She smiled at Upton’s flirtatious tone. “Fine, Matthew. And you?”
“I’d be better if you dropped that husband of yours and married me instead.”
She looked at Alex’s dark brown eyes. “Never.”
Upton sighed dramatically. “Then let me talk to the man. You know, one of these days you’re gonna accept my offer.”
“I think your wife would have something to say about that.”
He chuckled and she held the phone out to Alex.
She picked up the ornament. She’d put it away until next year, when it would grace their tree again, reminding them of both happy and sad times. Reminding them that no matter how bad it got, they would survive.
“When?”
Alex’s hard tone had her looking at him. He stared out the window, one hand scooping his hair back. “Okay, I’ll be there.” He disconnected and threw the phone down.
“What was that all about?”
“The lieutenant wants to meet with me.”
***
Lieutenant Watson pushed his chair away from his desk and stood, extending his hand to Alex. Alex shook it, nodded to Upton, who had risen from his own chair across from the desk, and sat.
Watson shuffled some papers around. “How’s the knee?” he asked without looking up.
“Fine, sir.” Alex resisted the urge to massage it.
“I see you’re not using the cane anymore. That bodes well.”
“Yes, sir.” A tall, thin man with a head full of gray hair, Watson was admired and respected by the patrolmen. Personally or professionally, Alex didn’t have a complaint with the guy.
“I called you here for two reasons.” Folding his hands on top of the desk, he stared at Alex. “I wanted you to hear from me that I’m pulling the detectives from your case.”
Alex stilled and for several heartbeats the room remained silent. “Excuse me, sir? Can I ask why?”
“The drug ring folded up and moved on. We can’t get anyone to talk. We’ve hit a dead end.”
“And you know this for a fact?” He was completely out of line for asking, but couldn’t stop himself.
Watson shook his head and didn’t seem to mind that Alex was questioning his decision. “There hasn’t been any significant drug activity since your shooting. Everything indicates that we accomplished what we set out to accomplish.”
They’d set out to stop a drug ring and to Alex that meant arresting the leader. So, no, he didn’t think they’d accomplished anything except move the drugs to another city, for another department to deal with, and possibly more killings. But this time he kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself, knowing it was useless.
“It’s not a complete loss,” Watson was saying. “The drug ring is gone. You did a superb job in your undercover assignment and a commendation will be placed in your file.”
Is that supposed to make Jason’s parents feel better?
Alex forced his jaw to unclench. Just like that, case closed, unsolved. Jason’s parents would never learn who killed their son and, unless his memory returned, Alex would never discover who shot him.
“And if my memory returns?”
“Then, of course, we’ll make every effort to locate the man who shot you. Now,” Watson said, pushing more papers around. “As for that knee. At the end of the month Harrison’s going on vacation and Jackson’s wife’s baby is due, so he’ll be taking some time off as well. What are your chances of returning by then?”
Alex blinked, still thinking of the closed case and his firm belief that the killer had not simply closed up shop but was still out there. He cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I’d have to talk the doctor into signing the medical release.” That could prove difficult, considering Dr. Ford had fought signing the form at his last visit, insisting he needed more time.
Watson stood and Alex took the cue to stand too. “Work on that, Juran. We need you back on the force. You’re one of the best damn cops around.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” For nothing.
Once out of the office and down the hall, he swung around and glared at Upton, who had followed him out. “What the hell just happened in there?”
“LT wants you back. What’s so bad about that?”
Alex balled his hands into fists. “Damn it, Upton, they’re closing the case!”
“Not officially. They’re pulling the detectives off it.”
“Come on, you know as well as I do when they pull the detectives, it’s as good as closed. I can’t fucking believe this. A kid was
killed
and the man responsible is out there.” He pointed to a window.
A uniformed officer walked past. Upton watched him until he turned the corner, then he stepped closer to Alex. “A punk-ass, small-time drug dealer was killed, Juran.”
The memory of Jason’s dead eyes snapped into his mind. “So you’re saying because he dealt drugs he’s less than everybody else? Are you saying he got what he deserved?”
“You’ve been out there long enough, AJ. You know the drill. Kids like Jason don’t suddenly stop selling. They go deeper and deeper until we’re hunting them because they’ve got a racket going at the local high school and some promising senior died of some damn overdose.” Upton stepped closer, going nose-to-nose, toe-to-toe with him. “I’m saying better him than you. I’d rather scrape his sorry ass off the ground than the best damn cop in the department. Don’t go getting teary-eyed on me,
Officer
Juran. That kid made a lot of bad choices long before he ended up a chalk outline, and not one of them had to do with you.”
Alex ground his teeth. “What if I had been the chalk outline? Would the case be closed then?”
Upton stepped back. “You weren’t and you should be damn happy about it.”
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “So that’s it. Case closed. No more bad guy.”
“What should we do, Juran? We’ve followed every lead. Until your memory returns—
if
your memory returns—our hands are tied.”
“And what about the intruder? The guy who attacked Tess? The hamsters on the doorstep?”
“What about them?”
“LT never mentioned them.”
“And why would he? They’re nothing but harmless pranks.”
“So you’re telling me Tess’s attack was a harmless prank?” He took a step closer to Upton and stopped, afraid of what he’d do if he got too close. Upton glanced at his clenched hands and raised his brows, the warning clear in the depths of his eyes. Alex relaxed his fingers, but the anger was still seething inside him. “You were there that day, Matthew. You saw her. You saw what that bastard did to her.”
“I didn’t mean her attack wasn’t serious. It was and I’m sorry it happened, but it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Jesus, he knew her
name
.”
“She drives a van with her name plastered all over it!” Upton took a step back and lowered his voice. “You need to stop this. The shooting and those other incidents are unrelated.”
Marshalling every ounce of self-control, Alex took a deep breath and tried to relax his tense muscles. “You just said I was the best cop in the department. That instinct that’s kept me in one piece for the past ten years tells me this is all related.”
“You’re too close to this case to trust those instincts, Juran.”
“All the more reason to trust them. There’s a connection here.”
The hot fire of anger burned in Upton’s eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? The guys are talking. They’re saying you’re not fit for duty. Right now it’s just gossip and Blankenship and I have it under control. You keep spouting this shit and the LT will have the department psychologist back on your ass so fast your head will spin. Keep your mouth
shut
and come back to work.”
Their gazes locked and held, a battle of wills to see who would look away first. The threat of Alex losing his job, his career and his hard-won reputation hung between them.
Upton was the first to break eye contact. “You’ve made a lot of enemies in your career, Juran. Just as a Field Training Officer alone. How many men did you wash out of the program? It’s no secret that you got the bad seeds because you were willing to ride them until they either quit or shaped up. How many criminals have you arrested? How many tickets have you written, domestic dispute calls have you answered? Ten years is a long time to make enemies. You’re a good cop. Don’t ruin it for yourself.”
Alex walked until his knee burned and still he pushed himself, testing the limits of his endurance, hoping the cold air and exercise would blow the anger away.
Looking at the problem from a cop’s perspective, he understood Upton’s point. The incidents all indicated someone other than the missing drug dealer. And everything else pointed to the dealer closing up shop and bugging out, presumably to open up somewhere else. Another murder unsolved, another murderer walking the streets. Just another busy day for law enforcement.
Except Alex couldn’t look at it from a cop’s perspective, not when his wife had been attacked and his house vandalized. Trying to force the memories that remained locked behind invisible doors didn’t help.
He looked up and discovered he’d walked all the way to the warehouse district. His feet guided him to the spot where he’d been shot. Forklifts zoomed past, their constant beeping drowning out the memory of gunshots echoing off the metal walls.
Alex bent and touched the cold ground, but nothing came to him. No sudden return of memory, not even a scrap he could grab on to.
The doctors warned that he might never regain all of that night. Was this how he’d live the rest of his life? Never knowing? Always looking over his shoulder? And what of Tess? Would he worry every time she walked out of the house? He’d learned last night not to push too hard, not to hold on too tight. He should have known she would eventually rebel. Hell, he couldn’t even be mad at her for the things she’d said because they were all true. She
would
have been safe if he hadn’t moved back in with her.
Chapter Eighteen
The front door lock clicked. Her heart leaping into her throat, Tess looked up from her book. Someday she wouldn’t jump at every creak and groan of the house. At least that was what she kept telling herself.
Alex stepped through looking very GQ in his charcoal suit and silver tie.
“Hey, you.” She put her book down and sat up.
“Hey, baby. How was your day?” He yanked on the knot of his tie.
“Lonely. How was yours? How’d the meeting with LT go? Did they catch the guy?”
He smiled, but his eyes held a dull pain that told her his knee was bothering him.
“The meeting went well.” He limped down the hall to the bedroom, pulling his still-knotted tie over his head.
Tess followed and Othello trailed her. “Yeah? So what’d he say?”
Alex threw the tie on the bed, shrugged out of his suit coat and tossed it on top of the tie. “I’ll tell you over dinner. How ’bout we go on that date we keep talking about, but never make it to?”
Her curiosity kicked up a notch. He was holding something back, she saw it in the veiled shadow of his eyes, but she wouldn’t push, not when he was this tired.
“Okay, sure. Where do you want to go?”
The phone rang. Alex picked it up and answered it with a gruff hello, unbuttoning his shirt one-handed. He held the receiver out to her. “It’s Shannon.”
Tess rolled her eyes and took the receiver. “Hey, Shannon, what’s up?”
Alex shrugged out of his shirt and let it drop to the floor. His belt buckle clinked, pants unzipped and fell to the floor, too.
No matter how long they’d been together, or how recently they’d made love, she always had this visceral reaction to his tight buns and muscular thighs. Everything inside her tightened into a ball of want.
“…red hair, like yours…”
Alex turned and saw the look on her face and his eyes darkened with desire.
“…visit…”
He’d been doing more than the physical therapy exercises. The muscles in his legs bunched and stretched with his sure steps. Except for today, he hardly limped anymore and nothing but two pink scars, about six inches long and running down each side of his knee, indicated he’d been injured.
“…right?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and turned her so that her back rested against his chest. His hands slid inside her shirt and brushed already taut nipples. He bent his head and nibbled on the curve where her shoulder met her neck, sending electric charges down her spine and making her shiver.
“Tess? Are you listening to me?” Shannon’s voice drifted through the sensual fog of Tess’s brain.
“Mmmmhmmm.”
“No, you’re not. I can tell when you’re not listening.” A newborn’s angry wail floated through the phone line, bringing Tess back to the conversation. She stepped away from Alex. His hands dropped from her waist and he groaned, falling backward on the bed and pillowing his arms under his head.
“You had the baby?”
His gaze stopped its lazy exploration of her body and snapped to hers.
“I’ve been
trying
to tell you that,” Shannon said over the baby’s cries. “It’s a girl, Tess. She has red hair just like you and we named her Theresa, after you. Theresa Margaret.”
Tess’s knees gave out and she sank to the bed.
Margaret
? That was
her
baby’s name. Shannon wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t open up barely healed wounds. She ran a shaking hand through her hair and took a deep breath. “Th-that’s wonderful, Shannon.”
The baby stopped crying and Tess pictured the tiny red head nestled against Shannon’s breast, suckling greedily. She closed her eyes and fought the unbearable pain of loss and the aching in her own breasts.
Alex sat up and pulled her to him so she nestled between his legs. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his chin on her shoulder to listen in.
“So, you’ll come tonight.” It wasn’t a question, nor a request, but a statement of fact. “Oh, Tess, she’s just beautiful. You’ve got to come see your namesake.”
Alex tilted his head and mouthed, “No.”
She should tell Shannon no, but her mouth wouldn’t form the word. She had a sudden need to hold the tiny infant close to her.
“Sure, Shannon, we’ll be by in about an hour.”