Wild at Heart

by Jane Graves

  Enough.

  She got up off the sofa, collected dirty laundry from her bathroom hamper, and threw it into a pink plastic basket. She’d always felt as if there was nothing in life she couldn’t put into perspective if only she took a load of clothes to the Laundromat. She’d resisted getting a washer and dryer all these years, because doing laundry was just the kind of mindless activity she needed sometimes to get her out of her apartment, to keep her from brooding, to clear her head.

  When she was growing up, laundry had been a task for the hired help, always performed out of sight of the family, with clean clothes appearing in drawers and linen closets as if little laundry fairies had stolen the dirty things away in the night and replaced them with clean ones. Now Val took great joy in doing the dumb little mundane tasks of life, even though her mother would have stroked out at the very thought of it.

  Val decided that after she finished at the Laundromat, she’d head over to her office to do a little research. She had a missing-person case where a wife was sure her husband had run away with another woman three months ago, but since there appeared to be no foul play involved, the police wouldn’t touch it. Actually, the woman didn’t want her husband back, but she desperately wanted the Lhasa Apso he’d taken with him. A little computer research would probably help pin down the guy’s whereabouts. Missing husband, missing dog—it didn’t matter to Val.

  Anything to keep her mind off Alex.

  Alex had dreaded the humiliation of standing in the courtroom in front of the judge, entering a plea, having bail set, with all eyes in the vicinity focused on him, wondering how a cop could possibly have ended up with a murder accusation against him. Fortunately Millner made quick work of getting him released. The bail that was set was reasonable given the extent of the crime he was accused of committing. But even though Millner was working effectively on his behalf, Alex was still disgusted at the very thought of having to deal with him.

  He told Alex he’d be in touch, picked up his briefcase, and walked out of the courtroom as if encounters like this were all in a day’s work. Even though the two of them had clashed in the past, Millner was all business—one of those guys who didn’t seem to care who his clients were or what they’d done. If you had the money, he had the time. Dave told Alex he should consider himself lucky in that regard. Instead, it made Alex hate him even more.

  After posting his bail, Dave drove Alex back to his apartment, where three reporters lay in wait for him. He shoved his way past them, went inside, and took a much-needed shower, feeling as if he had to wash that holding cell out of every pore in his body. As the water rained down on him, he made a vow to himself that he intended to keep: he wasn’t going back to jail—under any circumstances. He was an innocent man, and he’d be damned if anyone on this planet was going to lock him up again. And he’d be damned if he was going to sit back and let guys like Henderson and Millner determine his fate.

  When Alex went back outside, the reporters were still waiting for him, shouting stupid questions and rolling tape that was probably going to end up on the evening news. One guy got a little too close, and Alex came within an inch of inserting his camera in a place where there was not nearly enough light to get a clear picture of anything. Their lack of rational behavior astonished him. Did it make any sense at all to approach a man you knew had been accused of murder, stick a microphone in his face, and start yelling at him?

  Bloodsucking bastards.

  He got into his car, refusing to say a word. Even though one of the reporters tried to follow, all it took was a little bit of creative driving to lose him. Then he headed for Val’s apartment.

  Ten minutes later, he entered her neighborhood, an area near downtown that was neat and clean but ugly as sin, with bland prewar architecture and storefronts that were still firmly rooted in the mid–twentieth century. Weird people lived in neighborhoods like this one—people on the fringe who wore strange clothes, had excessive tattoos, and didn’t think twice about piercing body parts that were best left intact. The neighborhood was still home to a few older people who’d been there since time began and were loath to leave, even with the influx of bizarre neighbors, but mostly it was a haven for the alternative crowd. Val called it home with a smile on her face.

  He parked his car in the only place he could find—a parallel spot a block away from his destination. He got out and started toward Val’s building, only to see her through the smudged plate-glass window of a nearby Laundromat.

  She wore a tight pair of jeans slung low on her hips, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She flicked a long, dark strand of hair over her shoulder, then started pulling laundry out of a washer with the single-minded intensity that was so much a part of her personality. Five years hadn’t mellowed her in the least. As cool as he was, that was how hot she ran. And always—always—she had to do things her way, whether her way was best or not.

  Alex remembered a shoot/don’t shoot scenario she’d undergone in training. There had been a crowd of people behind her target, yet she’d still opened fire. He’d reprimanded her for it. She’d countered that she’d hit the suspect dead center. Six times. What she’d never understood was that her marksmanship didn’t matter in the least. Yes, she was one hell of a shot, but it was easy to be off a few inches in a real-life situation, so she had to learn to follow procedure to avoid getting innocent people killed.

  Follow procedure. Val didn’t even know the meaning of the words. She couldn’t toe the line if her life depended on it. She insisted on moving the line, erasing the line, drawing another line entirely. She’d irritated the crap out of him nearly every time she opened her mouth. She soaked up everything he said, then challenged all of it. And good God—if she’d said why one more time, he would cheerfully have smacked her.

  Then there was that day in the park.

  One relentlessly hot July afternoon, he’d run into her on the jogging trails that wove through Cottonwood Park, a public facility that consisted of acres of fields and forest adjacent to the police academy. Seeing her there didn’t surprise him—she prided herself on physical fitness, and he had no doubt she could kick the ass of ninety percent of the other cadets, male or female. He’d met men who could chew iron and spit bullets, but not one of them had the guts Valerie Parker had. Unfortunately, she did something that day that told him she also had an unhealthy dose of insanity thrown in.

  She challenged him to a footrace.

  “Come on,” she said, injecting a taunting tone to her voice as she danced from one foot to the other. “Two miles. I’ll leave you in the dust.”

  Alex hadn’t been able to believe it. She stood five-foot-six, while he was six-foot-four with a stride that outmatched hers by a mile, which meant he was predestined to be able to outrun her anytime, anyplace.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “One mile, if you don’t think you can go two.”

  Thinking it wouldn’t hurt to knock her down a notch or two, he’d said sure, that he could stand to put in another couple of miles at a nice, leisurely pace.

  They took off. She pushed—God, how she pushed, her legs pumping wildly just to stay within shouting distance of him. Then she surprised him by closing some of the distance between them, and he’d actually had to kick it up a notch in order to stay ahead of her. But still the outcome was hardly in question. He heard her panting behind him, taunting him, even when she could barely breathe for the effort she was exerting.

  Then he’d done something he’d never done in his life, and to this day he wasn’t completely certain what had made him do it. Maybe he’d sensed something in her that needed to win, that was desperate to win, something beyond claiming victory in a little footrace. Maybe he just wanted to see her reaction. Whatever the case, he’d lightened up. He’d imperceptibly shortened his strides as they reached the cluster of crape myrtles that marked the end of the second mile, allowing her to huff past the trees only a few strides ahead of him to win the race.

  She came to a halt and leaned over, her han
ds against her knees, her breath coming in great, gulping gasps. When she looked up, he saw sweat pouring down her face, plastering golden-brown spirals of hair against her temples.

  “Told you I could take you,” she said. “Guess it’s true what they say, huh? The bigger they are, the harder they fall?”

  Humility had never been one of Val’s strong suits, a quality that had pretty much prevented her from carrying on a nice, cooperative relationship with her fellow cadets. And right now, it wasn’t endearing her to him, either.

  “Might want to spend a little more time on the old cardiovascular workout,” she went on. “I mean, you just got beaten by a girl.” She shook her head sadly. “What will the other cops think?”

  If she hadn’t gloated, maybe he wouldn’t have said a word. He’d have just let her think she’d beaten him and gone about his business. But he’d always had a competitive nature himself, and the words were out of his mouth before he knew it.

  “They’ll probably think I was an idiot to let you win.”

  She blinked with surprise. “You didn’t—”

  She froze as the truth struck her.

  “You bastard!”

  She hauled off and belted him. Hard. With every ounce of energy she had, she smacked him on the upper arm, then drew back to do it again. Before she could throw that second punch, he grabbed her by the wrist, spun her around, and pinned her against him, his arm clamped around her chest.

  “Val! Cut it out!”

  “Damn you for patronizing me! If I beat you, I want to really beat you! Now let me go!”

  “Are you going to hit me again?”

  “Are you going to be a pompous, condescending ass?”

  She punctuated that last word with an elbow to his ribs. He recoiled in shock, the breath momentarily knocked out of him. When she spun around to face him, he grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Are you aware that you just struck a superior officer?”

  She made a scoffing noise, and that was when he knew: she was never going to make it. Never.

  It wasn’t as if she couldn’t cut it academically. In that regard she was at the top of the class. Hell, she was a better shot than any of the other cadets. She exceeded the minimum physical requirement by a landslide. But her attitude would make her a danger to any officer she worked with. A harsh, abrasive disciplinary problem somebody was going to have to deal with on a regular basis. A competitiveness that just wasn’t healthy for an officer in the field. And a temper … God Almighty, what a temper. How would she respond to citizens who got crossways with her? With suspects who gave her crap? Would she haul off and belt them, too?

  There was a part of Val that would never fall in step with the rest of the world. She had an outlook on life that was so radically different from his own that it should have instantly repelled him.

  It didn’t.

  Instead, the strangest feeling had overcome him. The cool, methodical way he negotiated his life suddenly seemed to fade into the background, and he’d had the most incredible urge to grab onto that energy of hers, to draw from it, because just being around her made him feel alive in a way he never had before.

  They stood there staring at each other for a long time, both of them still breathing heavily. Slowly something shifted, expanded between them. It was as if the hot summer air had become electrified all around them. She licked her lips, a smooth, sensual movement of her tongue, and all at once he’d found himself thinking about what it might be like to kiss those lips. And the look on her face said that for maybe the first time since he’d met her, their thoughts were in perfect alignment.

  He dropped his gaze to her lips, tracing their fullness with a slow sweep of his eyes. It was an involuntary action, and the moment he realized he was doing it, he yanked his gaze back up again. He hadn’t moved fast enough. Those lips he’d just been admiring curved into a knowing smile.

  Damn.

  She gave him a look that said she’d finally cracked his code and she could get under his skin anytime she wanted to. And he had the most uncanny feeling that it was the truth.

  He released her and backed away, horrified that his thoughts had had nothing to do with her as a cadet and everything to do with her as a woman. And that was absolutely unacceptable.

  He forced his face into a stoic expression. “Learn your limitations, Val. Don’t challenge somebody twice your size to a footrace. You’ll lose every time.”

  She gave him a knowing smile. “I don’t think there are any limitations. None at all.”

  There were so many meanings to that comment that he couldn’t begin to sort them all out. She backed away from him, one step, two, then turned and jogged away. She never looked back, but somehow he knew that she was aware that he was watching every stride she took.

  And now, five years later, as he watched her through the window of the Laundromat, he felt the same way he’d felt back then. No matter how wrong he knew it was, he just couldn’t take his eyes off her, which brought him right back around to thinking about that one night they’d spent together.

  And he had to stop it. Right now.

  If there was something she was forgetting about last night, anything that could point to someone else who might have been in that house, he had to find out what it was. He did not need to be thinking about sex with this woman, no matter how unforgettable it had been, because it had led to nothing but grief for both of them. She had frustrated him and fascinated him all at the same time, and that was a dangerous combination—one he needed to steer clear of at all costs. She was a witness. Nothing more. And undoubtedly she’d be a hostile one.

  Keep your cool, or she’ll make you lose it. Bank on it.

  He shoved the glass door open and stepped inside. Humidity hung heavily in the air, mingling with the scent of laundry soap and dryer sheets. Rows of rusty-edged washers hummed and squeaked. On a red vinyl couch at the back of the room, an old lady in a blue-flowered dress and a hair net sat reading People magazine.

  “Val.”

  She spun around, her expression shifting to one of surprise, then suspicion. In the span of a single second she seemed to grow two inches, her spine straightening like that of a soldier facing inspection. She pushed a strand of long, curly hair behind her ear and gave him a wary frown, as if he were the last person she’d expected to see and the first person she’d go to war with if she did.

  She turned to one of the dryers, rested the pink laundry basket against her hip, and started fishing out towels. She was the only person on the planet who could make doing laundry look like a mission from God.

  “I see you’re out on bail,” she said.

  “We need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “What did you see when you were outside the Reichert house?”

  She sighed with disgust. “We’ve been through this already.”

  “Last night was not the best time to discuss it.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you seemed pretty hell-bent on discussing it anyway. I have the bruises to prove it.”

  He glanced down at her arm and saw that she wasn’t lying. A faint, purplish bruise circled her left arm just above her elbow. A quick glance told him she had a matching one on the right. If she was out to make him feel guilty, she’d succeeded.

  “I need some answers here, Val. The detective on the case has already got me convicted.”

  “Really?” She slapped the laundry basket down on the counter and plucked out a worn bath towel. “Whatever happened to solidarity in the ranks?”

  “I drew the biggest bastard in the department. And you know it’s even worse for a cop. Everybody assumes we get cut slack, so we get no slack at all.”

  She flicked the wrinkles out of the towel and started to fold it, which told Alex she didn’t give much of a damn about that. His hope that maybe she’d become just a shade less hardheaded in the past five years flew right out the window.

  “What do you know about the Reicherts?” he asked. “Do you know of any
one who might have had a motive to kill Shannon?”

  She faced him with a look of exasperation. “Has it escaped your attention that I’ll probably be the chief witness for the prosecution? Testifying against you?”

  “All I want you to do is think about what else you might have seen that night. No matter how insignificant it seems.”

  “I’m a private investigator. If I’d seen anything else—anything—I’d have documented it, insignificant or not. It’s my job, and I’m damned good at it.”

  Private investigator. Alex had to fight to erase the derisive expression he felt settling over his face. Not that it surprised him that she’d turned out to be one of those. Shoot from the hip, skirt the law, answer to no one, with the concept of cooperation not even an issue. If ever there was a profession tailor-made for Valerie Parker, that was it.

  “You know as well as I do that sometimes people don’t remember details until later,” he told her. “All I want you to do is think for a minute. Try to remember.”

  She slapped the folded towel down beside the laundry basket. “Do you think I haven’t? Do you honestly think I haven’t gone over last night in my mind at least a hundred times already?”

  “Then you need to go over it a hundred and one.”

  “A thousand and one won’t tell you any more than you know right now.”

  “What exactly did you tell the police?”

  “The truth. And nothing but.”

  “And what do you consider to be the truth?”

  “You know what I saw last night. That’s what I told them, and what I’ll continue to tell them. I’m not lying for anyone, including you.”

  “You mean especially me.”

  She gave him that look he thought he’d forgotten—that stern, tight-jawed, dug-in expression that said she wasn’t about to be swayed by anyone or anything. She returned to her towel folding, pointedly ignoring him.