Though Masiela’s expression remained unchanged, there was something sad in her voice. Regret that her kids wouldn’t have the kind of grandmother she had? He couldn’t imagine it. Grandma Bolton might not have cared much for his dad, but she’d loved his kids every bit as fiercely as Grandma Decker had, every bit as fiercely as Masiela’s grandmothers had loved her.
“I’ll just have to do what Yelina did—find a man with a large enough family that the kids don’t notice someone is missing. Her husband is one of nine kids, and they all live within an hour’s drive of their parents’ house.”
I live less than thirty minutes from my parents, both sisters and their families, assorted aunts and uncles and uncounted cousins.
The thought came from nowhere and damn near made him squirm. It wasn’t as if he was offering himself as a candidate. He’d never thought of her that way.
Except for the night he found himself with his arms around her and his tongue down her throat. He’d thought of her a lot of ways then, mostly naked. But once he regained his sanity, the only time he’d wanted to touch her was to protect her or to smack some sense into her.
All he wanted now was to get through the next six days without a problem, then to see the last of her, for good this time.
Swear to God, that was the only thing he wanted from Masiela.
Chapter 5
Masiela sat at one end of the couch, her feet tucked beneath her, and AJ occupied the other end, legs stretched out and disreputable sneakers propped on the coffee table. He had control of the remote and had finally settled on a baseball game. Not the most exciting game in the world, but it beat watching fishing.
She expected him to go back to work in the front parlor after dinner, to leave her on her own again until bedtime, but he showed no such inclination. Maybe this was his “once in a while” to kick back and do nothing. And he was relaxed enough to do it with her.
She warned herself not to make too much of that fact. It wasn’t as if he’d really chosen her company. He was just making the best of a bad situation. As she was.
Right.
For distraction, she eased to her feet and padded into the kitchen. “Want some cookies?”
“Nah. But grab me a Coke, would you?”
She took two cans of pop from the refrigerator, set them on the coffee table, then returned to the counter. The first cookie went straight into her mouth, and, while munching, she shook three more onto a saucer. After a moment’s thought to her recent lack of exercise, she returned one to the bag, picked up the saucer and was turning to leave the kitchen when an explosion sounded. Glass shattered, both outside and in, as the plate slid from her suddenly limp fingers, crashing to the floor.
“Get down!” As she dropped to all fours, AJ jumped to his feet and dashed from the room, thudding up the stairs to get the weapon he’d left there.
The room was darker than it had been seconds ago, and between the rapid thuds of her heartbeat, she realized why: the security light outside was dark. Had it blown out due to some sort of power surge…or had someone shot it out?
AJ’s footsteps pounded down the stairs, then the front door quietly closed. Avoiding the shards of glass, Masiela crawled across the kitchen floor and into the dining room, then plopped onto her butt in an interior corner, unholstered her weapon and sat straining to hear anything besides her own fright. All she could pick up were normal sounds.
She should be out there backing up AJ, searching in the dark. In all the years they’d worked together, she’d never let him go into a dangerous situation alone. If it was his old buddies out there, it would be three against one—three who played dirty against one who didn’t. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if he stood between them and her, and she couldn’t bear to have that on her conscience.
Her body trembled as she pushed to her feet. Back in the day, she’d always been gung ho, into the fray, kick ass and take names. Foot chases had been fun; felony take-downs had gotten her heart pumping; she’d never shied away from getting physical with a suspect, even if he was twice her size. The first time she was shot at, she’d been so pumped with adrenaline that it had taken hours to come down.
The second time, she’d had too much to drink and wound up in bed with Decker.
But back in the day, it had always been business. The bad guys hadn’t had anything against her, just the badge she wore.
This was personal.
She moved through the dimly lit dining and living rooms, reaching the front door in seconds. Steadier now, she slowly twisted the door knob, opening it with only the slightest of sounds. Standing in the shadows, she nudged the door with her foot to swing it back, brought the pistol up to firing position and stepped into the doorway, then abruptly lowered it again.
AJ was coming up the steps, gripping a battered baseball in his left hand, managing to look both relieved and grim at the same time. He tossed it to her before turning to secure the door, and she looked at it. It was well worn, the writing rubbed off, nothing special and impossible to trace.
Unless you knew where to look.
“Kid I had a run-in with today was star pitcher on the Copper Lake High School team three years straight. I had to let him go, but he still wasn’t happy with me.”
She felt a surprisingly strong sense of relief. If their visitor had been merely a vandal, his intent to do property damage, there was no need to call the police. No need to pack up and run.
“Arrogant punk.” At his raised brow, she shrugged. “He didn’t bother to take the ball with him when he left.”
“He probably wanted me to know it was him, but not be able to prove it.” AJ headed to the back of the house, stopping in the laundry room for a broom and dust pan. On his way to the kitchen, he glanced at her. “You weren’t actually planning to go outside, were you?”
Her only answer was a level look.
“Remember the rules you agreed to yesterday? You don’t go out. You stay out of sight.”
She snorted. “And what if it’d been Kinney and the others out there? I might have had to save your ass.”
Now it was his turn to give the flat, steady look.
Irritably she tried to take the broom from him. “My mess. I’ll clean up.”
“You’re bleeding. Take care of that.”
Glancing down, she saw blood smeared on her left hand. Apparently, she hadn’t avoided all the broken glass when crawling from the kitchen. She went to the bathroom and washed the tiny nick, not even bad enough for a bandage, and thought of what AJ had said. He probably wanted me to know it was him, but not be able to prove it.
That, she’d always thought, was one reason why so many people had been willing to believe that Israel Rodriguez killed Teri Riggs. Everyone had known he’d killed the other prostitute when she tried to leave the life, but no one could prove it. They’d had to watch him get away with murder, and that had eaten at every cop who’d ever had contact with him.
But avoiding prison when he was guilty didn’t justify sending him there when he was innocent. And he was innocent of Teri’s murder. Masiela was staking her life on it.
AJ came downstairs Wednesday morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and to Masiela eating cookies at the counter with her own cup beside her. She didn’t look as if the little excitement last night had affected her in any way. In fact, she looked sleepy. Soft. Sexy.
She glanced at his clothes—gray trousers, white shirt, gray tie—but didn’t comment. He explained anyway. “I’ve got to go to court this morning. The defense counsel can show up in shorts and a T-shirt, but the judge wants the rest of us in uniforms or suits.”
“Let me guess: the defense counsel is a Calloway.”
His brows raised slightly. “Yeah. Robbie. One of the better of the bunch.”
She feigned shock with her hand to her heart and her eyes wide. “You actually have something good to say about a defense lawyer?”
He frowned, but there wasn’t much annoyance behind it. “In any group, so
meone’s got to be the best and someone’s got to be the worst. Of the Calloways in general and the Calloway lawyers in particular, Robbie’s one of the best.”
There was more to it than that, and they both knew it. Robbie had already been a lawyer when AJ met him. He’d never been a cop. He’d never planned to become a prosecutor, and in a small town like Copper Lake, criminal law was only a part of his practice.
And the biggest reason AJ could cut Robbie some slack and not her: they’d never been partners, buddies, a part of each other’s lives. He’d never felt betrayed by Robbie.
“Have fun. Hope the right side wins.”
Hope the good guys win. That was what she used to say before court appearances. Back then, the good guys had always been the cops. Now…
Giving her a narrow look, he picked up his coffee and left.
Like any cop, he had his favorite duties and his least favorite. Testifying in court ranked near the top of the least favorite. There had been worse things—getting shot at, watching Morgan Riggs at her mother’s funeral, having to tell parents that their sixteen-year-old son had been killed. But in the day-to-day routine, court appearances annoyed him. Defense attorneys annoyed him, even the ones he liked, like Robbie Calloway and Jamie Munroe Calloway.
Especially the one he used to like, before she’d turned to the dark side.
Once the hearing was over, he walked out of the courthouse with Robbie, stopping at the bottom of the steps. “How’s the house going?” Robbie asked.
“Slowly.” Unlike AJ, all the Calloway brothers were good with their hands. Russ had his construction company, and all four of them rebuilt old junk heaps for fun. “How’s the kid?”
Robbie grinned. “Looking more like his mama every day.”
“Thank God for that.” Anamaria Calloway was quite possibly the most beautiful woman AJ had ever met. She and Robbie might not have been an obvious match, but they had an abundance of the passion AJ’s parents had shared, that he and Cate couldn’t manage for even one night.
“Hey, we’re playing poker tonight—Mitch, Russ, Tommy and Ty. If you want to lose a few bucks—”
The blare of a horn, followed by the squeal of tires, interrupted Robbie’s invitation, and they both turned in time to see a glossy silver Mustang swerve into a parked car, cut back into traffic, then crash into another car across the street. The passenger, looking dazed, remained in the car, but the driver opened the door, staggered a few steps, then took off at a trot.
AJ recognized him at the same time Robbie muttered, “Oh, crap. That damn moron.”
AJ flashed a grin as he handed his suit coat to Robbie. “Hold on to this. I’ve gotta catch this guy. I owe him one.”
Connor Calloway was possibly shaken up from the crash, intoxicated or high—or merely, as his cousin put it, a damn moron. What he wasn’t, despite being half AJ’s age and better dressed for a run in shorts and sneakers, was a good runner. AJ closed steadily on him, then made a flying tackle.
The kid hit the ground hard, yelping like a girl as their combined weights skidded him forward on the pavement a foot or so. Concrete didn’t make for a soft landing. Neither did 185 pounds hitting square in his back.
“What are you doing?” Connor demanded. “Get the hell off me. I’ll have your badge for this. Do you freakin’ know who I am?”
AJ raised to his knees, pulled the boy’s arms behind him and handcuffed him none too gently, then stood and lifted him to his feet. “You bet I know who you are. Connor Calloway, you’re under arrest. You have the right—”
Connor jerked around to look at him and sneered. “This is harassment. I’m gonna sue your ass and the whole freakin’ police department. I’m gonna—”
“Shut up, Connor.”
The kid’s sneer widened when Robbie joined them. “This is my lawyer. Get your hands off me and take off those cuffs now, or you’re gonna be in so damn much trouble—”
“Shut up, Connor,” Robbie repeated sharply. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You totaled three cars, you could have hurt your passenger, you could have killed someone. Were you even thinking?”
AJ kept a straight face. From what he’d heard, Robbie and his brothers had been their generation’s Connor. They’d been in and out of trouble for years, with nothing but the family name to keep them from going to jail. “High-spirited,” people said about them. But there was something mean-spirited about Connor, something that hinted of deeper trouble.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” Connor said. “You’re my lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” Robbie chuckled. “Hell, I’m volunteering to be a witness for the prosecution. After you get booked into jail, call your uncle Seth. Maybe he’ll take care of you.”
Connor fell into sullen silence, and AJ finished reading him his rights as a patrol car pulled alongside them. The officer put the boy in the backseat, then drove away.
He and Robbie started back toward the court house. “On behalf of the family—at least most of them—sorry about that.”
AJ gazed at him as Robbie handed over his jacket. “Did you know he got caught shoplifting a thirty-two-hundred-dollar television yesterday, but the store manager wouldn’t press charges because he’s one of you? And I can’t prove it, but I think he threw a baseball and broke my security light last night.”
“Kid’s got a hell of an arm.” Robbie grimaced. “He gets a lot of breaks because he’s a Calloway and because of his dad’s death. Obviously, he’s not learning from them.”
“Maybe he needs some other kind of breaks. A few lessons in how to be a man, in accepting the consequences of his actions, maybe a little counseling.”
“Good luck with that. He hasn’t seen his mother in years. He’s living with his stepmom, who takes just enough responsibility to maintain access to the family money. He doesn’t want anything to do with our side of the family, especially now that I’m married to Anamaria, unless it somehow benefits him.”
Connor’s father had killed himself over Anamaria’s mother, Glory, and Connor and Anamaria shared a half-sister, if anyone ever managed to find her. A half-sister who, like Anamaria, was of mixed race. Tough for some wealthy white Southerners to accept.
“He’s going to self-destruct unless someone steps in,” AJ said mildly.
Robbie acknowledged him with a grim nod as they reached the accident scene. Traffic was being rerouted at the nearest intersections, and wreckers vied for space among the police cars and the lone ambulance to hook up to the three vehicles.
“God, I’m glad I’m not in traffic anymore,” AJ said. “See you.”
He was in his Impala, fastening his seat belt, when he noticed the stain on his left sleeve: something brown and tarry on the outside, a bit of red seeping through from the inside. When he’d tackled Connor, his left arm had been under the kid, scraping along the pavement. A stained shirt sleeve and raw skin were a fair trade for the pleasure of arresting the kid, even if it did mean going home to change.
Even if it meant seeing Masiela. Maybe still wearing that bit of nothing she slept in.
He notified the dispatcher of his destination as he headed that way. The neighborhood was quiet—the norm for hot summer days. He couldn’t remember a day when he was growing up that had been too hot for playing outside, but the kids who lived around him seemed to be more delicate. They required air conditioning, computers and video games to make it through the summer months.
The only exception was the little girl next door. She sat on the top porch step, surrounded by dolls and stuffed animals, murmuring to them in tones too low for him to understand when he got out of the car.
“Hey, Calie,” he called as he reached his own steps. He’d been saying hello to her ever since he’d learned her name. The first dozen times she’d run inside the house and slammed the door. For a while, she’d held her ground, giving him a flat stare way too old for someone her age. Today, for the first time, she lifted the bear she was cradling and waggled his paw in a wave.
>
AJ was so surprised that he dropped his keys when he pulled them from the lock. Who knew? In another year or two, she might actually speak to him.
As he opened the door, he bent to pick up the keys. He started to straighten, when a familiar sensation prickled the hairs on his neck. Sixth sense, caution, danger…the feeling he’d often gotten when clearing buildings or serving warrants. His gaze shifted slowly to a pair of battered sneakers in the living room doorway, traveling up over tanned legs and stained shorts, stopping on the .40-caliber pistol pointed at him. Masiela’s aim was rock-steady. He’d never seen her tremble or hesitate, not even when the bad guys’ shots were coming too close for comfort.
“Gee,” he said quietly. “Guess I should have called.”
She lowered the weapon, then holstered it as he walked through the door. “I wasn’t expecting you for another five or six hours.”
“I need to change clothes.” He raised his left arm so she could see for herself. If he were showing blood stains to Cate, she’d be rolling up his sleeve, calling for antiseptics and antibiotics and bandages, making enough of a fuss to let him know she cared.
Masiela, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed. “I hope this wasn’t another fifty-some-year-old woman who weighed ninety pounds.”
“Nope, this was the eighteen-year-old baseball-throwing punk who’s gonna sue my ass.”
She smiled at that. Between them, they couldn’t count the number of times they’d heard that threat from a disgruntled citizen. Or “I’ll have your badge.” Sixteen years, and he’d never once gotten sued or lost his badge.
“Let me know if he does sue,” Masiela said as she started down the hall. “I’ll quit working on the library immediately. There’s no way a kid would appreciate my efforts.”
He watched until she turned into the room. Not for any particular reason. Not because there was anything at all interesting about the way she moved. He was just giving the adrenaline time to drain away.
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