Last Shot at Justice (A Thomas Family Novel Book 1)

by Kristi Cramer

  He briefly considered lifting her up into the loft so she could get comfortable, but dismissed the idea on the grounds that it might wake her, and he didn’t want to give an impression of trying to take advantage of her. Not to mention, it didn’t seem too wise to disturb a sleeping police officer whose last waking thoughts had surely been about the danger she was in. Seemed like a good way to get a punch in the nose.

  The coffee pot sat on the floor next to a half-full mug. Blue picked them up and carried them to the sink to rinse them out. As he ran the water, he kept checking to see if Mitzi was stirring, but it was apparent that she was out cold. So he went about brewing another pot of coffee. Proper, strong coffee this time, not the weak tea he’d brewed last night.

  While he waited for the water to start percolating, he glanced at the TV to see the morning news starting up. He tried to read the captions for a minute, but they were going by too quickly, so he turned the volume on at a low level.

  After a brief weather report—the rain had cleared off and it was promising to be a beautiful day—the camera cut to the news anchors. The woman straightened a stack of papers while the man addressed the camera.

  “Good morning, Denver. We’ve had some developments overnight on the top two stories we have been following. In the case of missing twelve-year-old Leigh Ann Wharton, daughter of Mayor Suzanne Wharton, a spokesman from Regional Transportation District revealed that the girl’s cell phone was found as a city bus was being cleaned at the end of the day. It was handed over to the police late last night. Police aren’t saying if text messages or phone logs have revealed any clues, and have in fact censured RTD for disclosing the find to the press, concerned that the disclosure could hamper the investigation.”

  Blue shook his head at the TV station’s willingness to repeat information that the police preferred to keep quiet.

  The picture of Leigh Ann appeared once more on the screen, and Blue was struck again by the idea that he had seen the girl at some point, but he still couldn’t think of where he was when he saw her.

  The news anchor continued, “As most Denverites know, Wharton’s family amassed a fortune in the Caribou silver mines late in the nineteenth century, and Suzanne Wharton was the sole heir when her father died in 2007. Mayor Wharton is now offering thirty thousand dollars of her personal fortune as reward for information leading to the safe return of her daughter.

  “Mayor Wharton is no stranger to tragedy. Her first husband, Major Samuel Wharton of the 101st Airborne Division, died in Afghanistan early in Operation Enduring Freedom, leaving her to raise their infant daughter, Leigh Ann, alone.

  “After remarrying two years ago, Ms. Wharton ran for office last year on a platform of getting ‘Smart on Crime,’ a program that is gaining momentum in the greater Metro area. Her plan, which advocates creating ‘high interest’ zones downtown and near Mile High Stadium—an area well known for gangs, drugs, and prostitution—has drawn praise from the Justice Reform Alliance and other reformists, and outrage from supporters of traditional ‘tough on crime’ policies.

  “Mayor Wharton is fighting to reduce or eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing, while calling for a return of judicial discretion, increased community involvement, and proactive treatment programs, as opposed to overburdening the justice system and prisons. Offenders caught in illegal activities in the zones will soon face compulsory treatment and education programs instead of the harsh prison sentences that currently apply even to first offenses. Repeat offenders will face increased punishment commensurate with their crimes.”

  The news anchor turned to his co-anchor. “You know, Clarissa, an event like this makes me wonder if the Mayor is going to revise her position on how to handle crime in Denver.”

  “That’s right, Jim. Later today we’ll have expert analysts on hand to discuss the Mayor’s program and the possible repercussions of this heartbreaking event.” Clarissa turned to address the camera. “Be sure to tune in to the five o’clock news to catch this special report. Up next after the break, new developments in the case of a woman fatally shot near Union Station last night.”

  Blue clicked the mute button just a hair after the commercial began to blare its message about some mouthwash. He looked over to see his guest stirring. She inhaled deeply as though drinking in the smell of the brewing coffee, and stretched her arms out over her head with a deep sigh.

  Then her eyes snapped open, and she looked around in alarm.

  “It’s all right,” Blue said, automatically applying the tone he used to calm spooked horses. “You’re safe.”

  The tension eased from her body slowly, and she looked at him in a way that made him acutely aware that he hadn’t yet pulled on a shirt. Her cool appraisal left him thinking she had no room in her thoughts for anything other than the matter at hand, and his bare skin was an unwanted annoyance.

  At last she scrubbed her hands across her face.

  “I was so hoping last night was just a bad dream.” She spoke in a groggy voice. “I don’t suppose you have any cigarettes?” Her tone was not very hopeful as she sat up, the blanket slipping off as she stretched her legs out in front of her.

  “Sorry, ma’am, I don’t smoke,” he said, averting his eyes from her strong, shapely legs by turning to pour coffee for her. “I won’t ask if you slept well. I should have insisted that you sleep in the loft.”

  Groaning, she stretched her arms again, then accepted the coffee he offered her. “Mmmm. This is much better than the pot you made last night. Thank you.”

  “Sorry about that belly wash last night, ma’am. If I had known you were a cop when I made it, I would have done it up right.”

  “Belly wash?”

  “Belly wash. Weak coffee.”

  “Huh. That’s one I haven’t heard before.”

  “Oh, it’s a cowboy term.” Her puzzled expression begged for a deeper explanation, so he went on. “See, my great-great granddaddy rode the Goodnight-Loving Trail and the Santa Fe Trail for eleven years running back in the day, driving cattle to the railheads in Dodge City. The Thomas family has worked our cattle ranch by Syracuse since 1880.”

  He frowned with the memory of why he was in Denver. Remembered his father shuffling through bank and medical bills with tears of frustration in his eyes. His big brother working a town job in addition to running the ranch with their daddy. His sister, the veterinarian’s assistant, working the night shift at the old-folks home. Even young Kylie, his sixteen-year-old niece, helping out by slinging hash after school and babysitting. Everyone pitching in, doing all they could to ensure the family survived.

  “Cattle and horses. That’s pretty much all we know.” He turned away from her curious gaze before she had a chance to ask a question he didn’t want to answer.

  She was silent a moment, then asked a question he didn’t mind answering. “What time is it?”

  “About quarter to seven,” he replied, grateful for the change in subject. He glanced at the TV. “They’re saying there’s new information on your case.” Blue noticed the commercials had wrapped up, and turned the sound on as Mitzi focused on the TV.

  To their surprise, Mitzi’s picture filled the screen. Blue took a moment to note that she looked very sharp in her dress uniform and cap. Then the words the news anchor was speaking sank in.

  “In an early morning press release, Denver Police Chief Winston Hatfield named the prime suspect in the shooting death of a Denver woman yesterday evening. Detective Mitzi Reardon, seen here at her graduation from Denver’s Police Academy, was working undercover in Denver’s red light district, and is believed to have gone rogue. The Internal Affairs Bureau recently opened an investigation into Reardon’s activities, and believes she shot and killed Barbara Kellen in a dispute over Reardon’s cut of Kellen’s earnings as a prostitute.” Mitzi’s photo was replaced with an old-looking photo of a dolled-up redhead. “Internal Affairs alleges that Reardon has been systematically taking over territories formerly controlled by pimps, using her position
within the Department to help her avoid detection and leverage her way into this unsavory facet of Denver’s underbelly.

  “Since yesterday’s shooting Reardon has gone underground, and Chief Hatfield is asking the citizens of Denver to keep an eye out for her and report any sightings. If you see Reardon, do not approach her as she is considered armed and dangerous.

  “Up next, traffic....”

  Chapter Five

  Mitzi looked up to see Blue staring at her, the remote loose in his hand. She reached out, took it, and shut off the TV. The report had shaken her. The chief was pulling out all the stops, which worried Mitzi. It felt like a setup. Like orders had been given to shoot first and ask questions only if she was still alive afterward. Her gut twisted with a hardened conviction that Hatfield would make certain shots were fired.

  But right now, she needed to assess the man who was staring at her, and make sure he hadn’t changed his mind about helping.

  “Well that is disconcerting,” she said.

  “I’ll say. That story was so full of holes, even a dumb cowboy like me can tell they’re reaching.” The consternation on his face relieved her somewhat as he continued to speak in his slow drawl. “Killing someone pretty much guarantees you won’t get paid. Why shoot someone who supposedly makes you money? And even if you did shoot her, why would you run off and give up everything you’ve been working for? One ‘rogue cop’ pushing out pimps to take over an entire city’s worth of whores, and she isn’t going to try to pin a murder on someone else? Not to mention, it seems strange to me that they put you on TV like that. I mean, unless they want to drive you underground....”

  “Blue,” Mitzi inserted, taking a moment to sip at her coffee. “You really need to stop referring to yourself as a dumb cowboy.”

  His slow smile at her compliment revealed a sparkle in his brown eyes and a cute dimple in his cheek that caused her heart to skip a beat. She took another moment to appreciate both, as well as the rest of him. Under other circumstances, Mitzi would have been dying to run her hands down Blue’s bare, muscular chest to see if it felt as sleek as it looked. The man standing so near to her was the stuff pinup calendars were made of, and she wished she didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to. A girl could spend hours just drinking in the sight of him.

  She cleared her throat and took another sip of coffee. “The good news is that they didn’t mention anything about an accomplice, which means they don’t want to implicate you, or my partner for that matter. They’re telling everyone that I’m acting alone, which means they haven’t decided what to do about you.”

  She felt a small stab of disappointment when Blue walked over to his clothes cupboard and pulled out a brown t-shirt. He slipped it on, then leaned back against the counter to pull on some socks and his boots.

  “I had an idea about transportation for today,” she continued, “but now that they have plastered my picture all over the news, I can’t just go rent a car. Anyway, I only had enough cash to rent for one day, and using plastic is out. They’d track me for sure.”

  “Well,” Blue responded, drawing the word out even longer than usual. “I guess I can ask my neighbor if I can borrow her car. She’s offered it to me before.”

  Mitzi wondered if that was a blush she was seeing on his cheeks. “You don’t sound so sure.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well now, I’m just not so sure about her motives for offering it, is all. If I ask her, you’ll want to stay inside until I get the keys.”

  Mitzi’s curiosity was piqued as she imagined some hot young bit of trailer trash ogling Blue and suggesting ways he could pay her back for the loan. “I don’t want you doing anything that makes you uncomfortable now.”

  The cowboy gave her a smile that was equal parts shy and wicked, but his reply was noncommittal. “She won’t be up just yet.”

  She watched him a little longer, waiting for him to expound on his plan, but he just shrugged and lifted his coffee mug to his lips.

  “Well, we need to figure out what I’m going to wear,” she said at last. “I can’t go running around in that skirt in the daylight, but I doubt any of your clothes would fit me. Does your girlfriend keep any clothes here?”

  It was an obvious fishing tactic, and she almost felt bad using it when she could have asked a more direct question. Too much time spent diverting attention from herself these days, she realized. But Blue didn’t seem to pick up the obvious.

  “No girlfriend,” he said innocently. “I don’t have much use for most women.”

  That set her back for a moment. Of course. Such a sincere, kind, candy-store-hot man had to be too good to be true. “You mean to say you’re gay?” she blurted out, unable to hide her astonishment or disappointment.

  That made Blue choke on the coffee he had just sipped, and he nearly spit it out. In the moments it took him to stop coughing, the look he gave her was impossible to read. “What?” he finally croaked out.

  Aghast that she had given away her true reaction and blown her cool professional distance, Mitzi modulated her tone to simple inquisitiveness. “Gay. You have no use for women. So you’re gay?”

  “That’s not...what I meant,” he replied, and cleared his throat again. “I hope you’re better at solving crimes than you seem to be at listening, or we’re in trouble.”

  “Hey,” she defended. “That was a reasonable conclusion.”

  “Oh really?” Another coughing fit struck Blue as he tried to compose himself. He held up a hand to forestall her comment. “Stop. You’ll make me laugh again.”

  “Laugh?” It took someone mighty secure in his manhood to laugh in the face of being called gay. When he looked up at her again, she could definitely detect a spark of mirth in his eye. “Well, whatever. Do you have something I can wear, or not?”

  With that smile slowly spreading on his mouth, Blue stood up straight and took one casual step toward her, which brought him directly in front of where she sat on the bench. Looking up the length of him was like looking up a sheer cliff made of solid muscle, and she had to fight the urge to bite her lip.

  Despite the t-shirt, she could see firm pecs, traps, and delts, even the chiseled contours of his abs against his flat stomach. His blue jeans fit snug against powerful-looking legs. The proximity of such strength...the temptation to touch was nearly irresistible.

  He paused for a long moment looking down at her, and she thought surely he could see her heartbeat pounding against her skin. Finally he spoke again. “Well, there’s something that might fit, but I don’t reckon you’re going to like it.”

  When he turned away to open the storage cabinet where he kept his clothes, her breath left her on a quavering sigh. But when he turned around again, shaking out a folded item of clothing, her eyes went wide with revulsion.

  “Oh, no. You can’t be serious. I can’t be seen in something like that!”

  “I see women wearing ’em all the time around here.” He held the flannel pajama bottoms against his chest and looked down at them. “Maybe not blue camouflage, though.”

  “Not women.” She crossed her arms in front of her defiantly. “Redneck tramps and trailer trash! What else do you have?”

  Blue tipped his head and glanced in the storage cabinet. “You would walk right out of any of my jeans, and I don’t have much call for any other kind of pants. These were my sister’s idea of a joke after Momma lectured me about sleeping completely....” He stopped talking abruptly and thrust the pajama bottoms out to her. “It’s either these or the dress, I’m afraid.”

  She stared at him long and hard, trying to convey the depth of how much she hated the idea of dressing in what amounted to a symbol of the lifestyle she had worked so hard to escape.

  The voices of her classmates echoed in her memory even now, taunting with words like “white trash” and “redneck ho” as she walked by in worn hand-me-downs from her layabout brothers. She remembered more than one fistfight to earn respect, more than one instance of her mother showing up
at the principal’s office drunk, more than one beating from her father to “show” her not to fight.

  Mitzi also remembered the godsend of career day and the policewoman who spoke that day and gave her life direction and purpose. The happy accident when she met Darnell, her boxing coach, mentor, and sponsor, who taught her the discipline to overcome her family life and graduate high school with a B average—up from the D average she had started with. That same discipline helped her graduate in the top ten percent of her Academy class.

  She had come all that way, and here was Blue, giving the pajamas a little shake, expecting her to wear them in public.

  She glared even harder.

  “Hey,” he said in a particularly reasonable tone. “I never expected I’d need to dress a cop on the lam. Look at it this way. Who is going to expect to see you wearing something like this? It’s a disguise, right?”

  Letting loose a very different kind of sigh, she snatched the offending clothes away from him and wished she could order him out of his own home. “I need to change, then.”

  He stood looking at her for a moment, then the light of understanding dawned in his eyes. “Oh, right.”

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Blue couldn’t help shaking his head as he stepped out the camper door. The fresh morning air was welcome after the heat being generated inside; a kind of heat that had little to do with air temperature.

  He didn’t quite know what to make of his current situation.

  On the one hand, Mitzi was a policewoman, presumably trained to deal with the kinds of things that had happened last night. Things like getting shot at, running for her life. Things he had never in a million years thought he would experience.

  On the other hand, she clearly needed someone to ride with her. Watch her flank, make sure the wolves didn’t sneak around and come at her from behind. She may not think so, but she needed protection, and he felt honor bound to provide it.

  And then there was the woman herself, with her spirited attitude and dangerous curves. He wasn’t sure if she was aware of the response she provoked in him. He was half tempted to prove to her how totally he was not gay, imagined drawing her up and pinning her to the wall with a kiss he was sure would curl her toes in wanton passion.