Rachel Gibson: It Must Be Love

"Hey, watch your hands!"

"Don't get excited," he warned. "I'm not." Next, he patted down her behind, then knelt to check the tops of her socks. He didn't bother to feel for anything hidden between her thighs. Not that he trusted her, he just didn't think she would have been able to jog with a weapon in her panties.

"Once we get to jail, do I pay a fine and then go home?"

"When the judge sets bail you can go home." She tried to turn and face him, but his grasp on her hips prevented it.

"I've never been arrested before."

He already knew that.

"I'm not really being arrested like with fingerprints and mug shots, am I?"

Joe patted the waistband of her shorts one last time. "Yes, ma'am, with fingerprints and mug shots."

Turning, her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him. "Until this very minute I didn't think you were serious. I thought you were trying to get even with me for kneeing you in your… your private area."

"You missed," he informed her dryly.

"Are you sure?"

Joe straightened, reached into the back of his shorts, and brought out the handcuffs. "There's no mistaking something like that."

"Oh." She sounded real disappointed. "Well, I still can't believe you're really doing this to me. If you had an ounce of decency you'd admit this is all your fault." She paused and took a deep breath. "You are creating very bad karma for yourself, and I'm sure you're going to be very sorry."

Joe looked into her eyes and slapped the cuffs on her wrists. He was sorry all right. He was sorry he'd been knocked on his ass by a suspected felon, and he was real sorry he'd blown his cover. And he knew his troubles were just beginning.

The first fat raindrop struck his cheek, and he glanced up at the storm cloud hanging over his head. Three more drops hit his forehead and chin. He laughed without humor. "Fan-fucking-tastic."

For some reason, whenever Gabrielle had thought of a police interrogation, she'd always envisioned Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man . She'd always pictured a dark room, spotlight, and a crazed Nazi war criminal with a dentist drill.

The room she found herself in wasn't like that. The walls were stark white, without windows to let in the June sunshine. Metal chairs surrounded a table with a fake wooden top. A telephone sat on it at one end. A single poster, warning against the dangers of drugs, hung on the closed door.

A video camera stood in one corner, its red light glowing, indicating it was in use. She'd given her consent to let them record her debriefing. What did she care? She was innocent. She figured if she cooperated, they'd hurry and finish and she could go home. She was tired and hungry. Besides, Sundays and Mondays were her only days off, and she still had a lot to get done before the Coeur Festival that weekend.

Gabrielle took several deep breaths, controlling the amount of oxygen she took in for fear she might pass out or hyperventilate. Breathe away the tension , she told herself. You are calm . She raised her hand and raked her fingers through her hair. She didn't feel calm and knew she wouldn't until she was released to go home. Only then could she find her quiet center and tune out the static in her head.

Traces of black ink stained the pads of her fingers, and she could still feel the pressure of the handcuffs she no longer wore around her wrists. Detective Shanahan had made her walk all through the park in the rain cuffed like a criminal, and her only consolation was that he hadn't enjoyed the walk any more than she had.

Neither of them had said a word, but she had noticed that he'd massaged his right thigh several times. She assumed she was responsible for his injury, and she supposed she should feel sorry-but she didn't. She was scared and confused and her clothes were still damp. And it was all his fault. The least he could do was suffer along with her.

After being booked for aggravated assault on a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, she'd been led into the small interrogation room. Now across the table from Gabrielle sat Shanahan and Captain Luchetti. Both men wanted to know about stolen antiques. Their dark heads were bent over a black note-book, and they were in deep discussion. She didn't know what stolen antiques had to do with aggravated assault. They seemed to think the two were related, yet neither of them seemed in a hurry to explain anything to her.

Worse than her confusion was the knowledge that she couldn't just get up and leave. She was at the mercy of Detective Shanahan. She'd known him a little over an hour, but she knew him well enough to know he had no mercy.

The first time she'd seen him a week ago, he'd been standing beneath a tree in Ann Morrison Park. She'd jogged past him and might not have noticed him at all if it hadn't been for the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding his head. She probably wouldn't have given him another thought if she hadn't seen him the next day at Albertson's buying a frozen pot pie. That time she'd noticed the way his muscular thighs filled out his hacked-off sweatpants, and the way his hair curled up like small c’s around the edge of his baseball cap. His eyes were dark, and the intense way he'd watched her had sent an alarming shiver of pleasure up her spine.

She'd sworn off gorgeous men years ago- they caused heartbreak and chaos in the continuum of body, mind, and spirit. They were like Snickers bars-they looked and tasted good, but they could never pass for a well-balanced meal. Once in a while she still got cravings, but these days she was much more interested in a man's soul than in his gluteus. An enlightened mind turned her on.

A few days later, she'd spotted him sitting in a car outside the post office, then again parked down the street from Anomaly, her curio shop. At first she'd told herself she was imagining things. Why would a dark, handsome man follow her? But as the week wore on, she spotted him several more times, never close enough to approach, but never far away either.

Still, she tried to dismiss it as her creative imagination working overtime-until yesterday when she'd seen him at Barnes and Noble. She'd been in the store buying more books on essential oils when she'd looked up and noticed him lurking in the women's health section. With his dark, brooding looks and T-shirt-straining muscles, he just hadn't seemed like the kind of guy sympathetic to the anguish of PMS. That's when she finally accepted that he'd been stalking her like a serial psycho. She'd called the police and had been told that she could come in and fill out a complaint against the "unknown smoking jogger," but since he hadn't done anything, there wasn't a lot she could do. The police had been no help, and she hadn't even bothered to leave her name.

She'd slept very little the night before. Mostly she'd lain awake carefully devising her plan. At the time her strategy had seemed good. She'd lure him into a very public place. The chunk of the park next to the playground, in front of the zoo, and a few hundred yards from the Tootin' Tater train station. She'd take the stalker down and scream like crazy for help. She still thought it was a good plan, but unfortunately she hadn't foreseen two very important details. The weather had closed everything down, and, of course, her stalker wasn't a stalker. He was a cop.

When she'd first seen him standing beneath that tree, it had been like staring at her friend Francie's Hunk Of Burnin' Love calendar. Now as she looked across the table at him, she wondered how she'd ever confused him for a hunk of the month. In the sloppy sweatshirt he still wore and with that red bandanna tied around his head, he looked more like some hell-bound biker.

"I don't know what you want from me," Gabrielle stated, switching her gaze from Shanahan to the other man. "I thought I was brought here because of what happened in the park earlier."