Chapter 7 #2
He laughed, too. “Why do you think I’m still using the cane?”
The server came with our drinks. The break in tension left a sticky grin on my face. “It’s good to see you,” I confessed when she was gone, surprised by how much I meant it. “How are you feeling?”
Nick rubbed his shoulder. “The doc did a nice job on my arm. Stitches are out and it’s feeling pretty good. Leg’s another story though. I’m in PT, pushing paper at work for another four weeks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Could have been a whole lot worse,” he reminded me. The gratitude in his eyes was hard to look at. Feliks’s men may have been the ones pulling the triggers, but part of me still felt responsible for his injuries.
My guilty gaze slid away from him to the cops congregating by a table at the back of the bar. “I feel badly keeping you from your friends.”
“You want to meet them?” he asked, taking my hand before I could answer. A thrill raced through me at his brief touch as he led me out of the booth.
Joey leaned against the wall, a toothpick tucked in his cheek as he watched the two of us pick our way across the bar toward him. I looked for Vero, but she and Georgia were engaged in a game of darts.
“Hey,” Nick said over the chatter as we reached the cops’ table.
Someone called out to the server to bring Nick another beer, and they all scooted over to make room as they pushed an extra chair toward him.
Nick’s hand found the small of my back as he offered me his seat.
“You all know Georgia’s sister, Finlay?” The small group at the table waved.
Nick pointed toward the others gathered around the dart boards behind them.
“You already know Roddy.” Officer Roddy’s head towered over the others.
He was an old friend of Nick’s who’d provided security at my house on more than one occasion.
“And that’s his rookie-in-training, Tyrese,” Nick said, gesturing to the fresh-faced recruit who was flirting with Vero.
Nick returned his attention to the officers seated around the table.
He pointed to the only other woman among them.
She was willowy and elegant in a fitted pantsuit, her exaggerated cat eyes curling with her smile as she reached across the table to greet me.
“This is Samara Becker. Sam works in High-Tech Crimes. She just came on as part of a joint task force with OCN. And you already know Joey,” Nick finished.
Joey’s smile was tight around his toothpick. I returned it, feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
I waited through an awkward pause for Nick to introduce the last member of their group.
When he didn’t, Samara rolled her eyes. “And this is Wade,” she said, hitching a thumb at the shaggy-haired man seated beside her.
“He’s a firearms instructor for the department.
” Wade nodded, his dark eyes aloof under the bill of a well-worn trucker cap.
His arms were covered in two full sleeves of tattoos under a ratty old T-shirt that read I LIKE GUNS AND MAYBE THREE PEOPLE .
His crooked smile seemed directed at Nick as he resumed slowly spinning his beer bottle in its pool of condensation on the table.
Nick lowered himself into an empty chair beside me.
An electric current passed through me when our knees brushed.
He murmured an apology as he maneuvered out of his coat in the tight space, his body angling slightly closer to mine as he turned to hang it on the back of his chair.
He smelled as intoxicatingly good as he had the last time I’d helped him put it on, like warm leather and cloves, and I bit down on my tongue as I remembered the last thing he’d whispered in my ear that night as we stood under the mistletoe in my parents’ doorway—that he’d wanted to kiss me.
Then he’d left me with a chaste peck on the cheek and the nearly irrepressible need to tackle him and dry hump him in my mother’s foyer.
“You’re the author, right?” Samara asked, startling me from the memory. I cleared my throat and nodded, my palms a little sweaty. “What kind of books do you write?”
“Nick’s kind, apparently,” Wade said as he leaned back and scratched a rib. “Caught him reading one in the break room at the station last week.” The table exploded in laughter.
“You ought to try reading one, Wade. You might learn a thing or two.”
Samara gave a low whistle at Nick’s comeback and the table erupted in laughter again.
I glanced over at Nick, wondering how many of my six failed backlist paperbacks he had read and what kinds of things he might have learned from them.
The first book in my new series—a book loosely inspired by Harris Mickler’s murder, featuring a star-crossed romance between an assassin and a hot cop—hadn’t gone to print yet, but it was already attracting more attention than I was comfortable with.
Everyone in the police station had been talking about it since Sylvia had put out a press release, when a rumor began spreading through the department that the hot cop in my story bore a striking resemblance to Nick.
“Not all of us can be eye candy, Nick,” Wade teased. “What else does the commander have you doing while you’re pushing paper at the precinct? Posing for beefcake calendars like those hose draggers at the firehouse?”
“Nah,” Joey chimed in around his toothpick, “Nick’s too busy being the new poster boy for the FCPD.” There was another round of laughter. Nick threw Joey a sharp look.
“Poster boy?” I asked. Nick shook his head, color rising in his cheeks.
“The department’s had a lot of bad press,” Samara explained.
“Last year, a couple of dirty cops got caught working side hustles for the mob boss Feliks Zhirov. Zhirov skated—mishandling of evidence—and the local news outlets had a field day with it.” A muscle tightened in Nick’s jaw as she continued.
“The PR rep at the department decided we needed to do something to improve community relations, so they came up with a plan to expand the annual citizen’s police academy into some big dog and pony show—you know, win over the hearts and minds of the people we serve by letting them get a real hands-on, behind-the-scenes experience—only no one signed up.
Then, after Nick’s investigation led to Zhirov’s arrest last fall and Nick’s picture made it all over the news, PR got this wild idea to make Detective Hot Shit here the face of the new and improved FCPD Citizen’s Police Academy.
Suddenly, everyone and their grandmother started signing up, most of them women,” she said with a wink.
“The rest of us got roped into teaching,” Wade groused. “Now we all get to waste a week showing Rotary Club grandmas how to handle a gun and answering stupid questions for a campus full of horny soccer moms.”
My sister smacked Wade on the back of the head as she returned from her game of darts. “It’s going to be fun, Wade, and we’re all going to be there to support Nick.”
Sam turned in her seat and smiled up at my sister. “Now there’s a thought,” she said, tapping her chin with a French-polished fingernail. “Finlay should come to the police academy next week.”
The color drained from Nick’s face.
“That’s probably not a great idea,” I said quickly.
“What are you talking about? It’s perfect!” Georgia said, her eyes wide with excitement. “You can ask us all your weird writer questions and get loads of ideas for your book.”
“What do you say, Finlay?” Sam asked. “There are a few beds left in the academy dorm. If we register you tonight, we can probably hold you a seat on the bus. I can do it right now.” She pulled out her phone.
“Bus?” I asked my sister.
“Think of it like a cop sleepaway camp.”
Nick rolled his eyes at her.
“Georgia,” I started, pretty sure I was speaking for both me and Nick when I said, “I really don’t think now is a good time.”
“It’s only a week,” she argued. “And you already said Steven has the kids. It’s perfect. Vero should come, too.”
“Come where?” Vero asked, returning from the dartboard with a very interested rookie cop in tow.
“Citizen’s police academy,” my sister said. “It starts next week. We’re all going to be there.”
“You’re joking, right? A week? In cop school? With all of you?” Vero chuckled darkly as her scheming eyes circled the group. “That sounds absolutely perfect, Finlay! We’d have to be idiots to say no.”
“No,” I said firmly.
“We’re in.” Vero clapped her hands. “Someone sign us up.”
“Already on it.” Samara gestured for Georgia to take the empty seat beside her. My sister flushed as Sam scooted close, angling her cell phone so they both could see the screen.
Nick leaned toward my ear. “You don’t have to do this,” he said in a low voice.
“Come on, Nick.” Roddy’s rumbling baritone boomed over the table as he reached to scoop a handful of peanuts from the bowl. “It’ll be a great PR angle. Think of the headlines! Local suspense novelist gets hands-on with Fairfax County Police in preparation to write her next bestseller. ”
Vero wagged an eyebrow. “Finlay could definitely use a little hands-on research.”
I shot her a look.
“Finlay’s right,” Nick said. “It’s a bad idea. Tell ’em, Joe.”
Joey’s eyes caught mine across the table. The gleam in them made my insides squirm. “It’s not a terrible idea.”
“Done!” Samara said, dropping her phone in her purse. “We saved you two seats on the bus, but there was only one room left in the dorm, so you and Vero will have to bunk together.”
“It’s fine,” Vero assured her, “I’ll bring earplugs in case she snores.”
“Would you excuse us for a minute?” I got up from my seat and steered Vero by the elbow to the ladies’ room, throwing open the door and locking the bolt behind us. I checked for feet under the stall doors before rounding on her. “What are you doing?”
“Are you kidding me right now? You are looking a gift horse in the mouth. This is kismet.”
“This is insane!”
“This is exactly the opportunity we need! Steven has the kids, I need a safe place to lie low until we can sell the Aston, and you need to find EasyClean . Problem solved. And think of all the research you could do for your book!”
“Research for my book is what got us into this mess in the first place!”
“And now, it’s what’s going to get us out.” Mouths set, we stared at each other, each waiting for the other to cave.
I sank back against the sink and rubbed my eyes.
Maybe it was kismet, but that didn’t change the fact that Nick obviously wasn’t a fan of the idea.
Or that Joey seemed a little too eager, probably for the same reasons I should be—because we both suspected each other of something, and this was the perfect opportunity to keep an eye on each other.
Well, screw him. Two could play at that game.
If Joey thought I was a criminal, he certainly wasn’t going to prove it while I was stuck in a training academy surrounded by police officers.
I, on the other hand, was hunting for a dirty cop, and this was as good a chance as any to get close to a whole lot of them and figure out which one it was.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll go.”
Vero jumped on her toes and hugged me hard enough to knock the wind out of me. “This is going to be so much fun! I swear, Finn, you won’t regret it.”
The scary part was, I already did.