Born Wild

by Julie Ann Walker

  Damnit, Eve! Why didn’t you at least try to talk to me? Why didn’t you give me a chance to listen to an explanation? Didn’t I deserve that?

  Of course, coulda, woulda, shoulda. It was all water under the bridge now. Or was it? Did this change things? Change the way he thought about her? Felt about her? He looked inside himself, at all the years of hurt, at all the years of wondering, why, goddamnit, why? And realized he didn’t know. The truth of the matter was she betrayed him and the vows they made to each other the moment she agreed to go out on that date…

  Shit on a stick. Why the hell does life, and matters of the heart in particular, have to be so craptastically complicated? Seriously. That wasn’t a rhetorical question. He was really throwing that silent inquiry out into the ether, waiting for the universe to answer him.

  A couple of seconds ticked by, but he heard nothing but radio silence. Go figure. In his experience, the universe was, more times than not, a total wad when it came to replying to the big questions.

  “And then two days before I was due to finally get leave—I’d planned to fly to her university to figure out just what the hell was going on—I received an invitation to her wedding,” he finished the story in one long, weary breath. Once again, he glanced across the expanse of desks to the gray metal door leading to the interrogation rooms.

  “Harsh,” Mac muttered, and Bill snorted.

  “Yeah. You might call it that.” Or you might call it friggin’ heartbreaking. Lord knows his ticker had damn near exploded inside his chest cavity when he opened that envelope. To this day, he could still see that red and white invitation, still quote it word for word: With a joyful heart, Patrick Alastair Edens requests the honor of your presence at the marriage of his daughter Evelyn Rose Edens to Jonathon Blake Parish. The ceremony will take place at half past two o’clock on the afternoon of blah, blah, blah…

  Christ.

  Why had she sent him that awful invitation? He’d never taken her to be spiteful. Not the Eve he’d known then, and not the Eve he knew now. Unless…perhaps she’d thought it would be a signal for him to come crash the party? Perhaps she’d thought—

  “Then again,” Mac mused, his lips pursed in consideration, “sounds to me like she might have been manipulated into the marriage. After those articles ran in the papers, perhaps she felt there were expectations placed on her. You know, from friends and family. Maybe she thought she didn’t have another choice.”

  Bill wanted to tell Mac he was wrong. That she’d had another choice, goddamnit, because she’d had him. But the wide set of double doors connecting the elevator bank to the bullpen burst open, revealing the deep frown of none other than Chief Washington himself. Directly on his heels were Blake Parish and Patrick Edens.

  At some point, Blake had changed his blood-soaked shirt for a fresh button-down and a linen sport coat. But the getup looked a bit ridiculous considering the man’s nose was three times its normal size and both of his eyes were swollen and turning a painful-looking purple. Bill didn’t even try to hide his gleeful smile. And it only spread wider when he discovered Patrick Edens, freshly attired in a light summer sweater, was trying to stare holes through him.

  “You better redirect that gaze, cocksucker,” he called to Edens. “Or else I might just decide to jump up and put a limp in that Jimmy Stewart swagger of yours.”

  “Can it, Reichert,” Washington barked, just as the doors belched open again, admitting two gentlemen wearing pinstripe suits, shiny handmade loafers, and carrying briefcases.

  Ah, yes. The ambulance-chasers. Although, Bill would bet a dollar to anyone’s dime that these two overdressed, and no doubt overpaid lawyers had never chased an ambulance, or anything else for that matter, in their entire lives.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Edens said to the men, studiously avoiding Bill’s gaze as Washington led the group on a circuitous route through the desks in an attempt to bypass Bill and Mac’s position by the wall.

  Probably a good idea, Chief, Bill inwardly admitted. Because the reality was it wouldn’t take much, maybe just a whiff of Edens’s overpowering cologne, for him to follow through on that threat he’d just made.

  Of course, he was careful to make sure none of this showed on his face when Washington glanced at him over his shoulder. Instead, he lifted a brow, letting his eyes drift to the lawyers before returning his gaze to Washington and calling, “What was that I mentioned earlier about me being able to say I told you so?”

  Washington thrust out his lower lip all pugnacious-like and glared with those black eyes that seemed to see straight into a man’s soul. Bill had always kind of figured the role of Sergeant Foley played by Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman was modeled after Washington.

  “What did I just say, Reichert?” Washington bellowed.

  He grinned cheekily. “About what, Chief?”

  “About canning it,” Washington barked.

  “Um,” Bill twisted up his face like the IQ fairy had passed him by on Extra Points Day. “That I should do so?”

  “Exactly,” Washington said, holding the gray door leading to the interrogation wing wide so his train of murderers, manipulators, and, worse, lawyers, could precede him. “But don’t you leave,” the police chief added before following the group. “After I see these, uh, gentlemen in for questioning, I’m gonna want to have a word with you.”

  “I’ll be right here, Chief,” he promised.

  The detective pecking at his keyboard spared the group a brief glance before they disappeared behind the door. Then he went back to glaring at his computer screen. And when Bill turned to Mac, he found the man’s expression was as amused as Washington’s had been irritated.

  “I dealt with a lot of police chiefs during my time as a fed,” Mac drawled. “But I never came across one with quite the…eh…what is that particular aura that hangs around our intrepid Chief Washington? I can’t quite put my finger on it?”

  “It’s one part don’t fuck with me,” Bill supplied helpfully.

  “And the other part?” Mac queried.

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  Mac chuckled. “Yeah, I think you nailed it.”

  For a couple of minutes, the police station was silent save for the monotonous tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall above their heads, and the intermittent clickety-clack of the detective’s keyboard. Then Washington burst back onto the scene with the force and vigor of hurricane.

  Bill and Mac both jumped to their feet. “How much longer will Eve be in there?” Bill asked before Washington finished crossing the room.

  The chief didn’t deign to answer, the confounding sonofagun, until after he’d sidled up beside them, all the while eyeing Bill in that deeply disturbing and blatantly considering way he had. He took his time loosening his red and blue tie, shrugging out of his suit jacket, and unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeves on his white dress shirt. And Bill knew the chief was being purposefully annoying, proving to everyone that in this place he was the big, swinging dick. But finally Washington relented, throwing his jacket on the bench and saying, “I suspect she’ll be out soon. Normandy was wrapping things up when I looked in on them just a minute ago.”

  Bill was able to drag in a deep breath for the first time since she’d disappeared through that door. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” Because Lord knew he was completely wiped out from the day’s events, which meant Eve had to be dead on her feet. And, yes, the truth was he was worried about her.

  There. He admitted it.

  He shook his head. At himself. At Fate. At the goddamned, never-ending, roller coaster ride that happened to be his feelings for Eve Edens.

  “And once Normandy’s finished with her, he’ll move on to questioning her father and her ex-husband,” Washington added.

  “That’s good.” Bill hoped they were questioned until they squirmed holes right through their
designer pants. Questioned until they sweated blood…

  “And we’re in the process of pulling records to determine the locations of both men on the dates of Ms. Edens’s previous…uh…mishaps.”

  “Good.” Bill nodded. “That’s good.” He realized he’d gotten himself stuck in a loop when Washington’s dark face pulled down a fierce frown.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” the chief thundered. “You swallow a parrot or something?”

  “Sorry.” Bill shook his head, trying to wrangle his wayward thoughts. “My mind is all over the place tonight.”

  “Yeah.” Washington’s big lips twisted into what Bill suspected was supposed to be a grin but looked more like the man had a serious case of gas. “And if I had to guess, right now it’s back in that interrogation room where a certain socialite is being interviewed. You got a hard-on for Evelyn Edens, Reichert? Is that why you’re all rolled up into this mess? I just thought you were helping her out because she’s your kid sister’s friend.”

  A hard-on for Eve Edens? Yeah, that was one way of putting it. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Washington as much. “Let’s just say we’re old acquaintances and leave it at that, huh?”

  “If you insist,” Washington said, still eyeing Bill with blatant curiosity.

  “I insist.” Bill mirrored the police chief’s stance by crossing his arms over his chest. And then, to redirect Washington’s line of questioning, he posed a question himself. “Did the…uh…did the wire help any?”

  “It gave us enough reason to sequester Edens’s and Parish’s phone records.” Washington said. “We’ve got a request in to a judge right now. Currently he’s at a fund-raiser, but as soon as he’s done, he’ll sign the writ. Then we’ll send it to the respective phone companies, which probably won’t have anybody on staff until work hours tomorrow morning. So that means we’ll likely have the logs in our hands by noon at the latest.”

  Noon? “Jesus Christ!” Bill gaped at the chief then glanced around, blinking. “Was I transported through a wormhole back to 1989? Isn’t everything electronic now? Don’t you just need the right geek to push the right button and voila! The information is yours for the taking?”

  Where was Ozzie, BKI’s resident techno-geek extraordinaire, when Bill needed him? Oh, yeah. The guy was doing a four-month stint down in South America, trying to, you know, save the world or some shit. Goddamnit.

  “I work in the real word, Reichert. Not some…” Washington glanced over his shoulder at the detective still working, then turned back and lowered his voice. “Not some dick-shriveled, government blow-job factory.” Despite himself, despite the horridness of this god-awful day, Bill felt a grin pull at his lips. “So if you think you can do a better job of getting that info ASAP, be my guest.”

  Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Bill said, “What you said was be my guest. So why did I just hear go fuck yourself?”

  “Maybe because you’ve got good ears,” Washington replied.

  Bill chuckled. But the sound died in his throat when Washington continued, “Although, if you ask me, chances are slim-to-none the phone records will reveal anything. These guys might look like a couple of dandies, but I’m sure whichever one of them is behind this was smart enough to have covered his ass before calling in a hit.”

  “You think he used a burner?” Bill asked, referring to the cheap, prepaid cell phones available in gas stations for a song.

  “Yeah.” Washington nodded. “Which means, short of a confession, I suspect it’s gonna take some old-fashioned police work to get to the bottom of this thing.”

  “You and I both know a confession is out of the question.” Bill would like nothing better than that, but in order for a person to confess, they usually had to feel guilty about whatever it was they were confessing to. And in order to feel guilty, a person needed a conscience. As far as he could figure, Parish and Edens were each missing that essential ingredient.

  “Maybe.” Washington shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

  Bill opened his mouth to respond but snapped it closed again, his lungs seizing, when the gray door swung open and Eve and Delilah pushed into the room. Sweet Mother Mary, if there were ever two women who looked like death warmed over, it was those two. And one glance at Eve’s ravaged, splotchy face, at the hard line between her brows and the heavy bags beneath her brilliant blue eyes, and his foolish, sympathetic, insane heart turned a somersault in his chest.

  Wee!

  Yessir, and that would be the sound of his feelings for Eve, going for yet another roller coaster ride.

  Well, for shit’s sake…

  Chapter Seventeen

  Watching the women make their way through the messy desks of the Chicago police station’s Homicide Department made Mac’s stomach ache with so much sympathy he felt nauseous. Like someone had sucker punched his happy sack. And, sonofabitch, but he wished he could fall into that wormhole Bill’d spoken of and go back to this morning.

  If any day deserved a do-over, it was this day. Holy crow…

  But if I had a do-over, I’d never have taken that ride with Delilah.

  Okay, so there was that. Because despite everything she’d been through, despite the fact that she’d survived a gun battle where she’d witnessed one of her friends cut down in cold blood, the truth was that having Delilah Fairchild snuggled up against his back on the ride over to Patrick Edens’s condo had made it onto Mac’s personal highlight reel. Which probably just proved how much of a degenerate he really was, but hot damn!

  To his utter chagrin, he’d always been a sucker for that whole pin-up girl, Sophia Loren type, and Delilah pretty much personified the category. Hell, if the woman was a mathematics discipline, she’d be Trigonometry as opposed to Algebra, because she was all curves: not a straight line on her. And even now, makeup washed away, T-shirt stained with blood, and auburn hair sticking out like she’d shoved her finger in an electrical socket, she was still in the running for the top slot in the Sexiest Woman on the Planet Contest, which…damnit…was exactly what he didn’t need in his life right now. Or ever, come to think of it.

  What was that thing Ozzie liked to say? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself? Well, in the case of Mac’s prodigious attraction to, nah, lust for Delilah, that was damn good advice.

  Ripping his eyeballs away from her rolling gait took considerable effort, but he finally managed it. And when he let his gaze fall on Eve, his nausea returned with a vengeance.

  Good thing Bill’s taken to carrying around that bottle of Pepto again, because I might just have to borrow it…

  For pity’s sake, poor Eve looked like she’d been put through the wringer, taken out, dried off, then put through again…only inside-out. And in his not-so-humble opinion, she deserved a gold medal for the way she’d handled herself today. Scratch that, she deserved a parade and a whole freakin’ statue erected in her honor.

  Had Bill really likened her to a china doll? Had he really agreed with that comparison? It was hard to believe either of them could’ve been so far off the mark, like, not even on the same freakin’ playing field. Because Eve Edens was proving to be one of the toughest, most courageous women Mac had ever met. And ol’ Billy-boy didn’t know it yet—or maybe the guy just didn’t want to admit it to himself—but he was a complete goner where she was concerned. At the moment, the dude was literally vibrating beside him while watching Eve approach, strung tighter than a piano wire. And his expression? Well, if possessiveness had a particular look, then it was the one wall-papered all over Wild Bill’s face.

  Mac wondered if the man realized he instinctively reached for Eve when she stopped in front of him. Pulling her under his arm and tucking her in close, he asked, “Are you okay?” while bending to press his nose into her hair, inhaling the fragrance of her shampoo like nicotine addicts inhale secondary smoke.

  G-O-N-
E-R. What does that spell? Bill Reichert…

  Eve pulled back to look up at him, and from the expression on her face, Bill wasn’t the only one running for mayor of Lovey Dovey Land. In fact, if Mac listened real close, he imagined he could hear Eve making those sad, whimpering puppy dog noises. Of course, Bill was the big, handsome guy who’d been trying to help her and protect her for the last couple of days, so Mac could totally get why Eve was pulling the whole hearts and flowers and soft sighs routine. As far as he could figure, she’d placed Bill in the role of real life superhero, which, honestly, Mac could sort of agree with. Unlike Dale Pennyworth, Wild Bill didn’t need a weird bodysuit to make him heroic. His personal attributes did that for him: courage, honor, loyalty…

  Although if Bill’s the superhero, that makes you the trusty sidekick, a voice whispered.

  Okay, so he didn’t particularly like the sound of that. After all, everyone wanted to be the hero of his own script. And he was totally going to chalk up wanting to be the hero of his own script as the reason why he didn’t pull away when Delilah sidled next to him, tentatively reaching for his hand. He laced his fingers with hers, giving them a squeeze as he tried to convey his support and perhaps lend a little bit of comfort. Then again, with one of her luscious boobs pressed against the back of his arm, it was kind of hard to think comforting and supportive thoughts and—

  For the love of Christ. Pull your head out of the gutter, McMillan, he mentally groused at himself, and stop being such a cockstain.

  Delilah pressed closer.

  All right, so cockstain it was, because he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the fact that he thought maybe, just maybe, he could feel her nipple rubbing against his triceps.

  And so much for being the superhero of his own script. Unless, of course, he was dressed as Batman in the porno movie playing in his head. Shit.

  “Is there anything I or the Chicago Police Department can do for you, ladies?” Chief Washington asked, and right, so that did it. That was enough to distract Mac from the feel of Delilah’s warm hand laced with his, to take his mind—kinda, sorta, maybe—off the sensation of her breast pressing against his arm. Because if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed the man standing beside him, dark face as smooth and serene as an angel’s, was the same guy who’d just accused them of working for a government blow-job factory.