Bending the Rules

by Susan Andersen

  He could still see Murph’s face when he’d gone back to his place that day to grab some stuff and stopped by to tell his friend where he could be found for the next whatever. The old man hadn’t said, Are you out of your mind! He hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. He’d followed Jase up to his apartment then sat around grinning while Jase gathered his toothbrush, shaving kit and an armload of clothing. Grinning, for Christ sake. As though it were natural for a guy with Jase’s dicked-up history to move in with Poppy.

  What the hell was that all about? Sure, Jase had been determined on his course. That hadn’t stopped him from questioning himself. Yet Murph thought it was all just swell?

  And that had been when Jase had genuinely feared Poppy was in danger.

  Now he was ninety-some-percent certain she wasn’t. She didn’t need his protection. Yet all the same…

  See you at home, she’d said. Home.

  Where she hummed as she worked over her greeting cards while he pored through case notes across the table from her.

  Where she fed him homemade meal after homemade meal.

  Where he felt…good.

  She hadn’t called it her house. She’d said home. As if it were his, too.

  And in that moment he lost what feeble intention he’d ever had of moving out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Big L? Am I really contemplating the Big L?

  POPPY HADN’T BEEN in the mansion half an hour before Jane and Ava showed up. “Hey,” she said, looking up from the trim she was painting. “You two have radar or something?”

  “Nah, something better. A husband who’s been warned he better give me a jingle the minute he lays eyes on you.” Jane pinned her with a look. “You’ve been avoiding us, Missy.”

  Ah, hell. She carefully placed her brush across the corner of her paint tray and rose to her feet.

  And tried to prevaricate. “What are you talking about?”

  Okay, she obviously stunk at it now every bit as much as she had as a kid, because Ava said, “Oh, please,” and Jane tapped her Michael Kors patent leather demi-wedge shoe on Miss A.’s gleaming wooden floor.

  “Give it up, Calloway,” she said. “You never could lie worth a damn. What the hell have you got to hide anyway? It’s not like you’ve been holed up with a hot stud all week and are holding out on us instead of sharing all the steamy details as per the BFF bylaws.”

  “Ooh, that’s a good one,” Ava said. “Funny, though, how you never mentioned any bylaws when you were making time with Dev.” She waved her hand. “But that’s just nitpicking, since you’ve got the bottom line right. Poppy hasn’t had a hot date in, well, almost as long as me—never mind being shacked up with a hottie.” She flashed Poppy a comrade-in-arms grin.

  Come on, face, don’t fail me now. C’mon, c’mon, you can do this—shit!

  Both friends’ jaws went slack and Ava said, “You have, haven’t you? You’ve been shacked up with a hottie this past week! Who on earth—? Oh, my God. Detective Sheik?”

  “Tell me he’s not the one,” Jane begged. But that, too, was apparently written on her face, because her friend heaved a big sigh. “Hell. It is.” She sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor with no regard for the panties she was flashing beneath her rucked-up skirt.

  Ava joined her, but demurely curved her legs to one side, even though she was wearing slacks and could have sprawled out any which way. Her dimples nowhere in evidence, she bent a stern look on Poppy. “You will dish if you know what’s good for you, sister.”

  And she did; grabbing her own spot on the floor, she told her friends everything. Well, almost everything; she didn’t mention the so-called threat that had driven Jason to move in with her in the first place, because she knew she wasn’t in danger, and she didn’t want her friends to worry. And she kept the sexual details to herself.

  But she spilled all the rest in minute detail.

  When she finally wound down, Jane studied her quietly for a moment. Then her lips curled up in a faint smile. “So I’m guessing that maybe de Sanges is not the rigid Nazi you first painted him to be.”

  “Oh, man.” She drew in a deep breath. Shook her head. “He still has his Nazi moments. But he also has sweet moments, funny moments. And he’s been downright amazing with the kids.”

  “Oh, boy. That’s it. She’s a goner,” Ava breathed.

  Poppy raised her brows as if she hadn’t the foggiest notion what her friend was talking about.

  “C’mon! He’s good-looking, he’s built, he’s good with your precious kids? All we’re missing is testimony that the man is a demon in the sack and—Uh-huh! Uh-huh!” She jabbed an elegantly manicured finger at Poppy. “He is! I can see it on your face. You are so gone on this guy!”

  “Can’t deny that.”

  “And him?” Jane asked. “Is he equally gone on you?”

  “That I don’t know,” she admitted. “We haven’t really talked about any of this stuff.”

  “Okay, I suppose it’s only been a week,” her friend conceded. “So we’re going to be generous here and allow him two, three, maybe four more before we expect him to man-up and declare himself. Then Detective de Sanges had better come through for you, if he knows what’s good for him.”

  “That’s right,” Ava agreed. “Or we’ll see to it he pays in ways that’ll make him scream like a girl.”

  “I THINK CORY might have seen something illegal go down,” Jase said the moment he cleared Poppy’s door several hours later. “And I think I know when.”

  Poppy was working on one of her greeting cards. Or so he assumed, since she was hunched over her little dining table. They’d been sharing workspace at that table nightly, but it was a piece of furniture he’d never actually eaten a meal on, since it was constantly covered by a bunch of her projects in progress.

  And she always had a mess of those in the works.

  She set her colored pencil down now, however, and rose from her workspace. Crossing the room to him, she reached out to rub his arm. Gave him a soft smile that made his gut clench.

  Then knotted her fist in his tie and yanked his head down on a level with her own. And said, “Tell me.”

  He almost smiled because it was just so…Poppy. She cared so damn much about everything pertaining to her kids. Add to that the fact she wanted him to open up to her more about his work—and she got twice the bang for her buck with this peremptory demand.

  Every damn night she asked him about his day—his cases. What was he supposed to say? He could discuss the former in generalities, but divulging details of the latter to a civilian? He couldn’t seem to make her understand that he wasn’t like her—that he didn’t chat about every damn thing he knew.

  Still, just knowing she cared eased some of the tension he’d been carrying. It didn’t make sense, because it wasn’t as if her interest changed anything when it came to the new concerns set in motion by the intel he’d collected today. He could be damn sure nothing would be improved by talking to her about it. And even if it was, wasn’t that just exchanging one set of problems for another?

  As abruptly as she’d grabbed it, she untangled her fist from his tie. Carefully she smoothed its silver-blue and gray and white stripes against his blue button-down. Then, lacing her fingers through his, she tugged him deeper into the room.

  “Please,” she said quietly, reaching out to snag her mug of tea from the table as they passed it. Swinging him around, she looked at him with concerned eyes as she backed him toward the couch, steering him around the low table in front of it. “Tell me about Cory. I need to know.”

  And for the first time in his career he found himself willing to discuss a case with someone who wasn’t a cop. “Some weeks ago I was called out on a robbery that was just another in a series of jewelry-store heists we’ve been dealing with around town.”

  “The ones you mentioned the other night that have been giving you fits?”

  He nodded as the backs of his calves hit the couch. She gave his chest a nu
dge and he sat. Their knees brushed as she took her own seat on the coffee table facing him and he reached for one of her hands. Fiddling with her fingers, he said, “This call differed only in that the owner had the bad luck to be in the shop when it was broken into, and he got shot. He’s still at Harborview.”

  “I think I heard about that on the news.” She sat a little straighter on her wooden perch. “The guy who’s in the coma?”

  “Yeah. What you didn’t hear was that I found a can of spray paint and some chewed-up garden in front of the dentist’s office next door. I think a graffiti artist witnessed at least part of what went down.”

  “Oh, God.” She surged to her feet, paced a few feet away, then stopped to stare at him. “And you think that someone was Cory?”

  “Yes, I think it was. According to my informant, there’s been a big attrition in the ranks of taggers who considered the U district their territory. Kids have been disappearing from the streets lately.”

  Poppy drained her tea, then hugged the empty mug to her breast. “Disappearing how?” she whispered. “Killed?”

  “No.” He jumped up and, closing the space between them, reeled her in for a quick hug. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. But they have been getting hurt.” He led her back to the couch and sat her down, then dropped down beside her and shifted to face her. “One kid abruptly moved—he was sent to stay with an aunt and the family doesn’t trust cops worth a damn, so they won’t say what happened to him. Another had a broken arm and yet another had bruises on his neck that he couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to his family.”

  She looked at him with troubled eyes. “Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like what happened to Freddy Gordon?”

  “Yeah, I thought of that myself. It would be a pretty big coincidence, though, and you know how I feel about those. On the other hand, Freddy was beat to shit around the same time and a teen not telling the truth to avoid incriminating himself? That wouldn’t exactly shock my socks off. I tried calling him but got his uncle’s message machine. I haven’t heard back from anyone yet.”

  “How on earth do you stand the wait? I would go nuts with your job.” Her slender eyebrows meeting over her nose, she gave him an accusatory glare. “Did you learn anything from anyone?”

  A slight smile pulling up the corners of his mouth, he reached out to run his finger down the delicate slope of her nose. “I talked to the boy with the bruised neck. He’s scared and I don’t think I would’ve gotten squat out of him, except his mother sat with him on their couch and held his hand at the same time she informed him that no one was budging from that room until he talked to me—and to her, too, since she was through allowing him to keep her in the dark. As soon as it became clear she meant business—that he’d have a cop camped in his living room until he talked—he caved.”

  “And?” she demanded impatiently.

  “And apparently some thug was looking for a boy known only by his street tag.” He hesitated, then admitted, “Of CaP.”

  She went very still as she stared up at him in alarm. “As in Capelli.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. And that the thug clearly now knows that Cory’s a girl, not the boy he was asking about earlier. How he made that leap I can’t say, but the fact he tried to run her down indicates he discovered it somehow. I need to talk to her, Poppy.” He braced himself, marshaling his arguments for when she jumped down his throat.

  “I agree.”

  Relaxing his muscles one by one, he leaned back to study her face. “You do?”

  “Of course I do. I’ll fight you to the death if you mess with my kids when I think it’s to their detriment. But when you’re doing your job by trying to keep them safe? Jason, I’m all over that.”

  He hauled her across his lap for a kiss. Then he set her back on the couch next to him and gently smoothed the clothing his abrupt handling had tweaked out of place. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again—you are one smart tomatah.”

  “And once again I’m forced to agree.” She gave him a wry smile. “Just don’t expect me to keep telling you that you’re an excellent kisser.”

  “No need to tell me what I already know, Blondie.” He grinned at her, feeling pretty darn good. “You got a contact number for Cory?”

  “Yeah. It’s in my work address book—the red one in that stack under the phone. Here, I’ll get it for you.” She climbed to her feet, then crossed the room to unearth the address book. After flipping through a few pages, she read him the phone number.

  Thinking it’d be smarter to call the station and have someone look it up in the reverse directory so he could simply show up on Cory’s doorstep, Jase nevertheless did something he never did when it came to a case—gave in to the expectation on Poppy’s face. He punched in the numbers on his cell.

  A minute later, he snapped the phone shut again.

  “What?” Poppy demanded. “Nobody home?”

  “Worse,” he said flatly. “It was an operator intercept. She gave you a bullshit number.”

  Poppy’s jaw dropped. “She gave me a false…Why that little—” She drew a deep breath, slowly eased it out and turned to him. “Okay. I think we’ll be finishing up the art project tomorrow and I had planned on taking the kids out for pizza to celebrate. Let’s let them have that…then we’ll talk to Cory.”

  “I’ll talk to Cory,” he corrected. “But you can be present to look after her interests until we can contact her mother if you want.”

  She scooted closer. “You know something, de Sanges?” she said, laying her head on his shoulder. “You are so much better with the kids than I ever would have dreamed when I first initiated this thing.”

  “Yeah, about that—about you roping me into this deal with them—” Suspicion had been growing in him for a while now and he turned his head to stare down at her. “Do you even know the mayor?”

  Her lips curled up. “Nah.”

  He had to admire her brass, because she’d sure as hell had him going. But he bent a stern look on her…which apparently didn’t faze her one bit, since she merely batted those brown eyes at him. “So, who sicced him on me, then? No, wait, lemme guess.” He didn’t even have to give it five seconds’ consideration. “My money’s on Ava.”

  “She’s got connections like you wouldn’t believe,” Poppy agreed, then gave an impatient wave of her hand. “But we were talking about you. About how good you are with the kids. Man. Who woulda ever figured that?”

  “Not me,” he answered truthfully, since his experience with teens up until now had been fairly minimal—and that usually with some kid he’d been in the process of busting for knocking over a mini-mart. “Sure as hell not me.”

  SEATTLE DAWNED warm and sunny the following morning—one of those rare preview-of-summer days that hinted at a possible hot spell. Cory pulled a sundress from the back of her closet, one that her mother had bought her and she’d never worn because she’d considered it just too freaking cheery. Too so not her.

  But it was really kinda pretty with its spaghetti straps and empire waist, and she supposed the fuchsia fabric with its orange color-block stripes around the bust part and forming the dress’s short hem wasn’t too sucky. A little too pep-rally-girl for comfort, but she could live with it for one day.

  Especially after she pulled it on and saw that she actually looked kinda hot in it.

  She fixed her hair and put on makeup. Looking at herself in the mirror, she paused for a moment with the liquid eyeliner in one fist and the mascara wand poised over her lashes, thinking about what both her mom and Poppy had said about her looking prettier without all the makeup. Maybe…?

  Nah. She shook her head. She looked like a damn not-quite-fifteen-year-old—and a young not-quite-fifteen-year-old at that—without her eyes made up. Maybe when she was sixteen or seventeen, she’d revisit the idea of cutting back.

  Or not. In either case, it wasn’t something she had to worry about today. Which was good, because she already had a boatload of crap to
consider.

  Ms. C. seemed to think they’d probably be finishing the art project today. Cory had mixed emotions about it.

  On the one hand, they’d put in a ton of hours on the project and she was beyond excited to see the total result of all their hard work.

  On the other, though, she was gonna miss seeing everyone involved in the project. Even Henry and Detective de S. And, oh, man. Ms. Calloway, for sure.

  But she was especially going to miss seeing Danny G. on a regular basis. She sure wished they went to the same school.

  She wondered if he would just disappear from her life. She’d pretty much decided to give up her nighttime graffiti outings, since it wasn’t safe for her to be out on the streets these days. Besides, she’d gotten a taste for bigger projects, working on this one. Still, the streets had been her only contact with Danny. So what would she do if he just disappeared? God knew he was closemouthed about where he lived and stuff. She’d already tried to look him up in the phone book and online, but that had been one big no-go.

  She’d thought they had become friends. But she also knew he was a little p.o.’d at her for not telling de Sanges about Goonzilla and all the jewelry-store robbery stuff. She actually thought she might do that after they finished this afternoon. Because she really, really didn’t want this to follow her home someday. She’d die if she put her mom at risk. And while she may have outrun Arturo so far, there was no guaranteeing her luck would hold out.

  Besides, she didn’t want to spend her entire life squirreled away inside her apartment. She’d go five kinds of crazy.

  Then she shook her head. What was she doing—she didn’t need all this crap wrecking her day. She had to deal with it later but until then she was going to try not to worry about it. Because for now, she looked kinda pretty, she was going to see a boy she really liked and work on a project she loved with a woman she admired.

  So, please, God. Just let that be enough for the next few hours.