by Lori Ryan
One of the African-American students in the back called out. “So what’s the answer then? Why are we talking about all of this if you don’t give us any answers, professor?”
Eve turned to Kemal, glad she hadn’t been asked the question. She didn’t know what the answers were.
“Oh, I don’t have answers for you,” Kemal said, a bit of playfulness laced through the seriousness of the words.
The kids laughed, but they also grumbled a bit about his lack of a solution for them.
“Let me ask you this,” he said, “will any of you walk out of here with a better idea of who your classmates are and the things they deal with? Do any of you feel like you know Captain Scanlon better now? Like you can see she’s not just her badge, but a person just like you and me?”
There were nods and called out answers.
“Then we’ve made progress,” Kemal said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kemal drummed the steering wheel with one thumb as he looked at the building across the street. He shouldn’t be here. He sure as hell shouldn’t be thinking about going in.
Still, he looked again at her apartment building and wondered what she would say if he showed up on her doorstep. More than once, he’d gotten the sense she was feeling twinges of what he’d been feeling the last few days. That undeniable attraction that just didn’t seem to want to go anywhere no matter how hard he shoved at it.
Kemal jumped at a tap on his window. He looked out to see Eve, brows raised as she looked at him through the glass.
He rolled the window down.
“Waiting for me?” she asked.
He looked behind him and saw her car. He’d been so damned lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t seen her pull up.
“I was thinking,” he said. Smooth. Real smooth, Kemal.
She leaned a hip on the car. “Yeah? About what?”
“About coming in.”
The night air thickened between them. She had to know what he was saying. Had to know if he came inside, they weren’t going to be having tea and cookies.
He didn’t know if he wanted her to say yes or no.
She turned and walked away, and he had his answer in the way his heart hit the floor of his car. He had wanted her to say yes. More than he knew. More than he wanted to admit.
Eve turned back, eyes dancing. “Coming Goodwin?”
God, yes. He got out of the car, and caught up with her in two strides. His hand slid to her back as they walked. He wanted his hand on her. He wouldn’t disrespect her by doing more than this one simple touch out in public, but he needed some kind of contact with her.
He had to say, his patience was impressive as he followed her into her apartment and waited while she secured her weapon. But when she turned to him, that patience broke.
He pressed her to the back of the door, his arms on either side of her head, leaning in but not kissing her.
“Tell me you want this, Eve. Tell me yes.” His mouth hovered inches from hers but he needed to hear her say it.
Her answer was a whisper but it was the one he wanted. Hearing her say yes did something to him. His whole damned body tightened in response and he wanted to hear it again.
“Yes,” she said again, this time pressing her hips forward to meet his own.
He groaned and caught her mouth with his, stepping in to let his whole body meet hers. She matched him perfectly, her body lining up against him in all the right places.
He looped an arm behind her back and lifted her as she held his shoulders to steady herself. He walked toward the back of the apartment, hoping he’d run into a bed sometime soon.
She broke their kiss. “Last door on the right.”
He found her mouth again, not liking the lack of contact in the least.
When he got her to her room, he set her down, not taking in anything other than the neatly made bed. He was about to unravel the military precision of it.
He looked at her as she lay beneath him, her suit now mussed, her hair coming down out of the tight knot she kept it in.
He stroked the soft skin of her temple. “Take your hair down for me?”
That was heat he saw in her eyes. She kept her gaze locked on him as she reached her hands up and pulled her hair free.
He cursed under his breath and pulled the strands loose, spreading them over the pillow beneath her. Why the hell was that so hot?
Deep brown eyes watched him as he lowered himself over her. He didn’t go for her mouth this time. He went to her neck, running his lips over her soft skin, eliciting a moan that went right to his dick.
“Christ, Eve.”
Eve looked up at Kemal, knowing this was stupid. She shouldn’t be here with this man, and yet, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
She thought she heard buttons ripping when he worked her out of her jacket and blouse. Hell, she just didn’t care. For once, she didn’t care.
Her body tingled with each gruff whisper, with each pass of his hands over her skin, each touch of lips and teeth.
She writhed beneath him, pushing her hips into him, wanting more. Wanting to lose herself in the feel of him, in the sensations he was drowning her in.
“So gorgeous, Eve. So damned beautiful, woman.”
She slid her hands under his shirt and raked her nails down his back. She wanted his clothes off. And more of hers. She was still wearing far too much.
She wished she wasn’t wearing the sensible tan underwear and bra she had on. Wished she had something sexy on other than the plain black suit she wore. Wished she had on high heels instead of serviceable boots that let her do her job.
But that wasn’t her. She wasn’t soft and feminine. If he wanted that he’d be disappointed.
Kemal stopped, pulling back and she almost looked away when his eyes found hers.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You froze. Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted to be lost in the feelings of him again instead of wondering if she’d be enough for him.
He put a finger on her temple, rubbing softly. “What’s going on in here?”
She took a deep breath. “Sorry. I was thinking about my underwear. It’s not sexy.”
He gave a bark of laughter and looked down at her. Then he started to tug at the button on her pants, a grin on his face. “I’mma have to see these not-so-sexy undies.” He looked up at her. “Are they horrible? If they’re horrible, I can get rid of them for you. Say the word and they’re gone.”
His playfulness got to her and she laughed. The laughter left her in a breathy gasp when his mouth went to her hip bone as he peeled off her pants.
Then he was making her laugh again when he put a finger under the elastic waistband of her underwear and tugged.
“Eve, these things are truly God-awful.”
She went from moaning and begging for release, to laughing at him and back again, over and over as he ran his hands and mouth over her. Until he finally, finally ripped an orgasm from her before finding his own release deep inside of her.
When he fell on top of her, she was surprised at the weight of the tall well-muscled man, but she didn’t mind it at all. Somehow, he’d leaned enough to one side that he wasn’t crushing her. She ran her hands over sweat-slicked skin that was a deep brown with small scars here and there.
She touched one on his shoulder and didn’t have to ask where it had come from. She remembered his father coming into work late one day. Kemal had been in an accident at the community center while they were replacing some fencing.
Glenn had insisted on going to the hospital over Kemal’s objections, even though Kemal had been in his twenties by then.
She ran her fingers over the jagged mark.
“Accident at the community center,” he said. “I tripped and got in a wrestling match with a power saw and it won.”
“I remember. Your dad was still shaking when he came on shift.”
Kemal chuckled into her neck
and she squirmed as his breath tickled her. “I thought he was gonna take the needle from the doctor and try to stitch it up himself the way he was hovering in the emergency room.”
Eve grinned, able to picture Glenn doing just that.
Kemal went on, rolling off her slightly so he could shift to one side, propping his head on his hand. “My mom was all, ‘you sure a Band Aid wouldn’t do?’ when I told her I was going to get stitched up. Dad hit the sirens and beat me to the ER.”
“Your mom was a tough woman. Your dad always said she should have been a doctor with the way she handled blood and emergencies.”
Kemal’s mother had been a phlebotomist, drawing blood on patients all day long at a local lab, so blood didn’t bother her in the least.
Kemal’s answer was quiet. “Yeah, she handled things better than he did when it came to one of us being sick or hurt.”
Eve had a feeling he was thinking of his mom in those last months. His dad had had to deal with sickness and blood then. Cancer meant facing a lot of things you didn’t want to.
“Thanks for getting my pops out of there today. I was hoping having Antoine here would keep him busy and close to home, but Jayce’s mom was all over that boy. She apparently had no problem watching him while my dad went out to play cops and robbers.”
Eve shook her head, but she had to laugh at the image of Glenn running around with a toy gun and one of those plastic sheriff’s badges you could get at the toy store.
“Your dad says he’s going to get Antoine enrolled in school here. How long do you think he’ll be with you guys?”
Kemal rubbed a hand down his face. “Last time Chandra left him with us it was months before she came back. She’d been on the streets and back and forth to meetings. She was trying but she wasn’t in any shape to have a kid with her. This time, she got into a government rehab program, so we’ll see. Could be a month. I’m guessing more.”
“That’s got to be hard.” She saw plenty of addicts in her line of work. She knew the kind of hold drugs or alcohol could have on a person. Knew the hopelessness and the battle Chandra had ahead of herself. It would be easy for Eve to think the woman should get clean for the sake of her kid, but getting clean was no easy task. It was something Chandra would have to battle for every day for the rest of her life.
That could be overwhelming.
Kemal was running his hand up and down Eve’s arm, the heat warming her.
“He’s a good kid.” Kemal’s hand was slowing on her arm and Eve watched as his eyes began to close.
She kept watching as his face relaxed and his breathing evened into the steady pattern of sleep. She wanted to reach out and run her fingers over his brow. The part where it was always so tight and tense when he was awake was relaxed now.
She looked at the smooth dark skin of his cheeks and nose. It was beautiful in its richness, its depth.
She let herself watch him sleep for a few more minutes before slipping out of the bed and throwing a sweatshirt and leggings on, and heading for the kitchen. She was tempted to go to sleep herself, but she hadn’t had a chance to finish going through the notes from the case files they’d gotten from other precincts on the missing girls who had a link to the church. She’d brought the files home and knew if she wanted to look at them, now was her chance. Tomorrow was another day filled with meetings and paperwork. It was now or never.
Well, not never, but not soon enough if she wanted to catch up on what her detectives had found on the case.
She started with the notes from the most recent case. Camille Gallagher, fourteen years old. Missing from Glade Park two years ago. She had been a runaway living on the streets in an abandoned building with other kids.
Eve looked at the detective’s notes. He went to the church and talked to Faith Richardson. She’d said she wasn’t sure of the girl’s name, but that she might have come to the free meals the church offered a time or two. Her answer was vague, said she couldn’t be sure since they saw so many young kids come through there “looking for hope,” as she put it.
Eve skimmed down the rest of the page. The detective had tracked down one of the girl’s friends, Prissie, no last name. She confirmed they sometimes went to the free meals, said Camille might have gone to one of the church services. It was a loose connection, at best.
The detective had tracked down the girl’s parents, but they hadn’t heard from her in over a year. The detective didn’t get a good feeling about the home situation. His gut said the step-father might have been the reason the girl left home, but he didn’t put more than that in his notes. It was just a “stepdad” notation with a couple of question marks next to it.
Could be something as innocent as the stepfather being too strict for the girl’s liking or it could be something much worse. Eve sent an email to John Sevier to have him follow up on that in the morning. It might not help to find the girl, but the more they could dig up here, the better.
She heard the door to her bedroom open and looked up to see Kemal, his jeans slung low on his hips, the button still undone. He was pulling a shirt over his chest and she almost told him not to. Almost pulled him back to her bed.
But this had been a bad idea. She needed to get some sleep. To clear her head of all the emotions this man had sent swirling through it. All the emotions she was trying to ignore by burying herself in this case.
He came and stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. “Sorry I passed out on you.”
She looked up and smiled. “No worries. Just getting a little more work done before I head to bed.”
He nodded and leaned down, kissing her, slow, firm, deep. It was a hell of a goodbye kiss.
She reached one arm up and snaked it around his neck, but he pulled away, a laugh on his lips.
“If we start this again, I won’t leave and neither of us will get much sleep.”
Eve nodded. She had a feeling they’d just complicated things a lot. Too much, probably. She needed space and, she had a feeling, so did he.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eve didn’t make it into her office the following morning. Her drive to work was interrupted by a call from the Mayor’s office, and this time, he wanted her there in person.
She didn’t like the sound of that, but had no choice but to go.
Still, as she listened to the Mayor tell her he’d gotten a call from the church, she had to fight the urge to tell him to screw himself.
“The girl is a runaway, Eve. I have enough issues right now with people accusing the city of all kinds of things. Tensions are high. I don’t have to tell you that. And I don’t need to tell you that adding accusations of harassment of our city’s religious leaders isn’t going to help. You need to back off the church.”
She felt her back go ramrod straight, which was saying something since she usually sat pretty tall to begin with. “And if the church is responsible for her and the other missing kids? What then?”
He sighed and looked out the window. “We’ve made some progress lately with your idea for the committee, for bringing in community representatives. It would be a shame to see that all go down the drain because you can’t let go of this idea that a church is somehow involved with runaway kids.”
She could hear the message beneath the words. Throwaway kids was what he meant. Her jaw tightened.
“I’m not going to ignore a solid lead like this because we’re afraid of the fallout. There was evidence that this woman was held against her will, bound by the wrists and ankles.”
Mayor Dobson frowned. “You don’t know if that happened before or after she went missing. My understanding is this girl was a foster kid. Maybe those marks are from her childhood. She could have ended up in the system because she was abused.”
Eve shook her head. “You’re reaching with that one. She had no record of those kinds of injuries on her before she went missing. She spent years somewhere else, and there’s no ignoring the fact she was murdered and dumped in a grave. It’s not something that can be explain
ed away.”
Dobson turned toward the window, as though not willing to look her in the eye as he made his next pronouncement. “You need to take this investigation another way, away from the church.”
“Or?” Eve asked.
“Or I don’t know that we can make your community panel idea happen.”
Eve stood, her whole body vibrating with anger at what she was hearing. She’d respected the mayor most of the time, even when she didn’t always agree with him. She never once thought he’d do something like this. Pull something this abhorrent.
“I’m not going to run my investigation based on a threat. My detectives and I will go where the evidence leads us. If that’s to the church, so be it.” She didn’t feel the need to add that she knew they couldn’t go back to the church without evidence. Without a warrant. “A community panel is the right thing to do. If you won’t do it, that’s on you. I’ll take it someplace else. The state legislature could institute that as well as you could. If I need to do that, I will.”
She had no idea what she was saying. She had never gone to the state legislature for something and wouldn’t know where to start, but if he thought he could hold this over her head, he was wrong.
She didn’t wait to be dismissed. He wasn’t her chief. She left the building, fighting to slow her breathing, fighting not to throw something.
There was no way in hell she would write off this case as just another runaway who ended up in a bad situation. No way in hell.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Eve didn’t go straight to the office. She went to the gym on the bottom floor of the police precinct and changed into sweats and a t-shirt for a session on the heavy bag. Her punches and kicks were not disciplined and precise the way they usually were. But that wasn’t what she was going for now. She was going for an outlet, release for the anger that had built inside her.