by Marie Force
“Sam, the shower—”
“Oh shit! Shit, shit, shit.” She scrambled to her feet. “Let’s go.”
He stopped her when she would’ve headed for the stairs.
She looked up at him, questioning. “We’re late. We have to go.”
“Sam…”
“What?”
“Is everything okay?” He hated the weird, needy tone of his voice. But more, he hated that he had to ask.
“Everything’s fine. I’m sorry I was late. I lost track of time. Now are we going to go or stand here all night asking questions?”
“It’s not just tonight.” He reached out to caress her cold face. “You haven’t been yourself lately. I’m worried.”
“What are you worried about?”
She looked like his Sam. She sounded like his Sam. But her eyes… the clear blue eyes that had always been the gateway to her innermost feelings were shuttered now. Did he dare say it? Did he dare risk opening that door? How could he not?
“Is it the wedding? Is that the problem?”
She stared at him as if he had two heads or were speaking a foreign language. “What about the wedding?”
Nick’s heart raced, his mouth went dry and his palms were suddenly damp. “Do you still want—”
“To get married?” she asked, seeming incredulous.
He nodded.
“Do you?”
“Yes! You know I do! I just don’t know what you want anymore. You won’t talk to me! If you’ve changed your mind or something has happened, I wish you’d tell me. Just tell me. Anything would be better than wondering what’s going on with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Haven’t I been going to dress fittings and meeting with Tinker Bell and doing all the things I need to do?”
He nudged at the marble with the toe of his loafer. “Yeah.”
“Why would I be doing that if I didn’t want to get married?”
Nick couldn’t think of a good answer to that.
“I was late for the shower. I’m sorry about that. But let’s not turn it into something it’s not, okay?”
Biting his tongue and holding back the desire to shake her until she leveled with him, Nick nodded.
She brushed past him, and he followed her, relieved to have found her but still riddled with worries. She’d said exactly what she thought he needed to hear. But the wall was still up, and he was beginning to wonder if it would ever come down again.
The gifts had been opened and properly oohed and ahhed over. She’d eaten and laughed with her sisters and coworkers and even razzed his deputy chief of staff, Terry O’Connor, a man she’d tangled with in the past, about his flirtation with Chief Medical Examiner Lindsey McNamara.
Their guests left with an impression of a happy bride eagerly awaiting her big day. The moment the last guest left, though, Sam mentioned a headache and went upstairs to bed. Before the miscarriage, they’d always gone to bed together. Always. Now, it seemed she couldn’t go far enough out of her way to avoid him.
Listening to the soft cadence of her breathing, he remembered something she’d once shared about being lonely with her ex-husband. She’d said that even when Peter was sitting right next to her on the sofa or lying next to her in bed, she was often lonely in the relationship. They’d vowed to never let that happen to them. Yet here in the dark of night with the woman he’d waited so long to find sleeping right next to him, Nick was lonelier than he’d ever been in his life.
Chapter 2
Sam waited impatiently in the exam room. Harry was running late, but she’d forgive him since he snuck her in last-minute on a Monday morning. At least this time he wouldn’t have his hands all over her girl parts.
A knock on the door preceded him into the room. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Sam. I had an emergency earlier that’s put me behind.”
“No problem.” Like she did every time she saw Nick’s close friend, Sam admired his dark hair, handsome face and adorable dimples.
“Nice shower the other night.”
“It really was. My sisters went all out.”
“I gotta say, I’m surprised to see you this week,” he said. “I figured you’d have far more important things to do than to check in with me.”
“I need a favor.”
His smile faded and his brows knitted with concern. “Everything okay with you and Nick?”
“Yeah, sure. Everything’s fine. It’s just that… um…”
“Sam,” he said, smiling. “Spit it out. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“I want something for birth control,” she said in a burst of words. “Something that works right away.”
“I’m surprised to hear that. I was under the impression you were anxious to start a family.”
“I’ve decided I need some more time before that happens. Nick and I haven’t been together that long. We could use some time alone before we take the next step.”
“Hmm.”
Sam studied him. “What does that mean—Hmm?”
“It’s just, you know, you suffered a miscarriage a few weeks ago, and now you’ve totally changed direction on how you feel about having a baby. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask how you’re doing up here.” He tapped his head.
“I’m fine,” Sam said, annoyed. She wanted a shot, and she wanted to get out of there. What was so hard about that? “Look, Harry, I appreciate the concerned friend routine. I really do. I’m not looking to get my tubes tied. I want something short-term that will buy me a little time to get used to being married before I add a baby to the picture. That’s all there is to it.”
“While I’m honored that you consider me a friend, I’m actually coming at this as a doctor more than a friend. I know how much you wanted that baby, Sam.”
Goddamn him. Goddamn him and the softly spoken words that had her swallowing frantically to deal with the emotion that closed her throat. “I wanted the baby. I won’t deny that. And I won’t deny I’m not ready to try again.”
“So why not go with condoms until you are?”
Good old Harry was too damned perceptive for his own good. “Not that you probably want to hear this, but if I’m covered, then we can be spontaneous, which makes for a much better honeymoon, right?” Sam made a big show of checking her watch. “Are you going to help me out, or should I go somewhere else?”
Harry studied her for a long, long moment.
It was all Sam could do not to squirm under the heat of his stare.
“Stay here,” he finally said. “I’ll be right back.”
He left the room, and Sam released a long deep breath. She hated being evasive with Nick’s friend, but she had to do something. She couldn’t continue to avoid sex forever, and there was no way she was putting herself through another pregnancy. No way. So short of having to endure the emotional firestorm of that conversation with Nick the week of their wedding, she’d chosen to buy herself some time until she felt more ready to go there.
If her research were to be believed, the birth-control shot would give her twelve weeks. By then, hopefully, she would be able to talk to Nick about it. Hopefully.
Harry returned a few minutes later with his girlfriend, Dr. Maggie Tyndall, an OB/GYN in his practice. Sam had met her after the miscarriage when Harry and Maggie had come by the house to check on her.
“Oh jeez,” Sam said. “Are you guys ganging up on me or something?”
Maggie, who was tall and lanky with long dark hair and bright blue eyes, laughed. “No ganging. You’ve ventured out of Harry’s area of expertise, so he called me in to consult. He tells me you’re interested in short-term birth control?”
Nodding, Sam said, “I read about the shot that lasts twelve weeks. That would work for me.”
“When was the first day of your last period?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then it would be effective within twenty-four hours.”
Sam sighed with relief. “Good. That’s good.” Thinking about the
ir upcoming wedding night had filled Sam with anxiety. You could avoid sex a lot of nights, but not that night.
“The shot isn’t the only option, you know.”
“Believe me, I know. After I got pregnant in college, I tried just about everything else. The pill made me eat everything that wasn’t nailed down until I was twenty-five pounds heavier. The patch gave me a rash, the IUD caused a weird—and scary—infection, and I never had the diaphragm with me when I needed it.” She remembered the night six years ago that she first met Nick and looking for a place they could buy condoms at midnight while her diaphragm was stashed across town in her bedside table. “Funny, isn’t it, that I went through all that to keep from getting pregnant, and then look at what happens when I do get pregnant.”
Maggie pulled up a stool. “I’m worried about depression.”
“What about it?” Sam asked, confounded.
“You’ve recently been through a traumatic event. It would be entirely natural, especially having had three prior miscarriages, to be a bit depressed.”
“I’m not depressed.” Sam glanced at Harry, who was watching her intently, and beat back a swell of panic. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if they refused to give her something to prevent pregnancy. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She knew exactly what she’d do—she’d go somewhere else where no one knew her and tell whatever lies necessary to get what she needed.
“If you’re at all depressed, the shot can make it worse,” Maggie said.
“Well, I’m not, so no worries there. Anything else?”
“It can take longer—sometimes nine to twelve months longer—for women who’ve had the shot to get pregnant after the dose wears off.”
“That’s fine. We’re in no rush.”
“You’ve certainly changed your tune,” Harry said, studying her again with those intense eyes that made Sam feel like she was six years old and in the principal’s office.
“A woman’s prerogative.” Sam flashed him what she hoped was a convincing grin. “Come on, guys. I’m fine, really. I’m about to get married to a guy I’ve been with three months. I love him more than anything, but don’t we deserve a little time to ourselves before we have kids? Now that I know all the plumbing works, I want to be sure I’m ready before we go there. That’s all it is. I swear.”
Maggie and Harry exchanged a look before Maggie withdrew a syringe from her lab coat pocket and handed it to him. “She’s all yours. I’ll see you at the rehearsal, Sam.” Harry was one of Nick’s groomsmen.
“Thanks, Maggie.”
After she left the room, Harry said, “Take off your sweater and roll up your sleeve.”
Sam’s stomach heaved over the idea of a shot, but she did as directed.
“Why are you suddenly shaking like a leaf?”
“Needles and I don’t get along too well.”
He rubbed alcohol on her arm. “You’re sure about this, Sam?”
She’d never been more certain about anything. “Very sure. Let’s just get it over with.” The sting of the needle and the burn of the injection drew a gasp from her, but then it was over, and she had one less thing to worry about for the next twelve weeks. “You won’t say anything about this to Nick, will you?”
Harry seemed taken aback by the question. “Of course not. That’s not something you ever need to worry about with me.”
“I’ll see you Friday. Thanks for your help.” Ignoring his disappointed expression, Sam made her escape before he could make her feel any worse than she already did.
Sam arrived at her HQ office, determined to put the episode with Harry behind her. What’s done is done, she thought, hanging up her coat and taking in her unusually orderly office. She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her lately, but she was beginning to worry that Nick’s anal-retentive neatness was wearing off on her. It wasn’t like her to be concerned about cleaning up her office or closet or anywhere else for that matter.
When she realized there was nothing left to clean, nothing left to organize, she felt panicked. What the hell was wrong with her? Her emotions were all over the freaking place the last few weeks. Had to be the wedding and all the associated craziness. Once they got past next weekend, things would calm down. Or so she hoped.
What she really needed was a grisly murder to get things back on track. Ever since she’d closed the case of the murdered call girls, things had been freakishly slow. That had to be contributing to her odd mojo lately. Sam was always happier when she was in the midst of a complex case. All this idleness left her with too much time to brood.
Sinking into her office chair, she took a moment, just one moment to think about what might’ve been… Oh how she’d wanted that baby! For so long she’d been convinced she couldn’t get pregnant again, and she’d begun to make peace with that. After three miscarriages, one of them an ectopic pregnancy that had nearly taken her life, Sam had been told the likelihood of ever conceiving again was practically nonexistent. Certain she was infertile, the use of birth control had never occurred to her when she and Nick started burning up the sheets.
Leave it to him to prove the doctors wrong, she thought with a laugh that quickly became an ache when she remembered the joy of those few days last month after she realized she was carrying his baby. Recalling his reaction when he’d figured out what had her so freaked out and emotional… He’d been so excited. They’d barely had a chance to celebrate beating the odds when a violent confrontation with a perp led to the miscarriage.
“No sense dwelling,” Sam muttered, trying as she had over the last month to let it go, to move on, to do what she always did when the one thing she wanted more than just about anything was once again snatched away from her.
A knock on the office door startled her out of the morose thoughts, and Sam looked up, grateful for the interruption.
Her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, and Detective Tommy “Gonzo” Gonzales stood in the doorway.
“Got a minute, L.T.?” Cruz asked.
“Sure. Come in.” The two men exchanged glances that put her immediately on alert. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been working on something—on our own time,” Gonzo said.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“The guy who owns Reece’s house,” Cruz said.
Sam’s heart slowed to a crawl. She’d been meaning to get back to that, but she’d been so preoccupied that it had been hard to focus on anything. A while back they’d found items relating to her father’s unsolved shooting at the rented home of Clarence Reece, a man who’d murdered his entire family and then later carjacked Sam before taking his own life. Tracking down the owner of the house had turned into an exercise in futility.
“What’ve you got?” she asked.
“Gerald Price,” Cruz said, placing an open file folder on Sam’s desk.
Sam devoured the info on Price, including the long rap sheet of petty crimes that had escalated to breaking and entering and series of drug charges that landed him in jail. She reached for her portable radio. “I need to get up to Jessup to talk to this guy,” she said, referring to the state prison in Maryland.
“Already done,” Gonzo said.
“You’ve been to see him? And you never said anything?”
“We know you’ve had a lot going on with the wedding and everything,” Cruz said. “We thought if we could, you know, save you some time, it might help you out.”
“Plus,” Gonzo added. “We owe you.”
Touched by their efforts on behalf of her father’s case, she looked at Gonzo. “Owe me? What the hell are you talking about?”
“If we’d waited for the warrant, Gibson would still be in jail,” Gonzo said, his face tight with tension and fatigue. He had a new baby son at home who was keeping him up half the night. Sam had made a huge effort not to be jealous of her friend who’d recently learned that an ex-girlfriend had borne him a son, but it wasn’t easy.
“That’s not on you,” Sam said. “I’ve told you that a hundred times. I kn
ew what you were doing at his place, my dad knew, Captain Malone knew. We all screwed up by not waiting on the warrant. You need to get over it.”
They shrugged her off as they had for weeks since her ex-husband was released on a procedural technicality. The evidence they’d found all over Peter’s apartment had cemented their case against him in the bombing of Sam’s car. Gonzo, Cruz and their colleague, Detective Arnold, blamed themselves for not waiting on the warrant before entering the apartment.
Knowing the dwelling contained bomb-making materials that could clear a city block, Sam wouldn’t have done it any differently herself, but she’d had no luck convincing them of that. They’d probably never get over it.
“So what did Price have to say?” she asked.
“Two years ago, he rented the place to a guy named Trace Simmons.” Gonzo handed Simmons’s rap sheet to Sam, who skimmed the long list of priors that involved significant gang activity. “Price said the place was like a Do-Drop-Inn. Simmons had a bunch of people living there with him, brothers, cousins, fellow gangbangers.”
“All those people in that tiny space?” Sam asked.
“Exactly,” Cruz said. “Price got sick of the complaints from the neighbors and started eviction proceedings. Around that same time, which was about three weeks before your dad’s shooting, one of the cousins, Darius Gardner, was accused of raping a woman in the house.”
“Why didn’t that come up during the Reece investigation?” Sam asked.
“Very good question,” Gonzo said. “We did some digging and found that the case against Gardner never went anywhere. It made it as far as the U.S. attorney and then the charges mysteriously disappeared.”
“No idea why?” Sam asked.
The two detectives exchanged glances. “We figured that was a question for you to ask,” Cruz said. “We took it this far and decided it was time to bring you in. This is your case. We didn’t want to step on toes. We just wanted to give you one of those threads you love to pull.”
Overwhelmed by what they’d done for her—and her dad—Sam stood and stepped around her desk to address two men who ranked among her closest friends, not that she’d ever tell them that. Didn’t matter. They knew. “You gave me far more than one thread, and I can’t thank you enough. You have no idea how badly I needed this right now.”