CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marti placed her hand under the shower water, felt that it was hot enough, and was about to remove her clothing when she heard knocks at her room door.
Room service already ? she thought. She’d literally just ordered it! She was certain she could take a shower before they showed up. But they were there already?
She turned off the water tap and made her way out of the bathroom, past the king bed, the sofa, and the chair and dressing table, and made her way up to the door. But when she looked through the peephole and saw that it wasn’t room service, but Chief McGraw, she hesitated. She was pleased to see him: she’d admit that. But she was worried too. Captain Jeffers failed, so he thought he’d give it a go? Were these men in Belgrave that hard up? It was becoming a definite turn off for her.
She opened the door with that same look he probably gave to her when she showed up, unannounced, at his home. “Hi.”
But as soon as that door opened and Grant saw her face again, those warm feelings returned. Like clockwork. It was uncanny to him. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
Why wouldn’t she be, she wanted to ask him. “I am, yes,” she said instead.
He had his hands in his pants pockets. Although he was certain he had the look of a confident man since he didn't know any other way to look, inside he felt unsure of himself. Even foolish. Like why was he bothering this lady when she’d already given RJ the boot? Why did he have to see her?
He decided to just tell the truth. “You were gone when I finished up. I wanted to make sure you made it home safely.”
Marti was touched by his concern. If that was what it was. “If you could call a hotel room home, then yes, I made it home just fine.”
“Good. I know RJ can be a handful.”
“Captain Jeffers?” She smiled. “Yes, he can.”
“He’s not used to women turning him down.”
That seemed like a rather presumptuous thing to say to Marti. How would he know that he tried to hit on her and, more importantly, that she turned him down? “You must have seen him leaving. He just left a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah, we met in the parking lot. But you said he just left. He had been in your room then, hun?”
Did she let him inside, was what he seemed to want to know, which kind of pleased her that he was displaying what could be construed as a bit of jealousy. She also noticed how the chief was taking glances of her rather than looking her dead on. As if there was more he wanted to say, but he couldn’t figure out how to say it. “Everything okay, Chief?”
“Everything’s good. I know it had to be tough for you to have to fire your weapon. Just wanted to make sure you were . . . handling it okay.”
Now she was truly touched. “It was hard, I have to admit that. It’s been a minute since I fired it. And I froze a little.”
Grant looked at her with nothing but concern in his eyes. “You did?”
“Oh yeah. It’s been four years since I’ve been in the line of duty you know? I definitely froze.”
“What snapped you out of it?”
She decided to just tell the truth too. “You,” she said.
Grant didn’t understand. “Me?”
“I realized that if I didn’t take him out, he was going to take you out. And that wasn’t happening. Not on my watch. So I did what I had to do.”
Grant’s heart soared. It wasn’t just him! She was having those crazy feelings too. He smiled that smile that aged him, but that Marti was beginning to view as most attractive. “Glad I could be of help,” he said, and they both laughed. “Although you disobeyed my direct order,” he said to her playfully, pointing at her.
“Sorry, not sorry, about that.” They laughed at that too.
And it all felt so organic and real again. They were back in their no bullshit zone. “Want to come in?” she asked him. He gladly said yes.
They walked over to the sofa. It wasn’t a suite. Just a single room. But that was because the AG’s office was paying for her room and board during her assignment, given her low salary, and they weren’t trying to splurge. The king bed was in the one room, along with a desk and chair and the sofa, and the bathroom was just off from the main room.
She could remember going on vacations and staying in fancy hotels or extravagant Airbnb houses and condos, but that felt like so long ago and so far away that it no longer felt real. Because nowadays, if she had to pay for her own room and board, she would have been staying in a two-star motel if that. A Motel 6 at best. But a nice, three-star hotel like the one she was in? Nowadays it was an upgrade for her.
Grant removed his suit coat and flapped it over the back of the sofa before he sat down. Marti found herself staring at his body as she sat down. He was all muscle. Especially in his biceps. He was a big man.
“Did you find out anything new about why they targeted Karney’s?” she asked Grant as he sat down.
“Nothing new. Appears to be some random act of violence by a couple of sick individuals. But once we get into both shooters’ social media accounts, that should give us more insight.”
But Marti still heard what he said earlier. “You believe it was a random shooting?”
Grant looked at her. “Yes.” He studied her eyes. “But I take it you don’t.”
“Did you see the video?”
“I saw it, yes.”
“Did you see the way the second gunman pretended to be a customer and ran in that office with the real customers and those employees when they were trying to get away from the gunfire?”
Grant nodded. “I saw it. So what? What about it?”
“If you looked at his eyes, he seemed to be staring at one employee in particular.”
Grant had not seen any such thing. “Was he?”
Marti nodded. “It was subtle, and you had to look really closely, but it’s on that video. His eyes honed-in on that lady in the green pantsuit. And if you look even closer, you can see that she recognized him just before he started firing on her. It was only after he shot her repeatedly did he began shooting the others. As if to make it appear like a mass shooting.”
Grant frowned. He watched that video twice and didn’t see any of those nuances. “Why didn’t you tell me this at the scene?”
“I tried to talk to you, but your men wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. They said you were with the mayor or the chairman of the oversight board or the media. They gave me no access.”
Grant exhaled. “That will change,” he said to her.
“I sure hope so,” she said to him.
He exhaled again. She could see that he was distressed. “You got me there,” he said, “because I don’t think I even looked at his eyes. I was totally focused on his gun.”
“Like I said they weren’t glaring examples. Very subtle. You had to look very closely.”
“Don’t make excuses for me,” Grant said bluntly. “I dropped the ball. There’s no two ways about it. I’ll look into that. Thanks.”
Marti loved once again how he wasn’t a defensive man when given information he missed. Although it did worry her that he and his men seemed to miss a lot of basic, 101 policing techniques. “Perhaps you need to reconsider how your men are actually being trained.”
When she said it, Grant suddenly got a bright idea. A way to keep her around him when her consultant gig was up. “Would you be interested in becoming that trainer?”
Marti was startled by such a question. “ Me ?” She stared at him. It was the first time he revealed to her, in words, that he just might be interested in her. His actions already suggested it, in a roundabout way, but she was never sure. Until now. He wanted her around him. He wanted to keep her around him. And that reality kind of alarmed her.
Mainly because she was not the kind of girl that went into anything halfway. Especially a relationship, if that was where he was trying to take it. She’d had too much pain. She knew she couldn’t bear any more. “I don’t . . . I haven’t . . . It never occurred to me to--”
“I understand.” Grant knew he had exposed his budding feelings for her in that moment, and it was scaring the shit out of her. Was scaring him, too. “Just think about it. You don’t have to give any answer tonight. Just mull over it for a few days.”
She actually sighed relief. “I can certainly do that,” she said. Then she smiled. “You know what I realized after Captain Jeffers asked to give me a lift?”
Grant looked at her. Why was she bringing RJ’s name up? Did he manage to cast his spell on her too? “What did you realize?”
She grinned. “That I left my car at the station.”
“Oh that!” He smiled. “I’ll have one of my officers pick you up in the morning.”
“Thanks so much. Because I sure didn’t feel like going all the way to the station tonight to pick it up myself. Or deal with an Uber in the morning. Thanks.”
“I should be thanking you.”
“For what?”
“For saving my life.” He wanted to add in more ways than one , but he didn’t. Because she wouldn’t believe it. But that was what it was beginning to feel like to him. She was rejuvenating him in ways he didn’t think possible, and she didn’t even know it.
“I’m just glad I didn’t choke. Because I could have easily choked.”
Grant studied her. “What happened to you, Markita?”
It was a tough question. Too tough. She had to maintain her barrier. “I’ll make a deal with you, Chief. You don’t tell me your sad stories, and I won’t tell you mine.”
But Grant was already shaking his head. “No deal.” If their relationship was going to amount to anything, and that was a big if , it had to be real and honest and in the open.
But when he said no deal, Marti waited for him to smile or say he was just kidding. But he looked dead serious. Not as if he wanted to know her backstory just for curiosity sake, but as if he needed to know it.
It took several awkward seconds, but then it happened. For the first time in years, Marti said out loud what happened. “I gave my daughter a sweet sixteen birthday party. All of her friends were there and a few of my friends too. It was a lovely evening. But then one of the guys at the party, a crooked cop who shouldn’t have been there, got into an argument over a card game and ended up shooting one of the players. And was about to start shooting some of the others. I yelled for him to drop his weapon, but he turned it on me instead.”
Grant held his breath. Had she been shot? Was that her trauma?
“When he turned his gun on me, my training kicked in.”
“Kill or be killed,” said Grant.
Marti nodded. “Right. So that’s what I did. I shot him repeatedly. They said I fired every bullet I had in my gun into him. But . . . But . . .”
He could see her soft eyes turn over into a look of terror that she was trying desperately to suppress. She folded her arms and her legs. She was struggling.
But he had to know. From her. Before he looked it up himself. “But what, Marti?”
“But one bullet, just one, went through Andy, that was his name, and it hit Jaleesa. It hit my little girl.”
When she said those words, Grant’s entire body slumped. “Oh God no,” he said, his face a mask of concern.
He looked so anguished that it caused Marti to actually get distracted from her pain.
“Oh God no,” he said again, and then he pulled her into his arms with a desperation to hold her that touched her soul. “I am so sorry, Marti. I am so sorry!”
He held her so sweetly that it caused tears to well up in her eyes. Those same tears she cried every single night. But always alone.