Nerves of Steel (24 page)

"I got lucky," he agreed, but his voice had lowered.  "I saw Trautman toss you over the railing.  If I'd been a minute later..." his voice trailed off, and he looked away.

"Thank you," she said in a quiet voice.  The trembling returned.  It was as if the river had frozen her from the inside out.  No matter how high the heat blew at her, it would be a long time before she felt warm again.

Or completely safe.

CHAPTER 40

Drake turned back to her, his face carefully neutral.  "You're welcome," he said.  "Do you want me to drive you home?  I can have uniforms bring your car by later."

"I'm okay.  Can I just sit here a moment?"  Hart leaned against the door, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them, his jacket hanging loosely from her shoulders.

"You can stay as long as you like," he said, his voice dropping into a near-whisper.  He couldn't help himself, the way his throat tightened when he thought of how close she'd come to dying, the way his pulse raced at the prospect of her sitting so close, yet still so very far away from him.  She looked like an angel: the mist of their breath surrounding her, hair tumbling over her shoulders, that porcelain skin. 

He took a deep breath. 
She's off limits
,
he reminded himself, trying not to remember their passion the night before.  Suddenly the Dodge seemed drenched in the smell of apples and vanilla.

An angel with her wings folded around her, the image formed with clarity in his mind.  He knew he would have to get it onto paper or canvas before his mind would allow him a moment's rest.

Then the angel opened her eyes, and he was drowning in their depths. 
Hell of a way to go
, a voice whispered even as he raised a hand to stroke an errant strand of hair from her face.  He snatched his hand away, stunned by the flame that surged through him with the touch of her flesh.

Steady boy.  He returned his hand and gaze to the neutral steering wheel.  It had been a long time since he'd felt this way--too long.

Was this angel worth taking the risk?

"You're shaking."  Drake's voice penetrated the icy chill that had enveloped Cassie.

Her teeth chattered as she answered, "It's just adrenalin."

He raised her hands, unclenching them to inspect the damage.  "Maybe I should take you over to Three Rivers."

"No."  The single syllable took all her strength.  He looked away and dropped her hands.  She wanted to ask him to hold her, to share his warmth, but knew it was impossible.  There was too much at stake, not only his job and Fran's case.  Cassie couldn't risk re-opening wounds that had taken eighteen months to heal, wounds that last night had come perilously close to exposing.

Her stomach lurched as if she were falling still, dropping into an abyss.  It was terrifying to feel like this, as out of control as when T-man hurled her from the bridge.  Right before Drake pulled her back from the chasm.

Drake turned back, surprised her by taking her wrist once more and raising it to his lips.  With gentle precision he kissed the moon-shaped scar at the base of her thumb, her pulse vibrating beneath his touch.

She froze.  What should she do next?  Damn it, she'd never been any good at this.  Was he trying to tell her goodbye?  Or something else entirely?

He reached his other arm to gather her close to him, and she had her answer.

The kiss was sweet, filled more with compassion than the passion that drove them last night.  Cassie felt her trembling slowly ebb away.  She slid closer to him, craving contact with him. 

After savoring the long, sweet exchange, she pulled back.  Focused on reality.  "I'd better go now.  I don't want to keep you from your duties." 

"Seeing you home safe is pretty much my last job for the night." Drake's hand closed over hers. "We can get your car in the morning."

Her resistance crumbled with his touch.  She squeezed his hand in reply.  But not her house, it was too crowded with memories and old ghosts.  "No, your place.  We need to talk."

A tiny frown tightened his mouth and his gaze flicked away from her as he put the car into gear.  He drove with one hand on the wheel, keeping the other entwined with hers.  They rode in a comfortable silence over to his building in East Liberty.  He parked the departmental car in the side lot.  She waited for him as he moved around the car to open her door and give her his hand once more.

Together they climbed the wide oak steps.  Cassie admired the carved banisters and intricate twisting of wrought iron on the railings, details that she had overlooked last night.  "This is a great building."

"Thanks.  I worked hard on it."

"You own the entire building?"

"My uncle advised me to invest in real estate.  I fell in love with this place.  It was built in 1922 to house the
Liberty Times
newspaper.  Now, I'm just trying to find the right tenants for the other floors."

"I can't believe nobody's interested."

"A dot-com start up wanted the second floor, but they fell through.  Monsignor Newman from Our Lady of Sorrows is going to take the ground floor for a new food bank and daycare center once we get the funding approved."

She paused on the landing outside his door.  "I have a friend who wants to start a community clinic," she told him.  "Ed Castro--my boss in the ER, you met him, right?  He's had this dream for as long as I've known him."

"A free medical clinic?"

"Not just medical.  A place to help serve all of the needs of the community.  Social services, job training, literacy counseling, financial planning--every time he talks about it, he comes up with more ideas."

"That would tie into Newman's ideas.  I should get the two of them together."

"You'd do that?  Let them use the building?"

Drake nodded."Sure, why not?  Maybe your friend the social worker would be interested as well."

"I'm sorry about what happened this morning with Adeena.  She was just--"

"It's all right.  You have good friends."

"Sometimes I wish they'd let me live my own life." 

Drake opened the door to his apartment and flicked the lights on.  After depositing his gun and badge on the foyer table, he took her coat and hung it on the coat rack with his jacket.   The door behind clicked shut behind them, and Cassie felt a shiver run through her. 

Drake moved with slow, precise movements as if his mind were elsewhere.  He led her into the living room.

 "Can I get you anything?" he asked once she was settled on the sofa.  His voice sounded hollow, his face was expressionless.

"No thanks."  What was going on?   She stole a look back over her shoulder at the closed door, trying to ignore her clammy palms.  Had she said something wrong?  Everything was fine when they were talking outside--wasn't it?

But things had changed.  All they did was cross the threshold, it had only taken a split second.  Something was going to happen, something bad.  She looked up at Drake, wanting to convince herself that her anxiety had no basis in reality, but he wouldn't meet her gaze.

"We have to talk," he started.

Here it comes, get ready
.  Where was her escape route?  Cassie clenched her hands and forced herself to remain where she was.  She remembered the look of concern on his face out at the bridge. 
He's not Richard
.  Drake would never hurt her.  Oh, but he could, without even trying, he could cut her to the bone. 

Then it dawned on her what he was trying to say.  She let her breath out in relief.  "I know," she replied before he could go on.  "Finding Fran's killer has to come first.  And we can't see each other as long as you're on the case.  We have plenty of time.  I'll wait as long as you need."

Drake stepped away from her to the window.   He stood frozen, his gaze fixed far beyond the streets of East Liberty.

"I should have told you last night," he said.  He cleared his throat and turned around.  "I'm sorry I didn't.  But things moved so fast." 

She grimaced.  That was her fault, not his.  She started to tell him that, but he spoke again.  His voice was distant, remote.  

"I used to drink a lot--" he started. 

Her head swam.  It
was
Richard, all over again.

She wiped her clammy palms on her jeans, strained to concentrate, listen to his words. 
Drake wasn't Richard,
she repeated, hanging onto the thought even as her stomach tightened with fear. 

"It comes with the job," Drake was saying.  "Your friends are cops, and you drink with them, your dates meet you at bars or parties so you drink with them.  You're a detective working all hours, and sometimes a drink helps you sleep.  At least that's how it used to work for me.

"I never had a black out, and I was never drunk on the job, in fact I never thought I had a problem.   Until last summer, that was."  He stopped.

"What happened last summer?"  Cassie remembered what Spanos had said.  She'd ignored the patrolman's warning, thought his angry words were the product of jealousy. 

"Someone died because of me."

Cassie couldn't meet his eyes.  Her mouth was dry.  She fought to swallow as she waited for the rest. 

"This job wears you down, you know that," he continued.  "There's only so much you can see before it gets to you, but you can't let it affect you because then it affects the job.  You can't share it with anyone else because either they wouldn't understand or they'd think you were weak.

"So you build a persona, an alter ego.  Joe Cop--you watch enough bad TV shows and you can get it down real fast.  Life imitates fiction.  And boy, do the women go for Joe Cop."  He shook his head.  "It's unbelievable how sexy they find him," he said, speaking of himself in the third person.

"Last summer I'm seeing this woman, Pamela.  She'd been a witness in a case, and afterward she started hanging around, calling me, stopping by bars where we hang out.  We hooked up, but then things got too serious, and I decide to call a halt to it.  No big deal, had the routine down pat, did it all the time after I got bored or scared or whatever.  Even prided myself on letting them down easy.

"Anyway, a few weeks later I get a call from Pamela.  Can we meet for drinks, just as friends, no strings attached?  There's something she wants to tell me."  He paused.  "I'm afraid she's pregnant or something, so I'm scared shitless.  But I decide to face the music like a man and agree to meet her.  I go to pick her up at her place, we have a few drinks there, then a few more, and to make a long story short, we end up in bed." 

Cassie stiffened but kept her eyes focused on her clenched hands.  She knew she wasn't the first woman in his bed, but it still hurt.  Did he have any idea how much last night meant to her?  What she had risked, allowing anyone to get that close?

"Afterwards I'm sleeping, and I hear a voice whispering my name."  His voice was low and raspy as if what he had to tell her should not be said out loud.  "I roll over, thinking I'm dreaming, but I'm kind of half awake, and I see Pamela standing at the foot of the bed.  She turns around, and there's my nine millimeter at her head." He cleared his throat and raised his hands to rub at his eyes. 

"Before I could shout or move or blink, she pulls the trigger and there's this godawful explosion that echoes through the room, and blood is raining down on me, the bed, the walls, everywhere.

"I call 911," he continued, his voice now reduced to a hoarse whisper, "and I hold her until they come.  I have her head in my lap, trying to stop the bleeding.  I can't even tell where her mouth is anymore but there's this awful bubbling and gurgling noise."

Cassie drew her breath in.  What he described was so close to Fran's death that for a moment she was back in the parking lot, cradling Fran's face, blood covering her own hands.  A shudder raced over her.  She wrapped her arms around her, trying to ward off the cold, chill vision of death.

"And then it stopped.  Everything stopped."  Drake kept his hands over his eyes, pressing them shut.  "She was only twenty-six, just a kid, her whole life in front of her.  I was suspended while the department investigated, but they couldn't determine any wrong doing on my part, and they re-instated me.  Of course, that didn't stop everyone for blaming me for her death."

There was silence.  He lowered his hands and opened his eyes.  "You know, I really think she was going to tell me, I don't think she'd planned to kill herself, not until after she realized that she just didn't have the courage."

"Tell you what?"

"I found out after the autopsy.  Pamela was HIV positive."

She stared at him.  She remembered last night, how fast everything had happened, how nervous he'd been at first.  Then all that time talking afterward--why hadn't he said anything?  Did he think all those pretty words would make up for his silence?

He hung his head and turned back to her.  "Anyway, I took the cocktail, and I've tested negative twice since then."

She considered that.  The odds were in Drake's favor as far as the HIV exposure.  Hers too.  Still, he should have told her.  What did he think, that she just jumped into bed with any man who came along?   Did he assume that she was like Pamela?  Another witness, another woman to fall for his charms? 

Anger roared through her mind.  Anger and humiliation.  She'd been such a fool.  In the back of her mind, Cassie heard Richard's laughter mocking her.

  "I'm sorry," Drake continued.  "I just never expected--"

"You never expected what?  To care about what happens to me?"  The hot flash of fury propelled her to her feet.  She shifted into a fighting stance, her hands fisted at her sides. 

She thought Drake would never hurt her--and had sat there and allowed him to flay her open!   Should've known that just because a man didn't raise his hand to you, it didn't mean you could trust him. 

"Did you think I was just another one night stand?"  She flung the last at him even as she strode across the room, reaching for her jacket.  This time she didn't hide her tears from him.  To hell with him, anyway. 

CHAPTER 41

"Wait!" he shouted.  "That's not what--damn it, would you stop!"