Dark Blue (South Island PD Book 1)
Page 24
“Really?”
He nodded. “Just make sure you have a strong password and a secure network, because the feeds can be hacked. You wouldn’t want someone else seeing inside your home.”
The thought made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “Thanks for the warning.”
A knock came at the door and she jumped. The little bit of coffee left in her cup sloshed, nearly spilling.
“I’ll get it,” Elijah said.
“It’s probably my landlord.”
It was. Belle introduced her and Elijah, making it clear that he was a police officer and a friend. Then they changed the locks.
Of course, unless the intruder somehow had a key to her apartment, she didn’t see how new locks would help.
Elijah had an on-duty officer come by and write a report on the intrusion, and then she was finally able to return to where she really wanted to be: the hospital.
CHAPTER 30
“Why didn’t you tell me?” For the first time in five days, Jackson sat on his own couch. He was propped up with pillows like an invalid, but it was better than being stuck in the hospital.
Belle sat beside him on the edge of a cushion. She wore a calm expression, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him.
“I didn’t want to stress you out while you were in the hospital. I asked Elijah not to mention it to you until after you were discharged, too.”
He frowned. He was going to have a fucking talk with Elijah.
“Jesus, Belle, you could’ve been murdered. And you’re still sleeping there?” Someone had been in her apartment during his first night at the hospital. The fact sat in his gut like a heavy, jagged stone.
“The locks have been changed.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t be picked. Sounds like that’s probably how the intruder got in in the first place.”
She bit her lip – he could tell by the dent that appeared in the pink swell of her lower one. Her brows drew closer, too – she was worried.
“My landlord had a security camera installed in the parking lot, and I set one up inside my apartment, too.”
“Great. In all my years on the police force, I’ve never heard of a crime being committed in the presence of a camera.” He rolled his eyes, then squeezed them shut. Why did everything have to go to shit all at once?
Belle was being watched, or stalked, or whatever, and he was a fucking cripple.
They’d made him stay longer than he’d wanted to at the hospital, giving him antibiotics to prevent infection. He’d heal faster for it in the long run, they’d said.
He already felt a hell of a lot better than he had after the surgery, but he had to use crutches to get around and he moved at the speed of molasses. Navigating his apartment was a pain in the ass, or rather, the thigh.
“What am I supposed to do,” she asked, “assume a false identity and flee the country?”
“For starters, you should’ve told me.” He couldn’t believe she and Elijah had conspired to keep what’d happened secret from him. Yeah, his leg was hurt, but did they think he was so mentally feeble that he couldn’t handle knowing?
“What could you have done about it, Jackson?”
Her words hit him like a punch to the gut, and he struggled not to let that show on his face.
He failed. He could feel his brows drawing together, carving lines across his forehead.
“I could’ve asked someone at the department to make sure your street was patrolled,” he said, though it wasn’t enough. He wanted to be the one to make sure she was safe – it was too important to trust to someone else.
No matter how good a cop they might be, no one else cared as much about her safety as he did.
“Elijah did that.”
A mixture of relief and agitation swept through him. The important thing was that it had been done. Still, he should’ve been the one to do it.
Best friends or not, he wished he had two good legs so he could kick Elijah’s ass. Keeping the secret had broken just about every unwritten rule there was – between officers, and between friends.
“I’m sorry you’re upset,” she said, “but your wellbeing was my top priority. I wasn’t going to do anything that might’ve jeopardized that.”
“And you think your wellbeing isn’t my top priority?” He held her gaze, searching for some sign that she realized how ridiculous her stance was.
“I think you need to focus on your recovery.”
“Believe it or not, I can worry about two things at once.”
That little dent reappeared in her bottom lip, and her eyes seemed to get a shade darker.
He took one of her hands in his. It felt good to be able to move without an IV tying him down.
“Don’t keep any more secrets from me, Belle. I’m a grown man and a police officer, for fuck’s sake. Having a couple holes in my leg doesn’t make me a child or an idiot. If you’re in danger, I need to know – there’s nothing more important to me.”
Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and she held his hand a little tighter. “No more secrets. And you’re important to me too – I hope you realize that’s why I waited until now to tell you what was going on.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. As long as she wasn’t going to keep anything else like this hidden from him, they were good.
Not that it didn’t grate that she hadn’t told him in the first place. It was bad enough knowing that he couldn’t protect her like he wanted to. Knowing that she felt the same way – that she’d turned to someone else without even bothering to tell him what was going on – dealt a wrecking-ball-sized blow to his pride.
Every time he looked at her, he got a tight feeling in his chest. Whatever kind of shape his heart was in, it was overflowing with what he felt for her.
And she thought he was too weak to even talk to.
* * * * *
Belle monitored the feed on her camera religiously, which was possibly the most boring task of all time. Unlike other people who used the technology to supervise babysitters or pets, she had nothing to look at but her empty entryway and locked front door. A week went by without incident.
Maybe the security camera outside really was deterring crime. She’d like to believe that, anyway. She constantly wondered who’d been in her apartment and why.
More than anything, though, she wondered about Jackson. There was no question that his injuries had him down, and she hated the thought of him sitting alone at home for hours while she and Elijah were both at work. She visited him every evening, her heart aching for the day he’d be able to get out and do things again without pain.
The doctors were optimistic about his long-term prognosis, and so was she. He was young, strong and otherwise healthy. There were no signs of infection, and he’d been shot with a .22 magnum – a handgun on the shallower end of the power range.
Belle thanked whatever powers that were for that every day.
Still, she couldn’t call Jackson lucky. Not when he’d come home from so many other shifts unscathed. Her heart ached every time she saw him frown as he popped a pain pill, swallowing it as if it were arsenic.
It was plain to see that his fierce independence made him loath to rely on the crutches and pills. He’d told her he felt like a human sloth, lying on the couch or in bed all day with his leg propped up to keep the swelling down.
The shining veneer of easygoing fun and sizzling sex that’d coated the beginning of their relationship was gone. She didn’t feel any differently about him, though.
It wasn’t an easy path she feared losing, but him altogether. His injury had forced a gap between them – he didn’t want her help and didn’t like her “babying” him, as he called it.
What he didn’t seem to realize was that she was eager to be by his side because she loved him, and the idea of keeping her distance when he needed someone was intolerable. She wanted to tell him that flat-out, but bit her tongue every time she was tempted.
When she said tho
se words, she didn’t want them to fall on deaf or disbelieving ears because he thought she pitied him.
* * * * *
“Look man, she asked me not to tell you.” Elijah stood beside the TV, which Jackson was sick of watching.
He’d waited nearly twenty-four hours after talking to Belle to have this conversation with Elijah. He’d been asleep when Elijah had gotten home from work, and now he was preparing to leave for another night shift.
Jackson didn’t want to be a dick and get Elijah’s back up before he went in to work – that was never good – but they needed to talk about it.
“So?” he asked. “You’d have wanted to know if you’d been in my shoes.”
“Yeah, I would’ve. But I wasn’t, and I saw what a shitty time you were having at the hospital. It’s hard to come to grips with an injury that’s going to take months to recover from, and I didn’t think it’d be right to fuck that up for you while you were fresh out of surgery. So I kept my mouth shut.”
“What gave you the right to make that decision? You always think you can save the day – well, I didn’t ask for your help. I’m not some idiot who called 911 asking for you to jump in and take charge.”
For a long moment, Elijah said nothing.
“I did what I thought was best,” he eventually said. “I was trying to look out for you.”
“Well in the future, don’t.” Jackson sighed as his anger ebbed, giving way to guilt. Elijah was about to leave for his shift – whether or not he’d been wrong, it wasn’t right to give him a hard time now. “You and Belle are like two stubborn-ass peas in a pod. You don’t have any excuse, though – you’re perfectly aware of the responsibilities I can handle. What happened to me is nothing compared to some of the calls I’ve worked.”
“It’s different when you’re the one gunned down.”
Yeah, it was. But still…
“I’ve got a couple holes in my leg, not my head. Promise me right now that you won’t keep anything else from me when it comes to Belle’s safety.”
Elijah looked reluctant, but he nodded. “Fine.”
Jackson stared his roommate down for a minute, searching for any signs of insincerity.
“Fine,” he eventually agreed.
Elijah rolled his shoulders back, as if he’d been newly relieved of some burden. “Have you seen the paper?”
“No.” He was bored, but not bored enough to sit around reading the South Island Times. If anything was truly newsworthy, word spread through the department like wildfire and he heard it that way. The paper barely scratched the surface of what went on in the city.
Elijah walked out of the room and returned seconds later, tossing a newspaper down on the coffee table.
Jackson was about to ask him why he’d wasted his money on a paper when he saw the headline.
CHAPTER 31
“Sorry I don’t have much time,” Belle said. “I’m heading over to Jackson’s in a little bit, after his roommate leaves for work.”
Mariah nodded and poured two glasses of sweet tea, sliding one across her kitchen table toward Belle.
“How’s he doing?”
“His wounds are healing well – no signs of infection. The swelling isn’t too crazy, as long as he keeps his leg elevated.”
“Great. What about his mental wellbeing?”
Belle shifted her gaze down to her glass full of sweet, dark tea crowded with ice cubes. Mariah’s kitchen smelled like coffee and citrus – a pleasant combination. But the question reminded her of the weight she carried in her chest now – the one that anchored down her heart.
“I think he could be doing better in that respect. He gets restless, which is totally understandable. But it’s more than that, sometimes – being handicapped isn’t sitting well with him at all, even if it’s just temporary. I’ve been trying to do what I can to keep his stress levels down, but I think my main effort may’ve backfired.”
“And what was your main effort?” Mariah peered over her glass of tea, her eyebrows creeping toward her hairline. “Have you two already started having sex again?”
“No.” It was too bad, because she missed sex with Jackson. A lot. “With the shape his leg is in, we can’t. I see the way he winces when he’s moving around on the couch and doesn’t know I’m looking.”
Mariah nodded, her expression sympathetic. “So what was it that backfired on you, then?”
“You remember the day I found those flowers in my apartment?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t tell Jackson about it right away. Elijah and I thought it’d be better to wait a few days, until he was out of the hospital, to spring the news on him. But he was upset that we kept it from him.”
“I can imagine.”
Belle met her friend’s gaze.
“Come on, Belle – he’s a man. And a cop. Can’t you imagine how he must’ve felt when he found out you were sheltering him?”
Belle shifted in her seat. “You’re obviously right, but all I could think about was trying to protect him any way I could. It might not have been much, but it was something.”
“Sounds as if he’s already frustrated by the limitations his injury has placed on him. That’s pretty common with patients who’ve experienced traumatic wounds like his. In the blink of an eye, everything changes and they’re slammed with handicaps they never imagined having. And then he realized that when you were in danger, you went to someone else and kept it from him because you didn’t think he could handle it.”
The weight in Belle’s chest sank deeper. “When you put it that way, I sound like a real jerk.”
“Hey, I’m a nurse – I practically have superpowers. I don’t expect everyone to have this kind of insight.” She smiled, and the expression faded moments later. “I’ve seen a lot of hurt people Belle, and it’s hard, especially for guys like Jackson. It’s still early days, too – he’s experiencing the worst stage, and the light at the end of the tunnel probably seems pretty far away to him.”
“I guess that for him, the light at the end of the tunnel is returning to work.”
“If you think so, you’re probably right.”
Belle sighed. Now that Mariah had verbalized what Jackson was probably feeling, she felt spectacularly shitty. She said so to Mariah.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Why don’t you look ahead and try to make the immediate future a little brighter for him?”
“I’d love to; I just don’t know how to do it.”
“Well, there’s one thing that might get his mind off his leg…” Mariah wiggled her brows.
“I wish, but with his injuries—”
“Forget about bouncing around in bed. There are other things you could do for now, right? If he has to stay still, he might as well enjoy it.”
Belle smiled despite herself. “Maybe.”
“You know it’s a good idea – I see the gleam in your eye.”
Belle laughed for the first time in what felt like forever. It was an appealing idea. If they could both shove aside their worries long enough to let a spark of pleasure ignite between them, maybe it would be just what they needed.
“Hey,” Mariah said. “Have you seen today’s paper?”
“No, why?”
“Hold on a sec.” Mariah stood and grabbed a paper off the hutch by the fridge. “Front page – look.”
She dropped the paper on the table.
A bolt of surprise arrowed through Belle as her gaze settled on the headline.
Hero Cop Shields Local Woman from Gunfire, it read in bold type. Beneath was a portrait of a blonde woman, and beside it, a photo of Jackson.
It was a head and shoulders shot of him in uniform, looking serious and strikingly handsome – probably a portrait the department had had taken. They must’ve provided it, because Jackson hadn’t said anything about being in the newspaper.
“Looks like the woman he rescued did an interview,” Mariah said. “It’s nice, too – very complimentary of Jackson.”
“Yeah, she came into the hospital that night too. Between you and me, she was on death’s door when she got there – lost a lot of blood. If he’d gotten there any later or she’d sustained another wound, she’d be dead.”
Belle’s gaze was drawn to the newspaper article, and as she read, she could see it all unfolding in her mind.
Officer Jackson Calder, 29, of the South Island Police Department, responded to a call at Mead Avenue at approximately half past midnight on Tuesday. A resident had called 911 to report sounds of a conflict coming from a home shared by Marissa Brewer, 31, and her partner Thomas Horton, 37.
“We’d fought before,” said Marissa in an interview with the South Island Times, “but this was the worst time by far. Eventually he picked up a kitchen knife and swung it at me. By the time I realized I’d been stabbed, I was too disoriented to call for help. I didn’t know someone had called 911. When I heard a knock at the door, I thought maybe it was a neighbor coming to complain about the noise.”
Bleeding heavily, Marissa struggled to make it to the door and was surprised to find a South Island police officer on her doorstep.
“As soon as I saw him, I heard Thomas behind me,” she said, “and I knew something bad was going to happen. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and Officer Calder grabbed me. Next thing I knew, something slammed into my shoulder. From the sound of the gun, I knew I’d been shot. I was on the porch floorboards, and Officer Calder was down there with me, between me and the doorway. I didn’t realize he’d been shot too.
“I don’t remember a lot after that, but I know he was there and when I woke up after surgery in the hospital, they told me he’d been shot. I was glad to know he’d survived, because right away, I knew he’d saved my life.”