Task Force Bride

by Julie Miller

  That part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

  “Trust your instincts, Hope. Trust your heart. Sometimes love comes at us in unexpected ways, from unexpected places.” Robin turned her attention to the big brawny man unfolding himself from behind the wheel of the extended-cab pickup that had just pulled in. Jake Lonergan’s less than handsome face reminded Hope of the thugs who terrorized the good guys in any of a dozen movies she could name. But he’d proved hero enough a few months earlier when Robin and her infant daughter’s life were in danger. “You might be surprised at just how happy you can be.”

  “Ladies.” Even a smile did little to change the harsh contours of Jake’s scarred-up face, but there was nothing but adoration shining from his pale eyes as he leaned in to kiss Robin and take her bag for her. “Emma’s asleep in her car seat, so I’ll leave the truck running.” Hope smiled as he leaned over to drop a kiss on her cheek, too. “Did Robin tell you that Emma’s on the verge of crawling now? She’s got scooting across the floor on her bottom mastered, but I know she’s going to roll over and take off any day now.”

  Jake looked less like an infant girl’s father than anyone Hope could imagine, yet she’d never seen a man take to daddyhood the way the former DEA agent had. “Do you have any new pictures?”

  “A few.”

  “Liar.” Robin gave him a nudge toward the truck to load her things. “He’s taken hundreds.”

  Jake shrugged, unable to deny his guilt. “’Bye, Hope.”

  “’Bye, Jake.”

  Robin wrapped her arms around Hope and squeezed her in a goodbye hug. “I swear that man would put a crown on Emma’s head if her neck could support it.”

  Hope hugged her back. “Jake is a wonderful father.” Just like one she would have wished for growing up. “Emma’s lucky.”

  “She wouldn’t be with us now if Jake hadn’t been around.” Robin’s loving smile flatlined and she had a serious, sisterly word for Hope. “You make sure you stay safe, too. With everything that’s happened in our neighborhood? Now to hear you’ve been broken into?”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Well, don’t hesitate to call us if you need anything. Anytime of day or night.”

  “I won’t.”

  Robin’s smile was back. “And we’re going to have you and Officer Taylor out to the house sometime for dinner.”

  “Oh, that’s not—” Hope reminded herself to smile and keep the charade of her relationship with Jake as real as she could make it. Dinner with friends would be a normal couple thing, wouldn’t it? “Okay. Talk to you soon.”

  Hope said goodbye and loaded her things into the backseat of her car before climbing in behind the wheel. She’d just pulled her keys from her pocket purse when a sharp rap on her window startled her. With a shrieking gasp, she dropped her keys to the floor.

  “Leon.” She muttered his name with an apology, picked up her keys and started the car before rolling down the window. “Yes?”

  Leon hunched into the open window, pulled his cap into his hands and smiled. “Yeah, um, I was just wondering if you had plans for tonight. Since the boss is letting me go early, I thought we could get a bite to eat somewhere, or something.”

  Really? They’d known each other for two years, and he’d picked today to ask her out? Hope forced her gaping mouth to close. Even without the charade of a fiancé to maintain, she wasn’t interested in a date. “I can’t.”

  Leon thumped the side of her door and straightened. And then he was leaning into the window again. “It’s him, isn’t it? I knew I’d lost you.”

  Lost her? Had he been under the impression that she was ever his to lose? “You and I have barely spoken about anything except repairs at my shop and our jobs. We’re friends. But that’s all we’ll ever be.”

  His brown eyes narrowed into slits that made her lean away from the window. “After I did all those things for you, like fixing your door. I would have come and sprayed for bugs or set traps for you, too, just so you wouldn’t have to dirty your hands.”

  Bugs? Traps? As in mouse traps?

  “You sent those awful gifts?” Hope gripped the wheel and stopped retreating. She’d been grossed out, confused and terrified by the creepy bugs and dead rodent—and by the knowledge that whoever had left them must have been watching her shop and apartment very closely. This didn’t make any logical sense. “You’ve been sabotaging things at my shop as an excuse to come over and spend time with me? What, so you could save the day and be my hero? I thought you were being a nice friend. I offered to pay you for your time.” Her stomach got a little queasy at the twisted means of courtship. “Those gifts frightened me.”

  He reached into the car and curled his fingers over hers on the steering wheel. “I just wanted you to need me the way I need you. You would never talk to me, so I had to make up a reason for you to come out of your shell.”

  And she thought she’d been backward about meeting someone and developing a relationship. She slid her hand from beneath his and articulated the truth as succinctly as she knew how. “Leon, I don’t feel the same way about you. I’m sorry.” Confusion moved through disgust and went straight to anger. “You broke into my shop last night, didn’t you? You made that phone call?”

  He plunked his cap back on his thin brown hair. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you break in the window to my shop and cut the alarm wire? Did you spray-paint over the security camera? Pike’s dog could have killed you if you’d gotten all the way inside.”

  “Oh, so now everything that goes wrong in your life is my fault? I suppose you’re going to report me to that cop you’ve been shackin’ up—”

  “Did you break in?”

  “No! I was at my mother’s last night.”

  “And you didn’t call and threaten me?” Hope’s indignation waned as other, more disturbing, possibilities ran through her head. If Leon hadn’t installed the tiny camera Pike’s friend, Annie Hermann, had found hidden inside a light at her shop, then who had? The list of suspects who’d have that kind of access to her shop was short. The list of anyone interested enough in her life and business to go to that kind of trouble was even shorter.

  “Hundley.” Jake Lonergan’s massive shadow fell over Leon, and the short man with a sick idea of romance froze for a second before taking a step away from Hope’s car. “You’ve got some deliveries to make for my wife, don’t you?”

  “You’re not my boss, Mr. Lonergan.”

  Jake crossed his arms over the front of the formfitting black sweater he wore. With that heavyweight boxer’s body and scarred-up face, Jake Lonergan in intimidation mode was scary enough to make Hope shrink away, even though he was defending her. “If my wife tells you to do something, you do it. Understood?”

  With Jake daring the much smaller man to argue with him, Leon quickly gave up the fight. “See you around, Hope,” he said, sneering. “If anything else goes wrong at your shop, you get someone else to fix it.”

  “I will.” He scurried away to the flower shop van, sparing one contemptuous glare toward Hope before shifting into gear and speeding out of the parking lot.

  She was still running through a list of names of men who had access to her shop when Jake braced his hands at the open window of her car. “There’s something about that little weasel I’ve never liked. Call your boyfriend. Tell him you’re on your way. Robin and I will wait until you leave.”

  Boyfriend. Right. The undercover ruse was working if both creepy Leon and her true friends believed she and Pike were a couple. Wishing more than she should that her time with Pike Taylor wasn’t a lie, Hope looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Jake.”

  Robin and Jake followed her out to the highway before turning off to their home in the country outside the K.C. area. Hope waved them a thanks and continued toward downtown.

  As the miles passed, she was torn between simmering resentment at the unnecessary fear Leon had caused her, and a fear that ran much colder, much deeper, when she thought a
bout someone even more devious, more dangerous stalking her. Leon’s misguided efforts would have provided the Rose Red Rapist a perfect misdirection to throw the police off their ability to track down his movements and his threats against Hope. He could have been watching her from that very first night she’d spotted his van.

  Could the lights reflecting in her apartment, and the movements in the shadows around her, be attributed to Leon Hundley? Or were Leon’s crude attempts to work his way into her life a convenient distraction for the police while a more secretive threat watched her from unseen vantage points and hidden cameras? Maybe Leon was a really, really good liar—and her would-be suitor and the serial rapist were the same man. The one thing she was certain of was that she needed to get home to Pike and tell him about Leon’s disquieting confession.

  Hope rounded a wide turn on the interstate to head south toward the city, and found herself veering a bit into the passing lane. She tapped on the brake to turn off the cruise control. Although the light on the dash blinked off, centrifugal force was still making her lean toward the door. “Slow down, already.”

  She tapped on the brake without detecting any change on the speedometer. If anything, as the straight stretch of highway dropped into a valley, she was picking up speed. “Really?”

  The third time she pushed, the pedal went all the way to the floor and she went faster yet.

  “Oh, my God.”

  She had no brakes.

  Panic bubbled up in her throat, but she swallowed it down and gripped the wheel harder, judging the thankfully empty stretch of road, the brown grass median to her left and the trees climbing the steep hill to her right. She tapped on the useless pedal again. “What do I do?”

  Turn off the engine? Then she’d have no steering.

  Shift to a lower gear? Not at this speed!

  “Call me. I’ll be here.”

  Hope risked taking her hand off the wheel to pull her cell phone from her coat and punch in Pike’s number. She’d clicked it to speakerphone and dropped it onto the seat beside when Pike picked up. “Hope?”

  She put both hands on the steering wheel again and raised her voice so he could hear her. “Something’s wrong with my car. I can’t slow down.”

  She pitched forward when she hit the bottom of the valley and raced up the next incline at breakneck speed. “Pike?”

  “Where are you?” She could hear hurried footsteps and measured breathing. Pike was running.

  She gave him the highway number and closest exit she remembered passing. “I’m heading up a hill now. I’m losing some speed, but not much yet. I’ll try to pull off. But if I reach the other side—”

  He muttered one swift, succinct swearword, then started giving orders. “Put on your blinkers and make sure you’re buckled in. I’m calling highway patrol right now. Listen to me. Pump your brakes. Sometimes you can rebuild the pressure.” He went through a list of things to try to compensate for the damaged brakes.

  But none of them were going to do her any good.

  Hope’s eyes went to the rearview mirror, and her breath locked up in her chest.

  A white van crested the hill behind her, rapidly closing the distance between them.

  “Pike?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He’d be too late.

  * * *

  HOPE’S HAND TIGHTENED around Pike’s. “Wait.”

  Ignoring the audience of waiting patients, visitors and staff in the east lobby of the Truman Medical Center, Pike stopped the nurse pushing Hope’s wheelchair toward the exit and knelt beside her. He knew it wasn’t the crowd inside that made her nervous, but the onslaught of cameras and reporters waiting in the parking lot outside that put the shadows of fear into her eyes. Pike brushed a curling lock of hair away from the deep purple bruise on her forehead. “You say the word and I’ll get you out of here through some back hallway or employee exit. You just spent a night in the hospital. You don’t have to talk to these people.”

  She adjusted her glasses at her temple, and for several tense moments, those beautiful eyes looked straight into Pike’s soul and tried to tell him something. But then she blinked and the message was hidden behind the dutiful tilt of her gaze up to Detective Montgomery, who stood on the other side of her chair.

  Hope’s grip pulsed around Pike’s, and her pale lips smiled. “Yes, I do. I know what I’m supposed to say. I just need a second to gather my thoughts and steel my nerves. That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? Using me to bait the trap? We wanted his attention focused on me so he’d come after me. I won’t give up now.”

  “The bastard tried to kill you.”

  “He didn’t succeed.” But the burn on her forearm from the air bag, the bruising from her seat belt and the bumps and scrapes over the rest of her body told him the outcome of sailing over a ditch and flying up a brushy hillside to finally wedge her car between two trees could have had a very different outcome. “The truck driver who stopped to help me said he saw a man running to a white van parked on the shoulder of the road when he pulled up. The trucker must have scared him away before he could get to my car and...”

  Finish the job. Pike nodded. He’d been there when the EMTs had pulled a dazed and bleeding Hope from the wreck. “Remind me to give that guy a medal.”

  “Pike?” Hope’s gentle fingers brushed across his rough jaw, reminding him he still needed a fresh uniform and a shave after his vigil in the chair beside her hospital bed. Why was she smiling at him? After all KCPD and the Rose Red Rapist were putting her through, how could she still be brave enough to smile? “It’s not the first time I’ve been afraid of something and did it anyway because I had to. I may not be a firecracker on the outside, but I can be tough when I really need to be.”

  The old scars Pike had seen along her shoulder, wrist and collarbone each time a nurse had come to check on Hope’s progress through the night made him think this wasn’t the first time she’d cheated death. They also made him seethe with something akin to a protective rage when he thought of her father and her fear of dogs and how they all must tie into that painful childhood and grown-up panic attacks she didn’t like to talk about.

  The woman shouldn’t have to keep fighting for survival. Pike tilted his head to the astutely patient detective eavesdropping on their conversation. “Montgomery, help me out.”

  But it was Hope who answered. “Pike.” With another gentle touch, she turned his gaze back to hers. “I have to do this. Just promise you’ll stay with me.”

  He nodded. Yes. Screw the charade. He wasn’t leaving her to patrol his beat or attend a task force briefing. He wasn’t going to family dinners or football games with his brothers. He was staying right by her side until that slimy, cowardly cockroach of a man who’d done this to her was in jail and could no longer hurt her.

  Hope inhaled a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  Pike pulled her fingers to his lips and kissed them before rising and taking the nurse’s place behind the wheelchair. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Hope’s friend Robin had brought jeans, a sweater and a flannel-lined knock-around coat for Hope to wear home. Yet Pike could feel her shivering in the afternoon sun the moment the first light flashed and the barrage of questions started. With Spencer Montgomery, Nick Fensom and Kate Kilpatrick keeping the reporters at a barely respectful distance, Pike pushed the chair out to the far curb and bit his tongue while the press had at her.

  Vanessa Owen pushed to the front of the pack, urging her cameraman in beside her to get a shot of Hope’s bruises and bandages. “You claim the Rose Red Rapist ran you off the highway.”

  Hope squinted against the bright light. “I know it was him.”

  “You saw his face? You were careening down the interstate at eighty miles an hour and you took the time to look at the driver’s face?”

  “I wasn’t going that fast. I was already having car trouble. I’d slowed down.”

  Gabriel Knight was there, too, with his notepad and cy
nical voice. “That unpopulated stretch of highway north of the city where your car broke down is pretty far from the Rose Red Rapist’s usual hunting ground.”

  “He must have planned it.” Her chest rose and fell more rapidly as her breathing quickened. “The police found brake fluid at a church where I was attending a business meeting. They believe my car was sabotaged.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just a bad driver, Miss Lockhart?”

  Her knuckles were turning white on the arms of the wheelchair. “His van clipped my bumper, sending me into the ditch. I’m lucky I didn’t roll my car.”

  “Forget the accident, Gabe. What did he look like?” Vanessa Owen took center stage again. “You say you saw the Rose Red Rapist. You’re certain it’s the same man you identified last weekend, near where LaDonna Chambers was found raped and murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Pike stepped in when the brunette’s microphone got too close to Hope. “Enough. The woman could have died. Cut her a break.”

  “What about the other women who died, Officer? Don’t their families deserve to know who this man is? Don’t the rest of us have a right to know from whom we should protect ourselves?” With a smile that was more shark than serene, the reporter retreated a step. “Miss Lockhart, give us something. Was he tall? Short? White? Black? Dark-haired? Blond?”

  “A white man.” Hope’s voice sounded small.

  “How old was he?”

  “I...” She lowered her head, tilting only her eyes toward the camera. “He wore a surgical mask.”

  “So you didn’t see his face.”

  Her chest heaved with a deep breath. “I saw enough.”

  “What color were his eyes?”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  She twisted her fingers in her lap. “He didn’t speak.”