by Ranae Rose
“You son of a bitch,” he said as Jackson pushed his head down into the car, “you know domestics are bullshit. You’re gonna regret this.”
Jackson shut the cruiser door.
How had he served on the same force with such a piece of shit and not realized it until today?
* * * * *
Jackson cracked open a beer, and the memory of Sanders’ whiskey breath hit him like a ton of bricks.
He compartmentalized, filing the memory away as he sank down onto a kitchen chair and took a long drink from the bottle.
He could’ve downed something much stronger, but it was all he had. After peeling off his sweaty uniform and vest, though, nothing tasted better than a cold beer anyway. Wearing Kevlar in South Carolina during August was like walking around with your own personal sauna on your back.
“Shit.” Elijah strode into the kitchen, past the table and straight to the fridge. “I smell more like one of the transients down at the bus station than a cop. So do you, by the way.”
His roommate opened the fridge and pulled a beer from the case shoved into one corner of the top shelf.
“This time of year, there’s not much of a difference between transients and cops, at least as far as body odor goes.”
In uniform pants and a visibly damp t-shirt, Elijah took the seat opposite Jackson. There were only two chairs at their small kitchen table, but it was all they needed. On the rare occasions anyone else came over, there were a couple barstools at the nearby island.
Elijah snorted. “Best kept secret of law enforcement. We should use it to our advantage, somehow – weaponize it. Sweat’s cheaper than bullets.”
“You think you could’ve taken down that meth head last week with your stench alone?”
Elijah grinned. “Only one way to find out. Next time some junkie takes a swing at me with a steel pipe, I’m taking off the vest instead of reaching for the Taser.”
“You’ll get your skull caved in.”
Elijah shrugged. “Chicks dig scars.”
“You’re just sick of everyone on the platoon calling you Baby Face.”
At twenty-seven, Elijah was only two years younger than Jackson, but there was no denying which one of them looked younger. Not that the veneer of extreme youth stopped Elijah from drawing female attention like a magnet.
He was well over six feet tall and had the muscle to match. Despite his words, he spent more time lifting weights and hitting the beach than dating. No matter how much sun he got, his light brown skin stayed smooth and flawless, hence the Baby Face moniker.
Jackson didn’t envy Elijah’s college kid look, but his ability to tolerate the sun well was a different story. As a strawberry blond, Jackson had to lather on sunscreen every spring and let a tan build naturally on the exposed areas of his skin before he was safe from easy burning. Island living was rough on skin as fair as his, and it’d been a pain in the ass back when he’d been working construction.
“Rogers is the one who started that Baby Face crap,” Elijah said, “and she’s just jealous. Spent too much time lying out on the beach trying to tan that lily-white skin and got those premature crow’s feet.”
Elijah and Rogers had had a rivalry going on ever since the academy. Jackson had gone through it with the two of them and had witnessed the root of it all: the moment Elijah had accidentally hit Rogers in the calf with a Taser.
No matter how profusely he’d apologized, she’d never forgiven him.
“The other day, she asked me what kind of moisturizer you use,” Jackson said. “I told her I didn’t know, and she offered to slip me a twenty if I went through your bathroom drawer and reported back to her.”
“Seriously?” Elijah met Jackson’s eyes over his beer bottle.
“No.”
Elijah succumbed to rough laughter that was at odds with his pretty-boy face. When it faded, the air of joviality died with it.
“Heard you brought in Sanders today.” Elijah bounced his bottle cap on the table’s glass surface.
“Yeah.”
Elijah’s hazel eyes went dark as he frowned. “He really beating up on his wife?”
Jackson shot his best friend a hard look. Elijah knew he wouldn’t have brought him in if he hadn’t been sure. “He hit her twice in the stomach. She just had a baby, too.”
“Shit.”
He nodded. “Sanders looked like he was about to shit bricks when he realized I was going to charge him.”
Jackson knew very well there were officers who wouldn’t have. So did Elijah. It was illegal for anyone with a domestic violence conviction to possess a gun – if Sanders was convicted, he wouldn’t be able to keep his job.
“Hey, it’s the thin blue line, not the black and blue wall of silence,” Elijah said. “Fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.”
“There are too many people who think otherwise.” Integrity was one thing. Loyalty was another. Putting cuffs on someone who was supposed to have your back felt like having your moral compass torn in two.
“Someone’s gotta be the change.”
“You sound like a motivational poster.”
More laughter. “I bet Sanders was pissed when you brought him in.”
“Yeah, he seemed sure I’d regret arresting him. He even threw a punch.”
“It land?”
“No. He was either drunk or hungover – clumsy.”
“You charge him for assaulting you and resisting arrest?”
“No. It’d be my word against his, and that was a can of worms I didn’t want to open. Figured I’ll get enough shit over arresting him in the first place.”
“Well, the charges for what he did to his wife are there. And he can say what he wants – that shit would never fly with the lieutenant.”
“I know.” Anyone under their lieutenant’s charge knew she’d never turn a blind eye to actions like Sanders’. “But she’s not the one out on the streets who’s supposed to have my back, and Sanders isn’t in our platoon anyway.”
“So you don’t have to deal with Sanders or any of his buddies. Not unless you have to arrest him again, anyway.”
“Fuck that. Someone else can take the call.” He said it, but he didn’t mean it. He’d do it all over again if he had to. Letting someone else take the call might mean letting Sanders get away with it.
Elijah nodded, and silence filled their shared apartment.
“You sticking around tonight?” Elijah asked after a while.
“Yeah. Why?” He had work the next morning. All he wanted to do was grab a shower and some food and zone out in front of the TV with the AC cranked high before going to bed.
“I’m thinking of ordering in some Thai. You were MIA last night, and I had to finish off a pizza by myself.”
“I thought you were into cooking healthy instead of ordering in. That phase over already?”
“You know I only cook on my days off. I’d been making big batches of food to last through the week, but I didn’t have time this week since I ended up getting called in for overtime on my last day off.”
“So, a whole pizza – really milking it for all it’s worth, huh?”
Elijah shrugged. “They were having a special – a large one topping for eight bucks. Not like I was going to pass that up, especially with what we get paid. And you’re one to talk, anyway – all you cook is bacon.”
“I buy those fresh rotisserie chickens from the deli – that’s almost cooking.”
Elijah gave him a look of disbelief. “No, it’s not.”
“Well, whatever. I’m up for Thai. No plans tonight.”
“Last night not go so well?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the receipt from the florist on the counter. You went on a date, and you came home early.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “You trying to make detective?”
“Hey, you left it lying out.”
“I wasn’t on a date.”
“Treating yourself to a fresh-cut bouquet?”
<
br /> “The flowers were for an old friend. Figured I owed her something.”
“Why?”
“Caught her flying over the bridge yesterday and wrote her a ticket.”
For a second, Elijah stared, his eyes narrowing to laser focus. Then he burst into laughter.
Jackson frowned.
“You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?”
Elijah didn’t wait for Jackson to answer. “No wonder you didn’t get any. You dug your own grave, man.”
“I didn’t know it was her when I pulled her over.”
Elijah shook his head. “Only you, I swear. Do yourself a favor and don’t waste any more money trying to get back in that chick’s good graces. It’s not gonna happen. Only hope you have of seeing her again is in court.”
Jackson shifted in his chair, irritation chafing at him.
“We go way back. She’s not petty enough to get her panties in a bunch over a ticket.”
“You honestly believe that, don’t you? You’re gonna end up old and alone.”
“At least I’ll have you for company, Casanova.”
“Say what you want. If I meet someone I think would make a better roommate than you, you can be damn sure I won’t write her a ticket.”
Jackson pushed back his chair. “I’m grabbing a shower.”
“If you use all the hot water because you’re in there fantasizing about that woman, I’m gonna be pissed. She’s out of your reach.”
“I used to think so,” he said, heading down the hall, “but I was wrong.” He paused by the bathroom door. “You should see her. She could’ve had anyone – still could.”
“Calder,” Elijah called before Jackson could shut the bathroom door, “you’re the biggest idiot I know.”
Jackson didn’t say so, but he was starting to think the same thing.
* * * * *
“Well,” Keira said, “this is a first.”
Belle looked to her boss, the unflappable Director of Admissions, Keira Moseley. She stood with her hands on her curvy hips, her strawberry blonde curls bobbing as she shook her head.
“I’d certainly hope so.” Belle stared at the surprise that’d been waiting for them in the office when they’d unlocked the doors a minute ago. “What should we do – call campus security?”
Keira had already turned on her heel and was marching toward the phone at the reception desk. It was currently Zackary’s post, although he hadn’t arrived yet.
“We’ve got a situation here,” Keira said into the receiver after punching in a few numbers. “Someone made it into the office overnight and left us a little gift.”
It wasn’t so little, actually. The dildo standing at attention in the center of the round waiting table outside Keira and Belle’s individual offices didn’t seem far shy of a foot long. Made of bright kelly green rubber molded in an anatomically correct shape, it looked garish – even intimidating.
“I get that some people get upset when they’re not accepted,” Belle said, “but how the hell did they get past the locks?”
The only people who had keys to the admissions office were Keira, Belle and the college’s janitorial and security staff. Anyone else would’ve had to steal a key or pick the lock.
“Like I said, this is a first. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Belle’s gaze drifted toward her office. “I hope they didn’t leave us any other surprises.”
“Don’t go looking – we’ll have security inspect. People are nuts these days; they might’ve left something a lot worse than this.”
Zackary walked in at that very moment. “Morning, gu— What the hell?”
Belle turned to see him standing frozen by the reception desk, a backpack sagging off of one shoulder. “I’m, uh, still scheduled to work this morning, right?”
“We had a visitor.” Keira said it as if she were reporting on the weather. “Security is on the way.”
Belle bit her lip before she could laugh.
When two campus security officers arrived, their purposeful stride faltered as they walked through the office door.
The older one, a fifty-ish man with a grey mustache, was the first to recover. “Is this the, uh, object left by whoever broke in?”
“Yes,” Keira said, “and they either had a key or picked the lock. The door was just as I left it last night when I got here this morning – I unlocked it myself.”
The mustached man frowned and approached the rubber phallus as if it were a venomous snake that might strike if he got too close.
The urge to laugh grew stronger, and Belle buried an eyetooth in her lower lip.
It really wasn’t funny that someone had somehow entered the locked office and left something lewd for them to find. But the way people were reacting to it was definitely amusing.
After a few seconds of frowning at the “surprise,” the security officer turned his gaze on his partner and the office staff. “Right, well, since someone entered the locked office, I’m going to err on the side of caution and treat this as more than a prank. I’ll have a police officer come by and make a report. Nobody move the, uh, object.”
“We won’t,” Keira said, her expression betraying no hint of humor.
“Stanley, stay here while I make the call.”
The younger security officer nodded and took up a post near the door.
“For God’s sake,” Keira said after his partner stepped out of the room, “shut the door. I don’t want students coming in here and snapping pictures of our little exhibit.”
“This is a health sciences school,” Zackary said as he stepped forward, pushing the door shut, “I’m sure all the students here are, uh, familiar with human anatomy.”
Keira side-eyed the oversized sex toy. “Human. Sure.”
The remaining security officer helped them inspect their offices. There was no telling whether their visitor had unlocked and relocked them too, but nothing was amiss.
Even the Charleston police officer who filed a report on the incident concluded that the toy seemed to be the only sign that anyone had entered the office after hours.
After the report was finished and the sex toy taken away by security, Keira reopened the office door.
“Time and tide wait for no man,” she said. “Neither do admissions deadlines.”
They went about their day as usual, and as Belle lost herself in paperwork, the morning’s incident slipped farther and farther from her thoughts.
The discovery had been weird, even unnerving. But her mind was elsewhere. Apparently, it would take more than an intruder and a big green mystery dildo to get her mind off Jackson.
Which was saying a lot.
CHAPTER 5
The South Island Police Department was a three story brick rectangle located on the edge of downtown and framed by towering palms. Making his way across the second floor on Friday, Jackson felt like a model reluctantly walking the runway.
“I know I make this uniform look good,” he said to Delgado, the nearest patrol officer, “but you’re all staring more than usual.”
“You brought Sanders in yesterday,” Delgado said. “It’s all anyone’s been talking about all morning.”
He nodded. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. The weight of his fellow officers’ combined gazes felt like a spotlight as they gathered for roll call.
He knew all of them and couldn’t say there was anyone he had any real problems with. But he knew they were talking about him, reassessing their opinions of him.
Some of them would be wary of him. Some might even decide he was a traitor.
It’d been his call whether to arrest Sanders the day before, and he’d acted to protect the victim instead of one of their own.
Jackson exchanged a look with Elijah as the room filled and Sanders’ name was spoken several times.
Everyone shut up when the shift sergeant entered, and he quickly assigned an extra patrol to the area just north of a popular fishing pier where one convenience store and a beachwear retailer
had both been robbed during the past week. A single thief had acted alone and had claimed to be armed, but neither of the targeted clerks had actually seen a gun. He was to be considered armed and dangerous and had been described as a white male in his twenties.
By the time roll call wrapped up, Jackson was ready to get out from under his platoon members’ gazes and into his cruiser.
He and Elijah were almost to the stairs when someone caught his elbow.
“Calder.”
It was the lieutenant. “My office for a minute. Come on.” She tipped her head to the side, then nodded at Elijah. “Bennett, you can go.”
Elijah and Jackson went in opposite directions, Elijah toward the stairs and Jackson to the lieutenant’s office.
Once there, she shut the door and turned to face him, standing in front of her desk.
He knew without being told that this was about what’d gone down at Sanders’ place yesterday. Trepidation nagged at him, but he couldn’t believe Lieutenant Aldred would give him shit over it. It was well known in the department that her ex-husband had given her the scar that ran along her jawline. In her forties now, that was years in her past, and she was known for being stern but fair.
“You did what you had to do yesterday at the Sanders’ home,” she said. “I know you know you’ll catch some shit over it, but I won’t berate you.” A muscle in her jaw shifted, straining the thin, white scar. “I just wanted to let you know that Sanders’ wife dropped the charges against him.”
“What?” The revelation hit him like a punch to the gut, and his spine stiffened.
“She dropped the charges. This morning.” Lieutenant Aldred shrugged, her mouth drawn into a compressed line.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. All that, and Kate Sanders had caved. She’d made Jackson at least one solid enemy in the department, and – worse – she’d put herself and her child in danger.
“She was telling the truth,” he said. “She was terrified – she was there crying with her screaming baby.”
Anger bubbled up inside him like toxic sludge.
“Apparently, she had a change of heart.”