Taming Johnny (15 page)

Sally took another sip of coffee, eyeing Emma over her mug. “Have you thought about talking to him? He might be more receptive now that some time has passed.”

“I already did.”

“When?”

“A few days ago. I called him to say goodbye.”

Sally put her coffee down. “What?”

Trying to look her friend in the eye was proving to be harder than she’d thought. Instead, Emma tugged at a loose string from her sweater. “I’m gonna leave, Sal. I gave my two week notice on Friday.”

Sally’s lips formed a perfect O. Finally, she slumped back in her chair. “Why?”

Emma tugged at the string until it gave way, but not before it pulled a hole in her sweater. “Nigel has been after me to come to Africa for a visit. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll always wonder about it. There’s nothing keeping me here. I have some money saved up and my family’s blessing. No time like the present, I guess.”

Nodding, Sally continued looking at her, not missing a beat. “And what did Johnny say when you told him?”

“He said he was proud of me.” When her voice broke, she swallowed hard. “And he wished me luck. That was it.”

“Did you, by any chance, mention how you feel about him?”

Emma stared out the window, watching the tiny drops of rain make their way down the clouded glass. It was as if they were struggling to find the right path, inching their way toward the unknown. “I did,” she said quietly. “I told him I loved him.”

“Oh, Emma.”

Emma struggled to keep her composure, determined not to cry again. She’d done enough of that. But it didn’t change the fact that the tears wanted to come anyway. “Yup. Put it all out there on the line. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you love someone, right? Take a chance?”

Sally nodded and reached for her hand. Emma grasped it, welcoming its comfort. “What’d he say, honey?”

“He said he wanted me to be happy. And then he said goodbye.”

Sally squeezed Emma’s fingers. “Is this going to make you happy, Em? I’m only asking because I love you. Are you leaving to find something you’ve been missing? Or are you walking away from it?”

Knowing that with time the awful clenching in her chest would eventually ease, Emma looked straight into Sally’s eyes. “It’s not meant to be. It’s a two-way street. He could have met me halfway, but he didn’t. He’s not ready. Time to move on. Simple as that.”

“Can I just say one thing?” Sally finally asked.

“Shoot.”

“I’m gonna miss you like crazy.”

* * * *

Johnny sat in his patrol car with the radar gun pointed off to the side. A few cars had passed that he could have pulled over, but they hadn’t been going much over the limit, so he’d let them go. It had been a long, hard day, and he was ready for it to be over. Only one more hour and he could go home.

Closing his eyes, he tried again to clear his head. No such luck. Tomorrow would be Emma’s last day. They had given her a goodbye lunch at the PD this afternoon, and Sally had decorated the break room in a safari theme. Ridiculous paper lions, elephants, and zebras had hung all over the walls, as well as a huge banner which everyone had signed. It was official. She was leaving.

Johnny laid his head back against the rest, still unaccustomed to how that felt. He’d done the right thing in letting her go, he was sure of it. He wouldn’t be able to make her happy. She deserved better, and he’d told her so. But that didn’t ease the ache in his chest any. She’d been killing him slowly ever since coming into his life, and that scared the shit out of him. But he couldn’t deny that something had changed. He’d shifted since falling in love with Emma. And that part he wasn’t even trying to deny anymore. He loved her. But he hadn’t been able to recognize it for what it had been at first. He’d recognized the lust. That part was easy. But seeing the love for what it was, that was harder. He saw it now. Felt it. And it was because he loved her, that he wanted something better for her.

He glanced at the clock again. Only five minutes had passed since the last time he’d looked. Tomorrow at this time, she’d be on a flight to Zimbabwe and most likely into the arms of another guy. Johnny gritted his teeth so hard it felt like his jaw would snap from the pressure. He knew Nigel was the smarter choice. He knew it with his brain, but every other part of his body was having trouble getting the message.

“Four Baker Eight?”

Johnny startled. He sat forward and blinked at the dashboard. “Four Baker Eight, go ahead.”

“Disturbance, four sixty-one South Glen Avenue. Disorderly male suspect, arguing with female caller. Unknown weapons at this time.”

“Copy. En route.”

Johnny squelched his siren and pulled onto the highway. South Glen Avenue was close, only a few blocks away. He knew the area well. It wasn’t a good part of town.

A few cars pulled over to let him pass, and when he turned the corner onto South Glen, he could immediately see the suspect in question. He was a big guy who was walking with a drunken swagger Johnny didn’t like. He was waving something in the air and yelling across the street to a woman who was standing among a group of bystanders. She was screaming back, while a few people held onto her shirt.

Johnny pulled up to the curb and keyed his mic. “Four Baker Eight, on scene. Send backup code two, please.”

“Four Baker Eight, copy.”

Opening his door, he stepped out of the squad car with a hand near his Glock. The woman immediately began yelling in his direction.

“Officer! Officer! He’s here to take my kids! He can’t have them!”

“Shut up, bitch!” This from the man across the street. Johnny still couldn’t see what he had in his hand, but it looked close enough to a gun to make him draw his own.

“Everyone, back up,” he barked. “
Now
. And you…” He motioned to the man across the street. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

“I don’t have to do shit.”

“He’s got a gun!” The woman was now being dragged backward by members of the crowd, and she struggled against them. “He’s got a gun, I saw it! My kids are inside.”

Never taking his eyes off the man, Johnny keyed his mic again. “Four Baker Eight, better send that backup code three.”

“Copy. Standby.”

Johnny motioned for the woman across the street to be quiet, while taking a few steps toward the man, who was pacing and agitated. Johnny could see even from where he was standing, that he was sweating heavily. Both hands were now in his jacket pockets, concealing whatever he’d been holding a second before. His beady eyes darted back and forth, finally settling on Johnny.

“They’re
mine
. And I’m gonna take what’s mine, so help me God.”

Johnny took another step forward, his fingers tightening around the grip of the Glock. “Show me your hands. Then we can talk, okay? I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Not showing you shit.”

The crowd behind Johnny had mostly cleared out, leaving only the woman and a few others who were holding onto her. Again, he motioned for them to get farther back.

“Come on,” Johnny said evenly. “You don’t want to do this. Gets messy and we’ll have to take you in, spend the night in jail…”

The man stopped pacing. He was only about fifteen feet away now, and Johnny could tell he was definitely high. Angry, red sores riddled his face and neck, and his teeth were brown and rotting.
Meth.

“Thanks for the warning, officer. Don’t think I give a fuck.”

Johnny took a deep breath, not liking how the guy’s jacket pocket bulged with whatever he was carrying. The woman was crying now, the two people on either side of her whispering frantically to be quiet.

“No,” she sobbed. “
No
, Derek, you son of a bitch! You can have them over my dead body.”

Johnny’s eyes rolled in her direction. “Get her
out
of here!”

She started struggling in earnest. Johnny heard her shoes sliding against the sidewalk. She was probably high too.

“Oh yeah?” The man was twitching now.

Where the fuck was that backup?

“You might get your wish.”

Johnny stepped in front of the woman. If the guy were to pull out a gun, he would try to shoot her fist. Him second. And Johnny had a vest; she didn’t.

He trained his Glock on the man and lowered his head. “Show me your hands. Now.”

The guy started laughing. Whatever hope Johnny had of reasoning with him was out the fucking window.

“You gonna shoot me, pig? Huh?”

“I’m telling you one more time to comply. If you don’t, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’ve got a gun in your pocket.”

“Don’t have to assume nothin’.”

Behind Johnny, the woman was inconsolable. Crying and hiccupping and generally making his life a thousand times more complicated than it should have been at that moment. He had enough to deal with, without worrying she was going to get her head blown off.

His hands were beginning to sweat and he tightened his grip on the Glock. His vest was heavy and tight. He’d been in dozens of situations like this before. Maybe even hundreds. But something about this one was different. Something was off, and he felt it. For some inexplicable reason, Emma’s face flashed in front of his eyes. And the most bizarre thought occurred to him.
Why didn’t you ever call her by her name, you idiot?

“Eat shit, Derek!”

Something sailed over Johnny’s head and barely missed the guy in front of him. A rock. And not a little one, either.

“What the…”

Another rock sailed by and smacked the guy in the neck. Hard. His face contorted into a look of white hot rage.

Johnny shifted to see the woman winding up again, getting ready to throw an even bigger one. He realized now that they weren’t rocks. They were jagged chunks of cement from the broken up sidewalk she was standing on. A short, plump man, the last of the people who’d been trying to hold her back, gave up and scurried off in the other direction. Probably wise.

“Eat shit and die!” she wailed.

“
Stop!
” Johnny growled. If she kept this up, he might have to shoot her himself. Turning back to the guy in front of him, he barely had time to register the gun in the other man’s hands.
Fuck.

“Drop it! Drop it now!”

“Fuck
you
.”

Another chunk of cement sailed over Johnny’s head and hit the guy square in the face. Blood began oozing from a deep gash on his forehead and he shook his head like an enraged bull.

Johnny pressed his finger against the Glock’s trigger, raised the gun, and steadied himself. He’d aim for a leg...

But before he could release the breath he’d taken, something screeched past his ear, leaving it burning in its wake. With the sound still roaring through his head, Johnny fired. The man immediately screamed and dropped to one knee, but not before raising the gun and shooting again. And this time the bullet hit home.

Chapter 15

Emma stuffed a pair of sparkly flip flops into her suitcase and stood back to study them with her chin in her hand. Flip flops? With sparkles? Really? Pulling them back out again, she tossed them on the closet floor and sat down on the bed with a sigh. The problem was that she was having a hard time concentrating. Obviously, sequined flip flops had no place in an impoverished village in Africa. But every time she tried to think about the trip, to get excited about it, all she came back to was leaving the PD. Leaving Johnny. And her heart broke a little more with each passing second.

Flopping back, she stared at the ceiling and gave in to the sadness for the first time in weeks. She let it cover her like a blanket, let it settle over her arms and legs, weighing them down just like it weighed on the broken thing inside her chest.

This was the right decision. It was. Or at least that’s what she’d spent the last month convincing herself of. So why did she feel so sad? So unsettled? It wasn’t like she had a future with Johnny Street. He’d made that abundantly clear. But in her heart, in the deepest, darkest corners of it, she felt like she was walking away from a chance with him. And that was the hardest pill to swallow. Because even after everything, even after he’d said he didn’t want her, she still wanted
him
.

But unless a big chunk of sky came careening down to prevent her plane from taking off, the wheels were already in motion. She couldn’t back out now. With some difficulty, she swallowed hard, trying to compose herself.

When the phone rang, she jumped.

“Hello?”

“Em?”

“Hey, Sally. What’s up?”

“Something’s happened, Emma.” The voice on the other end of the line didn’t sound like her friend’s. It sounded like it belonged to someone much, much older. When it broke, Emma clutched her chest. “Something awful.”

* * * *

Emma didn’t remember the drive to the hospital. Sally had begged her to wait so she could drive her, she remembered that part. It was right before she dropped the phone and ran out the door. But the drive itself was a blur, like a hazy dream where you wake up and can’t make out the exact details.

When she got there, she found the chief and several of the guys from work in the waiting area. Without hesitating, he brought her in for a hug, patting her shoulder like an Army sergeant. Emma was grateful. Without his solid presence, she would have fallen into a heap on the floor.

“Where’s his family?” she heard herself say.

“They’re on their way.”

She nodded. The hospital was cold and sterile. It smelled like disinfectant. The chief’s uniform was starchy and rough against her cheek, and she wondered how it could be that just half an hour before she had been packing for a trip that she now realized she would never go on. If this wasn’t a piece of sky falling on her head, she didn’t know what was.

“Have you heard anything yet?”

“He’s in surgery,” the chief said. “It’s still touch and go.”

Emma felt like throwing up. Forcing herself to sit, she put her face in her hands and began to cry. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that before feeling a heavy hand on her shoulder.