by Mary McBride
“What was that?” she whispered.
“Probably just a dog knocking over a trash can.” He stood, deciding to wait until he was out of the room to take out his gun. No sense scaring Sara if he didn’t have to. “I’ll go check. Be right back.”
She turned on the lamp beside the bed. “Okay. But, Joe...”
“What?” he asked, halfway in the hall.
“I don’t have metal trash cans. They’re plastic.”
He tried the back door in the kitchen, glad to discover it locked up tight before he turned the dead bolt and stepped outside, muttering an oath when his socks encountered the slushy snow on the back porch. It was punishment, he thought bleakly, for lying down on the job. But at least he didn’t have to worry about his shoes crunching in the snow when he moved around the rear of the house toward the garage.
The trash cans were undisturbed with both their plastic covers battened down. Nearby, however, he noticed that the metal drainpipe was crimped about a foot off the ground as if something had crashed into it. And, sure enough, when he scouted around, he found one of those metal flying disks that kids used in the snow and, around it, a scramble of footprints. The backyard had a pretty good slope to it, probably irresistible to teenagers out a lot later than they should have been.
He picked up the disk and sent it sailing toward the evergreens at the back of the yard. He heard it thud. Then a voice—about fifteen, Joe guessed, from the inelegant depth of it—called out, “Thanks, man.”
Joe stifled a smile. “No problem, man.”
At least it wasn’t the problem he had anticipated, and he was grateful for that. He went inside, turned the dead bolt, then tugged off his soaking wet socks.
Upstairs, Sara wasn’t in bed where he’d left her. “Sara?” he called softly.
“I’m in here,” came the muffled reply.
“In where?”
“The closet.”
“What the hell are you... ?” He opened the louvered door. He didn’t see her at first, but then he caught a glimpse of frothy pink with pink toenails sticking out. “What are you doing in there?”
“I’m hiding, dammit.”
He heard a distinctly wet sniff and suddenly realized she was crying. Aw, jeez. “It’s okay, babe. It was just a kid taking a joyride on a metal tray. Here.” He reached into the closet. “Take my hand. Come on.”
“This is stupid,” she said, letting him lead her to the bed. “I think it finally really dawned on me that somebody might be trying to kill me.”
“Yeah, but he’s not going to, is he, with me here?” He turned back the covers on her side of the bed. “Climb in.”
She paused. “Would you just hold me for a minute? Please?”
Without another word, Joe gathered her against him. Her arms, trembling, circled his waist, and she held on tight. He tried not to even think about how perfectly she fit, how warm her hair was against his cheek, how her fragrance mesmerized him.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded against his chest, then sighed softly. “This is probably against regulations, isn’t it?”
“Maybe just a little.”
A moment later Sara loosened her arms. She took a small step back, then lifted her face. “I’m fine now. Thank you.”
“Well, you know our motto.” He needed to kiss that generous mouth of hers right then even more than he needed to breathe. “To serve and protect and administer hugs when necessary.”
She smiled, and her moist eyes sparkled. “Then you’re very good at your job, Lieutenant.”
The job, Decker, he warned himself. “Get some sleep now. I’ll be right here beside you.” On the damn job.
When Sara woke, the first thing she did was glance at the clock on the nightstand. It was seven-ten. Then she stretched, and her hand encountered hard, flannelcovered muscle. Decker! Good lord, how could she have forgotten?
She turned on her side, quietly, hoping not to wake him, wanting to watch him sleep for some absurd reason. His mouth was softer than when he was awake. The frown lines on his forehead had smoothed out. Now that his eyes were closed, she noticed how long and thick his lashes were. Then one gray eye squinted at her, and his lips tilted in a grin.
“You were awake the whole time! No fair,” she said, giving his arm a little punch.
“I’m guarding your body.”
The other gray eye opened, and his sleepy gaze strayed over her face for a moment before it centered on her mouth. Sara’s stomach did a kind of swan dive while her heart surged with an extra beat. Her breath stalled in her throat. Joe was taking it away again without even touching her.
Her lips parted just a bit, and she willed him to kiss her. Wanted him to kiss her more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. Her eyes drifted closed in anticipation. Her heart stood still.
And then his pager shrilled.
Saved by the bell. You almost lost it, idiot.
Joe reached to the floor and snagged the beeper he’d left there the night before. It was Maggie, God bless her. And it wasn’t the first time she’d gotten him out of trouble. It probably wouldn’t be the last, either.
Without being asked, Sara handed him the handset of the phone on her side of the bed. He sat up against the mountain of pillows and punched in her number and extension at work. “What’s up?”
“What is up?” Sara asked him a minute later when he passed the phone back. “Joe?”
“The guys in the Eighth Precinct brought in a Peeping Tom last night.”
“A Peeping Tom!” Sara laughed. “I didn’t know the police used that expression.”
“He confessed,” Joe said.
“To what? Peeping?” She giggled some more.
“To being the South Side Ripper.”
Her laughter faded instantly, and her face took on a kind of befuddled expression that might have been a mirror image of his own. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but his brain was doing a good-news-badnews number. The good news was the son of a bitch Ripper was finally behind bars. The bad news was that playing house with Sara Campbell had just come to an end.
“Well, that’s good news,” she said. “If he’s really the one.”
“Hell of a thing to confess to if he’s not.” He reached for her hand, held it in both of his while he kept his voice absolutely level. “We need you for a lineup, Sara.”
“Oh, no. No way.”
She tried to pull away, but Joe tightened his grasp.
“You can do it.”
“No, I can’t. I won’t. Anyway, if I can’t remember what he looks like, what difference does it make if I look at a lineup or not?”
“Maybe if you saw him, you’d remember.”
“Don’t make me do this, Joe.” Her voice climbed to a higher register. “Please. My heart’s already pounding and my hands are starting to sweat.”
“I know.” He turned her hand palm up, then brought it to his lips, placing a gentle kiss on the moist surface. “I’ll be with you. I’ll hold your hand the whole way. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Sara.”
She stared at their joined hands for a long time, trembling, her lower lip snagged between her teeth. Whatever agony she was suffering, whatever hell she was going through, was obvious even though Joe couldn’t begin to understand. He hated himself for putting her through this and tried to think of an alternative to a lineup, knowing there was none. This was one regulation he wasn’t going to be able to break for her. He couldn’t even bend it.
Her big green eyes sought his. “Couldn’t I just...?”
“No,” he said firmly.
She stared at the closet as if wishing she could crawl in and close the door the way she had the night before.
“I wish I knew what you were afraid of, babe. Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it. Tell me. What are you afraid will happen?”
“It’s stupid,” she said.
“Tell me anyway.” He put his arm around her trembling shoulders, drawing her closer. “
Tell me.”
“What if I start feeling dizzy? What if I faint?”
“I’ll catch you.”
She let out an exasperated little sigh. “What if I start feeling sick? What if I throw up?”
“What if you do? People puke at the station all the time. You’d fit right in.”
This time she gave a tiny laugh. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He gathered her closer. “Look. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll make sure we get there just before the lineup so we don’t have to wait around. We go in. You look. We come home.”
“What about the fainting part?” she asked, only half in jest.
“Okay. We go in. You look. You faint. I catch you. Then we come home. How’s that?”
She took in a deep breath. “All right. I’ll try. But only if you promise me that if I say take me home, you’ll do it. Right then. No questions asked.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
“No. Say you promise.”
He did, even though he knew—if and when the time came—it wouldn’t be a promise he could keep.
Chapter 7
They were sitting in Joe’s car half a block from the precinct house. It was snowing again, and he had the heater turned up so high that Sara had to roll her window down. As always, in one of her panicky states, she was either too hot or too cold. There was never a happy, comfortable medium.
She was practicing the abdominal breathing that Dr. Bourne had suggested while she read license plates on passing traffic, trying to distract herself from all the things going haywire inside her. Poor Decker, she thought. He was trying to be so patient and supportive. He had made call after call that morning, trying to get the lineup scheduled at a specific time rather than the usual approximate one. He warmed up the car before she got in, then drove one-handed in order to keep his right hand free to clasp hers reassuringly. Either that, or he was just being prepared to grab her if she tried to escape.
“It’s ten fifty-seven,” he said, looking at his watch. “That gives us three minutes to get to the viewingroom window. You’ll look through the one-way glass for, oh, five seconds maybe. Three minutes back to the car. At eleven-oh-three, you’ll be a free woman.”
She slanted him a weak grin.
“You can hold it together for six minutes, babe.” Once more, he squeezed her hand. “I know you can.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she said to his back as he got out, then trotted to the curb and began feeding change into the meter. Sara rolled her window down a few more inches. “You better not be putting any more than ten minutes on that contraption, Decker.”
“Trust me.” He held his hand over the vicinity of his heart for a minute before he pushed one more coin into the slot, then opened Sara’s door.
“I really don’t want to do this,” she said through clenched teeth.
“The sooner you do it, the sooner it’ll be over. Come on.” He held out his hand to her. “Six minutes. Piece of cake.”
A uniformed policeman passed on the sidewalk. “Yo, Sue,” he called to the lieutenant. “How’s it gozing?”
“Hey, Smitty,” Joe responded, then turned his full attention to Sara.
“What did that man call you? Did he say Sue?”
“Uh-huh.” He wiggled his fingers. “Come on.”
“Sue?”
“That’s my nickname.”
“Why in the world would anybody call you Sue, Decker?”
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He grinned. “After the line up.”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Maybe not, but it’ll give you something to think about besides your heart rate and your blood pressure.” He grasped her hand and hauled her up and out, then propelled her along the sidewalk toward the station.
Once they were inside the building, it occurred to Joe that the viewing room was on the third floor near the lockup. He prayed while he hit the up button on the elevator, half-expecting Sara to flip out when the door slid open, blissfully relieved when she responded to the little nudge her gave to the small of her back and stepped inside. That wasn’t to say she was fine, though. Far from it. Her face was the color of cooked spaghetti, and just about as expressionless. When the elevator shuddered to a halt on the third floor and the door whooshed open, Sara was out like a jackrabbit.
“Where’s this one-way window?” she asked, her eyes unusually bright and her voice high and tight.
“Just a few doors down.” He took her hand and started down the corridor, threading between uniformed cops and copying machines. “You’re doing fine, babe.”
“That’s what you think. Let’s just get this over with.”
Maggie was waiting for them at the window. Joe was surprised the captain wasn’t there to cash in on the victory if Sara came up with an ID.
“Where’s Cobble?” he asked.
His partner shrugged. “He’s supposed to be here, but he hasn’t shown up yet. Do you want to wait?”
“No way.” He could feel Sara’s hand tightening like a vise on his, almost hear her heart bashing against her ribs. “Let’s do it.”
“I know how hard this is for you, Miss Campbell,” Maggie said. “Thanks for coming.”
Sara nodded, trying to smile, swallowing hard.
“There are six men in there,” Maggie told her. “None of them can see you, so you don’t have to worry about that. Take your time, okay?”
“Okay.”
Maggie opened the venetian blinds that covered the window of one-way glass. Joe glanced at the six men, then, over Sara’s head, shot his partner a questioning look. In response, Maggie subtly held up two fingers. Joe looked back. His first impression was that the guy in the number-two spot wasn’t as tall or muscular as the guy he’d chased the other day. Still, he hoped Sara could point him out and put an end to this whole bloody business.
Her hand trembled in his while her eyes scanned the six men. Once. Twice. Then she shook her head.
“No. Nothing. None of them looks at all familiar.”
“Look just once more,” Maggie said.
She did, and came up with the same result. Nothing. “Can we go now?” she asked Joe. “Please?”
Sara fixed lunch for them when he brought her home after the unsuccessful lineup. She didn’t know how she could have done it without her clammy hand in Joe’s. The six minutes he had promised her turned out to be twelve, but she had survived, mostly thanks to him.
The lieutenant was unusually quiet during the ride home, and those famous grins of his were few and far between even while he ate his ham on rye. He didn’t even question the radicchio on the sandwich or accuse her of trying to poison him with something suspiciously purple. Suddenly she remembered that he hadn’t told her about his nickname.
“How’s the sandwich, Sue?”
“Oh, that.” He rolled his eyes. “I was sort of hoping you’d forget.”
“Not on your life. And I’m assuming it isn’t short for Suzanne.”
He grimaced slightly, then peeled back the bread on his sandwich. “What’s this purple stuff?”
“Radicchio. Don’t change the subject, Decker.”
“Suicide,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Sue is short for suicide.”
Sara’s eyes widened. “I don’t even want to know how you got a nickname like that.”
“Good,” he said. “End of subject.” And it was clear from his expression that he didn’t want her to pursue the origin, much less the meaning, of Sue.
“Well, it’s pretty much all over now, I guess,” Sara said a bit wistfully, feeling guilty that she wasn’t happier about the South Side Ripper finally being in custody.
“Pretty much, I guess.”
“Thanks for being so kind to me, Joe. I’m sure I wasn’t the easiest witness to work with.”
“No problem.” One corner of his mouth crooked up. “You did fine, Sara. You came through like a real trooper.”
She smiled, then tri
ed to sound casual when she said, “I’m going to miss you, Decker. Who’s going to boss me around now?” Who’s going to hold me when I’m scared? she thought. Or just be here making me feel warm and secure? How could she have gotten so used to this man in just a few days? She didn’t feel like a real trooper. She felt sad, forlorn.
Joe, on the other hand, seemed anxious to get back to work. Real work out in the real world, rather than just hanging around here with her. Sue, Sara suspected, needed those thrills and chills as much as he needed air to breathe. After lunch, he didn’t waste any time before he gathered all his things. He wrote down several phone numbers for her—the precinct house, his pager, his home.
“Call anytime if you need me,” he said.
I need you now. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will.” He tipped her chin as if he were going to kiss her, but then merely traced his thumb along her jawline and brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek.
What about dinner and a movie? No, don’t ask me. You know I can’t go. But even so, I wish you’d ask.
“Goodbye, Joe.”
“Bye, Sara.”
She shut down her computer early that night, unable to concentrate on pottery and prices when her gaze kept straying to the bed where Joe had slept beside her the night before. But he’d been merely doing his job, hadn’t he? And now, with the Ripper put away, that job was over, and Sara felt a little bit foolish for having considered it anything else.
That night, when Joe walked into his apartment shortly after ten o’clock, he dreaded turning on the lights. He’d stayed at the precinct house, catching up on paperwork, until his eyes felt like sandpaper each time he blinked, and his chest burned from too much coffee and too many greasy burgers and fries.
“Home, sweet home,” he muttered, tossing his gym bag into a corner already crammed with a stack of old newspapers and half a dozen towels he’d been meaning to wash. His pullout bed looked just the way he’d left it Monday morning—one scrunched pillow, one wad of pilly wool blanket, two bedraggled sheets.
Sometimes he had the distinct impression that Edie was gazing down on him, shaking her head, with one of those bemused and beleaguered Aw, Joey expressions on her face. Ordinarily, when that happened, his throat would constrict and then he’d grumble, “I’m doing the best I can, sweetheart.” But tonight he knew that wasn’t the truth. The best he could do was last night eating dinner in front of the fire with Sara, and this morning waking up to her lovely face and her luscious mouth and that tiny jolt of desire in her green, green eyes.
