Shielded by the Lawman

by Dana Nussio

  In the cacophony of plates scratching, silverware clinking and ice cubes tinkling, Jamie let his thoughts slip back to that night’s grisly discovery. Then further. Even nine years later, he couldn’t think of his funny, smiling brother without seeing Mark’s lifeless body dangling in the garage.

  Regret, the kind that only someone who has known true loss could understand, covered him, filling every crevice with emptiness, hopelessness and damnation. He’d tried to stop reliving the day of Mark’s death, but that night’s events had cued up the scene again.

  “I got this out here as soon as I could.”

  The soft, feminine voice from behind him startled him from his daze.

  Sarah held another tray and indicated the other diners with a shift of her head. “They’re nearly finished.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  He wished he had something clever to say, but as usual, he came up empty. Dion beat him to it.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready for dessert,” Dion announced. “What kind of pies have you been baking today, Miss Sarah?”

  “A bit of chocolate heaven or blueberry rapture?” Vinnie suggested hopefully.

  Jamie didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Sarah’s face would be as pink as her uniform. She seemed so uncomfortable whenever anyone mentioned her baking. He wished Ted hadn’t let them in on the secret that she was responsible for all the new pies, cakes and breads on the menu.

  She cleared her throat. “We have eclair cake with chocolate ganache and just one piece left of the lemon cake with whipped frosting and—”

  “Stop right there,” Nick interrupted. “Sold. Both.”

  She bent her head to jot a note. “And for pies, we have apple amaretto, strawberry rhubarb and lemon meringue.”

  Several of Jamie’s colleagues placed orders, and a few declined in defense of their waistlines. When she reached him, he shook his head. “I shouldn’t.”

  “No, you should,” Trevor said. “Give him his favorite. The apple. On my ticket.”

  Jamie didn’t bother arguing. It would be too obvious if he turned down free pie. Even if his slice was Trevor’s second clumsy attempt to comfort him.

  “Sorry. I owed him,” Trevor said, as Sarah returned to the kitchen. “And no, I don’t owe any of the rest of you anything.”

  When the waitress rested the dessert plate next to his barely touched burger, Jamie could only stare. Whoever had cut the pies must have flunked division in math because that slice made all the other pieces look like slivers. Had Sarah picked up on Trevor’s pity-pie ploy and decided to stuff Jamie in sympathy? He glanced right and left, but the others were too busy inhaling their own desserts to notice his.

  From the first bite, Jamie nearly forgot about his awful day and his shaky stomach. He closed his eyes and savored the sweet almond-liquor flavor that counterbalanced the tart apples. The flaky crust melted on his tongue.

  “Worth the five extra miles we’re going to have to run, isn’t it?” Trevor said.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Jamie pushed the burger aside and finished all but the crumbs of the pie. By then, Sarah had returned.

  “Great, as always,” Trevor told her as she cleared away their plates.

  “Yeah, great,” Jamie echoed.

  “Thanks.”

  Her voice was soft, but the corners of her mouth lifted.

  When she moved to the cash register to print out their bills, Jamie couldn’t help watching her again. She was as oblivious to him as she was to her own beauty. To her effortless allure that always had him catching his breath in her presence. If he believed that the earlier moment between them had been anything more than a product of his imagination, he was smoking stuff stronger than the K2, or synthetic marijuana, he arrested suspects for.

  His friends were already pulling on their jackets when Sarah returned to drop off their bills. Jamie glanced down at his. He hoped the pie would be on his ticket instead of Trevor’s, but only the burger and the coffee were listed.

  Farther down the page, her signature was the same—that loopy, feminine cursive that contradicted Sarah’s guarded demeanor. But then his fingers brushed a second slip of paper beneath the bill. The azure color of a sticky note was visible through the filmy ticket.

  Though she’d probably stuck it there by accident, her grocery list attached where it didn’t belong, Jamie straightened in his seat. What if it was something else, like a call for help? Why would she reach out only to him in a room full of cops? He blew out a breath. He really was losing it tonight if he was coming up with damsel-in-distress theories.

  Still, he made sure no one else was watching before he flipped over the bill.

  Thanks for everything you do. You’re one of the good ones.

  He read the words twice. People didn’t say things like that to cops. Now profanity-laced rants, topped with middle-finger salutes, those messages were more familiar. He studied the note again. No name. And the letters were block-printed. It wasn’t even addressed to him. Or any officer.

  So how pitiful was it for a twenty-seven-year-old man to tuck that folded square of paper in his jeans pocket, as if it was a secret note from study hall? Jamie decided not to answer that question as he shrugged into his sweatshirt. At the cash register, Sarah accepted Vinnie’s money and impaled his receipt on that tiny spike as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had, though this time the note in Jamie’s pocket made him wonder.

  Sarah caught him watching, and she didn’t look away immediately. He couldn’t have if he’d tried. His pulse pounded so loud in his ears that everyone in the restaurant had to hear it. His palms were as damp as his sweatshirt. With a shy smile, she turned away.

  Jamie couldn’t stop blinking. He dug in his pockets for his car keys.

  The connection had been as short as the one when he’d first arrived. Shorter. Had it not happened twice, it wouldn’t have seemed significant. But now he was certain of a few things. For one, it was possible for every nerve ending in a person’s body to become instantly alert. The other was that the note folded in his pocket really had been intended for him.

  What those things meant was less clear. Could she have overheard the other troopers talking about him before he’d arrived? Could all of this be about pity, after all?

  But when he started toward the cash register, Sarah was gone. Ted had replaced her and was checking out the last few troopers. Jamie slowed. Sarah wasn’t clearing tables or filling salt shakers, either. Where had she gone? The answer to that and his other questions lay beyond the swinging door that separated the restaurant’s dining room from its kitchen.

  He couldn’t burst into the back, locate her and insist that she explain herself, but he couldn’t let her raise these questions and vanish, either.

  “Officer, ready to check out?”

  Ted waved him over to the counter. Jamie opened his wallet and pulled out his debit card.

  Two minutes later, he pulled up his hood and headed outside. The jangling bells jarred him, reviving those same memories that had chased him into the diner earlier. Had he conjured this whole mystery to escape thoughts about the suicide investigation? Had he clung to the distraction because it might at least offer some answers when the other matter remained a black hole of question marks? Either way, he had to know.

  He glanced one last time toward the kitchen as the door whooshed closed. Sarah might not be around to answer his questions tonight, but he was about to become Casey’s best customer until she did.

  Chapter 2

  Sarah Cline hated cowering in the kitchen, but it seemed like her only option now. Even if the dishwasher had to be watching her as he sprayed gunk off plates with the pre-rinse hose, she didn’t dare look his way. How would she explain herself, anyway? For someone who understood just how critical it was for her to keep a low profile, who kne
w what she could lose if she didn’t, she’d practically leaped on the counter and performed a country line dance in her sensible shoes for all the customers to see.

  For all of them? No, her side steps and kick-ball-changes had been for been for just one guy. And she couldn’t explain why she’d done it. A cop? She’d learned the hard way how much she could trust them. She hugged herself tighter, her thumb tracing the jagged pucker of a scar on the underside of her left arm. It was covered, just inside her short uniform sleeve. Hidden. Like so many others.

  She lowered her arms and wiped her sweaty hands inside her apron pockets. From her awkward angle, she could no longer see the officer through the scratched, round window. She couldn’t blame him for his curiosity after her odd behavior tonight, so she was relieved when she caught sight of him again as he slipped out into the rain. Relieved and something else. Wistful? It couldn’t be that. If anything, regret was the thing pushing down on her shoulders like a lead blanket. Maybe tinged with the same anxiety she awoke to every morning and tried to sleep with every night.

  What had possessed her to write that note? She should have minded her own business. She knew better. It couldn’t matter that she’d only today realized that “Mr. Jamie,” the after-school-program volunteer her sweet Aiden had been gushing over for months, was the same “James A. Donovan” whose debit card she swiped at least twice a week. Or that, from snippets of his coworkers’ conversations, she’d learned that something bad had happened to him at work tonight. Or even that the raw expression clouding his hazel eyes was similar to the one living inside her own mirror.

  Not one of those things was a good enough excuse for her to meddle in some guy’s situation with a note...or even two-fifths of a pie. Getting involved in people’s lives encouraged them to ask questions. She couldn’t afford that.

  Especially not from a cop.

  With a shiver, she glanced back at Léon, who was watching her so closely that he’d sprayed water down the front of his apron. He lifted a thick black brow. She frowned at him. This wasn’t the first time she’d hidden in the kitchen at Casey’s, but usually she was avoiding rowdy customers who refused to accept the word no.

  But this one...it was all on her.

  Shooting one last glance to the front of the diner to be sure he was gone, Sarah stepped into the deserted dining room. She grabbed the tub of refilled salt and pepper shakers, ketchup bottles and containers filled with sweetener packets on her way past the counter.

  Ted plucked a peppermint from the bowl by the cash register and popped it in his mouth. “I wondered where you’d wandered off to.”

  “Just planning the desserts for tomorrow.”

  She marveled at how effortlessly she lied, but then most things came easier with practice. And at age twenty-eight, she’d had plenty of practice.

  “The fuzz boys do something to upset you? Because if they did, I could talk—”

  “No, they’re good customers.”

  “Good. But if they get out of line...”

  As Sarah leaned into a booth to reset the condiments, she turned away so that he wouldn’t see her eye roll. Ted hadn’t even hinted that he would ban them for bad behavior. He couldn’t turn away paying customers, especially those who appeared harmless.

  But she’d made the mistake of trusting the police once and had barely survived to tell the story. She brushed away that thought with a swipe of her forearm over her forehead. Compared to those Chicago officers, this group seemed like choir boys.

  When the image of one particular choir member invaded her thoughts, his wide eyes staring back at her, Sarah’s hand jerked. A saltshaker slipped from her fingers and skidded across the table, leaving a sticky white mess on the laminate.

  “Butterfingers tonight?” Ted asked.

  “I’m just tired.”

  The sound system blared with one of the country ballads she’d once adored, as a singer crooned about a love that didn’t exist. Hearts and hope and heaven easily turned to hurt and hits and hell.

  She righted the saltshaker and cleared the residue with her cloth. If only it were as easy to erase the other mistakes she’d made tonight. She had one rule—keep her distance from others—and she’d broken it faster than an order up for scrambled eggs and toast.

  She moved to the next table, but Jamie’s face flashed back at her from the mirrored napkin dispenser. He had kind eyes, she decided, and then shook her head. Why had she chosen now to think about that? She must have noticed his eyes before. Maybe because they matched his boyish face. But when she’d really looked at him tonight, what she’d seen had ripped at her heart.

  So, blame her odd behavior on the misery in his eyes. That rare vulnerability in a guy whose career suggested a preternatural fearlessness had drawn her in, but that was all there was to it. All there ever could be. Friendships were a luxury she couldn’t afford.

  Sarah blinked, the absurdity of those thoughts as shocking as her actions tonight. She needed to go home, where she could reclaim her good sense and her survival instinct. She had to remember the truth: She could count on no one but herself.

  “Marilyn’s late,” Ted said.

  “Again?”

  “She called this time. Car trouble.”

  She’d moved to the set-up table and was rolling cutlery, but now her gaze shifted to the door. At least there wasn’t a crowd of diehards arriving from Salute Lounge. If they had a rush, Ted might ask her to stay until Marilyn arrived. Again.

  “You’d better clock out then,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

  “I do need to get home.”

  “Aiden’s already in bed by now, right?”

  “He’d sure better be, or he’ll never get up for school.” She wished she didn’t still stiffen at his mention of her son’s name. It hadn’t turned out too bad, anyway, the few times she’d had to bring her son to work with her.

  “He doesn’t have to. There’s no school tomorrow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know. One of those teacher in-service days. A kid holiday.”

  Or a single parent’s nightmare. What was she supposed to do with her son now? Even her sitter, Nadia, worked days twice a week.

  “Bring Aiden with you in the morning,” Ted said. “We never get to see him.”

  “I just don’t want him to be bored.” Or seen.

  “You kidding? He loves it here. Who wouldn’t?”

  Maybe a six-year-old who’d prefer to play outside? “Why do you know about this schedule change and I don’t?”

  He held up a sheet of paper. “Local school district calendar. I watch it to know which mornings we’ll be overrun with kids and their parents.”

  But that didn’t explain why she hadn’t known. Had she missed something in Aiden’s backpack? She tried to keep on top of that mess, but sometimes she was just too tired. It was easier to curl up with her sleeping boy after she’d carried him down the freezing second-floor walkway from Nadia’s apartment to her own.

  “Everything’s ready for the morning, right?” Ted asked.

  “The cinnamon rolls are all ready to go in the oven.”

  “You made extra, like I asked?”

  She nodded, his earlier request now making sense.

  “And you’ll be able to come in earlier since Aiden doesn’t have school? Eight maybe?”

  Her second nod hurt a little more. Aiden would be grouchy if she got him up early on his day off.

  “Good. Then you’d better get home.”

  She headed back into the kitchen for her jacket before he changed his mind. She slid it on and pulled up her hood in case it was still raining.

  Jamie had been soaked when he’d come in earlier, though the others had been dry. The thought struck her as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, where puddles remained, though the downpour had dwindled.

&nb
sp; Why was the police officer on her mind again? Didn’t she have enough on her plate without taking on someone else’s problems? Bigger problems even than that she’d known nothing about her son’s school holiday. Obstacles like caring for a child who deserved a better, safer life than she’d given him, and too many bills with a paycheck that wouldn’t stretch. And the ever-present need to look over her shoulder for a boogeyman with a recognizable face, a booming voice and pain-inflicting hands.

  As a familiar tickly sensation scampered up the back of her neck, she splayed her apartment keys between her thumb and first two fingers to face off with a possible attacker.

  No one was following her. She knew that. Aiden was safe. They were safe. So why did every drip of leftover rainwater from the gutter echo in her ears? Why did each crunch of her shoes on the concrete throw off sounds as difficult to place as a ventriloquist’s voice? That seemed to come from behind her.

  She’d made it only to the corner of the storefront when she gave in and peeked over her shoulder. The sidewalk and even the street were deserted. In the lot between Casey’s and its nearest neighbor, Langston’s Furnishings, only two cars remained. Ted’s and the clunker that Léon used to drive himself, the night cook, Marty, and sometimes her to work. At least she wasn’t the only one who didn’t have a car. She hurried across the parking lot, but as she passed Ted’s car, a pair of headlight beams whipped into the lot, the vehicle they were attached to barely slowing to make the turn. The car swerved into a parking space, its driver cutting the engine.

  Sarah froze, a squeal escaping her. She needed to run back inside, yet her feet felt glued in place. Instead, she was forced to watch, an unwilling bystander to her own life. The car door flew open, and the driver leaped out and ran right toward her, something light fluttering beneath the figure’s hooded raincoat.

  As the runner’s bare legs came into view, Sarah released the breath she’d been holding. “Marilyn?”

  Of course, the waitress would be the one racing in and then sprinting across the parking lot with her apron whipping like a flag behind her. So why couldn’t Sarah stop shaking? Why did she have to assume that every fast-moving car would be him coming for her to finish the job, like he’d always said he would?