Once a Hero

by Lisa Childs

  “Mayor Standish…” Who Kent claimed had a controlling interest in the paper. “So why do you think she joined the Citizen’s Police Academy?”

  His grin widened. “Same reason you have, Ms. Powell. To spy for the mayor.”

  “I don’t work for the mayor,” she protested.

  He just shook his head, still smiling, and opened the door. “Okay, everyone, Ms. Powell and Ms. Standish were our last participants, so this traffic stop concludes tonight’s class. Please remember,” he said, glancing at Tessa Howard, who wore a skirt that wasn’t much shorter than Joelly Standish’s, “to dress more appropriately for our outdoor classes.”

  Even in her sweater, lightweight jacket and jeans, Erin was chilled, so she didn’t take offense when everyone disbursed for their vehicles without waiting for her. But Ms. Standish, with her high heels and unwieldy bag, was easy to catch as she headed down the ramp, instead of the stairs, to the lower levels.

  “Where are you parked?” Erin asked her.

  The woman, who was probably in her early twenties like Erin, shook her head, tossing waves of honey-blond hair around her shoulders. “I didn’t drive here.”

  Did she have a car coming to pick her up? After all, she was Lakewood royalty, and according to some, a spoiled heiress. Her father probably had a chauffeur waiting at her beck and call.

  “Do you need a ride somewhere?” Erin asked. “I’d be happy to give you a lift.”

  Joelly smiled. “Thanks, but where I’m going is close by. I can walk.”

  Heels on cobblestone sidewalks? Erin doubted it, but obviously this woman, who was nearly as much a class pariah as she was, didn’t want her company, either.

  Curious to learn more about the mayor’s daughter’s motives for joining the CPA, Erin persisted. “I was told that this neighborhood can get quite dangerous at night. You really shouldn’t walk alone.”

  “I’m not alone,” Joelly said, swinging her mammoth, herringbone-patterned purse out from her narrow shoulder.

  A sound emanated from the bag. And when Joelly undid a small flap, a tiny black head popped out. The little dog wriggled, and two ears—each bigger than the face of the bug-eyed critter—popped out, too. Its tiny white teeth bared, the dog growled even as it trembled.

  “Shh, Sassy,” the woman gently admonished her pet. “Behave.”

  “What is it?” Erin asked.

  “A pit bull trapped in the body of a long-haired Chihuahua.” With two fingers Joelly stroked the little head between the ears. “So I’m perfectly safe.”

  Although the dog considered itself a pit bull, Erin doubted it would fool would-be muggers into thinking the same. But not wanting to antagonize the mayor’s daughter, she just smiled. “If you say so…”

  The blond woman glanced up from her dog and focused on Erin. Gossip had labeled Joelly Standish a shallow ditz, but her eyes, an odd caramel color, narrowed with surprisingly shrewd intelligence. “I’m not so sure about you, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Erin swallowed hard, unnerved by the other woman’s scrutiny. “Are you talking about how no one likes me?”

  “That’s your fault. Your column antagonizes them,” Joelly pointed out. “I don’t think you’re in danger, though, because you’re the one who poses the threat.”

  “I’m not going to do a story on you,” Erin assured her.

  Joelly emitted a tinkling laugh that had the dog’s ears lifting. “You couldn’t if you tried, not at the Lakewood Chronicle.”

  “I don’t understand.” In truth, she was actually afraid that she did. She was afraid that Kent Terlecki hadn’t lied to her. About anything.

  “I used to get a lot of bad press,” the heiress admitted. “So much that my father bought the Lakewood Chronicle and promoted his best friend to editor-in-chief.” She cocked her head, unconsciously imitating her little dog as it stared at Erin. “Of course, he really didn’t do that for me. Or maybe not even to spare himself more embarrassment over me. He probably did it so he could go after the Lakewood Police Department.”

  Damn Kent Terlecki.

  “Why would he do that?”

  Joelly smiled. “My father doesn’t like to lose.”

  “What has he lost?” Erin wondered.

  “An old girlfriend to Chief Archer. The chief’s late wife used to go out with my dad until she met Frank Archer twenty-six years ago.”

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge,” Erin mused, surprised also by how matter-of-factly Joelly spoke about her father’s obsession with a woman other than her mother. Somehow she suspected the heiress hadn’t had the idyllic upbringing everyone thought she’d had.

  Joelly’s narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. “You don’t know my dad. I think only his respect for Mrs. Archer kept him in line all these years. But since she died a year ago, he’s taken the gloves off and is really going after the chief.”

  “Why doesn’t he just fire him?” Erin asked. “Your father’s the mayor.”

  “But the public loves Chief Archer,” Joelly said. “My father…not so much lately.”

  “And an election’s coming up,” Erin remembered. “So the mayor has to discredit Chief Archer in the press before he can fire him.”

  “Or cut the chief’s budget, make his life generally miserable and force him to quit,” Joelly explained. “But you must know all of this already, or you wouldn’t be writing that hateful column of yours.”

  “I write about Sergeant Terlecki,” Erin pointed out, starting to feel ill as she realized her vendetta, not her talent, was why she’d been given her own column.

  “Exactly. My father’s known Frank Archer a long time. He knows that to get to the chief, he has to go after the people Frank Archer loves the most.”

  “He loves Kent Terlecki?”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t you…” Her eyes brightened with amusement. “Oh, you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Joelly shook her head. “Despite what people might think, I’m not my father’s pawn. And I won’t be yours, either, Ms. Powell.”

  Her little dog swinging in the bag at her side, she headed on down the ramp. But she turned back and advised, “You’re the one who needs to be careful.”

  KENT TIGHTENED HIS GRASP on the dart. He narrowed his eyes, staring toward the board and Erin Powell’s beautiful albeit hole-filled face.

  “Throw it!” the chief ordered, his voice thick with anger and exasperation.

  God, he was losing his edge. How else could people keep sneaking up on him? He turned to his boss. “What are you doing here?” And out of uniform no less, in jeans and a white fisherman’s knit sweater.

  Frank shrugged shoulders nearly as wide as the entrance to the game area. Even out of uniform, the man was formidable. “I have to eat.”

  Since his wife had died the year before, he had no one to cook for him, but what Kent figured bothered Frank most was that he had no one to eat with. Some people couldn’t be alone; Kent actually preferred it. Before the shooting, he’d been too busy with work to notice. And now, he couldn’t expect someone to put up with the burden he might someday become.

  “So what are you going to do about this most recent column?” the chief asked as he propped a shoulder against the archway to the restaurant. He clutched a copy of the Chronicle in one hand—the picture that was facing out the same one that stared at Kent from the dartboard. “She called you a ‘player.’”

  Actually, Billy had called him the playa.

  Frank Archer snorted. “That proves she doesn’t know you at all.”

  Kent shrugged. “I’m no saint.” Although sometimes the chief and his fellow officers tried to treat him like one, which annoyed him no end, since he’d just been doing his job. “I used to date a lot.”

  “Before the shooting.”

  “I’ve dated since the shooting,” he insisted.

  “Not as much as you did before.”

  “That’s your fault,” Kent said, then laughed when the chief tensed, p
robably feeling guilty again. “That cushy desk job you gave me takes up more of my time than even the long shifts in vice.”

  Frank sighed. “I guess you do have to be available pretty much twenty-four–seven.”

  “So do you.” Kent wondered again why his boss had shown up at the Lighthouse. Usually the guy was at his desk, talking with his district captains or meeting with city council members or community leaders.

  “My wife understood.” As ever, the chief’s bright blue eyes dimmed when he mentioned his late wife. “I don’t guess your girlfriends have.”

  “Nope.”

  “But no one misunderstands you like Ms. Powell does.” Archer lifted the paper to eye level and, squinting in the dim light of the game area, read from Erin’s column. “‘Sergeant Kent Terlecki uses his questionable charm to garner good press for himself and the department. He’s clearly willing to take his oath to a whole new level—to protect and service.’”

  A laugh rumbled out of Kent’s chest even though just the day before he had been furious over the column she’d written, Public Information Officer Pimped for PR.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “I didn’t,” he admitted. “But now I can see the humor in it.”

  “She’s trying to make you and the department look foolish.” Archer bristled. He wasn’t old enough to be Kent’s dad, but that didn’t stop him from acting like he was. “How’s your investigation into her background going? Have you found a motive for her persecution of you?”

  Kent sighed. “Yeah…yeah, I have….”

  “So? What is it?”

  “I arrested her brother four years ago.” He had pulled the report and the transcripts from the trial. That was why he’d had to get out of the office. He’d had to get away from the irrefutable evidence that he and Erin had no future. He’d already known it, of course, but now he couldn’t even try to fool himself that if not for the bullet, they might have had something.

  Archer groaned. “What did you arrest him for?”

  “Dealing.”

  “How long did he get?”

  “Ten years.” Ten years out of his son’s life. When Mitchell got released, Jason would be almost a teenager.

  Frank whistled. “He had a lot of drugs in his possession then.”

  “Yeah.” Reading his report had brought back the details for Kent. “He was dealing out of an off campus apartment that he shared with his girlfriend and two year old son.” Kent’s heart clenched when he remembered Jason, as a toddler, screaming when the special response team broke down the door.

  “That much product, he had to be midlevel,” Frank mused.

  “Yeah, one of the dealers under him—a college kid—gave him up to me.”

  “Erin’s brother didn’t give you any names of people higher up, to reduce his sentence?”

  “Nope.”

  “Too loyal or too scared?”

  “Too stubborn.” Like his sister.

  “So this is why she’s after you and the department? Because her brother got caught?”

  He remembered what her mother had shared. “She thinks I framed him—that I did it to pad my arrest record and get the promotion to my cushy desk job.”

  Archer laughed. “Doesn’t she realize how much was seized? You couldn’t have planted that much evidence.”

  “I wouldn’t have planted any evidence ever.”

  “I know that. Everyone who knows you knows that.” The chief crumpled the paper. “Ms. Powell clearly doesn’t know you.”

  Kent sighed. He’d thought she was getting to know him—when she’d kissed him like she had in her kitchen.

  “You need to tell her about yourself,” the chief advised. “Everything about yourself.”

  Kent had no intention of telling her about the bullet, but he asked, “You really think that’s going to make a difference?”

  Frank shook his head. “Probably not.”

  Kent walked toward the dartboard. “It’s easier for her to blame me.” Realizing now her animosity really wasn’t personal, he corrected, “It’s easier for a person to blame the arresting officer than to admit their relative has done something wrong—something criminal.”

  “You’re not likely to forget that,” the chief commented. “You have a bullet in your spine to remind you of that.”

  And just as the bullet would always be with Kent, the animosity and resentment toward the officer who had arrested her brother would always be with Erin. She would never forgive him. So their uncertain future was not uncertain at all. They had no future.

  He pulled out the dart at the top of the board, the one that had pinned her picture to it, and he took down the tattered portrait of Erin Powell. He didn’t want to hurt her anymore.

  HAND TREMBLING FROM the cold, Erin struggled to fit the key in the lock. The door suddenly opened before she could unlock it.

  “You’re freezing,” her mother observed.

  “Most of the class took place outside tonight,” Erin said as she hurried into the warmth of the living room, which her mother had, as always, tidied. Erin lifted the folded fleece throw from the back of the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “You’re home early,” Kathryn noted, with some surprise.

  “Dad wasn’t happy the past couple of weeks that you drove back home so late.” Erin doubted her father was going to be happy no matter what time her mother came home, because he didn’t like his wife watching Mitchell’s son. Instead of rejoicing in the birth of their grandson, they’d been embarrassed that the child had been born out of wedlock.

  “So you came home early because you didn’t want to upset your father?” Mom asked, her voice sharp with skepticism.

  Erin shook her head. “I just came home early….”

  Because Kent hadn’t been part of the traffic-stop class. He hadn’t even put in an appearance.

  “If you wanted to make your father happy, you’d quit writing that column of yours,” her mother advised, with her usual disapproval.

  “That column is paying to keep a roof over Jason’s and my head.”

  “We’re not saying to stop writing for the Chronicle, just change the tone of your articles, Erin,” Kathryn Powell requested. “You wouldn’t lose your job if you did that.”

  Erin wasn’t so sure about that—not after talking to Joelly Standish in the parking garage. Kent had been right. The mayor owned the paper and was using it for his personal vendetta.

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, but couldn’t dispel the chill. “I don’t want to alter the tone of my articles, Mom.”

  “I thought you might be changing your mind about Kent Terlecki.”

  “Why would you think that?” she asked. “Haven’t you been reading my column?”

  “Your father and I wish you’d accept the truth, Erin,” Kathryn said, her voice more gentle than disapproving. “We wish you’d stop wasting your time going after the police department. I know that’s the only reason you’re taking this class—”

  And maybe that was why her father didn’t approve of her mother watching Jason.

  “Trying to prove my brother’s innocence is not a waste of my time,” Erin insisted.

  “You can’t prove what isn’t true,” her mom said quietly, and she reached out and brushed her hand tenderly along Erin’s cheek. “You have to accept that Mitchell isn’t that older brother you idolized when you were young. Even before he left home, he was getting into trouble. He had fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

  “He made some mistakes,” Erin admitted. “He was smoking and drinking, but that’s a long way from dealing drugs, Mom. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “You don’t want to believe that he would,” her mother said with a soft sigh. “But he isn’t that boy you used to know, Erin.”

  “He says he didn’t do it, Mom.” That should have been good enough for her, but now those doubts had niggled—because of Kent.

  Her mother shook her head, as if resigned. “He needs
to take responsibility for his mistakes.”

  “Mom…”

  Kathryn lifted her chin and forced her lips into a tight smile. “Let’s not talk about Mitchell then.”

  “Good, because we’re never going to agree.” She couldn’t turn her back on her brother the way her parents had. She couldn’t betray him with the officer responsible for putting him behind bars.

  “Let’s talk about Sergeant Terlecki,” her mother suggested.

  Heat flooded Erin’s body, warming her more than the blanket, as she thought about her and Kent in the kitchen. If not for Jason interrupting them, they might have made love right on the edge of the sink. She swallowed back the desire, the guilt choking her. “What about Kent Terlecki?”

  “Is it him—is he this Sarge—that Jason’s been talking nonstop about?”

  Erin nodded, glad that she hadn’t corrected Jason. She preferred that he didn’t refer to Kent by his real name; it was less personal.

  “So it seems that Jason has gotten over his fear of police officers,” her mother said with a genuine smile of relief. “That little boy is in awe of Sergeant Terlecki.”

  “He’s too young to know better,” Erin pointed out. “Too young to resist Kent’s charm.” So what was her excuse? How come, whenever he came near her, she couldn’t resist him, either? It was good that she hadn’t seen him for a while; maybe she could remember what was important to her. Her brother. Her nephew. Her family.

  Not Kent Terlecki. He meant nothing to her.

  Chapter Ten

  Erin’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard. She wanted to write about last night’s class of the CPA, about the explanation of the pursuit policy, when an officer made a decision whether or not to pursue a speeding vehicle based on the risk. But she knew Herb Stein wouldn’t print that column. He wanted another article about Kent or the department, something negative to further the mayor’s agenda.

  If she’d still been that idealistic girl she’d once been, she would have quit on principle alone, but she needed a job, needed to keep her apartment. Sure, she could probably move back to her parents’ place. Her father might even get over his disapproval of Mitchell and accept his step-grandson.