Authors: Radclyffe
“Perhaps there’s another way,” he said, recalling another of his father’s lessons. Where there was an obstacle, there was usually an opportunity also. “After all, we need a new representative at One Police Plaza.”
“Turn one of those cops?” Vincent laughed, then quickly smothered his smile. “From what I hear, they’re all a bunch of Boy Scouts.”
Kratos leaned back and tapped the list with one finger. Five people—three women, two men. “Find me the weak link.”
“I heard some of them are queers.”
“If you heard it, then it’s common knowledge and blackmail would be pointless. No,” Kratos mused. “It won’t be greed that provides the lever we need, and it won’t be power. It won’t even be fear of death.” He smiled, enjoying the challenge. “It will be love.”
“Boss?” Vincent frowned.
“Bring me everything you can find about their families.”
Rebecca Frye studied her face in the mirror over the tiny sink in her hospital room’s bathroom. The harsh institutional light mercilessly highlighted the purple-and-green bruise that extended from her left temple down her cheek to the angle of her jaw. Her upper eyelid was so swollen she could barely make out the ice blue rim of her iris. At least the blood in her hair was gone. She’d finally gotten a shower after two days of insisting to the nurses that she was perfectly capable of standing upright. Actually, the first time she’d tried to get out of bed, the room or her head—or possibly both—had spun so badly she’d nearly vomited. Thank Christ Catherine hadn’t been there to witness the episode.
Rebecca wasn’t bothered by the mess the gunshot had made of her face. To her way of thinking, if she was standing up and able to see the damage, she was way ahead of the game. What bothered her was that every time her lover, Dr. Catherine Rawlings, looked at her, she would be reminded how close Rebecca had come to being a casualty. Catherine tried to hide her worry and her fear, but the shadows flickering just below the surface of her green eyes gave her away. For Rebecca, the pain of being shot was nothing compared to the pain of knowing Catherine was suffering because of her.
She opened and closed her jaw carefully. Stiff and sore, but in working order. For a few seconds she contemplated trying to cover the bruises with makeup, but that would only call more attention to the injury. And no attempt at camouflage was going to diminish the reality of what had happened. She turned away from the mirror, flicked off the overhead lights, and padded barefoot back into her room.
Catherine stood by the windows, her arms folded beneath her breasts, her back to Rebecca. She wore a sage green silk suit, the slim skirt coming to just above her knees, the jacket cinched at the waist. Her auburn hair fell in waves to her shoulders, and for the first time, Rebecca noticed the silver at her temples. She was elegant and beautiful and tender and wise. She was also strong and intuitive. She was all the things that Rebecca was not, and Rebecca could still not understand what it was Catherine needed from her.
She stopped by the end of the bed, feeling disadvantaged in nothing more than a hospital gown and a pair of gym shorts. “Aren’t you supposed to be in clinic?”
“I’m playing hooky.” Catherine turned from the window, her gaze going immediately to the bruise. She quickly smiled, but not fast enough to cover her flinch of distress. “It’s good to see you out of bed.”
“I’m clean, too.”
“Even better.” Catherine crossed to Rebecca and kissed her on the cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad. I don’t suppose you know when I’m getting out of here?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Catherine tried to keep her tone light. “Since I expected that would be your first question, I made some calls on my way over.”
She appraised the damage to Rebecca’s face. Even though she knew, rationally, that Rebecca would heal, she couldn’t prevent the sinking feeling she got in the pit of her stomach at the sight of the injury. The bullet had glanced off Rebecca’s skull just above her temple. The impact had been enough to flay open her scalp and give her a hairline fracture, but the neurosurgeons assured Catherine once the concussion resolved there would be no permanent damage. Still, it was impossible to erase the image of Rebecca lying so still and pale on a stretcher, her blond hair matted with congealing blood. Catherine tried to tell herself it was because Rebecca was so skilled, so good at what she did, that she’d managed to avoid serious injury. If she pondered the possibility that it was only luck that had kept the bullet from striking Rebecca a half-inch lower or a half an inch farther to the right and killing her instantly, she’d never be able to sleep again when Rebecca was out on the streets. Luck was far too fickle a lady to be the guardian of her lover’s life.
“Ali said she’ll stop by as soon as she’s finished in the OR, and if you promise to behave, she’ll let you go.”
“I’ll promise her anything she wants,” Rebecca said.
Catherine raised an eyebrow. “It’s a good thing I trust Ali Torveau, then.”
“You can trust me.” Rebecca slipped her arm around Catherine’s waist and kissed her. When she felt Catherine’s resistance, she loosened her hold and eased back. She looked away, fearing what she might see in Catherine’s eyes. “I should get dressed.”
“Let me get your clothes.”
“I can do it.” Rebecca walked to the tall narrow closet next to the door. “I know you have patients waiting.”
“I want to drive you home.”
“That’s okay,” Rebecca said briskly. “I’ll call one of the team.”
She opened the closet. A shirt and clean pair of jeans hung on hooks where Catherine had placed them when she’d brought them from home. They weren’t officially living together, but they might as well be. Rebecca still had her small, spare apartment above a mom-and-pop grocery store in South Philadelphia, but she spent almost every night in Catherine’s Victorian near University Hospital where Catherine was the assistant chief of psychiatry. They’d been talking about living together, but that was before the shooting—the second time Rebecca had been shot in the line of duty since she and Catherine had been together. She wouldn’t be surprised if Catherine wanted to reconsider. Every other woman Rebecca had ever been with had eventually decided that the demands and risks of her job were too much to deal with.
“You should get back to work,” she told Catherine without turning around.
A pair of hands slid over her shoulders and Catherine leaned ever so gently against her back. With her mouth very close to Rebecca’s ear, she whispered, “I’m not going anywhere and you can’t chase me away.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Rebecca stared into the closet. She hadn’t realized she was cold until the heat of Catherine’s body warmed her. She never realized what she needed until Catherine gave it to her without being asked. She covered one of Catherine’s hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Turn around.”
Slowly, Rebecca turned.
Catherine’s heart clenched at the fear she glimpsed on her lover’s face. Rebecca was the bravest, strongest woman she’d ever known, and she couldn’t bear to think that anything she had said or done might have put that look in Rebecca’s eyes. “Do you love me?”
“More than my life,” Rebecca whispered.
Catherine laced her arms around Rebecca’s neck. “As long as that’s true, I’ll be right here.”
Rebecca clasped Catherine’s waist and kissed her again, and this time nothing stood between them. Immediately, her heart felt lighter. Catherine was a few inches shorter than her own six feet, and she loved the way Catherine’s body fit against hers. Holding her, knowing Catherine was hers, was like shining a light in the dark places in her soul. “I love you.”
“That’s all I need, Rebecca.” Catherine feathered her fingers through Rebecca’s sleek, fair hair. “It’s really so simple.”
Rebecca leaned her forehead against Catherine’s. “Why can’t I understand that?”
“You will, darling. You—”
The hall door swung open at the same time as a sharp rap sounded, and a brunette in surgical scrubs breezed into the room. Ali Torveau, Rebecca’s trauma surgeon and a good friend to them both, planted her fists on her slim hips and regarded them quizzically.
“Why is it every time I have a cop for a patient I end up finding her in a clinch with some good-looking woman before I even have a chance to sign the discharge papers?”
Catherine slipped out of Rebecca’s arms. “This is not a clinch. Clinching is for teenagers. What you witnessed is an embrace.”
“Uh-huh. Looked a lot like a clinch to me.” Ali pointed toward the bed. “Rebecca—in bed.”
“I feel fine,” Rebecca protested.
“Down,” Ali repeated with just a hint of a growl.
“Okay. Okay.” Rebecca stretched out on the narrow bed. As soon as she did she noticed that her headache dialed down a notch or two. She decided to keep that information to herself.
“Any double vision?” Ali flicked the beam of a penlight back and forth between Rebecca’s eyes.
“No.”
“Headache?”
“No.”
“Let’s try that one again. Headache?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca could see Catherine’s concerned expression. “Mild. Nothing worse than a bad hangover.”
Ali swung her stethoscope from around her neck, hooked it in her ears, and pressed the bell to Rebecca’s chest. “Take a deep breath. Again. One more time.” Then she straightened and slung the stethoscope over her shoulder. “Fortunately the x-rays don’t show any evidence of sternal or rib fractures. I don’t expect you’ll have the same kind of pulmonary problems you had after the chest wound.”
The last thing Rebecca wanted was Ali reminding Catherine of another brush with death. “Look, this was nothing. I was wearing a vest and it did its job. I got caught with a glancing round. The ER guys should’ve sent me home with a couple of stitches.”
“We all know what happened, darling,” Catherine said quietly. “And we all know what could have happened. Let’s just—”
Another knock sounded and a slightly overweight, gray-haired man in a brown suit that was shiny at the knees lumbered in. He took in the group and quickly looked at the ceiling. “Is everything covered? I hope not.”
“You should be so lucky.” Rebecca had never been so happy to see her partner, William Watts. She hadn’t wanted to work with the sometimes crude, reputedly over-the-hill detective after her longtime partner had been executed along with another undercover cop just less than a year before. But her captain had insisted and it hadn’t taken her long to realize that Watts was no burned-out cop putting in time until his pension. He was astute, hardworking in his own laid-back way, and most importantly to Rebecca, completely trustworthy.
Watts grinned, his blue eyes twinkling in his heavyset, ruddy face. “I always thought those little hospital johnnies were a turn-on. Better view from the back, though.”
“Jesus,” Rebecca muttered. “Get out of here so I can get dressed.”
“Getting sprung, huh, Loo?”
“Yes, and you’re my ride.”
“Sure thing. I’ll be outside.” He nodded to Catherine and Ali as he headed out the door. “Ladies.”
“I can drive you home, darling.” Catherine glanced at Ali. “If you’re going to let her go?”
Ali stood back from the bed. “Your CT scan shows a small hematoma just below that hairline fracture in the left temporal area. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time it resolves over the course of a few weeks. Every once in a blue moon we see delayed bleeding, usually from a vein tearing during excessive exercise or something else popping because of severe hypertension. What that means is you need to take it easy. No driving for two weeks. No workouts, no jogging, and no vigorous sex.”
“Got it,” Rebecca said through gritted teeth.
“There’s an even smaller chance, maybe one in five thousand, that this hematoma could resolve with a small area of scarring. Scarring in the brain equals a focus of irritation, and we sometimes see seizures. If you notice weakness, numbness, olfactory disturbances, memory loss, tremors, I need to know about it immediately.”
“What about prophylactic Dilantin?” Catherine asked.
Rebecca’s stomach tightened at the slight quiver in Catherine’s voice. She hated this—she just wanted it over, fast.
Ali shook her head. “The risk is smaller that she’ll have problems than the potential complications of taking the drug. I’d rather just wait and watch.” She fixed Rebecca with a piercing stare. “If I have your word that you’ll follow instructions.”
Rebecca reached for Catherine’s hand. “You have it.”
“Good enough. I’ll leave prescriptions for you at the nurses’ station. You can pick them up on your way out. I want to see you next week in clinic.” Ali started toward the door, then looked over her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay. Keep the rest of your people that way too.”
“I plan to,” Rebecca said.
*
Watts was slouched against the wall next to the door when Rebecca and Catherine walked out.
“You really should go downstairs in a wheelchair,” Catherine murmured.
Watts grinned and Rebecca shot him a look. “By the time someone finds one, I could be relaxing in the car. You did park out front in the fire lane, didn’t you, Watts?”
“Right at the curb, Loo.”