Bad Cop

by Linda Verji

  The sight of the blood and the woman’s resultant whimper was enough to send Lucas simmering rage straight to boiling point. He reached for his gun. However, before he could pull it out a hand came down over his.

  “Easy. Easy. There are too many people around,” Shane murmured beside him.

  Fine! Lucas was going to give the man another chance. “Drop the knife and surrender. This is the second warning.”

  “Get away from me!” the perp howled as he waved his knife at Lucas and Shane then at the rent-a-cops. “Get away!”

  “Please! Please, let me go.” The woman whimpered.

  “Shut up!” The perp hit the woman with the butt of his knife, and she screamed.

  That was it for Lucas. Screw being calm! He pulled his gun. “Put the knife down.”

  Everyone around them collectively ducked and gasped as if afraid that he would really shoot. Even the perp staggered backwards. Though fear flickered in the man’s eyes, all Lucas saw was the nine hundred dollars he’d lost because of the punk. Only the self-control beaten into him during training kept him from putting a bullet in the man’s arm right then.

  Shane had been with Lucas long enough to know when he was about to jump off a cliff. He took over.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Shane spoke to the perp. His voice was soft and calm unlike the tight anger that characterized Lucas’s tone and stance. “We don’t need to do this. Just drop the knife and we can all come out of this safely.”

  But the perp’s eyes were on Lucas and the gun he was pointing at him. He shouted, “Put it down. Put it down. Do you want to see her die? Put it down!”

  “Okay, okay,” Shane returned in that irritatingly calm voice. “Calm down. We’re putting down the gun.”

  Lucas didn’t want to but when Shane grabbed the top of the pistol and pushed it down, he had no choice but to lower his arm.

  “Throw it here,” the perp ordered as if he was in control of the situation.

  It was enough to make Lucas lift his arm again, but Shane was there to stop him. Shane forcibly pulled the gun from Lucas’ grip then bent and slid it across the floor a little distance from them.

  “Get lost, you bastards,” the perp hollered as he dragged the woman forward so he could pull the gun closer to himself with his foot. Unfortunately for him, his actions had the effect of loosening his hold on the woman. It was all Shane and Lucas needed. While the perp was going for the gun, Shane went for the woman. He grabbed her arm and yanked her to himself, freeing her from her assailant. Meanwhile Lucas darted downwards for his gun, getting to it before the perp could do.

  The woman and the gun were now out of play. It was now just Lucas and the perp.

  Lucas smiled as he tucked his gun back into its holster but there was no humor in that smile. “Do you know how much those collectibles you broke cost?”

  “Get away from me,” the perp hollered as he waved his knife around dangerously and shuffled backwards.

  “Nine hundred.” Lucas prowled closer. He shoved his fingers through his dirty blond hair as the full magnitude of his loss hit him. “Nine hundred dollars, you punk”

  The assailant puffed out angrily before shoving the knife towards Lucas’ face. Lucas arched backwards and easily dodged it. When the man went for his right shoulder, Lucas deftly swayed to the left. The perp stabbed again but this time Lucas was waiting. He grabbed the man’s arm forcefully then kicked out right into the man’s leg and swept him off his feet. The man fell forward with a pained groaned.

  Then it was over. Just like that.

  It took an hour or so for them to sort out the situation. After Lucas and Shane identified themselves as detectives for the Chancery Police Department, the mall’s security let them have the perp. By the time they got to their precinct, night was already falling.

  “You better hope you go in for a long time,” Lucas threatened the perp as he hauled him up the stairs and into the precinct, “because as soon as you’re out I’m suing you. I want my money back.”

  The perp only smirked.

  Shane gleefully translated the smirk. “That means you’ll never get it.”

  Lucas offered his partner a baleful glare. “Try not to enjoy it so much!”

  “I told you it was a stupid idea to pay so much money for those toys.”

  “They’re not toys. They’re-” Lucas paused to take a deep calming breath. “Why do I even bother? They’re dead anyway.”

  “Don’t worry.” Shane laughed. “You can borrow my shoes anytime. They’re still here.”

  “I thought you two were off-duty?” Cynthia Hill, a uniformed officer, said when they brought the perp straight to her desk. “Did you go looking for trouble again?”

  “We don’t look for trouble,” Lucas retorted. “Trouble looks for us.”

  “This one stole a watch from a jewelry store at the mall then pulled a knife on a woman there,” Shane said as they handed off the suspect.

  Moments later, they left the perp to Cynthia. But their day of excitement wasn’t over yet.

  “Have you seen her?” Officer Devon Martin asked as they took the elevator up to the bullpen.

  “Have we seen who?” Lucas asked.

  “The lady who’s been chewing out Buddy for the last hour,” the officer said. “I hear she’s a real hottie.”

  “What’s she chewing Buddy out for?” Lucas asked.

  Shane whose priorities were different cut in with, “How hot is she? Seven, eight, nine?”

  “Nine.” Martin grinned. “And that’s only because I strongly oppose the notion that anyone can be a nine. So let’s just say a strong nine.”

  “Whoa!” Shane’s eyes lit up, and he looked up to the numbers above the elevator as if willing it to move faster so he could meet the nine.

  Lucas wasn’t surprised that Shane was so eager to meet the woman. The man had a problem; a flirting problem. He’d been known to hit on anything with a skirt. Hell, if Arnold Schwarzenegger walked into the precinct right now in a dress, Shane would probably try to charm him.

  Lucas laughed and shook his head before repeating, “What’s she chewing Buddy out for?”

  “Some case he closed.” Martin shrugged. “I don’t know much about it-”

  Lucas wasn’t surprised that Detective Barnaby Shriver, or Buddy as everyone called him, was getting chewed out again. The man was the poster child for incompetence. Whenever he was given a case, he did the bare minimum to close it, brought in people with very little if any ties to the case, or used excessive and illegal means to interrogate suspects. The only reason he was still at Chancery P.D was because he had ties to the Mayor. In these circles that counted for a lot.

  “-all I know is that she’s hot,” Martin finished.

  The lady’s hotness or lack of hotness didn’t matter to Lucas. He’d gone through so many women in his bid to forget the one woman who’d wreaked him that they’d all started to look the same. No matter how pretty a woman was, once morning came she still wasn’t who Lucas wanted.

  Still, Lucas was curious about what case Buddy had messed up this time. When Shane cheerfully bounded out of the elevator and down the hall, Lucas followed him. When they got to their unit, Lucas’s gaze swept over the heads of his fellow detectives to land at Buddy’s desk.

  Buddy, a chubby middle-aged man, was seated back in his seat with his arms crossed over his sizeable chest as if to protect himself from the blazing wrath of the woman seated across him. The situation should’ve been humorous since Buddy looked like a schoolboy being scolded by the Principal, yet Lucas couldn’t find it in himself to be amused. He was too shocked.

  He felt the blood drain from his face and he took a step back. All the sound in the room disappeared until all that was left was a weird buzzing in his ears as he stared at the woman. What was she doing here?

  “Jasmine?” he whispered, afraid he was hallucinating.

  CHAPTER 3

  Seeing Jasmine again was like an electric shock to his system.

&n
bsp; One would think that the years apart would’ve dulled his memory of her, but it hadn’t. It was almost as if he’d just seen her yesterday. Even though she wasn’t a stick-thin, bespectacled teenager, she was still achingly beautiful. Her chocolate-brown skin was as soft and supple as he remembered, and her lips just as lusciously thick.

  However, a few things had changed. Glasses had been such a ubiquitous part of her that it was weird seeing her large, beautiful brown eyes without lens covering them. Her hair had changed too. When she was younger, she’d liked to perm her hair, saying it was too hard to deal with, but now it was out in its full, natural glory. The ink-black curly strands had been styled in a poofy afro that fell to the top of her shoulders.

  Her body had changed too. Even though she was seated, he could tell from the way her red velvet dress smoothed over her full breasts and voluptuous thighs that time had given her more curves than expected.

  “Damn! She’s hot.” Shane, who was beside Lucas, murmured, “Definitely a strong nine.”

  Lucas couldn’t agree more, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything since it seemed like even his vocal cords had stiffened in shock on seeing Jasmine.

  Even from this distance, he could sense the restrained anger pouring from her in waves. She sat with her back straight, one hand set in a fist over Buddy’s desk and one leg crossed over the other while she stared at the detective.

  “Are you serious right now?” Her voice carried over the low murmurs of the other detectives watching them. “You’ll really close this case like this? Without finding the murderer?”

  “There is no murderer,” Buddy bit out between gritted teeth. “It’s a suicide.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you this isn’t a suicide?” Jasmine puffed out an angry breath before leaning forward as if to clarify, “One; York was a devout Catholic. He would never take his own life.”

  “Catholics take their lives too!” Buddy retorted sarcastically.

  “Not York. He was as Catholic as they come. He attended mass twice a week. Once even thought of being a priest.” Jasmine sat back to cross her arms over her chest. “But if that was all, I wouldn’t have come to you. You read his suicide note, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I read his suicide note!”

  “And you didn’t see the issues with it?” She stared at him like he was the biggest idiot she’d ever come across. “It didn’t sound like him at all. If you read his blog, then you’d know that York had his own patterns of speech and writing like everyone else. He always capitalizes ‘to’ even when it’s in the middle of a sentence. And he’s a poet. If he was going to write a suicide note, he’d make it beautiful. Not the eleven-word note he left.”

  “Maybe he was in a hurry!” Buddy retorted sarcastically.

  “Obviously not! He even had time to type out the note,” Jasmine retorted. “Which brings up another point; why type out an eleven-word note? He could’ve written it on a piece of paper.”

  She was making a lot of sense. If Lucas was investigating the case, the issues with the note would’ve pricked at his detective instincts. However, right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care about what or who she was talking about. All that mattered was that she was here, in Los Angeles.

  What was she doing here? During their silent talks in the dead of the night when everyone was asleep and she felt comfortable enough to speak, she’d always told him that Los Angeles was her destination. Still, her presence here was still surprising. He’d never thought that she’d go through with it. She was too shy and retiring to do something so adventurous. It was the reason why he’d moved out here and taken a job at Chancery P.D, because he knew that they’d never meet here.

  Yet here she was, looking beautiful and angry.

  Buddy puffed out a frustrated breath. “Look lady, I get it. You’re finding it hard to accept that your friend committed suicide-”

  “He did not commit suicide,” Jasmine cut in firmly

  Lucas’s eyebrows shot up at the assertiveness in her tone. He’d never seen her this angry or this assertive. The Jasmine he knew wasn’t capable of this kind of anger. Back then whenever she was frustrated she burst into tears, became silent or apologetic. She never got angry.

  Interesting! A few things had obviously changed while he was away.

  “He bought tickets to Beyoncé’s upcoming concert,” Jasmine continued. “He’s been talking non-stop about that concert and even had a calendar marking down the days. There is no way he would have missed it. That boy was a hardcore member of the Beyhive. There is no way-”

  “I don’t know what the Beyhive is and I don’t care.” Buddy’s double chin was practically trembling with anger as he added, “York Emerson was a failed child actor. It makes sense that he was depressed. We got his suicide not and the M.E says it was a clean suicide. It doesn’t matter what you think is off. We’re the experts. We’re the detectives. If I tell you this isn’t a murder, you can take it to the bank.” He suddenly shot to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have other cases to handle.”

  “Hey,” Jasmine started, but Buddy was already walking away from his desk.

  She shot to her feet too. It was obvious in her stiff posture and the rage reflected in her narrowed eyes that she wanted to follow him. But she must’ve had second thoughts because she bent down to grab her purse from the floor before turning.

  Run. Lucas’s instincts screamed at him. She hadn’t spotted him yet so there was a chance that this whole event could end without her ever having seen him and he could go back to missing her. But his legs refused to move.

  The eyes of other detectives and officers in the bullpen followed Jasmine as she moved from Buddy’s desk. Her strides were as purposeful as the clickety-clack of her heels as she started towards the elevator. Until she saw Lucas.

  She paused – stopped moving. Her eyes widened as instant recognition flashed in them.

  Though that pause couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds, it felt like a lifetime. Everything in Lucas’s tightened and his breath caught in his chest as he waited for her reaction. The shock in her gaze slowly melted and was replaced by cold distance. Her gaze swept away from him. Then she started moving again, coming towards him, closer, closer, closer…

  She walked right past him without even a sideway or backward glance.

  Lucas was so shocked by her reaction that he was rendered motionless for quite a while. Shane’s “damn, there she goes,” was the trigger that yanked Lucas out of his daze. Without conscious thought, he started after her.

  Shane called out behind him, but Lucas was too intent on reaching Jasmine to stop. Eventually, he reached her but by then she was already in the elevator and the doors were closing. Her gaze was wintery cold as she watched him come closer but she didn’t even make an effort to hold the door for him.

  The doors closed, and she was gone.

  I should let her go, Lucas told himself. I should let her ago.

  But seconds later, he was rushing towards the emergency stairs. By the time he got to the ground-floor, she was already out of the station. He raced through the lobby ignoring the greetings from his fellow officers. Though night had already fallen, the precinct was well lit and Lucas spotted her as soon as he emerged.

  Her bag clutched tightly to the side of her body, she moved swiftly towards the gates. The view he had as he trailed her was enough to get his shaft thickening. Damn! She’d grown up fine. Her dress clung to her ass, accentuating her voluptuous flesh. What he wouldn’t do for his hands to replace that fabric…

  Down boy! He firmly quelled his raging libido as he bounded down the steps. This wasn’t the time for this. He didn’t even know why he was following her but one thing was certain; it wasn’t so they could start over from where they’d left off. It wasn’t until they were both out of the gate that he announced himself.

  “Angel?” he called out, using the childhood nickname he’d given her.

  Immediately, she stopped mo
ving and whipped around to face him. The sidewalk wasn’t as well lit as the precinct grounds and he couldn’t see her expression. He jogged closer to reach her. When he could finally see her clearly, her expression seemed oddly inscrutable.

  Lucas forced his features into a smile. “Hi?”

  “I’m sorry.” She cocked her head to the side as confusion crossed her features. “Do I know you?”

  Do I know you? Lucas stopped moving. Was she kidding him?

  OF COURSE SHE knew him. How could she not?

  Lucas Gallo! Heartbreaker, heartless bastard and cheater!

  As soon as she’d seen him at the station, she’d recognized him. Though he’d gotten, taller, harder and more muscular with age, his hair was still as blond as she remembered albeit shorter. His eyes were the same pale, crystalline blue that they’d always been. They still seemed to see right through her straight into the heart he’d broken and that she was still trying to mend. Of course, she remembered him.

  But even if she hadn’t recognized him then, his calling out ‘Angel’ would’ve brought memories of him back. Everyone else had always called her Jasmine, Jazzy or Jaz. He was the only one who thought he was special. Angel? Please! What was he even doing here? Oh, right! How could she forget? Lucas had always been one to ignore rules and laws. He was probably just getting out of jail or on his way in.

  Seeing him had shocked her, but now she was angry. She could feel resentment build up her into a raging inferno as she stared at him. It was a good thing that she no longer walked around with her emotions written on her sleeves. She’d gotten so good at hiding her feelings that she faked another confused look as she repeated. “Do I know you?”

  “It’s Lucas,” he said as he closed the distance between them.

  It took everything in her not to gasp when he stopped a foot from her. A familiar heat flushed through her body as her senses prickled in awareness. Immediate anger pulsed through her. It had been thirteen damn years already, how could her traitorous body still react the same way.

  Still, she maintained her confused demeanor. “Lucas?”