Читать книгу You Only Love Once - Tori Carrington - Страница 9

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kelli caught herself daydreaming as she stood in front of the toaster. She’d been thinking about David in a way that had nothing to do with the way he’d treated her yesterday, nothing to do with her plans to nab a detective’s shield, and everything to do with hot flesh and cool sheets.

Sighing in a mixture of wistfulness and frustration, she pushed her run-dampened hair from her cheek, then stuck half an onion bagel smothered with grape jelly between her teeth. Ignoring the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and the empty carton of orange juice on the counter, she clutched her full coffee cup, then elbowed open the kitchen door. She had forty-five minutes before roll call. Plenty of time to peel off her sweats, catch a shower and get down to the district three station to have that little talk she and David had never really gotten around to yesterday.

The tension she had just spent a half an hour and three miles running off settled solidly back between her shoulder blades.

After the hostage case and Sutherland, there had been the press to deal with. She remembered how David’s easy grin and easygoing personality had transferred well over all forms of media and felt her stomach tighten along with her shoulders. Reporters, especially female—although she’d noticed a couple of males responding to David’s charming, daredevil ways—were all over him. When they’d finally gotten back to their squad car, it seemed a quarter of D.C.’s population had a crisis of some sort that needed attention. She and David had spent the day on back-to-back runs ranging from the simple—helping find an elderly woman’s “stolen” social security check in a neighbor’s mailbox—to the complicated—an obvious gang member who would probably lose an eye but would never give up the names of his homies or the opposing gang.

Still, no matter how many calls came in, how much paperwork they had to fill out, a thread of awareness had bound her and David together. It was a connection not even her sharpest retort could hope to cut.

Yeah, well, today she planned to take a machete to work. She’d get a handle on her runaway hormones if it was the last thing she ever did.

Kelli wove her way through the maze that was currently her apartment into the dining area of her living room. She dodged precariously stacked, half-unpacked boxes, a hundred pound bag of diet dog food and her treadmill. Finally she nudged a manila folder aside with her mug, then put her coffee on the cluttered dining room table. Her attention catching on a pink message slip, she freed the bagel from between her teeth and took an absent bite. The message must have slipped from one of the files, the blue ink nearly faded. She leaned closer to see the date. March 25, 1982. The day her mother was murdered. The day she’d decided she wanted to be a homicide detective.

A sharp bark made her jump.

“Yikes, Kojak, you just about gave me a coronary.” Frowning down at the drooling blond boxer she’d rescued from a New York animal shelter, she considered the disgusting concoction that served as her breakfast then held it out to him. He sniffed, licked, then whined and walked away.

Kelli stared at the now inedible bagel half. “Thanks a lot.” She tossed it into a nearby bag she hoped was empty, then switched on the television across the room with the remote. The local news broadcaster’s voice filled the apartment reminding her again how David had charmed the reporters. His too handsome mug had been plastered all over the news last night, every hour on the hour, if not on the news itself, then in the news previews. “You don’t want to miss our story of the day as local man in blue David McCoy saves the day….”

It was enough to make a person ill.

Kelli plucked up the remote again, moving to switch off the television before the news could launch into another “local hero” bit featuring her partner the sexist cad, when a completely different scene stopped her. “We’re on the outskirts of Georgetown where a woman was found dead in her apartment, earlier this morning. Eyewitnesses tell us the murder of this quiet, private school teacher bears all the markings of the work of the man dubbed the D.C. Degenerate.” The female spot reporter looked over her shoulder.

Kelli wryly nodded. “Zoom in on the standard body shot,” she said under her breath.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “If so, then I, for one, think we need to upgrade his name to D.C. Executioner. Because it appears he’s just lost interest in playing out sick sexual fantasies and has just graduated to full-fledged killer.”

Kelli pressed the mute button, the case too similar to another for her comfort. She picked up the message slip lying on the table in front of her, wondering how much detectives knew about this latest guy. And if they would do any better catching him than they had her mother’s killer.

It had been awhile since she’d reviewed the contents of the folders strewn out before her. Three years, in fact. Ever since transferring to New York where doing any footwork on the case would have been impossible. She sat down and curled her right leg under her. Now that she was back home, though…

The telephone chirped. Propping a file open with one hand, she reached for the cordless with her other.

“Yeah?”

“Jaysus, Kelli, is that the way you answer the phone?” her father asked with obvious exasperation.

Kelli closed the file and reached for another. “I don’t know, Dad, you’d be the better one to answer that question since you are the one who’s calling me every five minutes since I got back in town.”

She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth. Not because she shouldn’t have said such a thing to her own father, but because of what it would ultimately lead to.

She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable speech.

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have to call you if you were staying here, now would I?”

“No, Dad, you wouldn’t,” she said almost by rote.

“You know I have more than enough room for you. There’s no sense in your going off and getting an apartment.”

“Yes, Dad, I know.”

The sound of crumpling paper caught her attention. She turned to find Kojak nosing around in the bag for the uneaten bagel.

“Have you watched the news lately? It isn’t safe for a woman to be living on her own in this city.”

Kelli nodded. “Not safe.”

“And that damn mutt of yours is no kind of security either, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s nothing but an overgrown cat.”

“Cat…”

“Kelli Marie, are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, girl?”

“Sure, Dad. Though I really don’t have to because you’ve said it so often it’s etched in my brain.” She pulled another file in front of her and flipped it open. “Was there a specific reason you called, Dad? Or is this just another of your check-ins?”

Silence, then, “Can’t a dad simply want to talk to his daughter?”

Kelli slowly spread her hand out palm down on the table. She should have seen that one coming as well but stepped right through the open barn door all the same. Her voice was decidedly more subdued when she said, “Of course you can, Dad.” She leaned back in her chair. Sometimes it seemed it had always been just her and her father. “You and me against the world,” he’d said when he’d found her crying in her mother’s closet after the funeral. Words he’d repeated time and again after she’d gotten knocked down over and over while proving to everyone and to herself that she was just as good as the guys. “It’s just you and me against the world, kid.”

She curled the fingers of her free hand into a loose fist. “Dad…I know it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it…and Lord knows I’ve avoided bringing the topic up enough times…but I have to know.” She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her. “Does it ever bother you that Mom’s killer was never caught?”

She regretted the question the instant it was out. The silence that wafted over the line was as palpable as her own unsteady heartbeat. “You know I don’t like talking about the past, Kelli.”

“I know, but—”

“What’s done is done. Nothing can change it.”

I can change it. “But don’t you think sometimes that it can be changed? That by—”

“No.”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking anymore questions, no matter how much she wanted to. She knew from experience that she would only upset her father more. And the more upset he got, the more he clammed up, locking himself away even from her. She didn’t want to make that happen. Not in her first few days back home, no matter how desperately she needed answers.

“Okay, Dad. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She switched the phone to her other ear, focusing her entire attention on lightening the conversation, coaxing it back to safer ground. “So tell me, big bad police chief…did you go for the Café Vienna or the French Vanilla this morning?”

For the next ten minutes she and her father talked about everything and nothing, with Kelli carefully redirecting the conversation whenever it moved too near career territory…too close to family issues that might include mention of her mother. It was altogether easier for both of them to forget that she was a police officer. Um, edit that. It was infinitely easier to make her father forget she was a police officer, much less why she had chosen the career to begin with. She wasn’t sure what he told everyone about her time in New York, but if she knew Garth Hatfield, and she did, it probably had something to do with art school.

Of course that explanation would not only raise some brows now that she was back in town, it would call into question his mental capacity.

Kelli glanced at her watch. “I gotta run, Dad.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She methodically closed each of the files in front of her and piled them back up, chucking any idea she had of going through them this morning. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Later.”

“Goodbye.” She started to get up and nearly tripped over where Kojak was licking a jelly stain from the wood floor.

“Hold up a second, Kell.” Her father’s voice stopped her from hitting the disconnect button. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

She absently watched the muted images slide across the television screen. Stories of murder and corruption, all against the background of the most powerful capital of the world. Never a dull moment. “What is it?”

“How did it go yesterday?”

Kelli paused, wondering at the neutral sound of her father’s voice. She decided to play it as vaguely as he was. “It went well. Really well.” Liar. Although she was sure her dad would approve of her trouble with David even less than the idea of her putting on a uniform every morning.

“You meet your new partner yet?” he asked.

She slowly reached out and switched the television off. “Yes.”

“Are you getting on well?”

Kelli crossed her free arm over her chest. “Yes.”

Her father’s sigh burst over the line. “Come on, girl, this isn’t an official interrogation. You can give more than a yes or no answer. Do you like the guy or don’t you? Do you want me to have you assigned somewhere else? Another district station, maybe?”

“Like out in Arlington where the most serious crime is loitering? No, Dad, but thanks just the same.” She rubbed her forehead. So much for avoidance measures. “And my partner’s name’s McCoy. He’s a pigheaded, male chauvinist who needs an ego adjustment, but I can handle him.” At least she hoped she could.

There was a heartbeat of a pause. Kelli fought the desire to ask him if he was still there.

“McCoy?” he finally said gruffly.

“Yeah. David. Do you know him?”

“Of him. I know his father.”

“That’s nice, Dad. Maybe you and he can get together and plot how to scare your kids off the force over a beer sometime. Look, I’ve—”

“If Sean McCoy and I ever end up in the same room together where there’s beer, I’d just as soon crack a bottle over his head,” her father said vehemently.

Kelli’s mouth dropped open. She’d never heard him say such a thing about another person. Yes, he was quite adamant on where he stood on her decisions, but that was different. In almost every other aspect of his life he was as open-minded as they came. “Dad…I don’t quite know what to say. I’m…shocked.”

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be if you knew the guy. They don’t make them any cockier than Sean McCoy.”

He hadn’t met David yet. “When’s the last time you spoke to this…Sean?”

He mumbled something she couldn’t quite make out.

“What was that?”

“Twenty years.”

Kelli smacked her hand against her forehead. “Gee, and here I thought it was something a little more recent. Like yesterday.”

“It was. I might not speak to the old geezer, but I see him just about every day on the job.”

“Wait, don’t tell me. He’s on the force, too. What is he? Regional Assistant Chief for the West or something?”

“Chief?” Garth nearly shouted. “Hell, Kelli, aren’t you getting the drift of anything I’m saying? The guy’s a damn beat cop. Always has been, always will be.”

“So?” she said carefully. “Look, Dad, call me slow, but I’m not getting this. What is this, a modern day replaying of the old Hatfields and McCoys thing?” She glanced at her watch and nearly gasped. “I gotta run, Dad. We can talk about this later, okay?”

She pressed the disconnect button while he was still blathering on. She cringed. No doubt she would hear about that later, as well.

DAVID STARED at his watch for the third time, although no more than a minute had passed since the last time he’d looked. The briefing room was already filled to capacity. Which wasn’t abnormal in and of itself, except the collection of plainclothes at the front of the room had ignited gossip among the officers surrounding him.

Where is she?

“What do you think’s up?” Jones, next to him, asked.

David shrugged. “Beats me.”

“Harris thinks it’s the Degenerate case.”

He grimaced. “All this attention for a sexual deviant? Seems a little excessive.”

“Where you been, man? The guy’s been promoted. He’s chalked up his first killing. Body was found this morning, though they think she’s been dead a couple of days.”

David recalled the case. “Damn.”

Jones chuckled. “You got that right.”

“Did I miss anything?”

David looked to his left where Kelli had claimed the seat he’d been saving for her. She looked far too fresh, too alert, for first thing in the morning. And far too enticing. It was all he could do not to pant all over her like a Chihuahua, bug eyes and all.

“You’re late,” he said, unhappy with the simile. A Chihuahua? He should be something more manly, like a German shepherd at least.

And Kelli was one hundred percent groomed white poodle, pink bow and all.

She smiled. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

It took David a full second to realize she was referring to her lateness, not to his mental comparison.

She shifted her weight so that she could slip his notepad out from under her curved bottom. “This yours?”

David snatched it away, telling himself the paper couldn’t possibly be warm after so brief a contact.

“Did I miss anything?” she asked again.

David crossed his arms, tempted to ignore her. After her dumping maneuvers yesterday after they kicked off work, he’d spent the entire night at his father’s place glowering…and watching Pop glower, too. Not a fun way to pass the time. “It’s about the Degenerate case.”

Her eyes lit up. “You mean the D.C. Executioner case now, don’t you?”

“You know?”

“Of course I know. Don’t you watch the news, McCoy?”

He wanted to tell her that no, he got enough of real life on the job, but he didn’t think it would reflect well on him. So instead he said nothing, because to imply that he usually did watch the news, but had missed it now, might hint at a break in his routine. Which might then lead to her assumption that she was the cause for this disruption. He wouldn’t in a million years let her think that. No matter how on the mark the assumption would be.

Instead, he grinned. “I, um, had other things to do last night.”

The light extinguished. “The news came through this morning.”

David shrugged. “Same difference.”

Kelli sat back in her seat and sighed. “Please, do spare me the details.”

He leaned in a little closer, eyeing the clean stretch of flesh just below her ear. “Oh, I don’t know. I was hoping you and I could, um, go over them blow-by-blow. Say tonight? Over dinner?”

He never saw her fist coming, but he had no doubt that’s what hit him in the arm. “Ow,” he said, rubbing the sore spot.

“Come on to me again on the job and you’ll be hurting a lot worse than that, McCoy. Now stop your whining. They’re about to start.”

And start they did. But David only listened with half an ear about the formation of a special task force headed up by homicide in cooperation with the Sex Crimes unit. They were looking for a few good men and women to go undercover. SC already had three detectives working undercover at three different sex shops across the city that the earlier victims may have frequented. They needed another.

David couldn’t care less. His academy test scores had all basically come up with “does not play well with others.” It was exactly the reason he’d been through three partners in less than seven years. Even if he had a mind to apply for a position on the task force—and he didn’t—they’d probably laugh him out of the interview.

Still, it wasn’t his lack of interest in the goings-on that worried him. Rather, his intense interest in the woman next to him.

Why had she dodged his attempts to get her alone last night? One minute he’d been shooting the breeze with a couple of other officers back here at the station, the next he’d turned around to find her gone.

He’d thought about showing up at her place unannounced with a six-pack. And probably would have had she been anyone else. But for some reason the thought of her shutting the door in his face had chased him out to Pops’s instead.

Was it his imagination, or had the sex between them the other night been as good as he remembered? And if that was the case, why was it that Kelli looked like she’d rather be anyplace else on earth than sitting next to him?

Unless…

Oh, God, he couldn’t even bear to think that he’d somehow fallen short of the mark performance-wise. Missed the three-pointer. Left her swinging in the proverbial wind.

He shifted and covertly eyed her. Naw. It wasn’t even remotely possible that lady-killer David McCoy had left a woman sexually unsatisfied. Hell, he had a black book full of names to prove differently. An endless list of women just begging for a phone call from him.

He crossed his arms. It wasn’t possible.

He slanted her another glance. Was it?

“That’s it. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask the detectives here. We should be getting a suspect sketch out to all units before the end of first shift.” A pause. “And officers, I won’t kid you. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, what the suspect’s capable of and how far he intends to go. The female officer who signs on will be faced with a very dangerous situation. We want you to take that into consideration before tendering your name.”

David practically sprang from his chair. “Thank God, that’s over. You ready?”

Kelli grimaced. “I’ve got…something to do first. Meet me out at the car?”

He shrugged. “No prob.”

Women. Probably had to go powder her nose or something. Lord forbid she should look less than her best to apprehend a shoplifter.

KELLI DISCREETLY wiped her sweaty palms down the length of her slacks when she finally left the briefing room. Her chances of winning the grand prize in the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes were probably better than getting on that task force. She’d only been on the job in D.C. for two days. What did it matter that she had three years of solid experience in New York? Or that she’d gone undercover twice there as a prostitute to arrest potential johns?

Still, she’d had to submit her name for consideration, no matter what the outcome. Chasing down men who preyed on women was exactly what she’d always been driven to do. If she couldn’t find closure in her mother’s case, she could make damn sure no other young girl had to face what she had. She would offer them closure. A chance to see the offender punished for what he’d done to a loved one. An opportunity to go on with life knowing that there was some justice in the world.

She had to do it. No matter how dangerous the road she had to take to get there.

She shrugged into her coat and opened the outer door, admitting that maybe her chances at the assignment were better than she thought. Even she was surprised to find the task force already had her personnel file. Written there in black and white for the entire world to see was her career goal: become a full-fledged homicide detective before she reached thirty. She cringed. Sure, that was her goal. But what had she been thinking when she wrote that little tidbit down for her supervisors to see? She might as well have written that when she was ten she’d wanted to be president of the United States.

“Smooth move, Hatfield,” she muttered to herself as she put on her hat.

She wasn’t surprised to find David glowering in the squad car, tapping the face of his watch like a taskmaster. Kelli climbed into the passenger’s side, inclined to tell him that she had enough on her hands with one father, she didn’t need another. But that might lead to her revealing who her father was, and she wasn’t quite up to dealing with that can of worms right now.

“Took you long enough,” he said, backing out. “What did you do, eat some bad Chinese or something last night?”

Kelli stared at him, her mouth agape. Of course he would think she’d needed to make a pit stop at the bathroom. She wouldn’t be surprised if he thought she’d needed to powder her nose, or whatever men thought women did nowadays. Lord forbid she’d have any interest in joining the task force. And far be it from her to fill him in. It would only make it worse when she found out she hadn’t made it.

She snapped her mouth shut. “Yeah, something like that.” She switched on the radio and picked up the handset. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two, heading out.” She settled back into her seat. “Look, David, you and I really need to have that talk I mentioned yesterday.”

“About what?”

His blank expression told her he truly didn’t have a clue. “About the little stunt you pulled yesterday morning.”

He didn’t look enlightened.

“When you sent me out for donuts while you, by your lonesome, went out and saved the world.”

“Oh, that,” he said, grinning. “I didn’t save the world, Kelli. Just kept a guy who needed some sleep from mucking up his life any more than he already had.”

“Did it ever cross your mind to consult with me first? To work out a plan together, then have Sutherland approve it?”

He appeared to think her question through, then shook his head. “Nope.”

She pointed her finger in his direction. “That’s exactly the reason we need to talk. Just what did you think you were doing climbing that fire escape without backup? Without anyone knowing just what you were doing? Then barging through that open window like…like some uniformed supercop there to save the day?”

He arched a brow. “Uniformed supercop?”

Kelli bit her tongue. She’d picked up the description from one of the many news reports the night before.

“Look, Hatfield, you and I could argue about this all day…and all night,” a decidedly suggestive twinkle entered his eyes, “but when all is said and done, there was no time to plan. SWAT had a shot and Sutherland was about to give the order for them to take it. I had to act, and I had to act fast.” He stopped at a red light. “Okay, I admit, sending you to get donuts was a pretty rotten thing to do—”

“Downright crappy.”

He grinned. “Yeah. But, hell, I was still shocked to find you were on the force, much less my partner, and I needed some time to adjust before going out and playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, you know?”

His explanation made Kelli more agitated. Only because it made a twisted sort of sense. What was the world coming to when she understood the inner workings of a mind like David’s?

Worse yet, what was with her desire to keep looking at the way the material of his slacks clung to his hunky, well-defined thighs?

“Just don’t do it again, McCoy, or else you won’t have to worry about Sutherland taking a piece out of your behind. I’ll be the one with that honor.”

He flashed that devil-may-care grin at her again, making her want to smack her forehead against the dash in exasperation. “Sounds fun.”

She mumbled a series of unflattering remarks under her breath.

David’s grin vanished. “That was just a joke. Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll let you take the lead on the next call that comes in, okay? Whatever it is—bank robbery, car chase, shoplifter. You name it, I’ll stand back and let you handle it any way you want to. You’ll be completely, totally, in charge.”

Naughty images that had nothing to do with police work slid through her mind. Finally, she managed to say, “I don’t want to be the leader, McCoy. I just want to be your partner.” She uncrossed her arms and smiled. “But you’ve got a deal.”

Just then, the radio crackled. The dispatcher named a code and a location. “All officers in the vicinity, please respond.”

Kelli rolled her eyes. A domestic dispute. It figured. The one call she was going to get to control and it would probably be settling an argument over who left the cap off the toothpaste.

“Aren’t you going to call it in, Hatfield? We’re only two blocks away,” David said, then laughed so hard he had to slow down the car.

Kelli glared at him. “I was thinking about letting another patrol get it.” Then she sighed and picked up the handset. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. We’ve got it. ETA five minutes.”