Chapter 8
EIGHT
HARMONY
It was a few days before she saw Crois again. Even though the area that her ambulance covered was the same area that Crois covered in his cruiser, there wasn’t necessarily a lot of overlap in their activities.
When she finally bumped into Crois it was during a confrontation between two drivers and a car accident.
Vega was the first to spot the CCPD cruiser as he drove the ambulance up the street.
“Hey,” he lifted his chin at the street up ahead, “looks like your hot cop is on scene.”
Hot cop.
Harmony wasn’t someone who spent a lot of time on social media, but there were plenty of people at Firehouse Twenty-nine that were and the photo of Crois cradling a baby in the back of her ambulance hadn’t just made the rounds.
The photos had been printed out and pinned up on bulletin boards around the firehouse.
One of them had been taped to her locker door in brilliant color.
Since then, Crois had been dubbed her hot cop.
No one in the house knew the extent of their interaction, but someone remembered that Crois had picked her up for breakfast the morning after that interaction, so people were talking, but Harmony wasn’t.
Not even to Vega.
As soon as they parked, Harmony was out of the ambo and moving toward the scene.
Pilar saw her first and waved her in. “Two car accident.” Pilar pointed at the car closest to Harmony.
“Air bags deployed. The driver is complaining of pain in her head and neck.” Pilar gestured at the other car as Vega walked up with his bag hanging from his shoulder.
“The other driver has the beginnings of a black eye from some kind of impact and a cut on his leg, likely from the dash and the impact.”
Harmony nodded and looked at Vega. “You want to take the leg injury?”
Before he could speak, Pilar put her hand on Harmony’s arm. “You might want to reconsider.”
Harmony frowned at her words. “What’s going on?”
Pilar gestured to the first car. “She doesn’t seem to like women. When I approached the car as we drove up, she nearly bit my head off. Called me a bitch and a whore.”
Harmony leaned back and away, shocked. “What?”
“She reeks of alcohol, it’s likely a DUI. Sometimes people lose their filters when they’re drunk.”
Harmony nodded. “Well, I can see her saying those things, but let’s roll with things right now.”
She saw PIlar hesitate, but she went with her own assessment.
Vega gave her a nod and headed toward the second car and the leg laceration.
Harmony walked up to the Honda Civic and put her hand on the top of the car. “Hello. I’m Harmony, an EMT working in this area. Can you tell me what happened?”
The woman driving was gorgeous.
That was Harmony’s first thought when she turned her head.
The driver had long dark hair and warm chocolate eyes.
Her make up was impeccable and the nails on her fingers where she was touching the side of her head. They were definitely manicured and shaped, more than a half an inch past the rounded tip of her fingers.
She was definitely model beautiful, but it was the look in her eyes that called the rest of her beauty into question.
As soon as the other woman locked eyes with her, her expression soured. “Who the fuck are you?”
Hmm…
Putting a neutral expression on her face, Harmony introduced herself again. “I’m Harmony, an EMT with firehouse Twenty-Nine. Can you tell me what happened?”
“What happened,” the woman seemed to be mocking Harmony’s tone or voice, “is that someone hit my car!”
Yes. Harmony drew in a breath. I know.
“Were you injured? Do you feel pain anywhere?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed like a hawk. “My head! Can’t you see?”
Then she pressed her fingertips against the place she said she was hurting, digging her nails into the flesh there.
Harmony frowned, wondering if her adrenaline was interfering with her ability to feel the pain at the moment.
“Okay,” she tried to keep her expression neutral, “let me see what we can do for you.”
Harmony reached to open the driver’s door and felt a snap of pain on her hand.
The female driver inside was glaring at her with wide-angry eyes. “Don’t you fucking touch me, you bitch!”
Harmony blinked at her.
Pilar had been right.
Still, she had to treat the person in front of her. “I need to open the door to examine you.”
The woman huffed and folded her arms across what appeared to be a generous bosom. “Utterly useless.”
Harmony reached for the door again but pulled her hand back as the woman lifted a hand, ready to strike.
“I said don’t touch me! Are you this stupid?”
“Miss, I am sorry, but to treat you, I need to examine you.”
“I’ve got this, partner.”
Harmony heard the helpful words, but the voice wasn’t what she expected.
She turned to look in its direction and saw Crois put a hand on Pilar’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture. “I’ve got this.”
Pilar’s jaw tensed. “Don’t let her hurt Harmony.”
Harmony saw Crois’ expression change as he looked at her. “I won’t.”
His smile made Harmony feel warm all over, but mostly in her chest, around her heart.
When he walked up to the door, he looked down at her, and Harmony found herself struggling to keep her expression neutral.
Her instinct, which was new to her in so many ways, was to smile and let her cheeks warm with a blush, but knowing the kind of woman in the car, she hesitated.
“Miss?” She repeated a little louder. “Please open the door so I can see if you require medical assistance.”
The woman swung her head around and nailed Harmony with a look. “You’re fucking retarded.”
“That’s enough!”
Crois was suddenly at her shoulder and the personality of the woman in the car turned on a dime.
“Well, hello, handsome!”
Harmony could hear a distinct slur in the woman’s voice. Adding that to the overwhelming scent of alcohol coming from her breath, Harmony had no doubt what they were dealing with.
“I’m officer St. Cyr, ma’am.”
Harmony heard Crois’ emphasis on the word ma’am, but it seemed as though the woman was impervious to anything less than a sledgehammer.
“Well, Offfiiisser Sinseer. It’s so nice to meet you.”
Harmony felt how tense Crois was beside her and tried not to take her eyes off of the woman in the car.
If she did have a head injury, things could go south, quickly.
“We’re going to need you to step out of the car, ma’am.”
“Ma’am,” she purred and Harmony barely held off a laugh.
Apparently, the woman was finally letting words through into her head.
“You don’t have to be mean, handsome. I’m barely into my twenties.”
Harmony’s mouth thinned into a tight line. She wasn’t an expert on aging, but the woman in the car was likely well into her thirties. Why lie about it?
Every birthday that Harmony had was a good one. It meant that she’d made it another year, relatively unscathed.
Maybe a little more jaded under the surface, but still kicking.
“Ma’am. I am now giving you a lawful order to step out of your car.”
“Lawful…” The woman sighed. “Isn’t it strange how lawful sounds like awful?”
Harmony saw Crois lift an eyebrow at that. “Ma’am. I’ve asked you to get out of the car. And then I’ve told you to get out of the car. If you don’t do that then I’m going to have to make you get out of the car.”
Harmony felt his hand against her hip, gently nudging her to the side.
A quick look down told her that she was in the way of the door.
If Crois was going to open the door and pull the woman out he didn’t need her to block the door.
As she looked up, Harmony saw Pilar a step or two away, pulling on her gloves.
“Goodness,” Harmony murmured under her voice. This was going to happen.
“Ma’am?”
She leaned on the open window of her car door and smiled up at Crois.
“I’ll get out if you’ll frisk me,” she blinked a few times, but instead of being flirtatious, it looked like her upper lids were too heavy to do it easily.
Making her look as though her face was slower than it should be.
“Or,” she giggled, and the sound was a little sour, “you could bend me over your police car and… rough me up.”
The woman reached a hand out of the window. It looked like she was aiming to trail her fingers along his arm, but before she could reach that far, PIlar’s gloved hand grasped her wrist and held on tight.
Crois tugged on the handle of the car door, and it opened a moment later.
The woman inside almost spilled out onto the pavement, but it was Crois’ quick reflexes that saved her from scratching her pretty face on the asphalt.
It wasn’t easy after that.
Instead of complying, the woman went limp like a toddler.
Harmony had seen this particular method of avoiding things in children, not a full grown woman.
“Come on,” Crois grumbled, “stand up.”
With her hair over her face, the woman laughed and flailed. “Why don’t you carry me? Like… like a princess!” She lifted her head and her hair flipped back from her face. One messy lock of her hair was caught in her mouth.
Harmony grimaced at the sight.
She didn’t like spit.
It made her skin crawl.
Blood? Other bodily fluids? All fine.
Spit? Especially strings of it?
Harmony shuddered.
“Okay,” she heard the frustration in Crois’ voice, “let’s get you in the cruiser.”
The woman was on her feet at that point. Pilar moved forward with her cuffs in hand and that’s when the woman balked.
Planting her feet on the ground, and bending her knees, she leaned back and kicked out with her feet. Her shoes, spindly heels that looked fairly close to stilettos flailed out.
One foot nailed Pilar’s leg and the officer tensed, swallowing a painful sound.
“Stop that!” Crois lifted the woman off of the ground. How he managed it, Harmony couldn’t really see, but it looked effortless. “You’ve just gotten yourself a guaranteed charge of assault on a LEO.”
The woman tossed her head back, lifting her face up. Her hair was even more disheveled than better. “So that bitch cop is a Leo? I would have said she was a Capricorn.”
Crois froze and then shook his head. “LEO meaning Law Enforcement Officer.”
“Huh,” the drunk woman laughed out loud “well, that’s just silly.”
Pilar approached from the side and back of the woman and together with Crois managed to get cuffs on the woman as she was flirting with Crois.
The overly fawning looks and increasingly crass comments were getting on Harmony’s nerves.
She could tell that Pilar wasn’t feeling any better.
When a second ambo showed up and took the victim from the other car, Vega helped Crois get into the back of the ambo and cuffed her to the gurney.
She gave Vega a look or two, but she really only had eyes for Crois.
When Vega climbed in the back with her and Crois started to close the back doors, the woman let out a screech of sound. Harmony turned and saw that Pilar was writing something in a notebook. Crois was standing beside her.
“You going to be okay, Harm?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but one corner of her mouth was tipped up. “
“Harm?”
He shrugged. “It’s a nickname in progress.”
She nodded. “I think you said it before, but I wasn’t sure if you meant it or you just tripped over my name.”
He laughed softly. “Around you, I’d probably trip over my tongue.”
She frowned at his words, not quite understanding what he said. “Okay, well I better get the ambo on the road.”
“Well, we need to stay with her to keep her in custody. They can also draw her blood at the hospital if she doesn’t agree to a blood draw for the DUI.”
“Oh?” Harmony smiled. “Are you going to drive along with us?”
Pilar looked up from what she was doing. “I’ll stay with the cars. When the tow trucks come to take the cars, I’ll have the accident reports ready.”
Crois looked at his partner. “I could stay and write the report.”
Pilar gave him a look that was dark and foreboding. “If you make me stay with that… that woman, I’m going to end up doing some bodily harm to her.”
Harmony raised a brow at that. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”
Pilar smiled and it almost looked real. “She’s a prize and I think she’s saying what she’s saying to get a rise out of us.”
Harmony shrugged. “I’ve met women like her before. She sees women in positions of authority and want to tear them down. It’s ridiculous. I couldn’t see doing it to someone else, but I don’t measure my life by other people. I bet she looks at other women as competition in every aspect of her life.”
Pilar nodded in agreement.
“And they see men as ways to get out of trouble.”
Harmony couldn’t argue with the other woman’s words. “She certainly treated our partners much better than she treated us.”
“I’m betting that she thinks her face is going to get her out of trouble.”
“Pretty is one thing,” Crois shook his head, “but I’m betting she’s counting on her tits to get her out of problems.”
Harmony stared at him, wide-eyed. “Really?”
He held up his hands. “It’s not going to work.”
“Because you have a body cam?” Harmony like she might want to kick him in the shin.
“No,” he sighed softly and started to reach out toward her but lowered his hand before he could touch her. “Because I have taste.”
She saw him raise an eyebrow at her and she knew that he was talking about her.
“Well, Officer St. Cyr, I guess you’re coming with us in the rig.” She started to take a step toward the cab and stopped short. When she turned her head to look him in the eye, she was smiling. “Are you riding in the back with Vega?”
Crois shuddered and she smiled at the unconscious gesture. “If you make me ride in the back with her, Harm. I might not survive the trip.” He lifted his hands and prayed fervently before her. “I don’t want her to steal my soul.”
Harmony rolled her eyes. “Afraid of a woman?”
Crois put a hand over his heart and looked into her eyes. “Of her? Absolutely.”
She gestured to the other side of the ambo. “Go ahead and get in. When we get to Cole, I’ll see if they’ll give her a banana bag to help sober her up.”
“After,” Crois put emphasis into the word, “her evidentiary blood draw.”
“Let’s hope the judge puts through the electronic search warrant soon.”
“Check your files!” Pilar called out to them and a moment later Crois’ cell chimed.
Crois gave his partner a thumbs up. “Thanks.”
Harmony got into the driver’s seat on Ambo Nineteen just as Crois got into the passenger’s seat in the cab.
It felt strangely right to have him riding up front with her.
Was this really happening, she wondered?
If it was, she could really, really get used to it.