Lasting Pride (Pride Series Romance Novels) (2 page)

W
hen the cops arrived ten minutes later, there was no one left standing. The ambulance had pulled up a few seconds before the first officer on the scene. The paramedic had just stood and looked in horror.

Bonnie and Billy lay sprawled on each other. Tom and Craig, the two brothers, had tried to run, but were now laying face down three feet away. Jenny had been the first to get shot, she had a hole in her head that had turned her pretty blond hair to a deep red. The other kids had looked no better.

“
Damn gang wars going on in my fucking backyard,” Detective Johns had been on the force for over fifteen years and had never seen anything like what he was looking at. Eight young kids, no older than his own boy Stephan had been gunned down half a block from the Chuck E. Cheese. Where unknowing families were celebrating birthdays, eating pizza, and playing games.

What was this city coming to? He looked over the faces of the kids and felt his heart break a little.
“Any witnesses?” he already knew the answer, but had to ask anyway. Hell, he knew that even if someone had seen what had gone down, no one would step forward.

“No sir,” the young cop, whose face was whiter than a sheet of paper, stepped forward.

“Any IDs?” He knew that answer too. He looked down at a pretty blond girl and remembered seeing her face on a runaway poster not too long ago.

Just then, he heard a small sound and looked over to a dark haired girl. Her eyelids fluttered. “Get that goddamn paramedic over here ASAP! Damn it man, didn’t you check for pulses?” He raced over to the girl and bent to check for one himself. Her pulse was strong and her skin felt warm. There was blood all over her face, arms, and legs. He ran his hands over her small body checking for holes. He found none.

“
Get your fucking pig hands off me!” It came out as a whisper.

“You just sit still girl, you hear me? Are you shot or hurt anywhere?”

“Get your hands off me,” she said again, this time with a little more strength.

“Just hang on here,” he shifted so the light fell on the girl’s face.

She looked down at her own hands and started frantically trying to rub off the blood onto her jeans.

“Get this off me! Damn it! Get it off me,” she continued to scrub at the blood, using her shirt now. A paramedic handed her a wipe and she went to work trying to clean herself up.

Detective Johns tried to angle her so her back was to the terrible scene. She continued to clean her hands and moved aside as she stood. The paramedics brought a gurney over.

“What’s your name?” the paramedic asked while helping her onto the gurney.

“
None of your goddamn business,” she shot back, still cleaning her hands.

“It would do you a world of good to answer that question,” the detective said firmly. The girl looked up at him with large hazel eyes. He could see a small battle in her eyes, and he could see the intelligence radiating from her. This was a smart one, one to be watched, he thought.

She blinked. “Rob… Roberta Stanton.”

He smiled, “Well Roberta Stanton, did you see who did this to your friends?”

The old man wasn’t half bad looking, Rob thought. Nice clear blue eyes, wide face, thinning blond hair. Looked like someone else’s old man, not hers.

“It was a late model Ford LTD, Burgundy, License plate ACF… seven… something,” she shook her head, “There were three white guys; driver was a Hispanic girl about my age. Two had black hoods on, one had a ball cap, and the girl had red streaks in her hair.”

“How could you tell all that?” The younger EMT asked while he pulled the blood pressure cup off her arm. They started to wheel her towards the ambulance.

“Good eyesight and memory, I guess,” she shrugged.

“How could you tell they were white if they had hoods on?” Detective Johns asked.

“
White hands,” she looked over his shoulder to the pile of kids behind him. “They’re all dead?” she looked back to him.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Roberta Stanton, Rob, will you help me get the people who took your family away?”

“They weren’t my family,” she said, but her eyes told him she was lying.

“Your friends then,” he stopped the gurney before the EMTs could put her in the back of the ambulance.

“Yeah, sure. What else have I got to do now?”

Ten years later:

She pulled herself up one last time, her arms screamed with pain, her muscles burned from carrying her one hundred-twenty frame. Her eyes were focused straight ahead, not really seeing anything.

“Damn Rob, how many pull-ups do you do everyday?” Rookie Steve Ratter asked from the weight bench next to the chin-up bars.

“One hundred,” Sergeant Johns said from behind her.

Breathing outwards slowly, she lowered herself down and wrapped a white towel around her neck. Her arms screamed, her hands ached, and she felt alive. “Nowhere near that many Sergeant, and you know it.”

“Rob, I’ve watched you everyday for the past ten years now, and know damn well you do one hundred pull-ups every day of your miserable life. Don’t be so modest. Rookie,” the Sergeant pointed over to the young man bending over to tie his shoe. “You’d do well to learn discipline from the detective here. She’s not only the smartest cop working on the force,” he got a bunch of laughs from the room at that remark, “she’s the toughest.” The room went silent.

Rob could see the pride showing on the old man’s face. It had been ten years since that terrible night her life had changed. The old man had taken her in, like she was his own. She finished Police Academy in record time, then went on to get her detective badge faster than anyone in Portland’s history. Sure, she’d taken a year off to do some traveling, thanks to a big bonus she’d gotten one year. But now, she had a small apartment on the south side in a nice quiet neighborhood, a used car that was paid off, and a cat named Jack. She hadn’t changed all that much, but one thing was for sure. She was on the right side of the law now. The gold ring on her right finger was a constant reminder of where she had come from.

When she’d gotten to the hospital ten years ago they had searched her pockets, and came up with the black silk box. She hadn’t even looked inside it that night, not until Detective Johns had come knocking the next morning. The place she had robbed had reported money missing, but not a ring. Well, since they had found the money on Billy’s possession, they had blamed him. The ring was hers to keep, and her burden of the truth.

Now, she was the best detective in Portland. They, Detective Johns and her, had taken only two months to track down the killers of the seven kids that night. All four members of the rival gang were now serving life sentences, thanks to her testimony.

Sure, she was a little rough around the edges, she was a cop, she had always been destined to be one. Everything leading up to that night, ten years ago, had done nothing but prepare her for this life.

“
Detective Stanton?” A uniform officer stood in the doorway.

“Yo,” she said, wiping her face with the towel and waiving her hand. He walked over and handed her a file for her next case.

Ric Derby had always lived a pampered life. He’d gone to the finest schools his mother’s money could buy. He’d driven the fastest cars his father’s money could buy, and he’d dated the loosest women who wanted his money.

He’d never had to scrape for anything. That was until he decided to go into business for himself. At twenty-two he’d purchased his first building. No, not a house on the upper side. But, an old brick building that was half falling down, half burned down in LA. In under a year, the place had been remodeled and opened as his first business. The Blue Spot was more than a gallery, it was a work of art itself, and his only love. He remembered the two years of struggles after he’d opened the place. If it hadn’t been for Megan Kimble, now Megan Jordan, he was sure that The Blue Spot wouldn’t have been as successful as it was now. With six “Spots” now opened on the West coast, he was even more successful than his parents had ever been at his age.

His gallery’s art ranged from small time painters, to some of the best known painter/sculptures in the modern time. He had over four thousand clients and almost two hundred artists under contract.

It was nine in the morning on a Friday and his place was crowded, unfortunately it was black and whites that crowded the old building in Portland, not patrons.
His assistant, Mark Walker lay face down in a pool of blood. The walls were not blank as he’d thought they might be. Instead he noticed only a few places that were now sitting empty.

Had Mark walked in on the burglary? Or had it been an inside job? Mark had only worked for him the last six or so months. Rita, his old assistant had retired earlier that year. She’d been almost sixty, and in the last two years had gone from frail to fragile before his eyes. The cancer she’d battled for years would claim her life less than two weeks after her retirement. But now, as Ric looked over at the white sheet that covered his latest assistant, it wasn’t the thought of the young man’s body that caused his stomach to roll, it was the lost work from the walls that made his skin crawl. He wasn’t cold hearted, in fact, he was deeply saddened by Mark’s death. But, it was starting to appear more and more to him, that Mark had let the thieves in.

He was standing behind the reception desk giving a uniformed officer his statement when she walked in. The whole room seemed to have stopped, and everyone turned their heads and watched her glide in. She walked with such fluid motion, his first thought was that she must have been a dancer. She had on dark sun glasses, a dark gray blazer, black slacks that fit just right and black dusty boots with a slight heel. He could just make out a white shirt under her blazer. No ruffles, no ear rings, no jewelry except for a gold ring on her right hand. Her hair was tied back into a long braid that flowed almost all the way down her back. It was black, not just a dark shade of brown, but jet black. She stood at about five-foot-seven, curves in the right places, and the attitude that demanded respect.

He watched as she moved over to the side of the room where Mark lay sprawled out, and then she leaned over and quickly removed the sheet.

Ric looked at her face, looking for any signs of emotion. Nothing. She had removed her sun glasses, and hadn’t even batted an eyelash. He noticed that she took in the whole picture. Removing the sheet completely, she leaned over Mark for several minutes as her partner walked around the room taking notes about the empty spots on the walls. Her partner was a tall blond man who had a young face, he was writing down information from the bronze plates that sat underneath each painting.