by CJ Lyons
"It's mine," he told her when she looked around for her pager. He yanked the technologic intrusion from his belt. Kwon. He yawned and struggled to his feet, looked at the clock. Nine-forty. They had slept almost four hours.
He wrapped his arms around Hart, snugging her close and kissed her on the forehead. Her body trembled with the adrenalin rush of her abrupt awakening and she was still too pale by far. But her eyes had regained their old light. "Any bad dreams?"
She smiled. "No. That was the best I've slept in days."
"Me too." His beeper went off again. Damn it, Kwon, take a Ritalin or something.
Hart eased out of his arms, headed into the tiny bathroom. He phoned Kwon.
"Something break? You need me to come in?" he asked.
"No." Kwon paused. "Actually, I was calling to talk to Hart. Thought I might find her with you."
"Why?" He looked up as Hart opened the door and emerged from the bathroom. "You don't want me to bring her in, do you?" He couldn't, he wouldn't put Hart through that, not after everything she'd done to try to protect him. To hell with the job.
"Dimeo says we don't have enough to arrest Hart, not yet, anyway. But the search warrant came through. I was calling as a courtesy. Thought she might want to be there when we serve it."
Kwon's voice was cold, unemotional. Drake knew she was going above and beyond to warn him, trusting him not to make things worse. Trusting him not to screw up again.
His mind spun with the ramifications. Hart wasn't guilty--that was the one thing he was certain of, even if he had no proof.
"DJ, can I talk to Hart?" Kwon's voice cut through his thoughts.
"Yeah." His voice was heavy with fatigue and regret. He handed the phone to Hart. "It's for you."
Cassie took the phone, wondering what the bad news could be. "This is Detective Kwon," she heard. "We've a warrant to search your premises and are about to execute it. Customarily, if the homeowner isn't present we have the right to enter by any means necessary. But in these circumstances," her tone made it clear that Kwon in no way approved of the circumstances, "I'm willing to wait a few minutes until you get here to let us in."
She had to force the words past her lips. "I'll be right there."
"Hart?" Kwon's voice lowered as if she didn't want the people with her to hear what she said next. "Don't let DJ come with you. He's on shaky ground as it is, if he's seen with you--"
"I understand." So Kwon did have an ounce of compassion beneath that flint-like exterior, at least when it came to protecting her own. "Thank you, Detective." Cassie carefully hung up the phone. It was either that or rip it from the wall and hurl it across the room.
Drake stood there in his stocking feet, arms out at his sides, hands wide open. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head, batted away his apologies. She stepped into her boots, bent over to lace them. "I've got to go."
When she straightened, she saw that he was reaching for his shoes, fumbling with a knot in one of the laces. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Going with you." He sat on the bed, tugging at the recalcitrant lace.
"No. You're not." His head snapped up, mouth open to protest. Cassie stepped between his legs and took his face in her hands, kissed him. A deep, shuddering kiss, filled with the heat of her anger and frustration.
He dropped the hightop to the floor with a thud and pulled her hard up against him. Finally they separated.
"What was that for?" he asked.
"To thank you. For offering to come with me even though we both know it's about the stupidest thing you could do--for either of us," she added when he began to interject. She kissed him again, this one pure passion and warmth, a promise of things to come. "That one was so you don't forget me or Plan A."
"To hell with Plan A," he grumbled, drawing her tighter against his chest. His lips pressed hers with an urgency she shared. It took all of her strength to pull away.
"If I don't leave now, they'll break down the door," she said, ducking away from his lips. His arms held her in an unbreakable grip.
"Let 'em bust it into kindling." He planted his lips against hers once more.
"Drake, no. I couldn't let them do that--what would Rosa say?" Or the neighbors for that matter. She was certain there'd be a crowd watching the festivities. Police were not commonly seen on Gettysburg Street.
Drake sighed his surrender, and she stepped free of his embrace. He kept hold of one hand and gave it a tug.
"Hart, I'm tired of being bossed around by your grandmother."
She smiled, leaned forward to plant one more quick kiss against his lips and danced back out of his reach.
"Rosa would like you," she said and was gone.
The door swung shut behind her, raising a whirling dervish of dust bunnies that sped through the room. Drake sank back on the bed, uncertain whether to be more afraid of her use of present tense when she spoke of a woman dead three years--or his own.
He shook his head, finished untying the knot in his shoe. He could head back home, get some more sleep. Or maybe crash at the House so he'd be there if something broke.
Drake jerked upright. Judas H! He was an idiot. He shoved his feet into his shoes. Hart had jumbled his mind so that he forgot about being a cop when he was around her, forgot everything.
Like the fact that someone in this hospital was trying to kill her. And he had let her waltz out the door. Alone.
He grabbed his coat and ran.
CHAPTER 58
Distracted by thoughts of the police rampaging through her house, Cassie didn't notice the footsteps echoing behind her in the stairwell until she passed the third floor landing. She stopped. The steps above her stopped. She looked up into the dimly lit space but could see no one.
She wasn't the only one who found elevators distasteful. Of course, not everyone had their coffee spiked with poison today, either. She galloped down the stairs, anxious to get to the next floor. The clamor of her own footsteps camouflaged any other sounds. The second floor landing beckoned to her. Only a few steps to go.
A man's weight crashed into her, shoved her into the cinder block wall.
"I told you I wasn't finished, Cassandra," Alan King's voice came from behind her. He kept her pinned to the wall for a long moment, then lifted his weight off her. Cassie spun around to face him.
"Alan! What do you want?"
He leaned forward, one arm on either side of her. Cassie knew he thought he was being intimidating, violating her space, but his posture left several vulnerable targets open for her attack, if need be.
"You thought I wouldn't recognize your boyfriend, didn't you?" Alan continued. "But I did. He's the co-star of a certain video Richard left with me last night. And a medical student saw him assault Richard earlier today." He grinned at her. "I'm going to ruin his career, take away everything he has."
She frowned. Alan clearly thought Drake was responsible for Richard's injuries. "Alan, Drake didn't give Richard that black eye, I did. He attacked me at my house this morning. Leave Drake alone."
Alan considered this, his gaze roaming down her body. "Give me a reason. What's in it for me?"
"For one thing, I won't have to arrest you for assault." Drake's voice came from above.
Cassie looked up in relief. Drake joined them on the landing. Alan ignored him for a long second, then straightened, dropping his arms to his sides.
"Thought I'd escort you to your car, Dr. Hart," Drake said. "You never know what kind of predator might be roaming the hospital."
Alan chuckled. He pointed at Cassie. "You stay away from my brother. And you," he glared at Drake, "I wouldn't make any long term career plans, Detective Drake."
She watched him return up the steps to the ICU. "One of my favorite things about you," she said, intertwining her arm with Drake's, "is your impeccable sense of timing."
They continued together down the steps. Drake looked back over his shoulder in the direction Alan had taken. "Think he might be using the same stuff Richa
rd was? That guy's a walking time bomb."
"No, that's just Alan. I used to think he was bipolar, but he's all mania, no depression."
They approached her car. He put his hands on her shoulders. "No matter what happens," he said, "don't forget that I believe in you. I'll be here for you."
He kissed her forehead, then released her.
"And for God's sake, Hart, be careful."
Drake's simple declaration of faith helped to quiet her fears as she drove home. The streets were slick with snow, several inches on the ground already and no signs of letting up. She pulled her car into the alley behind her house after seeing that the front spaces were occupied by various law enforcement vehicles.
What a circus. She opened the door for Kwon and her team. They even had a drug sniffing dog to help them. Kwon left her on the front porch with a patrolman. Cassie sat on the porch swing, trying not to grimace as she looked through the front windows and watched. They weren't destructive by any means, just very thorough. Apparently searching did not include replacing anything they moved, so within a few minutes the living room was strewn with displaced cushions, pillows and stacks and stacks of books.
And Rosa's floors! Bootprints, footprints, and dogprints marred the once shiny hardwood, melted snow puddles certain to leave stains. She sighed, pretended to read the thick wad of papers outlining the parameters of the search and tried to ignore the neighbors who wandered out from the comfort of their homes to see what was going on.
When they finished with the first floor, they allowed Cassie inside. She looked around the disruption surrounding her, and the weight of her exhaustion crashed down on her. Nothing was where it should be, where it had been for as long as she could remember. Her house was the one constant in her life. She'd never realized what an important touchstone it had become for her.
A dog's bark and a shout from above broke through her reverie. "Got something!" someone yelled from her bedroom.
No one stopped her, so Cassie climbed the steps to see what all the commotion was about. Had Richard brought drugs into her house this morning? Kwon, Spanos, and another officer with a dog crowded into her bedroom.
Kwon was holding her bloody T-shirt. "What happened here?" she asked Cassie.
"I had a bloody nose this morning." Cassie was glad she didn't have any swelling or black eyes like Richard did after their encounter. What would she say then--that she had run into a door?
Kwon didn't look convinced, gestured to the broken glass, shattered remnants of the lamp and statue Richard had swept to the floor.
"I tripped," she answered the detective's unasked question.
"Right. When you got your bloody nose."
"That's right." Cassie kept her eyes level with the detective's, but knew Kwon didn't believe her.
"Wanna tell us what's in the hamper?"
The dog was pawing at her dirty laundry, his handler holding his lead tight. "Nothing," she told them. "Just dirty clothes."
Kwon nodded to Spanos who began piece by piece exhuming Cassie's laundry. Spanos glanced over at Cassie with a leer that made her face flush. Out came dirty socks and underwear, clothes from work, a Kempo gi, sweaters and jeans. The last set the dog to barking again.
"Nothing in the pockets," his handler said after searching them. The jeans were the only item the dog seemed to care about.
"Those are the ones I wore to the precinct house," Cassie remembered. "I had the FX in my pocket, it was wrapped in two plastic bags. Could he still smell it?"
The dog's handler nodded, praised his co-worker for his efforts. Kwon looked disgusted. "That's it?"
"Only thing in the whole house he alerted to. Rest of the place is clean."
Cassie wanted to pet the dog, tell it what a good boy it was, but refrained. Kwon and her men kept going, leafing through every book and piece of paper--which in the house of a history professor and his daughter, both voracious readers, was a herculean task in its own right--taking her computer, financial records and poking their heads into every nook and cranny from basement to attic. The only thing remotely controversial was Rosa's ancient Luger, broken down and wrapped in oilcloth in a trunk in the attic. There were no bullets for it, and it wasn't the same caliber as the gun that killed Fran, but Kwon included it in her haul anyway.
Finally, at almost four in the morning, the disgruntled detective signed a receipt and explained to Cassie the procedure to retrieve her belongings if they weren't needed as evidence. Cassie watched as the policemen packed up their cars and left.
She closed the door and locked it, then leaned against the thick oak, surveying her home. Nothing looked familiar, it was as if she'd been dropped into some alternative dimension where chaos reigned. Sighing, she picked her way across the debris, found a cushion that fit the chair by the fire and shoved it into place, happy to have one thing appearing semi-normal. She turned the fire on. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch, but she was too upset to be hungry.
She stalked through the first floor of the house, her anger driving her, until she came up short in front of the buffet. A seldom touched bottle of Glen Morangie, her father's favorite, sat there, beckoning. It was usually kept below, behind the cabinet door, out of sight.
Why not?
She found the glasses stacked on the counter top beside a copy of Nietzsche. Cassie poured a few fingers of the single malt, watching the amber fluid slip down the side of the glass. The first swallow jolted through her--it had been a long time. Somehow, after Richard, turning to drink for comfort had not seemed appealing.
But this liquid fire that smoothed her ruffled temper felt so good. Another swallow, and her toes began to tingle. She carried it back to her one inhabitable chair. Maybe she should dilute it? Cassie smiled. Paddy Hart would be rolling in his grave at the thought of his granddaughter spoiling whiskey that way--even if it was Scotch and not good Irish.
It was nice to think of Paddy with his Irish lilt and constant smell of moist soil and pipe tobacco. He'd grown up in Clifden, a seaside village northwest of Galway. Paddy despised the Brits but hated the Nazi's more after his sister, Brigid, died on the Athenia. He tried to join the Royal Navy determined to avenge her but had been assigned to the merchant fleet. Then, after he met Rosa, he left the sea behind to journey to a new land with new hopes and dreams.
She used to spend summers at their small farm in St. Augustine before Paddy died and Rosa moved in with Cassie and her father. She remembered nights spent under the stars, laying on Rosa's quilt, listening to Paddy spin his tales about the home country, about the war. Her favorite had been the story of the first time Paddy and Rosa met.
"We was slinking along the coast of France, trying to avoid the Krauts and their bloody U-boats when it came. The siren sounded but 'fore you could do more than topple from your bunk, a Godawful shudder tore through the ship. Many's a boy who wet his pants, I can tell you that, gal."
"What happened?" Cassie asked, her fingers twisting a length of grass into a knot.
"That U-boat cap'n, he knew his business. Busted our lovely ship like your Gram guts a chicken. And their timing couldn't have been worse. It was a cold, blustery night, so cold that there was ice hanging from the rigging. A storm were raging, twenty foot seas, wind from the Northwest wailing like a banshee. We all tumbled into that godforsaken inferno of water certain we were breathing our last.
"Imagine eighteen men packed into a wee wooden boat being spun and tossed about like a whirligig," he continued, his hands weaving through the air, describing the raging ocean. "No lights or Jerry'd see us--as it was that bastard Kraut got two of our boats before he abandoned the rest of us to our fate. Men were howling, cursing, weeping and praying as that storm spat its fury at us." He took a puff on his pipe and shook his head. "God was pissed but good that night. I reckon he was already tired of this war and the pointless killing.
"We had no motor and lost most our oars when we launched. There was a bit of canvas, but no way to raise a sail--as it was, I thought the till
er would wrench my arm off.
"There was no choice but head for the coast and hope the Vichy treated their prisoners better than Jerry. Captain Cavendish sent an SOS, but we knew rescue weren't coming. Any other ship close enough would be a sitting duck for the U-boat and her cursed skipper. So we'd given up hope, thinking only that life in a prison was better than a certain death at sea. Although there were still some who argued the point, mind you. Myself, I was ready to take my chances with the sea, would have if the currents and wind had been fair. But God and nature seemed bound and determined to send us into the coast whether we liked it or not."
"But Gram, when did Gram come?" She bounced up and down with excitement.
"Patience child, patience. I swear you're just like Rosa, neither one of you can sit still worth a damn. Even if it means risking your fool life. And thank God for it, I say.
"Your gram had already escaped the Nazis once. They killed her entire family, so she made her way into France and joined the Resistance. She's a sneaky one, your gram, you wouldn't believe the hell her group raised. Chaos and calamity for the Vichy and their Kraut friends. Anyway, she heard our SOS. Knowing that them lazy Vichy coast watchers would be snug in their cottages drinking and playing cards, she rounded up every boat she and her mates could lay hands to and set out into the storm.
"Now, ya know Rosa can't swim--is terrified of water in fact. See, when your gram were a wee one, her own grandmother predicted she would die in the water. So's all her life she'd been cautioned from it. But that night, she rode out in one of the long boats, braving nature's fury without a thought to her own safety or comfort. She helped to find and haul in nine o' my mates 'fore they could drown or make it into enemy hands. The seas were churning all about them, threatening to swamp the boat. Waves higher than that barn there pounding them.
"But Rosa, she spotted one more poor soul floundering in the icy water. Her boat started to make its way toward him when he went under. Lost--the black ocean swallowed him whole!" Paddy's voice rose, and Cassie shuddered in anticipation. He paused and looked down on her.
"And do ya know what happened next?"