Danger and Desire: A Romantic Suspense Anthology

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Thirteen sixty-two, this is Main.”

  Dade’s dark brows lifted toward her hairline in a non-verbal “not-it” as she held up her sandwich, which was already missing a sizeable bite.

  Xander shook his head and scooped up the radio with a chuckle. “Main, this is thirteen sixty-two. Go ahead.”

  “Be advised, a nine-one-one caller is reporting a ten thirty-nine at twelve Broadmoor Street,” came the report, and shit. Assault calls were some of the worst. “Victim is non-responsive, unclear if suspect is still on-scene. EMS has been dispatched to the location and advised to wait for police assistance, over.”

  Xander flashed Dade a look, but she was already nodding. Between her ridiculous driving skills and the fact that Xander knew North Point’s streets as well as he knew the goddamned alphabet—maybe better—they could be on-scene in five minutes. Plus, someone was in trouble. End of shift or not, they needed to take this. “Main, this is thirteen sixty-two. We are responding to twelve Broadmoor Street, over.”

  “It’s a damn sin to let this sandwich get cold,” Dade muttered, hastily wrapping up her dinner and handing it back to Xander as she reached for her seatbelt. While most people would find her gripe a bit callous, given that someone had just been assaulted to the point of non-response, Xander knew better. Defense mechanisms were as much a part of keeping cops safe as good training and body armor. Dade focusing on her sandwich meant she wasn’t focused on her adrenaline.

  And that helped Xander not focus on his. “I could always drive if you want to eat on the way there,” he offered sweetly, tugging his own seatbelt into place as Dade kicked the cruiser into gear and pulled away from the side street where they’d stopped to eat. He’d learned pretty damned fast that her sarcasm was the main ingredient in the defenses that kept her safe, just as his laid-back demeanor was his. It was a weird partnering that shouldn’t work, and yet…

  “Stop being cute,” she warned.

  A smile touched his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I mean it, Matthews.”

  “Copy that,” he said, his smile refusing to budge. The banter calmed him in its odd way, leaving him clear-headed enough to scan the quickly passing streets. The city wore its usual Friday night crowds, but luckily, most people deferred to the flashing red and blue lights on the cruiser. Xander measured both his breaths and his heartbeats in time with protocol. Inhale, survey the entire scene upon arrival for potential threats. Thump-thump, clear the scene so paramedics can administer first aid to the victim. Exhale, take statements. Canvas the area. Search.

  Do whatever it takes to help the person who needs it.

  Each neighborhood grew shabbier than its predecessor as they went deeper into North Point. Xander’s pulse always worked differently up here, as if the neighborhood that had given him the rough edges he’d tried so hard to sand down could see right fucking through him. Sure, he’d gotten out. Lived in a nice apartment. Had a good job. Food in his fridge. An eighty-year-old neighbor who checked on him as much as he checked on her, because that’s what people did downtown.

  And after two years, North Point only needed two seconds to make him feel like an imposter.

  “Okay,” Xander said, dumping himself out of his thoughts and into the right-now of Broadmoor Street. “The house should be right up here, on the left.” He slanted a gaze over everything the cruiser’s over-bright headlights touched. “I don’t see anyone.” After a glance in the side-view mirror, he added, “But it looks like the ambo’s right behind us.”

  “Copy that,” Dade said. “Keep your head on a swivel.”

  “Always,” Xander promised.

  Putting the cruiser in Park in front of the nondescript single-story house, Dade radioed in their arrival, then got out of the car. Xander moved in tandem with her, both of them treating the scene to one last heavy visual before turning toward the ambulance that had pulled to a stop at the curb.

  “Hey, Xander,” came a familiar voice from the driver’s side of the ambo. Cops and firefighters were like peas and carrots around the Thirty-Third, and EMS totally counted. Quinn Slater leaned through the open window, her husband/paramedic partner, Luke, sitting right beside her. “You want us to hang back?”

  “For a minute, yeah. We’ll move as fast as we can to secure the scene.”

  Dade tilted her head toward the house to indicate that this wasn’t a tea party, and right. Time to go.

  He fell into step beside her, his heart striking a brisk rhythm against his ribs as they approached the front door. The house was quiet, the single porch light casting a dingy glow over the worn boards, the flimsy screen door, and—

  “Door,” Dade murmured. Her hand moved to her weapon at the sight of the splintered front door jamb and the sliver of light spilling onto the porch from the interior of the house.

  Xander didn’t have time to register the knock-knock-who’s-there between his adrenal glands and his pulse. At Dade’s nod, he shouldered his way over the threshold, his own weapon drawn and all five senses on full alert. The house was small enough for them to clear it quickly—just one front room, a kitchen, and a small dining area. Dade lifted her chin at the short hallway, which presumably led to a bedroom, and Xander metered the tightness in his lungs with a nod in reply. She led the way into the lone room in the corridor, moving soundlessly to the door on the far side of the room as Xander took the opposite side. Searching the tiny closet behind him took seconds, and he moved to the far side of the bed to clear the space.

  Only a woman lay unconscious on the narrow stretch of carpet, a small but very real pool of blood beneath a wound at her temple, and Xander’s body moved before his brain even realized the command to do so.

  “Woman down,” he said, at the same time Dade said, “Clear.” Holstering his weapon, he yanked the pair of nitrile gloves he always had in his pocket over both hands, then knelt carefully beside the victim.

  His exhale came fast and hard. “She has a pulse.”

  Relief flickered through Dade’s dark eyes for the briefest of seconds before she reached for the radio on her shoulder to give Quinn and Luke the all clear. Xander stabilized the victim by cradling her head in his palms, trying not to let his gaze linger on the jagged gash spanning from her temple all the way into her matted blond hair.

  She stirred at the contact, her eyes flying wide a half-second later.

  “Whoa, okay, it’s okay,” Xander said in a rush. “My name is Xander Matthews, and I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you.”

  “He said…he was here, and he said…” Her voice trembled with raw fear, her body following suit beneath Xander’s hands, but nope. Not today.

  He parked himself directly in her line of vision, holding her glassy eye contact with his own steadier stare. “I’ve got you, now. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  The woman blinked, her body relaxing after a beat. Quinn and Luke crossed the threshold into the tiny bedroom less than five seconds later, working briskly to complete the Rapid Trauma Assessment that deemed a C-collar, backboard, and an immediate trip to Remington Mem necessary.

  “On my count. One, two, three,” Luke said, lifting the backboard in perfect tandem with Quinn and moving it to the gurney they’d had to leave in the hallway for the sake of space. All the better, really, since this place was clearly a crime scene.

  Speaking of which…

  “We’re going to need to figure out what happened here,” Xander said to Dade, who nodded her agreement as they followed about ten paces behind Quinn and Luke, heading back out into the muggy night.

  “I’ll call it in. One of us should—”

  Her words cut short at the sight of a redhead in a skirt and blouse that looked like they cost the rough equivalent of Xander’s monthly rent, beelining directly toward the ambo.

  “Amour! Oh, my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?”

  The sound of the woman’s voice sailed straight past Xander’s Kevlar and into his chest. No way. No fucking way. It couldn’t be.
/>
  Quinn stepped in to intercept the woman before she could get too close. “Ma’am, I need you to calm down and take a step back, please.”

  “No, I will not calm down, and I sure as hell won’t step back,” she said, hands planted against her pinup-model hips as she glared at Quinn, and God damn it.

  Tara Kingston was in the middle of his crime scene.

  Chapter 2

  Adrenaline replaced the fear that had taken up residence in Tara’s chest the second she’d seen all the flashing lights in front of Amour’s house. But at least the buzz of energy taking a swipe at her composure right now was familiar territory—occupational hazard of arguing with people for a living—and as nice as the paramedic standing in front of her seemed to be, the woman was entirely misguided if she thought Tara was going to sit idly by.

  “Tara Kingston, DA’s office,” she clipped out. Oh, God, Amour looked so frail and helpless strapped to that gurney, her head bundled in a pile of blood-tinged gauze. That bastard Sansone had to be behind this. “She’s a CI,” Tara added, much more quietly, because she couldn’t be too careful. Or, apparently, careful enough. “One of mine.”

  The paramedic—Q. Slater, according to the name stitched over the RFD logo on her shirt—flicked a heartbeat’s worth of a glance over Tara’s shoulder before saying, “Okay, but she’s got a head injury and we need to get her to Mem. Quickly.”

  Tara’s fear made a comeback tour, tightening her rib cage beneath her slate gray blouse.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Sorry, but it’s family only for transport,” the other paramedic, a guy with light brown skin and a serious voice that brooked no argument—not even from adrenaline-soaked attorneys—said quietly. “Plus, we need to keep her stable, which means we need room to work.”

  Wait, how had he opened the back of the ambulance so fast? “You don’t understand,” Tara tried again as they collapsed the gurney’s wheels with a hard clack. “She called me. Instead of nine-one-one, she called me. She doesn’t have anyone else she can trust.”

  The female paramedic paused. “You can follow us to Mem if you want.”

  “Actually, she can’t.”

  The male voice coming from behind Tara made her pulse stutter as she turned toward its source of origin. But the police officer standing in front of her didn’t make sense. That voice, somehow both rough around the edges and quiet all at once, belonged to someone the DA’s office had considered prosecuting. Someone she’d initially pushed to pursue. Granted, it had been two years ago, but the case had been pretty unforgettable. Arson. Fraud. Murder.

  And Xander Matthews had been smack dab in the middle of the whole thing…

  Right up until he’d broken the whole case wide open and helped the Intelligence Unit catch a killer.

  “Xander? What are you doing here?” Tara blurted, her cheeks instantly heating at her lack of decorum.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Ms. Kingston.” The muscle that pulled across Xander’s unfairly chiseled jawline translated the words into a lie, but Tara didn’t have time to apologize for her iffy brain-to-mouth filter before he continued. “I’m here because it’s my job. And if you have any information on this assault, I’m going to need you to stay here to make a statement.”

  “No.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Okay, so that might’ve come out a liiiiiittle bit strong. But—no, no, no—the paramedics already had Amour in the back of the ambulance and were less than two minutes away from getting out of there, and Tara needed to be with her, to make sure she got anything she could possibly need.

  To make sure she didn’t die.

  She scooped in a deep breath. “I need to stay with Amour. She’s my responsibility.”

  “You are aware that this wasn’t an accident, right?” Xander asked, his dark brown brows lifted so high that they nearly disappeared into his just-long-enough-to-look-hot-instead-of-scruffy hairline.

  But not even his hotness, which had grown exponentially since she’d last seen him (along with his shoulders, holy shit) was going to distract her right now.

  “Since I was on the phone with her right after it happened, yes. I’m very aware of that.”

  Funny, he seemed totally unmoved by her Lawyer Voice. “Then you’re also aware that if you were on the phone with her right after this happened, you really need to give a statement as soon as possible so we can try to find the bastard who hurt her.”

  And shit. “She doesn’t have any family nearby, and she won’t trust anyone else. I need to be with her in case she needs something,” Tara said, even though Xander wasn’t entirely wrong.

  As if he’d sensed her blip of hesitation, he doubled down, his arms crossing over the front of his body armor. “You need to stay.”

  “Why don’t we do this,” said the other officer, a petite black woman who clearly outranked Xander, if the way he’d just lowered his chin was any indicator. Not that it erased his high-level frown. “I’m going to take a gamble and guess Amour is working something active with you right now. Is that correct?”

  The officer, whose nameplate read L. Dade, kept her voice barely above a murmur, and Tara nodded.

  “That means we do need to act quickly, since we all want the same thing, which is to catch the person who hurt her. At the same time”—Dade lifted a hand to silence the argument that Tara had been concocting, and whoa, that was a powerful, Mom-level, don’t-even-think-about-interrupting-me stare—“you are her point of contact, Ms. Kingston, and she’s probably going to want a familiar face at the hospital once she’s cared for.”

  Tara swallowed. “She’s going to be terrified.” Neither Dade nor Xander argued, making Tara’s stomach clench. “I really need to go.”

  This time, Dade sent The Stare at Xander, who looked primed to argue, before saying, “And we need a statement…which Officer Matthews is going to get from you before he escorts you to Remington Memorial.”

  Xander’s mouth fell open for a split second before he recovered. “You want me to take her statement and escort her to Remington Mem?”

  “I do.” Dade moved over to the ambulance, thumping the back door twice with her palm to signal an all clear and send the paramedics on their way. “It’s going to take the doctors a while to work on Amour, and I know Tess Riley personally. She’s the best emergency physician going, but she’s not going to let anyone see Amour until they’re done, so you have a little time to spare. And since you”—she slid a glance at Xander, who was looking more and more displeased by the minute—“seem to know Ms. Kingston already, you can take her statement and bring her to the hospital. I’ll call Sergeant Sinclair to get the Intelligence Unit involved and wait here for the crime scene unit I’m sure he’ll roll out. Matthews, you and Ms. Kingston should keep your eyes open for whichever detectives he sends to Mem to get them in the loop. Did I miss anything?”

  Tara blinked. “No,” she said slowly. “Sinclair knows Amour. She gave us the intel that led to a huge arrest, and she’s supposed to testify in six weeks against a guy who wouldn’t hesitate to try to hurt her to shut her up.”

  A frown formed at the corners of Dade’s mouth. “I’ll be sure to let him know you’re making a statement and that you’ll be headed to the hospital.”

  “Thank you,” Tara said, then turned toward Xander. “Can we get this over with so I can go?”

  She heard her impatience only after it had left her mouth, biting her lip even though it was too late to trap the words so she could rearrange them into something more polite. “I mean, I just—”

  “I get it.” Lifting one shoulder partway before letting it drop, he gestured to the police cruiser parked in front of the house. “We can do this in the car, if you want. It’s probably more comfortable there. Cooler, and all.”

  In that moment, Tara realized that her blouse was plastered to her body in no less than three places, two of which were her underarms and the third being the too-curvy bust she did her best to hide under normal
circumstances.

  Xander, of course, looked totally unfazed by the heat even though he had Kevlar molded to half his body.

  “Fine,” she said, making her chin stay level even though she wanted nothing more than to blush her way into the ground. Xander led the way to the cruiser, popping the passenger side door before moving around the vehicle to the driver’s side, and Tara sent up a tiny prayer of thanks that the trip kept him from hearing her near-orgasmic moan as the cool interior air hit her skin.

  Situating his lean frame in the driver’s seat, he pulled out a notepad and pen. “Okay. Why don’t we start with where you were when Amour called you tonight?”

  “Work,” Tara said, as automatically as breathing. “Well, I guess technically, I was leaving work. I was on my way to my car.”

  Xander was all concentration as he wrote. “And what time was this?”

  “Nine thirty. Maybe a few minutes after.”

  Something that looked a lot like surprise flickered through his light green stare, but he didn’t give it voice. “What did she say?”

  “I knew right away that something was wrong,” Tara said, a chill skating over her forearms at the memory of how Amour’s voice had trembled. “She sounded frightened. She asked me to help her.”

  Tara’s voice caught on the last two words, and damn it, she couldn’t lose control over this. Not now, and definitely not in front of Xander, who suddenly had the patience of a saint to go with those sinful shoulders.

  She cleared her throat and mentally kicked her own ass. “I put her on hold and dialed nine-one-one, then patched her through. I was worried she couldn’t do it on her own, and I didn’t want to lose her.”

  Xander nodded. He didn’t prompt her or push, and even though Tara knew it was Interview 101 to use as little guidance as possible with a witness, his calm, comforting gaze took a tiny sliver of the tension out of her chest.