Carolina Blues

by Virginia Kantra

  Luke whistled. “What did you do, twist their arms?”

  “More like knocked their heads together.” Hank eyed Jack with rare approval. “When does she start?”

  “I have a candidate coming at ten today. That’s why I asked you to come in on a Wednesday. I wanted you both to meet her.”

  “What’s her name?” Luke asked.

  “Marta Lopez.”

  “Sounds Mexican,” Hank said.

  Jack shot him a hard look. Working in law enforcement, your world became divided into Cops and Everybody Else. Us versus Them. The distinction became easier and uglier when prejudice crept in, when “They” had darker skin or different last names or spoke another language. It used to make him sick sometimes back in Philly, the way some cops talked about the people they were sworn to protect. The words they used. The attitude.

  He wouldn’t tolerate it. Not in his office, not in the field. And if Hank thought otherwise, he was out of here.

  “She’s Hispanic, yes,” he said evenly. “We could use somebody who speaks Spanish in this department.”

  “My nephew Josh is friends with a Miguel Lopez,” Luke said easily. “His mom works at the realty office.”

  Jack nodded, keeping his eyes on Hank. “That’s the one. According to Sam Grady, she’s been with them twenty-five years. Worked her way up from the cleaning crew to the office. He says she’s smart, organized, and used to handling calls and pressure.”

  “So why’s she leaving them?” Hank asked.

  “She says now that her boys are older, she’s looking for more of a challenge.” Jack wondered how she’d deal with Hank and his redneck attitude.

  “Sounds like you already made up your mind,” Hank said.

  “She’s qualified,” Jack said carefully. “Not experienced, but most dispatchers train on the job.”

  Hank grunted. “Let’s hope she can make coffee.”

  “I can make coffee.” A woman’s voice, assured. Amused. “As long as you don’t expect me to serve it to you.”

  Hank turned to the doorway, shoulders bunching like a bulldog’s at the sight of a cat.

  Marta Lopez stood in the door to the office. Early fifties and confident in her skin, with generous curves and thick, dark hair and a handsome face. What Jack’s dad would call a nice handful. And then Ma would dig him in the ribs with her elbow.

  Jack bit back a smile. “Marta, this is Hank Clark. Our reserve officer.”

  She pursed bright coral lips. “I know who he is. I’ve seen him driving around in his car. You used to be with the sheriff’s department.”

  Hank nodded, apparently strangled by his collar.

  “And Patrol Officer Luke Fletcher.” Jack continued the introductions.

  Marta cocked her head. “Josh’s uncle? You’re Tess Fletcher’s son.”

  Luke, over six feet of Marine Corps muscle, grinned at her like the Boy Scout he’d undoubtedly been. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re just back from Afghanistan, then. Welcome home.” She smiled with genuine warmth, offered her hand. Bright nails, no rings. “Thank you for your service.”

  The phone rang.

  Before Luke could pick it up, Marta looked at Jack, raising dark, elegant brows. “You want me to get that?”

  In a few sentences, she’d established her island pedigree and her ability to hold her own. Good for her, Jack thought. And good for him. If she handled calls as easily as she’d handled introductions, she was in.

  He gestured toward the desk. “Please.”

  She took off one big gold earring and laid it on the desk before tucking the receiver to her ear. “Dare Island Police Department, how can I . . . Oh, hi, Dora. It’s Marta Lopez. What’s up?” A series of sympathetic hums, and then, “When did you notice? Hold on. I’ll check.” She punched the hold button. “Dora Abrams on Teach Street. Something’s caught in the trap under her house. Since this morning, she thinks, but it could have been last night. When can someone go out there?”

  “I’ll go,” Luke said.

  “I’ve got it. You stay and get acquainted,” Jack said.

  In emergency situations, communication was key. Hank might have reservations about their new dispatcher, but they all had to work together. If there was going to be a problem, Jack needed to know now. And if Marta couldn’t change Hank’s attitude, Jack would.

  “If you don’t mind me leaving you with these two for a while,” he said to Marta.

  “Whatever you say, Chief.” She hit the button again. “Dora, it’s your lucky day. The chief is on his way.”

  “Great,” Jack said when she ended the call. “We’ll talk when I get back. In the meantime, Luke here can give you the tour, take you next door to meet our friendly firefighters.”

  “Luke’s a rookie.” Hank’s voice scraped like barnacles over rock. He cleared his throat, his dark eyes fixing on Marta. “I’ll show you around.”

  They all regarded him with varying degrees of surprise.

  Marta’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “I did say I wanted more of a challenge,” she murmured.

  Red crept into Hank’s craggy face. His jaw hardened.

  Jack narrowed his eyes, picking up some vibe in the room. Trouble? Flirtation?

  He shook his head, dislodging the thought. Don’t overreact. Hank was simply pulling rank on Luke. Or he was making amends for that remark about the coffee.

  They would be fine. Everything was under control.

  “Don’t worry, Dad.” Luke’s blue eyes gleamed with laughter. “I’ll referee ’til you get home.”

  Hank snorted. “More like I’ll be babysitting.”

  And after that, what choice did he have but to trust them and go?

  Moving forward? Or running away?

  His fist curled on the handle of the door, the metal pressing into his palm. Damned if he knew anymore.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T CALL.

  Probably just as well, Lauren told herself as she trailed up the stairs of the Pirates’ Rest, her stomach churning with disappointment. The evening sun slanted through the windows, throwing rose-colored bars across the wooden treads and faded floral carpet.

  Snipers were hardly known for their warm, nurturing personalities. If she wanted to salve her ego or recharge her energies, she could certainly find a less demanding hookup than the recently divorced, chip-on-his-shoulder, stick-up-his-butt chief of police.

  What could Jack Rossi give her that she truly needed?

  Jack, behind her, his hands at her waist, his lips at her throat, his body a solid wall at her back . . .

  Well, except for that. She fumbled for her room key. Anyway, she didn’t expect him to call. Guys never did. But she’d thought—okay, maybe she had really hoped—that Jack would be different. All that confidence and control, the hot, disciplined body, the cool, assessing eyes. A man who knew what he wanted, she’d thought.

  Two days ago, with him pressing hard and urgent against her, she had thought he wanted her.

  My mistake.

  She opened the door to her room. The stale air wrapped around her, smelling faintly of guest soap and bathroom cleaning products. The scent of a hundred hotels, reminding her how far she was from home. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  She crossed to the window and dragged up the sash. The evening air flowed in, humid and alive with the scent of salt and a chorus of tree frogs.

  Jack hadn’t said he would call. In fact, she’d gotten the impression that he was carefully avoiding saying much of anything at all.

  She was the one who was trying to make that flare of attraction—that instant of connection, that moment when she’d felt vibrantly, achingly alive—into something more, projecting her own yearnings onto him. See you. See you. She wanted that so desperately, to be seen. Not through a television screen or the halo of
celebrity, but seen for herself.

  But he hadn’t even dropped by the bakery this afternoon, when he knew she would be there.

  Fine. She didn’t need Jack kissing her. She didn’t want him judging her. She didn’t need a guy to make her feel inadequate. She felt bad enough all by herself.

  She pressed her forehead to the screen, the metal mesh biting into her skin.

  She’d been stuck on this book for months, unable to let her words or feelings out, afraid of revealing what a hot mess she was inside. Editing her emotions, fudging the truth, until all her words were empty. Hostage Girl: My Life After Crisis was a joke. Hostage Girl was a fraud.

  She wasn’t anyone special. How could she expect to help or inspire anybody when she couldn’t help herself?

  She took a shaky breath. Held it.

  Okay, that had just used up her entire quota of negative self-judgment for the day. She needed to grow a thicker skin. Or a spine. Positive thoughts, she reminded herself.

  Outside her window, over the tops of the trees, the sea shimmered like a promise out of reach. The sun lay down a trail of fire across the water. Lauren blinked hard and climbed to her feet, looking around for her laptop.

  It wasn’t there.

  Crap. She looked again, on the bed, under the bed, by the dresser. She’d had it with her this morning at the bakery. And then . . . Had she put it under the counter while she worked? Or left it charging on the corner table? She couldn’t remember. And now she’d forgotten it.

  Unless . . . The thought bloomed inside her, the tight bands easing around her chest. Unless someone stole it.

  The relief was shameful.

  No more laptop. No more pressure to find the words to put her soul on paper. Nothing she could do about it.

  Anyway, her laptop was there, at the bakery. It had to be there, in one place or another. And even if she lost her computer, her work was backed up on the cloud. Like some giant black thundercloud looming on the horizon. Threatening. Inescapable.

  She shook the image away. She wasn’t trying to escape. She wasn’t running from her responsibilities or her deadline or anything else.

  However much she might want to.

  She glanced again out the window to where the sky was turning pink and gold. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Plenty of time to walk to the bakery and back before dark. Of course, Jane’s would be closed by now. But Lauren had a key. Just in case, Jane had said, pressing it into her hand a week ago, and even though Lauren couldn’t see why she would need one—she was never there alone—it felt so good to be trusted that she’d taken the key anyway. Just in case.

  At least retrieving her laptop would be doing something. Not sitting alone in her room or hanging around the guest parlor, intruding on the vacationing couples, hoping Meg or somebody—not Jack, screw Jack—would notice and take pity on her.

  She closed the window and locked her door before slipping downstairs and outside into the gilded summer light.

  Opening the garden gate, she felt a touch along her spine like the finger of her mother’s fears. She hesitated, looking up and down the empty road. Maybe she should call Jane or Meg. Or at least let Tess know where she was going. But that was anxiety talking. This was Dare Island. Nothing was going to happen to her here. Unless she got run over by a random cyclist.

  Anyway, the walk was good exercise, past Fletchers’ Quay and along the harbor before turning inland through more residential streets. Lights blinked on in windows as she passed. A dog barked and was hushed. A line of pelicans glided over the rooftops, black against the radiant sky, and her heart lifted.

  She turned into Jane’s drive.

  It was . . . darker under the trees. Chairs loomed out of the shadows. Lauren hurried up the wooden steps, clutching her shiny new key. A security light—new since the vandalism?—threw the spindles of the porch into sharp relief.

  Through the front windows, she could make out the silvery glow of the refrigerated cases, a faint spill of light from the kitchen. No laptop in sight.

  Swallowing, Lauren unlocked the dead bolt and nudged open the door.

  Beep beep beep. A soft, warning sound.

  Startled, she looked around. Red lights on the coffee machines. Red EXIT signs above the doors. Nothing unusual, nothing alarming. She ducked behind the counter. There. Her breath whooshed out. Her laptop was there, safely tucked away on a ledge under the register.

  She grabbed it.

  Beep beep beep from the kitchen. Had Jane left an oven on? A timer?

  Still holding her laptop, Lauren crossed to the shadowy kitchen. Dim lights gleamed on stainless steel. Beside the back door, a panel glowed. Beep beep beep.

  She sucked in her breath. The security system.

  Her heart hammered. She should have called Jane. She should have . . . Should she just leave? Or was there some way to turn it off? She hurried closer to take a look. Text blinked on the tiny screen. ARMED. ARMED. ARMED. Like a missile or something.

  Oh, crap. She stared helplessly at the keypad.

  The kitchen exploded with sirens.

  She gasped and flung her hands over her ears. Her laptop cracked against the panel and slithered to the floor. Shit, shit, shit.

  The sirens blared, stabbing her ears, vibrating through her body like electric shocks. Her chest tightened.

  Don’t panic. She forced her eyes open. Breathe. In, two, three . . .

  Another blast shattered her concentration. She was nearly blind. The dark, the sirens . . . Get down! On the floor!

  A phone shrilled from the wall, tearing against the horns. She stumbled toward it, her breath choppy, desperate for relief. For silence. She fumbled for the receiver, her hands shaking. “Hell . . . Hello?”

  “This is Island Security.” She could barely make out the words through the deafening brays. “Can you give me the passcode, please?”

  Her mind blanked. Her head pounded. Passcode? “You need . . .” She tried to think. “Jane.”

  “Is she there?”

  More sirens. Black spots danced before her eyes. Make it stop. Please. “No.”

  “The passcode, please,” the voice said implacably.

  She gripped the phone, her palms sweating. “I don’t have it. I . . .” Work here, she wanted to say. But she had no air.

  “If you can’t give us the passcode, we will notify the police.”

  Rough voices shouting, glass breaking. Gunfire.

  Stay down! Police!

  She curled in on herself, struggling to breathe.

  “Ma’am, the police are on the way.”

  She slid to the floor, holding the receiver to her chest, the sirens blaring in her head.

  Seven

  THE SECURITY ALARM blared like a damned air raid siren, covering the sound of Jack’s entrance. He swept a look around the kitchen. Lauren curled on the tiled floor, her back against the wall, gasping for breath.

  The sight of her hit his chest like a bullet.

  He pushed down his instinct to go to her. As a sniper, you learned to control your reactions, to get into the zone where you were calm. Controlled. You couldn’t make assumptions. Especially ones that could get you killed.

  Senses alert, heart pumping, he scanned the room for potential targets, the corners, the shadowy aisles. Nothing. Lauren was alone.

  He relaxed his grip on his weapon and stepped deliberately into the dim light.

  Her head jerked up as she saw him. No blood, but she was definitely not all right. Her body shook. Her eyes were dark and cavernous in her flushed face.

  He strode down the narrow work aisle and plucked the phone from her chest. “Ned, it’s Jack Rossi.” He cupped the receiver, pitching his voice below the screaming sirens. “Yeah, everything checks out. You want to—”

  The alarm cut off. Relief. In the sudden silence, he could hear
Lauren wheeze.

  “Yeah, it’s her.” Her eyes met his. He held her gaze as he spoke into the phone. “Front door was open. Have you reached Jane yet? Well, keep trying . . . Thanks. Yeah, I’ll lock up.”

  Lauren wrapped her arms across her chest, as if she could physically hold herself together.

  He’d seen Marines freeze like that in battle, their systems on overload, flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. And after battle, too. The body had no way to distinguish between real and remembered danger. The reactions were the same. Fight or flight.

  He didn’t tell her to calm down or suck it up. If she could have calmed herself, she would. And telling her there was nothing to worry about would just make her feel crazier.

  He hunkered down beside her, his weight on the balls of his feet. Not crowding, not threatening, not even touching her the way he wanted to. Just there. Her dark, dilated gaze fixed anxiously on his face. He began to breathe slowly in and out. In through the nose, out through the mouth, deeply, deliberately, again, regulating her breath with his, until the rhythm caught and held, until she realized what he was doing and began to breathe in time with him, in and out, in an intimate cadence like sex.

  Until they matched, sharing the same rhythm, the same breath. The tension screwing his insides slipped a half notch.

  “You must have really wanted a muffin,” he said.

  Her breathing broke on a laugh. Something turned over in his chest. Like his heart.

  She got to him. Not her vulnerability, not just that. He’d never been attracted to weak women. But the strength and humor she found to face and fight her fears.

  She stretched out her hand and patted the computer on the floor beside her.

  “You left your laptop,” he guessed.

  She nodded. “I . . .” Her lungs wheezed.

  “Give it a minute,” he suggested.

  “I’m fine.” A pause, measured in breaths and heartbeats. Her color deepened. “I feel stupid.”

  In his years as a cop, he’d responded to a lot of false alarms. It wasn’t her fault that Jane hadn’t prepared her for the new security system. “At least you got your laptop.”