“Make sure they stay gone,” Gina said, hooking her cuffs back onto her belt and running to the front door. She opened the glass storm door and knocked against the inside door. “KCPD!” she announced. The woman screamed, and the man yelled all kinds of vile curses. “Vicki Bismarck, are you all right? This is the police, answering a call to this address. I’m coming inside.”
Twenty minutes later, Gina and Derek had Gordon Bismarck and his former wife, Vicki, separated into two rooms of their tiny, trashed home. Gina had bagged the box cutter Gordon had dropped when she’d pulled her gun and blinked her watery eyes at the stench of alcohol, vomit and sweat coming off Gordon’s body. Either Gordy and his buddies had been beefing up their courage for this confrontation or they’d partied hard and gotten stupid enough to thinking violating a restraining order was a good idea.
Although the slurred epithets were still flying from the living room where Derek had taken Gordon to put a winter coat on over his undershirt, and Vicki was bawling in the kitchen while Gina tried to assess the woman’s injuries, Gina was already wrapping up this case in her head. Even if Vicki refused to press charges, she could book Gordon on breaking and entering, violating his restraining order and public intoxication—all of which should keep him out of Vicki’s life long enough for her to get the help she needed. If she’d ask for it. Clearly, this wasn’t the Bismarcks’ first rodeo with KCPD. That probably explained why Gordon had brought his friends.
Although she hadn’t noted any stab wounds on Vicki, the woman was cradling her left arm as if it had been yanked or twisted hard enough to do some internal damage. Gina glanced around at the slashed curtains and overturned chairs in the kitchen, her gaze landing on the shattered cell phone in the corner that had been crushed beneath a boot or hurled across the room. Clearly, there’d been a substantial altercation here.
Gina righted one of the chairs and urged the skinny woman to sit. “Will you let me look at that arm?” Gina asked, tearing off a fresh paper towel for the woman to dab at her tears. When Vicki nodded, Gina knelt beside her. Bruise marks that fit the span of a man’s hand were already turning purple around her elbow. But there didn’t seem to be any apparent deformity suggesting a broken bone. Didn’t mean it hadn’t been twisted savagely, spraining muscles and tendons. Gina pushed to her feet and headed toward the refrigerator-freezer. “An ice pack should help with the swelling.”
She heard a crash from the living room and spun around as Derek cursed. “Gina—heads up!”
“Are you turnin’ me in, you bitch? My boys are gonna kill you!”
“Gordy!” Vicki screamed as Gordon charged into the kitchen.
Don’t miss KANASAS CITY COP by USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Miller, available in March 2018 wherever Harlequin Intrigue Books® books and ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2018 by Julie Miller
ISBN-13: 9781488098475
Lay Down the Law
First published as Cops and…Lovers? by Silhouette Intimate Moments in 2001
This edition published in 2018
Copyright © 2001 by Linda Castillo.
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