by Jenna Rae
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Table of Contents
Cover
Synopsis
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by Jenna Rae
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Bella Books
Synopsis
For a long time, Captain Brenda Borelli has had it all—a devoted girlfriend, a dedicated partner, loyal friends, and a fulfilling career. Her world seemed perfect. But somehow it all fell apart. While she was busy investigating crimes, the things she valued most just slipped away.
When newly minted Officer Tami Sheraton is murdered by a corrupt cop, Brenda is unable to let the department close the case. She feels responsible for letting the rookie down and finds herself unsure of whom she can trust.
Soon she enlists the help of ex-girlfriend Tori and together they begin their own investigation. Just when the situation feels truly desperate, it only seems to get worse.
As if solving the murder isn’t enough, trying to figure out whether she wants to start over with her old lover—or explore the possibilities with a potential new one—might prove to be the most difficult task of all.
Copyright © 2018 by Jenna Rae
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
First Bella Books Edition 2018
eBook released 2018
Editor: Ann Roberts
Cover Designer: Judith Fellows
ISBN: 978-1-59493-604-3
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Other Bella Books by Jenna Rae
Stumbling on the Sand
Turning on the Tide
The Writing on the Wall
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for my beautiful children and my darling Lee. Thank you for offering your love and humor and patience. Maritza, Becca, Mary, Suzanne, Sarah, and Motsie—thank you for being your kind, loving, accomplished selves and for putting up with my neglect and distraction.
Ann Roberts, thank you for providing encouraging feedback along with direct, insightful suggestions for sculpting a book from my mess of a draft. As a reader, I have greatly enjoyed your books. As a writer, I have greatly benefited from your generosity, talent, and wisdom.
Thank you to the smart, dedicated, talented team at Bella Books and to our peerless leader Linda Hill.
To each reader I offer my humble thanks. Your time is valuable and your choices many. Thank you for investing irretrievable minutes and hours to this story.
Chapter One
Rookie patrol officer Tami Sheraton fell back when the bullet hit her chest.
A tiny video camera secured to the frame of Sheraton’s eyeglasses watched tall, slender Sergeant Mark Donnelly saunter through the back exit of the liquor store with a paper sack in his left hand. His dark eyes widened and his fleshy mouth gaped in evident surprise. Donnelly drew his service weapon and spoke for six seconds. There was a blinding flash as he discharged his gun. The evening sky dropped and the audience gasped.
Captain Brenda Borelli blinked as the big screen went dark in the nearly silent auditorium. She swiveled ten degrees left to face her interrogator and answer his question.
“Yes, Commander, I did suggest Sheraton wear a hidden camera.”
Briarwood Police Department Senior Commander Marty Banks raised an eyebrow. He cleared his fleshy throat, an action that generally presaged a long lecture, and Brenda decided to forestall it.
“Not a serious suggestion. Obviously. It was a sarcastic off-the-cuff remark, not something I expected Officer Sheraton to actually do. She understood it was a joke. We laughed about it.”
Banks grunted and rolled his eyes. When no one seemed to respond to this, he cleared his throat again. He snatched up his dripping water bottle roughly enough to crinkle it.
While he chugged and choked, Brenda looked around the room as though gathering support. She chose her words with care. “I guess she thought about it and decided it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.”
“So you and Tami Sheraton were off alone somewhere, joking around, and you suggested something dangerous and thought nothing of it.” Recovered now, Banks shook his jowls. “Did you often have private conversations with this female junior officer? And where was this personal conversation, Captain Borelli? Did it take place inside your home, a restaurant, a bar? This was at a time when you were off duty, wasn’t it?”
Brenda kept her face blank, refusing to rise to the bait and wondering how Banks had advanced to the second-highest rank in the department. She watched the other members of the panel sit back, as though to distance themselves from Banks.
“As indicated in your briefing notes, Commander, I was walking into this building at approximately noon on Christmas Day. I wasn’t scheduled for duty but had some paperwork to catch up on, and I wanted to support my officers who were working the holiday. I brought sandwiches and cookies, just like I have on every major holiday for the last several years.”
Brenda waited a beat before continuing. None of the high-ranking bureaucrats ranged above her on their raised platform had been at work on Christmas Day, and everyone knew it.
“Sheraton approached me on the front steps to ask my advice on developing stronger observational skills and situational awareness. I suggested the usual things and warned it could take years to hone her craft. She was frustrated, so I kidded her, saying a camera might help. Sheraton laughed. It was obviously a joke.”
“Captain—”
“I advised Sheraton to seek guidance from her training officer, Sergeant Mark Donnelly, and her station’s commanding officer, Captain John Vallejo. She assured me she would do so, and I followed up with Captain Vallejo and Sergeant Donnelly within the week to ensure she had.”
“And now Officer Sheraton is dead.” The stark statement came from the only female officer in the Briarwood department whose rank was higher than Brenda’s. Commander Victoria Paige Young widened her beautiful blue eyes and shook back her long golden hair. Brenda knew Tori had long been referred to as Commander Barbie by more than one senior officer, though no one dared say it in front of Brenda.
Elevated on the gleaming pecan dais with the other bras
s, Tori peered down at her ex with clear disdain. Brenda felt her spine stiffen. With what she hoped was invisible effort, she relaxed her shoulders and the muscles of her face.
“Yes, Commander.” Brenda waited a beat. “Of course, a few things happened in between.”
Tori blinked slowly and sat back, and Brenda sobered. Did Tori really think Brenda had misjudged the situation with Sheraton? Certainly she’d misjudged Tori.
Staring up at the glossy bureaucrat ensconced in a navy bespoke suit, Brenda had a hard time seeing the funny, smart, devoted lover with whom she’d shared nearly a decade. Brenda pushed her feelings aside to focus on the task at hand. She looked directly into the face of each of the big bosses one at a time.
“Tami Sheraton’s family, this department, and this city have lost a good person and a good officer. But my joke didn’t kill her. We only know the identity of her killer because she was wearing the hidden camera. The footage we just watched is from that camera.”
She took a long sip from the glass of water in front of her and kept them waiting an extra few seconds. “Mark Donnelly is still at large. I request the allocation of additional resources to the search for Sheraton’s killer, pursuant to the department’s longstanding focus on officer safety and on ensuring the highest professional standards within the department.”
Banks cleared his throat. “Captain Borelli, we are aware of our own policies. You’re the subject of this hearing because your carelessness may have been a contributing factor in the death of Officer Sheraton.” He caressed his tie, danced his stubby fingers through his thinning white hair and ran his gaze around the assembled officers who ringed the back of the large, plain chamber on the ground floor of the city’s new five-story building. “You’re hardly in a position to make requests of this department.”
“Commander Young. Commander Banks. Commander Olivares. Commander Jones. Commander Fulton. I won’t mention my twenty years of service to this department as a defense against your allegations of wrongdoing, though of course the only wrong I’ve done was to make a joke that the officer in question knew was a joke. Sheraton was a rookie who was focused on doing her most conscientious job. She took some initiative. In fact, she might have revisited the idea after she read this department’s newsletters, two of the most recent of which detailed how many departments around the state and the country are requiring their officers to wear body cameras, a practice we can debate the relative merits of at a later date.”
Based on the surprise painted on their faces, she guessed not one of the senior officers staring down at her had actually read any of the department’s newsletters or was aware of current operational trends in law enforcement. Bringing up the newsletters’ contents was her kill shot, and she could only hope she’d calculated its best use accurately.
As one, the brass section looked past her at the dozens of officers witnessing the hearing. Brenda noticed Tori’s small, nearly invisible smirk and knew she’d scored big. She decided to build on the strength of her position.
“One of our own killed one of our own. That’s the real issue here, the fact we allowed within our ranks a man who is corrupt, violent, dangerous, unethical, and a threat to our community and our department.”
Brenda noted the way Tori shifted her shoulders. She knew the hearing was essentially over then and Brenda had won the rhetorical battle. What this would cost her in the long political campaign that was her career in law enforcement, she’d find out later.
There was more yammering. Each senior officer had to make a long-winded statement that could be quoted by the press and by the public-relations contractor. Then a few midlevel officers had to follow the bad examples of their bosses and express outrage and smug superiority. The onslaught went on for well over an hour.
This barrage of verbiage was finally punctuated by a brief, conciliatory statement from Chief Walton, who had positioned himself halfway between her and the elevated senior officers as though he were a neutral party.
She thought for the umpteenth time that Chief Walton was, if nothing else, a brilliant tactician. It was he who’d suggested she wear a suit instead of her dress uniform and insisted the hearing should be open to the public. She strongly suspected he’d also notified key officers to ensure a wall of blue stood behind her in the hearing.
She sat quietly through that last hour. She kept her face blank, her back straight, her hands relaxed on the table in front of her. Things turned out about like she’d expected, with no authorization for further investigative resources and no censure of Brenda or anyone else.
As she finally made her exit, exchanging quick greetings with dozens of officers on the way out, she noticed a woman staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes. Struck by the intensity of the stranger’s gaze, Brenda returned the direct look for a long moment before the outsider turned away, disappearing in the crowd of officers and other onlookers.
The attractive newcomer—an elegant redhead with dark brown eyes—looked vaguely familiar, but Brenda couldn’t place her. Was she an officer from a neighboring department? A journalist? A victim? A politician? Clear eyes and skin, very good haircut, tailored suit and erect posture were the only impressions Brenda had formed in her brief perusal. Who was the staring stranger?
Adrenaline engendered by the very public scolding she’d just experienced pushed her speculation away, and she plowed as gracefully as she could through the crowd. She shook hands and patted shoulders and smiled without letting anyone engage her for more than a few seconds.
She nodded at Dan Miller, CEO of Briarwood Watchdogs, wearing a bland expression despite the question that ran through her mind at seeing him: why would the head of a private security company show up for a hearing like this one?
As always, he sported a black polo shirt and gray pants, gleaming combat boots, a movie-style holster and a variety of mail-order badges and insignia. A civilian would take him for a police officer or a soldier, which she supposed was the idea. He shaved his thinning hair and always looked like he was about to head into some mysterious battle with unknown nefarious evildoers. The extra thirty or so pounds he sported in his midsection and the ever-present sheen of sweat on his pate blew the lie, but he didn’t seem to know that.
Brenda eyed Miller as he approached, his mouth wide in a salesman’s smile and his hand outstretched. She knew he’d squeeze her hand much too hard, so she summoned an iron grip to counter his. After a few tense seconds he broke the hold and smiled as if in concession.
“Congratulations. Ready to get out from under yet?”
She laughed. “You never quit, do you?”
“I’m a success because I surround myself with the best people. You’re the best, so you bet I’m going to keep trying to get you on my team.”
“Why don’t you join us?” She countered with what she hoped was a friendly smile. “We could use someone with your leadership skills.”
He pursed his lips and nodded before answering. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. I have a lot to offer. I could shake things up. But I’m my own man, Captain. I’m on the winning team. I’m always on the winning team. Don’t get left behind.”
“If I change my mind you’ll be the first to know.”
“That’s a maybe, and that’s better than a no. I’ll get you someday!”
He nodded as though they’d agreed to something, and she patted his arm as she murmured a goodbye and brushed past him.
“Thanks for coming, Padilla,” she said to a recently retired officer, shaking his cold, dry hand and continuing to move through the crowd.
A reporter clutched her arm, and she extricated herself with a wry smile and a brief squeeze of his arm. “Come on, Cal, don’t you guys at Channel Three have anything better to cover on a Friday night? It is football season, right?”
Tami Sheraton’s captain, John Vallejo, stood in the swirling mass of officers and spectators, somehow apart from everyone while surrounded by the crowd. He was in Brenda’s path, having apparently plotted h
er course and planted himself accordingly.
“John,” she said, coming to a stop. Her Central Division counterpart was in his early fifties. His salt-and-pepper curls looked as droopy as his posture was erect, and she saw weariness in his dark, hooded eyes. His curt nod gave her pause, and she peered at his closed expression. “This couldn’t have been any easier for you than it was for me.”
He shrugged and looked away. “The sooner we can all put this behind us, the better.”
“Agreed.” She noted the strain in his voice, not certain whether he blamed her for Sheraton’s death or whether he was feeling guilty himself. He was, after all, both Donnelly’s commanding officer and Sheraton’s.
As if reading her thoughts, he shook his head. “Donnelly—I still can’t believe it. He seemed like a regular guy, a decent guy.”
She murmured agreement and examined Vallejo more closely. He’d been smoking. She could smell it on him and knew how hard he’d worked fifteen years back to quit smoking when his second wife was pregnant with their first child. Or was it, she puzzled, his first wife and second child? It was getting harder to remember details like that.
She caught a whiff of booze in his sweat and was even more surprised by this. He had been sober for over twenty years. The strain of the situation was showing on her normally unflappable colleague, and she wasn’t sure how to offer comfort without seeming patronizing or political.
“I never thought you were responsible,” he offered, rubbing his chest as though it itched.
“Thanks. I never blamed you either, for what it’s worth.”
“Yeah. See you around.”
Vallejo suddenly turned away and shouldered a path through the crowd. Brenda frowned at his retreating back, but another young officer was already approaching, and she offered a quick handshake and wooden smile before moving on.
