Czytaj książkę: «Her Detective's Secret Intent»

Chapter 1

Detective Tad Newberry—currently on leave from the police force in Charlotte, North Carolina—walked into the pediatric examining room in Santa Raquel, California, forcing a big smile. In addition to the exam table, some plastic chairs, a counter with drawers and glass containers of various cotton supplies, the room boasted zoo animal prints in shades of blue and green. The floor was gray tile, eight-inch squares, and the lights were ceiling-mounted fluorescent bulbs.

After giving his surroundings a quick glance, cataloging every aspect out of habit, he focused on the seven-year-old boy dressed in jeans and a yellow T-shirt sitting on the edge of the table, swinging one of his legs back and forth—a nervous gesture, Tad surmised, not a happy or excited one.

The boy’s mother, in jeans and a navy hoodie with a light green shirt underneath, stood beside him, hand about an inch behind her son on the paper-covered cushioned mat. As though she was ready to grab him at any moment. Tad glanced at her, having been prepared ahead of time, and still felt bile rise in his throat when he saw the red-and-purple puffiness taking up one entire side of her face.

Marie Williams wanted to be kept safe from her abusive husband, but she didn’t want to press charges against him. She truly believed that once they got through their divorce, she’d be fine; he’d no longer be a risk to her. At the same time, she didn’t want to ruin his life.

Tad had heard the entire report. He didn’t get it. But it wasn’t his place to judge.

“Danny, this is Tad, the man I told you about,” said the third woman in the room that sunny April morning, the one Tad knew and by whose invitation he was there. Pediatric physician’s assistant Miranda Blake could easily steal Tad’s entire focus if he allowed himself to relax. Something he could never do around the lovely brunette.

“Hi, Danny,” he said, his gaze on the boy as he approached. “I hear you’ve had a bit of a tough time.” Pulling up a chair, not the doctor’s stool Miranda had pushed his way, he settled half a foot below the boy’s eye level.

Chin almost to his chest, Danny nodded.

The boy, a beefy little guy, though not overweight, wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Tad had never been married, had no kids, but he knew human nature. Leaning down, he tried to catch the boy’s look. Danny turned to his mother, burying his face in her chest.

“Tad’s not going to hurt you, Danny.” Miranda’s tone not only held authority, but that incredible sense of nurturing that had captivated him from the first time he’d heard her speak. The woman radiated caring. Not that he required it for himself.

He had other matters on his mind. Giving all his attention to the boy, he made a guess. “I’m not mad at you, son. You aren’t in any kind of trouble. And I’m not a doctor or anyone in the doctor business. I’m not here to look at your injuries. I’m just here to talk.”

He was there as part of an individualized plan designed by the High Risk Team in Santa Raquel—a team comprised of various working professionals who shared domestic violence information with the single goal of preventing domestic violence deaths. The current plan had been devised to protect Danny and his mother. His role, strictly volunteer, was to keep an eye on Danny anytime the boy wasn’t with his mother or teachers. Specifically he was to do multiple drive-bys a day to see that all was well. Miranda, a frequent visiting member of the High Risk Team, had come up with the idea for the two of them, Danny and him, to actually meet. Her reasoning—if Danny knew him and knew he was close by, he’d be more apt to reach out if he was in trouble—was sound.

But it was only going to work if he could get Danny to trust him.

Not an easy feat for a man who’d had few dealings with kids until recently, and a little boy who’d had his trust in men destroyed by the one man he should’ve been able to count on—his father.

The boy didn’t turn to him as Tad spoke. Danny’s tennis-shoe-clad heel on his good leg was no longer lightly bumping the table. It hung completely still beside the leg he could hardly move.

That caught Tad’s attention.

Danny didn’t have to know or like Tad for Tad to keep an eye on him. But maybe he could do more here than help prevent further physical harm. Maybe he could help the little guy heal in other ways.

As someone who was attempting to heal himself, he found that the idea appealed to him.

“Ladies, if you’ll please forgive any impropriety and feel free to turn your heads, I’d like to show Danny something on my leg.” He tore the paper from the top half of the exam table, wrapped it around his waist. Then, looking at Miranda and Danny’s mother for an okay and receiving nods, he awkwardly—using one hand, as though performing some kind of comic routine—managed to get his loose-fitting jeans undone and dropped them to the floor. He was a boxers kind of guy, dark blue that day, and even without the paper all pertinent parts were fully covered. It wasn’t the pertinent parts that were relevant right now.

Pulling the paper up on his waist, high enough to expose his upper thigh or, more accurately, the jagged, puffy and discolored seven-inch scar slashing across the front and around the side of his leg, he said, “It doesn’t look as gross now as it did. And yours won’t look nearly as bad because it was a straight line, and that makes a big difference.”

Standing there with his pants around his ankles, Tad might have felt embarrassed. Or inappropriate. All he felt was that he had to reach this little guy on his own level. Dealing with what was foremost on the boy’s mind.

And it appeared to be working. Danny, having sat upright, was staring at the scar. Boys must still be somewhat the way he remembered himself being—fascinated by gross things.

“I fell, too,” he said, leaving out the part about the explosion that had sent him flying. Just like he didn’t mention that he knew Danny had been running from his enraged father when he’d tripped and impaled his leg on a plant stake in the backyard.

“It hurt like heck to move my leg for a while,” he added, because he knew Danny had months of rehab ahead of him as the muscle that had been cut in his upper thigh healed. “I go to the gym at least twice a day, three days a week, to make it stronger, and now I can walk without any limp at all.” Unless he was overtired. Then a tilted gait came back to remind him of what he’d done.

He moved his leg enough to flex the muscle, which made the scar jump. “See, it works just fine now.”

Glancing briefly at the two women on either side of the exam table, he asked if they’d mind turning around so he could get himself put back together. He did so in record time, except for tucking in the blue cotton polo shirt. Going strictly on instincts, as he watched the boy watching him, he lifted his shirt a few inches, showing Danny his back. “I got burned, too,” he told the boy. “So, you see, I’m just here as a guy who got hurt, wanting to help another guy who got hurt.”

Danny didn’t speak. But he didn’t turn away, either. He watched Tad. And maybe that was enough.

“What happened?” Danny’s mother asked. Tad looked up and saw the compassion on her face. He chose to think of it as that, as opposed to pity, which he could not abide. He’d made a stupid choice.

But it had brought the best result possible—saving a little girl’s life. Something that might have been done with less damage—to himself and others—if he’d followed protocol by waiting for the hostage negotiators and SWAT to arrive.

Or little Lola could have been hurt far worse than the minimal bruising she’d suffered from Tad’s falling too heavily on her when he dived to protect her body from the blast.

“A guy was angry with me,” he said, vetting his words carefully with Danny in mind. “He had something that didn’t belong to him and when I went to get it back, he...hurt me.”

Lola’s’s father had rigged a homemade bomb to go off if anyone pushed open the antiques store’s back office door, behind which he held the child hostage. Unaware that the girl was there, Tad had gone to the business, not yet open for the day, to question him about some things he’d been selling in his shop. Stolen things.

“Did they get the bad guy?” Danny’s voice was surprisingly strong as he looked Tad in the eye.

“Yes, they did,” he said. The man had been prepared to kill himself and his daughter, too, apparently, rather than face arrest. The child wasn’t supposed to have been there. Her mother, who’d had shared custody of her and no idea that her soon to be ex-husband was in any kind of trouble, had dropped her off with him because she’d been called into work.

He’d dragged her into the back office, telling Tad and his partner to get out or he’d hurt her...

“So, anyway, if you want to come to the gym with me sometime, have your mom call me,” Tad said. Marie Williams already had his cell number. “You might see me hanging out, too,” he added. “You can talk to me or not, your choice. I just wanted you to know who I am and that I’ll be around.”

Danny said nothing more. Tad took the boy’s choice at face value and left the room.

* * *

Miranda didn’t hurry through the rest of her appointment with Danny and Marie Williams, but as soon as they were out of the exam room, she finished the last of her administrative responsibilities for the day. Then she was out the back door of the clinic where she worked for pediatric specialist Dr. Max Bennet, and heading to her car.

The white Chevy Equinox blended in with a million other similar-sized and -shaped white mini SUVs, which was why it fit her perfectly. She had an hour before she had to pick Ethan up, and Tad Newberry was waiting for her at a coffee shop halfway between her office and the school.

The balmy sixty-five-degree weather was perfect for her white cardigan and cartoon-spattered scrubs.

Heart pounding in an entirely new way, she drove five miles over the speed limit, switching lanes when necessary to weave past slower cars. All the while, she thought about those minutes in the exam room with the off-duty, out-of-state detective who’d shown up at a High Risk Team meeting six weeks before.

He’d dropped his pants. The move had been calculated, out of the ordinary, a somewhat shocking attempt to get Danny’s attention—and build trust, too. She understood that. Admired the hell out of it, actually. He’d known that Danny felt particularly vulnerable, so he’d made himself seem—and perhaps feel—just as vulnerable.

All of that aside...she’d peeked. She shouldn’t have. It had been completely unprofessional. Completely, 100 percent out of character. And she’d done it. Seen...a lot.

Blue boxers. Dark hair on legs that were tight and firm. Even now, driving to discuss the afternoon’s event and how it played into the care plan the High Risk Team had developed to prevent Devon Williams from ever hurting Marie or their son again, she shied away from thinking about the ugly facts of life, and found herself picturing those jeans pooled around Tad’s ankles instead.

Watching him with a very definite feminine reaction.

Wrong. It was just plain wrong of her. On so many levels.

Parking in the coffeehouse lot, seeing Tad already inside sitting at a table for two with a couple of steaming cups in front of him, she pulled herself together. Having very private fantasies was bad enough; allowing them to invade the space she shared with others was prohibited.

Period.

* * *

“That went well.”

Miranda heard the sarcasm in Tad’s greeting as she sat down. She felt herself immediately tuning into him.

“It did go well,” she assured him. “I can’t tell you what was said after you left—” he knew about her legal restrictions with regard to medical confidentiality “—but it went well. Marie asked me to tell you thanks. She feels much better knowing that you’ll be adding extra drive-bys to the ones the police are already going to be doing.”

Tad’s next comment was angry. “Devon Williams should be in jail.”

“Agreed. But since he hasn’t actually physically hurt anyone—that we can prove—since Marie dropped those charges against him last year, and still insists that her current bruising comes from a fall, there’s not a lot the prosecutor can do.”

He knew that, too. Santa Raquel’s assistant prosecutor was a new member of the High Risk Team.

“At least the judge granted her restraining order,” Miranda added, wishing she was only thinking about the woman who’d just left her office. Truth was, she saw more abused children and their mothers than she’d like. She suspected that at least five of the fifty families she saw on a regular basis dealt with that insidious disease.

“And you know as well as I do that those orders are ignored more than forty percent of the time in these kinds of cases,” Tad countered.

And often victims invited the abuser back into their lives. Yeah, Miranda knew that, too. Which was part of what made the situation that much more frustrating.

Unknown to Tad, though, she wasn’t just aware that it happened, she understood how it happened. In the most personal way possible.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How can a woman marry a man after he’s already abused her? It makes no sense to me.”

He was talking about Marie, whose boyfriend had hit her a couple of times back in high school. Once, he’d also shoved her up to a wall with his hands around her neck.

He’d also loved and adored her when no one else had, making her vulnerable to him, and he’d scared her into thinking that marrying him was the only way to keep herself safe. And happy.

The incidents had been isolated. She’d understood that he hadn’t been himself for various reasons—usually involving alcohol. But she’d believed him when he promised never to lift a hand to her again when she’d dropped charges against him the previous year.

She’d hoped.

Right up until he’d been thundering behind their son, trying to catch up to him to give him a spanking for not packing a suitcase as he’d instructed. He’d panicked Danny, who tore out of their house so fast he’d tripped and fallen on a stake she’d just put up in her garden.

“Our job is to follow the safety plan and do what we can to see that Devon doesn’t have a chance to hurt either of them again,” she reminded him. “You heard Chantel. As soon as he violates that protection order, his ass is in jail.”

Chantel Harris Fairbanks, a Santa Raquel detective on the High Risk Team, might be married to a millionaire banker and live in one of the town’s most impressive mansions, but she was all cop when it came to her job. Even to the point of keeping her previous small apartment in town so she didn’t ever lose sight of who she was and what she knew. So she wouldn’t ever forget where she came from.

Miranda envied her—being able to keep her old self alive. Nothing about Miranda’s former self lived on with her. Not even her name.

“And then the prosecutor can call for a dangerousness hearing,” she said. It wasn’t technically called that in California, but it meant that if Devon was arrested and was considered a danger, he could be held without bail.

The man had threatened to kill his wife. Twice in the past eight weeks since she’d told him she wanted a divorce. He’d actually told her how he’d dispose of her body. He’d been drinking again. And quit his job. When he’d gone to their house the week before to insist that Danny come to his apartment and stay with him for the weekend, the boy suffered his fall. And then he’d blamed his wife for that, too, taking his anger out on her face. On a list of nineteen risk factors pointing to the danger of death, Devon Williams ranked at thirteen. It only took eight for the case to be referred to the High Risk Team.

Marie was changing her routine, her working hours. Her newly married sister and brother-in-law were moving in with her for a while. She and Danny were going to stay around crowds when they went out. She wouldn’t be going to her usual church, grocery store or hairdresser. Not until Devon was under control.

It wasn’t just to keep her and Danny safe, but because she truly wanted Devon to succeed. She wanted him to come through this. To find a good life for himself. To be happy.

She loved him.

And that was the part Miranda got that many others, most others, couldn’t. How a heart could still feel love for someone who beat them.

The secrets she held close inside kept her emotions in check during that afternoon coffee with Tad Newberry though she desperately wanted to talk to him about them.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

No matter how badly she hurt.

Ethan’s life depended on her keeping her secrets to herself.

And the second she’d given birth to him, his life had become more important to her than her own.