In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  “No. Not until you explain.” She grabbed the book back from his hand.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Maybe I just want leverage to use against you.”

  If it meant he could part ways with that spandex, then Danny thought it might be worth it. He couldn’t look at her like this. Couldn’t. She was a cop. “Come with me,” he said shortly.

  “Where?”

  “To Ron’s office.”

  “Why?”

  “Stop with the questions for once, will you? Follow me. You want to talk? Fine. We’ll do it in private.” He was damned if he was going to give the kids more of a show.

  He was halfway across the court before he sensed rather than saw her fall into step behind him. He stalked angrily through the vestibule and waited by the office door. When she passed through it, he slammed it shut behind her and went to the other side of the desk to keep space between them.

  “We have a serious power struggle going on here,” he said.

  Molly leaned her back against the door. “I was here first.”

  “You’re not going to get rid of me. I don’t care how many times you tow my car. Regardless of my parole terms, it was my decision to be here.”

  Somewhere along the line, she had started to realize that, and it made Molly feel small.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said again, sitting in Ron’s chair. He laced his fingers behind his head. The muscles in his upper arms flexed. Molly felt her throat go a little tight. “They’re my kids,” she said finally.

  “Well, now they’re mine, too.”

  Okay, so he had bought half of them gym shoes. “Let’s just say I accept that…since I have no choice. What’s your point?”

  “We had an opposite-ends-of-the-gym agreement. This did not include you bringing library books onto center court.”

  She tossed the book on Ron’s desk. The cover said Learning The Basics of Basketball, pretty much as he had expected.

  “Maybe I’m willing to concede that you have a point about getting these kids on school teams,” she said. “A weak point, but a point just the same.”

  That surprised him. He didn’t want her to be open-minded. He especially didn’t want her to be open-minded for the sake of the kids. It made him like her too much. “Then let me handle it. I know basketball. You don’t. There are other areas where you can help.”

  “Such as?”

  Damn it, he thought. Double damn it. She had both her hands wrapped around the doorknob at her back. It made her breasts thrust toward him. “I’m thinking.”

  “That might be a stretch for someone who allowed the police to frame him.”

  “Shut it off, Molly. You know nothing about that.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “To what? Shut your mouth down? Yeah, I can see where that might be difficult.”

  “I’m trying to figure out why anyone would let themselves go to jail without a fight.”

  “It’s none of your business!” he shouted. She had a way of seriously getting to him. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “All right, let’s calm down here.”

  “I’m perfectly calm.”

  “Yeah, well, you are unless I decide to move in on your space. You get pretty shaken up whenever I get too close.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  But he saw it happen again, that flush come to her skin. Today there was a lot more skin. There was all that pretty freckled expanse over the top of her sports bra and a stretch of midriff between the bottom of that and the top of her spandex leggings. She had a truly fantastic body.

  He couldn’t think like this. She was a cop.

  Danny decided that he had gone too long without a woman. That was his problem. He made a mental note to remedy that little problem this very night.

  He cleared his throat. “We…uh…need money. We need uniforms. We need the other cities to agree to play against us.”

  It took Molly a moment to bring her mind back to sports. Her heart was still thumping. She did not want to be affected by him this way—Mr. Mobster, Mr. Ex-Con. But, oh, there was something about him.

  “What are you suggesting?” She rubbed goose bumps off her skin absently.

  “That if you want to help, come in here tomorrow and get on the phone.” Get rid of the spandex, he thought. It would also keep her out of his gym, out of his sight…off his mind.

  “I might be willing to do that.”

  “You’d do anything to help these kids.” It came out before he’d thought it through. And he knew he was right.

  “Okay.” She scraped curls off her forehead. “That takes care of your team. What about the fact that the cops framed you for armed robbery? Who really put that money in your condo?”

  Now he understood why she’d given in so easily. She’d been placating him until she could turn the conversation back to where she wanted it to go. “Forget it,” he growled. “The cops didn’t do it. The mob did.”

  “And you let them?”

  “I’m not willing to talk about this.”

  “I’ll wear you down. I have that way about me.”

  “Tell me something I didn’t already know.”

  She laughed. Then, for a moment, a deadly moment, they just grinned at each other. A little like…comrades.

  Danny recovered first. He needed to fix that. Right now. He could shake her up, make her run, he reminded himself. Danny rose from the desk and closed the distance between them.

  Molly tried to back up. With her back against the door, she had nowhere to go.

  He was out of his mind. He stepped even closer, anyway. “See? You get sort of shivery when I get near, don’t you?”

  “I do not.” She drew in breath. Enough breath that her breasts almost touched his chest. He was that close. Molly blew her air out again quickly. “That’s quite an ego you’ve got there.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong. I lost that six years ago.”

  Molly tried to mentally measure the space between his mouth and hers. Three inches, she decided, tops. “I’m really good with my knee. They taught me in the academy. Back off.”

  “You won’t use your knee.” He prayed hard that she wouldn’t, anyway. If she decided to, then he was reasonably defenseless, the way he was standing over her. Cops were ruthless. Cops would do anything. “You’re waiting with bated breath to find out what I say or do next.”

  “My breath doesn’t bate.”

  “Want to bet?” He braced one palm against the door over her left shoulder. Knowing he was insane, he did it anyway. Then he traced a line with his fingertip from the hollow of her throat right to the top of that sports bra.

  She stopped breathing. Molly couldn’t have found her breath in that moment if he’d held a gun to her head—and given who and what he was, maybe that wasn’t such a reach. Her limbs went weak. And everything inside her sank to the core of her, hot and shivery and ready. She tried to think if she had ever experienced any sensation like it before. She didn’t think so.

  “That,” he said, “was definitely a bated breath.”

  “It’s just your eau de gym. It caught me by the throat there for a moment.”

  “I like that about you, you know.” He closed the distance between them another half an inch.

  Her heart was hammering. “You like what?”

  “That quick tongue of yours. Makes me wonder what else it can do.”

  “Ohmigod,” she gasped. She couldn’t do this. He was an ex-con.

  “Give it up, Officer. You can’t order me into line. Your kind has already done the worst to me it can do.” The reminder should have quelled him. Should have been like a bucket of cold water over his head…and all the other parts of him that were waking up and feeling randy. But the flames were too hot in his blood. Licking. Tantalizing.

  “This is insane,” she whispered.

  “It’s every bit of that and more. Want me to kiss you now?”

  She choked and drove her fist into his stomach.

>   Danny backed off quickly. It hurt. Damn it, it really hurt, and he’d taken punches from men twice the size of her. He rubbed his gut and gave her her space back. “You could have just said no.”

  “Would you have listened?”

  “Probably not. I’m an ex-con. I’m the baddest of the bad.”

  At least that took her mind off what had just passed between them…a little. “Why? Why, Danny? Why did you let them do that to you? Why did you let them frame you?”

  “It was six years of my life, Molly. Or it was the rest of it. Which would you have chosen?” His voice was suddenly tired, and something in it, some obscure note of hurt and bitterness made her want to cry. Molly didn’t answer. For all she had seen and survived—through Mickey and his death and all her years in law enforcement—Molly wasn’t sure she had it in her to make a decision like the one he’d just described.

  She turned around and wrapped both hands around the doorknob, wrenching it hard, escaping.

  “Worked again,” Danny murmured, watching her run. But he felt little satisfaction this time.

  This time he wanted her to come back.

  Chapter 4

  Molly was nearly at her car—two and a half blocks away this time—when she heard someone calling her name. She looked back to find Anita chasing after her. The teenager was grinning from ear to ear.

  Molly went to meet her and clasped both her hands. “The test was negative, right?”

  “Right.” Anita gave a whoop and tugged her hands away to dance around in a little circle, shooting her fists at the sky.

  “Good,” Molly said, still feeling a little shaky, remembering Danny’s words, Want me to kiss you now? What kind of game was he playing with her? And why?

  “I just wanted to let you know,” Anita said, turning away.

  “Wait.” Molly bore down on her scurrying thoughts. “You’re welcome and all that. But promise me you’ll use the condoms from here on in.”

  Anita waved a hand. “Yeah.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Okay.” Anita shook her head and started back up the street.

  Molly didn’t know if she had reached the girl or not. She went back to her car and sat behind the steering wheel for a while, her hands clenching it until they hurt. Then she let out her breath and turned the key in the ignition.

  Danny Gates was a whole lot more than she had bargained on.

  Someday, Danny thought, he might be able to look at his parole officer without hating him for things that were no more the poor guy’s fault than the weather was. He left the office on Main Street after his weekly check-in feeling as though someone had wrapped steel bands around his chest. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to loosen some of the tension.

  That was when he saw Bobby J. across the street.

  The kid was standing in front of the bank. He was talking to a short man in jeans and a black windbreaker. The guy’s back was to the street. Danny couldn’t see his face. But he did see the man reach forward and either take something—or put something—in Bobby’s hands.

  Danny acted without thinking about it. He jogged into the street. A couple of passing cars honked at him. He was jaywalking, right in front of the probation offices.

  By the time he reached the opposite side of the street, the man was halfway down the block and Bobby was turning in the other direction. “Hey,” he said.

  Bobby’s shoulders twitched but he kept walking.

  “I can catch you,” Danny said, “so spare me the race.”

  Bobby paused. Danny picked up his step again to reach him.

  “Get out of my face, man,” the kid said when he reached him.

  “No money is worth that, Bobby.” He inclined his head in the general direction where the transaction had just taken place.

  “Yeah, right, con. You’re one to lecture me, right?”

  “Right. It’s nasty inside.”

  “I know. Been in juvie.”

  “Multiply that by five for the big house.”

  He thought he saw a reaction on the boy’s face before he turned away again. Bobby took a few steps and looked back, poking his finger at him. “You back off,” he snarled. “Just leave me alone. You got no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t want your frigging help.”

  You’ve got it, anyway, Danny thought, watching the boy walk away.

  Bad cops were like coat hangers in a closet, Molly decided the next morning as she stepped into the war room. Leave them in the dark long enough and they just proliferated.

  She was tired, and the small of her back hurt from either a bad night’s sleep or the tussle she’d had with the drugged-out teenage Sumo wrestler two shifts ago—she couldn’t be sure which. The kid had turned out to be from a very good family, the kind that could afford top-notch counsel for their hoodlums. Unlike Bancroft and Danny, he had called for a lawyer right off the bat and he’d been out of the holding cell within an hour.

  Come to think of it, Molly realized, maybe Bancroft hadn’t called for counsel because he really had been suicidal. Maybe he had known he’d be dead as soon as his belt arrived so there was no need to call anyone.

  Danny, on the other hand, had apparently taken the fall just to stay alive. He’d said the mob had framed him for some infraction, and he’d implied that they might have killed him instead. Why would the mob kill one of their own? For squealing, for turning state’s evidence against them, she thought.

  For walking away.

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she warned herself as she pulled out a chair and sat at the crime book table. “Stop dwelling on him.”

  “Internal Affairs could set you up for a psych examination for talking to yourself, you know.”

  Molly turned in her chair to find Joe Gannon. “And I’m starting to think that there are those who would gladly turn me in to IAD for doing it, too. Point taken.”

  He joined her at the table and looked down at the reports, forms and notes strewn all over the scratched Formica. “This is a mess.”

  “I know,” Molly replied. “No one files. And because they don’t, no one can find anything.” Then it hit her. What a clever way to slow down the investigation!

  She almost opened her mouth and said so but for once in her life, she bit her tongue instead. Coat hangers and closets, she thought again. Joe seemed like a good cop. But at this point, who knew? She’d been staggered to learn that Bancroft and Malloy had nabbed Tracy Walker and Jake Anderson. And Spence Harrison had seemed to agree with her that maybe others in the police department were working on the side as well.

  “How’s your parking situation coming along?” Joe asked, taking a pile of papers and beginning to sort through them himself.

  “Terrible. Great.” She cut her gaze up to him as he continued to stand beside her. “In this case, it’s the same thing.”

  He helped her file for half an hour. Molly found nothing new of interest in the reports that passed through her hands. She wondered about the ones Gannon was tucking away. Was his help just a clever way of keeping her from seeing something on this table that the others didn’t want her to see? Was he actually lifting a few pages out of her grasp?

  Yes, she thought, she suspected task-force cops now as well.

  Hasselman and McCauley really didn’t like her. Neither, it would seem, did Beau Maguire. She’d never had so many enemies in one place before in her life. And all of them were on the task force. What better way to protect the bomber than to get assigned to this detail and skew the investigation a little? She’d muscled her way onto the team. Maybe one or two of the others had done the same thing. The fact remained that the filing really was a disaster.

  Molly stood and moved to the computer on the other table. She tried to boot it up but it was stuck in safe mode and wouldn’t do much of anything for her.

  “What are we using this for?” she asked Gannon.

  He looked up. “It’s supposed to cross-reference everything we’ve got here in hard c
opy and give us access to other police departments, too. The theory being, once we finally get something concrete on the bomb, maybe we can find a similar device used in other cities. But Hasselman hasn’t been able to get it on-line yet. And he’s our resident computer geek.”

  Another information dead end, Molly thought. Convenient…if anyone really was deliberately trying to muddle things here.

  She went back to the crime book table. Gannon handed her the book after he finished putting his share of the paperwork inside, so maybe he wasn’t trying to hide anything.

  “I’m going to head over to the country club,” she said. “I haven’t really had a good look at the bomb site yet.” It wasn’t true, but she wanted to catch his reaction.

  Gannon dug into his pocket and came up with a key. “You’ll need this then. The Men’s Grill area is all boarded up and ply-wooded-off from the rest of the club. Only authorized personnel can get in.”

  “That would be me.” Molly caught the key when he tossed it to her.

  “Now it is. If I’m not at my desk when you get back for your regular shift then hold on to it and give it to me later. I don’t want it just sitting around in one of my drawers.”

  Did that mean he was suspicious of some of the officers, too? “I don’t blame you. I worry a little about some of our coworkers,” she said neutrally, watching him. He shot her a speculative look but didn’t answer. Molly held up the key. “Mind if I have it copied?”

  “My guess is that’s the only way you’re going to get one.”

  Molly smiled slowly. “Thanks.”

  She left the war room, then she hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at the door, frowning. Something else bothered her, she realized. Why was it that the war room was always pretty much empty of task force members? She’d been the fifteenth cop or detective to be appointed to the team, so where were the others? Why was the place always so lonely except during meetings she wasn’t informed of?

  Maybe the others were always out running down leads. Heaven knew they were generating enough unfiled reports.

  On impulse, Molly stopped at the personnel office as she passed it. The woman behind the counter there was new. Molly didn’t know her but something about the way she cracked her gum and pounded at her computer keys told her that she had handled her fair share of city records over the years.