Julie Miller - Takedown

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Captain.” She called the cops she knew by rank or nickname, the same way her brother, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, her sister the M.E., her sister-in-law the police commissioner and her KCPD brother-in-law did. “I know how hard it can be on family to see someone you love hurt like that. You want to help him—make things right. But you can’t. The reality is, accident or not—Mike’s still a teenager. He’s going to have moods. And he’s going to have to figure out for himself how to make this work. In the end, the best thing you can do for him is love him.”

Those blue eyes narrowed, silently asking a question. Yes, she was speaking from personal experience, but Mike’s dad didn’t need to know everything about her sordid past.

When she turned away to get her clipboard and wristband of keys, he followed her, letting her pretend she had no shameful secrets to keep. “He’s got that. The love, I mean.”

“Mike knows that, down inside. He may not remember it every day, but he knows you love him. Just the fact that you use your dinner break to bring him here to the clinic and pick him up means something to him.” Jillian slipped the elastic key bracelet around her wrist and tucked the clipboard of treatment logs under her arm. Together, they headed toward the gym exit and the hallway beyond. “Look at Troy, on the other hand. He’s fighting most of his recovery battle on his own. Ever since the shooting, his grandmother refuses to leave his brother, Dexter, alone. Either he’s at school or she locks Troy in the apartment with him to keep an eye on him the evenings she works her second job.”

“It can’t be easy for her.”

“I’m sure it’s not—and I admire her for supporting her grandkids financially, but it’s almost as if she’s given up on saving Troy and is focusing all her energy on Dexter. If Troy wants to come to physical therapy he has to schedule the appointments himself and take the bus to get here. I’ve been giving him a ride home, at least, trying to give him a little extra attention and ease some of the burden.”

“You’re driving him home tonight?” The captain stopped, checked his watch. It wasn’t five o’clock yet, and she’d done it more than a dozen times. No big deal.

She turned at the doorway arch. “As soon as I log in these stats and sign out.”

“Where does he live?”

Jillian named the street and apartment area just west of downtown Kansas City. His mouth thinned as he propped his hands on his hips. “At HQ we call that neighborhood No-Man’s Land. It’s not the safest place to be after dark.”

“Clearly. Otherwise, Troy might not have been shot in the back by that stray bullet.”

“I’m serious, Jillian.”

Did he see her laughing? She knew about the dangers of No-Man’s Land—more personally than Michael Cutler would probably imagine. If she could keep Troy from falling prey to them the way she once had by simply giving the kid a little extra time and offering him a ride, she would. “I don’t take chances I don’t have to. But I’m not going to let Troy shoulder his recovery all by himself, either. Somebody always knows when I leave and where I’m going.”

“And when you get back?”

Jillian groaned. “It’s just a car ride. I can handle it, Captain.”

His low-pitched curse followed her into the hallway as she locked the gym door behind them. “I’m not your commanding officer, so why don’t you call me Michael? That’d be a damn sight friendlier than ‘ugh’ or ‘whatever,’ which seems to be all I’m hearing from Mike these days.”

Jillian relaxed enough to smile, glad his disapproval of her efforts to help Troy had been short-lived. “Captain Ugh. I bet your men would love to call you that.”

“My men wouldn’t dare. Not to my face.” Instead of heading past her door to get Mike from the break room, he followed her into her office. “Can you spare another minute?”

“Sure.” Jillian hugged the clipboard to her chest and turned.

“I wanted to double-check the PT schedule. Mike’s school is having their spring break next week. He’s pretty bummed about making up extra class work while his classmates go on vacation, and since he seems to enjoy his time with you and Troy, I wanted to see if I could still bring him in for his regular sessions—give him a break from history and geometry and…me.”

“I’ll be here,” Jillian promised. “Anything else I can do to help?”

“Yeah. Be careful driving through No-Man’s Land. My son needs you.” He pulled his SWAT cap from his back pocket and pulled it on over his head. The stern police captain had returned. “Keep your doors locked. If you feel threatened in any way, stay in your car and drive straight to the nearest police station. Run red lights if you have to. If you think someone is following you, stay in your car and honk the horn until an officer comes out to assist you.”

“You know, I have a big brother to give me lectures like that. You don’t have to.”

“As long as you listen to one of us. I can give Troy a lift home on the days I’m off duty and don’t have to get back to the precinct.” He adjusted the brim of his cap to shade his eyes. “If riding with a cop wouldn’t cramp his style.”

“That’s nice to offer. I’ll ask him.”

“Be careful. Mike’s counting on you.”

Look who was talking. She dropped her gaze to the sidearm holstered at his thigh. “You be careful.”

“Always.”

After he tipped his hat and left, Jillian watched him stride down the hallway. Yeah. Big-brotherly overprotection aside, fortysomething looked good on the police captain from this view, too.

Savoring the responding skitter of her pulse, Jillian turned to her desk. Her gaze landed on the droopy, fading flower in the glass vase there, and her heart rate kicked up another notch. Would it have killed the sender to include a note? Or even just a name?

Between friendly discussion and heated debates, she’d forgotten for a few minutes that not all men were as straightforward as Michael Cutler. Maybe she was only crushing on the older man because she was 99. 9 percent certain he hadn’t sent her that mysterious rose. As beautiful and blameless as the deep red flower might once have been, she’d lived with too many deceptions in her life already. The whole secret admirer thing had lost its charm long ago.

Dismissing the tiresome joke with a shake of her head, Jillian sat behind her desk, pulling up Mike’s and Troy’s files on her computer to chart the updates. But the rose kept taunting her from the corner of her eye.

It was the sort of apologetic gesture her ex-boyfriend, Blake Rivers, would have made to get himself out of trouble with her. She supposed breaking up with him after an attempt to rekindle a relationship—clean and sober style—had failed qualified as trouble. But she had no proof the flower had come from Blake. No reason to suspect him. She’d left him months ago. He’d moved on to some blond reporter or red-haired heiress, according to the paper’s society page. Jillian was old news.

And she intended to stay that way. As wealthy and handsome and devilishly clever as Blake might be, he had a reckless streak in him that had enabled her own addiction and nearly gotten them both killed. Jillian had promised her family, her therapist Dr. Randolph and herself that she was never going to go down that dangerous, self-destructive path again.

But if not Blake, then who had sent her the flower?

She supposed a phone call to Blake’s office at Caldwell Technologies couldn’t hurt. She didn’t want to send any false signals to her ex, but a few words to put her mind at ease and set him straight on the romance-is-over message was worth the risk. And if the rose wasn’t from Blake…?