Book'em Sadie (Iron Badges #1)

by Danielle Norman

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Orange County copies, fourteen forty-two.”

  I turned and headed back to the station to meet with Lieutenant Christakos as ordered.

  “You needed to see me, sir?”

  “Yes, come in, shut the door.” My heart plummeted. Not a single person wanted to ever hear those words. “I had a visitor today, and she left this for you.” Kayson handed me an envelope that was marked Orange County Department of Child and Family Services.

  “Umm . . . I don’t have children.” I slid one finger under the flap. “Shit.” I pulled my hand back and shook it before sticking it into my mouth, the small paper cut smarting more than it should. Had I been on my game, I would have taken that as an omen, but I was blissfully oblivious until I pulled out three pieces of paper and scanned each one slowly. Kayson stayed quiet and gave me time to take in the information, but he could have given me a week and I still wouldn’t have understood. “I’m sorry, I’m confused.”

  “It seems that Louise Hazelton has filed a complaint and has involved the Department of Child and Family Services. Her attorney was nice enough to forward a copy over to Internal Affairs. It seems that Mrs. Hazelton is concerned about the welfare of her granddaughter, especially when that granddaughter is in the company of one county deputy named Sadie Lazar. She claims that you are endangering the child’s life and believes that this is a direct result of your influence.”

  His words became muffled as my pulse thundered harder. I knew that everyone said that they saw red when they were livid, but when I looked from the papers to my boss, I didn’t. What I saw was a blur, a smudge . . . I was going to smear the ground with that bitch. How dare she bring me into her jealousy-fueled fight!

  “Sadie, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I snapped.

  “Then you understand my decision, until this all gets resolved you have two choices, pine duty or radar on the interstate. Which will it be?”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” No deputy wanted pine duty, we wanted to be on the road, in the thick of things, not stuck behind some pine desk.

  “No.”

  “Lieutenant, the woman is a viper, none of this is true. I wouldn’t hurt a child for anything. Don’t punish me.”

  “Sadie, I trust you, I do. I would trust you with my son. But this isn’t up to me; it’s up to Internal Affairs. They’ve decided that this is the best course of action for the department not only for our reputation but also with the least legal blowback. Until this is settled, they want you to avoid any drama. We have a lot of desk work that needs done, and we have a high report of speeders on the interstate. So, whichever you choose, you are still helping us out.”

  There was no way I was sitting behind a desk all day, but radar was so boring and traffic stops had become one of the most dangerous parts of an officer’s job. And sitting out in the Florida sun on a Harley . . . mmm, fun. “How long?”

  “No clue, but until this is resolved you’re to have no contact with Caroline Montgomery, and for the sake of reputation, I’d advise you to avoid all minors, is that clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Good, go home and when you come in tomorrow, you can start . . .” He left that word hanging in the air as he waited for my answer.

  “Radar.”

  “Radar duty.”

  I stood, my anger still roiling.

  “Sadie.” I turned back to face him. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I think this is total bullshit.”

  I gave him a chin nod and was out. I couldn’t have contact with Callie, but I sure as hell was going to give Ryan a piece of my mind, what little there was left.

  As soon as I was settled in my house, Wasabi fed and nestled in my lap, I dialed Ryan.

  “Hello.”

  “This is Deputy Lazar.” I felt an arctic wind sweep in and the frigid air wrap around my heart. I had to protect myself. It had been a week since Callie ran away, and I was making the first fucking phone call.

  “Sadie, I know.”

  “I’m not sure where you are right now mentally but I’m not in a good place, Ryan.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  “Really? From where I’m standing it appears that you have that whole vidi, vici, veni thing down pat.”

  “You mean, veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered?”

  “No. I mean vidi, vici, veni. You saw, you conquered, and you came. Now you are moving on.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “It’s been a week, Ryan. Callie ran away a week ago. You needed my help a week ago, you got it. You promised you would call, and it’s been crickets!”

  “Sorry, I’m a little overwhelmed right now.”

  “Ryan, Louise sent papers to the sheriff’s station making claims that she’s worried about Callie’s safety because of me. I’ve been moved to working a radar and controlling traffic speed. I’m not allowed to have any contact with Callie or any minors, which means I can’t volunteer at Kidz Klub either. It’s more than just Callie being hurt now, other children are being affected by her venom.”

  I had to take a deep breath and try to stop my hand from shaking. “Anyway, I’m calling to beg you to please talk with her. Let her know that you’ve stopped talking to me so that she can back off and take my name of that damn complaint so I can get back to my life.”

  “Is that what you want? You want to walk away? Louise had gone too far. I agree with that, but I don’t want to stop talking or seeing you, Sadie.”

  “Yeah? It didn’t really seem that way when you were busy not talking to me and not seeing me.” I pushed out a deep breath. “Listen. I get it. If I got dragged into this, it means that you have, too, but that means that you should want to do what’s best for Callie. If what’s best for her is walking away from me to get Louise to back off, then that’s what you should do.”

  “You’re wrong. That isn’t the best thing for my daughter, and it isn’t the best thing for me. I’m so sorry about what’s happening, but I will talk with them. Just give me some time to get this sorted out. I’ve been a fucking mess. I know that isn’t an excuse, but I’m in over my head with Louise and Sonya, and I’m barely hanging on.”

  “And what about what’s best for me? All my life I’ve wanted to be a deputy. That is on the line right now, and we’re just too new, you have to see this. If in three months you decide that you can’t do this, that you’re not ready, then I would have risked everything and literally lost everything. I’ll have no career, which means no money, no home, no future. As much as I care about you, I can’t do this anymore.”

  “But . . . I think that I’m falling—”

  “Yeah, me, too.” I disconnected and realized that my heart was shattered.

  Tomorrow, yeah tomorrow when I regained my mental strength, I would call Sunday, maybe the Iron Ladies could look into this for me and help me find a way to beat Louise’s claims. I wasn’t sure whether it was more for me, to get back to my regular routine, or for Ryan. Whatever the reason was, I needed someone to help me.

  24

  Ryan

  “Hello?”

  “Ryan, this is Louise, I’d like to see my granddaughter.”

  “And I’d like to live in peace, but it seems that neither of us are getting our way. You refuse to follow the few rules that I give. I wasn’t joking, Louise, you need help. You are cruel to Callie about someone she looked up to, and when you decide to throw a tantrum when I call you out on it, you call DCF. So, I really do feel that it’s in Callie’s best interest for you and Sonya to no longer be part of her life.”

  “You’ll never understand what I’m going through. If you loved my daughter, then how can you replace her so easily?”

  “Easily? It’s been four years. Had Deirdre survived, I would have still been happily married to her, but she didn’t. You want me to spend the rest of my life alone? I’m still young enough to have a family, to give Callie siblings. She deser
ves that . . . I deserve that. Why won’t you just let me live in peace? You could have been part of our lives forever just like we always planned. But instead my daughter is afraid of you, I can’t stand you, and if I can convince Sadie to give me another chance, then I wouldn’t blame her if she never wants you near us again.”

  “I’ll never let that happen. Caroline is all I have left of Deirdre.”

  “Callie is what you could have had. You played a game and lost. Your mistake is that you went after my daughter, and I won’t let you or anyone else hurt her. If you do anything else, I’ll look into getting a restraining order against you.”

  “I refuse to allow you to forget my daughter or allow that woman to replace my daughter’s memory. Someone needs to keep her alive, since you won’t, then I will. It’s your fault she’s dead.”

  “Louise, we’ve been through this a million times, Deirdre wanted to work and loved being a doctor. I wasn’t going to force her to be a stay-at-home mom just because we had a child or because you thought that was what she should do. She was an adult.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. That would have required you actually being a man.”

  “That’s it. Do not contact Callie or me again via phone, email . . . anything. You are not permitted to have contact with any of us until you grow the fuck up.” I slammed my phone down and leaned against the counter just so I wouldn’t fall over.

  Holy shit, holy shit. Why didn’t I do that sooner?

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Much.” I smiled at Polly. “How much did you hear?”

  “Not sure, but enough to know that they pushed you too far. I’ve never heard you speak to anyone like that.” Her words were like a ten-ton weight in my stomach. “Oh, you took my words wrong. From what I overheard, they deserved it. In fact, there are several people you should have spoken to like that before now. I’m glad to know it’s in you. I’m just saying that whatever they did had to be heinous to bring out this side of you.”

  “Deirdre’s mother has gone crazy.”

  “Ummm, hasn’t she always given you a hard time?”

  “Yeah, but she used to be tolerable, now she’s lost her damn mind.”

  “Do you know what changed? What made her act out like this?”

  I pushed out a deep breath. “You know that wreck we had in front of the hospital?”

  “The one that was what . . . earlier this month?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. The female deputy, she’s also the deputy who found Callie. I . . .”

  “Wow, I can’t remember the last time I saw you turn red. I’m glad to see that you’re going out.”

  “I was going out. Louise upped her crazy factor and it ended up putting Sadie’s job in jeopardy, so I’ve put distance between us. Just when I thought things might start turning for the better. One tiny ounce of happiness, and Louise sweeps in and sucks the life out of me. They’ve got Child and Family Services involved.”

  “On you, for what?”

  “Negligence.”

  “Where do they live? I think they need a visit from the sisterhood.” Polly cracked her knuckles.

  “If you didn’t look so much like Betty Crocker, then maybe you could pull the whole bad bitch off. But you are too nice.”

  “Fine. That hurt my hand anyway. God, I haven’t cracked my knuckles in forever. Truthfully, though, what are you going to do?”

  “I need to talk to a lawyer and find out the best way to keep those crazy people away from my daughter.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. It sounds to me like this is harassment. Why don’t you call Becky?”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yes, this is what she does.”

  “I know who she is, but I don’t want to put her in the middle of this.”

  “Please, Ryan, I think she’d be hurt if you called someone else. No one would work harder for you than Becky.”

  “I know that. I just don’t want to take advantage.”

  “You’re not. Let me get you her card, I have it in my purse; you can call her office. She’ll be a bulldog for you, and she loves Callie, you know that.”

  “I know you both do.” When Deirdre died, Polly and Becky were like rocks in my world. If it weren’t for them and my mother, I didn’t know if I would have made it through. I was overwhelmed, my mom was busy making arrangements, and Deirdre’s family was distraught, so Becky and Polly stepped in and took care of Callie. They even bought a toddler bed for their spare room for her. Every so often when they need to be reminded why they don’t want kids, they ask to watch Callie for the night.

  “I’m going to go call Sadie, will you get me that card?”

  “Will do.” Polly gave me a hug and headed off as I grabbed my phone.

  When it went to voicemail, I waited for the tone and then just spilled my emotions, “Sadie, I like you, I really do. I want to see where we can go with this. When I’m with you, I feel alive, and I haven’t felt like that in a long time. Please trust me, we will get through this. I’m going to speak to an attorney about doing something to protect us from Louise. Just give me a chance, please.”

  I had just disconnected when the alert came across. “Trauma team one, report to ER-H, reference inbound med-flight.” The hospital intercom blared through the corridor.

  “Emergency, got to go.” I hung up and ran out of my office, shoving my phone into my pocket as I ran. I was trauma team one, ER-H was the helipad.

  “Here you go.” Polly handed me my medic case as we raced for the elevator.

  Pushing open the doors onto the roof, I was greeted by one of the MedFlight paramedics. “Catch me up, what do we have?”

  “Male, twenty-seven, Brevard motorcycle deputy, hit by car. Wearing helmet. Severe subcu-bleeding along right side. Maintaining C-spine. Has not regained consciousness. Heart rate one-nineteen, BP eighty-five over fifty, respiratory thirty, ox-sat ninety.” Totally caught up on the vitals, we rushed him to radiology for a CT scan.

  If this were a normal patient, I wouldn’t stay to wait for the scan, but they’d called trauma team one, which included a radiologist, a surgeon, and an on-call. We all stood around and waited. In some offices, people gathered by the watering hole, a.k.a. the drinking fountain, but we congregate by the nurses’ station. It’s where the food and halfway decent coffee was.

  “This is my least favorite part of the job, when it is a cop or a firefighter. I always see them like us,” Dr. Wilhite, the surgeon, said. “I do what they do, I put others first, but in the end, cops are the ones who end up dead. They are the ones the public turns on. Haven’t you ever thought about it? Why cops? You never see mass riots against firemen, but when you research statistics there have been more cases of internal corruption. Or us”—she stared at me above the rim of her coffee cup—“people get mad at us, but they always yell at the insurance companies. I’ll tell you right now, you couldn’t pay me enough to be a cop. There is no amount of money worth the risks they take. Glad my husband is an accountant, only thing he needs to worry about is a paper cut.”

  I was still thinking about what she said when the scans hit the screen. We stood together and tried to figure out what the next step needed to be to save this man’s life.

  “He’s mine, Ryan,” Dr. Wilhite called out.

  “Agreed. Let’s go.” I helped her transfer the deputy over to the OR, but that was when I took my leave. A bit dazed from the adrenaline rush, I made my way to my office and my normal life. Visions of Deirdre flashed in front of my face but then . . .it changed, in my mind it was no longer Deirdre.

  “Twenty-eight-year-old female, motorcycle deputy, hit and run, severe head trauma!” the paramedics had shouted as they lifted her off the med-flight. It had been then that I got a good look at the body . . . Sadie. She was lying on a gurney just as Deirdre had been. Her face pale, and I was too stunned to move. Shaking away the phantom images of Sadie, I worked to clear my head and slow my breathing. It was a hallucination, that’s all. Sadie is f
ine. But the truth was, that deputy fighting for his life in the ER could have been Sadie.

  I hurried back to my office and pocketed the card Polly had left. It was time for me to leave to pick up Callie anyway.

  25

  Ryan

  “Are you Ryan Montgomery?” the man standing at my front door asked. He was wearing a badge that read: Field Officer, but I had no idea who he was.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Mr. Montgomery, you’ve been served.” He thrust an envelope at me and then headed off as I stepped back into my house and closed the door.

  “Was that Sadie?” Mom asked.

  “No. I was just served.” I held up the papers. “It seems that I’m being sued by Louise Hazelton.”

  “Sued? Sued for what?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said as I flipped page after page, “but if I’m reading this correctly, I’d say that she is suing me for custody of Callie.”

  “You need to call that attorney. This is getting out of control.”

  She was right. It had been two days since Polly had given me the card, and for some reason, I’d allowed it to slip to the back of my mind. Maybe because I was busy finding reasons not to see Sadie. We were talking at night, but every time I decided to go see her, I saw that deputy lying on the gurney unconscious.

  “I do. Give me a minute.”

  She nodded and I grabbed the phone to call Becky.

  “Ryan,” she said after the second ring. “I was wondering when you were going to call me.”

  “I know. I figured Polly told you she gave me your card. Do you have a second to talk?” “Sure, what’s going on?”

  “I just got served, it seems that my former mother-in-law is suing me for custody of Caroline.”

  “Okay, come on over.”

  I grabbed the file I’d been putting together and my laptop so Becky could see for herself what kinds of emails Louise had been sending me, then headed out of my house. When I arrived at Polly and Becky’s, they were both waiting out front. Becky took one look at me and then turned, saying, “Let’s go into my office.”