No Escape

by Heather Lowell

  “Let me know if I can do anything. I mean it. And thanks for bringing Tessa here.” He leaned forward and pressed a sympathetic kiss to her cheek. “I’m sorry as hell about Ed. He was the best.”

  Veronica looked at him. “Take care of her. I heard the whole thing on my cell phone—her screams, the car’s engine sounding like a horror movie, the gunshots. I’m never going to be the same. I can’t imagine what seeing Ed die in front of her will do to Tessa. Reliving it won’t be easy, but we still need to talk to her for a formal statement. The captain wants to speak with her personally.”

  “I’m taking her to the hospital, then we’re going to ground for a few days. Until I know for sure who tried to kill her and why, I’m not letting Tessa out of my sight. If the PD needs to talk to her, tell them to come by the ER.”

  Ronnie nodded. “Any ideas about who might have done this?”

  “It has the feel of a contract job. The guy was a pro—to come back after the first pass, then keep going despite having eighteen 9mm rounds hit his windshield. It has to be related to one of her cases.”

  “That’s what the senior investigator on the scene thought as well.”

  Luke continued. “I’ll bet money it goes back to Club Red, since that’s the only case she’s working on with players capable of arranging a hit. We found out a few days ago that the club is turning over about $25 million each year, so it’s worth their while to silence Tessa.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell the investigators to look into that angle. I guess now LAPD will get involved in that task force,” Veronica said.

  “Yeah. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know where we are. But just you—I don’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Okay.” She turned to leave. “Why don’t you take her to the ER at La Brea Hospital? That’s where Ed was taken. The people there will bump her up to the front of the line, treat her right.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hours later, Luke watched from across the room as a technician checked the new cast on Tessa’s left forearm. She’d already received personal condolences, as well as a gentle interrogation about what had happened, from Ed Flynn’s captain at LAPD.

  Now the doctor was in the room for a final checkup and to sign her release papers. He’d pulled Luke into the far end of the room to give additional instructions.

  “The fractures aren’t displaced, so the bones should heal well in the cast. She’ll need occupational therapy once it comes off, but I believe she’ll recover fully. Her other injuries are minor—a few deep contusions, some cuts and abrasions. Keep them clean and moist to minimize discomfort. Ice should help, too.”

  Luke nodded. “I’d like to get her into my hot tub to help with stiffness. I’ll clean the cuts after each soak.”

  “I’ve also written a prescription for painkillers. See that she takes them, at least for the first few days. It should get a lot better after that, as long as she doesn’t move her fingers too much. And watch her for signs of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder,” the doctor added. “She saw something terrible today. It’s going to affect her deeply.”

  “Yeah. But if I know her, she’s going to take her pain and emotions and pour them into the investigation.”

  “I think it would be healthy for her to work again, after she’s had a few days of rest. Try to get her life back to normal as much as possible. Routine, comfort, and security will help her get through this. Understand that her emotions will be all over the place, and be patient.”

  “I will. Thank you, Doctor.” Luke shook his hand and watched as the man went over to inspect Tessa’s cast a final time. Then the doctor excused himself from the room, along with the technician.

  “He’s a nice man,” Tessa said. “He and the captain wanted to assure me that Ed didn’t suffer. Apparently there was massive chest trauma that ruptured the aorta and broke several ribs, which punctured his lungs. Even if it had happened inside the ER, there was nothing they could have done to save him. Knowing that helps a little.”

  Luke could see she was trying to accept the reality of Ed’s death by talking about it openly. But hearing the soft, toneless summary of her friend’s injuries was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  She might look all right, but Tessa was a breath away from emotional breakdown. She desperately needed to deal with the jumble of feelings inside her, or they would eat her alive.

  “How do these people think they can get away with running down a police officer?” Tessa asked. “I don’t understand.”

  Luke didn’t argue with her assumption that Ed’s death was related to Kelly and Club Red. “It’s easy for them—they never signed on as law-abiding citizens.”

  “I want those bastards in prison.”

  “Or dead,” Luke agreed. “As of right now, the gloves come off.”

  “We’re going to take Kelly out of there by force?” Tessa guessed.

  “Yeah. We tried making nice by working the system and building a case—and it got a good cop killed. From now on, we do things my way.”

  “Good.”

  Chapter 33

  Santa Monica, California

  Saturday evening, March 13

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to mix wine with painkillers,” Tessa said. “I feel like I could sleep for days.”

  “That was the idea,” Luke replied. He was stretched out on a soft chaise lounge on the second-floor deck that connected to his bedroom. Tessa was lying between his legs, her back to his chest, his arms wrapped around her underneath a warm blanket. Less than a block away, they could hear and smell the waves that crashed on the moonlit beach.

  He’d hoped that the sound of the ocean would help Tessa relax after he’d brought her home from the hospital and prepared a dinner she could barely bring herself to eat.

  Her broken wrist lay gingerly braced on a pillow across her lap. He’d had broken bones before and knew there were few things that felt worse than that deep, throbbing ache in the first few days. That’s why he hadn’t thought twice about pouring her a small glass of white wine to go along with what the doctor had prescribed.

  “The hot tub finished me off.” Tessa adjusted her head against Luke’s shoulder, feeling like she was looking down at someone else instead of experiencing this moment for herself.

  “I think you fell asleep while I was cleaning your cuts afterward. I wish you could have eaten more dinner. I don’t want you to waste away.”

  She laughed without humor and gestured at her rounded hip. “Not a chance.”

  His hands shifted so he could squeeze her curves. “I like these just the way they are. You won’t do yourself or Ed any good by not eating. I need you to stay strong so we can work the case.”

  “I’ll be okay tomorrow. This fucking case got Ed killed, you can bet I want to close it,” she said, shocking Luke with her language. He’d never heard her curse so bitterly before. “I’ll start tomorrow. I owe it to him.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like guilt.”

  “How else should I be feeling? You warned me this could be dangerous, and I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Stop it. Even I had no idea things could go south like they did.”

  “And I refused to consider that possibility,” she insisted. “For the first time in years, I felt meaningful. I was doing something important—working on a big case, complete with tragic victim, high-profile perp, and the full support of the D.A. I’d never done anything like it, and I was loving the exposure. Even though I knew Kelly was suffering.”

  “I know how you were feeling before this case. Hell, it’s one of the reasons I left the sheriff’s department. You get caught up in the bullshit investigations and wonder if that’s what the rest of your life is going to be about,” Luke said. “And then you feel validated when you finally get a big case. It doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you human, Swiss.”

  “Do you know what my last couple of cases involved?”

  “No.”

 
“Well, there’s Maria Angela Sandoval, who keeps turning tricks out of her apartment to support her five kids. The super wants her evicted, but she’s got a signed lease and is very discreet with her ‘dates.’ Then there’s Ray Barber, who may have stolen his company’s software and installed it on his home PC so his kids could play interactive online games during the weekends. And let’s not forget Lester Delillo—he has a frozen potato launcher that he uses after midnight to take out his neighbor’s garden gnomes.”

  “The famous spud gun.” Luke laughed unwillingly. “I did my turn as a street deputy, so I know what most of the daily calls are like. I’ll admit I never thought about what happened once the police reports were filed, though.”

  “The cases get dumped on some junior prosecutor like me,” Tessa said. “I would find myself researching the replacement value of garden gnomes so I’d know what to charge Lester with—and asking myself if this was why I’d gone to law school. But that changed the morning I met Kelly.”

  “Because the case was important.”

  “It had a direct effect on someone’s life. And suddenly, my own life had purpose again. I just didn’t realize the price other people would have to pay for me to feel good about my job. First Kelly, then Ed—” Her voice broke.

  “Dammit, Tessa. That’s not what happened. If you want to get angry, if you want to blame someone, then save it up for the guy who carried out this hit.”

  “Believe me, I’ve got plenty left over for him.”

  Luke gently turned her to face him on the chaise, mindful of her wrist. “After knowing Ed Flynn for eight years, I’m going to take the liberty of speaking for him.”

  “He respected you,” Tessa said.

  “By all accounts, he loved you and thought you walked on water. Both as a person and a prosecutor. He was one of the best cops I’ve ever known, and I’d trust his judgment about you implicitly.”

  “Even if you weren’t sleeping with me?” Tessa asked.

  “You bet. Do you believe that Ed dedicated his life to protecting others? That in the years since his wife died he was essentially married to the job?”

  “Yes,” Tessa said softly. “Ronnie and I kept trying to fix him up on blind dates, but after a while saw there was no use. He gave everything he had to the job. And to helping me and Ronnie learn the ropes.”

  “Ed died a cop, protecting a friend he cared for very much,” Luke continued. “If I’d been there, I would have done the same thing.”

  Tessa shook her head vehemently as she blinked back tears.

  “Yes,” Luke said, giving her a small shake before wrapping her in his arms. “Ed left this world saying the name of the woman he loved, doing a job that made him whole. It just doesn’t get any better than that, Tessa.”

  She continued to shake her head. “I didn’t want him to die for me.”

  “He chose to make that sacrifice, baby. And now it’s your job to make sure it wasn’t in vain.”

  “No one is worth another’s life,” Tessa said.

  “It’s what he wanted.”

  “I want him alive. I want him to be here.”

  “I know you do. But he’s gone, Swiss. We need to carry on his work for him. What drove him on this case?”

  “He wanted to help Kelly. Because it was what I wanted.”

  Luke could barely understand her through the tears he’d deliberately provoked. He didn’t think it was healthy to keep everything bottled up, but hadn’t been prepared for the depth of Tessa’s pain. Remembering the doctor’s advice about work and getting her life back to normal, Luke said the first thing that came to his mind.

  “If that’s what Ed wanted, then that’s what we’ll do. In his name. But not tonight, okay? Tonight we cry and raise a glass to a good man.”

  Tessa nodded, her throat too tight to speak. She had the crying part down just fine, and couldn’t seem to stop now that she’d started. She felt Luke’s arms strong and warm around her, and was ashamed for the way she was leaning on him.

  Normally, she didn’t depend on anyone, but it had been the worst day of her entire life. Even the day she’d lost her mother hadn’t hurt this badly, because she’d been too young to understand what it all meant. But now she did, and she didn’t have the strength to pull away from Luke.

  “Just cry it out, baby.” He seemed to be reading her mind. “Ed wouldn’t mind at all. It shows that you loved him, that he had an impact on your life. He had an impact on everyone who met him,” Luke’s voice was gravelly because of the lump in his own throat. “If I could be half as good a man as Ed was, I’d be happy.”

  She looked at Luke and saw his hazel eyes shimmer with moisture. Reaching to wipe away the wetness on his cheek, she felt the dam inside her bursting.

  Without another word, Tessa buried her head in Luke’s neck and wept.

  Chapter 34

  Santa Monica, California

  Sunday morning, March 14

  Tessa woke up at nine on Sunday morning, disturbed when Luke left the bed. She rolled to her back and winced at the pain in her wrist. Before she could do more than open her eyes, Luke was bending over her, shifting a pillow so that she could rest the cast on it.

  “Don’t get up. I’ll get you a snack and some painkillers. Let me get the door first, though. Some jerk has been banging on it for the last two minutes.”

  She watched in a daze as he paused to pull sweatpants over his boxers, then finger-combed his hair. When the pounding on the door started again, Luke cursed and left the room.

  Tessa gingerly piled another pillow behind her back and looked around. She vaguely remembered coming in from the porch late last night after crying all over Luke. He’d helped her wash her face and brush her teeth—he’d even opened the toothpaste and applied it for her, something that would have been difficult to do with her wrist so sore that moving her fingers caused sharp pain.

  Then he’d tucked her into bed, sliding in beside her to warm the sheets and hold her close. And when she’d drifted off, only to jerk awake with a cry of protest on her lips, he’d understood the demons haunting her. So he’d turned a light on and talked to her into the night, telling funny stories about his experiences on various task forces and stakeouts. She’d fallen asleep curled against Luke’s side in the middle of one of those tales.

  In all, Luke Novak had taken better care of her than anyone had. Ever. And for some reason, it felt like pity was the last thing motivating his actions. But she really wasn’t ready to deal with how she felt about that. It was too much, too soon.

  For now, she had to think about finding Kelly and building a case against the man who had killed Ed. She hoped Luke would understand that she simply didn’t have anything else to give until those tasks were done.

  “Someone’s here to see you,” Luke said from the doorway, surprising her out of her thoughts. She saw his eyes linger on her tousled hair and bare shoulder where his oversized sheriff’s department T-shirt gaped off her.

  Then she sat straight up in bed as she saw her father move into the doorway behind Luke. Her eyes were still gritty from last night’s tears, but they weren’t deceiving her.

  “What the hell? You’re supposed to be in Argentina,” Tessa told him.

  “I made arrangements to come back as soon as Luke called me yesterday. Are you all right?” Paul looked at the raw scrapes on her face, the visible bruising on her cheek and jaw, and the pristine cast on her left forearm.

  Tessa shifted under her father’s silent regard and resisted the urge to adjust the neckline of the T-shirt she was wearing. She probably looked like crap.

  “He wouldn’t wait for you to come downstairs,” Luke said, stepping into the room and sitting on the bed next to Tessa.

  He handed her a breakfast bar and put a glass of water on the nightstand, then leaned against the headboard to get comfortable. It was clear Paul was pissed beyond words at finding Tessa in bed with a half-dressed man, but Luke figured it was no less than the guy deserved for barging in unannou
nced on a Sunday morning.

  Paul let the silence stretch, wondering who would cave in and break it first. But except for the sound of a wrapper crinkling as Tessa consumed the granola bar, no one seemed willing to break the uncomfortable quiet. In fact, his daughter tried very hard to act like sitting on a bed with a bare-chested man sprawled next to her was nothing new. But as Paul looked at the casual strength of Luke Novak—whose scarred abdomen and careless pose gave him the appearance of a warrior after battle—he realized that nothing about the scene was normal for his daughter.

  He’d never liked the men she’d dated previously, because they were, quite frankly, pussies. Nothing about Luke gave that impression, so he had to hope his daughter’s taste in men was improving.

  With a sigh, he entered the room and threw his coat down on an end table. Then he took a seat in an overstuffed chair meant for reading or getting cozy in front of the fireplace on a winter night.

  Sliding his daughter and her lover a glance, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to go there just yet.

  “You flew all the way up here to see me?” Tessa finally asked. Her curiosity got the better of her determination not to be the first to give in.

  Paul Jacobi gave a sigh. “Things between us must really be in the toilet if you have to ask me that. Of course I came to make sure you were okay. I have to admit, I hadn’t considered that you might have someone to, ah, take care of you.”

  Luke smiled complacently and handed Tessa a painkiller and the glass of water off the bedside table. She counted to ten in irritation while she took the pill and swallowed. She didn’t want to start fighting with her father—frankly, it took too much energy. But he did know how to push her buttons.

  Besides, nothing had happened with Luke last night—at least nothing along the lines of what her father was thinking. But she’d bite through her tongue before giving him the satisfaction of watching her defend herself.

  Seeing his daughter’s shoulders tense and face go expressionless, Paul could have kicked himself. Here she was, bruised and battered, and he fell right back into their old pattern of bickering. He knew how close she had been to Ed Flynn—had, in fact, been jealous of their easy relationship. He shouldn’t let those feelings color his behavior now that the man was gone.