Sweet Seduction Shield (10 page)

"Ah, fine.
Thanks," I replied.

"How's Daisy?"
Pierce asked, eyes thankfully on my face now, as Abi hurried over
and took my washing from my hands without me having to ask.

"I'll do
these," she murmured and was gone from the room in a flash.

"Sleeping," I
answered Pierce. "Worn out. Emotional."

"And you?" he
asked, concern etched in every word.

Ben's chair
pushed back and I watched him walk to the sink, fill his mug with
water, then without casting either of us a glance, he left the way
Abi had. I hadn't said a word while I watched him.

"Do you want
to sit down, Marie?" Pierce asked, returning my attention to him.
"Fresh coffee in the pot," he added.

I let a long
breath of air out. "I could go a coffee."

"Sit," he said
softly. I guess it could have been considered an order, but his
tone changed the command to a request.

I followed the
nod of his head to the chair next to his and sat, as he reached
over and nabbed a clean mug, pouring coffee into it from a plunger
pot.

"Milk, one
sugar, right?" he said, obviously remembering how I took my coffee
from when we were in Sweet Seduction. I nodded.

The steaming
mug in my hand I took my first sip, just as he pulled a large pad
over from beside him and flipped the cover over, revealing a clean
sheet of paper beneath.

"OK," he said,
all businesslike. "Let's get this out of the way and then you can
relax."

A bubble of
sarcastic laughter erupted out of my mouth. Pierce ignored my
reaction and clicked the top of his pen, ready to write my
statement.

"We have to do
this," I said. Not a question, but I guess he took it as one.

"Yeah, we do."
He scratched his beard. "Listen, I'm not sure if you know how the
legal system actually works, but I'll sum it up for you. The more
evidence we have against a criminal, the more chance they'll get an
appropriate sentence in court. Sure, we can arrest someone for one
thing, charge them and get an adequate outcome, but that does not
mean they serve the correct time for all of their crimes. Justice
is not the law. They are two different things entirely. Now, I'm in
the business of justice, but I have to work within the law to
achieve it. That means, even though the criminal has been arrested
and detained, I don't stop investigating, gathering evidence,
adding more charges, until I know justice has been served."

Silence met
the end of his statement. I took a sip of my drink. He followed
suit.

"Marie," he said softly. "The man who chased you yesterday is
part of McLaren's team. You know this. Sure, your statement will
help put
him
away, but it will also,
perhaps, lead to something else I can pin on McLaren. And that's
not even getting you to press charges for him murdering your
husband."

I stiffened. I
hadn't agreed to that.

"One day you
will have to face it," he added, still talking softly, carefully,
gently. "One day you will have tell Daisy what happened to her
father. Give her an idea of how he died. Can you do that, knowing
you let the man who killed him get away for that particular
crime?"

My coffee cup
came down onto the surface of the table with a loud thud. So hard,
I thought for a moment that it might have cracked.

"You have no
right to bring up Daisy," I ground out. "No right to ask me to do
this. You weren't there!"

"No, I
wasn't," he said quickly. "But you were. And so was Abi."

"What does that mean?
So was Abi?
Is she offering to be a witness in court for this?"

"She will, if
you press charges."

I shook my
head. "There's no way I'd get someone else mixed up in this sordid
mess."

"Abi's neck
deep in it already," Pierce pointed out.

"So, you think
a little more shit piled on top of the shit she's already had to
endure is nothing at all? Is that how it works for you,
Detective?"

Pierce
grimaced, sitting back in his chair.

"It's so easy for people like you," I snarled. "You didn't
lose someone you love. You didn't watch their life ebb out of them.
Didn't think you'd be next. Sitting there with your husband's blood
and brains all over your face and think, please God, just make it
quick, like it was for Rick. A bullet in the head, not in the
stomach. You didn't stare into the eyes of Satan himself and wait
for the click of his gun. You have no idea what I went through.
What Daisy could still go through. You swoop on in, after the fact,
thinking you'll save the day and make everything all right. But you
know what, Pierce,
nothing
will ever
be all right again."

A shuddering
breath in ended my tirade.

Oh, fuck. I
had never talked about it before. I had never voiced what had
happened to anyone. Ever. Oh, fuck. And I choose to lose my rag
with a cop?

Oh, fuck.

My eyes,
feeling too big for their sockets, came up to Pierce's, fearful of
what I'd see there. Derision at my breakdown? Sympathy for what I
had divulged? Pity?

But I didn't
see any of those things. I saw something else. Something
unexpected.

I saw understanding. But not just a stranger's understanding
of what you have said, but the understanding of someone who
had
been through something similar.
Who
did
know what you were talking
about. Because they had experienced it too.

No judgement.
No pity. Just complete and utter understanding.

Oh, fuck.

Pierce cleared
his throat, spun the pad around on the table’s surface with the
flick of an agitated finger, and then slammed his pen down on top,
making the pad stop spinning altogether.

OK, hit a
nerve. Well, he'd been hitting mine from the moment he walked into
my office.

"You know
what?" he said eventually, eyes not on me but staring off into the
distance.

"What?" I said
with an exaggerated sigh.

He shook his
head. Ran a hand over his face and said, "You're right."

What?

"About which
part?" I asked slowly.

His intense
brown eyes flew to mine. "About me swooping in and thinking I'll
make things all right."

"Oh." I had
nothing else to add, but Pierce did.

"But the
difference between people like me and people like you," he said,
leaning forward, resting his elbows on the table, "is that we try
to make the world a safer place, rather than just hoping it will
be." He let a frustrated breath out. "Now, I don't have a kid, so I
know you've got more to worry about than some. But to me it seems
simple, Marie. You either trust everyone else will do the right
thing so your kid will be safe. Or your grab the fucking bull by
the horns and ensure it is."

Holy shit.
This was how he got witnesses on side?

"Ah, you speak
to all your potential witnesses like this?" I had to ask.

"No, just the
monumentally stubborn ones. The ones I know can handle the truth
and maybe, just maybe, do something with it."

He stood up
abruptly from the table, snatched the pen and unmarked pad off the
surface and headed for the door.

"What about
the statement?" I asked after him.

"What about
it?" he shot back. "Neither of us are in the right frame of mind
right now."

And then he
was gone.

I sat stunned
and unbelievably angry with the man. Who the fuck did he think he
was to put that kind of crap on me? He was meant to be one of the
good guys. One of those charged with keeping us safe. And this is
how he treats a frightened woman?

Oh, I could
think of a few things now to hurl in his face. Of course, you
always do think of great one-liners after the dickheads have gone.
But as I stood from my seat and splashed water into my mug,
cleaning it out with a little dish-washing liquid brusquely, a
multitude of great comebacks flashed through my mind.

I started muttering a few of them under my breath. "Why don't
you just pull your service weapon out to get me to comply? No? How
about
you
stand in the dock in the
courtroom then, and face off against the arsehole who wants you
dead? Or maybe you should just handcuff me, throw me in a cell and
wait until I'm compliant enough to do as you command, oh fucking
wise one."

A chuckle
sounded out over my shoulder and the mug crashed to the bottom of
the sink.

"Shit!" I
cried, as I waited for it to fracture into a million pieces. It was
made of sterner stuff.

I swung around
and found Ben leaning against the door frame, arms crossed over his
impressive chest, a tribal tattoo peeking out from the sleeve of
his t-shirt. A highly amused look on his face.

"If you like,
you could just write 'em all down and post 'em to him later," he
suggested in a drawl.

"That would
mean I actually cared about what he said, " I pointed out, crossing
my own arms.

"Oh, you
cared. Otherwise Pierce wouldn't have said it."

"What does
that mean?" I demanded.

"You'll figure
it out," he infuriatingly replied.

"I don't want
to figure it out," I complained, uncrossing my arms and slinking
into a seat at the table. "I've got more important crap to deal
with than a cop spitting his dummy out."

"I am so gonna
tell him you said that," Ben teased.

"Traitor," I
half heartedly snapped.

He walked to
the fridge and started hauling out ingredients for a salad,
plopping them down on the table in front of me, adding bowls,
chopping board and a knife.

"You're on
salad, I'll marinate the steaks," Ben explained.

I gratefully
accepted the task, something to take my mind off infuriating and
demanding police detectives, and give me a moment to calm myself
down. I wondered if that was Ben's intention, because for a good
ten minutes he didn't utter a word.

Then after
returning the steaks to the fridge to marinate, he unscrewed a
couple of beers, sliding one towards me, leaned against the bench
and said, "I'm not gonna defend Pierce's behaviour."

"Good," I
replied instantly, tossing the last salad in its bowl. "Because its
indefensible."

"Nah," he
argued, took a swig from his bottle and returned to studying me.
"I'm just not the one to defend it."

"And your
point is?" I asked with raised eyebrows, getting up to place the
covered salads in the fridge too.

"My point,
Marie, is Pierce knows what he's doin'. Whether that's chasin' down
a criminal, settin' up a sting, or corrallin' a witness into doin'
the right thing, he's good at it. There is never a time when he
doesn't do somethin' for a reason."

"Who? Pierce?"
Abi said sauntering into the room and going straight for Ben to nab
his beer bottle, swiftly downing a large gulp.

"Get your own,
Red," he said with an amused smile.

"Nah, she's
good," Abi replied. "I like this one, thanks." She slipped into a
seat beside me and added, while Ben grumbled good naturedly as he
fetched a new beer for himself, "I checked on Daisy, she's still
napping."

"Thanks, Abi,"
I replied, taking a swig of my own beer.

"So, we were
talking about the complicated and mysterious Ryan Pierce, weren't
we?" she announced.

Ben rolled his
eyes to the ceiling. "If this gets all girlie, I'm outta here."

"By girlie he
means we start cataloguing Ryan's fine physical attributes," Abi
explained, and I choked on a swallow of beer.

She patted my
back while I coughed up a lung and Ben said with a growl, "Woman!
There will be no cataloguin' of any man's physical attributes
unless they are mine."

"No harm in
looking, Ben," she pointed out.

"Oh, Abigail,
there will be harm if you look, believe me," he threatened with a
white toothed smile.

"He's
bluffing," Abi whispered to me out of the side of her mouth, as
though Ben couldn't hear her from across the room if she said it
quietly enough.

"That's it. I'm outta here!" he announced and walked straight
up to Abi, reached down and lifted her chin with a finger
underneath, and then kissed the living daylights out of her. "Now
see whose physical attributes you catalogue after
that
, Red."

Then he was
gone.

"Oh, my," she
said, fanning herself. "Yum," she added, and we both burst out
laughing.

It was exactly
what I needed. One of those spontaneous hilarious moments right
from the belly. A real tension reliever, making your cheeks ache
and your chest heave and the muscles in your stomach quiver. If
we'd been on the floor we would have been rolling.

As it is, I
had to wipe tears from my eyes with the back of my hands as I
struggled with the last few wayward giggles.

"I so needed
that," I declared, when Abi handed me a paper towel from the bench
to dry my hands.

"I thought you
might have," she said with a smile.

I sucked in a
breath and took a good look at her. I think she knew what was
coming.

"How did you
know him?" I asked, and because she didn't flinch I was sure she'd
been preparing for this moment since the penguin painting room
incident.

"I grew up in
his Compound," she said, holding my gaze. "My mother died when I
was young, but my Dad was too far into that world to escape with
his only child."

Too far into
that world. Just like Rick.

She took
another large swig of her beer and then launched into her tale.

"When I was
fifteen years old Roan McLaren took an unhealthy interest in me. I
won't go into details, but I was OK, my Dad protected me. But we
knew, once Roan had shown his hand, that I couldn't stay. My Dad
saved hard, taught me everything I needed to know about running and
hiding, and then when I turned eighteen I did just that. And I
didn't stop running until I met Ben." She sucked in a breath of air
and added, "And Detective Pierce."