Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  Her gaze locked on Robin, Martine strained to hear the sounds of Anise’s passing through the shop. She tried so hard she wasn’t sure whether the sounds she picked up were real or imagined: a shuffle of feet, a gasp, a whimper, a creak of wood and the reassuring rumble of what might have been a male voice. Hope surged inside her. Jimmy was here, or Jack, or...oh, please don’t let it be Niles. Panic was his usual state of affairs.

  Martine eased back in the direction of the door. “So all you need to be a happy woman is to kill Tallie and me.” A bit of fresh air wafted through the doorway—because the front door had opened?—and barely detectable on the cold air was a dear scent. Jimmy’s cologne, fresh and near and full of hope. He was out there, somewhere within screaming distance. She was going to be okay.

  Robin followed on the opposite side of the room. She may have let Anise go, but Martine was sure if she tried to walk out, her old friend would use that gun.

  She stopped a distance from the door to lessen the chances that Robin might look into the main room. Sadly, she couldn’t see, either. “Why?”

  Robin gestured with both hands, still holding that damn gun. “It’s Callie’s fault. I never would have come up with the idea on my own.”

  “Callie wanted you to kill us, starting with her?”

  “Of course not.” Robin backed into the shadows again. When this was over, Martine swore she would have new bright lights installed all through the shop. She didn’t care how much her customers liked atmosphere. No one would ever be able to hide in here again.

  “Did I tell you I got engaged? Of course not, because we haven’t spoken for twenty-four years.” Robin drifted into the light again to reveal a massive diamond on her left hand. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken Martine’s breath away, but now, knowing that those hands cut their friends’ hearts out of their chests, all she could see was the stone bathed in blood.

  “First,” Robin began conversationally, “let me catch you up on the years since we last spoke. I went to college—had to work my way through that, just like high school. Had a couple of decent jobs—too little pay for too much work. Got married—twice. Got cheated on and divorced—twice. Moved to Chicago for a new job. Pay wasn’t great, but I met a lot of important people. Including Philip Malloy.”

  She paused, obviously expecting a response. “You don’t know who he is, do you? Damn, Martine, you always thought the sun rose and set on this stupid city. Small-town Louisiana girl never could imagine anything bigger or better than New Orleans. Philip owns half of Chicago and a good chunk of the Midwest. He’s got more money than Mr. Winchester ever dreamed of, and he wants to spend it all on me.”

  Robin gazed at the ring a moment, her smile sweet, the affection in it sincere. For her fiancé? Or for the millions he could give her?

  “I told Callie. She and Tallie sent me Christmas and birthday cards sometimes. And you know what she did? She asked me for money. Can you believe it? Money. When I had to work for everything I ever got. Seems Daddy’s generosity ended when she turned forty and still had her hand out all the time.”

  Martine wished she could be surprised by Callie’s request, but the twins had been raised that way. They’d only had to ask, no matter how outrageous the desire, and they got it. Had anyone truly expected them to become self-sufficient adults?

  “I knew better than to think it would be a one-time deal. If I paid her, she’d be back in a year or six months or a few weeks, wanting more. So I told her no, and she said she would tell Philip about the curse we put on Fletcher.”

  The slightest blur of movement flickered outside the door. Martine glanced that way, as if checking on Tallie, and saw Jimmy on his hands and knees. Her heart squeezing painfully, she wished she’d awakened him to tell him she loved him. What if she didn’t get another chance?

  He gestured toward Tallie, making a pulling motion, and Martine walked back along the aisle. Robin followed her on the opposite side.

  “You have to understand that Philip is a very private, almost reclusive man. He avoids the media and shuns the spotlight. His good name is sacred to him. When Callie threatened to tell him... If I hadn’t silenced her, I would have lost everything.”

  Martine’s stomach clenched at her casual, reasonable tone, as if reputation and money were perfectly logical reasons for murder. “So you killed her and made it look like a ritual murder to throw suspicion on...who? Fletcher’s family? One of us?” When Robin shrugged, Martine pointed out, “Ritual murder isn’t a voodoo thing.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Martine, how many people know that? I needed a distraction, and it worked. Then I realized that Callie couldn’t talk, but you, Paulina and Tallie could. If I was going to keep my secret safe... Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’ Who am I to argue with one of our founding fathers? Though, of course, four shared my secret.”

  Two of them were dead, and one lay injured and possibly dying. Finally, it became too much for Martine to resist a look toward Tallie. With the cabinets and merchandise in the way, she couldn’t see her, and though she’d listened hard, she hadn’t heard a sound.

  “So...” Robin gestured with the gun. “Time to go. I had planned on you and Goth Girl carrying Tallie to the car, but now I suppose I’ll have to help you. Then we’ll go to the same place I took Paulina, and...” She let her shrug finish the sentence.

  Martine didn’t move. “You expect me to just go along quietly?”

  “Yes, because I’ll shoot Tallie if you don’t.” With another sweet smile, this time tinged with regret, Robin sighed. “That’s where we’re different, Martine. You still care about us. All I care about is Philip and me and how incredibly happy we’re going to be. So move. Before Goth Girl comes back with the police.”

  Still Martine didn’t move. Had Jimmy had enough time to get Tallie out and reposition himself? What if he could hear but not understand them? What if he was vulnerable when Robin walked through the door? What if she shot him instead?

  That image forced her into motion, long strides leading to the end of the counter. When Robin rounded the corner and saw nothing but bare floor where Tallie had lain, a keening sound escaped her, full of anger and making the hairs on Martine’s neck stand on end. Furiously, she charged through the doorway, screaming, the pistol up and ready to fire, and Martine charged after her.

  Jimmy and Jack were near the shop’s entry, Tallie cradled in Jimmy’s arms, his back to them as he handed the woman over to Jack. Jack shouted a warning and Jimmy spun, but he’d holstered his weapon to pick up Tallie. Even as he grabbed for it, Martine knew it would be too late.

  Her actions were pure instinct: she’d yanked the Taser from her pocket as she ran, had activated it and flipped off the safety. Now she centered the laser on Robin’s back and pulled the trigger. It crackled and popped and, an instant later, Robin’s body went rigid as she fell to the floor, her body convulsing from the electrical shock, her screams turning to curses.

  Then reaction hit. Like Robin, Martine’s muscles locked in place. She couldn’t lower the Taser, couldn’t control the shudders racking her body, couldn’t breathe or speak or stop the tears filling her eyes. She stared at Robin as she twitched, the longest thirty seconds of her life, both horrified and perversely satisfied by the knowledge that she had dealt that punishment. Even more perversely, when the charge ended, she wanted to trigger it again: thirty seconds for each life she’d destroyed or tried to.

  “Tine? It’s okay, Tine.”

  Jimmy’s soft, anxious voice came from nearby, and he tugged until her cramped fingers let go of the Taser. It clattered when he set it on a shelf beside them, then he wrapped his arms around her and held her so tight she could scarcely breathe. She wanted him to never let go.

  His breathing was rapid and shallow, and he was shaking, too, but slowly he calmed, and so did she, breat
hing deeply of all his scents. Voices sounded behind them, and sirens wailed outside, but right there in his embrace, everything was okay. He’d kept his promise.

  After a moment, he tilted her face back to stare into her eyes. “You saved my life.”

  It took a moment for the words to process, then she slowly smiled. “Yes, I did.”

  “There’s an old saying that if you save a man’s life, you’re responsible for him ever after. Want to spend the rest of your life looking out for me, Tine?”

  It was a serious moment, serious words, serious intent, and she couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling inside her. “Really, DiBiase? You ask that now, surrounded by cops and paramedics and gawkers and a crazy psychotic killer who tried to shoot you?”

  And there it was—the grin she loved with all her heart, smug and brash and overconfident and sexy and sweet, aw, damn, so sweet it made her ache. “If I wait until everything’s back to normal, you might come to your senses and turn me down. I love you, Tine. I always will.”

  After years of nurturing her hostility toward him, she had come to her senses. She knew him. Wanted him. Loved him. Trusted him. Forever.

  In reply, she cupped her hands to his face and kissed him, sliding her mouth from one end of his to the other before parting his lips with her tongue, dipping inside, tasting him, teasing him. “I love you, Jimmy,” she murmured, “and I always will. Just one question.”

  When his brow quirked, she smiled innocently. “Will you let me keep the Taser?”

  * * * * *

  And don’t miss out on any other suspenseful

  stories from Marilyn Pappano:

  NIGHTS WITH A THIEF

  BAYOU HERO

  UNDERCOVER IN COPPER LAKE

  COPPER LAKE ENCOUNTER

  Love pulse-spiking romance and

  spine-tingling suspense?

  Keep reading for an excerpt from

  FATAL THREAT

  The latest FATAL book from New York Times

  bestselling author Marie Force!

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  Fatal Threat

  by Marie Force

  A JOGGER SPOTTED the body floating in the Anacostia River just south of the John Philip Sousa Bridge.

  “I hate these kinds of calls,” Lieutenant Sam Holland said to her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, as she battled District traffic on their way to the city’s southeastern quadrant. “No one knows if this is a homicide, but they call us in anyway. We get to stand around and sweat our balls off while the ME does her thing.”

  “I hesitate to point out, Lieutenant, that you don’t actually have balls to sweat off.”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said with a sigh. “It’s going to be a long, hot, smelly Friday down at the river waiting to find out if we’re needed.”

  “I gotta have a talk with Dispatch about when we’re to be called and when we are not to be called.”

  “Let me know how that goes.”

  “To make this day even better, after work I have to go to a fitting for my freaking bridesmaid dress. I’m too damned old to be a damned bridesmaid.”

  His snort of laughter only served to further irritate her, which of course made him laugh harder.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “Yeah, it really is.” With dark brown hair, an always-tan complexion and the perfect amount of stubble on his jaw, he really was too cute for words, not that she’d ever tell him that. Everywhere they went together, women took notice of him. For all he cared. He was madly in love with Elin Svendsen and looking forward to their autumn wedding. Wiping laughter tears from his brown eyes, he said, “I won’t make you wear a dress when you’re my best-man woman.”

  “Thank God for that. I need to stop making friends. That was my first mistake.”

  “Poor Jeannie,” he said of their colleague, Detective Jeannie McBride, who was getting married next weekend. “Does she have any idea that she has a hostile bridesmaid in her wedding party?”

  “Of course she does. Her sisters left me completely out of the planning of the shower, no doubt at her request. I’ll be forever grateful for that small favor.” Sam shuddered recalling an afternoon of horrifyingly stupid “shower games,” paper plates full of ribbons and bows, and dirty jokes about the wedding night for two people who’d been living together for more than a year. The whole thing had given her hives.

  But Jeannie... She’d loved every second of it, and seeing her face lit up with joy had gone a long way toward alleviating Sam’s hives. After everything Jeannie had been through to get to her big day, no one was happier for her—or happier to stand up for her—than Sam. Not that she’d ever tell anyone that either. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.

  She’d been in an unusually cranky mood since her husband, Nick, left for Iran two weeks ago for what should’ve been a five-day trip but had twice been extended. If he didn’t get home soon, she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. In addition to worrying about his safety in a country known for being less than friendly toward Americans, she’d also discovered how entirely reliant upon him she’d become over the last year and a half. It was ridiculous, really. She was a strong, independent woman who’d taken care of herself for years before he’d come back into her life. So how had he turned her into a simpering, whimpering, cranky mess simply by leaving her for two damned weeks?

  Naturally, the people around her had noticed that she was out of sorts. Their adopted thirteen-year-old son, Scotty, asked every morning before he left for baseball camp when Dad would be home, probably because he was tired of dealing with her by himself. Freddie and the others at work had been giving her a wide berth, and even the reporters who hounded her mercilessly had backed off after she’d bitten their heads off a few too many times.

  During infrequent calls from Nick, he’d been rushed and annoyed and equally out of sorts, which didn’t do much to help her bad mood. Two more days. Two more long, boring, joyless days and then he’d be home and things could get back to normal.

  What did it say about her that she was actually glad to have a floater to deal with to keep her brain occupied during the last two days of Nick’s trip? It means you have it bad for your husband, and you’ve become far too dependent on him if two weeks without him turns you into a cranky cow. Sam despised her voice of reason almost as much as she despised Nick being so far away from her for so long.

 
Twenty minutes after receiving the call from Dispatch, Sam and Freddie made it to M Street Southeast, which was lined with emergency vehicles of all sorts—police, fire, EMS, medical examiner.

  “Major overkill for a floater,” Sam said as they got out of the car she’d parked illegally to join the party on the riverbank. “What the hell is EMS doing here?”

  “Probably for the guy who found the body. Word is he was shook up.”

  Dense humidity hit her at the same time as the funk of the rank-smelling river. “God, it’s hotter than the devil’s dick today.”

  “Honestly, Sam. That’s disgusting.”

  “Well, you gotta figure the devil’s dick is pretty hot due to the neighborhood he hangs in, right?”

  He rolled his eyes and held up the yellow crime-scene tape for her. Patrol had taped off the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail to keep the gawkers away.

  The closer they got to the river’s edge, the more Sam began to regret the open-toe sandals she’d worn in deference to the oppressive July heat. The squish of Anacostia River mud between her toes was almost as gross as the smell of the river itself. She had her shoulder-length hair up in a clip that left her neck exposed to the merciless sun.

  Tactical Response teams had boats on the scene, and from her vantage point on the riverbank, Sam could see the red ponytail belonging to the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Lindsey McNamara. She was too far out for Sam to yell to her for an update.

  “Let’s talk to the guy who called it in,” she said to Freddie.

  They traipsed back the way they’d come, with Sam trying to ignore the disgusting mud between her toes. Officer Beckett worked the tapeline at the northern end of the area they’d cordoned off. He nodded at them. “Afternoon, Lieutenant. Lovely day to spend by the river.”

  “Indeed. I would’ve packed a picnic had I known we were coming. Where’s the guy who called it in?”

  “Over there with EMS.” Beckett pointed to a cluster of people taking advantage of the shade under a huge oak tree. “He was hysterical when he realized the blob was a body.”