by Cathie Linz
“What makes you say that?”
“You never mention the name of the ass who beat your friend. It’s like you don’t trust me with that much information.”
“It’s not my secret to tell,” she said quietly. “I promised I wouldn’t give that information to anyone. I take my promises seriously. I think you take your promises seriously as well, so you should understand that it’s not a matter of trust. It’s a matter of honoring my friend’s request.”
He got that now. “Understood,” he said gruffly.
“I know you’re in a hurry, so you can just drop me off in front of the building,” she said. “That will be fine. Or on the corner. I could walk.”
“Not on my watch. I’ll drop you in front of the building because I know you’ve got twenty-four-hour doorman service.”
“Protective much?”
“All the time.”
She leaned over to kiss his cheek. “And who protects you?”
“My mom would say it’s St. Michael the Archangel, the patron saint of police.”
“I hope she’s right.” Megan trailed her fingers down his face before hopping out of his SUV and hurrying inside her building.
How could Logan believe that when St. Michael hadn’t protected Will? He’d removed the silver St. Michael medallion that night and hadn’t put it back on since then.
Logan’s mood was already deteriorating by the time he entered Buddy’s South Side brick bungalow. It got worse when he saw his dad sipping hot coffee at the kitchen table with his grandfather. Billy Doyle had inherited all of his father’s stubbornness and then some. His dark hair had gone gray at the temples, but he had Logan’s blue eyes. Rather, Logan had his dad’s blue eyes. He hoped he hadn’t inherited his problem with alcohol as well.
“I don’t believe this,” Logan said. “You stay sober for five years and now you fall off the wagon? Why?”
“I’m not drunk,” his dad said.
“Yeah, right.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Buddy said.
“You told me he’d fallen off the wagon.”
Buddy shrugged. “I lied.”
Logan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why?”
“We needed to talk to you,” Buddy said.
Logan didn’t like the sound of that. Not one damn bit. “Your timing sucks,” he said. “I was having a great evening.”
“With Megan?” Buddy guessed.
“What’s so important that you couldn’t wait until morning to talk?”
“You. You’re what’s so important. Pull up a chair. Want some coffee?”
“No. I want an explanation.”
“And you’re about to get one.”
“What is this? Some kind of intervention?” The look on their faces said it all. “Shit.” He turned to walk out, but Buddy stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Sit down, boy-o. It’s time.”
Logan glared at his grandfather but took the chair he offered. “Fine. Give it your best shot. This is about Will, right?”
“It’s about you.”
“So just because I don’t react the way either of you would, that means something is wrong?”
“The fact that you’re having nightmares a year later means something is wrong. The fact that you didn’t cry at Will’s funeral—one of the few times it’s okay for a cop to cry—means something is wrong.”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Logan said grimly. “The fact that Will is dead. Nothing you say can make that right.”
“You can’t keep holding on to the pain,” his dad said, taking over the role of intervention advocate.
“Sure I can.”
“It will eat you up inside.”
“That something you learned at AA?” Logan said.
“Don’t you be disrespectful of your dad,” Buddy said.
“You don’t think it’s disrespectful to ambush me this way?” Logan retorted.
“What are you afraid of?” Buddy said.
“Snakes. You know I hate snakes.”
“You can joke around all you want, but you’re staying here until you talk about this.”
“About my fear of snakes?”
Buddy glared at him. Logan recognized that look. It was the same one he’d received as a boy when he’d broken a window playing baseball. He’d hung his head and slouched his shoulders a bit without even realizing it. Logan straightened up. He was no longer a kid. But he was acting like one.
“We never talk about stuff,” he muttered, still acting like a kid.
“We’re starting now.”
“We don’t do touchy-feely.”
“We do now. Just this once is okay. So start talking.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell the truth.”
“You want the truth? Fine. I feel like shit. It’s my fault that Will died.”
Instead of being shocked by this news, his dad and granddad just looked at him with understanding. Why were they nodding like that? Did they agree that he was to blame?
“Because you were his partner and it was your job to protect him,” his dad said.
“Damn right. I sensed something was up but I couldn’t put a finger on it. Will was talking about his fiancée. We were serving a warrant on a guy. No prior history of violence. When I said I felt antsy, Will just laughed and said that’s because he was talking about getting married. He was standing right next to me. Then the shot came.” Logan’s throat tightened and he couldn’t speak for a moment. His mouth was dry. “I keep seeing it over and over again in my nightmares. One second we’re standing there talking . . . then he’s hit. Took a bullet in the neck. Blood all over. Everything goes into slow motion. I pulled him behind the parked car next to us. Put pressure on the wound. There was so much blood.” His throat tightened and he couldn’t speak for a moment. “He died in my arms.” His voice cracked.
Buddy and his dad gave him a moment to recover.
“What would you have done differently?” his dad asked quietly.
“Everything. I should have known. Should have trusted my gut. That was a mistake. One that cost Will his life.” Logan remembered yelling, “Officer down,” as the patrolmen who had accompanied them exchanged fire with the shooter.
By the time Logan pulled his own weapon out, it was all over. Will was dead and so was the shooter. “I’m not the same person anymore.” He couldn’t begin to describe the despair that had crept over him the instant he realized Will was gone.
“As cops we are trained to be in control,” his dad said. “Trained to function in emergency situations. We are action-oriented problem-solvers. We believe we can control the unexpected. But we can’t. Not all the time.”
“Why Will and not me?”
“Ah, that’s the question, now isn’t it?” Buddy stood behind Logan and put his hands on his shoulders in a show of support. “It wasn’t your time, boy-o.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“You think you are in charge of the world but you’re not. And Will’s death forced you to acknowledge that.”
“He shouldn’t have died.”
“No, he shouldn’t have. But you didn’t kill him. I know you’d give anything for things to have turned out different. If you could only go back and do it over, you’d trust your gut. You’d have been more cautious. But we rarely get do-overs in this life. And even if you’d been more cautious somehow, there’s no guarantee the outcome wouldn’t have been the same. And we plan on talking to you all night if we have to in order to convince you of that fact. So make yourself comfortable, boy-o. We’re here for the long haul, and you might as well get used to it.”
Megan worried about Logan and his dad and grandfather all night and all day Sunday. She didn’t want to intrude on a personal family situation. She just wanted to know that everyone concerned was okay. She finally gave in by Sunday evening and called Logan.
“I can’t talk now, Megan.” His voice was curt. “Eve
rything is okay. I’ll call you later.” An instant later, she heard the dial tone.
She tried not to be hurt by his brush-off, but it was difficult not to be. He hadn’t even given her the chance to say anything before hanging up on her. And when was later? Later tonight? Tomorrow? Next year?
His record as far as calling her went was dismal.
Fine. She wasn’t going to sit around and mope. She had plenty of things to keep her busy. She would kick Logan Doyle out of her mind. She was tough. She could do that.
The next morning, Megan started her Monday walk to work by appreciating the above-average temperatures making this one of those rare late-Indian Summer days when the sun felt deliciously warm against her face. It was also one of those days that tempted a person to play hooky.
But Megan couldn’t do that. They were too short-handed as it was. Library support staff had been cut back by city budget issues, which meant the professional staff was called upon to do everything including reshelving library books. And it meant no playing hooky.
Besides, Megan had a special program at the library tonight. Emma Riley-Slayter was speaking. It was her final appearance on her book tour. And Megan had arranged to have dinner with her at an Italian restaurant near the library before the presentation.
Which meant it would be a long day, but that was okay. It prevented her from thinking about Logan.
She was not calling him again. Let him call her for a change. Did they even have a relationship? Okay, maybe they did. But what kind of relationship was it? A romantic relationship? A make-out relationship? The memory of his kissing her in between shooting stars made her feel all hot and bothered.
Getting hooked up with him was a recipe for disaster. She already had enough mayhem in her life with the news about her mother being alive. Did she really need more complications?
Yeah, if that complication could kiss the way Logan does. He made her feel good all over. As long as she didn’t dwell on him being a cop with lousy communication skills. So she didn’t. At least for today.
Megan smiled at the street musician on his customary corner and dropped her usual donation into his guitar case. She even paused to listen to him complete his song before continuing on. Today she’d decided to listen to music for the remainder of her walk instead of a professional workshop podcast and had chosen Owl City’s upbeat “Ocean Eyes” album on her iPod.
By afternoon her day had definitely gone downhill. The slide started when she was working the reference desk, where library patron Wally Hunt delivered his weekly rant. “There’re too many do-gooders in the world. That’s the problem. And it’s getting worse.”
Personally Megan thought the problem was that Wally was a pain in the heinie, as Tori would say. Actually Tori would probably be much blunter than that.
Megan wondered if Wally would consider her to be a do-gooder. Were optimists do-gooders? Probably. They were more likely to try to make a difference than a pessimist who thought it wasn’t worth making an effort because it would fail.
She remembered Logan telling her the other night that the world needed more optimists. She couldn’t help thinking that the heart of an optimist beat somewhere deep inside that sexy pessimist body of his. Otherwise, why would he continue to fight the bad guys and try to right wrongs?
“This day couldn’t get any worse if someone set my tampon string on fire,” Tori proclaimed as Megan joined her in the staff room.
“Another Southern saying? I’ll bet that one isn’t from your uncle Bo.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m sorry your day is going so badly. You could perk it up by attending the program this evening with our guest author.”
“Or I could go home and eat a carton of chocolate- chocolate chip ice cream.”
“Or you could come to the program tonight,” Megan repeated.
“Are you afraid no one is going to show up?”
“Not really. A large number of people signed up. But there’s always the chance they won’t show.”
“And there’s a chance the planet will get hit by a giant meteor. Hello? Reality calling. You can’t live that way.”
“On second thought, maybe that ice cream option would be a better one for you,” Megan said.
“I agree.”
Megan spent the rest of the day working the reference desk, where she got more vague questions than usual. “I saw this book. It had a blue cover and was set somewhere in the south.”
Not a lot to go on. “Do you remember anything else about it?”
“Yes. That I wanted to read it.”
“Do you remember what part of the south?”
The patron shook her head.
Some might give up and say they’d need more information. But Megan prided herself on not doing that if she could help it.
“The author had three names. Or two first names. Something like that. And the book title had a city name and two words.”
Megan went online and pulled up Amazon’s website. “Was it Savannah Blues?”
“That’s it! Do you have it?”
Megan changed screens to her branch’s collection. “We do and it’s on the shelf. You might want to check out Savannah Breezeand BlueChristmasas well. They include the same characters.”
No sooner had that patron left than she was replaced with another one. “There’s this book . . . I don’t remember the author but the title had sugar in it. It’s fiction.”
This time Megan took a wild guess. Sometimes that worked. “TheSugar Queenby Sarah Addison Allen?”
“That’s it!”
Again Megan checked the database and found the book for the patron. “You rock!” Aisha said as she walked by, pausing to give Megan a high-five.
Megan had a few minutes left before she had to meet Emma for dinner so she spent the time checking the status of the various book displays. The one she’d done on Novel Writing Month needed replenishing. The Arab Heritage Month display also needed some additions; she took care of both before heading out.
Megan had chosen an Italian restaurant near the library to meet Emma for dinner. Faith was joining them too as well as Emma’s two sisters, Sue Ellen and Leena.
Once they were all seated and had placed their orders they started talking like old friends. Megan immediately related to Emma, who wore smart-girl glasses and a tailored black pantsuit with simple pearls.
“We decided to meet up here in Chicago for a girls’ weekend,” Emma said.
“We left the men behind to take care of our darling children,” Sue Ellen said. Unlike her sister Emma who seemed a quiet academic type, Sue Ellen appeared to be one of those people who gobbled life in large bites. She was wearing purple knit pants and top with a matching purple jacket. Emma’s other sister, Leena, was wearing a gorgeous outfit that suited her curvaceous body wonderfully.
“Yes, we left the kids back in Rock Creek, Pennsylvania. I’ve got a daughter, Annelise,” Leena said.
“And I’ve got a boy Donny Jr,” Sue Ellen said.
“They were born a few months apart.”
“My sister has to copy everything I do,” Sue Ellen said with a knowing grin at Leena.
Leena ignored her sister’s teasing comment and spoke to Megan instead. “I like your cloche. It’s an August Hats design, right? And that’s a great vintage sweater.”
“Leena is a former plus-size model,” Emma said. “Fashion is her thing. She’s now an advocate for improving womens’ and girls’ self-esteem. She has a wonderful website and is working on a book now about body image.”
“It can be challenging being a size sixteen in a size-zero world,” Leena said. “I’m all about changing people’s views on the real definition and diversity of beauty.”
“You’ll have to have Leena speak at your library when her book comes out,” Sue Ellen said.
“Let’s finish this book tour first,” Emma said with a laugh. “We head home tomorrow for the opening of my husband’s environmentally friendly sports resort next we
ekend.”
Megan knew from reading Emma’s bio that her husband was Jake Slayter, a former extreme sports athlete who’d nearly died in a climbing accident in the Andes Mountains.
“I read your book Taking Chances,” Megan said.
“I did too,” Faith said. “And I was just telling Megan the other day that the two of you have something in common. She’s seeing a Chicago cop.”
“He’s a police detective,” Megan said, almost as if that somehow made him less of a cop, which was ridiculous.
“Which is a risky job, as I’m sure you can imagine,” Faith said.
Megan had been imagining that entirely too much lately. Avoiding it didn’t seem to be helping.
“So I thought maybe you could give my cousin some pointers in dealing with falling for a guy who is a risk taker.”
“Sometimes it’s riskier for us, the women who love them,” Emma said. “They get the adrenaline rush from the risks. We don’t. We just get the adrenaline rush from being with them. Which, I have to admit, is a pretty powerful rush.”
“You can also get that same rush from being with a sexy veterinarian,” Leena said. “Like my husband, Cole.”
“And I get the same rush from my husband, the sexy owner of Smiley’s Sewer Service,” Sue Ellen said. “It’s all about being with the man you love. That’s where the rush comes from. And our husbands face risks too, you know. Sewers aren’t always safe. And Cole could get attacked by a mad dog or something.”
“Putting those happy thoughts aside,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes. “Getting involved with a cop has a special set of emotional demands.”
Megan nodded. “Yes, I know. They see physical and verbal intimidation as ways of getting the job done.”
Emma frowned. “Has this cop of yours shown any sign of that with you?”
“No. He just rolls his eyes at me.”
“That’s not all he does,” Faith said. “He took her to see the meteor shower the other night so she could wish on shooting stars.”
“Aww,” Emma and her sisters said in unison.
“Says the woman whose husband proposed to her at a White Sox game.” Emma and her sisters looked at Megan blankly. “Faith is a big fan,” she explained. “Her husband is a former Force Recon Marine.”