Not Without Risk (8 page)

Not until he crossed the threshold to his home and locked the door behind him, did
Justin give in to the strain of the day. His body ached, screamed in protest of the
crack on the shoulder the young officer delivered and the stiff, unyielding stance
he’d maintained since the incident. He’d held tough, showed little weakness and no
complaint, and he’d paid dearly for it.

His shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his exhaustion as he moved with uncharacteristic
slowness through his kitchen, to the desk situated in the corner of his living room.
Dropping his duplicate copy of the St. John file onto the glass-covered mahogany,
he melted into the executive chair. With careful, precise movements, he released and
removed his shoulder rig from his side. He opened the center drawer of the desk.

The lone content of the drawer rolled forward and bounced off the handle, stopping
label up. Justin stared down at the small, brown bottle and frowned. His name, printed
in bold script, stared back.

He hated that bottle and its little white pills, hated everything it represented.
Weakness and pain were his enemy, his inability to make it more than forty-eight hours
without medication, his curse. He worked hard, did everything and more than the therapist
prescribed and yet every day the ache persisted—a constant reminder of his vulnerability.

Hell, he should be happy to be alive, with all his faculties intact. What was muscle
and nerve damage compared to paralysis, even death? So what if he had days so bad
that he questioned his ability to continue working the job he loved. He could always
put in for a transfer. After all, a cop who rode a desk was still a cop, right?

His fingers tightened on the prescription bottle of pills. “I’d rather be dead,” he
admitted aloud.

Justin set his jaw. Frustrated and worn out, he palmed a pain pill. He needed the
rest the prescription narcotic would bring him, no matter the muddled senses and loss
of concentration he knew from experience he would suffer tomorrow. Without sleep,
the pain would have a tighter hold on him, become even harder for him to ignore. If
the price for that sleep was loss of mental acuity and a bad attitude, so be it. His
mood was already just this side of foul.

Scowl firmly in place, he swallowed the pill dry. He flipped open the case file he’d
brought home with him and began reading through what little information he and Allan
had managed to gather. Though he knew the meager contents backwards and forwards,
the impending arrival of Detective Jon Brennan, St. John’s partner from Boston, drove
him to take a closer look. There had to be something there, something he’d missed.
He resolved to find it.

With single-minded determination, he dove into the file. An hour later, he’d only
made it half way through the information when the telephone at his right rang. His
thought processes interrupted, he answered abruptly. “Yeah?”

“I always did like a man with manners,” a female voice responded dryly.

Justin smiled, genuinely happy to hear from the most important woman in his life.
“Hey, Mom, how are you?”

“I’m glad you asked. I’m doing wonderfully. And I assume you are as well. You’re back
to working with Allan, is that right?”

“I’m back on active duty, yes.”

“That’s wonderful, dear. I know how eager you are to get back into the swing of things.
You’re taking care of yourself, staying safe? You know I worry about you.”

“I know you do, Mom, but you don’t need to. I’m fine.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Sudden, uncharacteristic silence came from the other end of the phone line. Justin
waited, at once uncomfortable. Something was wrong with this. One thing about his
mother, she didn’t call often, but when she did he needed to be prepared for one whirlwind
conversation. Thelma Kincaid tended to store her thoughts, file them away and then
spill them upon him about once every two or three weeks in the most exhausting conversations
he ever engaged in.

He always looked forward to those calls.

“What is it, Mom? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

She paused just long enough for him to know she was lying. Anxiety tightened the muscles
in his side, shot pain down his arm. The urge for nicotine swamped him. Justin leaned
back in his chair and waited for her to get to the point.

“I just called to see if you’d meet me for dinner Thursday night?” she continued after
a moment.

“Of course I will.” Her voice was too chipper, her cadence hesitant. She had something
to say all right, and the longer it took her to come out and say it, the more uncomfortable
he became. “Spill it, Mom, you know you want to.”

“You always did know me too well. Okay, here goes. I met a man. His name is Nicholas
and he’s asked me to marry him.”

“Shit!”

“I’ve agreed.”

He scraped his fingers through his hair. “Aren’t you a bit old for this?”

“I am fifty-seven years old. I am not dead.”

Her steely tone told him he’d hurt her feelings. The knowledge did nothing to improve
Justin’s rapidly disintegrating mood. He slid open the desk drawer on his right, then
slammed it shut when he remembered he didn’t smoke anymore.

Why did she keep doing this? What was the point of constantly setting herself up to
fail? He loved his mother, would do anything for her. Which is why he felt the need
to protect her from herself.

All his life he’d watched her go through men. She chased love, hunted after it like
her life just wasn’t complete without it. When she found it, at least what she believed
to be true love, things were good. But it never lasted, and in the end, she always
wound up hurt.

It was after her second failed marriage, when he was but twelve-years-old, that he
vowed never to love, never to risk his heart. Thelma Kincaid might believe in love
everlasting and commitment, but he’d witnessed firsthand just what that brought her—heartache
and pain. As a result, Justin kept his encounters with women light and carefree. Never
remaining with any woman long enough for her to get any ideas about the future.

“Mom, when are you going to learn?”

“What would you have me learn, Justin?”

“It’s okay to be alone,” he assured her. He refused to admit that he might also be
assuring himself. “There’s no shame in it.”

“There’s no shame in wanting more, either. I don’t know about you, but I do not wish
to die alone, with only my own arms about me.”

His throat tightened painfully. A few months ago, he would have brushed aside her
concerns, never believing such a thing possible. “I’ll hold you, Mom.”

“I’m more concerned with who will hold on to
you
,” she replied passionately. “Your aversion to love is not normal. Random affairs
are not healthy.”

“I don’t have affairs—”

“Of course not. Affairs require some modicum of intimacy. You won’t even give a woman
that much.”

Her words hit with unerring accuracy. Had the subject been different, less personal,
he might have smiled at their identical temperaments. Instead, he could only listen
as she continued, her tone and attack becoming that which only a mother could deliver.

“Listen to us, snapping at each other like children. We’ve always been close, Justin.
Haven’t we always been close?”

“Yeah, Mom, we’ve always been close.”

“Yes. Maybe too close, but I feel I can tell you this.”

“Mom, I—”

“I was wrong to turn to you after your father left us. Wrong to make it your sole
responsibility to keep me happy. I’m sorry for doing that. You were too young. You
were struggling with your own pain.”

“You did your best.”

“I’m not so sure. What I did, taught you nothing but the pain of loving someone. It’s
not all pain, Justin. It’s joy, excitement, and the most wonderful thing anyone can
experience. To love someone, to have someone return that love is…it’s…”

“Temporary,” he supplied, then immediately regretted his comment.

“It’s a risk, certainly, but what is life if not a risk?”

“I’m a cop, Mom. In my line of work, risk can get me killed.”

“You’re also a man, Justin.”

He didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t give him the opportunity.

“Just tell me, are you happy?”

Was he?

“I’m happy,” he assured her. He wondered whether either of them truly believed it.

“Fine. Good.” She offered no further argument. “Dinner. Thursday night, eight o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

Justin pushed his thumb and forefinger against his closed lids as he hung up the phone.
He reached out blindly and closed the case file. Trying to get anything done after
that conversation would be a waste of time. He couldn’t think past the hurt he’d just
caused his mother, by not showing proper enthusiasm over her engagement. If he hadn’t
been in pain, already angry about his own limitations, perhaps he could have managed
to feign happiness for her benefit. But with fatigue pressing down on him, he just
couldn’t get overly enthused about something history told him was a washout.

Thelma Kincaid married.
Again
. He could hardly believe it.

Pushing out of the chair, Justin headed for his bedroom. He changed into a pair of
sweatpants and dropped atop the bed. He stared at the ceiling as his mother’s words
played in his head.

“It’s not all pain.”

You could have fooled him. He’d been there, holding her as she cried, comforting her
as best he could. He’d witnessed firsthand the effect her ‘true love’ had on a heart.
No way he’d risk his own.

“I don’t want to die alone…”

Stretching his left arm above his head, he moved his right hand to his side as his
thoughts shifted to how close he’d come to doing just that. Through the thin material
of his shirt he fingered his scars—the round, puckered mark near his shoulder and
the larger, jagged line at his side. His lids drooped, his body relaxing as the medication
began to take effect. As his pain eased, his mind drifted back to how he’d gotten
them.

He’d been unstoppable, mixing long hours on the job with late nights with the ladies.
He’d been impulsive, insatiable and invincible.

At least he’d thought so.

Veterans of war say you hear every bullet that passes you, but not the one that hits
you. Justin could verify that statement. It had been the worst day of his life, both
professionally and personally. And it had only gotten worse. He’d been strung out,
wrung dry and feeling far more than his thirty-five years. To this day, he wondered
had he been at the top of his game, would he have made such a perfect target? He would
never know.

The worst part of it was that it hadn’t even been one of his cases that put him in
the line of fire. He’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and faced
with a man with too little money to support a growing drug habit.

His memory, whenever he allowed himself to recall that fateful day, played the events
out before him as if they’d happened to someone else. He watched, like viewing a film
in slow motion, as he pulled his police issue beater into the strip mall in search
of a pack of smokes. In his mind’s eye he saw himself exit the vehicle and start across
the lot toward the convenience store. He’d been reaching for his wallet when the front
door of the store swung open and a disheveled man in a hooded sweatshirt stepped out.

The next few minutes were a mixed blur of images and impressions. He saw the man’s
face, his shifting eyes and hardened expression as he spotted the shield clearly visible
on Justin’s belt. As a trained observer, the best at what he did, Justin should have
spotted the .38 aimed at his chest before he felt the burning pain in his side. He
should have gotten the drop on the guy, or at least gotten out of the line of fire.
Instead, he’d gone down hard and fast.

Although difficult to believe, luck had been on his side that day. He lay there, unconscious
and vulnerable, a perfect target, yet the shooter had cared more for his next fix
than for finishing him off. Cash in his pocket, the man simply ran off. The store
clerk, left unharmed, called for an ambulance, and then worked to slow Justin’s bleeding
until its arrival.

He came to in the hospital, surrounded by the unsettling silence of the intensive
care unit, agonizing pain in his lung and an empty room. The bullet had torn into
his shoulder, just below his clavicle, causing muscle and nerve damage. It hadn’t
stopped there. From the amount of damage, the doctors concluded it then ricocheted,
puncturing his lung and fracturing two ribs before coming to rest. The combination
of blood loss, exhaustion and a two-pack-a-day nicotine habit resulted in pneumonia.
Blind luck was credited for keeping him alive.

The fight back was long and hard, the endless nights alone the most difficult to face.
What he wouldn’t have given for someone to have been there for him, just once during
those long agonizing nights of recovery when pain and doubt would assault his already
weakened senses and cause him to question. Would he recover enough to return to active
duty, to the job he loved? Would he suffer any lasting consequences? Would he ever
find the peace he used to in his solitary lifestyle, or would he forever hear only
the silence of the night?

As that very silence settled around him, Justin answered the questions that had plagued
him so those six months before. Hours of therapy repaired his mobility enough to return
to active duty. Occasionally, he still experienced weakness in his left arm, but it
wasn’t anything he couldn’t work through. As for his solitary lifestyle, more than
once during those first few weeks of recovery, he’d almost died. Alone. Lonely.

Again, Thelma’s words played through his mind. He didn’t want to die alone any more
than his mother did. But marriage, commitment, these things went against every lesson
life had taught him. He didn’t want marriage or commitment. He just wanted companionship.