Authors: Sarah Grimm
“It doesn’t have to be that way. As much as I would love to carry you to that big
bed over there, it doesn’t have to be like that. Let me keep you safe.”
Safe.
She would feel safe with Justin. No longer alone, no longer afraid. But who would
keep her safe from him? Being with him felt so right, so natural, and powerful. That
was dangerous. She’d been that route before, had stood on that precipice of pain and
loss and she was in no rush to return. This time, she didn’t think she would survive.
“No.”
“Paige—”
“I can’t, Justin,” she argued, hating the waver in her voice but unable to control
it.
He slipped his left hand into his pocket and sighed. “I don’t think you should stay
here. You’re alone, vulnerable. The businesses around yours are all closed for the
night.”
A chill worked through her at the reminder. “Do you think whoever was in my house
will come back?”
“Probably not. Still, I think you should reconsider.”
“No.”
Frustrated, he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Are you always this hardheaded, or
is it just me?”
“I’m sorry, Justin. It’s just…” She ran her tongue over her dry lips, then immediately
regretted it when she discovered she could still taste him. “I can’t get involved
with you.”
“
You
called
me
. Not the other way around.”
“That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have called you. I should have let the responding
officers do their job and left it at that.”
“A mistake?”
“I can’t get involved with you…without letting you matter. I don’t want you to matter
to me.”
An emotion she couldn’t identify came and went in his gaze. “I see. If you won’t reconsider,
then you need some form of self-protection.”
The muscles in her spine went taut. Justin continued talking, unaware of her growing
tension.
“I can’t believe I’m even suggesting this, do you know how to use a handgun? My back-up
weapon is in my trunk. I could show you how to use it safely.”
“I hate guns.”
“You need to be able to protect yourself.”
“No.”
“Damn it,” he growled, right hand fisting against his thigh. “I can’t help you if
you won’t help yourself.”
Her body began to tremble. She took a small step backward. “You don’t understand.”
Eyes narrowing, he studied her face. His hand unclenched as the temper faded from
his dark, brown eyes. “Paige,” he assured her softly, “knowledge reduces fear.”
The pain in her stomach increased even though his words were meant to soothe. He didn’t
understand. She would have to make him.
On legs suddenly weak and unsteady she crossed the room to her roll-top desk. In the
center drawer, just beneath a scattering of unopened junk mail, she found it. In the
exact spot she had placed it years before when forgetting was paramount.
The knots in her stomach tightening with every passing moment, Paige removed the black
plastic case and set it atop the desk. The lid slid open easily and there it sat—more
firepower than a woman like her needed. Rick’s voice played back in her mind as with
practiced skill, she checked the chamber, the safeties, then locked the fully loaded
magazine into the handle.
Guns don’t kill, P.C., people kill. Even so, you’ve got to respect the weapon, respect
the power.
Respect the power. She respected it all right. She knew guns, how to break them down,
clean them and put them back together. She knew how to shoot. She also knew firsthand
the deadly force they were capable of.
Sometimes
, Paige thought,
knowledge only feeds fear
.
Surprise rippled through Justin at the skilled way Paige handled the handgun. She’d
gone so pale, seemed so shaken by his offer of a gun, he’d assumed her fear stemmed
from naiveté. Yet her movements appeared second nature, as if demonstrated by one
who handled such power daily. Her body might tremble with emotion, but her hands were
steady, competent.
Questions ran through his mind. What was a woman with such unbending animosity toward
violence doing with a nine millimeter Beretta stashed in an unlocked drawer? Or, perhaps
more importantly, where had she gotten it? He knew, for he’d gathered all the information
he could find on her just a few days before, that she had no license for such a weapon.
His whole body tensed. Just what other surprises did she have up her sleeve? “You
do know that I could arrest you for possession of an unlicensed handgun.”
“You won’t.”
“What makes you so sure?” She wouldn’t come home with him and he knew better than
to suggest he spend the night on her couch. What if he was wrong and her intruder
returned to finish the job? If she spent the night in a holding cell awaiting arraignment,
at least she’d be safe.
“You just offered me the use of your sidearm.”
He’d offered her his back-up weapon. Damn it, since when did he put his neck on the
line like that? He’d always done things by the book. He respected the law he swore
to uphold. He didn’t break rules or push boundaries. At least not before he met her.
“Where’d you get the Beretta, Paige?”
She sighed audibly, returned her attention to the gun in her hand. “It’s Rick’s old
service pistol. It didn’t help him much, did it, Justin?”
He didn’t have an answer for her. She didn’t wait for one.
“I hate guns. I hate being afraid, but I hate guns more. I won’t use one.
Ever
.”
“Then why did you keep it?” he asked with a casualness he didn’t come close to feeling.
“Why have it at all?”
Her responding laugh was humorless and filled with irony. “I don’t really know. So
I never forget?” As she spoke, she removed the magazine, replaced the weapon and closed
the lid of the box with a snap. “Like I could ever forget.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, opened them a heartbeat later. He had the sudden, uncomfortable
feeling that as she stood before him, surrounded by darkened windows that looked out
at a mild San Diego night, it was not him she saw, but another man and another city.
“The thing about knowledge is that it can sometimes work against you. I know all too
well the damage that can be done even with the smallest caliber handgun.”
Her words, the pain in her voice and the far-away look in her eyes, twisted him up
inside. He knew better than to go to her, but closed the distance between them anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he said, brushing the tips of his fingers across her cheek.
Her hand reached out for him, settled lightly against his left side, just below his
sidearm. “What about you, Justin? Do you know, too? Is that what happened to you?”
Her words splintered through him. He swore softly and stepped back, forcing her to
drop her hand. “That doesn’t matter now.”
“I think it does. I think it matters a great deal.”
What could he say that wouldn’t add to the fear already churning through her? “Paige,
please, we need to discuss getting you out of here.”
“I’m not leaving. I won’t be driven from my own home.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
She lifted her chin, determined to show him strength even while her hands shook. “I’ll
be fine.”
Frustration wound deeper. He rolled his shoulder where his muscles knotted painfully.
“Listen to me—”
“You aren’t going to tell me are you?”
He set his jaw.
“Why not?”
Because she mattered to him. Because the truth about what happened to him six months
ago would hurt her, push her away and he didn’t want that. Not when he ached to draw
her back into his arms, ached to have the sweet, potent taste of her swimming through
his system again.
Too late he realized his silence had the same effect on her. Already, her eyes were
going cold and distant as she pulled her emotions tightly under control. Only this
time, it wasn’t fear she wanted to keep at bay, but him.
The knowledge stung. It didn’t matter that by distancing herself from him—emotionally
and physically—she was probably doing him a favor. He’d already spent enough time
thinking of her when he should have been concentrating on his job. Recalling the scent
of her, the feeling of rightness that filled him when he held her in his arms. When
he was supposed to be reestablishing his place in the department.
He needed to remember that any further involvement with her would be a colossal mistake.
That he couldn’t afford the distraction Paige Conroy represented.
Still, the ache in his chest as she withdrew even further took him by surprise.
“Tempting as your offer is,” she said quietly, as she eased across the room. “I won’t
go home with you. I can’t sleep with you, Justin. You say it doesn’t have to be that
way, but you and I both know that’s the way it would be.” Her arms slid around her
middle. Her gaze met his. “You’re a risk I can’t afford to take.”
The first forty-eight hours of any investigation are critical. After those first crucial
days, trails tend to go cold. Once cold, dead isn’t far off.
One-hundred-and-two hours after Detective St. John was gunned down in his hotel bed,
Justin sat on a case colder than Becky O’Riley the night he tried to go a little too
far in the backseat of her daddy’s ‘79 Chevy. The first forty-eight hours had been
and gone long ago. Were he to get them back, he was less than certain they would be
any further enlightened about what brought a Boston narcotics officer three-thousand
miles to his death.
At least the dead man’s partner had finally decided to grace them with his presence.
Sitting at the apex of the desks, feet propped just to the right of Justin’s coffee
mug, Detective Jon Brennan didn’t do much to boost any hope for closure. Tall and
lanky, he wore his otherwise ordinary brown hair short, its bleached tips slicked
forward into spiky disarray. With cold blue eyes, he scanned through the crime scene
photos once, before tossing them atop the desk, the corner of his mouth kicked up
into what could only be described as a smirk.
Justin set his teeth. He shot his left hand out and stopped the photos before they
slid off the desk and onto the floor.
“Detective St. John died no more than three hours before his body was discovered.”
Unaware of Justin’s growing antagonism, Allan continued to bring Brennan up to date.
“Cause of death is a single shot to the back of the head. By the starburst pattern
of the wound and the bruising present, it appears he was held face-first into the
pillow and shot point-blank. Ante mortem bruises present on the upper arms indicate
St. John struggled briefly with the shooter. Since it would take considerable upper
body strength to overpower a man of St. John’s size, we believe our shooter is a man,
but the total lack of physical evidence at the scene leaves us without much to go
on.”
“Execution style, quick and easy,” Brennan stated, his tone cool and detached, as
if the man they discussed was a stranger.
For someone who just lost a partner, Brennan didn’t appear overly upset by the loss.
Justin fingered his side. He shook his head. Detective Jon Brennan was either made
of ice, or heartless.
His face a mask of indifference, Brennan continued. “Any sign of a robbery?”
“No.” Allan shifted through the ever-growing pile of papers before him. “The room
didn’t appear to be searched. His cash and credit cards were still in his wallet.”
“Did he place any calls?”
“Telephone company records show he placed one call to Ms. Conroy. The conversation
lasted two minutes, ten seconds.”
It was not the hotel’s practice to log local outgoing calls. In order to verify Paige’s
statement, they’d had to arrange for the telephone company log. “Just enough time
to plan to meet,” Justin pointed out, speaking up for the first time since introductions
had been made.
Brennan’s chair groaned in protest as he lifted his feet from the desktop and straightened,
his attention shifting from Allan to Justin. “So this Ms. Conroy, she’s the last person
to see St. John alive?”
“Not exactly,” Justin replied bluntly.
“What does that mean?”
“Paige Conroy didn’t walk into that hotel room until four hours after the telephone
call. By then, Detective, your partner was dead.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What time did he place the call?”
Justin shuffled through his notes even though he knew the few facts of the case by
memory. “Three-fifty a.m.”
“So for whatever reason, St. John felt it important enough to wake her, but not important
enough for her to meet with him right away?”
“I wondered about the same thing,” Justin replied. “She stated your partner claimed
it was urgent he speak with her. So why didn’t they meet right then? Why did St. John
apparently go to bed after placing the call?”
“What did he have to tell her? What was he doing in San Diego?” Brennan asked.
Allan quirked an eyebrow. “We hoped that you could tell us the reason behind his trip.”
“I have no idea.”
“None?” Justin asked with derision. “You were partners for the past two years.”
In the first show of emotion since his arrival, anger flared briefly in Brennan’s
eyes. His jaw clenched tight enough to bring out the white line of a faded scar along
his left temple. “Leroy didn’t talk much.”
“Great.” Allan’s frustration rose to match Justin’s. “Just wonderful. Let me just
vocalize what I’m certain my partner would like to know as much as I would. What exactly
are you doing here?”
“Making certain you two give this case the attention it deserves.”
“You arrogant, little sonofa—”
“Justin,” Allan warned.
“If you’re so worried about our handling of this case, where have you been for the
last three days? What kept you from arriving on Tuesday as planned?”
Brennan shrugged negligently. “Something came up.”
“Something came up? That’s rich, really.” Justin rubbed at the tight muscles in the
back of his neck as he pondered the man before him. Jon Brennan was arrogant, condescending
and a tad too dispassionate when it came to the murder of his partner.
“Here,” Justin stated as he made up his mind. He dug one of the larger files from
the pile on his desk and dropped it before Brennan. “Let me introduce you to your
partner. Leroy St. John, age thirty-three. Graduated from the academy at twenty, top
in his class, moved through the ranks quickly, made detective in record time. Worked
robbery for a while but switched to narcotics when his sister’s kid OD’d on bad smack
at the ripe old age of ten.”
With a flick of his wrist, the file flipped open and a few years’ younger version
of Detective St. John beamed up at his partner. “He was a good cop, dedicated, made
an impressive number of arrests.” All morning the sensation that he was missing something
ate at Justin. It flared to life again. “None of this means squat right now because
what I need to know, you should be telling me. What was the man like, on and off duty?
Did he make friendships that lasted a lifetime? Was he careless, did he make a habit
of sticking his neck out? Did he do that here, in my city, right before he had his
head taken off?”
Justin placed his elbows on the desk and leaned in. “Or was he the type of man who
took his time, muddled through, working out all the details before he made his move?
‘Cause I gotta think he’s the latter. Otherwise, he just left Ms. Conroy swinging
in the breeze. And if I’m right, we’re missing something here. If I’m right, St. John
spent the time between his one call and our witness’s arrival, getting his ducks in
a row. Are you following me, Detective Brennan?”
Jon Brennan surged to his feet. The raw scrape of his chair across the floor echoed
throughout the room. “Don’t talk to me as if I’m ignorant.”
“Don’t walk into my precinct and insinuate I don’t know how to do my job.”
Ever the mediator, Allan piped in. “Boys.”
Brennan’s hands clenched into fists. He stared down at the file for a moment then
said through his teeth. “You’ve got one problem, Sergeant.”
“And what’s that?”
“From what I’ve heard so far, you didn’t find any so-called ducks in that hotel room.
You didn’t find jack shit.”
True enough. Justin moved his pinching shoulder holster to a more comfortable position.
He didn’t have time for this. Not the constant delays that meant he was losing ground
on the St. John homicide fast, or his growing dislike of the victim’s partner. His
patience had run out within five minutes of meeting the man, but anger wasn’t going
to solve their problems. He needed to keep a level head. “Let’s go back to the beginning
on this, shall we? What have you brought us that we can use?”
Hands digging into the top of the chair he’d vacated, Brennan stood motionless as
his gaze swept the squad room before him. After a moment, he shifted the angle of
the chair and sat. “Upon receiving notification of Leroy’s death, I went to his apartment.
It had been tossed and not very professionally.”
“Any prints?” Allan asked.
“Hundreds. We’re still sorting through all of them. It’ll take a while. He wasn’t
exactly a tidy housekeeper.”
“Do you know if there was anything missing?” Justin questioned.
“Hard to tell.”
Hard to tell because of the mess, or because Brennan hadn’t taken the time to get
to know the one man he should have known best?
Justin shifted his gaze to his partner. After ten years of working side by side with
Allan, he knew his partner’s furrowed brow meant he was thinking, turning Brennan’s
answer over in his mind. For most people that expression meant confusion. For Allan,
it meant contemplation. Justin knew this because partners, no matter how short a time
together, grew tight. They learned each other’s ins and outs, their strengths and
weaknesses. They learned each other’s quirks. That’s what happened when you spent
hours together on the job, relying on each other to cover your back no matter the
situation.
And with that bond came communication. Partners talked about everything. They learned
things about each other, the most personal things. Right now, if anyone asked, Justin
could tell them what Allan and his wife, Suzanne, planned to name their baby, even
though the decision had only been made the previous evening—Jessica for a girl, Andrew,
a boy.
Leroy didn’t talk much.
Partners communicate. They share a bond not unlike marriage. They know things about
one another no one else could. It didn’t make sense that St. John and Brennan’s partnership
would be so much different.
Justin rubbed at eyes that felt like they were filled with sand. He considered Allan’s
opinion, voiced just that morning that he was taking this case far too personally.
He knew the dangers of taking a case home with him, spending even his off time turning
it around in his mind. But some cases chased you like a rabid dog and bled over into
your personal life. For him, this case was that one.
What about for Detective St. John? Did he have a case like that?
“Did you find any files?” Justin asked. “Any notes or paperwork?”
“About what?”
“The Preston homicide.”
Brennan’s brow wrinkled. Justin could all but smell his skepticism. “You think Leroy’s
death is linked to his obsession with Preston’s murder?”
“The only case St. John was actively investigating that had any link to San Diego
was Preston’s murder,” Allan supplied.
“Which you should know. You were his partner, after all.”
Brennan ignored Justin’s barb. “If he had any new information on Preston’s murder,
Leroy didn’t share it with me.”
“Apparently he chose not to share this information with anyone,” Allan replied dryly.
“What about at his apartment? Did you find any files?” Justin reiterated.
“His home computer had been wiped clean. We found nothing there.” As if he’d only
just recalled possessing the item, Brennan reached into the case at his side and withdrew
an oversized manila envelope. “I did recover something of interest from a locked drawer
of his desk.” He passed the item to Justin. “A curiosity, really. Not much there to
necessitate a lock.”
Justin opened the envelope carefully and dumped the contents across the top of his
desk. He separated the papers and lined everything up in no particular order. “Curious.”
“What have you got?” Allan shifted to the front edge of his chair and took the photograph
Justin passed him. An identical photograph to the one found in St. John’s hotel room.
“Curious indeed. What else?”
“One key chain: a silver bullet, no keys. A newspaper article regarding a drug bust.
A transcript of Paige Conroy’s interview after Preston’s murder, complete with notes
in the margins. Copy of Preston’s autopsy report, a photo of two grown men dressed
head-to-toe for Halloween. The one on the right looks like Preston, the other could
be St. John.” Justin held the shot up for his partner to see.
“Superman and The Lone Ranger?”
Justin shrugged. “Who knows.” He picked up the final item. “And a wedding invitation,”
he began to read. “Mr. And Mrs. Joseph Martin Conroy request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter Paige Louise to Detective Rick Preston…”
“Detective? The man’s rank is on his wedding invitation?” Allan shook his head. “Was
she marrying the man or the job?”
“The man was the job,” Justin replied laconically. It seemed he and Preston had a
lot more in common than just Paige Conroy.
Why did that leave an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach?
“You’re right, Detective,” Allan leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind
his head. He stretched from side to side. “I don’t see anything here important enough
to require it be kept under lock and key.”
“There’s a reason. You don’t just lock up a bag of trinkets for no reason.” Justin
shifted the items around once more, as if seeing them in a different order would help
them tell their story.
“You do if your name is Leroy St. John,” Brennan replied dryly. “The man didn’t always
make sense.”
“Perhaps he did, but only to those select few that knew him best.”
“Speaking of which.” Allan tipped his head toward a spot behind Justin’s shoulder.
“Justin, it appears you have a visitor.”
“I’ll take that as my signal to go stretch my legs.” Brennan nearly tipped his chair
over backwards as he stood. A grin split his face as he caught it. “See, too many
hours on a plane has made me clumsy.”
Justin swiveled his chair to follow Brennan’s retreat. He opened his mouth, prepared
to offer a rather non-complimentary opinion of the departing detective, when he caught
sight of his visitor.
Paige
. The cool professional was back. Hair piled atop her head, donning a suit and a pair
of dark sunglasses, she stood just inside the archway, a leather computer case clutched
in her left hand. Until that moment, Justin had managed to keep thoughts of her to
a minimum. Just that quickly, the memory of holding her in his arms slammed into his
brain—the warmth of her body against his, the taste of her lips. Desire shot through
his system with the force of a mule kick. His pulse jumped into high gear, his gut
tied into knots.