar’s bruising grip. “Give that back.” Mort grinned an ugly smile. “I’ll scream.”

  “Who’s gonna hear ya, honey?” Mort took his sweet time unzipping the bag and rifling through her things, fouling the items he touched. “What else you got in here that’s worth trading for?”

  “Stop that.” She switched her attention back to Edgar, who’d palmed her hip with his heavy hand and dipped his nose to sniff her hair.

  “It ought to smell like strawberries with a color like that.”

  Kelsey braced her hand beneath his chin and shoved, wishing he’d go back to being interested in shiny things. “Get away from me.”

  “That’s not very nice.” He whipped his chin beyond her reach and pinned the attacking arm behind her back, wrenching her shoulder in its socket. His chest and hips pressed against her as he leaned in closer and sniffed some more.

  “Oooh!” She grunted a frustrated protest and fought his hold on her. They were amused by her struggles now. Oh, to be seven feet tall and built like a tank and break every one of his grubby, grabby fingers. “Let go!”

  Thank God she’d stuffed her keys into her pocket. At least she’d be able to drive away from this place and get straight into a shower to hose off the ick. If she could free herself.

  If she could get away right now, she’d just run. She didn’t have much money in her wallet. Still, her credit cards? Irreplaceable pictures of Frosty and Lucy Belle?

  Kelsey couldn’t stand it. She twisted around, freed her arm, jammed her elbow into Edgar’s gut and made one last valiant lunge for her backpack. “Give me my bag!”

  But Edgar threw his body into hers, sandwiching her between his big, bulgy belly and the counter. “I don’t think so, honey.”

  She rammed the heel of her boot down onto his instep and punched at his Adam’s apple. “Get away from me!”

  The jingle of the bell over the front door interrupted his foul-mouthed curse of pain.

  “You heard the lady. Move away.”

  Edgar twisted her arm, anchoring her in place. Mort shot to his feet.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  She knew that voice. Crisp and biting, low-pitched and not to be messed with.

  “T.” She whispered a sigh of relief.

  “Who the hell’s gonna make…” Edgar’s challenge faded into a startled gasp when he turned around and got a good look at the man standing behind him.

  Kelsey saw him, too.

  Her heart beat faster, though she didn’t know whether to run into his arms or back away. This was a whole new side to T. Merle Banning she hadn’t seen before.

  And there was definitely nothing bookish, buttoned down or Brooks Brothers about him anymore.

  DETECTIVE BANNING wasn’t as big as Edgar, didn’t fit the smarmy surroundings as well as Mort. But he had their attention. Kelsey’s, too.

  He’d brought the cold in with him, and the raw temperature clung to his clothes and his attitude. Standing there, with his feet braced apart, he planted his black-gloved hands at his waist, spreading open his coat and jacket. The badge, the gun and the tough facade—the survivor who’d beaten death and heartbreak and whatever the world dared throw at him—were all in plain view.

  “Detective Banning,” she uttered with more force, worried about how much of that displeased look was directed at her.

  “Sorry, Detective,” Edgar apologized, covering his backside rather than sounding sincere. His grip on her was rapidly cutting off the circulation down to her wrist and hand. “I didn’t know the cops were paying us a visit this evening.”

  Mort shoved his stool back and circled around the counter. “You’re jumpin’ our case? She’s the one who came in here buggin’ us. Said she had some crystals and rocks to trade, but have we seen ’em?”

  “Easy, friend.” Banning’s sharp-eyed gaze seemed to take in both men at once. “Better sit back down. But keep your hands up top where I can see them.”

  Mort took a moment to weigh his options. He looked at the gun, at Kelsey, back at Banning. Then, with a shrug, he slowly returned to his seat. “We didn’t know she was with you,” he grumbled. “This is just a misunderstanding. If she’d have said she was working with K.C.P.D., we would have answered her questions. We’re all into cooperation here, Officer.”

  “Yeah. Cooperation,” Edgar echoed.

  Kelsey didn’t trust the conciliatory mood for one second. Neither did Banning. He extended his hand toward her and crooked his fingers. “You’d better step over here with me.”

  The instant Edgar released her, Kelsey spun around and grabbed her purse, her gaze snared by Mort’s accusatory leer. She gathered the things he’d scattered across the counter and backed away toward Banning. When she felt his hand at the small of her back she jumped. She was even more startled when he laced their gloved fingers together and pulled her to his side, claiming a proprietary ownership the other men took note of.

  “Hey, we didn’t know it was like that with you and her.” Edgar rattled off a hasty explanation. “She came on to me first, asking all those questions.”

  Yeah, right.

  Mort tried to shift the blame, as well. “You ought to keep a tighter rein on her, Detective. A pretty girl like that doesn’t usually come into our part of town unless she’s willing to, um, do a little business.”

  Banning’s shoulders broadened. “I trust you won’t make that mistake again.”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir.”

  Kelsey savored a few moments of blessed reprieve, her deep breaths dragging in the clean scents of cold and wind from Banning’s wool coat. He held her hand as if he had every right, as if they were more than adversarial colleagues. As if there wasn’t anything freakishly wrong with a man wanting to hold her hand.

  But there was.

  Kelsey’s fleeting sense of security rushed out on a weary sigh. They both wore gloves, muting her ability to sense anything, but there had been too many times when an accidental brush or an intentional clasp had triggered insights people didn’t want to share. She’d lived through too many humiliating rejections and outright attacks to delude herself into thinking she could ever have a normal relationship with a man.

  Protecting herself from wayward desires, Kelsey moved a step away from the sense of security Banning provided and subtly tugged against his possessive claim. She was only asking for trouble if she thought snuggling up to his strong shoulder would give her the peace she’d craved for so long.

  But he tightened his grip around hers, refusing to let go. “Do you have everything?”

  He glanced her way, warning her to play along. The silent threat seemed to indicate that Mort and Edgar weren’t the only danger in the room she’d have to deal with if she refused.

  With the slightest of nods, Kelsey wiggled her fingers into a more comfortable position and held on, trying to remember how she’d acted when she thought she’d been in love with Jeb. Before she’d understood his cruel game. Before she realized she couldn’t wink or cuddle or kiss or drop her guard—or hold hands—as other women did when they gave their heart to a man.

  Her rueful gaze slipped to the amber bracelet still twisted around Edgar’s fingers. But she’d fooli
shly agreed to the trade. “I just want to go.”

  “Then we’ll be on our way.” Kelsey dutifully followed as he backed toward the door. But he paused a moment before stepping outside. “By the way—” His friendly grin seemed to put Mort and Edgar on as tight a guard as his authoritative voice had. “Did you answer Ms. Ryan’s questions?”

  Mort warned Edgar to keep his mouth shut. “We answered enough.”

  Banning considered the lie, then concluded the conversation. “The three of us will talk later,” he promised. “Right now I’m going to take the lady home.”

  The two looked less than thrilled that their dealings with Merle Banning weren’t over. “Later works for me. You, Edgar?”

  “Later’s good.”

  The detective left her at the door and crossed the length of the shop in long, purposeful strides that gave little indication of his limp. He pulled the amber beads from Edgar’s unresisting fingers. “I’ll take that.” He gave the two men a curt nod. “Gentlemen.”

  Kelsey opened the door, anxious to make a hasty exit and regroup after her dismal foray into criminal investigation. The winter air blasted her as if she was standing in front of an open freezer. She squinted her eyes and turned her face from the biting wind that swirled down the concrete stairwell leading to The Underground.

  But she held the door and waited until Banning was outside with her before pulling her knit cap out of her coat pocket. However, she never got a chance to put it on. As soon as he’d shut the door behind them, he had his hands on her waist, turning her and half lifting, half pushing her up the stairs ahead of him.

  “Hey.” It wasn’t much of a protest. She was as anxious to get out of there as he seemed to be.

  “Where are you parked?”

  “In the next block. Across from the mission.”

  He scanned a hundred and eighty degrees up and down the street as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. Dusk had fallen and the street lamps had come on, igniting tiny sparkles of light in the drifts of snow that clung to bumpers of parked vehicles and lined windowsills and doorways. “Good. That’s not far from my car.”

  Without breaking stride, he switched his grip to her arm to hurry her alongside him at his pace. Kelsey dug in her heels and jerked her arm free. “I’ve been manhandled enough for one day, thank you very much. At least let me get bundled up. It’s freezing out here.”

  “Make it fast.” Banning stopped a couple of steps past her and turned to face her. “Are you hurt? Did you get all your stuff back?”

  “I’m fine. Maybe a little grossed out, but fine.” His concern, though slightly delayed, was appreciated. She dangled the bracelet and smiled her gratitude as she hooked it over her wrist beneath the black-and-white cuff of her coat. “Thanks to you, everything’s accounted for.”

  Though he pulled his jacket shut, he made no move to button his coat. To give him easy access to his gun? To let the wind bulk up his coat to give him a bigger, broader silhouette? Because he was impervious to the cold, biting wind?

  Her first impression of Detective Banning was that he looked more at home in an office or behind a computer. But seeing him so hard and not to be messed with downstairs in the Underground, and watching him now on full, guarded alert as the nighttime crowd filtered onto the streets, made her think there was a lot more to T than first impressions might indicate. She sensed it had something to do with that limp, and those scattered images she’d seen from his past.

  Banning was smart, complicated, conflicted—and very impatient, judging by the tiny white clouds that formed in front of his face and dissipated with every heated breath.

  “Today?” he urged her.

  Knowing she owed him for saving her dignity, if not her very life, Kelsey worked quickly, pulling her turquoise cap down over her ears and tying her scarf high around her neck. She inhaled deeply, welcoming the damp air that crystallized inside her nose and cleared the odor of Mort and Edgar’s shop from her sinuses.

  “I guess I got in a little over my head.”

  “You think?”

  She let his sarcasm slide off into the dusting of new snow beneath her feet. “They know more than they told me. It’s just a matter of convincing them to talk.”

  His panning gaze finally stopped on her. “Did you read that in your crystal ball?”

  More hocus-pocus insults? “I told you, I don’t—”

  “Time to move, sweetheart.” He wasn’t in the mood to listen to any argument or explanation or even a thank-you. Snatching her by the arm above her elbow, he pulled her into double time beside him. “I distinctly told you not to come down here by yourself.”

  Apparently, resistance was futile. His grasp might be gentle, but it wasn’t budging. “Well, you weren’t going to talk to them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She glared at his stern profile—the square jaw, the straight nose, the grim expression. “If Mort and Edgar were on your to-do list, why didn’t you say something?”

  “Did you give me a chance?” They halted at the intersection to let traffic roll past. “As I recall, I was sitting at my desk, trying to piece together some information from that box you gave me—”

  “You were?” Kelsey was stunned.

  “—when you hung up on me. Look around you. You decided to go on a scavenger hunt in one of the most dangerous parts of town. Alone. Unarmed. Clueless.” He inclined his head toward a short, muscular black man standing catter corner from them. Dressed in leather from head to toe, and wearing enough gold jewelry to start his own store, the man stared back without apology. “That’s Zero, one of the local pimps. He’s already secreted away his girls because he’s heard there’s a new cop in the neighborhood. I imagine your two friends down in The Underground started making calls as soon as I was out the door.”

  “I didn’t think this was going to be a cakewalk, Detective. But I do know a little about self-defense.”

  A girl didn’t grow up as different as she was without learning how to defend herself on the playground, in a barroom, or—like that last night with Jeb—in the bedroom.

  “Yeah, I saw you gettin’ your licks in on the big guy. But what if they both decided to go after you?” He glanced down at her. “Could you take them both?”

  “Probably not.” She conceded his point, but still tried to make her own. “But I was just going to a pawnshop to ask shopkeepers a few questions. It wasn’t like I was trying to track down drug dealers.”

  Banning’s laugh made wispy clouds in the air. “Are you kidding? You didn’t smell the pot down there?”

  Pot? Good grief. Kelsey hung her head and wished the light would change so she could get to her car and get away from Mr. Know-it-all. “That would explain the Eau de Cat that made my eyes water. It was to cover up the smell of marijuana.”

  “Exactly. And those murders you’re so anxious to help K.C.P.D. solve? The nine dead women were all found in this part of town.”

  She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, accepting the blame for her impulsive choice. “I get the idea. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to do this on my own. Bad things happen around here.”

  “I’ll say. My partner got shot just a couple of blocks down the road.”

  The stark announcement, combined with the sudden distance in his focus, reached past her own feelings of remorse. No wonder it had been so important for him to keep even someone he considered a nuisance like her safe.

  “I’m sorry.” Her instinct was to reach out and offer comfort. But Kelsey curled her fingers into her palm and held them at her side. She didn’t have to be a psychic to know that her touch wasn’t the one he’d want. “Did he…?”

  “She…recovered after a few months of rest and rehabilitation. I took out the shooter myself. It was an ambush. The other two perps got away, but were eventually killed at another crime scene.”

  “How horrible.”

  “She’s on maternity leave now. That’s why I’m temporarily working solo.” Kelsey h
eard the first hint of softness in his tone when Banning mentioned his partner. “That’s why I’m stuck with this old case.”

  That’s why I’m stuck with you.

  Kelsey could imagine the unspoken line. And there wouldn’t be any softness when he talked about her.

  “I’m glad she’s all right.”

  A man wearing a plastic trash bag on his head beneath a faded red Chiefs cap jostled past as the light changed. Kelsey stumbled into Banning just as he stepped off the curb. With his fingers still wrapped around her upper arm, he easily righted her. But the bump was enough to throw him off stride and he came down wrong on his right foot.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Banning’s fingers clenched on her arm. Standing perfectly still, he grit his teeth hard enough to make a pulse leap along the line of his jaw as he worked his way through the pain. This time, she did offer help. She clutched a fistful of his jacket and steadied her hand against his chest, ready to take his weight and guide him back to the sidewalk when he was ready to move. “Is it your knee?”

  He nodded. “Cold weather doesn’t help. Damn thing isn’t as flexible as it used…” His breath stopped up and the tenor of his voice changed. “How do you know about my knee?”

  “I’ve seen you limp. You hide it pretty well, but the stiffness is still there.”

  He covered her hand with his and pried it from the front of his jacket, warily keeping her in his sights as if he didn’t trust that that was all she’d seen.

  A half dozen more people shuffled past them. A horn honked. The light had changed. Banning tugged on her hand to get them out of the street. “C’mon. We need to keep moving.”

  He walked just as quickly as he had before, though his rocking gait was more pronounced. “What does your car look like?” he asked.

  “It’s a red Saturn.”

  He led her around a group of homeless people, mostly men, lining up against the gray stone facade of the Wingate Humanitarian Mission to get inside for the promise of a hot dinner. The painted sign beside the double front doors offered meals, free medical service three days a week, plus counseling, religious services, adult literacy classes and overnight lodging. A smaller, handwritten note beside the billboard, however, warned the would-be patrons that the beds were full, medical supplies were limited and that classes had been suspended until a new teacher could be hired.