MAD DOG AND ANNIE (16 page)

"You followed us?" She shuddered. It was too creepy, the thought of Rob out there in the darkness while she and Maddox…

Rob shook his head. "I assumed you'd both run true to type. Sex in the back seat was all you were ever good for."

She forced herself not to recoil from his verbal slap. "Too bad you didn't figure that out before we got married," she said quietly.

"It was too late then," Rob said self-righteously. "You were already pregnant. I wasn't about to let you spread it all over town that I ignored my responsibilities."

"I wouldn't have done that."

"No? But you're doing it now. You're testifying against me." He leaned in even closer, his eyes feral. "It doesn't look good. I'm disappointed in you, Ann. I'm trying to be friends with you. I'm trying to show people there are no hard feelings. And you just aren't cooperating. Maybe MD isn't the one who needs to reexamine his loyalties."

She could feel the violence building in him. It reached out to her in waves. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Ann, Ann," he reproached her. "You don't want to make me tell you. A loving wife should know. You just think about it. You think about where your best interests lie. Not with the cop. Not with Val.
With me."

Realization settled sickly in her stomach. Val. This was about Val. This was about betraying her friend—again—by recanting her testimony when Rob went to trial. "I can't do that," Ann protested. "I gave a statement."

"You better do it. Or I'll make you sorry, do you hear me?" He towered over her. He bent, so that his hot breath tickled her ear and sent cold chills down her spine. "I'll make you very, very sorry," he whispered.

* * *

Maddox was stepping out of the shower when his pager beeped from the back of the toilet. He frowned. He wasn't on duty tonight. Unless a traffic stop had gone bad, and the dispatcher was signaling for help…

Hitching a towel around his waist, he checked the number before dialing it in. It wasn't
Crystal
at the station. "Palmer."

"Hey, Mad Dog, it's Tom.
Creech?
Got a call to a possible ten-sixteen."

Domestic disturbance.
Maddox frowned at the clouded mirror. "You need backup?"

"No, I'm okay. No drinking, no weapons, no assailant on scene. It's just the reporting party on this one is Ann Cross. You told me to let you know."

He was already in his room, yanking open bureau drawers.
"Medical assistance?"

"She said no. I figured I'd assess, drive her to the ER myself if it looked bad."

"Copy."
A hanger rattled to the floor as he grabbed his uniform pants. "Show me en route in five."

"You want to cover?" Tom sounded surprised. "I'm just going to take a report."

"
That's affirm
. Thanks for the heads up, Tom.
Call
Crystal
for me?"

"Will do.
I'll go run interference on a party in Grand Oaks.
Noise complaint."

"
Juveniles
?"
Maddox guessed, shoving his feet into his shoes, reaching for his holster.

"Twelve-year-old girl.
Birthday party."
Tom chuckled. "Guess the neighbors don't like boy bands."

Maddox grunted and signed off. Even as be pocketed his keys and methodically checked and strapped his equipment belt, his mind was leaping ahead to Annie, frightened, threatened, hurt.

Annie, telling him she didn't need or want his protection. His gut burned. His jaw set. She was getting his protection now, whether she wanted it or not.

Crossing town, he put the blue light up and the gas pedal down.
No assailant on the scene
, Creepy had reported, but as Maddox stopped in front of Ann's house, he checked all the approaches, anyway. No Rob. No sign of Rob's car.

He pressed the bell and stepped back so she could get a good look at him through the peephole.

The door cracked open. Ann stood in the gap, her face in shadow, her arms folded protectively across her middle. She still had on the sexy black dress she'd worn to the club, but her hair was tumbled and one narrow strap had slipped off her shoulder. He wanted to reach through the opening and pull it up for her, to set it right.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"You called."

She didn't budge from the doorway. "I called 911. I didn't know you were on duty."

"I am now. Are you going to let me in?"

Her head tilted. "Did you bring your superhero cape with you?"

Her wry humor caught and cut him as easily as a knife. "No. But I've got my badge and notebook."

"And a note from your father?"

"I don't need one. This is an official call, Annie."

"I never called before," she whispered.

His heart wrenched. "I know. Let me in."

She shuffled back from the door. The light from the lamp slid across her face, and he let himself hope. Her eyes were sunken and her skin looked tight, but he didn't see any cuts. No swelling.
None of the puffy redness that would bloom into bruises by morning.

And then he remembered what she'd told him.
He didn't usually touch my face
. And his own response:
They don't hit where it shows
.

"Are you all right?" he asked roughly. He would kill the son of a bitch, badge or no badge.

Her head wavered up and down.
"Fine."

His blood pumped hot. He forced himself not to jump and roar, but enough of what he was feeling must have escaped into his face, because she looked at him with wide, dry eyes that had seen too much violence. Like the eyes of a survivor at an accident scene, or the flat gaze of the old-young children on the bad streets of
Atlanta
.

"No, really fine," she insisted. "He threatened me. He didn't hit me."

"Mitchell?"

"Was upstairs the whole time."

He would have to accept her assurance for now. Concentrate on the job, aid the victim,
make
his case.
For now.
He took out his notebook. "Okay. Why don't we sit down and you can tell me what happened. Starting with when you got home."

She perched on the edge of the couch. He sat in the brown recliner, the only chair in the room big enough for him, and wondered why she stiffened. He wanted to hold her, wanted to tell her that everything would be all right, that he would make it all right. But she didn't want him that
close,
and he didn't know if he could fix anything yet.

So he asked his questions and wrote down her replies. She was a good witness. She kept her times and events in order, clasping her hands in her lap like a polite child while she described how
her
home and her freedom and her safety had been violated. Her evidence was unemotional and clear.

Maddox was afraid it wouldn't be enough.

"…and then he left," Ann concluded.

"Is that when you called the police?" Why not me?
he
wanted to demand. Why the hell didn't you turn to me?

"I—" Her throat moved as she swallowed. "It may have been a couple of minutes after that."

Her words trembled between them
. I don't need someone to take care of me. I need to handle things myself.

Ann was scared and cold and sick inside. She wanted Maddox to hold her, wanted to crawl onto his lap and beg for the strong comfort of his arms, the rough reassurance of his voice. She squeezed her hands together to keep from reaching for him.

A muscle bunched in his jaw.

She knew what her distance cost her. She was less sure how it affected Maddox.
But that betraying muscle…
He'd never let anyone bully her, not even Billy Ward back in middle school. Sudden gratitude made her offer,

"I never called before. But tonight your father—I thought it would be all right.
Because you'd talked to him."

His hooded gaze met hers straight on, acknowledging her concession. "You did the right thing," he said. "Tomorrow we'll go see a magistrate, get a warrant."

It sounded so straightforward.

"But he didn't hit me."

"He threatened you. That might be enough, given your history of abuse and him being on probation."

She nodded.
"All right."

"In the meantime, you should get somebody to stay with you.
Val, maybe?"

"You figure I should ask my pregnant friend, the friend I stole
from,
to leave her husband and her bed and defend me with her frying pan from the man who tried to murder her? No."

He almost grinned.
Scowled, instead.
"What about your mother?"

Her brief enjoyment faded. "We don't—we're not close," she said with difficulty. "She could forgive me for getting pregnant and marrying Rob—how else could a girl like me catch a prize like him?—but she still can't find it in her heart to forgive me for divorcing him."

She'd shaken that granite police face. "Annie—"

"It's all right," she said quickly. "I don't need anybody. We'll be fine."

And he respected her boundaries. He didn't even suggest that he sleep on her couch.

Ann told herself she was glad. She would have said no, anyway. Instead, she said good night, and locked and dead-bolted her door, and went upstairs and cried herself to sleep.

But in the morning when she looked out her window, she saw Maddox's big blue sedan, as if he'd driven right out of her restless dreams to park in front of her house. Not in her driveway—the neighbors would talk—but across the street. Just for a moment, she had it back: the squeak of vinyl, the rush of heat, the scent of tobacco and sex and Maddox moving under her, thrusting inside her.

She blinked. The car stayed stubbornly at the curb. So she wasn't hallucinating. Maddox must have camped out in his car all night. She didn't know whether to be thrilled by his determination to protect her or mad that he'd do such a thing without once asking what she wanted.

She jerked a brush through her hair and reached for her shorts. When she sallied forth ten minutes later, she still wasn't sure if she were visiting the troops or going into battle.

His window was open. She stopped in the street, clutching a coffee mug, and demanded, "What are you doing out here?"

Maddox scrubbed his face with one large, square hand. The slanting light revealed the bags beneath his eyes and exaggerated the creases in his forehead. He needed to shave.
"Good morning to you, too."

She fought the twist of concern. "That was a stupid thing to do, sitting up in your car all night."

He gave her one of
those level
, unreadable looks that made her stomach flutter. "I'm used to it."

She remembered their conversation from the gym. "Another part of the job?" she quoted dryly.

He must have remembered, too, because his eyes narrowed. "We weren't going to talk about it, you said."

It.
The shooting.
She held out the mug to him. "Maybe we should."

"Thanks." He sipped the hot coffee. "Why? You worried about me hanging around your kid?"

"Maybe I'm worried about you. Did you ever talk to anybody?"

"Darlin', they made me talk to everybody. The division commander, the investigating
shoot
team, the D.A.'s office, the P.I.O.—that's the Public Information Officer—and the shrink."

"And?" she prompted softly.

He shrugged. "And they all said the same. Clean shoot. Hell, I saved a teacher's life. I must be some kind of cop, huh?"

Her heart wrenched at the bleakness in his voice. "Is that how you felt?"

"No." He stared into the mug cradled in his large hand. "I kept wondering—I still wonder—if there was something else I could have done."

It was a bigger admission than she'd expected. More, perhaps, than she knew how to deal with. Ann studied him a moment. "Do you want to know what my therapist would say?"

He looked up at her. "Sure." His lashes were thick and short. Something warm and liquid and addictive as caffeine spread under her ribs.

"My therapist told me that no one is the cause for another person's violent behavior. So you can't take responsibility for that boy's decision to fire that gun any more than I should accept the blame for Rob beating me."

"Damn it, that's different."

"You're right. I chose to stay in my marriage. You didn't have any choice about being in that schoolyard. It seems to me that if I can forgive myself, then you certainly should be able to forgive yourself." She waited for him to absorb that one, watched his jaw tighten and his full lips compress. Had she said enough?
Too much?
What would this man accept from her, anyway?

"Do you want to come in for breakfast?" she asked.