by W. J. May
Chapter 2
Two years later…
Kallie gripped the straps of her backpack as she jogged up the long set of concrete steps to the police station. She pulled her bag tight so it would not bounce against her back. With her luck, the loaner camera she got from her college photo class would flip on, or record itself jostling against her notebook or worse, have the battery die. Great first impression.
At the top of the stairs she slowed to a walk and pulled her long blonde ponytail tight. How she landed an interview with this hot-shot rookie RCMP guy was newsworthy – probably more than the interview itself. This guy had managed to crack a bunch of unsolved murders and elude the press. She shook her head. Just a first-year college student who wanted to get into journalism, she hadn’t jumped through any hoops to get the interview.
It had been quite easy actually. She found Detective Liam Steel’s email on the RCMP website and asked to interview him for her school paper. When his email address showed up in her inbox an hour later, she figured he was politely declining. Instead, he had agreed and asked what evening would work for her. Hands shaking with excitement, she replied and nearly misspelled the single sentence: Thursday night would be perfect. For once auto-correct worked in her favor.
Now outside the doors to the police station, she checked her reflection in the glass with the remaining rays of the setting sun; hair in place, make up didn’t look smudged and her clothes were decent. She grabbed the long handle with one hand and at the same time slipped her iPod into the side of her backpack. Cool air blew against her as she stepped inside. The humidity made outside feel like a hundred degrees, and the smog from the city traffic didn’t help alleviate any of the hot thickness. The marble floor and constant run air conditioning inside the station made goose bumps appear on her arms. She shouldn’t have worn a tank top. At least her long striped skirt seemed to agree with whatever temperature man – or nature – threw at it.
Even at night, the lobby bustled with activity. Men and women in uniform strode purposely down the hall or through doors while tired looking people paced or sat on red leather chairs. What or whom they were waiting for drew Kallie’s curiosity. Maybe they were waiting for their robbing son to finish his court case, or maybe they were the people who were robbed and were waiting to talk to a police officer.
Someone’s watch beeped reminding Kallie she should have been here a bit earlier. She walked over to a reception line and stood by the “Wait To Be Called” sign.
“Step forward, ma’am.”
Did all police officers sound so formal? Kallie cleared her throat as she went to the receptionist whose bun seemed so tight the woman’s eyebrows were stuck halfway on her forehead. Kallie tried not to stare at them. “I’m here to see Detective Steel.” She cleared her throat a second time.
Bun lady’s eyebrows shot up another notch. “Really? What for?” She clicked through a few screens on her computer. “Name?”
“Kallie Matheson. I ha—”
“I.D. please.” The receptionist cut her off.
Kallie slipped a strap off her shoulder and unzipped her backpack. She pulled her wallet out and handed the woman her driver’s license. She covered the odd pair of scars on the bottom of her wrist with her free hand. They were faded but the pink jagged spots reminded her of drug needles. She wasn’t a druggy, she’d never tried anything stronger than ibuprofen, but people always commented on them. It made her uncomfortable and now at the police station, she seemed more aware of them.
“Go down the hall all the way to the end. There’s a set of stairs. Third floor, go right to the very end, last door on the right is the detective’s office.” Oblivious to Kallie’s discomfort, the secretary handed Kallie her driver’s license back, along with a visitor’s badge. “Wear the pass so the officers can see it, don’t stuff it in your bag.”
“Okay. So hall, stairs, third floor, right and right at the end.” She slipped the pass over her head and made sure her name lay face up. “Thank-you.” Even bitter-bun lady deserved a teeny bit of politeness. “Have a nice day.”
She race-walked down the hall and jogged up the steps, repeating the direction pattern under her breath until she reached a wooden door containing a brass plaque with Dt. L. Steel on it.
About to knock, butterflies had somehow managed to find their way into her stomach and throw a hip hop party. She wiped the palms of her hands against her skirt and took a deep breath. “It’s just an interview,” she muttered. Except what if her questions sucked? What if the guy didn’t have anything to say? He refused to talk to any of the big national papers so what if this was some kind of joke?
Chuckling sounds distracted Kallie from her thoughts. A deep, slightly sexy-slightly muffled voice called from behind the door, “You coming in, or just going to stand there all night?”
Kallie blinked and glanced above the door expecting a security camera staring down at her. Nothing there but cream-painted walls. Strange. She shrugged and reached for the doorknob, turning it. She stepped inside, the heavy door swinging shut behind her.
The office had a musty smell. Four filing cabinets lined the side of the office with no windows, a large multi-angled desk seemed to take up the rest of the space. Three computers sat spaced across the desk, stacks of folders and papers covered the rest of it. Kallie knew it was the same color as the hard wood floor only because of the ornate carved legs. No pictures on the walls, only the window with a view of the city lights below.
A guy not much older than Kallie stood by the table. He had one leg on the edge and was tying a grey sneaker. He wore baggy jeans, a sleeveless blue zip up jacket over a black tank top. Easy to see he worked out by the muscles covering his bare arms and cut shoulders. Short cropped dark hair continued down to the scruff of a five o’clock shadow. It gave him a sexy rough boy kind of look.
He lifted his foot off the table and turned to smile at Kallie, his bright grey-blue eyes making her lose all train of thought. She’d pretty much forgotten everything when she noticed him, but those pretty eyes distracted her brain all over again. Something in the back of her mind flickered but she failed to chase after the thought when he spoke.
“Hi.” He seemed amused by her staring.
“Ha-Hello.” She forced herself to look away and pretended to concentrate on the desk. “I’ve got a meeting with Detective Steel.” Maybe he was the intern. Wouldn’t that be awesome.
“Liam. Just Liam.”
“Okay. Is that what he prefers to be called?” She wondered if she should get her notepad out to go over her questions.
Cute boy smiled again. “He does.”
Kallie slipped her backpack off and set it on the other end of the desk. “I’m Kallie.” She pulled out a notebook and the camera. “I’m supposed to interview Detective St—Liam. Is he here? Does he know I’m coming?”
“He is. And he does.” The silly grin appeared again. “How old are you, Kallie?”
“Nineteen.”
“You just started college this year?”
“Yeah.” She flipped her notepad open to the page she had written the list of questions on. She stared at the page, trying to focus on the questions and not the millions of others she was wondering about the good looking stranger in front of her. “Are you in school?”
“Me?” He crossed his arms and leaned his bum against the table. Taut muscles rippled without trying on his upper body. “I’m one of the nerdy guys. Graduated high school at fifteen. Crazy, I know. I enrolled in the police academy that summer and joined the RCMP two years ago.” He pressed his lips together and forced air out of his nose. “Kinda found my way up the ranks.”
Nerdy? Far from it. “Wow, how old are you?” She was willing to bet his story was way more interesting than Detective Steel’s.
“Nine—sorry, I’m twenty-one.” He swallowed and paused, then glanced down at her hands. “Do you need to write any of this down?”
“Uh, no. I’m good.” Twenty-one? He hardly looked older than she
did. Smart young guy working as a cop already. Kallie straightened suddenly, her notepad slipping from her hands. It dropped to the floor with a resounding slap. “Wait a minute…You’re Detective Liam?”
Chapter 3
“Just Liam.” He grinned. “Detective makes me sound old.”
Kallie couldn’t stop staring. No newspaper or Internet article had bothered to mention the new RCMP on a hot streak was freakin’ hot. She shifted her weight and her left flip flop brushed against something thick on the floor. Her notepad. She quickly bent to retrieve it. “I’m so sorry.” Her face burned. She cursed inside her head for her body’s lack of control, for its inability to hide things she didn’t want others to see.
“Don’t apologize. I should have introduced myself.” He gave a small, cocky grin.
She blinked. He knew she hadn’t realized and had teased her.
“Kallie?” The detective reached for his phone nestled in the clip on his belt. His brows furrowed together as he scrolled through something. “Excuse me a moment.” His fingers tapped over his phone faster than anyone she’d ever seen before. He snorted and shook his head, then seemed to tap even faster.
Kallie sat down and turned in her seat.She looked absently around the room. She didn’t want to be rude and the guy had police business to take care of. The one wall held a bookcase with some odd books and a couple of crystal trophies. A picture rested behind the desk, an old black and white photo of a barn and farm house. She squinted and realized she recognized the place. It was in a lot better shape in the picture but the barn wasn’t too far from where she lived.
“Almighty,” Liam said. “You came here for an interview and I have about ten minutes. Duty calls.” He set his phone on the desk and leaned a hip against it. “What do you want to know?”
“I’ll be as quick as I can.” Kallie looked down at her list of questions and reached around her backpack for something to write with. She also pulled out her recorder, set it on the arm of her chair and turned it on to record the interview. “Thanks for letting me interview you. I know you don’t really like talking to the media.” She continued to search her bag.
He leaned over and handed her a pen. Delicious cologne wafted her way and she was tempted to close her eyes and inhale again. “What makes you think I don’t like to be interviewed?”
“There’s nothing about you in the papers. Or whatever is written is basically speculation and I’ve never come across a direct quote or a picture of you.”
“You’ve been cyber-stalking me?” He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. “I’m kidding. What made you want to interview me?”
She tried to think of some witty comment but gave up and went with the truth. “I need a good mark in this class.”
“You’re not interested in the city’s crime or how to stop it?”
It was her turn to tease. “Isn’t that your job?” She grinned.
“Point taken. I guess it is.”
“Is that why you became a policeman? To stop the bad guys? I mean, you graduated high school early and apparently have an off-the-wall I.Q. Why not get into neuroscience or become a doctor?”
Liam shook his head. “Blood and I sort of have this love-hate relationship. What about you? You’re a bright girl, why are you getting into journalism instead of being a doctor?”
“Guts and gore and I sort of have this love-hate relationship.” She smirked, happy to reuse his remark against him. An odd thought crossed her mind. “Why did you agree to let me interview you?”
The detective stared down at his hands, probably trying to come up with some fake reason to avoid answering. His head came up sharply, his steel blue eyes captured hers. “You’re the Matheson, right?”
She swallowed, her mouth weirdly dry. “The Matheson? I’m not sure what you mean, or what it has –”
“The bad car accident a couple years back,” he said, cutting her off. “You were involved.”
Now Kallie’s eyes slipped down to the notebook laying in her lap. She knew she needed to steer away from this conversation. “I saw on the Internet you don’t even answer the biggest paper in the country’s request for an interview. Your avoidance of the media is causing quite a stir. It’s obviously not because you are shy. What’re you trying to hide?”
He straightened, a little too fast. “I’ve got no secr—there’s nothing to hide.” He cocked his head to the side. “What’re you trying to cover up?” He stared at her with those piercing blue eyes, as if trying to read her mind. Then he shrugged and his face softened. “I don’t like the news. Never have, never will.”
“Why is that? Did some newspaper misspell your name in tee ball when you were a kid? Now you can’t let it go?” She tried to keep a straight face, but had to press her lips tight when she could feel their corners trying to turn up. She didn’t want him to press her on personal questions, so teasing was usually her way out of awkward situations.
The surprised look on his face was kind of cute.
“You’re a funny-bunny.” He rolled his eyes. “And it was soccer, not tee ball.” He winked at her.
She wrote it down as a joke.
His hand covered her writing. “That’s off the record, right?”
She stared at his long fingers and resisted the urge to cover his hand with hers just to feel his skin against hers. She cleared her throat.
He moved his hand.
Kallie made an exaggerated effort to scribble out what she had written. Her bangs fell into her eyes when she glanced up at the detective. “What do you want me to write? I mean, you agreed to let me interview you, but you don’t like the media.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “There’s something you want the news to know, right? Why else am I here?”
The detective leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms over his muscular chest. “You’re funny. Direct also. I can appreciate that.” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be a journalist. You’ve got way too much potential.”
She didn’t appreciate him knocking her career choice. “We talk for ten minutes and you know all about my potential now? What’d you do; run a police check on me and subpoena my report cards?”
He raised his hands in surrender. “That’s not what I meant. I… you… it’s…” He blew a breath out, his cheeks puffing as he forced the air out. “Look. I like you. I don’t like journalists. They twist the truth.”
“And cops don’t? You believe every cop is clean?”
“That’s a bit of a drastic comparison.”
“Is it?” She crossed her legs and saw his eyes dart down to her exposed calf before slowly returning to her face. “You seem to have no problem sitting on the judgement throne. Tossing assumptions and accusations from your high seat.” She stood, ready to toss the interview. Screw him.
Except she couldn’t walk away. She needed the interview for a good mark. Her entire journalism class depended on this conversation. So could see her future job in broadcasting if she really thought about it.
She sighed and sat back down, dramatically turning her notebook to a fresh page. “Can we just start over? I’ll ask you questions and you can answer them or if you don’t want to, just say ‘no comment’. Will that work?”
“How about for every question you ask, I get to ask you one?”
Really? What was interesting about her? She had been in a car accident two years ago, but it wasn’t a big deal. No one really remembered it except her family. A silly thought crossed her mind, but she pushed it away. There was no way he would be remotely interested in her. He was mister-hot-cop. He didn’t have time for dating. Just because she might be physically attracted to him, it didn’t mean he felt the same way. “Fine. I’ll ask you and if you don’t respond, I don’t have to answer yours. Deal?”
He grinned. “Deal.”
She couldn’t help but smile back at him. He thought he had one on her, and she figured she was the one ahead of the game.
His eyebrows rose. “Aren’t you going to ask me a questi
on?”
“Oh! Yeah, right!” She stared down at the blank page in front of her. She wrote the number one down. “What made you want to be a cop?”
“I like catching the bad guys.” He sat on top of his desk and leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “What made you want to interview me?”
“I need to get a good grade, so I figured a hard score would do it.”
“I’m a hard score?” He smiled, his white teeth showing bright against his red lips.
She ignored his comment, or tried to; the heat growing on her cheeks proved otherwise. “On the record, if you don’t like the media why did you agree to let me interview you?” She felt like a broken record asking the same question again, but he was avoiding answering it.
He stared at her without saying anything to the point where she needed to look away from his unique, intense blue eyes. He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. His bicep muscles curved perfectly, showing his strength. “I don’t have a problem with the media. I just don’t like the attention. I find it unnecessary. I come to work, do my job, and go home. I’m not trying to be a superhero or anything.”
Kallie made a quick note in her notepad. “Basically you like keeping your head down.” She understood what he meant. She had been doing the same thing since the accident.
“Yeah.” Liam looked relieved when she didn’t write anything more down. “My turn. Are you living on campus or off?”
Weird question. “I’m off. I live at home and commute.”
He nodded. “Good. It’s safer.”
Maybe there was something going on at campus he knew about and didn’t want to say. “Can you tell me what you’re working on right now?” She didn’t know if he could even say something about a current case. Probably not. “Or about your latest closed case?”
“The last case involved a ring of murders.”
“A ring?” She wrote that down in her notepad. “Do you mean a serial killer?” She tried to remember reading about it in the papers and couldn’t recall.
