Courage Under Fire

by Sharon Dunn

  Once inside, Lani invited Noah to sit on the couch while Scotty sniffed his new surroundings. She excused herself to change out of her wet clothes.

  Family photos, many of Reed and Lani doing sports together, adorned the wall in the living room. There was a picture of them attending a Yankees game with an older couple. Judging from the resemblance, the older couple must be Reed and Lani’s parents. His eyes rested on a picture of a teenage Lani in a leotard with her arms around two other dancers. A more recent one showed Lani on stage in a Western costume with other actors.

  Noah understood why Lani was referred to as Cover Girl by the rest of the team. Her vitality and positive attitude came across in the photos and she was beautiful enough to be a model.

  Several photos featured Reed working with his K-9 partner, Jessie.

  Lani entered the room dressed in an oversize orange sweatshirt and jeans. “Do you want some cocoa or something?” Her blue eyes did not have their usual sparkle. He detected the weariness in her voice. It was important that she not be alone after having gone through such an ordeal.

  “Sure, that sounds good,” he said. “Let me help you.”

  While Lani filled the kettle and put it on the stove, Noah rooted through cupboards for mugs.

  Lani pulled a basket filled with tea bags and hot chocolate packets from a cupboard. “Pick whatever you like.”

  The toll of the attack was evident in her movement and on her face. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you go sit down and I’ll bring you the drink?”

  She nodded and stepped back into the living room. Again, he knew something was up because she didn’t argue with him.

  He opened the packets of cocoa and sprinkled them into the mugs. The kettle whistled. He poured the water into the cups. He carried the steaming mugs into the living room where he found Lani standing, not sitting, staring at the wall of photographs. Scotty had finished sniffing his surroundings and now sat at attention. His ears perked up when Noah entered the room.

  She pointed to a bare space on the wall. “Do you know what goes there?”

  Noah shook his head.

  “A picture of me with my dog when I’m assigned one.” Her face shone with a sort of inner glow.

  The bare space was next to a photo of Reed with his Jessie. The bloodhound’s saggy-skinned expression seemed to contradict the dog’s tenacious personality.

  He knew from Lani’s file that she was twenty-nine, old for a rookie. His estimation of her abilities had changed, but he still had his doubts. Her background was not the normal career route for a cop. “That will happen soon enough.” It had been months since Lani had been accepted to the K-9 unit and a suitable dog had still not become available. She’d tried out several. The dogs were either not compatible with her or they washed out of the program. Jordan’s death and Noah getting used to being chief had slowed everything down as well.

  “Tonight didn’t go like I expected.” She stared at the floor.

  He stepped toward her, touching her chin so she lifted her eyes. “But you handled the unexpected. That’s what a good cop does.”

  A little light came into her blue eyes. That spark of energy that he liked about her returned.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She let out a heavy breath and sat down on the couch. Noah sat down beside her sipping his beverage. Scotty lay down so his butt rested against Noah’s feet and his head rested close to Lani’s feet.

  Noah pointed toward the photos. “So you did a lot of plays?” It was important to keep her mind off the attack.

  “Mostly off Broadway, and I did a couple commercials and even some stunt work,” she said.

  “I know I’ve lived here my whole life, but I think I made it to the theater twice in my life and one time it was with my school.”

  Lani laughed, “I know. There are people born and raised here who have never been to the Statue of Liberty.”

  He reached down to pat Scotty’s head. “My family goes to the Mets games quite a bit.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Lani took a sip of her cocoa.

  They talked awhile longer. When the door opened and Reed stepped in with Jessie, Noah glanced at the clock. An hour had passed without him realizing he’d been so caught up in his conversation with Lani.

  Jessie loped over to Lani, who leaned so the dog could give her a sloppy kiss.

  “Long night?”

  “Something like that. Had a couple other calls after we got stuff wrapped up at the refuge.” Reed took his coat off and hung it up on a coatrack. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped in to talk with Abigail for a little bit.”

  Abigail was Reed’s fiancée and an outreach coordinator for troubled teens.

  “Can I talk to you for just a moment?” Noah gestured for Reed to enter the kitchen.

  “What’s up?”

  “Keep an eye on her through the night. Not just to make sure she doesn’t lose consciousness. Wake her up a couple of times. The ER doc said to look for dilated pupils. I’m more worried about her emotional health. Maybe she’s just acting tough in front of me. I don’t know.”

  Reed nodded. “We got this handled. I know my sister.”

  “She’ll push to come into work tomorrow, but she needs to take the day off,” said Noah.

  Reed nodded. “Will do.”

  When they returned to the living room, Lani had fallen asleep on the couch. Jessie curled against her belly. The bloodhound was so huge she hung halfway off the couch. Lani’s blond hair, loose from the tight bun, framed her face and fell across her neck.

  Scotty lay at Lani’s feet. He stared up at Noah while his tail thudded on the floor.

  Noah commanded Scotty to come and he fell in line. “I’ll see myself out.” He glanced once again at the sleeping Lani. She looked at peace. “Take care of her. Maybe you can talk her into making a counseling appointment.”

  “You can’t talk my sister into anything once she’s made up her mind.”

  “So true.” Noah stepped to the door, swung it open and headed up the block toward his SUV with the dog padding softly on the sidewalk beside him. He looked back. The curtains were drawn in the living room. Still, he could picture Reed placing a blanket over his sleeping sister. She was in good hands.

  As he loaded Scotty into the patrol car, he felt that tightening in his chest.

  He only hoped that what had happened to Lani tonight was an isolated incident. He didn’t want another cop harmed...or worse.

  THREE

  Lani clicked the leash onto the collar of the six-month-old yellow Lab and headed out of the training center to walk the pup. She was glad to be back to work after a required day off. Oscar was one of eight puppies born to Stella, a yellow Lab, who had been a gift to the unit from the Czech Republic. The dogs had all been put into foster homes. Oscar had been brought back to the training center to assess if he would be good K-9 material and maybe assigned to Lani. She tried not to get too hopeful about Oscar. Other dogs she’d trained with had initially seemed like a good fit. She pushed aside the frustration she felt over not getting her own K-9 partner after so many months.

  As she stepped out into the early morning to walk the dog, the sun bathed her skin. She turned the corner.

  The idea of taking the dogs out was not only for exercise but getting them used to staying focused with a million distractions around them. This street usually had fewer people and less traffic than Ninety-Fourth Street where the K-9 offices and training center were.

  All the same, the streets already bustled with activity, visual and auditory. Oscar heeled with his head up, taking in the buzz of the city. Pedestrians brushed past them on the sidewalks. Car horns blared as traffic rolled by. In the distance, she detected the intense rhythm of a jackhammer.

  This was her city. Walking the dogs was part of her routine while on duty. Still, a fearful hesi
tation made her a little less confident in her step. The boat her attacker had escaped in was never found. She’d gone for a run on her day off which usually cleared her head, but not this time. Her sleep had been fitful.

  Oscar’s tail wagged when a group of children walked past him. She gave the leash a slight jerk to let him know that as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t interact with the children.

  “We’re on duty,” she said.

  The crowd thinned as they approached an abandoned building that used to be a multistoried department store. She could feel the soreness from the attack. She increased her pace. Oscar’s little legs kept up with hers. If she slowed, he responded. The dog was sharp. She loved all the K-9 recruits, but she liked how quickly Oscar picked up on her cues. They seemed to be dialed into each other, a quality that was essential in working with a partner, K-9 or human.

  She’d requested that he be brought out of foster care to see if he’d be good K-9 material. Not all dogs had the temperament to be K-9s. In her first encounter with Oscar, when he was just weaned at eight weeks, he had sat back on his haunches and looked up at her, tilting his head to one side as if to say, At your service, ma’am.

  Oscar seemed to have alerted on something across the street. She followed the line of his gaze. Noah Jameson stood beside a coffee cart waiting for his morning cup. He offered Lani a small wave before he turned back toward headquarters. He must be busy today if he was getting his coffee from a street cart. Most of the officers went to Griffin’s diner for coffee. Scotty wasn’t with him. He must be back at Noah’s office.

  “He’s all right, isn’t he, Oscar?” Noah had always struck her as being emotionally closed down. She had seen a more caring side to him after the training exercise fell apart. Maybe he was human after all.

  A scraping sound above her caused her to tilt her head. A large square object came right toward her at a rapid speed, filling her field of vision. She jumped to one side, falling against the brick exterior of the building. The few people on the sidewalk scattered as well. In her panic, Lani had let go of Oscar’s leash.

  An air-conditioning unit shattered on the concrete. Some of the pieces still vibrated from the impact.

  An older man rushed toward her. “Are you all right?”

  Dazed and in shock, Lani got to her feet with the man’s help. She brushed the dust off her uniform.

  “What a bizarre accident.” An older woman approached Lani. She tilted her head. “It must have been loose or something.” The woman patted Lani’s shoulder. “Are you all right, dear? That was quite the scare.”

  Lani’s heart raced a mile a minute. She glanced around. Where was Oscar? “Did you see where my dog went?”

  Both the old man and woman shook their heads. People had begun to move past her on the street, stepping around the pieces of the shattered air-conditioning unit. She stared through the forest of feet, not seeing the puppy as fear gripped her heart all over again. The poor thing had probably gotten frightened and run off.

  A yelp came from inside the building. She pressed her face against the dusty window. She could just make out Oscar’s face by a pile of scrap wood. The poor dog had been so afraid he’d run for shelter.

  “Hang on, Oscar. I’m coming to get you.”

  She tried one of the double doors that were the main entrance to the building. Locked.

  Oscar had gotten in somehow. She saw then a hole in the display window. Not big enough for her to slip through. She walked around to the side of the building and found a door that looked like it had been jimmied. Someone desperate for a place to sleep on a cold fall night had probably done that. Knowing that she might surprise someone, she pulled her gun.

  She rushed in. She heard Oscar’s whimper before she saw him in the dark corner. Broken display counters and pieces of mannequins still remained in the dust and debris.

  A sense of relief flooded through her as she ran over to the puppy. She holstered her weapon and gathered him in her arms. “It’s all right, buddy. That was scary for me too.” The pup licked her face.

  Thudding sounds came from the floor above her. Footsteps. Her heart beat a little faster. Maybe the air conditioner had had a little help by being pushed. Maybe the lock was jimmied by someone up to no good, not just looking for a place to sleep.

  “Tell you what, buddy. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.” She wrapped his leash around a door knob. She still hadn’t been issued a new radio. Protocol would be to call for backup. That wasn’t possible right now. She’d neglected to get another cell phone after hers was damaged by the water last night.

  Chances were she was dealing with a vagrant, nothing more. He or she could have leaned against the air-conditioning unit...or the destruction might have been on purpose. Or just someone so high or drunk, they didn’t know what they were doing.

  Oscar yipped as if to offer encouragement. More footsteps sounded above her. She pulled her weapon and headed up the wide staircase in the center of the floor. The second floor was an open area with broken glass and display counters largely dismantled and probably used for firewood. Mattresses and dusty clothing scattered throughout the floor indicated the homeless had taken up residence at one time. Maybe they were still here. None of the big front display windows on this floor contained air conditioners.

  She scanned the open floor area one quadrant at a time. There were places someone could hide, behind the piles of busted furniture and boxes and the display counters. She detected no movement. She held her own breath and listened, sensing that someone was watching her. Her mouth went dry. “NYPD. Please show yourself.”

  Turning quickly and aiming her weapon, she thought she saw someone in her peripheral vision. She let out a breath. Just a mannequin. She shook her head and dryly laughed.

  There were smaller rooms on the south side of the building that might have been offices or storage spaces. Some had doors, some did not. With her heart drumming in her ears, she made her way toward the rooms.

  Her own footsteps seemed to echo on the floorboards. The first room had no door, she peered inside seeing only empty shelving. She lifted her weapon and made her way to the second room. She held her gun in one hand while she opened the door with the other.

  A hand went over her mouth and jerked her back. The attacker had come up from behind. “I got you.” He pinched the nerves on her wrist. “Drop the gun.”

  Pain shot up her arm, but she held on to the gun. She angled her body side to side trying to escape his iron hold on her. In the struggle, she dropped her gun. She broke free, whirled around and slammed him hard in the stomach. The man, who was wearing a blue baseball cap, bent over. She scrambled to get her weapon.

  The man recovered quickly and took off running just as she picked up her gun. Footsteps pounded behind her. Not another one. She whirled around aiming her weapon just in time to see Noah coming up the stairs.

  On reflex, Noah pointed his gun at her. “Whoa.”

  Unable to form the question, she shook her head as if to ask what he was doing.

  “I saw movement on the third-floor window where that thing fell out. I was just getting ready to walk around the corner to headquarters, but there was a construction accident that blocked the sidewalk, so it took me a minute to run back over here.”

  But he was here. That’s what mattered.

  She pointed. “He went toward the stairwell leading up.”

  They both raced across the floor. The culprit must have been trying to get out via the first floor when Lani had interrupted him on the second floor. Noah took the lead as they headed up the stairs.

  The third floor consisted of a hallway and a series of rooms that were probably offices and storage. There was no obvious exit.

  Lani pointed, signaling that they could work their way from either end toward the middle, clearing each room. She moved into the first room, cleared it and stepped back into the
hallway just in time to see Noah disappear into a room on the opposite end of the hallway.

  She stepped into the second room, which featured a large window that looked out on the street. A knocked-over file cabinet and pieces of a desk that must have been quite beautiful in its time cluttered the floor. This could have been the CEO’s or store manager’s office. There was no evidence a transient lived here, though she did see the hole that likely contained the air-conditioning unit that now lay in pieces on the street.

  She shuddered. What was in the mind of someone who would push something out a window knowing there were people down below who could be hurt?

  She heard the thunder of footsteps. Heart racing, weapon drawn, Lani stepped back out into the hallway just in time to see Noah sprinting toward the far end of the building.

  Noah looked over his shoulder. “He’s headed up to the roof.”

  Noah disappeared around a corner. Lani followed after him, praying they would catch their suspect.

  * * *

  Moments before, Noah had stepped out on a fire escape and spotted the suspect climbing out on a different fire escape and taking a ladder up toward the roof. He had raced back inside to see if there was an easier way to get to the roof. That’s when he’d seen Lani and told her the suspect was headed up to the roof.

  He hurried out to the landing where the suspect had gone. The fire escape, which looked like it was hanging by maybe one bolt, was clearly not a safe route down. He peered up just in time to see the suspect’s feet disappear over the top of the building.

  Noah holstered his weapon and leaped up the uneven brick facade that the suspect had used as a sort of climbing wall. His muscles strained as he pulled himself up. He glanced down only for a moment to see the throngs of people and metal of cars glinting in the early morning sun. He found another foothold as his hands wrapped around the protruding brick above him.

  Lani came out on the balcony. She groaned. “Are you kidding me.”

  Noah looked down at her. “Join the fun.” He scaled the rest of the wall and pulled himself up to the flat roof. The suspect raced from one corner of the roof to another. He was trapped.