Some kind of wonderful (21 page)

"We pulled into an alley behind a strip mall in east LA. Streetlights were out. But that didn't mean anything. Kids were always breaking the lights with rocks ... or bullets. Our headlights bounced off the rain like a laser, blinding. And the storm kept raging. Water roaring like a river down that alley and pounding off the windshield like it was coming out of an upended bucket. Couldn't see a damn thing."

He squinted, trying in memory to see what he hadn't seen that night. But the images were still blurry, indistinct, and nothing could change what had happened. "Will got out of the car first. Don't know why. Just worked out that way. He headed for the back of the building, where our phone caller had said the body was. Even in the rain, that alley smelled like a cesspool. Rotting garbage and Christ knows what else." He shook his head as the stench filled his nostrils.

Not even the scent of Carol's perfume of springtime and coconut was enough to dislodge that memory. "I was a step or two behind him. Still so damn mad at him, I could hardly stand the sight of him. My brain kept giving me images of Will and my wife. In my

bed. Couldn't shake 'em." His fists tightened helplessly at his sides. There'd been nothing to hit then and there was nothing now. And God, he wanted to hit something. To pound on something until his hands were bloody.

"It didn't feel right. Couldn't see a damn thing, but the alley didn't feel right. Will didn't notice. His rhythm was off. He was wondering what the hell was wrong with me, so he wasn't paying attention to what was happening. I knew it. I could see it in him." He inhaled sharply, deeply, and blew it out again in a rush.

"The first gunshot came out of nowhere. Went wild, slammed into the building behind me, splintering the brick into little pellets of stone that snapped around the alley like bees. Will stopped. He just... stopped."

Shaking his head now, he saw it all again in his mind's eye and still couldn't understand why his friend hadn't dropped into a crouch—gone for cover. Something. "He just stood there, looking at me like he was confused about what was happening. I shouted at him to get down, but the muzzle flash sparked like lightning at the same time and it was too late. Will got hit."

Carol didn't speak and he was grateful. Instead, she moved in closer to him and wrapped her arms around his middle and simply hung on, tipping her head back to stare up at him. He shifted his gaze from the night to her eyes and told himself to not look away, because at the moment, the only light in the world was right there. In those pale brown eyes shining up at him. "He staggered into the damn Dumpster and trash rolled out of it and rained down on him when he dropped."

He took a breath. "I couldn't get to him because the damn shooter was still firing. The shots were going wild, though. Hitting Will must have been pure luck, 'cause this

guy's aim was shitty. I was behind the car. He couldn't get a clear shot at me."

Reaching for Carol, he grabbed her face between his hands, kept his gaze locked on hers and said, "I watched for the muzzle flash. And when I saw it again, I fired off three rounds. There was a scream." A scream that still rippled through his head and brought goose bumps to his flesh every damn night. "And then the whimpering started. Like from a kicked puppy or something. Soft cries, nearly buried under the sound of the rain pummel-ing down around me. I couldn't go to Will. Not yet. Had to make sure the shooter was out of the picture first."

"Of course you did."

He didn't want her understanding. Couldn't take it because she hadn't heard all of it yet. Didn't know the worst of it. Couldn't grasp the depth of the nightmare. Not yet.

"I found the shooter. Huddled in a doorway, curled up in a tight ball. He'd dropped the gun and was holding his stomach, like he could push all of the blood back inside. But it was running red into the rain, and his hands were too small anyway."

Silently, she tightened her grip on his waist.

"He looked up at me and the rain fell on his face, splashing against his eyes, and he said, 'It hurts. Make it stop hurting.'" Jack's eyes swam and his vision was as blurred as it had been that night. "He was ten, Carol. A little kid, who should have been at home watching cartoons or something and instead he was lying in a stinking alley, bleeding to death. He was trying to earn his way into a gang by killing a cop."

"Oh, my God."

He rushed on, letting the words fly now in his race to

get it finished before she pulled away from him. Before he could read the censure in her eyes.

Before he lost his nerve.

"I called for the paramedics, secured the gun, and went to check on Will. But it was too late. He was dead. Eyes wide open and staring up at the rain, he just lay there, dead in the garbage. And I wanted to scream at him to get up so I could beat the shit out of him for stealing my wife. My family. But he was dead so there was nothing to do. Nothing I could do."

"Jack.. r

"That's not all, dammit." He grabbed her upper arms and squeezed as if afraid she'd try to make a run for it. To get out before she could be sucked even further into the nightmare his life had become. "You wanted to hear it, so hear it." He sucked in air like a man who couldn't get enough into his lungs. "I got a commendation for shooting the kid. For facing bodily harm in defense of a fellow officer. I killed a ten-year-old boy and they gave me a fucking medal for it."

Even the words tasted foul in his mouth. It didn't matter that there hadn't been a choice. Didn't seem to matter that the shooting had been called justifiable. None of that took the sting out of his heart, his soul. A boy was dead and Jack wasn't.

And as soon as he'd looked down on that boy, he'd known he couldn't walk into a dark alley again. Known he couldn't take the chance of killing another child. Yet leaving the force had destroyed what was left of his life.

"You did what you had to do."

'That's what I tell myself. If I didn't believe that, at least in my head, I wouldn't be able to live with myself." Now that the words were out, he felt almost lighter. As if

by purging the blackness inside, he'd allowed a small sliver of light to penetrate the corners of his soul. And like a freshly cleaned wound, the ache throbbing inside him was sharper, brighter than it had been when it was simply festering.

"Believe it, Jack," Carol said, her voice a soft hush of steel.

"I want to," he admitted. "Need to." He sucked in another gulp of air and let it slide from his lungs an instant later. "My wife left me on Christmas morning. To this day, she's convinced I let Will die. That somehow I didn't protect him as I normally would have because of what she'd told me before shift."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?" he asked quietly, staring down into pale brown eyes that held more light than he'd known in two years. "God help me, I don't know anymore."

here only drags them into it, too, and they don't deserve that." Then he focused his gaze on her. "Neither do you."

Carol's brain raced.

Her heart ached for him, but she could see in his features that he wasn't looking for sympathy. He just wanted her to run. To turn her back and walk out on him—as his bitch of a wife had, she thought. As his partner had.

He expected her to leave.

And maybe it would have been easier on him if she did.

But Carol had no intention of walking away from him. If anything, she wanted to hold him tighter, closer. To somehow ease the pain that was tearing at him.

He reached down and plucked her arms from his middle and took a step back.

It was only a foot or two of space separating them, but it might as well have been miles. She looked up into his eyes and saw that the shutters were firmly in place again. Shutting her out. Shutting himself in.

Well, he'd taken one step. He'd opened the door to his past and now it was simply too late to close it again.

"You can't be serious," she blurted and, after the words were out, thought perhaps she might have handled that a little better.

"You think I'm making this up?"

"No." She shook her head and took a step toward him, but he moved too, keeping that buffer between them. "I mean, you can't really believe that you allowed Will to die. Purposely."

He lifted both hands and rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes. When his hands dropped to his sides again, his shoulders slumped as if he were standing beneath a burden too heavy for any man to carry. "I don't know anymore. I just don't know."

"Well, I do," she snapped and figured that kindness wasn't what he needed right now. He needed brutal honesty. He needed a kick in the ass. He needed a slap upside the head with a two-by-four. Unfortunately, she was unarmed, so she used her only weapon at hand— her mouth, and the fact that she wasn't afraid to say what he didn f t want to hear. "You didn't stand there and allow someone to kill your partner."

"Carol—"

"No. This is bull, Jack." She stepped in close again and this time when he tried to shift away from her, the backs of his knees hit the bed and he was caught. She pushed her advantage. Stepping up close to him, she actually felt the chill that held him in its grasp snaking out to ensnare her, too.

She ignored the cold though and fought past it with the heat of her own outrage. "You were mad and you had a right to be."

"Yeah, but—"

"You were hurt." Carol cut him off, waving a hand to keep him quiet. "Betrayed by the people you trusted the most."

He sucked in air, swallowed hard, and tipped his chin up to a fighting tilt. Unwilling—unable—to accept sympathy. Fine. She wasn't offering any.

"When your wife 9 ' —she sneered that word and his eyes flickered, letting her know he'd caught the disgust in her tone—"told you she'd cheated on you— lied to you— deceived you . . . that she'd been sleeping with your partner—"

"Jesus, Baker—"

His eyes went wide with surprise, or shock, she wasn't sure which. But she wouldn't apologize. She couldn't say enough bad things about any woman who would do that

to a man like Jack. "When she made her grand confession, did you at least tell her what you thought of her?"

"I was a little shell-shocked." He straightened up and shot her a glare that should have fried the ends of her hair. Still, she kept right on, throwing words at him so fast, he didn't have a chance to close them off.

"Not surprising," she snapped, absolutely disgusted with the woman she hoped she'd never meet. Carol kept muttering to herself as she took a step away from him.

He relaxed a little as she moved off, then straightened up and tensed again when she turned around and came right back.

"Jesus," he muttered.

"That... bitch had the nerve to look you dead in the eye and tell you that when she knew you had to go out there onto the streets with Will?" Carol reached up and grabbed handfuls of her own hair and gave it a yank. The resulting pain at least was better than the ache settled in her heart. Then she let go of her hair and shook a finger in his face. "On Christmas Eve, yet. When she knew that you'd be locked in a car for eight solid hours with the man she'd screwed you over with? That's when she decides to tell the truth?"

A short, sharp sound shot from his throat, and under other circumstances, Carol might have thought it was a bark of laughter. But that couldn't be. Not while she was reaming him. Not while she was so furious on his behalf she could hardly see straight.

"And when you came under fire—" She snapped the question out. "Did you run? Did you leave Will lying there in the rain while you saved yourself?"

"No, but—"

"No," she repeated hotly. "The man you thought was

your friend—the man who'd slept with your wife—was lying there hurt and you did what you could to save him."

"Yeah, but—"

"Did you know the shooter was a child?" she demanded, slapping one hand in the middle of his chest.

"No." He frowned, remembering again, and she wanted to drag him out of the past bodily and force him to stay here. In the present. With her.

"It was dark," he said. "Raining. I saw the muzzle flash—"

"And fired back."

"Yeah."

"Did you have any other choice?"

"Not if I wanted to live."

"Did you want to live?" she asked, her voice dropping a notch or two. This was the big question, she told herself. This was what she had to know. What he had to decide. And if she'd asked the question fast enough, he'd answer it from the gut.

"I didn't want to die," he said with a growl of menace that ordinarily might have been enough to have her backing off a bit. Giving him a little space. But not now. Not when they'd come this far already.

"Not the same," she said quickly, her gaze locked with his, demanding he see her. Silently, her gaze demanded more. Demanded the truth. "Did you want to UveV

"Yes."

Good answer.

"Then why aren't you?"

She went up on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and hung on as if half-expecting him to pluck her off and toss her aside. He did neither.

His gaze never left her face. He studied her features

as if trying like hell to make out a foreign language. His gaze moved over her face, her mouth, her eyes, and settled there. "I'm breathing, aren't I?"

"There's more to living than simply breathing, Jack."

"And I'm supposed to just forget that kid?" he muttered thickly. "Forget what happened in that alley?"

She watched the pulse beat at the base of his throat and felt the thundering pounding of his heart against her own.

"No," she said, her voice softer now, "being who you are, you couldn't, even if you tried." She scooped one hand around to cup his cheek and felt his jaw twitch beneath her palm. "But you might try remembering that the child you killed was trying to kill you." She shifted her hold on him then, and tightened her grip on him, sliding one hand up to thread through his thick, black hair.

"And Jack, if all you're doing is breathing ... then the boy did kill you. You might as well have stayed in that alley."

"You don't get it," he said, staring down into her eyes. "Every time I close my eyes, I see it all again. It plays out, just like it did that night, and I try to change it. Try to make it different. And I know it's a dream and still I think, maybe this time. Maybe this time, it'll be different."