Without Restraint

by Angela Knight

  Yet Alex had no real desire to pull back and let things cool off. A little voice in the back of her head kept insisting Frank was not the kind of guy who came around more than once in a lifetime. If she didn’t leap on and ride, she’d regret it.

  Trouble was, that little voice was competing with another little voice who swore this was a really, really bad idea.

  And she had no clue which schizoid personality to listen to.

  * * *

  Alex answered a shoplifting call at the Gas-N-Go—some asshat had grabbed a six-pack from the beer cooler and raced out the door with it. The store video didn’t show anybody she knew from previous shopliftings, so she drove around looking for the next twenty minutes without spotting any little jerk swilling stolen Coors. That was the way it went some shifts.

  Ted and Bruce were likewise having slow nights, judging by the list of calls on Alex’s patrol laptop. The computer displayed the calls each car on the shift handled, allowing officers to keep track of what everyone else was doing and where they were at any given time.

  At the moment, Bruce had gone 10-7—out of service—to hit the McDonald’s drive-through, while Ted was working another debris-in-the-roadway call. Some idiot had been leaving bags of glass bottles on Sanders Drive the last few nights, apparently in hopes of puncturing the tires of unwary drivers. Ted had sworn to catch said moron and toss his ass in jail. Except . . .

  Alex paused, staring at the laptop screen with a frown. Ted had gotten out of the car to take care of the trash at 1:40 a.m. It was now 2:04, but he still wasn’t listed as back in service. She keyed her car’s radio microphone. “Charlie 23—Charlie 21. Are you 10-8?” She let go of the key so he could respond, but there was no answer. She keyed the mic again. “Charlie 23?” Nothing.

  Unease slid through her. It should have taken Ted no more than five minutes to take care of that bag of bottles. She keyed the mic. “Dispatch, is Charlie 23 still out with that debris call?”

  “Affirmative, Charlie 21,” the dispatcher replied, sounding bored.

  “I’m going to go see if he needs a hand.”

  “10-4, Charlie 21.” Now she sounded amused. Alex knew exactly what the woman was thinking. You think he needs a hand with a bag of trash? Do you know Ted Arlington at all?

  Maybe the dispatcher was right. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Ted had caught his trash-tossing pranksters and was putting the fear of Dom into them. He loved scaring the crap out of idiots, viewing it, as he often said, as a public service to the rest of the planet.

  But twenty-four minutes?

  Alex hit the gas a little harder than she strictly needed to, though she resisted the impulse to use her siren. She’d feel like a fool if she roared up with blue lights blazing while he was standing there giving some kid a stern talking-to.

  She turned onto Sanders Drive and slowed down. Spotting the familiar shape of Crown Vic taillights on the shoulder of the tree-lined curve, she hit her brakes and pulled in behind the idling Ford. She didn’t see Ted at all, only a mound of black in the roadway, presumably the trash he’d gotten out to remove.

  Frowning, she keyed her mic. “I’m 10-22 at Charlie 23’s location on Sanders Drive, but I don’t see him.”

  “Do you want backup?”

  “Nah, I’ve got it.” But as she grabbed her Maglite and got out, the hair on the back of her neck rose. She immediately drew her weapon. Ted had taught her that you listened to those little hairs, because they knew things your forebrain hadn’t put together yet.

  It was only then that she realized the mound beside Ted’s car wasn’t a black plastic trash bag.

  It was a figure in a black uniform.

  Her training kicked in, defeating the impulse to break into a reckless run to him that could get her shot. Automatically, she swept her gaze and her weapon over the car, the woods, the tangled brush at the edge of the road. Looking for the faint glint of a muzzle jutting from hiding. Nothing. She saw nothing, but it didn’t mean the killer wasn’t there.

  But Ted was there, and he was hurt, could be dying. Now she broke into a run, gun in one hand pointed at the ground, keying her mic with the other. “Officer down! I need an ambulance and backup!”

  She hit her knees beside him, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, illuminating a bloodless face staring blankly at the sky. There was a small black hole in the center of Ted’s forehead. Blood pooled on the ground beneath his head—the bullet’s exit wound had been much larger. It had probably shattered the back of his skull.

  Her mind spat out a random factoid: the last time a Morgan County cop had been shot in the line of duty was 1978. Cops had died in the line since then, of course, but always from traffic accidents or being hit by a car while writing some asshole a ticket.

  Staring into Ted’s empty eyes, Alex felt shock roll slowly over her like a tide of glacial ice. An incoherent mental voice babbled this had to be some kind of test, or maybe a really tasteless prank. Something, anything, other than that somebody had murdered her dearest friend.

  Her gaze wandered away from the body, landing on his patrol car. Something wet glistened on it in the moonlight. Mechanically, she aimed her flash at it. Words, scrawled in something red. Please God, let it not be blood. Numbly she read what the killer had written.

  Filth. Spewed all over the car like crimson vomit. Queer! Deviant! You suck black cock! And worse, from the N-word to every homophobic slur she’d ever heard.

  This wasn’t just a murder. This was a hate crime. That thought banished shock. The reality of Ted’s murder slammed home so hard it seemed her skull rocked.

  Someone shot him, dumbass, a cold, clear mental voice told her. And whoever it was could be drawing a bead on you right now.

  * * *

  Bruce stood in the bend of the road behind the two cars, knowing the glare of her own headlights would blind Alex if she looked in his direction. He raised the rifle and aimed the night vision scope at her glowing green figure, aligning the crosshairs on her head. And waited for her to scream, cry, indulge in some other female emotional display.

  He wouldn’t kill her. Yet. But he’d enjoy the hell out of her grief. Now you know how it feels to have someone you love taken away from you, bitch.

  Instead she scuttled the length of Ted’s patrol car and around in front of the vehicle. She’d evidently realized where his bullet had to have come from and acted to put the engine blocks of both cars between herself and the shooter. He wouldn’t have thought she’d be that cool under fire. Not with her daddy pervert dead anyway. Disappointment blunted his triumph.

  Maybe she hadn’t really loved Ted either.

  The wail of sirens ululated in the distance. Her backup was coming. Slinging the rifle’s strap over his shoulder, he ghosted into the trees. He’d need to get his car and show up before she wondered where the hell he was.

  * * *

  Bruce Greer arrived first, grim-faced and cold-eyed, to help Alex string yellow crime scene tape. They looped it around the trees that crowded close to the road until Ted and his car was ringed in yellow.

  Neither said anything as they worked. Bruce seemed to sense she’d crack wide open if he offered her any sympathy at all. She felt numbly grateful. Lousy lover or not, he was a good partner.

  But then, Bruce’s mother had been murdered. He understood the stunned grief she felt, because he’d felt it, too.

  The night filled with sirens and blinding blue light as more cops roared onto the scene. Not just deputies, but officers from surrounding municipalities, even a couple of South Carolina Highway Patrol troopers in their pressed gray and black.

  Soon the narrow stretch of road was strung with police cars, revolving lights sending waves of white and blue flowing over trees and cops and Ted’s corpse. Halogen lights blazed down on the scene to assist the evidence search, the rumbling generator that powered them filling the air with the oily stink of diesel fumes.

  Officers milled around like wasps from a smashed nest, shining flashes on the grou
nd as they grimly searched for evidence.

  When a cop went down in the line of duty, everybody responded; they’d chase the killer, as the old police saying went, “until the wheels fell off.”

  But this time there didn’t seem to be anybody to chase. The fucker had ghosted. Despite the small army combing the surrounding woods, so far nobody had found so much as a shell casing. He’d obviously cleaned up his brass.

  After that, he’d gotten out the spray paint. Ballsy prick.

  He hadn’t just shot Ted and fled, as any other cowardly assassin would have. Simply murdering a good cop hadn’t been enough for the son of a bitch. He’d had to try to poison his memory, too.

  With dry, burning eyes Alex stared at the homophobic graffiti covering Ted’s car. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

  Except some of the filth read, You suck black cock! And under that were the words Lev. 20:13.

  Alex knew the Leviticus verse: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

  But it was the part about black cock that worried her. That was a little too damned specific to be a coincidence.

  Somebody had known Ted’s secret. And the bigoted fuck had killed him for it.

  But even more disturbing than the graffiti was something she’d realized only after the other cops had started arriving.

  Ted’s badge was missing. The sniper had taken it. Why? Trophy, maybe? That was serial killer behavior.

  Who had done this? That question pounded away in her head again and again like the tolling of a relentless bell. Who had found out Ted’s secret?

  “What kind of bullshit is this?” Bruce growled, glowering at the car. “Ted wasn’t gay. He was as far from a fruit as it’s possible to get.”

  “Some kind of white supremacist crap,” Andre Jones spat. He was a big, beefy black cop who’d been a deputy for twenty years. “We need to look for some Klan motherfuckers, maybe those Sovereign Citizen assholes that hate government. Those bastards are not getting away with killing no cop in this town.”

  “Why did he take Ted’s badge?” Alex said, more to herself than the other deputies.

  “What?” Bruce blinked at her.

  “He took Ted’s badge,” she said. “It’s gone. Why did he take his badge on top of everything else?” And why the hell couldn’t I have shown up twenty minutes sooner and caught the son of a bitch before he murdered my best friend?

  Alex took a blind sip of cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup. One of the deputies had evidently emptied every pot at Burger King into gallon jugs. There were bags of little cheeseburgers, too, but the thought of eating anything made her want to gag.

  There was fuck all else to do. She and the other officers had been banished outside the crime scene tape and told to do crowd control. Not that there was a crowd to control; there were no houses on this stretch of Sanders Drive, so none of the usual nosy neighbors dropped by to see what all the blue lights were for.

  A couple of media vultures were already circling, though. A live truck idled just up the road, its diesel generator rumbling and reeking. A reporter and her cameraman were working the crowd of cops, trying to get something, anything.

  Cassie York was there, too, her blond hair bright under the halogens. The Morganville Courier blogger was the only reporter Alex had any respect for, mostly because she cared more for journalistic ethics than her career. Her friend had tried to gesture her over a couple of times, probably not realizing the dead deputy was Ted. Cassie had never been insensitive.

  Alex just hoped none of the reporters—even Cassie—had gotten a shot of Ted’s car before the shift supervisor ordered it covered with a tarp.

  She was distantly aware that Frank had arrived, uniformed and smelling of shampoo. Not like her grubby self, dirt-covered from scrabbling to hide behind the cars from the fucking assassin. Instead of, say, charging out to catch his ass. Never mind that she hadn’t known where the fuck the sniper was. Never mind that taking cover was what she’d been trained to do.

  She’d let Ted’s killer get away.

  * * *

  Frank stood silently beside Alex, trying to offer whatever comfort he could by his presence. What he really wanted was to put his arms around her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate being made to look unprofessional. She was hanging on by her ragged fingernails as it was.

  Other deputies had tried to approach her, offer their condolences—the whole department apparently knew how close she and Ted had been. Frank had warned them all off with silent headshakes. She wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

  And if any of them wondered how the hell he was entitled to warn anybody off—well, fuck ’em.

  * * *

  Alex looked pale and frozen in the light of the big halogens, her dry eyes too wide. Frank knew the look better than the cops did. Yeah, they’d all seen plenty of death, plenty of grieving people, but this was different. This was seeing a buddy step on an IED right in front of you, or watching three other SEALs shot down while you watched in impotent horror.

  Frank had seen other soldiers struggle with the mortal psychic wounds guilt could inflict. Had felt the weight of midnight regret himself. His fellow cops, on the other hand, had never experienced the sense of black failure that descended when a buddy died.

  Besides, she was female. While the male cops around her might blink reddened eyes or wipe away tears, a female cop who did the same thing would automatically be judged too emotional. Which was probably why Alex had herself so tightly locked down. She must be raging somewhere underneath all that self-control.

  He wasn’t feeling all that steady himself. He’d been listening to the scanner app on his phone before the 10-0 call had gone out. Past midnight or not, he’d been thinking about Alex, wondering whether getting involved in a D/s relationship with her was really a good idea.

  Not that “good idea” really mattered. The fact was, he’d wanted to listen to her voice while she worked. Which probably said all that needed saying about how he already felt about her. There was something that fascinated him about the contrast between her cool, clipped radio voice and the honeyed drawl she used when she’d played with him.

  Then the shit had hit the fan.

  When he’d heard the terror and anguish in her voice as she’d called in the 10-0, his heart had just . . . stopped. She’s out there with a cop killer.

  He’d thrown on his uniform and run for the car. It seemed his heart had only started beating again when he saw her red hair blazing under the halogens.

  “I have to tell Cal,” she said now in a deadened voice. “The sheriff and the chaplain will tell Ted’s mother he’s gone, but nobody knows about Cal.”

  “Do you want me to . . .”

  “Shit!” Alex straightened as if somebody had goosed her with a Taser. “I’ve got to tell the detective!” She jolted forward as if to run.

  Frank grabbed her arm, dragging her to a stop before she could race away. “Tell him what?”

  Her gaze swung to him, finally seem to register he was there. “What if the fucker has gone after Cal? What if he’s already killed him? I didn’t even think . . .” Jerking her personal cell phone off its belt clip, she dialed frantically. Frank watched her listen to it ring. No answer. She let it ring.

  No answer.

  It rang.

  No answer. It went to voice mail. “Cal, call me,” she snapped. “Call me now.” She’d gone so pale, he wondered if she was about to pass out. Instead she pulled it together and started for the crime scene tape.

  “It’s four thirty in the morning,” Frank reminded her, following at her heels. “Maybe he turned off his phone.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s dead.” She ducked under the tape, forcing Frank to lengthen his stride to keep up with her. She headed for Detective Sergeant Ben Tracy, who stood over the body, scribbling furiously in a pocket notebook.

  “Sergeant, I just realized something. I don’t kn
ow why I didn’t think of it sooner, but Ted’s lover . . . This bastard could have gone after him, too. He’s not answering the phone. He could be dead or—”

  “Wait—Ted did have a male lover? That shit on the car is true?” Tracy was a brawny white cop, a hair over six feet, blond and blue-eyed, with the kind of looks that got actors on the cover of People with headlines like SEXIEST MAN ALIVE. He was young for his job, in his early thirties, which might explain why, even called out at this hour, he wore a neatly pressed shirt, chinos, and tie.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” Alex said grimly. “Ted was gay.”

  “And you didn’t mention this until now? The boyfriend could be the shooter, Rogers!” Nine times out of ten when somebody was murdered, the killer was the vic’s lover or family member.

  She made an impatient gesture. “Cal Stephens couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a flyswatter. He hates guns almost as much as he loves Ted. No way could he have done this. And anyway, he’s a bartender. Ted told me earlier he’d be working until three in the morning, which means he’s probably got an alibi. But he should be home by now, and the killer could have gone after him. Which means he may be dead or in danger now.”

  “Goddammit. Okay, let’s go check on him. One way or the other, I want to talk to this guy.” Visibly frustrated, he snarled, “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “She’s in shock,” Frank snapped back. “Ted was the next best thing to her father.”

  Tracy stared at him, not placing him for a moment. “Who the hell are . . . Oh, the SEAL. What do you . . . Never mind. Let’s go.” When Alex started for her car, which she’d moved beyond the tape, he growled, “No, you are not driving. Murphy is right, you’re not hitting on all cylinders. You’re with me. I want to know what else you haven’t told me.”

  Frank got in his own car and followed, with Bruce right behind him. As he rocketed through the night behind Tracy, he hoped to hell Alex wouldn’t end up standing over another friend’s body.