If he called her name, it was lost in the slamming of the car door. And maybe he thought better of it, because she didn't hear anything as she hurried up the walk
She did not look back. She fumbled with the lock and the dead bolt and flicked the porch light once to let Maddox know she was safely inside. Locked away from temptation, in a prison of her own choosing. She felt the weariness of her self-imposed punishment in her shoulders. She felt its loneliness in her soul. She closed her eyes a moment, as if that would bring her rest or peace.
At least this time, she chose the bars that kept the world at bay.
With her palms pressed flat to the metal door, she listened to the sound of Maddox's car as he drove away.
Then, summoning a smile to greet her baby-sitter, she walked into the living room, dropping her little black bag on the back of the couch. "Hi, Julie, I'm home."
Rob looked up from the brown recliner, where he slumped watching TV. "It's about time," he said.
* * *
Driving down the darkened street, Maddox smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his palm. Damned if he knew what had happened.
He'd just fulfilled his high school fantasies with the girl of his dreams. Okay, so he'd rushed to the party, but she'd been satisfied. He ought to be on top of the world.
He felt lousy.
He felt… Never one for self-examination, he searched for the word. Frustrated.
Not sexually frustrated. His body still had the revved-up hum of a well-oiled engine allowed to race. He hadn't felt so relaxed since … before the shooting, in the early days of Sandra. A long time. But he was frustrated all the same. Something had been missing from their little car encounter, and it wasn't just that he hadn't had a chance to see Annie, really see her, without her clothes on.
Thank you very much, but I'm not interested in being your pet police project this month.
Hell.
He'd suspected things were moving too fast. He'd tried to talk her out of it, hadn't he? But when she offered to take off her dress… His body tightened in memory. Well, he'd seized the chance to replay their high school fiasco on the river road, to get it right this time for both of them.
It should have worked. He'd taken care to make it work, to give Annie the experience she deserved, even after he scored early in the game. He'd certainly been satisfied. Maddox frowned, driving on autopilot down streets he hadn't cruised in a dozen years. Maybe not quite satisfied. He wanted to do it all over again, slower, in a bed, in the light. But still, it was great car sex.
And Annie had been satisfied, too, damn it, sweet and soft, wet and eager. His, shuddering in his arms, moaning at his touch, crying out at the last. Desire pulsed through him, and he almost turned the car around.
Bad idea. She wouldn't want him with the baby-sitter there. She wouldn't want him with her son sleeping upstairs.
Hell, who was be kidding? She didn't want him anyway. She didn't want to be helped, didn't want anyone taking care of her.
And it was a good thing, too, he was glad about that—wasn't he?—because he was the last guy she needed taking care of her. He remembered enough of the academy course in domestic violence intervention to know that Ann needed to trust her own decisions. And he needed to get back to Atlanta. Back to the pimps, the pushers, the teenage shooters, the jokes and jargon and chaos of the squad room. Back where he belonged. He had what it took to make it there.
He pulled into his father's driveway—God, he felt like a teenager again—and sat for a minute with the engine running. Two and a half weeks. The sooner he left, the better. Because he'd never made it in Cutler. He didn't have what it took to make it for good with a woman like Annie.
But she'd kissed him good-night.
He shook his head. See, that was the kind of thinking that could get him into trouble. Annie was vulnerable. She might claim she wanted less from him, but he knew she dreamed of more. Only she deserved to find it with some nice guy with clean hands and a good heart. Somebody with a big, loving family and a low-risk, high-paying job. Somebody safe.
Deep down, Maddox figured she knew that.
He'd be a lot better off once he accepted it, too.
* * *
Everything inside Ann screamed. Get out, get out, get out, get away. She did her best to ignore the howling warnings, keeping her face a mask, her voice quiet.
"Where's Julie?"
"Afraid I murdered your baby-sitter?" Rob stood, enormous and out of place in her small, neat, shabby living room. She took one step backward and he looked at her in disgust. "Oh, what do you think, Ann? I paid her and sent her home. She thanked me for her tip."
"I'll pay you back."
He made an impatient gesture. "Don't be stupid."
She would send him a check, although he'd probably tear it up. But she would not fight with him. She would not give him the opportunity to fight with her. She had to protect Mitchell.
"And Mitchell?" she asked.
"In bed."
Safe, then. She drew a shallow breath of relief. Once in bed, their son knew not to come down. Because no nightmare could be as bad as what happened after bedtime in the house on Stonewall Drive
.
"Is that where you've been? Bed?" Rob asked.
"No, I—" Don't apologize, don't explain. "No."
"I saw you get out of his car."
"I didn't see yours."
"That's because I'm smarter than you. I parked down the block. What were you doing with him, Ann?"
Ann swallowed. No point in pretending she didn't know who Rob was talking about. "He gave me a ride home from the club."
"Are you putting out for him? Is that why he's switched teams all of a sudden?"
"I think you should go now," she said.
Rob strolled forward, his hands in his pockets, his head thrust forward. Ann stood her ground, her heart hammering. How could she run, with her son hostage upstairs? She was guilty of so much. But she would never leave Mitchell to face Rob's wrath alone.
"You look like a whore," he said in a pleasant, conversational tone. "And you smell like sex. I wouldn't have thought you were enticement enough to make MD forget where his loyalties lie."
"Don't touch me," Ann said.
Rob lifted his brows. "Touch you? I could do a lot more than touch you, dear wife."
He was close enough for her to smell the remembered scent of his after-shave, the bourbon on his breath. Her skin crawled. She opened her mouth to breathe.
"Ex-wife," she said stiffly. "And I'll call the police if I have to, Rob."
"And tell them what? That I was here baby-sitting our son while you screwed Maddox Palmer out on the river road? That will impress his daddy."
"You followed us?" She shuddered. It was too creepy, the thought of Rob out there in the darkness while she and Maddox…
Rob shook his head. "I assumed you'd both run true to type. Sex in the back seat was all you were ever good for."
She forced herself not to recoil from his verbal slap. "Too bad you didn't figure that out before we got married," she said quietly.
"It was too late then," Rob said self-righteously. "You were already pregnant. I wasn't about to let you spread it all over town that I ignored my responsibilities."
"I wouldn't have done that."
"No? But you're doing it now. You're testifying against me." He leaned in even closer, his eyes feral. "It doesn't look good. I'm disappointed in you, Ann. I'm trying to be friends with you. I'm trying to show people there are no hard feelings. And you just aren't cooperating. Maybe MD isn't the one who needs to reexamine his loyalties."
She could feel the violence building in him. It reached out to her in waves. "What do you want?" she asked.
"Ann, Ann," he reproached her. "You don't want to make me tell you. A loving wife should know. You just think about it. You think about where your best interests lie. Not with the cop. Not with Val. With me."
Realization settled sickly in her stomach. Val. This was ab
out Val. This was about betraying her friend—again—by recanting her testimony when Rob went to trial. "I can't do that," Ann protested. "I gave a statement."
"You better do it. Or I'll make you sorry, do you hear me?" He towered over her. He bent, so that his hot breath tickled her ear and sent cold chills down her spine. "I'll make you very, very sorry," he whispered.
* * *
Maddox was stepping out of the shower when his pager beeped from the back of the toilet. He frowned. He wasn't on duty tonight. Unless a traffic stop had gone bad, and the dispatcher was signaling for help…
Hitching a towel around his waist, he checked the number before dialing it in. It wasn't Crystal at the station. "Palmer."
"Hey, Mad Dog, it's Tom. Creech? Got a call to a possible ten-sixteen."
Domestic disturbance. Maddox frowned at the clouded mirror. "You need backup?"
"No, I'm okay. No drinking, no weapons, no assailant on scene. It's just the reporting party on this one is Ann Cross. You told me to let you know."
He was already in his room, yanking open bureau drawers. "Medical assistance?"
"She said no. I figured I'd assess, drive her to the ER myself if it looked bad."
"Copy." A hanger rattled to the floor as he grabbed his uniform pants. "Show me en route in five."
"You want to cover?" Tom sounded surprised. "I'm just going to take a report."
"That's affirm. Thanks for the heads up, Tom. Call Crystal for me?"
"Will do. I'll go run interference on a party in Grand Oaks. Noise complaint."
"Juveniles?" Maddox guessed, shoving his feet into his shoes, reaching for his holster.
"Twelve-year-old girl. Birthday party." Tom chuckled. "Guess the neighbors don't like boy bands."
Maddox grunted and signed off. Even as be pocketed his keys and methodically checked and strapped his equipment belt, his mind was leaping ahead to Annie, frightened, threatened, hurt.
Annie, telling him she didn't need or want his protection. His gut burned. His jaw set. She was getting his protection now, whether she wanted it or not.
Crossing town, he put the blue light up and the gas pedal down. No assailant on the scene, Creepy had reported, but as Maddox stopped in front of Ann's house, he checked all the approaches, anyway. No Rob. No sign of Rob's car.
He pressed the bell and stepped back so she could get a good look at him through the peephole.
The door cracked open. Ann stood in the gap, her face in shadow, her arms folded protectively across her middle. She still had on the sexy black dress she'd worn to the club, but her hair was tumbled and one narrow strap had slipped off her shoulder. He wanted to reach through the opening and pull it up for her, to set it right.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"You called."
She didn't budge from the doorway. "I called 911. I didn't know you were on duty."
"I am now. Are you going to let me in?"
Her head tilted. "Did you bring your superhero cape with you?"
Her wry humor caught and cut him as easily as a knife. "No. But I've got my badge and notebook."
"And a note from your father?"
"I don't need one. This is an official call, Annie."
"I never called before," she whispered.
His heart wrenched. "I know. Let me in."
She shuffled back from the door. The light from the lamp slid across her face, and he let himself hope. Her eyes were sunken and her skin looked tight, but he didn't see any cuts. No swelling. None of the puffy redness that would bloom into bruises by morning.
And then he remembered what she'd told him. He didn't usually touch my face. And his own response: They don't hit where it shows.
"Are you all right?" he asked roughly. He would kill the son of a bitch, badge or no badge.
Her head wavered up and down. "Fine."
His blood pumped hot. He forced himself not to jump and roar, but enough of what he was feeling must have escaped into his face, because she looked at him with wide, dry eyes that had seen too much violence. Like the eyes of a survivor at an accident scene, or the flat gaze of the old-young children on the bad streets of Atlanta.
"No, really fine," she insisted. "He threatened me. He didn't hit me."
"Mitchell?"
"Was upstairs the whole time."
He would have to accept her assurance for now. Concentrate on the job, aid the victim, make his case. For now. He took out his notebook. "Okay. Why don't we sit down and you can tell me what happened. Starting with when you got home."
She perched on the edge of the couch. He sat in the brown recliner, the only chair in the room big enough for him, and wondered why she stiffened. He wanted to hold her, wanted to tell her that everything would be all right, that he would make it all right. But she didn't want him that close, and he didn't know if he could fix anything yet.
So he asked his questions and wrote down her replies. She was a good witness. She kept her times and events in order, clasping her hands in her lap like a polite child while she described how her home and her freedom and her safety had been violated. Her evidence was unemotional and clear.
Maddox was afraid it wouldn't be enough.
"…and then he left," Ann concluded.
"Is that when you called the police?" Why not me? he wanted to demand. Why the hell didn't you turn to me?
"I—" Her throat moved as she swallowed. "It may have been a couple of minutes after that."
Her words trembled between them. I don't need someone to take care of me. I need to handle things myself.
Ann was scared and cold and sick inside. She wanted Maddox to hold her, wanted to crawl onto his lap and beg for the strong comfort of his arms, the rough reassurance of his voice. She squeezed her hands together to keep from reaching for him.
A muscle bunched in his jaw.
She knew what her distance cost her. She was less sure how it affected Maddox. But that betraying muscle… He'd never let anyone bully her, not even Billy Ward back in middle school. Sudden gratitude made her offer,
"I never called before. But tonight your father—I thought it would be all right. Because you'd talked to him."
His hooded gaze met hers straight on, acknowledging her concession. "You did the right thing," he said. "Tomorrow we'll go see a magistrate, get a warrant."
It sounded so straightforward.
"But he didn't hit me."
"He threatened you. That might be enough, given your history of abuse and him being on probation."
She nodded. "All right."
"In the meantime, you should get somebody to stay with you. Val, maybe?"
"You figure I should ask my pregnant friend, the friend I stole from, to leave her husband and her bed and defend me with her frying pan from the man who tried to murder her? No."
He almost grinned. Scowled, instead. "What about your mother?"
Her brief enjoyment faded. "We don't—we're not close," she said with difficulty. "She could forgive me for getting pregnant and marrying Rob—how else could a girl like me catch a prize like him?—but she still can't find it in her heart to forgive me for divorcing him."
She'd shaken that granite police face. "Annie—"
"It's all right," she said quickly. "I don't need anybody. We'll be fine."
And he respected her boundaries. He didn't even suggest that he sleep on her couch.
Ann told herself she was glad. She would have said no, anyway. Instead, she said good night, and locked and dead-bolted her door, and went upstairs and cried herself to sleep.
But in the morning when she looked out her window, she saw Maddox's big blue sedan, as if he'd driven right out of her restless dreams to park in front of her house. Not in her driveway—the neighbors would talk—but across the street. Just for a moment, she had it back: the squeak of vinyl, the rush of heat, the scent of tobacco and sex and Maddox moving under her, thrusting inside her.
She blinked. The car stayed stubbornly at the curb. So s
he wasn't hallucinating. Maddox must have camped out in his car all night. She didn't know whether to be thrilled by his determination to protect her or mad that he'd do such a thing without once asking what she wanted.
She jerked a brush through her hair and reached for her shorts. When she sallied forth ten minutes later, she still wasn't sure if she were visiting the troops or going into battle.
His window was open. She stopped in the street, clutching a coffee mug, and demanded, "What are you doing out here?"
Maddox scrubbed his face with one large, square hand. The slanting light revealed the bags beneath his eyes and exaggerated the creases in his forehead. He needed to shave. "Good morning to you, too."
She fought the twist of concern. "That was a stupid thing to do, sitting up in your car all night."
He gave her one of those level, unreadable looks that made her stomach flutter. "I'm used to it."
She remembered their conversation from the gym. "Another part of the job?" she quoted dryly.
He must have remembered, too, because his eyes narrowed. "We weren't going to talk about it, you said."
It. The shooting. She held out the mug to him. "Maybe we should."
"Thanks." He sipped the hot coffee. "Why? You worried about me hanging around your kid?"
"Maybe I'm worried about you. Did you ever talk to anybody?"
"Darlin', they made me talk to everybody. The division commander, the investigating shoot team, the D.A.'s office, the P.I.O.—that's the Public Information Officer—and the shrink."
"And?" she prompted softly.
He shrugged. "And they all said the same. Clean shoot. Hell, I saved a teacher's life. I must be some kind of cop, huh?"
Her heart wrenched at the bleakness in his voice. "Is that how you felt?"
"No." He stared into the mug cradled in his large hand. "I kept wondering—I still wonder—if there was something else I could have done."
It was a bigger admission than she'd expected. More, perhaps, than she knew how to deal with. Ann studied him a moment. "Do you want to know what my therapist would say?"
He looked up at her. "Sure." His lashes were thick and short. Something warm and liquid and addictive as caffeine spread under her ribs.
"My therapist told me that no one is the cause for another person's violent behavior. So you can't take responsibility for that boy's decision to fire that gun any more than I should accept the blame for Rob beating me."
MAD DOG AND ANNIE Page 14
