Suddenly catching this asshole wasn’t just a professional duty but a personal mission.
Digging deep, she lengthened her stride, determined to close the distance.
Chapter Four
Tara took off up the alleyway at a flat sprint, arms pumping as she gave pursuit. By the time Reid made it to the head of the alley she was halfway down, running hard. She’d done track and field at school and he knew from personal experience that she was fast, but he was pretty sure he’d never seen her move like this.
“124 in foot pursuit,” he told the radio, taking off after Tara and the suspect.
By the time he got to the end of the alley, he was just in time to see Tara disappearing down a cross street. Sucking in air, he pounded after her, not wanting her to come up against a desperate criminal on her own. She could take care of herself, he knew, but that didn’t mean he liked the idea of her having to wrangle a freaked-out car thief single-handedly. The odds were good there were drugs involved, too, this sort of spontaneous, opportunistic car theft being typical of strung-out addicts.
He kept Tara in sight as he dodged his way down the street, sidestepping pedestrians and other obstacles. A part of him couldn’t help but admire her smooth, even gait as she gained on the thief. She was like a gazelle when she ran—elegant, born to it, her narrow hips and long legs built for speed.
Suddenly she veered to the left, disappearing, and Reid was so distracted he almost went tumbling, smashing into an A-frame sign a store owner had placed on the sidewalk.
Shit.
He recovered quickly, once again building speed, streaking around the corner into yet another alleyway. He saw immediately that the far end was blocked by a chain link fence, the top covered with coils of razor-wire. The suspect had just reached it, springing up the chain link like a monkey, hands and feet clawing for traction. Tara was only seconds behind him, and as Reid watched she leaped at the fence, momentum giving her wings as she snatched at the suspect’s back. She grabbed the guy’s T-shirt, yanking backwards, and the two of them fell to the ground. Tara immediately rolled to her feet, while the suspect stayed low, scrambling toward the fence once again.
Reid was close enough now to see that the suspect was a woman, her face sunken and sallow, hair greasy, eyes bloodshot and wild. Meth user, he guessed, which meant she could be anything from plain old fashioned desperate to out-of-her-mind psychotic.
The woman barely had a grip on the fence before Tara was on her again, wrenching her backward.
“Police! You’re under arrest.” Tara’s words echoed up the alley, strong despite the fact she was breathing hard.
The woman struggled, striking out at Tara. Tara’s head jerked backward as a blow connected. Reid’s lungs were on fire as he covered the final twenty feet, adrenaline lighting up every cell in his body, the need to get in there and control the situation and protect Tara a primal, undeniable urge.
Tara used her body weight against her assailant, rushing forward and pushing the other woman off balance. For a second the two of them hung suspended. Then they were both on the ground, Tara attempting to control the other woman by throwing her leg across her body. The woman struggled to throw Tara off, but Tara grabbed her right arm, twisting it up her back.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Tara panted. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney... “
Reid slipped his cuffs from his utility belt, dropping to his knees the second he reached the two women. Tara leaned to the side without him having to say a word, allowing him to slip on the first cuff, and within seconds he had the woman’s other arm cuffed tightly behind her back. Then and only then did Tara let up, taking her weight off the other woman’s body.
“Fucking cop. Fucking broke my arm. I’m going to sue your ass off,” the woman screamed, head thrashing from side to side, body bucking.
“You okay?” Reid asked, glancing at Tara.
“Of course.”
Her hair had come loose during the struggle, and strands hung around her face. When she turned her head to look at him, he saw a cut and the beginnings of a bruise on her cheekbone.
“That hurt?” he asked, gesturing at her cheek.
Tara lifted a hand, touching her face, looking surprised when it came away with blood on it.
“I want a lawyer. I know my rights. You can’t manhandle me like this,” the other woman protested.
Tara stood, adjusting her utility belt. “Come on, on your feet.”
She reached down and used her grip on the woman’s wrists to force her first to her knees, then her feet. Reid called in to dispatch, letting them know they had the suspect in custody before relaying their position. His gaze kept going to the wound on Tara’s face. It had been a good takedown, and she was okay, but he hated it that she’d been hurt.
“My arm hurts. I need a doctor, you bitch,” the woman said.
“My name is Patrol Officer Buck, and you can request a medical evaluation when we take you in,” Tara said.
Her tone was cold and hard, devoid of the professional distance she usually employed. Reid shot her a quick look, registering the stony expression on her face.
“Fuck you, Patrol Officer Bitch,” the other woman said. Her expression contemptuous, she spat in Tara’s face.
Tara moved so fast, he almost didn’t see her, reaching out to grab the woman’s T-shirt in her fist, getting right up in her face.
“You want to try that again, you piece of crap?” Reid didn’t recognize Tara’s voice, it was so low and hard and dangerous. She shook the other woman, making her head rock on her neck.
“Tara,” Reid said.
She didn’t seem to hear him, her whole being focused on the thief. He reached out, grabbing her shoulder. He could feel how wound up she was, her body vibrating with suppressed emotion.
“I’ve got this,” he said firmly.
She glanced at him, and for a split second her gaze was utterly blank, as though she didn’t recognize him. And then she blinked and he saw awareness rush back in. Her shoulders dropped and she released her grip on the other woman so abruptly the woman staggered, off balance.
Reid concentrated on Tara, aware of the sound of sirens as their colleagues raced to join them.
“Tara?”
She turned her back on him.
“Talk to me, Tara.”
Verbal abuse and physical assaults were part and parcel of the job, but he’d never seen Tara react like this before, not in all the months they’d been working together.
She took a deep breath, her shoulders lifting and falling with the force of it. Then she pushed the loose strands of hair back from her forehead and turned to face him.
“I’m sorry.”
Her green eyes were clouded, troubled, and she looked close to tears. His gut impulse was to pull her into his arms, but they had a pissed-off meth user to take care of and a patrol car was going to join them any second.
“Go flag the others down,” he said.
It was an unnecessary task, but he could see she needed a few seconds to pull herself together. She nodded and started walking to the top of the alley.
“Good riddance, bitch,” the other woman yelled after her.
Reid spared her an irritated glance. On another day, he’d probably find some sympathy for the track marks on her arms and the open sores on her face, but not today.
Today, his thoughts were all for the woman walking away from him, and his inability to take her pain away.
Tara couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She had to clasp them together behind her back to hide the fact while the suspect was read her rights again and helped into the backseat of a patrol car. Tara stood at a distance and kept her head down the whole time, avoiding eye contact with her colleagues. Especially Reid.
If he hadn’t stepped in, she had no idea what might have happened. That was the ugly truth of it. She’d been so bound up in the moment, filled with an
almost ungovernable anger... she could still feel the purity of it, the way it had burned its way through her body.
Insults often flew thick and fast when people were being called to account for their wrongdoings, but in five years on the job, Tara had never let them get to her. For a few minutes back there, though, she’d been so close to doing something irrevocable. Something that would have changed who she was as a person and a cop.
Shame burned a hole in her gut as she went over and over the scene in her mind. Would she have hit the other woman if Reid hadn’t stepped in? A woman who was cuffed and helpless, unable to defend herself? She wanted to believe she wouldn’t have—needed to believe it—but she honestly didn’t know. In that moment, she’d been so angry, the rage boiling up from some hidden place within her.
“Come on.”
Reid’s hand landed in the small of her back for the briefest of moments as he encouraged her to walk alongside him. She matched her pace to his, her gaze fixed on the sidewalk.
“Everyone has bad days, Tara,” he said after a minute. “Everyone loses it on occasion. You’re only human, and if ever it was going to happen, today was probably the day, right?”
Reid’s tone was so understanding, so matter of fact and reasonable. She wanted to believe him, to let herself off the hook, but she’d never gone easy on herself.
“Have you? Lost it like that, I mean?” she asked.
She glanced at him, found him watching her.
“Of course. I’m not a saint. And neither are you.”
Some of the tightness left her chest. Not all, but some.
“I always promised myself I was going to be a good cop. Take care of people, do the right thing.”
“You are a good cop.”
There was no arguing with his statement, he said it so unequivocally.
“I shouldn’t have come into work today,” she admitted.
He didn’t say anything, one of the many reasons she liked him so much.
She could see the patrol car ahead. Someone had put out traffic cones to cordon off the scene. An ambulance crew stood with a woman who was holding the baby, her face still wet from tears. Normally Tara liked this part of the job, the bit where she got to interact with people who’d had good news, a good outcome. She was still feeling shaken and raw, however, and she hung back when Reid stepped forward to check that the mother was okay. She had to force a smile when the woman insisted on coming over so she could thank Tara personally for her efforts.
“I’ll never forget this day, and how great you all were,” she said, her blue eyes wide with sincerity.
“We’re just glad the baby’s okay,” Tara said.
It was a relief to be in the car, driving back to headquarters. Tara flipped down the visor to check her face, touching the cut on her cheekbone tentatively.
“Should heal okay,” she said, flipping it back up.
It was hard to get too worried about a bruise and a superficial cut when there were so many other things wrong with her life.
“You need to learn to duck.”
“You need to learn to run faster.”
He shot her a dry look and she almost smiled. She was fast, but in a neck-and-neck race they both know he’d beat her.
They pulled into the yard and parked the car. A couple of the guys called out congratulations as they headed inside. Tara was just pleased they had something to think about other than her personal life.
She caught Reid’s elbow as they approached the patrol bay, stopping him so they could talk in the relative privacy of the corridor.
“So you know, I’m going to ask Sarge for a week off.”
“Good.”
He surprised her then by reaching out and brushing his thumb across her cheek, careful not to touch her cut.
“You should get this looked at, too. Just in case.”
The contact was fleeting, less than the time it would take a person to blink, but the warmth of his touch stayed with her after he’d turned away. She stared at his retreating back for a long beat.
Then she took a deep breath and went to talk to the Sergeant.
Sergeant Crawford insisted she take two weeks’ leave instead of the one she’d requested. She, in turn, insisted she would finish her shift rather than head home immediately. Consequently it was after five by the time she was back in Marietta.
She headed straight for her mother’s place. Over the past few months she’d gotten into the habit of dropping in on Tammy every few days so she could take care of any little chores that needed doing—washing, vacuuming, cleaning up the kitchen. Her mother’s Parkinson’s disease was not yet so advanced that she couldn’t still do these things for herself, but she had been struggling with mood changes and depression since her diagnosis, something the doctor was still trying to sort out with medication, and she tended to let things slide if Tara wasn’t there to help her out.
And, of course, Tara needed to tell her mother what had happened with Simon.
She took a minute to compose herself when she arrived, listening to the car tick-tick as it cooled, preparing herself for her mother’s reaction. Then she drew in a deep breath, let it out, and climbed out of her car.
“There you are. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see you,” Tammy said as Tara let herself in the front door.
Her mother was in her favorite chair by the window, a magazine in her lap. Her blonde hair was piled high and sprayed into place, her face perfectly made up, even though she probably hadn’t left the house all day. She was wearing a pair of the tight black pants she favored, along with a leopard-skin T-shirt with a bejeweled neckline. The two-inch wedge-heeled mules she usually wore around the house—her idea of a casual shoe—sat beside her chair, at the ready in case someone who wasn’t family came to the door.
Tara spared the damned things a dark look. Her mother wasn’t supposed to wear high heels any more, her balance having been affected by the Parkinson’s, but she insisted that she couldn’t stand flat-heeled shoes and that she was too used to wearing heels to stop now.
“I had a few things to sort out at work,” Tara said. “How have you been?”
She kissed her mother’s cheek, breathing in the smell of hair-spray and Tammy’s strong floral perfume.
“Oh, you know. The usual.” Her mother shrugged, her mouth pulling down at the corners.
“Do you need me to get any groceries for you?” Tara said. Her stomach was tight. She so didn’t want to do this.
“You took care of that last time, remember?” her mother said, giving her a curious look.
“Right.” She’d cooked up some meals, too, and frozen them in portions for her mother. “Anything else that needs doing?”
“The bathroom could do with a once-over, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure. Do you want me to take something out for your dinner?”
“If you like. I haven’t been very hungry lately.” Her mother attempted a wan smile.
“Well, you need to keep eating. You know that.”
“I know.”
Tara went into the kitchen and opened the freezer. Half a dozen plastic containers filled the basket, each neatly labeled in her own hand-writing.
“Chicken hotpot or chili con carne?” she called out.
“The chicken sounds good, thank you.”
Tara pulled a container from the freezer’s depths and left it on the counter. Her gaze went to the cupboard under the sink where the cleaning supplies were stored. It was so tempting to slope off to the bathroom and busy herself with cleaning rather than bite the bullet and do what needed to be done. But delaying wasn’t going to make this task any easier.
“Would you like a cup of tea? Margot dropped in with some of that fancy Lady Grey stuff she gets online from France,” her mother said from the kitchen doorway.
Without waiting for Tara to answer, she crossed to the counter with the slow, rigid gait that had been one of the first symptoms of her condition. She reached out to flick on the kettle
, her hand trembling uncontrollably.
“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Well, go ahead, then. No one’s stopping you,” her mother said with some of her old sass.
“Simon’s been cheating on me. We broke up last night, and the wedding is off.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. A hand lifted to her chest, pressing flat against her sternum. “Oh. Tara. No. No, no, no.” The last words came out on a wail. “This can’t be happening. Not again. Tell me it’s a mistake. Tell me someone got something wrong. You two are so good together. He’s such a sweet man. So reliable and hard working.”
“Reid saw him leaving a motel with the girl.”
“Girl?”
“She’s one of his students.”
Her mother’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Tears were rolling down her face now, and the hand pressed to her chest clenched into a fist.
“No. I refuse to accept it. I won’t accept it. I simply won’t.”
“I’m okay, Mom,” she said, even though her mother hadn’t quite got around to asking.
But her mother was already lost in a world of her own pain.
“Oh, Tara. I can’t bear it. This is the one thing I wanted to protect my daughters from. The one thing. People talking and looking sideways at you in the supermarket. Everyone feeling sorry for you. And knowing that they’re out there somewhere together, enjoying the happiness they stole from you. Laughing at you. Making up stories for each other to excuse their own weakness.”
Her mother was shaking all over now, an emotional reaction and not a Parkinson’s symptom.
“This can’t be happening. It just can’t. I won’t let it. Do you hear me, I won’t let it?”
The kitchen echoed with the high pitch of her mother’s voice, every second word punctuated with a thump of her fist to her sternum.
“Mom, you need to calm down. Simon’s not worth this kind of upset.”
Her mother moved closer, reaching out to catch both of Tara’s hands in hers. Looking into Tammy’s faded blue eyes, Tara could see her bone-deep pain, still as fresh today as it had been thirteen years ago. She’d given everything to Jason Buck, and he had left her half a woman when he’d abandoned her. Her mother had never recovered. Worse, Tara suspected she didn’t want to, that at a certain point, whether consciously or unconsciously, Tammy had decided that if the hurt her ex-husband had inflicted on her was all she had left, she would cleave to it utterly.
Almost A Bride (Montana Born Brides) Page 4