by Lisa Childs
She drew in a bracing breath. “I don’t need an apology. I just need to get through tonight so I never have to see you again.”
“If I could take it back…”
She nodded. From the way he’d sneaked out, she knew he regretted what they’d done. Until he finished his sentence.
“I wouldn’t.”
“What?” she asked, certain that she hadn’t heard him correctly.
He leaned closer, lowering his voice, but enunciating every word clearly. “I would not take it back.” His eyes darkened. “I would not change anything about that night.”
Not even his leaving?
She ignored the warmth spreading through her, and reminded herself that she had been sick since it happened. “Well, I would.”
Chad drew back as if she’d struck him. “I understand. I acted like an ass the way I left, not calling.”
“I told you I didn’t expect that, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” If they did, if he explained or apologized again, she would forgive him—and then she would fall even more hopelessly in love with him.
“That’s fair,” he said with a ragged sigh. “Let’s check out the car and hit the road.”
Nerves fluttered in Tessa’s stomach over more than riding with Chad. She hoped they’d been assigned to a safe area of Lakewood. She wasn’t like Bernie; she wasn’t looking for any thrills. Yet just riding in an elevator again with Chad had heat flashing through her body. The doors opened to the parking garage in the basement, and Tessa welcomed the cool, musky air.
Chad cursed under his breath. “They left me Pepé.”
“Pepé?” she asked.
“Someone used this car to pick up the woman who probably started the oldest profession herself. She wears so much perfume that we can’t get it out of the car,” he explained. “You know—Pepé Le Pew.”
She nodded. The skunk from the old cartoons that her younger siblings still caught on Nickelodeon. “You don’t have your own car?”
“I do,” he muttered the two words as if he was now the one reluctant to speak.
“And?” she prodded.
“It got wrecked a couple of weeks ago.”
She gasped in surprise. “Were you in it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it was a high-speed pursuit.”
“You crashed?” Her heart pounding fast and heavy, she leaned closer to him, checking for scratches and bruises. “Did you get hurt?”
“No,” he assured her. “But I had to stop the guy so no one else would.”
He had risked his own life. And he’d accused her of being reckless. She held her tongue, unwilling to call him a hypocrite again. It wouldn’t matter what she said to him, especially when it hadn’t mattered what she’d done with him. He wasn’t ready to move on yet. For her. Her only comfort was that he might never be ready. For anyone.
When he opened her car door, Tessa’s stomach roiled at the overpowering scent of the perfume, which smelled like dead roses. The stench clung to Pepé’s interior. “Can we keep the windows open?” she asked, willing her dinner to stay down.
“You might get cold,” he warned her as he snapped the laptop onto the console between the seats.
She doubted that since she’d be riding next to him. “I’ll be fine.”
After popping the trunk button on the dash, he picked up the bag he’d dropped onto the ground when he’d attached the laptop. Emblazoned with Lakewood PD on black canvas, the bag looked like an overstuffed duffel. He extracted a clipboard from it, then carried the clipboard and the bag around to the back of the vehicle.
Curiosity about his job—about him—compelled Tessa to follow him. “What are you doing?”
Chad released a soft sigh of relief, grateful she couldn’t ignore him entirely. He sure as hell couldn’t ignore her. She was so beautiful but now, in the oversized vest with the dark circles beneath her eyes, she had an open vulnerability that touched him. That made him want to protect her.
“Right now I’m checking out the car, making sure I have everything I need.” He had a feeling it wasn’t the items on his checklist but the woman standing beside him that he really needed. “Since this isn’t my assigned car, I have to make sure it’s fully equipped,” he explained, then pointed out the items in the trunk. “These long things strapped to the lid are road spikes.”
She reached inside, her shoulder brushing against his as she touched the metal device at the end of the canvas holder. “This looks like a fishing reel.”
“You fish?” he asked with surprise.
“No, Stepfather Number One did.” She shrugged, “Or so he claimed.”
“It’s sort of a reel,” he said. “Once you throw down the spike strips and the car you’re trying to stop runs over them, you can reel the strips back in so the units in pursuit don’t run over them, too.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You missed the part of the class about the pursuit policy,” he reminded her. “I covered it before the simulated traffic stops.”
Maybe if she’d been there for his presentation, she would have understood why he couldn’t pursue her. The risk was too high. “If it’s a slow night, I can explain it,” he offered.
She nodded.
His heart a little lighter, he pointed out the rest of the stuff in the nearly full trunk: the road flares, first-aid kit, biohazard kit, emergency blankets, fire extinguisher, police tape and traffic cones. “Here’s where we put the video tape,” he said, gesturing toward a black box mounted farther back in the trunk.
Some color had finally returned to Tessa’s face, but maybe it was only because of the cold.
“Let’s get inside the car,” he said, dropping his bag in the trunk before slamming down the lid.
“What’s in that?” she asked as she moved around to the passenger’s side.
“Extra tickets.” He gestured toward the book inside the driver’s door. “In case I run out. Extra magazines…” He checked the shotgun mounted between the seats, barrel pointed toward the roof.
“Is it loaded?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly with fear.
“We have to be ready for anything…”
He turned the key, which they always left in the ignition, and started Pepé. Heat blasted out of the vents, thickening the scent of dead roses in the air until Tessa, turning almost green in the dashboard lights, lowered her window.
“Can you press the garage door opener?” he asked, gesturing toward the one on her visor.
As she pressed the button, the tall door at the top of the ramp lifted with a grinding of gears. Chad divided his attention between the downtown traffic and his laptop screen where the computer sat open on the pullout platform between his seat and Tessa. He tried to ignore her as she was now ignoring him again, her face turned toward the open passenger window.
He couldn’t blame her if she hated him, not after the way he’d treated her. She had to think he had used her, just as she’d said other men had used her mother. He could have told her the truth, but he would rather have her thinking him a creep than a coward.
The radio crackled, bringing Chad’s attention back to the only thing he wanted in his life now—his job. He listened to a domestic assault call coming over the radio.
“Are you going to respond to that?” Tessa asked, her voice cracking as she raised it above the wind blowing through her windows and the heat out of the vents.
“What?”
“The call,” she said. “Or isn’t it in your district?”
“It’s not.”
“But you would go if I wasn’t with you,” she guessed.
“Yes,” he admitted. He couldn’t subject her to the bad memories that just his shouting in the driveway had brought back for her family that night.
“Then go,” she urged him.
“Tessa, it’s a domestic abuse call,” he said, which she had to understand since they didn’t often use call numbers anymore. He turned to watch her face, and he caught the flin
ch she couldn’t quite hide.
She lifted her chin with pride, and insisted, “You can go.”
“Those calls can be really dangerous,” he explained. “We never know for sure what kind of situation we’re walking into.”
“I know. I remember the video footage you showed us.” Her throat moved as she swallowed hard. “And the footage the crime scene tech showed us.”
He groaned, familiar with the tech’s gruesome slide show. “Munster.”
“What?”
“Herman Schuster—we call him Munster.”
“It fits.” She drew in a shaky breath. “But at least I know what to expect now.”
“Then you know why I don’t want to bring you,” he said.
She sighed. “I don’t mind not going, but I don’t want to keep you from doing your job—no matter how dangerous it is.”
“It is a dangerous job,” he agreed. “We’re careful, though.” If only he had been as careful in his personal life as he’d been in his professional life, he wouldn’t have begun to fall for Tessa Howard.
“I know,” she said. “I’ll be careful, too. In fact I’ll stay right here in the car.”
Believing that she would, he responded to the call. However, because he’d been outside the area, the suspect was already being loaded into the back of another police car when they pulled up to the scene.
He caught her sigh of relief that the suspect had been apprehended and cuffed. “You can get out if you want,” he offered, “while we take statements.”
She shook her head, and her face paled again. “No. I’m fine in here.”
“There’s no danger,” Chad said as he stepped out of the vehicle. “You might learn something.”
She shook her head again. “I know about domestic abuse.”
He leaned back inside the car to meet her gaze; her blue eyes brimmed with emotion. Regret filled him over the pain she had endured and over the pain she obviously relived now. “You’ve been abused?”
“Not me,” she said, “but my mom was. A guy that knocked her around.”
“James’ and Kevin’s and Audrey’s dad,” he guessed.
She nodded. “He wasn’t the only abusive one. The last guy she dated got a little rough when he was drinking. He never touched any of the kids, but he’d shout and throw stuff and generally shake everyone up.” She sighed. “My mom has lousy judgment when it comes to men. Thankfully, after that guy, she’s given it a rest and stopped dating for a while.”
He suspected Tessa had had something to do with that, to protect her younger siblings. He narrowed his eyes as he studied her face in the glow of the dashboard lights. “You think you have her lousy judgment in men?”
“I’ve picked some losers. Guys who cut and ran.” She met his gaze and held it. “I thought I was getting better.” She sighed. “But I was wrong again.”
“Tessa…”
“Hey, Lieu,” an officer called out to him.
He ignored his colleague, wanting instead to explain to Tessa what he couldn’t even explain to himself.
“Go,” she said, “do your job.”
“I’ll be right back,” he promised.
“Take your time.”
He had blown his shot with Tessa Howard. Even if he could get over his fear of losing her and his sense of betrayal to Luanne for falling for someone else, he doubted Tessa would give him another chance. By leaving her the way he had, he had confirmed all her fears about men. He’d become proof of her lousy judgment.
Guilt pulled at him, more fiercely than it had that night. He hadn’t only betrayed Luanne, he had betrayed Tessa, too.
Chapter Thirteen
Even though she stayed in the car when he responded to the calls they received that night, Tessa was excited watching Chad do his job. She knew he was the man she had believed he was: a man of honor who had the respect of his fellow officers. With his help, the other officers had obtained the statements they’d needed to take the domestic abuse suspect to jail. That wasn’t the only call on which they’d requested his help. He’d also responded to a couple of breakins and a fight in a tavern parking lot. Despite the hard time Tessa had given him since they had met during her traffic stop, he had her respect, too.
While he stood near the driver’s window of the car he had just pulled over, another call crackled from the radio, giving an intersection for a traffic accident with “possible fatalities.”
Goose bumps rose on Tessa’s skin and she shouted through her open window, “Chad!”
“I heard,” he told her, his fingers at the radio mike on his shirt collar. He waved off the traffic violator and headed back to his vehicle. “That’s a bad intersection on the outskirts of Lakewood, not very busy, so nobody stops, and everyone speeds.”
Tessa studied his face as he slid into the driver’s seat. Was that the intersection where his wife had died? Tessa couldn’t ask; she had been careful not to distract him from his job—but how did he do it? How did he respond to traffic accidents and not think of losing Luanne and their baby?
His jaw clenched so tightly a muscle jumped in his cheek, he focused on the road as he turned on the siren and the lights and proceeded toward the crash faster than Tessa had ever dared travel. Since night had fallen, she couldn’t even see other vehicles—the lights just a blur as they passed them—sometimes on the wrong side of the road. She gripped the armrest with one hand and splayed her other one on the dash, not trusting the seat belt alone to protect her. In minutes they were at the crash site, the first unit on the scene. Chad parked the cruiser across both lanes of traffic.
A minivan had pulled onto the shoulder of the road, and the driver, an elderly woman, ran toward the police car the minute Chad got out. “Thank God you’re here!” she cried. “Besides calling 911, I didn’t know what to do.”
“You did the right thing,” Chad assured her. “An ambulance and a fire truck’s on the way, too.” He leaned down and caught Tessa’s gaze. “You can stay in the car.”
He didn’t wait for her response, but popped the trunk button, grabbing something—probably the first aid kit, before heading for the damaged vehicles, which Chad had illuminated in the cruiser’s high beams. He knelt beside the pickup truck that lay on its side in the middle of the street, inky gray smoke rising from under its crumpled hood. A car had hit the ditch, which on the outskirts of Lakewood were so deep because of the sometimes torrential lake-effect rains that everyone called them “suicide” ditches. The small vehicle had flipped over onto its roof.
Through the window she had opened earlier to combat the overpowering floral perfume, she could hear cries of pain and terror. The voices were young. Thinking of Kevin and Audrey, Tessa pushed open the door and walked on unsteady legs toward the mangled car.
She never knew where Kevin was at night. He could be one of those kids crying out for help. With the cruiser’s lights and some faint moonlight guiding her, she scrambled down the bank, over weeds and brush crushed from the path the car had taken. Briar branches tugged at her pants, but she pulled free. “Help’s coming,” she called out.
But Chad crouched on the street next to the pickup truck, assessing the driver’s condition. Gasoline fumes mingled with oil and the metallic scent of blood. Tessa’s stomach turned with fear and nausea. She forced herself to look through the shattered windows. In the glow of lights from the broken dash, she could make out at least five bodies in the car, but she couldn’t tell for certain as limbs and torsos were contorted around each other and the car’s mangled metal. There was so much blood.
“Help!” a feminine voice, weak with pain, cried out.
“Help’s coming,” Tessa repeated, glancing again toward the street. Chad scrambled down the bank toward them. “Thank God…” She moved, getting ready to stand up and meet him, but a bloody hand reached through the shattered driver’s window and grasped her arm.
“Don’t go,” a male voice moaned.
Heart in her throat, she turned toward the kid, noting th
at beneath the blood matting his hair, the strands were blond and were eerily similar to Kevin’s style. She knew it wasn’t Kevin, but it easily could have been. She needed to help him learn to drive more carefully.
Was Chad right? Was she not a good example for her brother? With her speeding, she could cause a crash like this.
“I’ll stay,” she assured the kid, although she had no idea how to help him and his friends. Sinking to her knees in the ditch, she entwined her fingers with the boy’s, holding his hand to offer comfort. “I won’t leave you.”
“Promise?” the kid murmured.
Biting her lip, she nodded. Then, knowing that he probably couldn’t see her in the shadow of the car, she said, “Promise.”
Chad moved around the vehicle, testing the doors. The window frames had been crushed, the openings now too small for more than a hand to squeeze through. Yet somehow he reached through the rear window, checking pulses as he murmured reassuringly to the injured kids.
Only a few of them were conscious, the others oddly pale and still as blood oozed from their wounds. Tessa clutched at the hand in hers, willing the kid to live. “Hang on,” she implored the boy. “Help’s on the way.”
Then she pitched her voice lower and murmured to Chad, “Can’t you help them?”
“We need the Jaws of Life. ETA for the fire truck is less than a minute.” Sirens whined in the distance, but he continued to work from the first aid kit he’d pulled from his police car, wrapping bandages and tourniquets around the wounds he could reach through the nearly crushed window.
One of the girls inside howled in agony. Another awoke and began screaming hysterically.
“Shh…you have to stay calm,” Tessa advised them even as her own heart raced with panic. Would help get there in time to save the kids? A minute had never seemed so long. She glanced toward the street and noticed that other police units had joined them, and a fire truck lurched to a stop on the shoulder of the road.
Relief flooded through her. “You’re going to be fine,” she vowed. “Just fine.”
“It’s my fault,” the boy murmured, tears streaking through the blood smeared on his face. “I didn’t stop. I was going too fast…”