by V. K. Powell
Alex shrugged. “She hasn’t arrived yet.”
“She arranged this briefing in the first place,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “What gives?”
Alex struggled to keep her face calm. She couldn’t appear weak or ineffective to these men. It was so typical of Helen. Screw up and leave her the mess. But this time, whatever her game, she was toying with Alex’s livelihood. The temptation to throw her to the wolves was strong. Alex didn’t owe her shit.
“In all honesty, I don’t know,” she told her male colleagues. “I’m as surprised as you are, but Callahan seems to think the rest of us are just her cheerleading squad, or hadn’t you noticed?”
She intercepted a startled look between the two men and smiled in satisfaction. It was out there now, the fact that she’d failed to stand by another female officer. They could interpret her antagonism toward Helen any way they wanted.
“Yeah, we noticed the attitude,” the DEA supervisor said. “Jesus Christ. I left a search warrant on three meth labs for this.”
Sounding equally disgusted, his companion said, “Get used to it. I’ve worked a few major cases with Callahan. If you want my opinion, she’s a glory hog who gives her troops lousy leadership.”
They sat down and ordered drinks, her new best friends. Over the next hour they took numerous trips to the buffet, discussed progress and strategies for the Sonny Davis investigation, and shared all the dirt they had on Helen. Both men were on the point of leaving when a briefcase landed in the spare chair at their table and a breathy voice announced, “I’m here.”
“Captain Callahan.” Alex stood and began gathering the files she’d referred to. “We were just winding up the meeting.” Her two companions shook hands with Alex, grunted an obligatory farewell to Helen, and left.
When the men were out of earshot, Helen said, “Well, of all the nerve.”
“I agree completely. How dare you schedule a meeting that wasn’t necessary, five hours out of town, and inconvenience three people for your own selfish reasons? Since none of us knew what you really wanted, we discussed the case and adjourned.” Alex gave Helen a scathing look and continued packing her briefcase.
A shocked expression skirted across Helen’s face and disappeared just as quickly, replaced by the sultry visage of a seductress. She slid an arm around Alex’s waist and whispered in her ear, “I’m certain you know what I want. You’re the reason we’re here and you knew it before you came.”
The swell of heat that usually accompanied Helen’s touch was noticeably absent, a fact that gave Alex great satisfaction. A line from The Wizard of Oz skipped through her mind: Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead. She stepped away from Helen’s grasp and conceded, “Yes, I did. I decided it was time I stopped covering for you and started taking up for myself. Everybody sees through you, Helen. They know you’re touting your own agenda for the credit and glory, and it’s over. Stay out of this investigation from now on and out of my life.”
“I cannot believe you betrayed me to these men.” Helen’s face turned a bright shade of crimson as Alex’s words registered. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Of course. I told the truth. But more importantly, I stood up to you for the first time in my life. Never contact me again unless it’s in a professional capacity.” Alex turned and strode away.
Helen came after her, grabbing her arm in the lobby. “Alex, darling. Don’t be like that.” She stroked the hollow of Alex’s cheek with her thumb and looked at her with those intense bedroom eyes.
Amazed that this woman still thought she could assume command of her life, Alex jerked free of her and said, “Touch me again and I’ll bring charges. You’re not in control anymore, Helen. Get used to it.”
“Alex, you’re not listening to me.” Helen’s words were like aspartame, sickly sweet and usually accompanied by hazardous results. “This is just a silly misunderstanding. I’ve missed you. Darling, can’t we talk about this? I know it’s been difficult for you.”
Alex remembered those eyes on her body, those hands stroking and filling her with unbridled pleasure. Amazingly, the only sensation those memories evoked was distaste. “You’re right. We do need to talk.”
As if she’d been given a second chance, Helen’s attitude changed from solicitous to in-charge. She steered them toward a love seat in a quiet corner of the lobby. “Mind if I get a drink?”
“Actually—”
“You don’t expect me to have this conversation completely unfortified, do you?” Helen flagged down a passing barman and gave her order. Her palm was hot against Alex’s leg as she kneaded the well-defined muscle in her thigh. “That’s one thing I can always count on.” She smiled up at Alex. “Even when we’re fighting, your body still wants me.”
Alex waited for the usual pulse to hammer in her crotch. Nothing. She drew a deep breath of relief. “Yes, Helen, we did have great sex,” she said. “But it wasn’t worth the price.”
Helen flinched, but her recovery was almost immediate. “Will you ever forgive me? I’d like to make it up to you somehow.”
Alex’s mind flashed back to Keri. It had only been days ago that she leaned against Keri’s chest as they danced, and listened to her heart pound. How could two women’s touches feel so different and elicit such physically similar but emotionally diverse responses? Helen’s calculating caresses only reminded her that their life together had been emotionally charged but substantively void. Keri offered something altogether different. She reminded Alex of life before Helen Callahan—love, possibility, hope—all the things Helen had denounced or destroyed.
“Helen, it’s too late,” Alex said flatly. “It’s over.” Her voice cut like a surgeon’s knife, steady and sure.
Helen stopped, stared into Alex’s eyes and dropped her hands into her lap. “You sound serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
The muscles around Helen’s mouth tightened, but her eyes sparkled with challenge. Sparks of light flashed in her squinted eyes and her nostrils flared. Her gaze never leaving Alex’s face, she taunted, “Like you have a better offer. Get real. Obviously she doesn’t want you or you wouldn’t be sitting here with your tail tucked between your legs, pretending we’re saying good-bye for good. Let me guess, little Miss Innocent?”
Alex checked her rising anger, determined not to stoop to Helen’s level. She got to her feet. “Here’s your drink.”
They were both silent as a waiter set the shot of bourbon on the low table in front of Helen.
“I’m going now,” Alex said as soon as he moved away.
“Sure, you are.” Helen downed the bourbon with one swift gulp and reached for Alex’s hand. When she pulled away, Helen’s shocked expression quickly turned to rage. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. Nobody walks away from me.” As the distance between them grew, Helen’s last desperate insult echoed through the hotel lobby. “After you’ve popped her cherry and get bored, don’t expect me to be waiting.”
Without looking back, Alex walked out the door and headed toward the parking lot, feeling Helen’s hold on her heart and mind fall away.
*
Steady rain, sharp lightning, and rumbling claps of thunder accompanied Alex on her journey back to Granville. As she drove, she relived Helen’s shock and anger and smiled with sheer satisfaction. Finally their professional relationship could assume its appropriate place alongside the others in her life—no more important, no less. But it was the personal aspect that brought a smile to Alex’s face. Helen’s grip on her had ended, and Alex knew the change was permanent. She would never be affected by Helen again. The sway of her sexual prowess no longer existed for Alex. She wasn’t excited or enticed in the slightest; in fact, thinking about Helen repelled her.
It was Keri’s face that flashed constantly before her now, lips slightly parted, full and tempting. Alex wanted to feel those lips against hers, to have them explore and torment her body. She visualized Keri’s f
irm body under her sliding, stroking, and screaming to orgasm. Alex imagined the lust and subsequent satisfaction in Keri’s eyes as she came with Alex’s fingers buried deep inside her. The image left her wet and weak. She tried to replace her fantasy with memories of past encounters and other lovers, but her attempt failed miserably, only increasing her craving for Keri.
She repeated the well-known admonishment that kept her at arm’s length: Keri was a subordinate. Alex knew that fact alone could get her demoted or even fired. Such a breach of protocol was totally unacceptable. Yet she felt she’d go mad trying to contain her feelings and keep their contact strictly business. The hypnotic flapping of windshield wipers emulated the conflict in her mind: It can work, no it can’t, yes it can.
Suddenly every encounter with Keri formed part of a larger picture that made sense to her, giving new context to her reactions. Her anger over the brunette’s fondling of Keri in the police parking lot. Her conflict and procrastination about placing Keri on the task force. The electrifying results of Keri’s first touch in the gym and their near kiss in the locker room. And finally that dance and their incredible kiss at Shelly’s bar. Everything crystallized into pinpoint clarity. She was undoubtedly attracted to and sexually aroused by Keri, but there was more. No matter how professionally inappropriate or potentially painful, her feelings were inescapable. The unthinkable had happened; she was in danger of falling in love and she had no clue what to do about it. Her options seemed as clear as this dreadful weather.
Headlights from an approaching vehicle returned Alex to the business of getting home in one piece. They seemed to be the only cars on the road as she slowed to round Brighton’s Curve. Rain pounded the windshield as jagged lightning dissected the night sky. Home was very close and she could hardly wait to relax in her own surroundings.
She squinted for visibility through the downpour. The oncoming car hit a puddle of water and hydroplaned out of control. Headlights suddenly veered into her lane of travel. She blew the horn but the vehicle continued its path toward her. Alex had only two choices: straight ahead into the lights or down the embankment.
*
Keri was on her way home when the accident call was broadcast. Normally, she wouldn’t have responded but there were no patrol cars in service and the accident involved personal injury. Even though she was no longer in uniform, she felt compelled to respond. She flipped the emergency switches and her unmarked car became a flashing, wailing chariot.
Cars jerked to the side of the road and intersections whizzed by as Keri negotiated the evening traffic, expertly shifting from gas pedal to brake, accelerating around the unobservant and slowing for the uncertain, just as her father had taught her when she was only ten. Lights created a spray of color through the heavy rain and coming night. As she approached Brighton’s Curve, the traffic thinned out until there were no cars at all, much less signs of an accident. Maybe someone skidded off the road onto the muddy clay shoulder, righted himself, and continued on his way. Perhaps whoever phoned in was confused. They hadn’t stayed at the scene, so perhaps there was nothing to see.
Keri positioned her car just off the shoulder of the road, grabbed her neon orange raincoat from the seat beside her, and pulled it on. Grumbling to herself and cursing the downpour, she retrieved her Maglite from its charger on the floorboard and sloshed her way to the steep embankment that gave way to Brighton’s Creek fifty feet below.
Spiraling blue lights from her vehicle cast eerie dancing shadows through the saturated night. The sloping shoulder to the right of the roadway, once built up by gravel and rock, was now riddled with gullies. Pine trees and blossoming clematis covered the ridge leading down to the creek. As Keri splashed through standing water toward the apex of the curve, hairs on the back of her neck came to attention. Skid marks started on the pavement approximately twenty feet in front of her car heading toward the embankment. On the clay overhang, tire tracks continued over the edge of the precipice into the foliage below.
Keri peered over the side. A dark-colored full-sized vehicle was nestled precariously between two skinny pine trees about ten feet down on the side of the ledge. Keri couldn’t tell if there were any occupants. If there were, they could be seriously injured and it would take a while to get them up the slick embankment. She began her hazardous descent toward the vehicle. The terrain seemed to shift beneath her tennis shoes. She’d have been happy for cleats and a tether but she settled for small shrubs that dotted the bank and prayed their rain-soaked roots would hold her weight.
“Is anybody down there?” She inched closer to the car and flipped on her Maglite to survey the stability of the vehicle’s position.
She reeled at the sight before her. The car, a green Ford Crown Victoria, was wedged between the two small trees with its left front and right rear bumpers the only apparent means of support. Worse still, from the two antennas mounted on the trunk and the permanent tags, Keri realized with a sickening jolt that this was an unmarked police car. In the same instant she knew it was Alex’s vehicle, and fear almost made her double over. Where was she?
Heat began to rise inside Keri’s raincoat despite the chill that enveloped her. As she inched along the car, she clung desperately to a patch of kudzu that wrapped around the base of a small poplar tree. The flashlight in her right hand urgently intruded into the body of the vehicle, providing proof of its owner. A tan briefcase lay on the passenger side floorboard with the gold initials “KAT” gleaming in the stream of light. Keri had seen Alex carrying that case many times.
Terror gripped her throat as she tried to call out. Only a whisper escaped her lips. Steeling herself, she cried, “Alex! Can you hear me? Where are you?”
Rain beating against the side of the car was the only response.
Fastening her left arm around the pine tree at the car’s front bumper, Keri leaned toward the driver’s door and stuck her flashlight inside for one last look. At least Alex wasn’t trapped in the car, injured and in need of medical assistance. A weakening dread passed through her as she took in a dark stain trailing across the upholstery from the driver’s seat to the passenger door.
Without warning the rear end of the vehicle began to slide. Keri swung her weight toward the pine tree and wrapped her right arm around it for support. Her flashlight fell to the ground. The unmistakable sound of glass breaking and metal being crushed left Keri alone in the dark with no backup and no idea of Alex’s location.
Keri clung to the lone pine with aching arms. She was soaked and couldn’t see much, but she had to find Alex. She wasn’t about to slide quietly down the slope. Using her left hand and foot, she made gouges in the hillside as she clung to the tree with her right arm. If she could make them deep enough to support her weight she could climb back out of this rain-drenched hell. Her fingers ached as nails cracked and broke away, but she still clawed at the muddy incline. As soon as tiny ruts appeared they filled with water and sloughed off down the bank. “I’m no quitter,” she kept repeating to herself, digging harder.
“Officer, you down there?” A gruff male voice called from the top of the ridge.
It seemed to Keri she’d been hugging that pine tree for hours, calling for Alex. “Yeah, I’m here, but the car’s a goner. There was somebody in that vehicle and I have to find her.” Keri called back up the bank.
“Just hang on, lady. I’m the wrecker driver and you ain’t findin’ nobody till I get you outta there. I’ll light up the place with my spots and drop you a line.”
After what seemed an eternity the towrope appeared and Keri grabbed hold.
“Can you climb or do I gotta haul you up?” he hollered.
“You’ll probably have to winch me out of here. The hillside is completely washed away down to the clay.” Her muscles ached with tension from the ordeal. Her feet slipped, sending her belly first into the red mud and sharp undergrowth as she tried to leverage herself upward. Please let me get out of here soon so I can find Alex. She has to be all right. When she finally saw l
ights at the top of the rise, she reached out her hand and was drawn swiftly over the edge onto solid ground by the wrecker driver’s massive bulk.
Beth Price and several uniformed officers and paramedics rushed to her side.
“Are you okay, Keri?” Beth’s face registered concern as she gave her a visual once-over. “Let the EMTs check you out. You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine, Sarge, really. It’s just a few scratches. Look, this is important. That’s Lieutenant Troy’s car down there.”
“Yeah, we know.”
“I’m not sure where she is, but I think she may be bleeding.” Beth’s comment finally registered. “What do you mean, you know? We have to find her.”
“Calm down, Keri. We already have. Or rather, she found us. She managed to crawl out of the car when it wedged against the trees before the rain got too heavy. She got to a house and the folks there called in just as she passed out. I think her ankle’s badly bruised and she probably has a light concussion. She can’t walk too well, but she’s in my car.”
Not waiting to hear the rest, not caring about anything except confirming Alex was all right, Keri sprinted to the sergeant’s car, her legs suddenly adrenaline-powered. As she neared the vehicle the pale dome light shone on rain-soaked auburn hair and Alex turned to greet her through the open passenger window. She had a cut lip, and blood from a raised knot on her forehead covered the left side of her face.
“Oh, my God,” Keri gasped.
“Do I look that bad?” Alex winced from an attempt to smile.
“God, I’m glad to see you.” Keri reached hesitantly through the window, hand outstretched, afraid of Alex’s response. Sensing no indication of withdrawal, Keri delicately outlined Alex’s jaw with her finger. As she stroked Alex’s face, their eyes met and held in an admission of mutual caring that left Keri drained of strength but charged with emotion. Her eyes clouded with tears, and she said hoarsely, “I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful in my life.”
