Officer in Pursuit (12 page)

“Jesus.” Henry frowned, or maybe that
was just his usual facial expression – it was hard to tell for
sure, the two were so similar. “What do I have to do for you to get
over that – write a letter of apology?”

“That’d be a start.”

Henry took a huge bite of some sort of
fancy lunch Sasha had made him. It was a plastic container full of
yellow rice, red peppers and strips of chicken breast. It smelled
spicy and like coconut, and when Henry gestured with the container,
the smell wafted so strongly across the table that Grey’s stomach
growled.

He’d brought two ham and cheese
sandwiches as his own lunch – in such close proximity to Henry’s
fancy food, they seemed depressing.

“Are those leftovers from Harvest?”
Grey’s mouth watered as he thought of the restaurant where Grey’s
fiancée, Sasha, worked.

Henry shook his head. “Sasha made this
for me especially, at home.”

Grey took a bite of the first
sandwich, and a glob of mustard shot straight against the back of
his throat. “Damn it.” If he wasn’t careful, shitty food would be
the death of him.

“I could ask her for the recipe, if
you want it,” Henry said.

He still looked dead serious, but Grey
knew he was being a dick on purpose.

“You know I’m shit at cooking.” The
breakfast he’d made Kerry the other day had been a fly by night
venture, and he’d been immensely relieved when it hadn’t caused her
to throw up. It’d been his best culinary effort ever. Normally, he
stuck to surefire meals for himself, like chicken breasts drowned
in store-bought barbeque sauce.

“Anyone can cook,” Henry said, “all
you have to do is follow directions.”

“Yeah, you say that as you shovel your
girlfriend’s cooking into your face. Why don’t you make your own
lunch if it’s so simple?”

“Sasha wanted to make this for me.
It’s not like I asked her to do it. Besides, I always cook us
breakfast.”

“I bet you have your own little apron
and everything,” Grey said, but the fight had gone out of him.
Halfway through his first sandwich, he was feeling down.

Maybe it was the shitty coffee – he
wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was secretly decaf – or the
faint headache that was bothering him. Or maybe it was the fact
that the conversation had stirred up memories of the evening
before, when Kerry had cooked dinner for him.

Consumed by a craving that had nothing
to do with food, he finished his lunch in silence.

When the time to return to his shift
came, he left the break room’s undersized tables and lackluster
coffee behind, trading those sparse comforts for E Block, where he
and Henry escorted an inmate complaining of tooth pain to
medical.

While he did that and a dozen other
things afterward, he looked forward to that weekend’s wedding.
Before, he might’ve found the idea of getting excited about a
wedding hilarious, but now it was the next time he’d see
Kerry.

And that was one hell of a thing to be
excited about.

* * * * *

Brad tossed a cheeseburger wrapper
over his shoulder, into the backseat. When he reached into the
drive-through bag, his fingers scraped the bottom, tangling in an
empty straw wrapper.

What the hell?

They hadn’t given him any
fries.

Rain spattered across his windshield,
and he flipped the wipers on, crumpling up the bag and throwing it
at the dash. The receipt fell out, the one that showed that he’d
paid for the whole meal, fries included.

The dumb bitch working the
drive-through had ripped him off, and she’d had an attitude when
he’d gone through, too. She’d probably done it on
purpose.

His temples throbbed, bringing back
his headache from the night before. He should drive straight back
there, give the little bitch a piece of his mind. He knew it, but
he didn’t have the fucking time.

He didn’t have any time to spare. Not
after waiting for three years – wasting three years, anticipating
this moment.

A truck came rolling through the rain
behind him, slowing down as it approached the section of road he’d
pulled over on, just outside the mansion gates. Gravel crackled
under its huge tires as it edged toward the shoulder, like it was
going to stop.

He bit back a curse, looked over at
the driver and gave the nosy bastard what would hopefully look like
a friendly wave.

It worked. The vehicle went on its
way, leaving Brad on the side of the road in his own
truck.

Fuck, he hated this. Sitting around
and watching – waiting – like his time didn’t mean anything. Like
the whole fucking world revolved around Kerry, and he was just
another asshole caught in her orbit, waiting for her to make an
appearance.

He ground his teeth, took a long drink
of his sweet tea. The ice rattled at the bottom of the cup as he
drained it, and he slammed it back into the cup holder.

He didn’t even know why he was sitting
around waiting for her to come out of the house. Not after last
night – he’d gotten a pretty good look at her, parked on the next
street over from hers. He’d seen her walking out of her house with
some guy, some bastard she was probably fucking.

He wasn’t surprised. Not a damn bit.
Still, it was hard to keep a clear head now that he’d actually seen
her screwing around on him. He’d pictured it a million times
before, but somehow, actually seeing it had been
different.

The rain slowed down enough that his
wiper blades screeched against the windshield, so he turned them
down. His knuckles ached; they were all busted up from the night
before. He’d hit the dash, hit a lot of things, wishing it was that
stupid bastard’s face.

The same thought kept running through
his mind: how dare anyone fuck his wife? How fucking dare
he?

He obviously had no idea who he was
dealing with, the lengths Brad was willing to go to in order to
defend what was his. State lines and paperwork didn’t mean a damn
thing. Anyone back in Kentucky would’ve known, wouldn’t have been
shit-brained enough to lay so much as a finger on his
woman.

He slammed the car into drive, pulled
away from the road, upending the iced tea he’d only shoved halfway
back into the cup holder. Ice spilled all over the passenger
seat.

He kept driving. He didn’t need to sit
around waiting for a glimpse of her face anymore. He knew it was
her – he’d followed her home from the place where the newspaper had
said she worked. It’d been dark then, so he’d only been half-sure
it was her.

Yesterday had been enough, though.
He’d seen her crystal clear stepping out with that son of a bitch,
had flattened her tires after she’d returned home alone that night.
She looked different, but she wasn’t. She was still his, even if
she’d gone on a three year vacation.

She’d realize that soon
enough.

CHAPTER 10

“
Have you seen
The Heat
?” Sasha flopped
down onto the couch in her and Henry’s living room, a universal
remote in hand.

Kerry shook her head in reply, and
also in an attempt to clear away the stress that lingered from her
talk with Jeremy. After work, Sasha had taken Kerry by her house to
pick up an overnight bag and file a police report about her slashed
tires. Jeremy had been the responding officer, and had taken the
incident seriously. While Kerry was grateful for that, the memory
of his concerned expression fueled the sense of uneasiness that’d
followed her from her house.

“Good,” Sasha said, “me neither. I’ve
been meaning to watch it for an eternity now.”

It was hard to care much what they
watched. Kerry was so glad for this escape, this single night away
from her lonely house, that she would’ve settled for
anything.

As it turned out,
The Heat
was pretty
funny. And Kerry couldn’t help but feel a secret kinship with the
main character, who was kind of uptight and decidedly
awkward.

The other star was more like Sasha:
bold, fearless and likely to say anything. If she’d had blonde hair
and a push-up bra, she could’ve passed for a relative of
Sasha’s.

A half hour into the movie, Sasha
brought a tray of lemon tarts out of the fridge. “Henry said he’d
grab that wine for us,” she said. “He’s at Grey’s right now,
lifting weights. He’ll probably be home in about an
hour.”

“Great.” The lemon tarts were
surprisingly good. Kerry had only meant to have one, just to be
polite, but she ended up having two, and by the time Henry arrived,
she was contemplating a third.

Despite Sasha’s assurances that Henry
didn’t mind Kerry spending the night, she still felt awkward when
he walked in. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he and Sasha
seemed to exchange some pretty heated glances.

After a quick – but passionate – kiss,
the only thing Sasha grabbed was the bottle of pale dessert wine
Henry had brought them.

After saying hello to Henry, Kerry
accepted a glass from Sasha, who announced to the room at large
that there was leftover lasagna in the fridge for
dinner.

Relieved at how un-awkward Henry’s
arrival had been, Kerry quickly became absorbed in the movie. It
was good while it lasted – everything was – until it came time to
actually go to bed.

* * * * *

Oh, God. Why had Kerry let Sasha open
the wine?

True, they hadn’t had much – they’d
split a bottle – but a little bit was all it took to utterly
destroy what few inhibitions Sasha had in the first place.
Apparently.

The sound of her giggling drifted loud
and painfully clear from the bedroom down the hall, the closed door
just a few yards from the couch where Kerry had settled in for the
night. She rolled over, pulling a blanket over her ears, trying to
block out the noise.

She was about as successful as an
ostrich trying to bury its head in the sand.

Henry’s voice came next, low and
rumbling, mercifully indistinct.

And then – oh God – a smacking sound
followed, quickly chased by more of Sasha’s laughter.

Kerry had had about five minutes of
peace after Sasha had made the couch up as a bed, plying her with
spare blankets and a thick pillow. It’d gone downhill quickly after
that, with things getting weird as soon as Sasha had finished up
her nightly beauty routine and retired to the bedroom.

For once, Kerry longed to be alone in
the dark. Instead, she felt bizarrely exposed and embarrassed – on
Sasha and Henry’s behalf – as noises continued to come from beyond
the bedroom door.

She wasn’t alone in her forced
eavesdropping – Wolf, Henry’s German Shepherd, had been shut out of
the room. He lay on a dog bed in the hall and gave Kerry knowing
looks every now and then. For some reason, that made the whole
situation even more embarrassing.

Wolf probably had to deal with this
every night. Would it have killed Sasha to be a little more
discreet just this once?

Knowing Sasha, she probably thought it
was hilarious that Kerry could hear, if she even had her head
firmly enough on her shoulders to realize it. She’d had most of her
wine before she’d eaten any lasagna, and it seemed to have gone
straight to her head.

Kerry covered her ears with her pillow
when the mattress started squeaking. Seconds before, she’d heard
something suspiciously metallic, almost like … handcuffs. Handcuffs
clinking together and maybe even closing around wrists.

It was a thought that made her cheeks
burn, partially because she felt like a voyeur, and partially
because she couldn’t help but picture the shine of handcuffs on
Grey’s duty belt, silver and gleaming.

She flipped over on the couch, kicking
one of her blankets off. There’d been lots of times she’d secretly
longed to be more like Sasha, but as she imagined the paradoxical
freedom of being bold enough to enjoy Grey and his handcuffs, she’d
never regretted more that she wasn’t anything like her best
friend.

* * * * *

Brad’s foot landed on a whiskey bottle
when he stepped out of bed. It rolled, empty, sending him pitching
forward.

Stars burst before his eyes, brilliant
against the motel room’s dimness, as his head hit the little dining
table that’d been crammed into the undersized room.

Fuck
. He tried to curse, but his mouth was too dry. Instead, he
made his way to the closet-sized bathroom, rinsed his face with
cold water, then cupped his hands and gulped some down.

There was a cut on his chin from when
he’d hit the table. Not too big, but blood trickled down and he had
to mop it away with a hand towel. That occupied him for a few
seconds, and then he had nothing to do but remember the night
before – everything that’d happened before he’d come back and
drowned his rage in a whiskey haze.

Or rather, everything
that
hadn’t
happened. Kerry hadn’t come home last night.