Act of Valor

by Dana Mentink

  “You think he’s the guy in charge?” Zach pressed.

  Noah shrugged. “Nothing definitive, but it’s telling that when we bring up the name, all our sources close up tighter than a tick on a coonhound. There’s something behind this guy Uno.”

  “Another drug ring putting down roots here in Queens?” her father asked with a shake of his head.

  “Plenty of noise that there’s a drug-smuggling operation organizing,” Carter said, “but we can’t prove this Uno character is behind it. Malcolm Spade was running things until recently, but thanks to Declan, we got him put away.”

  Declan Maxwell was Zach’s longtime friend and the newest K-9 officer with the elite NYPD Vapor Wake Squad. Along with the Jameson brothers, Jordan among them, Declan and his dog Storm had helped take down the drug kingpin. Thinking about it set loose a wave of sadness inside her. She had not seen Katie, Jordan’s pregnant wife, at the diner in several weeks. Zach’s grimace made her believe he’d been thinking about his lost brother also.

  “What about the TSA guy?” Noah asked.

  “No sign of him but we’re looking.”

  Zach toyed with his coffee mug. “Bill Oscar’s got to be involved. I’m going to put him under a microscope and tear his past apart until I get to the bottom of it.”

  Violet bit her lip. Her heart told her Bill was a good boss, a good father, a good friend, but there was no way to overlook the fact that he’d acted suspiciously at the airport. Zach’s flinty expression told her she had zero chance of diverting him from that course of the investigation, anyway.

  “You shouldn’t go back to your apartment,” Zach said, fixing her with eyes darkened to navy. “It’s not safe. If Bill’s involved, he can feed Beck your address.”

  There was universal agreement around the table.

  “He wouldn’t...” she started to say, until uncertainty dried up the words.

  “She can move in with us,” Barbara said. “Help take care of that little stinker of a puppy.”

  The pup’s mother, Stella, was a gift from the Czech Republic to the NYPD. The yellow Lab had surprised one and all by having eight puppies shortly after her arrival, leaving the department scrambling for homes for all the pups. K-9 officer Brianne Hayes was now training mama Stella in the ways of bomb detection, but her babies were unharnessed hurricanes needing constant supervision. Latte, the precocious pup, had found a home with the Griffins. Two others had been placed with Carter and his daughter Ellie in the Jameson home. Violet figured them to be a welcome distraction in the wake of Jordy’s murder.

  “Yeah, you’re gonna need another set of hands at least,” Carter said with a groan. “The two we’ve got are tearing up the place. I’m down a gym bag and a Yankees cap already. Ellie is all set to keep them forever, even though they’ve mangled her toy sewing machine.”

  “So everyone agrees, then,” her father said. “It’s settled. Violet can work here and stay at our place. I need help keeping up with the pie demand, and everyone says that your pies are superior, Violet. Your mother’s got a little birthday shindig here on Tuesday afternoon, remember. She’s expecting big stuff in the pie department.”

  Violet steeled herself. Her father would be content if she never left their family dwelling in Rego Park, right next door to the Jamesons’ shared family home. She was never sure if his overprotectiveness was due to losing his son, or the fact that she was a female, or just his natural bent, but whatever the reason, she’d fought for her independence and she wouldn’t let it be stripped away because of Xavier Beck. “Hold up just one minute. As much as I adore you all, no one is going to organize my life. I am perfectly fine at my apartment, and I’m not giving up my job at the airport.”

  “But...” her father started.

  “It’s not safe,” Zach said again. He got to his feet. Eddie eyed him from the porch room and stood, too, tail wagging in anticipation of a departure. “This guy Beck knows you saw the drugs in his bag. You can testify. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  She stood. “I’m not alone. I have a roommate.”

  He was unmoved. “Who is away on an overseas assignment for another three weeks, correct?”

  “Yes, but I live in a building with a hundred other tenants. The guy next door is a butcher, and he knows how to handle a meat cleaver, if it comes to that.”

  Her father snorted. “He works practically round the clock, plus he’s a Red Sox fan and that just speaks to his poor character right there.” He threw up his hands as if he’d just set the universe in order.

  Violet stood as tall as she could manage. Good thing she was wearing heels. Even so, she had to tip her head to look Zach in the eye. “With or without a butcher next door, I am a very competent woman, thank you very much.”

  “Vi...” Zach towered over her, handsome face close enough for her to reach out and touch the fatigue lines that grooved his forehead. She kept her hands clenched by her sides. “This isn’t about competence,” he said wearily.

  The softness in his voice almost broke her resolve. Bossiness she could deal with, but tenderness... She swallowed. “I will not be forced out of my home. I’m safe and I’m not scared.” She tried to believe her own brash statement.

  They all stared at her. Zach folded his arms across his chest. It seemed like the entire diner went dead silent.

  Noah cleared his throat. “We’ll assign a detail to watch her place.”

  Zach shook his head. “No. It’s not enough. Vi, I want you to stay with your parents.”

  Right next door to the home he shared with his brothers? It was part of the reason she’d been so anxious to move away. It killed her an inch at a time to see him every day, watch him bringing his girlfriends to the house for family dinners, to try and pretend she was happy for him when her own heart was protesting. In the months before Jordy was killed, she thought she’d actually achieved some level of normalcy, accepting that Zach and the Jamesons had their own lives and loves that didn’t involve her. It’s the way he wants it, she’d finally convinced herself. She thrust her chin up. “Badge or not, you don’t get to tell me what to do, Zach.”

  His eyes sparked, narrowed, pinned her in that way he probably did when he was staring at someone he was about to arrest. She stared right back, hoping the fire in her eyes matched his.

  “Okay,” he said, after a breath.

  She was thrilled at her victory until he continued.

  “If you’re going to ignore all good sense and stay at your apartment, I’m sleeping on your sofa. End of story.”

  Satisfaction turned to outrage. “You most certainly are not.”

  “Zach,” Noah said. “This isn’t your call. You’re off shift, and you’ve had a long day. Go home and rest.”

  Zach shot him a glance. “Is that an order since you’re the chief now?”

  “Interim chief,” Noah said, putting his coffee mug down and wiping his mouth. “But don’t make it that way.” The cops glanced uneasily at each other. “You’re putting in full-time hours. You’re exhausted. This is Violet’s call, not yours.”

  Violet’s breath caught as the seconds ticked by. She could not stand to see tension between Zach and Noah, not now, not because of her. She touched his hand, just grazing his fingertips. “Zach,” she murmured, then louder. “You win. I’ll go to Mom and Dad’s tomorrow, after I get some things together. I’m exhausted, and I want to tell the building’s superintendent in the morning so I’ll stay one more night at the apartment.”

  Her father frowned. “But tonight would be better, really, Vi...”

  She gave him the sternest look she could manage. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  He huffed out a breath. “All right. Tomorrow morning. We’ll get the room ready for you.”

  “By we he means me,” her mother said.

  “I’m not giving up my airport job, mind you, only my living space and only
temporarily.”

  After another long moment Zach relaxed. It seemed as though all the cops in the room did, as well. “All right, but I’m still spending the night on your sofa,” Zach said.

  Her nerves ignited. “That sofa is as comfortable as sleeping on a sack of potatoes.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “I don’t want you to bother.”

  “No bother.”

  “Zach, you can’t sleep on my sofa.” Exasperation crept into her tone.

  “Then I’ll stretch out in your hallway and annoy the neighbors. They can step over me on the way to the elevator. The butcher will love it.”

  She glared. He stared. She fisted her hands on her hips. He hooked thumbs in his utility belt and gave her a slow, sassy smile, one that said, “I win and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She could have resisted further, but the smile was edged with something deeper, something soft that played at the edges of his mouth, tangled with the stubbornness.

  “The butcher stays awake until three in the morning and plays nonstop polka music,” she said in a last-ditch measure.

  “Then I guess I’d better eat a hearty meal before I go off to the torture chamber.” He had the audacity to wink at her.

  She shook her head, biting back the retort that would not do any good, she realized.

  “How about some lunch?” he said. “All these cops are starving, right, guys?”

  They all broke into loud agreement, probably happy the standoff was at an end.

  Zach cocked his head. “You see? Starving.” He struck a plaintive expression that made him look all of ten years old. “Please feed us, Vi, before we keel over from hunger.”

  Violet looked from Zach to her parents, to all the other cops gathered around the table and she knew that she had lost the battle.

  Fine, she resolved. I’ll do what you want, just for a while, but I’m not going to let good guys or bad guys have control over my life.

  “Lunch is coming right up,” she said through gritted teeth.

  FIVE

  Violet whirled on her heel and marched to the kitchen. No need to ask orders of the assembled group; she’d bring them each their favorite sandwiches, which she’d memorized long ago, along with bowls of homemade soup, extra crackers on the side for Noah and a bagged chocolate chip cookie for Carter to take home to Ellie. Zach’s favorite lunch was a pastrami on rye with extra spicy brown mustard, a glass of root beer, no ice, and a slice of apple pie, never à la mode. It was a meal he could devour with no guilt since he was a workout fiend and a star on the police basketball team. At least he had been known to devour all of that in one sitting before his brother was murdered. Now more often than not he’d stick to coffee or pick at his food, asking her to wrap it up for later, but she doubted he’d eat it at all. He was thinner, his face a touch on the gaunt side. She missed seeing him power down a hearty meal and sigh in pleasure at her apple pie.

  “Why does your pie taste better than anyone else’s?” he would ask.

  She’d never tell him the answer. She prepared every pie she made with painstaking care, because she imagined she was making them all for him. It had been that way since she was thirteen and he’d told her for the first time how much he enjoyed her pie.

  Sappy, Vi. Get it together, girl.

  If she couldn’t salve his pain, she would follow the long-standing Griffin tradition of throwing food at the problem. You’re getting an extra-big piece of pie and you’re going to eat it this time, buddy boy.

  As he took his customary place with his back to the wall, so he could track the comings and goings at the counter and front door, he kept his gaze on her every moment. Ignoring him and ladling up bowls of soup, she thought about what it would be like to have the brooding, determined Zach Jameson parked in her living room.

  A year before, she’d been dating Otto, an NYPD detective. He was everything Zach wasn’t: short and stocky, brilliant in math and languages, a lover of books and quiet walks. He was always there with a sweater to put around her shoulders or a bouquet of flowers to brighten her counter at Emerge. They’d had fun, but something was missing for both of them; that deep sense of “rightness” was the best way she could describe it.

  They’d parted amicably, although part of her still wondered why she hadn’t felt a deeper connection with Otto. He was an undeniably good man, though Zach had told her on more than one occasion he didn’t think Otto was at all right for her.

  You need somebody tougher, Vi, who can stand up to you, he’d said. Somebody who can make you laugh.

  Somebody like himself? Of course, he hadn’t meant that. So why exactly was Zach front and center in her thoughts at any given moment?

  Natural, in light of what happened to his brother. Thoughts were okay; it was her heart that was off-limits since she had no intention of complicating her lifelong friendship with Zach. At least she was not prone to running into him on a daily basis, since she was at the airport forty hours a week. Keep busy, was her strategy; stay away from Zach, who awakened so many contradictory feelings she could not make heads nor tails of.

  He was a family friend...yet, his blue eyes made her breath quicken.

  He knew her better than anyone else in the world...yet, he shut her out at the worst moment in his life. He made her laugh like no one else on the planet, but the thought of him with another woman burned like acid.

  Worst of all, she felt rattled and vulnerable after the attack, and the feelings were surfacing that she desperately did not want to share with a man who was increasingly making her weak in the knees.

  So how exactly is having him under my roof going to work?

  It was only for one night, she told herself. Better Zach sleeping on the sofa than her being alone with a drug dealer after her. The feel of Beck’s fingers grabbing at her made her skin go clammy.

  Silly. She was safe, completely so, within the walls of Griffin’s Diner, surrounded by cops and dogs.

  But what about when she returned to her airport job? Beck’s threat came back to her.

  A quick death is better. We could make it last much longer if we wanted to.

  Suppressing a shiver, she loaded up her tray and delivered the food. She could tell at once that the tone had changed around the table. Zach was stiff-backed, jaw thrust forward.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference whether you were there or not,” K-9 officer Luke Hathaway said in response to something Violet hadn’t heard. “Jenks would have bolted into traffic, anyway.”

  Violet knew that Claude Jenks was the man who had left the fake suicide note at the K-9 graduation ceremony that Jordy was to have facilitated. Jenks would have killed department secretary Sophie Walters, who’d discovered him in the act of leaving the note, if Luke hadn’t intervened. Jenks had died denying he’d killed Jordan Jameson, before he could reveal the name of the murderer or the motive.

  “Maybe not,” Zach said. “Things might have gone differently if you had more help.”

  Luke’s mouth hardened. “I was saving Sophie from drowning. You’d have done the same.”

  “I wasn’t implying otherwise.”

  Luke’s nostrils flared. “I think you were, Zach. Why don’t you just spit it out? You want to blame me for Jenks’s death, huh?”

  Noah held up a calming hand. “No one is implying anything, Luke. Zach is just venting, and it’s going to stop.” He turned a hard stare on his brother. “We are not going to go after each other. It’s bad enough with the reporters spreading the suicide theory all over. We’re a unit and we’ll stay that way. It’s what Jordy would have wanted.”

  Zach jerked as though he’d been slapped. He pushed back his chair and stalked to the porch room, returning with Eddie. Violet stood frozen as he left the room and exited the restaurant.

  Noah scrubbed a hand over his face and let out a long, weary breath. “Luke, d
on’t hold it against him. He’s hurting, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.” His look was pained as he sought Violet. “Vi, he will listen to you more than anyone. Do you think you can...?”

  But she was already moving, praying God would give her the words to soothe Zach’s tattered soul.

  * * *

  Zach leaned against the stone front of Griffin’s, heart thundering in his chest.

  It’s what Jordy would have wanted... Noah was right. Jordy would never have tolerated him going at other members of the team, second-guessing their actions, heaping blame where it didn’t belong. Shame squeezed his gut. What’s the matter with me?

  He looked at his boots when Violet approached. She stood with him, arms folded against the cold air.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” he blurted. “Noah’s right. I don’t blame Luke. It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I should have been there, just like I should have sensed something was wrong, that someone was after Jordy. I should have...” He stopped abruptly as the pain closed off his throat. The back of his head banged against the hard stone behind him, and he closed his eyes. “I’m losing it.”

  And then she was embracing him, warm and soft, and his arms went around her as he buried his face in her neck.

  “I was going to say it’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay and I understand.”

  And with her there, he let himself hear it, clinging to her, willing her to say it again. His craving for comfort was so strong and it seemed like she was the only person who could give it to him. He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, breathing in the scent of her hair, the fragrance of soup that clung to her clothes while she murmured gentle, soothing things against his cheek.

  This isn’t your fault.

  I’m praying for you.

  Praying. Lifting him up to a God whom he despised. He did not know if he could stand it, but nevertheless he grasped at the words, feeling the steady beat of her heart that somehow made his own keep on pulsing in spite of the pain that nearly crippled him. She felt like a life preserver in his arms, holding him just above the water that was trying so hard to pull him under. He wanted to lose himself in her embrace.