Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (2 page)

Why had she thought her past wasn’t going to bite her in the ass?

She wiped her face with a paper towel that felt like sandpaper, and told herself to grow up. She’d done the right thing turning in her corrupt partner ... but she’d made a lot of mistakes in the process. She had to take the good with the bad, suck it up, and
deal
.

Maybe she should have listened to her father and applied for a Lieutenant position in the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. Her father’s closest friend was the Sheriff.

You really want to be indebted to your father for the rest of your life?

Even worse than using the Judge’s clout, everyone would know how she got the job.

Oh, you’re the disgraced daughter of Judge Morgan. He’s a great man. Are you adopted?

Ha, ha, ha. Funny, boys.

Her dad was a criminal court judge, respected by both the defense and prosecution. He was fair, honest, and tough. He was also judgmental and rigid about rules and procedures and believed in the letter of the law. She was deeply proud of her dad and all he’d accomplished, especially considering his poverty-stricken background. But she’d never been able to live up to his high standards. She always fell short in some way.

You had every advantage growing up. Use it.

Meaning:
look at what I’ve done when I started with nothing.

She didn’t want his favors or protection. She’d thought about leaving Sacramento for another jurisdiction, but where could she go? She’d have to leave the state if she wanted to keep what happened here private; even then, cops talked. It wasn’t like shooting her partner had been a big secret. Didn’t matter that he was a corrupt S.O.B. who shot her first. She’d crossed the invisible line. She’d turned on one of her own. And Tommy Cordell was in prison and she was walking free, something that many of her former colleagues thought was a mistake that should be rectified.

The truth was, she missed it. She missed the bull pen. She missed her friends. She missed the damn
job
. All she’d ever wanted was to be a cop. She went to college to please her father—she’d wanted to enroll in the Police Academy right out of high school.

College first. If you still want to be a cop when you graduate, I’ll support you.

And he had, without reservation. Because Judge Morgan was a man of his word. Hence, the
love him
part of her love him/hate him relationship with her dad.

The door opened and she caught the reflection of the female suit who’d asked her the obnoxious questions. The woman was surprised to see Alex there, opened her mouth to speak, but Alex walked out without a word. She had a temper—it had gotten her into trouble in the past—and the things she wanted to say to that uninformed bitch would have done no good, for Alex or her reputation.

She bypassed the elevators and pushed open the door leading to the stairs, surprised when it hit the wall with a metal
bang-bang
. She glanced around to make sure no one had heard her little temper tantrum, then jogged down three flights to the main floor of the five-star hotel across from the California State Capitol.

The stairwell opened at the end of a wide lobby. Natural sunlight streamed through tinted two-story windows, bathing the pale, contemporary décor in warmth. To her left, a step-down lounge dotted with mauve couches and gray chairs overlooked the pool. A shot of tequila sounded tempting right about now, but she just wanted to go home. Except going home to her small apartment meant sulking, and she wasn’t going to indulge in self-pity.

Vigorous exercise to sweat out her overwhelming sense of failure and anger might just be the ticket. Running on one of the river trails? Or the track at Sac State? Maybe she should drive to Placerville and tackle rougher terrain. 

She weighed the pros and cons of each venue, irritated that a large group of people stopped her from reaching the main exit. They didn’t seem to be doing anything but blocking her way. She frowned as she surveyed the lobby. A press conference by all appearances, large enough to be for the governor or maybe even the new owner of the Kings basketball team. She hated crowds, both as a person and as a cop. She glanced around looking for another exit, but to get to the parking garage, she had to go through this group, anyway. She should have walked to her interview. It was only a mile, but she hadn’t wanted to be sweaty. February wasn’t supposed to be this hot.

She’d just have to push through the damn crowd.

“Excuse me,” she muttered. No one budged. She assessed the group and the surroundings.

Once a cop always a cop.

Most of the people were reporters, with notepads and cameras and recorders. God, she hated reporters. Was that a national reporter? Maybe—she rarely watched any news, especially after she’d been vilified in the press last year. Several people in the crowd were bystanders, either by invite or curiosity. Everyone stood waiting for someone to enter. Men in suits—private security?—framed the main doors. No getting out that way. She moved around toward the back of the crowd, aiming for the far staircase that would take her back upstairs where there was another exit into the parking garage.

Her subconscious registered something …
off
… the moment before her eyes caught what was wrong. She scanned the balcony above the foyer and spotted a lone man at the railing. He was watching the crowd. He wore gloves.

Why is he wearing gloves inside?

He moved slightly and she saw the briefest flash of metal in his waistband.

Gun.

Whoever had done advance for this little shindig had done a piss-poor job. Alex began to push her way through the crowd, planning to alert security and keep the dignitary from entering the lobby. Several people shot her nasty looks and one foul-tongued woman issued a verbal attack as profane as any drug dealer Alex had arrested. Before she got to the front, the group around her began talking all at once and stepped toward the door as if they were a single unit. A television cameraman nearly knocked Alex over.

Alex followed their lead. The glass doors slid open as two men and a woman entered. The man in the center commanded everyone's attention. Tall, broad-shouldered, with curling dark hair Alex thought was a little too long for a politician, California’s Lieutenant Governor Travis Hart strode in. He raised his right arm in a trademark wave even Alex recognized.

Politician. Gun.
Shit
.

Her attention snapped back to the suspect. His eyes were locked on Hart’s entourage. He reached inside his jacket. The gun. He was going for the gun Alex had seen in his belt. 

“Get
down!
” she shouted, hoping the reporters could hear over their incessant questions.

Without waiting to see if anyone listened, Alex shoved through the crowd.

“Hey!”

“Watch it!”

“Bitch,” a petite blonde in a blue power suit mumbled.

Alex ignored everyone and leapt onto the large table in the center of the lobby. A massive decorative vase as tall as Alex, brimming with an array of fresh flowers, teetered but didn’t fall.

“Get down!” She launched her body like a bullet right at Travis Hart, leaping over the crouching bodies of reporters and landing square on her target as the first shot rang out. She pushed him to the floor, shielding his vital parts with her smaller body. She heard a second shot and felt a sharp pain in her upper arm, knew she’d been hit.

Where was his damn security?

She drew her weapon with her wounded arm and glanced over her shoulder.

The suspect ran. She repeated his stats to herself, but there was little to go on. He was as average as average came.

“Cover him, dammit!” she shouted to anyone who would listen. But no one could hear her. People were running away from the door or still on the ground. The hotel should at least have
some
security on the main floor. What did they do all day, sit around guarding the damn safe?

The lone shooter bolted.

Alex jumped up and ordered the man closest to her to get Hart to safety. Mindful of the pain searing her right arm, she switched her gun to her left hand. She darted through the downed crowd, not caring if she stepped on anyone’s head, limb or more sensitive body part.

She caught a brief glimpse of the suspect running down the wide second floor hall before he turned toward the garage.

“Security to the garage!” she shouted. She doubted the suspect had parked there; it was too difficult to get out fast and too easy to block off. Unfortunately, three staircases led to three different streets, and he could use any of them to disappear. It would take too much time for security to cover all three exits.

Running up the wide ballroom stairs three at a time, Alex gained speed as she rounded the corner, her body pumping out the adrenaline. By the time she reached the second floor, the suspect had vanished. She ran into the garage, Sacramento’s unseasonably warm spring day sucking the breath from her lungs. She spotted the suspect on the sidewalk below as he disappeared around the corner of the structure, toward K Street. She pursued, taking the stairs two at a time. When she emerged on the street, she looked right toward the convention center, then left toward Cathedral Square.

“Hey!” she called out to people walking past her. “Did you see a white man in a dark hoodie run through here?”

No one responded, either ignoring her or giving her an odd look and wide berth. She looked down at her blouse. The blood had seeped through. That she had a gun in her hand probably made people wary. But she was a cop, dammit!

Had been a cop. Past tense.

The suspect had had a solid lead and she hadn’t been fast enough to shorten the distance. It was easy to lose oneself on K Street. Still, she dashed first to the right and scanned the street, trying to get a visual. He could have disappeared into the convention center, another hotel, a restaurant, a parking garage, or across J Street and down any number of alleys.

She did the same thing at the opposite corner. Too many places to hide, too many side streets, too many easy ways to disappear.

The shooter was gone.

“Well, shit,” she muttered.

Chapter Two

Three California Highway Patrol officers met up with Alex as she stood on the corner replaying the last ten minutes over and over in her mind, but she couldn’t have done it any other way. If she’d had a partner or if the shooter hadn’t had such a good head start? Maybe. Maybe she could have caught up to him.

“Hey,” Alex said as the CHP approached her cautiously. CHP handled security in the Capitol building.

Alex holstered her weapon and identified herself to the officers, showing her ID and her concealed carry permit. She couldn't really blame their response time. Everything had happened so quick, by the time hotel security or Hart’s security alerted the police, the suspect was long gone.

“He disappeared on K Street, but I couldn’t get a visual once he left the garage.” It was close to the lunch hour; the street began to fill with government bureaucrats and hacks on their lunch break. “He was approximately five feet ten inches tall wearing a black hoodie and jeans. Light brown or dark blond hair, Caucasian, slim—no more than one-fifty. In his early twenties.

One officer repeated the information into his walkie-talkie, then said to Alex, “We'll canvass the neighborhood. Maybe someone saw him. We can also pull the security feeds from the hotel and K Street.” He gestured to the city’s security cameras that had been installed a few years ago on streets surrounding the Capitol building.

That's all that could be done at this point. Alex hoped one of the cameras caught a good look at his face, but they’d have a better chance with the hotel surveillance system. They'd also search the hotel for evidence and interview witnesses.

She said, “He had on gloves, but was standing on the second floor railing looking down into the lobby. Maybe there are prints up there.” Doubtful, but worth checking.

“You’re bleeding.”

“No shit.” The scent of her own blood turned her stomach, and she was trying to ignore the throbbing pain. The wail of approaching sirens told her the cavalry had arrived.

The CHP escorted her back to the main hotel entrance. Three Sacramento PD squad cars skidded into the roundabout, facing the wrong direction.

“An ambulance is on its way,” one of the cops said to her. “Why don’t you sit down inside?”

A blast of cool, artificial air hit her as the doors swooshed open. Her damp silk blouse clung to her skin and chilled her when just a minute ago she was overheated. She subconsciously shivered.

“I don’t need an ambulance,” she said. “Just a first aid kit.”

They ignored her comment. She would have, too, if she were still cop.

While two of the CHP officers went to brief the responding police, she allowed the third to escort her to a leather seat next to the valet stand. She’d grown increasingly dizzy.

“Was anyone else hurt?” she asked.

“Negative,” the cop said.

“Good.”

“Excuse me for a minute,” he said.

Relieved that she had been left alone to deal with her pain and failure, she watched both uniformed cops and detectives spread around the perimeter and invade the hotel. An unmarked car pulled up behind the patrol cars, and Detective Jim Perry jumped out. He flashed his badge. She didn’t have to hear him state he was the lead detective on the case, his body language said it all. 

She knew him well. Too well.

Jim and his partner listened to the first responders as they walked briskly into the hotel without a glance in her direction. Alex thanked God she had a moment to gather her wits before she had to face Jim and her former colleagues.

She scanned the crowd, impatiently brushing aside a lock of brown hair that had escaped her French braid. The first responders had acted fast—the area was roped off, the reporters and spectators far from the scene of the crime. She didn’t see Hart or his entourage anywhere.