Fall Into Me (2 page)

“Someone needs to break him,” Tick muttered from the passenger seat. He grimaced and passed a hand over his side. “He’s going to be the freakin’ death of me.”

“You know what the problem is, don’t you?”

“Other than the fact he has the common sense of a fence post?”

Mark ignored the smart-ass rejoinder. “You’re just alike.”

Tick’s head whipped in his direction. “What?”

“He’s just like you when you were a rookie.”

“Yeah, I doubt it.” Tick snorted. “I was never that damn…stupid.”

“No, you were worse. Trust me. I remember.”

“You’re—” The sudden jangling of a Gary Allan song cut him off. He lifted his cell, glanced at the display and groaned before lifting it to his ear. “Hey, Aunt Maureen.”

Mark smothered a chuckle. Tick rested an elbow on the door, shading his eyes while he listened.

“Aunt Maureen, I really don’t think—”

Even Mark could hear Maureen’s agitated squawking as Tick tried to get a word in.

“Aunt Maureen…Aunt
Maureen
. You’re getting all worked up over nothing. I’m sure there are going to be no strippers out at the Cue Club.”

Mark choked on a laugh. Tick looked sideways at him and shrugged, eyebrows lifted in his where-does-she-get-this-stuff expression.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure. The county has an ordinance against exotic dancing… She said what? A den of iniquity?” Tick sighed. “Aunt Maureen, that’s just Angel’s sense of humor. I’m sure she was teasing you. Yes, ma’am… Yes, ma’am. Goodbye. Yes, I love you too. Bye now.” He snapped the phone closed and laid it on his lap. Laughing, he dragged both hands down his face. “Sweet Jesus.”

“Strippers at the Cue Club?” Mark slowed to take the turn onto 112. “That’s hilarious.”

Tick shook his head. “Obviously, Angel Henderson was teasing about hiring strippers and changing the name of the place to the Den of Iniquity and Aunt Maureen took her seriously.”

“The Den of Iniquity?” He could just imagine those words coming out of Angel’s mouth, accompanied by one of her wicked winks. He shifted in the seat, little pitchforks of guilt stabbing at him. Something about the way she’d looked at him when he’d stepped out of the patrol car earlier said his not returning her messages had been a bad thing. Actually, taking her to bed when he didn’t intend to pursue a relationship had been a bad idea too, but he’d been so wrapped up in falling the rest of the way in love with Tori Calvert that it had taken days for that reality to sink in. He’d been a bastard all the way around with Angel.

“That’s what your badge bunny said.”

Mark slanted a swift glare in Tick’s direction. “Don’t call her that. She’s not a cop groupie and you know it.”

Genuine contrition flashed over Tick’s features. “Yeah, I know.”

Silence descended, broken only by the whir of tires on blacktop and the occasional crackle of radio traffic. Mark watched the road, pine trees and the lime mine flashing by, and waited. He could almost
feel
the thoughts running through Tick’s head and no way was the conversational minefield over that easy.

Tick was too damn stubborn to let it go and Mark knew it.

He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel. Wonder if they’d make the Delta Pines crossroads before Tick—

“You slept with her, though, didn’t you.” The quiet comment was more a statement of fact than a question and the underlying condemnation set Mark’s nerves on edge.

“Really none of your business, Tick.” He flexed his fingers around the wheel. “I never asked you about the string of blondes, remember?”

“You’re dating my little sister. That makes it my business.” Tick fidgeted against the seat with the movements of someone who’d given up on finding a comfortable position. “And the blondes were different. I wasn’t sleeping with any of them.”

“Your little sister is twenty-seven and old enough to make her own decisions without your approval.”

“You’re thirty-nine and less than a month ago you were still indulging in one-night stands with women you didn’t bother to call again.” Tick drummed his thumb against his knee. “And I’m supposed to be okay with this whole thing between you and Tori?”

“The horse is dead, Calvert. Quit beating it.” Mark rolled his neck, trying to relieve the sudden tension sitting there. Hell, he wasn’t proud of his past, but he didn’t need his partner throwing it in his face every time he turned around either.

“So explain to me how I’m supposed to believe you’re going to treat Tori differently than Angel or your other playmates.”

Goddamn, he was like a dog with a worn-out bone. Mark tightened his fingers and loosened them once more. Stopping the car and whipping Tick’s ass was out of the question. The guy was recuperating from major surgery. Not to mention the fact it would make Tori mad and really solve nothing. When Tick got like this, the only thing that really made a difference was time.

“Because.” Mark relaxed his jaw with an effort. “The difference between Tori and Angel or the others is the same one between Falconetti and Cicely St. John or Lynne Harris or any of the other blondes you went through when you came back from Mississippi and Falconetti had dumped your ass.”

Let him argue with that.

Tick fixed him with one long glare and turned away to stare out the window, still tapping his thumb against his knee. Fine. Let him stew.

“Chandler, C-3.” The radio crackled, doing little to break the tension hovering in the car.

Mark lifted the mike. “Go ahead, Chandler.”

“10-50, 10-52 at the intersection of Stage Coach and Jackson Dairy. All other units are busy. Can you respond?”

“10-4, Chandler. 10-76.” Mark replaced the mike and flipped on the light bar. He pressed down on the accelerator, and the police package Crown Victoria responded instantaneously with a muted roar and a rush of power. They were only a couple of miles from the reported accident and obviously an ambulance was on the way as well. Man, he hated that intersection, the site of two fatal wrecks in the last year.

Pine woods flashed by, interspersed with fields recently stripped of cotton and peanuts. A heavy scent of cow manure and damp feed hung in the air and permeated the car’s interior via the air vents.

The crossroads loomed, a late-model Ford pickup and a little red sports car jammed together. Steam rose from the crumpled hoods. Mark brought the unit to a halt just inside the intersection and grabbed the mike, calling them in as arrived at the scene and requesting dispatch of a wrecker. He released his seat belt and popped the trunk, sparing Tick a rapid glance. “Can you secure the intersection while I check the vics?”

“I think I can handle that.” Heavy sarcasm laced Tick’s words, but Mark didn’t reply. Tick wasn’t supposed to be in a patrol car at all, just sitting behind a desk part-time until his six-week post-operative checkup, which was nearly four weeks away. When Falconetti learned Tick had worked a wreck, she’d have his ass.

Mark couldn’t wait to tell her.

He jogged to the Ford. The teenage driver was on his feet, already yapping into his cell phone. Recognition slammed Mark with a wave of irony. Paul Bostick.

“You all right?” Mark looked him over—no obvious injuries other than a scratch to his forehead and a small cut on his wrist.

“Yeah, I’m good.” The boy’s voice shook and he pointed at the cell. “I called Daddy. He’s on his way.”

Mark directed him to the embankment behind his unit, a safe distance from both vehicles and any oncoming traffic. “Sit down for me over here until the ambulance arrives so the EMTs can take a look at you.”

He returned to the wreck and went to the driver’s side of the red car, which at one time had been a Mazda, the same make and model as Tori’s. The entire front end was demolished. Hell, soon as he could, he was putting her in something safer, like a Sherman tank. She was a horrible driver, an accident waiting to happen.

The car door stood open, the driver, also a teen, sitting sideways and sobbing into her cell phone, big tears running down her face. Why did he just know those phones had had something to do with this wreck?

The girl cried so hard she was incoherent. He hunched before her, visually assessing her for injuries. Like Paul, she seemed to have only minor cuts and contusions, an angry red streak cutting across her collarbone, most likely from the seatbelt.

“Kaydee? Kaydee, are you all right?” The panicked female voice coming from the phone was audible even over the girl’s smothered wails.

Mark gestured at the phone. “Your mom?”

She nodded, fresh tears spilling over. He held out a hand for the cell. “Want me to talk to her?”

She passed him the phone.

“Do you hurt anywhere?” he asked before lifting the baby-pink rectangle to his ear. She shook her head, folding her arms around her knees as she wept. “Hello, this is Mark Cook with the Chandler County Sheriff’s Department. Who’s speaking, please?”

“Oh my God.” The female voice broke. “This is Sara Davis, Kaydee’s mother. Is she all right?”

“She appears to be okay.” He slanted a reassuring smile in Kaydee’s direction. “However, she has been involved in a traffic accident at the intersection of Stage Coach Road and Jackson Dairy. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m on my way. Are you sure she’s all right?”

“I don’t see any visible injuries other than minor cuts and bruises, but an ambulance is en route.” Actually, the approaching siren told him it was just around the curve. “The paramedics will check her out, but she seems to be fine. Would you like to talk to Kaydee again?”

“Please.”

He handed off the phone to the slightly calmer teenager. The ambulance appeared, coming to a stop at the shoulder. One EMT jogged over to where Tick was talking with Paul. The second joined Mark at the car.

“Hey, sweetheart, I’m Jim. Let’s check you out, okay? Hey, Cookie.” Jim Tyre opened his medical kit.

“Jim.” Mark nodded. He let the medic take over and stepped back. Catching Tick’s eye, he mimed sketching the scene. Tick shook his head.

Mark pulled his notebook and made quick work of drawing a rough outline of vehicle positions and skid marks. A pair of wreckers arrived moments later from Lawson Automotive, followed quickly by Bubba Bostick and both of Kaydee’s parents. For the next twenty minutes, Mark found himself taking statements while Tick handled worried parents. Finally, Mark issued Paul a citation for failure to control his vehicle. The kid trailed his father to the family SUV, an unhappy bent to his head and shoulders as Bubba read him the riot act for garnering a third ticket, as well as causing an accident, in less than two weeks.

As Kaydee and her parents departed, Jim and the second paramedic, Clark Dempsey, approached.

“Kids were lucky.” Jim jerked his chin at the skid marks on the other side of the intersection. “If he’d been a little farther the other way, she’d be dead.”

“Yeah.” Tick glanced at Bubba’s departing vehicle. “Maybe his daddy can slow him down some.”

“You look good, man.” Jim clapped a cautious hand on Tick’s shoulder. “But are you supposed to be back on active duty yet?”

“Hell no, he’s not.” Mark hid a smirk behind his hand. He wouldn’t have to tell Falconetti. News of Tick’s on-the-road adventures would be back to her by nightfall.

“Congratulations on the baby too.” Jim grinned, and when he rested his hands at his waist, sunlight glinted off his shiny new wedding band. “Rhonda’s already wanting us to start trying.”

The devilish darts of guilt took aim at Mark once more. Angel Henderson had dated Jim off and on forever. Probably part of the reason she’d gone to bed with him on that first and only date had been her rebound situation with Jim’s sudden marriage.

Shit, he really was a bastard.

A bastard who needed to apologize, badly. In person.

Oh, hell yeah, Tori was going to love that idea.

A white sheriff’s unit topped the hill, slowed and angled in behind the unmarked car. Troy Lee emerged, tipped his campaign hat at the EMTs on scene and stopped at Mark’s side. “What’s up?”

Mark shrugged and gave him a brief rundown. “I cited him for failure to control.”

Troy Lee squinted at the skid marks, the area where the kid’s truck had left the roadway and the second set of rubber lines where he’d entered the intersection and slammed Kaydee Davis’s car.

“How fast did he say he was going?”

“Fifty, maybe fifty-five.”

Troy Lee snorted. “More like seventy. He’s lucky he didn’t roll the truck.”

Frowning, Tick studied the marks. “How do you figure that?”

“Geometry and trig. You know, high school math.”

“Troy Lee.” Warning hovered in Tick’s voice and his brows lowered in a scowl.

“I’m serious.” Troy Lee spread his hands. “It’s basic geometry and trigonometry. Simple angles and drag coefficient. He left the road at what looks like a thirty-degree angle, re-entered more on a forty-five. When you enter that and the drag coefficient for dry pavement into the formula, you get approximately seventy miles per hour.”