“An escort comprised of two lovely women. Who wouldn’t welcome that?” Sean mused.
January signed what he had just said to Maya, who beamed at Sean, her eyes shining.
“You know,” Sean said to January as he paused by the front door, fighting the urge to linger. “I could stay a little longer…”
As appealing as Sean seemed right at this very minute, she wasn’t going to allow herself to get roped into saying yes. “A little longer” had a way of transforming into something greater and she couldn’t allow herself to get distracted. Maya was her main, and only, focus.
“No,” she told him. “Like you said, you have work to do and we’ve kept you here long enough. Besides, it’s close to Maya’s bedtime.”
The news surprised the detective. “You’ve managed to establish when her bedtime is?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” January was forced to admit. “I gave her the same bedtime I was made to observe when I was her age.”
That brought him to another question. “You know her age?” he asked, glancing at Maya.
She was glad to give Sean at least one positive answer. “That I did establish,” January confirmed. “I asked her if she knew how old she was this morning and she nodded vigorously, holding up five fingers.” She smiled at the detective. “Maya’s five.”
“Well, that’s good,” he replied. “But nothing so far on her last name or her address, right?”
“Right,” January signed. “I’m still coming up empty on that—for now.”
Sean grinned. “So, now you’re an optimist,” he concluded.
She leaned into him, unaware that it caused him to catch a whiff of her light, floral perfume. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. In this line of work, I have to be, or I’d wind up crying myself to sleep every night,” she confided.
Straightening, she told herself it was time to have him leave before she thought of an excuse to get him to stay permanently. “All right,” she said, signaling an end to the evening. “You’ll give me a call as soon as you know anything about her DNA?”
He thought of reminding her about the time he had already told her it was going to take, then decided it wouldn’t do any good.
“You’ll be my first call,” Sean promised. “By the way, you make a really great Chicken Parmesan,” he said by way of parting.
The compliment warmed her more than she would have expected. “Thanks. I’ll look for your endorsement if I ever decide to open a restaurant.” A whimsical smile played along her lips.
Her smile sorely tempted him, drawing him in and making Sean really want to kiss her. But he exercised restraint, knowing that to give in would be going way over any line he was allowed to cross. He was a police detective working a case that involved the little girl January had temporarily taken into her home, and that was where their connection began and ended. He couldn’t afford to let himself lose sight of that.
No matter how much he wanted to.
“Don’t forget to lock up,” he reminded her as he started to go.
“Yes, Detective,” she responded in a sing-song voice. “I also have an alarm system I plan to engage the minute I shut—and lock—the front door. Now go.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sean saluted. And then he turned toward Maya, and to the surprise of both January and the little girl, Sean signed, “Goodbye.”
Overjoyed, Maya signed the same thing back to him, her eyes dancing.
“I’m very impressed,” January told the homicide detective.
“Don’t be. I used the search engine on my computer,” Sean told her.
“But you did think to use it, so I’m still impressed, Detective.” She smiled her approval at him.
“Call me Sean,” Sean prompted.
She inclined her head, humoring his request. “Good night, Sean.”
“Good night, January,” he said just before he walked to his vehicle, still parked in front of her house. He couldn’t resist saying one last time, “Don’t forget to lock up.”
January sighed, murmuring something under her breath she was glad that Maya couldn’t hear as she closed the front door. She shook her head. The man had to ruin it, she thought.
“C’mon,” she signed to Maya. “It’s time to get you ready for bed.”
Maya seemed disappointed. “So soon?” she signed, crestfallen.
“It is not soon,” January informed her firmly. “It’s late.”
Maya looked as if she actually wanted to put up a fight, but the next moment she nodded, giving in.
January smiled and kissed the top of the little girl’s head.
“Atta girl,” she signed, or something close to it.
* * *
After she had gotten Maya ready for bed, January went downstairs to finish cleaning up in the kitchen. Maya followed her down, but January hadn’t really expected anything else.
“You lie down on the sofa,” she signed to Maya. “I’ll be finished what I’m doing here soon.”
January turned away, then heard an unfamiliar noise. She was about to sign that she wanted the little girl to settle down when she realized that the noise wasn’t coming from anything Maya had done. It was coming from outside the front of the house.
Her attention piqued, January went to the window next to the front door and looked out. Scanning the street, she saw a black sedan parked in front of the town house next door.
The same one that she had seen pass by her own home several times yesterday evening. What was it doing parked in front of the Walkers’ place?
Weren’t they still on vacation?
She couldn’t remember if the couple had returned recently or not.
You’re doing it again, Jan, she upbraided herself. You’re overthinking things. The Walkers probably came back from their vacation this week and they have company now. People with normal lives do that kind of thing. They have people over. They have fun.
She needed to stop borrowing trouble. With that, she looked around her kitchen. She had cleaned up everything and put things away. Now it was time for her to do the same thing with herself and Maya.
“Okay, sleepyhead,” she said, addressing the dozing child stretched out on her sofa. “Time to get you to bed.” Saying that, January scooped up the little girl and slowly carried her upstairs.
“At least someone is going to sleep well tonight,” she said, placing Maya in the bed next door to her own bedroom.
January stood there for a moment, just looking at the little girl before she finally draped the blanket over Maya. She pressed her lips together ruefully. Instead of looking after other people’s children, she could have had one of these of her own, she thought with a trace of longing.
“Right. Just what the world needs, another Immaculate Conception.” She mocked herself because that would be the only way she would be able to have one of her own. She had no social life to speak of, other than the fund-raisers she attended from time to time with friends of her parents who were old enough to—well, be her parents. No chance for romance, much less a child there.
“You’re doing just fine, Jan,” she said aloud. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You live a great, fulfilling life. Now drop the pity party.”
With that, she went into her bedroom. This time, unlike the previous night, she changed into an old set of pajamas she favored and then crawled into her bed.
The second she did, she realized that she could barely keep her eyes open. January was just about to drift off to sleep when a sudden noise penetrated her consciousness.
Her eyes flew open.
She knew that noise. It was the one made by her back-door alarm.
Someone was trying to come in.
January immediately thought of the black sedan she had seen earlier. The same one she had seen driving around yesterday.
Bolting out of bed, she p
aused only long enough to grab her cell phone—not even her shoes. Moving as fast as she could, she flew into Maya’s bedroom.
“C’mon, baby, we’ve got to go,” she signed as quickly as she could.
Maya had barely opened her eyes. January wasn’t sure she had even gotten her message across to the girl, but there was no time to stop and sign it again.
They needed to hide.
Now.
There was a deep closet at the back of the second floor that had initially been put in as a panic room. The first owner had had it installed when he bought the town house. It was generally known that the senior citizen was a rich recluse who everyone had said was basically paranoid.
When she bought the town house, January had used the panic room as a storage area for things she meant to eventually go through and get rid of. The only problem was, she had never managed to find the time.
Her heart pounding as she held on to Maya, January hurried down the hall and made her way into the panic room now. She was praying that the lights inside still worked. She couldn’t remember the last time she had tested them.
Completely awake now, Maya looked at her with sheer panic in her eyes.
It killed January to scare the little girl this way, but she had no choice. Someone was in her house and she couldn’t think of any reason for them to be there other than that whoever had killed those three men in the warehouse had realized that there might have been a witness to what they had done. They had obviously tracked her down and were here to eliminate Maya before she could point them out.
This time, January didn’t feel as if she was overthinking the situation. If she was, for some reason, then this was all Stafford’s fault and he had to get himself over here to make sure that everything was all right.
Signing for Maya to sit down on the floor and give her a few minutes, January quickly tapped out Sean’s number on her cell phone. She had programmed the number into her phone earlier that day.
Sean answered on the third ring.
Convinced that January wouldn’t be calling him at this hour for some inane pillow talk, he picked up his cell and immediately asked, “January, what’s wrong?”
“Someone’s trying to break into the house,” she answered in a breathless whisper. “I think he or they might already be here. Where’s the damn police patrol you said was supposed to be out here, driving by my house?”
Her voice had gone up. If January was hiding, she sounded much too loud, Sean thought. That prompted him to ask, “Where are you right now?”
January took in a deep breath to try to steady her nerves.
“There’s a panic room on the second floor of this house. Maya and I are in there right now, but I have no idea how secure it is. It came with the town house.” Before he could ask, January told him, “I use it for storage.”
She hadn’t said anything about a panic room before, but that was a conversation for another time. “I’m leaving right now,” he told her, dropping everything he’d been working on. “Hang tight,” he instructed.
As he ran to get his vehicle, Sean put a call in to the detail he had assigned to maintain a patrol around January’s town house.
“Hemmings,” the patrolman answered.
“Hemmings, this is Detective Stafford. I’m on my way to the Colton town house. January Colton just called to tell me that someone is breaking in. You’re supposed to be patrolling that area,” he reminded the officer.
“Sorry, Detective. We’re not there because Jonah and I got called away on another case,” the police officer apologized.
“Another case?” Sean repeated in disbelief as he got into his vehicle. Securing his seat belt, he started up the car. “I had you doing surveillance on Ms. Colton’s house,” he told the officer sharply.
“Sorry, sir,” Hemmings apologized again. “Lieutenant Walters said he needed us for something a lot more pressing than a babysitting detail. His words, sir, not mine. Again, I’m really sorry, Detective,” the officer repeated.
Sean could feel his blood pressure going up. “Yeah, right.”
Furious at being overridden without even the courtesy of being told, Sean terminated the call to the patrolman. The next moment, he was putting in a call to the dispatch desk.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a calm female voice on the other end asked.
Sean identified himself, giving the dispatch desk his name and badge number. “There’s a break-in taking place right now,” he told the woman, then recited January’s address. “The owner is home with a little girl. I think the people breaking in are involved in a drug gang and they believe the child was a witness to a triple homicide.” He stressed every gory detail he could think of to get the police there as fast as possible.
For good measure, he ordered, “Get there now. I’m on my way and about ten minutes out. I had a patrol car cruising the area, but I’m told they got pulled for another assignment.”
“I can check on that for you sir,” the woman volunteered.
“Don’t bother. Just get someone out there right now,” he instructed, then repeated, “The little girl could have been a witness to a triple homicide and whoever is responsible could very well be trying to eliminate her, as well.”
“I’ve got two patrol cars in the area,” she informed him.
Sean never hesitated. “Send them both!” he ordered, stepping on the gas as he turned on his siren.
CHAPTER 12
The one thing that Sean had never managed to do, either as a policeman or as a homicide detective, was to effectively divorce himself from an ongoing situation. More specifically, he couldn’t manage to separate himself from the details of any case he was investigating.
He envied those in the police department who could compartmentalize their minds or put up barricades within themselves so that what they saw or were dealing with did not weigh heavily on their minds.
Although Sean was able to maintain a calm outward facade, he just couldn’t seem to do that inwardly, no matter how much he wanted to. Once he was on a case, he lived and breathed it until it was finally resolved, one way or another.
And then there were those cases that he couldn’t seem to put to rest because, even now, they hadn’t been properly resolved.
Right now, he was vividly imagining someone—or several someones, for that matter—breaking into January’s town house. Sean summarily cursed the patrol car that was supposed to have been in her vicinity—but wasn’t.
If anything happens to January or Maya—
Sean abruptly blocked the thought from his mind, staunchly refusing to entertain it. He just couldn’t allow himself to go there because to carry the thought out to its possible conclusion seemed much too horrible to contemplate.
Sean pushed down on the accelerator. The speedometer went to eighty—then past that.
With an eye out for traffic—and his throbbing heart lodged in his throat—he went faster. He just wanted to get there.
He’d estimated getting to her town house in ten minutes.
He got there in just under eight.
To his relief, the two patrol cars that dispatch had told him they were sending had already arrived.
Coming to a screeching halt in front of January’s town house, Sean’s vehicle had barely stopped running when he leaped out and went racing up the walk.
The front door was standing wide open. He couldn’t make up his mind if that was a good sign or not, he only knew that his heart was pounding so hard against his chest, it felt as if it would crack through his rib cage at any moment.
One hand on the butt of his service revolver, the other holding up his identification for the benefit of the two officers he saw just within the foyer, Sean announced, “I’m Detective Stafford. Where are they?” Before either could answer, he shot a second, even more urgent question at them. “Were they hurt?”
>
Before either officer could speak, Sean had his answer. January was standing barefoot in her pajamas, holding a huddled Maya in her arms. January had apparently, just this moment, come down the stairs.
His first inclination was to throw his arms around both of them and hold them to him, but he managed to refrain. He had a feeling that January wouldn’t appreciate this show of emotion right now.
“We’re all right, Sean,” January told him in a voice that indicated she was clearly shaken.
“We found them in what looked like a panic room, sir,” the first officer, Jim Crawford, told Sean. “She had just opened the door. Although the lock on it looked kind of flimsy. I’d have it replaced, ma’am, if you want it to be of any real use.”
Sean had a more important question for the officers. “What about the intruders?” he asked. “Did you get them?”
The other officer, Jacobs, an older man with thinning gray hair, spoke up. “We saw two men, dark clothes, medium build, running from the house. My guess is that the sirens must have scared them away.”
Sean could only imagine what January must have gone through. He didn’t want to think what could have happened if the intruders hadn’t taken off but had managed to break into the panic room.
“Yeah, thankfully. Are you two all right?” he asked the social worker, stroking Maya’s head in an effort to convey a sense of calm to the little girl.
January nodded. “Getting there,” she answered honestly.
Sean had never been one to shirk a responsibility or to try to cover something up he thought might be his fault. And this, he felt, could very well have been his fault.
“I’m really sorry you had to go through this,” he told January.
She was doing her best not to get angry, but that anger wasn’t directed at him. She felt that there had to be some miscommunication at fault here.
“Where were the police officers you said were patrolling around here?” January asked.
Sean was having trouble controlling his outrage. “They were apparently called away on another case. No one told me.”
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