Текст книги "Upholding the Paw"

Автор книги: Diane Kelly

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, thanks to my brilliant editor, Holly Ingraham, for your smart and insightful suggestions. Thanks also to Sarah Melnyck, Paul Hochman, and the rest of the team at St. Martin’s whose hard work got this book into readers’ hands.

Thanks to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for all of your work in furthering my writing career.

Thanks to Liz Bemis-Hittinger of Bemis Promotions for my great Web site and newsletters.

Thanks to all my great writer friends from Romance Writers of America, especially Hadley Holt, Sherrel Lee, Angela Hicks, Celya Bowers, Kennedy Shaw, and Trinity Blake. You’re such an encouraging group and I’m glad to have you all in my life.

And finally, thanks to my readers. I love connecting with you through the books. Enjoy this fast-paced adventure with Megan and Brigit!

Chapter One

Spring Has Sprung

Fort Worth Police Officer Megan Luz

It was the first day of spring. After recently blasting north Texas with a severe ice storm that had caused numerous traffic snarls, school closings, and slips on the ice resulting in broken arms and cracked tailbones, Mother Nature had decided to cut Fort Worth some slack. The day dawned bright and sunny. Forecasters predicted temperatures in the low sixties by noon.

Yahoo!

Neither Mother Nature nor the forecasters would get any complaints from me. Working as a cop required me to spend a large part of my day outside writing speeding tickets, directing traffic, or checking on houses where alarms had been activated. Performing these mundane tasks was hardly fun to begin with, but carrying out my duties in cold, wet weather was far worse.

My furry shepherd mix partner and I had been out on patrol for an hour or so when she emitted a soft whine from her enclosure behind me. I glanced at my rearview mirror. “Need a potty break, Brigit?”

Though she didn’t answer with actual words, her woof told me that, yes, she’d appreciate the opportunity to take a tinkle. We were in luck. Just a block farther down was the fire station where my boyfriend, Seth Rutledge, worked as a firefighter and bomb squad officer. The station had a nice patch of grass out front, the perfect place to relieve oneself. If one were a dog, that is.

I turned into the station to see Seth at the back of the parking lot, tossing a Frisbee for Blast, his yellow lab who was trained in explosives detection. I flipped my siren on for a brief moment, the abbreviated woo alerting Seth and Blast to our presence.

Their two heads snapped our way and, as always, I was struck by how many similarities they shared. Blond hair. Square jaws. A little scruff on the chins. Where the dog’s eyes were brown like mine and Brigit’s, Seth’s were a shade of green a girl could find herself getting lost in. That’s why I was careful not to stare into them too long and had downloaded that compass app on my Smartphone to set me back on course in case I began to go adrift. It’s not that I didn’t want to get serious with Seth—eventually. It’s just that I’d spent my entire childhood looking after my four younger siblings, and had picked up the slack for one irresponsible roommate after another during college. For now, I wanted to enjoy being young and free and not having to answer to anyone but myself.

I pulled into a parking spot next to Seth’s ’72 blue Nova. The car had orange flames painted down the sides and personalized plates that read KABOOM. A bit flashy perhaps, but a fitting ride for a bomb squad officer and his canine partner.

Seth and Blast reached the cruiser as I climbed out of it. Seth greeted me with a smile and a “Hey.” A kiss would have been nice, but both of us were on the city’s clock so such behavior in public would have been inappropriate. Blast stood on his hind legs with his front paws on the back door of my patrol car, greeting Brigit with a tail whipping back and forth in excitement and an Arf-arf-arf!

I angled my head toward Brigit, who stood on her platform in the back of the vehicle, scratching at the inside of the door. “My partner needs to utilize your g-grass.”

Yeah, I’ve got a stutter. Had it since I was a kid. Though I’d been unable to shake it entirely, it had become less pronounced over the years. Sometimes it bothered me, but mostly I took it in stride. After all, everyone’s got something to deal with, right? Still, the stutter had been the bane of my existence as a child, making me feel awkward and self-conscious, an easy target for bullies. I’d often chosen to spend my time with books rather than other kids. I don’t entirely regret my lonely childhood, though. I learned a lot about crime solving from those books. In fact, it was the old Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes books that first got me interested in becoming a detective.

But first things first. In Fort Worth, before making detective, a person had to put in a minimum of four years as a police officer.

I’d become a cop to fight for truth and justice, to serve and protect those who weren’t able to protect themselves—like little girls who couldn’t make their words come out right. Okay, clearly I’d suffered some emotional scars. But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Or at least motivates us, gives our lives direction and purpose. If not for my stutter and the resulting teasing, I might have ended up processing paperwork at an insurance company. Not the worst job, probably, but not one likely to give a person a sense of self-actualization.

“’Scuse me, boy.” I nudged Blast aside, opened the door, and let Brigit out of her cage. She hopped down to the pavement, exchanged a quick sniff with Blast, and trotted over to the grass where she squatted shamelessly for all the world to see.

Seth tucked the Frisbee under his arm, leaned back against the fender of my car, and looked up into the cloudless sky. “Can you believe this weather?”

I followed his gaze, squinting against the sun, enjoying the feel of its warm rays on my face. “It’s gorgeous. Hope it lasts.”

It probably wouldn’t. Mother Nature could be such a tease in the spring.

Blast and Brigit returned from relieving themselves and looked hopefully up at Seth.

He readied the Frisbee in his hand. “On your mark,” he said, causing the dogs to quiver in anticipation. “Get set.” He turned to the side and bent his knees for leverage. “Go!”

Seth sent the Frisbee sailing down the drive with a smooth throw, his well-developed shoulder muscles flexing under his fitted navy T-shirt. All those laps at the YMCA’s indoor pool this past winter had kept him in great shape.

As the dogs took off running, Seth turned and damn! He caught me ogling him. A grin tugged at his lips but he had enough sense not to call me on it. I prided myself on being above such base carnal desires. Of course I wasn’t actually above such desires, but I was damn good at lying to myself.

The dogs’ paws thundered on the asphalt as each vied to be the first to get to the disc and snatch it out of the air. Brigit beat Blast by a whisker, leaping into the air and grabbing the Frisbee in her teeth just as it began its descent. Fortunately, Blast didn’t appear to feel emasculated by Brigit’s superior skills. Perhaps being neutered had rendered his masculinity irrelevant. At any rate, he galloped along beside her as she brought the disc back to Seth for another throw.

“Good girl!” Seth praised my dog, ruffled her ears, and tugged the Frisbee out of her teeth for another toss. With the dogs on their way once again, Seth turned his attention back to me. “How’s your morning going? Anything exciting happen?”

“Nope. All I’ve done so far is write a warning for a broken taillight.”

As much as I wanted to fight for truth and justice, the reality of working as a beat officer was that 99 percent of our shifts were spent driving around looking for trouble and finding only minor, routine infractions. During these downtimes, I entertained myself by listening to NPR or podcasts on my phone. But the other 1 percent of the time, when I was chasing a burglary suspect on foot, wrangling with an angry drunk or a violent felon? That was an entirely different story.

I probably shouldn’t admit it, but those moments terrified me. While I loved making a bust, I was not one of those cops who enjoyed engaging physically with suspects, who got some type of rush from risking my life and safety in shootouts or hand-to-hand combat. Don’t get me wrong. When push came to shove, I could shove. Didn’t mean I liked it, though. If every suspect would raise their hands in the air and surrender willingly, I’d be just fine with that.

Brigit ran up, having once again won the race. Blast had asserted himself this time, though, clamping down on the side of the Frisbee where it hung out of Brigit’s mouth and running alongside her. It was a Lady and the Tramp moment, but with a plastic disc rather than spaghetti.

Seth ruffled his own dog’s ears. “Nice try, Blast.”

I wrestled the disc out of their mouths and tossed it myself this time. Of course my throw paled in comparison to Seth’s, flying slower and lower and likely to reach only half the distance. Nonetheless, the dogs scrabbled on the pavement and took off after the disc a third time.

With our partners on their way, I turned back to Seth. “How about you? Fight any fires this morning?”

“Not a one. It’s been a dull shift. Not even a single kitten in a tree.”

Seth’s job was similar to mine in that it involved a lot of downtime punctuated by moments of life-threatening action. At least he could spend his downtime exercising his dog and hanging with the guys at the station playing poker and watching television.

Crunk-crunk-crunk-crunk. A metallic rumble sounded as the door rolled up on one of the truck bays. The flashing lights illuminated on the large red truck, and one of the firefighters appeared in the doorway. He waved Seth inside. “Suit up, Rutledge! We got a call!”

Seth shook his head. “Spoke too soon, huh?”

The dogs returned, the Frisbee clamped in both of their mouths again. Not a second later the voice of a female dispatcher came over my shoulder-mounted radio. “Officer needed at Eighth Avenue and Oleander. We have a report of a fire in a Dumpster.”

No doubt the fire was the same one to which Seth and his coworkers were headed. The location was less than a quarter mile from the fire station. In fact, my nose detected a hint of smoke carried on the breeze.

I reached up and squeezed the mic. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.” I returned my attention to Seth. “Looks like we’ll be working this one together.”

He gave me a soft, sexy smile as he walked backward away from me. “I can think of some other hot things we could do together.”

I tried to fight a grin but lost. “Keep your pants on.”

A nonsensical reply, really. He was on his way to put on more pants. Thick, flame-retardant ones.

I loaded Brigit into the back of my cruiser, hopped inside, and took off, lights flashing and siren wailing. Woo-woo-woo! Less than a minute later I rolled up Eighth Avenue, surprised—and irked—to see Derek Mackey’s cruiser sitting at the curb in front of a Subway sandwich shop.

Derek “The Big Dick” Mackey was an ass of epic proportions. An attention whore who claimed credit for the victories of others. A sexist pig from the tips of his steel-toed loafers to the top of his flaming orange burr haircut.

He was also my former partner.

Before Brigit, I’d been paired with The Big Dick for several long, insult-laced, and fart-filled months it would take years of therapy for me to work through entirely. Who would’ve thought losing my temper, activating my Taser, and delivering fifteen hundred volts of electricity to Derek’s testicles would have saved me? Luckily for me, Chief Garelik decided to give me a second chance. Rather than fire me, he’d reassigned me to work with Brigit. Derek was the chief’s golden boy, and the chief knew if he fired me I could have sought revenge and revealed some things about Derek and his less-than-exemplary behavior that would have tarnished his protégé’s gold plating.

At any rate, Derek and I despised each other, even more so since we’d discovered that both of us planned to seek detective positions in the future. And there the guy was, climbing out of his patrol car.

I pulled my vehicle to the curb behind Derek’s and hopped out, leaving Brigit in the cruiser with the windows cracked. Flames reached skyward from a large metal bin at the back of the lot, releasing the acrid smell of smoke and the funky smell of barbecued garbage. Yick.

What had caught fire? Had someone tossed a cigarette into the bin and accidentally set off a conflagration? Or had the fire been intentionally set? If so, why?

Ignoring Derek, I headed toward the sandwich shop to evacuate the employees who were on site, preparing for the lunch rush. Fires were unpredictable and spread without warning. Better safe than sorry.

“Hey!” Derek yelled, jogging up behind me. “I was here first.”

“And I responded on the radio that I’d take the call. That means it’s mine.”

I didn’t break stride, nor did I look his way. Just because I didn’t get my jollies from fistfights didn’t mean I wouldn’t stick up for myself.

He sped up, veering in front of me to block my way. “I have seniority.”

“What you have is a chip on your shoulder.”

The guy couldn’t stand that I’d bested him several times recently. Working under detectives Audrey Jackson and Hector Bustamente, who’d become my mentors, I’d helped to identify and take down culprits in a couple of major cases. The busts would surely help my chances of landing a detective position someday. If Derek weren’t such a cocky S.O.B., maybe one of the detectives would have taken him under wing, too.

He turned to face me now and stopped, a mountain of man and muscle. I had no choice but to stop, too, lest I run straight into him.

His face flamed nearly as red as his hair. “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder,” he spat. “You have an attitude problem.”

I closed my eyes and mentally counted to ten as I’d been taught in the anger management class the chief ordered me to take after the Tasering incident. What can I say? I’d inherited my mother’s Irish temper. You can’t fight genetics.

One.

Two.

Three.

As much as I didn’t want to back down, I knew a person should choose their battles wisely.

Four.

Five.

Six.

But concede to this jerk? No way would I give Derek the satisfaction. Uh-oh. The counting didn’t seem to be working. I might have to go well into the double digits before I cooled off.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

All right, all right. Arguing over a crowd control call simply wasn’t worth the effort, especially since chances were the fire would be put out in mere seconds. I raised a palm with as much forced graciousness as I could muster. “You want this call? You got it. No need to get your jockeys in a bunch.”

Derek responded with a smug smirk as I turned to go back to my car.

Butthead.

I climbed into my cruiser and cast a glance back at Brigit, whose chin was coated in fresh saliva. She probably thought the burning garbage smelled yummy. “Know what, pup? You’re twice the partner D-Derek ever was.”

Despite the drool, it was true. She wagged her tail in agreement.

As the fire truck pulled up, my radio crackled to life again. “Armed robbery in progress at Cowtown National Bank on west Rosedale. Who can respond?”

I grabbed my mic from the dash and squeezed the button. “Officers Luz and Brigit en route.”

Derek turned in the doorway of the sub shop and cut a hard look my way. Undoubtedly he’d heard the exchange through his shoulder-mount and now regretted insisting on taking the fire call. Ha! A bank robbery would be a lot more interesting than setting up saw horses and directing traffic around the fire trucks. A robbery would be scarier, too, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let my fears hamper me.

I flipped on my lights and siren and raised a hand in good-bye, treating Derek to my smug smirk this time. “Karma’s a bitch!”

Chapter Two

Sub Sandwich to Go?

Fort Worth PD K-9 Officer Brigit

All in all, Megan wasn’t a bad partner. She brushed Brigit every night, a hundred strokes. She let Brigit sleep in bed with her. She even bought Brigit her favorite treats when they went to the grocery store.

But now? Megan had driven to a sandwich shop and left the windows cracked, treating Brigit to the mouth-watering scents of turkey, pastrami, bologna, and meatballs. Smoke, too, but Brigit’s superior nose could nonetheless distinguish the scents. Brigit had hoped Megan would return to the car with a sandwich, but she’d come back empty-handed. Brigit had wagged her tail, hoping Megan would take a hint and go buy the dog some fresh meat. She hadn’t.

Ugh.

Humans could be so difficult to train.

At least things seemed to be picking up now. The siren whooped and Megan was driving like a bat out of hell. That could mean only one thing.

They were about to see some action.

Brigit lived for action.

Chapter Three

Phase One: Complete

Smokestack

One of them had a personal score to settle. The other had his dignity to avenge. But Smokestack? Heck, he was just along for shits and giggles. So far there’d been quite a few giggles thanks to that special banana nut muffin he’d eaten earlier.

Cannabis. The breakfast of champions.

He might have no education and no job training, but he was a master at manipulation. Hell, for two years he’d had his parents convinced he was attending college when in reality he’d dropped his classes each semester, got a refund of the tuition they’d paid, and spent his days—and his parents’ money—at pool halls and strip clubs. But that money had all been spent now. He’d managed to snag a credit card a drunk had dropped under the next table at a strip club, but that was a short-term solution. Sooner or later the guy would realize he’d lost the card and it would be deactivated.

Convincing the other two to rob the bank had been a cinch. Both were down and out, throwing themselves a pity party when they’d gone out for beers after last night’s meeting. All he’d had to do was play on their fragile egos, convince them they’d been treated unfairly, and persuade them to fight back against the injustices they’d suffered.

“You were victims!” he’d exclaimed with outrage. “Only a couple of total pussies would take that lying down.”

He’d suggested this little escapade because he liked to start fires. The fact that he’d also get a one-third share of the take was icing on the cake.

Without an education, steady job, or discernible abdominal muscles, it was hard enough getting laid. The girls he went after tended to be streetwise, less gullible. Add in the fact that his crash pad was his childhood room in his parents’ house, and he was constantly getting derailed. But he and his cohorts had come away from the bank with nearly three grand. The other two didn’t know it yet, but the bank was just the beginning. With any luck, by the end of the day he’d have enough cash to buy himself a year’s supply of chronic, a lap dance from redheaded Ruby at club Blue Balls, and a new apartment so that he could finally move out of his parents’ place.

Yeah. Things were definitely on track now.

Chapter Four

Hop on the Bus, Gus

Megan

I punched the gas on my cruiser. Seth looked over from where he hung from the fire truck, a perplexed expression on his face as I sped away from the curb. Of course he knew nothing about the bank robbery. I’d fill him in later—assuming, of course, that the robbers didn’t fill with me lead. In that case he’d just have to read about it in the paper.

The woo-woo-woo of my siren acted like an electronic cheerleader, telling me to Go! Go! Go! before the robbers got away with two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar!

Fueled by adrenaline, I hooked a right on Rosedale, rocketing down the street as drivers pulled to the right to let me by. As much as I hated to admit it, I liked the sense of power my authority gave me. As a child I’d been helpless to stop the bullies who’d teased me about my stutter. But with my badge, weapons, and cruiser, I sure as hell wasn’t powerless now.

I sped past a bus stop where an inordinate number of people seemed to be disembarking. But there was no time to ponder the situation. I had bank robbers to catch. I only hoped the robbers would realize resistance was risky and surrender quickly. On the bright side, if they decided to come out of the bank with guns blazing, at least it was a pleasant day to die.

A quick prayer couldn’t hurt, right?

Less than a minute and a Hail Mary later, my cruiser whipped into the bank parking lot, tires squealing as I braked to a quick stop. Screech!

My pulse thrummed and throbbed, and a sticky, anxious sweat coated my skin. I yanked my gun from my belt and slid out of the car, letting Brigit out of the back and ordering her to stay by my side. Her unique skills could be useful in taking a suspect down or chasing them should they attempt to flee. Still, as always when I deployed her, my heart squeezed a little. Sure, she was a tool, a piece of equipment designed to assist me in my work. But she was also a sentient creature, a living being, not to mention my partner, roommate, and fuzzy-wuzzy buddy. The decisions I made could put her life at risk. If anything happened to her, could I ever forgive myself?

I forced the thought from my head. I couldn’t think about that now. The two of us had a job to do.

With my K-9 partner by my side, I hunkered down and ran as fast as I could to the brick wall next to the front doors, plastering my back flat against it.

What was going on inside?

Had the men who’d held up the bank taken hostages?

Had anyone been hurt?

I pushed the button to call dispatch. “What’s the status at the bank?”

“We don’t know,” the dispatcher said. “We got a quick call from someone on a cell phone two minutes ago but the call dropped.”

Dammit! Brigit and I were working blind here.

A second cruiser pulled into the lot. Officer Spalding. Thank God. Spalding was a stocky black officer with ten years under his belt. Just the man you wanted to have your back.

He slipped from his cruiser, readied his weapon and bullhorn, and crouched down behind the open door of his car. Raising the bullhorn to his mouth, he aimed it at the front doors of the bank and calmly said, “Law enforcement has surrounded the building. Come out with your hands in the air.”

Trembling, I crouched next to Brigit, whispered “good girl” to let her know she was doing well, and aimed my gun at the door in case the robbers decided to come out shooting. Please, please, please, dear Lord! Don’t let that happen! Truth be told, my gun skills sucked. Having been a twirler in my high school marching band, I was much better with my baton. Problem was, a baton was of limited use. It required your target to be within striking distance. While I had a Kevlar vest to stop bullets, Brigit was unprotected. She’d make an easy target. My heart squeezed again, even harder this time. Please don’t let Brigit get hurt!

A moment later, the glass door opened a few inches, then banged shut again.

What was happening?

Were the robbers scrabbling with innocent customers?

If so, it was my job to stop it before anyone got hurt.

Gulping back the cantaloupe-size lump of fear that had formed in my esophagus, I gave Brigit the order to follow me, ran to the door, and yanked it open, dashing inside.

Two screams sounded in stereo. “Aaaah!”

The first scream came from an elderly man who was having trouble opening the door from his electric scooter. The second came from me as I tripped over the scooter and rolled in an inadvertent somersault over the tile floor of the foyer, through the open inner door, and into the main room of the bank, praying all the while that my gun would not accidentally discharge, especially since the barrel was now shoved up under my left boob.

When I stopped rolling, I sat where I’d landed on my ass, pulled my gun up to sight, and scanned the room over it. Everyone I could see had bewildered expressions on their faces and their hands in the air. None wore pantyhose over their heads or held a weapon.

“Where are the robbers?” I hollered as Brigit trotted up next to me.

“They left,” said the old man, backing up with a beep-beep-beep and pulling his scooter up next to me with a zzzzzip. “They ran out the door right after they caught a teller on her phone with 9-1-1. They slapped the phone out of her hand and took off.”

He pointed across the space. I followed his gnarled finger to a young, fair-haired teller who’d gone hysterical, shrieking and crying despite her coworkers’ best attempts to quiet her down.

I looked back to the man. “Did you see which way they went?”

“Sure did.” This time he pointed out the door and to the right. “They ran off that way.”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“Were all of them armed?”

“I’m not sure. One of the men stood outside the front doors so I didn’t get a good look at him. The man who waited inside the doors had a rifle. The one who gave the note to the teller never pulled out a weapon as far as I could tell. He had his hand in his pocket, though, and there was something in the shape of a pistol in it.”

I pulled myself off the floor and addressed the startled crowd. “Everyone stay put for now. We’ll need to get your statements.”

Giving Brigit the command to follow me once more, I headed back outside and told Spalding what was going on. “I’m going to see if my partner can track the robbers.”

Spalding nodded. As he walked toward the building, I instructed Brigit to follow the robbers’ trail. She put her nose to the ground and began to sniff and snuffle her way across the lot in the direction the man had pointed. While Brigit was not trained to track a particular person, she was trained to detect where an area had been recently disturbed and to follow that path to the culprits.

Snuffle-snuffle. Snuffle-snuffle.

While she advanced across the lot and onto the sidewalk with her head down, I trailed along directly behind her, acting as her eyes, watching for cars or people who might get in her way or pose a risk. I ordered her to halt at a corner, raised my hand to stop an approaching minivan, then gave my partner the signal to continue tracking.

A block down, the large group of people I’d noticed on my drive to the bank milled about at the bus stop. One of them, a short, skinny thirtyish man, wore a city of Fort Worth bus driver uniform. When he spotted me and Brigit approaching, he waved to get our attention and hollered, “Three men with a rifle just done hijacked my bus!”