Beverly Long - For the Baby's Sake

She liked the way the z rolled off his tongue. She liked the way all the consonants and the vowels, too, for that matter, rolled off his tongue. It was a molten chocolate center bubbling out of a freshly baked cake. Smooth. Enticing.

Maybe he could read her the dictionary for the next week.

“I need to ask you some questions,” he said.

She wasn’t going to get a week. “Sure.” Why the heck not? Together they sat on the faded gray cement, hips close, thighs almost touching. Liz wanted to lean her head against his broad shoulder but knew that would startle the hell out of him.

She settled for closing her eyes. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d crawled out of bed and caught the fiveo’clock bus.

“Sawyer?”

Liz opened her eyes. The man who had been with Sawyer when he’d arrived now stood in front of the two of them. He was an inch taller and probably ten pounds heavier than Sawyer. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

Was the sky raining gorgeous men?

“What did you find out?” Sawyer spoke to the man.

“Bomb, all right. Big enough that it would have done some damage. Quick to shut down. Looks like they wanted to make it easy for us.”

Sawyer didn’t say anything.

“Who are you?” Liz asked.

The man’s face lit up with a broad smile showing perfect teeth. “I’m Detective Robert Hanson. My partner has no manners. Otherwise, he’d have introduced us.”

“I’m Liz Mayfield.”

“I guessed that. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I—”

“What else?” Sawyer interrupted his partner.

Detective Hanson shrugged. “We’ll get the lab reports back this afternoon. Don’t expect much. Guys thought it looked like a professional job.”

“Professional?” Sawyer shook his head. “Half the kids in high school know how to build a bomb.”

“True.” Detective Hanson stared at Sawyer. “Did you get her statement?”

“Not yet,” Sawyer said, pulling a notebook and pen from his pocket.

Detective Hanson frowned at both of them. Then he turned toward Liz. “Who got in first this morning?”

“I did,” she said. “I got here about five-thirty.”

Sawyer looked up from his notebook. “Short night?”

Liz shrugged, not feeling the need to explain.

“Door locked when you got here, Ms. Mayfield?” Detective Hanson asked.

“Yes. After I came in, I locked it again and reset the alarm.”

“You sure?”

“I’m usually the first person in. I know the routine.”

“Did you see anything unusual once you got inside?”

“No. I went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee.”

“Then what?”

“I heard the front door, and then I thought I heard Jamison’s door open. It appears I was right.”

“You didn’t see anybody?” Detective Hanson continued.

“No. When I left the kitchen, I looked around.”

“Then what—”

“You looked around?” Sawyer interrupted his partner.

“Yes.”

“You should have called the police.”

She frowned at him. His tone had an edge to it. “I can’t call the police every time I hear a door.”

“You got a threat mailed to your office, and then shots were fired through your window,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you should have given that some thought before you decided to investigate.”

“Maybe we should keep going.” Detective Hanson spoke to Sawyer. “You’re taking notes, right?”

Sawyer didn’t respond.

“After I looked around—” she emphasized the words “—I went down to my office and started working. After Jamison arrived, we came upstairs for coffee.”

“What time was that?”

“Almost eight. Jamison’s cell phone rang and then…we called 911. That’s about it.”

“It sounds like you stayed pretty calm. That takes a lot of guts.” Detective Hanson smiled at her again.

She smiled back this time. “Thank you.”

Sawyer grabbed Robert’s arm. “Come on. Let’s go. I want to talk to the boss.”

Liz stood—so quickly that her head started to spin. She picked up Sawyer’s suit coat, shook it and thrust it out to him. “Don’t forget this,” she said.

He reached for it, and their fingers brushed. The fine hairs on her arm reacted with a mind of their own. What the heck was going on? She’d never ever had this kind of physical reaction to a man. Especially not one who acted as if he might think she was an idiot.

Sawyer jerked his own arm back. “I’ll…uh…talk to you later,” he said. Great. She had him tripping over his own tongue.

Sawyer got twenty feet before Robert managed to catch him. “Hang on,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Sawyer shook his head. “Just forget it.”

“You act like an idiot and think I’m going to forget it?”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten this. We’re here to investigate a crime. We’ve got a lot of people to talk to. I didn’t think it made sense to spend any more time with Liz.”

“Liz,” Robert repeated.

“Yeah, Liz.” Sawyer did his best to sound nonchalant. “She told me I could call her Liz.”

“Since when do you hang all over witnesses?”

“I wasn’t hanging all over her. She seemed upset. I offered her some comfort. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called compassion.” Sawyer started to walk away.

Robert kept pace. “That wasn’t compassion I saw. That was a mating call. What’s going on here, partner?”

Sawyer didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue why he started to unravel every time he got within three feet of Liz. “Liz Mayfield is a material witness to a crime. We had questioned her. I figured we needed to move on.”

“That’s it?”

“What else could it be?”

Robert looked him in the eye and nodded. “Your timing sucks. I could have had little Lizzy’s phone number in another two minutes.”

“Lizzy,” Sawyer repeated.

“She’s my type.”

Sawyer clamped down on the impulse to punch his partner, his best friend for the past two years. “She is nothing like your type.”

Robert cocked his head. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“I’ll be damned.” Robert laughed, his face transformed by his smile. “You like her.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sawyer walked away from his partner.

Robert ran to catch up with him. “You’re interested in a witness. Mr. Professional, Mr. I always use my Southern manners. This has got to be killing you.”

“Liz Mayfield is going to help me get Mirandez. That’s my only interest,” Sawyer said.

Robert slapped him on the back. “You just keep telling yourself that, Sawyer. Let’s go talk to the boss.”

When Sawyer and Robert reached Liz’s boss, the man held up a finger, motioning them to wait while he finished his telephone call. From the one side of the conversation that Sawyer could hear, it sounded as if the guy was making arrangements to refer his clients on to other sources. After several minutes, the man ended the call and put his smartphone in his pocket.

“Detective Montgomery.” The man greeted Sawyer, giving him a lopsided smile. “I have to admit I was hoping there wouldn’t be any reason for us to talk again.”

Sawyer felt sorry for him. He looked as if he’d just lost his best friend. “This is my partner, Detective Robert Hanson.”

“Nice to meet you, Detective Hanson. I’m Jamison Curtiss, the executive director of OCM.”

Sawyer watched Robert shake the man’s hand, knowing Robert was rapidly cataloging almost everything there was to know about Jamison.

“I understand you got the call this morning, warning you of the bomb,” Sawyer said.

“Yes. I’d just gotten to work. It was probably about ten minutes before eight.”