Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Ask

They talked. Faye saw that, though she couldn’t hear what they said. At one point, her trespasser reached for his hip pocket, and she held her breath. The last three years had made her suspicious of any gesture that could produce a knife or a gun. But he only pulled out—well, it was hard to tell, squinting through the camera lens—but it looked like his wallet. He flipped it at the officer. They talked some more.

And then they started toward the house.

Her stomach sank. Oh, dear. She really didn’t want…

The young officer bypassed the steps that led up to the deck. The two men disappeared along the side of the house. Maybe they would just go away?

Her doorbell rang. No.

Faye brushed her skirt with trembling fingers and went to open the door.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” The young officer loomed on her porch. “Would you mind stepping out for a moment?”

Well, of course she minded. But she summoned her courage and a smile from somewhere and unlocked the screen door. Cautiously she edged out onto the porch. Her gaze slid sideways to her intruder.

Everything about him looked hard—hard face, hard body, hard, dark eyes. She shivered. She knew she made an unimpressive adversary, five-foot-two and twenty-five, with a little girl’s short haircut and an old lady’s flowered skirt.

Officer Cowlick cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I have to ask. Do you know this man?”

She looked away, snapped from the hold of those bold dark eyes by a welcome jolt of outrage. “Is that what he told you?”

“He said that you’d seen each other.”

Faye crossed her arms against her negligible chest. Indignation warmed her voice. “And I suppose if he told you those binoculars were for bird-watching, you’d believe that, too.”

Her trespasser grinned.

The officer frowned. “No, ma’am. But I did check his ID. His driver’s license lists him as Alec—Alex—”

“Aleksy,” the intruder said.

“Denko,” the officer snapped.

She was confused. “I don’t know any Denkos.”

“He does.” Denko’s voice was deep and confident. His eyes were wickedly amused. “Jarek Denko is the chief of police in this town.”

She arched her eyebrows. “And who are you? His long lost cousin?”

He looked at her with a faint, surprised respect. “His brother.”

She didn’t want his respect. She wanted him gone. She appealed to the officer. “I don’t care who his brother is. I want him off my property.”

“Yes, ma’am. What I need to know is, will you be filing a formal complaint? Because—”

“Oh, dear God.” She saw it now, as Denko swiveled to face the officer. A faint bulge at his back, covered by his jacket. “He has a gun.”

The officer pivoted.

“Easy.” Denko stepped back, palms up and wide. “It’s in the belt clip at my back. I’ll let you pat me down, but I don’t want you getting excited and grabbing for the gun.”

He turned around slowly, his hands still in the air. The officer leaned in and slid the gun from its holster before ducking away.

“Just a suggestion,” Denko said over his shoulder. “Next time you might want to do the search before you bring a possible suspect up the complainant’s porch steps.”

The officer flushed dull red. “I’ll have to detain you, sir. Please put your hands behind your back.”

Faye’s heart thumped with alarm.

But Denko only shrugged and held his wrists behind him. The officer snapped on the cuffs and tightened them.

Faye did not want to get involved. She really didn’t. But some residual sense of responsibility forced her to ask, “Don’t you have to, um, read him his rights or something?”

The officer slipped his fingertip out of the cuffs and took another step back. “He’s not under arrest, ma’am.”

“Then, why—”

“Only sworn law enforcement officers can carry concealed in Illinois,” the officer said tightly.

“You’ve been watching too much TV, cream puff,” Denko told her. “You don’t have to Mirandize until you’re going to question somebody. Usually at the station.”

Faye goggled. Cream puff? What was with this guy? He was apprehended, disarmed and in handcuffs and yet somehow he wasn’t subdued at all. A small part of her almost envied him.

The officer with the cowlick frowned. “Hey, are you on the—”

“At the station,” Denko repeated. “I can fill you in there.”

The two men exchanged glances. Faye felt more out of her depth than ever. “Yeah, okay,” the officer said.

“Don’t you need me to make a statement?” Faye asked.

The officer shifted his gaze to her. “We’ll be in touch.”

She watched him steer his prisoner toward the black-and-white cruiser. He’d parked on the side of the porch, under cover of Aunt Eileen’s rhododendrons. Denko stood quietly while the officer opened the car door and put one hand on top of his head to guide him into the back seat.

Faye began to shake. We’ll be in touch.

Apprehension formed a knot in her stomach. She could hardly wait.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Police chief Jarek Denko’s voice was quiet and cold as a night in January. “This is my town. It’s not your personal sandbox that you can come make a mess in when you’re tired of stinking up Chicago.”

Aleksy Denko clamped his jaw. He knew he was out of line, damn it. But he didn’t allow anybody to talk to him that way. Not even his big brother.

“I was on a case,” he said.

Jarek narrowed his eyes. “A case you didn’t choose to explain to my patrol officer. A case you didn’t bother to run by me. Damn it, Alex, you know the rules of jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly acting officially,” Aleksy muttered. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.”

“Let me get this straight. You kept me in the dark to protect me?”

Jarek sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. Hell, Aleksy didn’t believe it himself. Before his brother gave up the streets to play Andy Griffith in Eden, Jarek Denko—the Ice Man—had been a legend among the homicide cops of Chicago’s Area 3.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” Jarek invited quietly.

Aleksy sighed and dropped into the chair facing the chief’s desk. “You know about the shootout on the west side, five, six weeks ago?”

“I read about it in the paper. One officer down, I remember.”

Aleksy remembered, too. He choked off the fresh wave of anger and guilt that rose with the memory. “Yeah, well, what wasn’t in the paper was that it was a joint op. Some scum is running guns from Atlanta through Chicago to Canada. The Toronto police want him. The FBI wants him. The ATF wants him. And we got him. Set up a nice little sting to net the whole operation. Only everybody’s tangoing so hard that somebody missteps. The scum figures it’s a setup and gets away. We’re left with nothing but a couple of mopes who aren’t talking and one dead detective.”

“How do you come into it? Was it your operation?”

“I don’t like it when one of our own goes down. Maybe after the shooting, I pushed a little too hard on the investigation.”

“No ‘maybe’ about it,” Jarek murmured.

Aleksy grinned sharply. “Anyway, some fed got his toes stepped on and pushed back. Next thing I know, my boss is calling me into his office telling me I need an extended vacation.”

“Here in Eden?” Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly Cancún, little brother.”

“Could be I figured you needed some help planning your wedding.”

A month or so back, Jarek had gotten himself engaged to a local babe. A reporter, Tess DeLucca. Aleksy had had some doubts about the match, but his brother seemed happy, and the wedding was set for September.