Falling for His Suspect
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Tara Taylor Quinn
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26
Chapter 1
“Sis... I’m sorry to call you so early...but...”
“Josh?” Jasmine Taylor glanced toward the window as she sat up, noting the darkness between the cracks in the closed blinds. “What’s wrong?”
Heart pounding, she pushed her legs out from under the covers and over the side of the bed. Her brother wouldn’t be calling predawn just to say hello.
“Danny called.” Her brother named his best friend from high school, who also happened to be a cop. That didn’t assuage anxiety any as her brain quickly jumped from one family member to the next. Anyone they’d get middle-of-the-night calls for. Mom and Aunt Suzie, who lived together back in New York, where they’d grown up, were on a cruise with a group of people from their church. The privately litigated, no-contact agreement with their dad probably precluded notifications.
“There’s a warrant out for my arrest, Jas. I plan to turn myself in first thing this morning. I need you to keep Bella. Please...”
“Of course.” Every nerve in Jasmine’s body jittered. Standing in her bedroom, she forced her knees to find their strength. Fear would not win. Whatever the police had found was a mistake. No matter what. Josh was one of the good guys. Through and through.
She was already pulling on black capri pants and reaching for the cropped white blouse she usually wore with them. “I’ll come get her.”
“I’m actually on my way to you. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Coming from his home in Santa Barbara, he’d have had to have been on the road over half an hour before he called. And had to have pulled his three-year-old out of bed in the middle of her night.
“What’s going on?”
Josh was the only guy she really trusted.
“Heidi’s going on,” he said, sounding frustrated in spite of his soft tone. “She filed a complaint of spousal abuse.”
“What!” She shook her head. And then, “Heidi?” Her squeal was decibels louder than she’d have liked. “What the hell?” His ex-wife was the abuser—she was the reason why Josh, a businessman who also ran a string of nonprofit sports training centers for at-risk teenaged boys, was raising a toddler daughter on his own.
“She wants shared parenting,” he said now, his voice lower than ever, as though his most likely sleeping toddler would hear, and understand, the conversation. “She threatened to claim I was abusing her if I didn’t comply.”
“That’s stupid.” Jasmine said the first thing that came to mind. Because...this was Josh. They were each other’s safe places. “She’s already been convicted of abuse, which is why she lost custody to begin with. And the law says you have to wait five years before a judge can give it back, right? Claiming you’re abusive isn’t going to get Bella back to her, either. But it could leave Bella in the hands of Child Protective Services if the system got wonked and someone believes her.” She heard her words aloud. “Not that that’s going to happen,” she quickly assured him. “You know it’s not. You’ve got a lifetime of people who will back you up. Besides, she’d have to have some kind of proof.”
“She fell and sprained her wrist,” he said, sounding more defeated than she’d ever heard. Even when he’d had to admit that he was a victim of domestic violence. Again. “She’s claiming that I grabbed her, yanked her and sprained it.”
“With your bare hands?”
“Yes.”
“She’d need pictures of bruises to corroborate that.” Brain in fully awake, fighting mode now, Jasmine strode to the kitchen to put coffee on for him, checking Bella’s room on the way to ensure that it was clean and ready as it always was. She had a room for Josh, too. One he’d occupied during the dark days after his marriage had fallen apart—while he’d been in the process of fighting for his daughter and buying a new home for them both.
A home without destructive memories lining the walls.
“Heidi had a guy at the gym grab her wrist as resistance, as she tried to push past him, and then took a picture of the marks he left. She showed me the photo.”
“Before she fell?”
“Yeah, the wrist isn’t bruised in the picture.”
“Is there a time stamp on it? If her doctor’s report for the sprain doesn’t match up with the photo time frame...” She knew her stuff. Not just from the years of growing up with an abusive father, but because she spent forty hours a week teaching elementary school at The Lemonade Stand—a unique, resort-like women’s shelter in Santa Raquel. She’d spent countless more hours volunteering at the Stand when her classroom hours were over. You spent enough time there, you heard all the stories.
“She claims they match. At this point I have no way of knowing...”
“Danny’ll sort it all out.” Josh’s friend would have Josh’s back with the police. And Jasmine had faith. Because Josh had given her the ability to believe in a better life each and every time he’d protected her from another blast of their prominent father’s temper.
And now they had Bella to protect.
“Is Bella still asleep?” she asked, reminding herself that they were survivors. And had had their family blessed the day Bella had been born—in a way neither of them had realized could happen. The little one’s innocence and natural joy...
While Bella’s advent into their lives filled Josh and Jasmine with joy, it hadn’t been the same for her mother.
Heidi herself had also been a victim of domestic violence. At first, she had been protective and tender with her little one...
But over that next year, dealing with a crying infant who never let her sleep through the night, jealous of Josh who got to go to work every day and be with adults...she’d changed. Had grown into a state of almost constant irritability. Counseling had helped. Josh had taken Heidi on a couple of small getaways, just the two of them, and things had improved each time. For a while.
“Yeah, sound asleep,” Josh was saying, his tone a bit more relaxed. “Barely peeped when I put her in her car seat. I have her blanket and baby pillow propped around her.”
The baby pillow had been Jasmine’s back in a day when parents hadn’t known better than to put a little pillow and blanket in a crib with a baby. She’d given it to Bella when the toddler had been having trouble transitioning from her crib to the princess bed that came next.
“If you get to the station quickly enough, you could possibly make it back before she even realizes you’ve been gone,” she told him. “You’ll be released as soon as they process you...”
If not, she’d take Bella to work with her. While not a regular by any means, her niece had been a guest at the Stand’s excellent daycare several times.
Moving from the coffeepot to the front window, Jasmine peeked out through the blinds, watching for Josh’s headlights.
“I need to talk to you about that,” Josh said, barely above a whisper. Then added, “I’m here.”
She was already out the front door.
An arrow sliced the pit of Detective Greg Johnson’s stomach when his phone rang just as dawn was striking. In his modest beach bungalow’s home gym, he glanced toward the cell he’d left on the bench with his towel and continued to do crunches.
Nine. Ten.
He’d made his reps. But his phone was four rings in. He grabbed the phone with one hand and his towel with the other, wiping sweat as he said, “Yeah.”
“You know it’s me,” a petulant female voice said. “Why do you answer like that?”
Guilt jabbed at him.
“I’m working out, Liv. You know that. Every morning from five to six.” She used to complain about it, the way he’d leave her in bed to wake up alone every morning, rather than starting her day within the safety of his arms. Or cuddled up to his back.
Of course, she could have just gotten up with him.
Her silence irritated him, which brought along a bit of residual guilt, which irritated him even more. “What’s up?” he asked. It’d been a couple of months since she’d called him in a state. The longest they’d gone since their two-year-old breakup.
He hadn’t missed those calls.
More guilt.
Accompanied by a need to lie flat on the bench he stood beside and press against every ounce of the 350 pounds hanging from the bar. One hundred and fifty pounds over his weight. Piece of cake compared to dealing with Liv.
“I called now because you don’t like it when I interrupt as you’re getting ready for work. And you don’t like when I call you at work...”
After five. He’d told her, umpteen times, that it would best if she called him in the evening. But then, he’d always picked up every time she’d called outside the parameters. Because she only called when she was struggling. And he had the ability to help.
He couldn’t not answer.
“What’s up?” he asked again. He’d told her when she’d left him to call if she ever needed him. He’d meant the offer.
“Rick called me stupid. I just... I think that’s verbal abuse, isn’t it, when your partner tries to personally belittle you? Especially when you’re already struggling?”
He dropped his towel. Sat on the bench. Workout over.
“You have a bad night?” he asked. Rick calling her stupid didn’t ring true. Middles of the night were her worst times, though the home invasion that had scarred her had been in broad daylight. She hadn’t been physically hurt, other than some bruising, hunger and dehydration, but the a-hole had tied her up and left her there to die, instilling a sense of inadequacy and periodic helplessness with which she still struggled...
“Yeeaaahhh.” The tears started. Dread filled his gut. He kept his thoughts on task.
“Is Rick there?” Greg not only genuinely liked the guy; he admired the hell out of him. The man had some mysterious vault filled with empathy.
“He’s in the shower,” Liv said, sniffing. “I’ve never seen him so angry...”
The Richard Haley Greg knew was a saint. His mother had been a victim of human trafficking before she’d had him, and he’d grown up tending to her fears. And seemed to understand Olivia in a way Greg never could.
But you never really knew, did you, unless you were in the relationship? Liv had misinterpreted Greg on almost a daily basis. So maybe Greg had Richard wrong...
“Tell me what happened.”
“The anxiety...you know how it gets...that I can’t always help it...”
When he’d first started seeing her, six months after his office had prosecuted the invasion, she’d been on prescribed medication for anxiety. During the course of their three-year on-again, off-again relationship, she’d traded those in for illegal substances for a short stint. She’d been sober their last year together, though. And two years after that, still was. He’d had dinner with the couple two nights ago.
“There’s no way I can go in to work...”
“Which is why you arranged it so you could work from home,” he reminded her.
“I know, but...it’s a bad one, Greg. I couldn’t be alone today. And Rick...he didn’t get any sleep, either, and...”
Everything in him tensed. Not in a good way.
“He lost his temper with you?”
“Not at first.”
If the man had hurt her...if he’d so much as broken a hair on her head...
He took a deep breath. Liv had a way of getting him to overreact—also not in a good way. He couldn’t always separate the drama from reality with her.
“When then?”
“When I called into work and said that he was sick and would be working from home today.”
Oh God. Running a hand through his hair, Greg grabbed his towel. Threw it, along with the T-shirt he pulled off one-handedly, into the laundry bin on his way toward the shower.
“You called him in sick,” he said, trying his damnedest to keep all inflection out of his voice.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he can work from home, just like I can, but if I called myself into work, there’d be no reason for him to stay home. Calling in sick for him gives me a reason to call myself off to care for him.”
Calling in sick for him made her look like the strong one. Every once in a while he got how her psyche rolled. Whether or not she got it, too, was a mystery to him.
“You don’t think he’d have a reason to stay home if you were sick?”
More likely, she hadn’t trusted that he would and, as she’d admitted, she hadn’t wanted to be alone.
Her lack of response to his latest question was respite, at least. He still had to deal with whatever Rick had done or said. As a cop he couldn’t hear something of concern and just walk away. As Liv’s ex, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to fully walk away. Not because he loved her. But because he didn’t.
Because he felt for her. And felt horrible about his inability to tend to the aftereffects of her trauma on a daily basis. “What did Rick do when you told him you’d called in sick for him?” he finally asked, after listening to sniffles for a lot of seconds.
“He said...he said...he said it was a stupid thing to do!” She was crying again, but after years of deciphering her words through tears, he was pretty sure he’d heard them right.
“He didn’t call you stupid. He said what you’d done was stupid.”
“It’s the same thing.” More sobs followed. He tried to ignore them. She couldn’t help the emotion. And he’d never understand the seemingly uncontrollable intensity of it.
“No, it’s not. You’ve kind of put him in a tough spot, saying he’s sick when he’s not. He’s now either forced to show you up for a liar with your employer or lie to his employer.” Who happened to be one and the same.
Greg was sure he was being too harsh. But she knew him. And she’d called him. He gave her what he had.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding more like the woman he’d been drawn to once upon a time. “I already called back and told them that I was wrong about him not feeling well, and that I’d be working from home today.”
“Does Rick know that?”
“Not yet.” He could hear the huff and puffs of air as she started to cry once again. “I’m afraid he’s going to leave me...”
A fear he’d heard so often...and could never assuage. I’m afraid you’re going to leave me, Greg. Are you going to leave me, Greg?
“You made this one right, Liv. You always do. He knows that. Just as he knows what he signed on for. So why would you think he’d leave you?” He had the thought that maybe Rick had finally had enough. Hoped he was wrong about that.
“You did.”
He’d wanted to. God, he’d wanted to. He had a bit of a savior complex—him always feeling like he needed to rescue people. Made him good at his job, but not so good in relationships, as he never factored in his own needs until it was too late.
“No, Liv. You left me, remember?”
“Only because you made me feel unwelcome.”
He probably had. There’d been days he’d dreaded going home when he’d known she was going to be there.
“You’re a smart, capable woman,” he told her. “You’re witty and loyal and nurturing. You’ve increased product sales by more than fifty percent in the five years you’ve been at your current position. Your team loves working for you. Think about those things, Liv. Think about the fact that you have way more good days than bad.”
It’s what had kept him sane when they’d been together.
“Yeah. You’re right. I just...when the fear takes over... I feel like such a freak...”
“Talk to Rick. Ask him how he feels about you.”
Another twinge as Greg considered the idea that Rick’s feelings might have changed in the past forty-eight hours, but he didn’t think so.
God, he hoped not.
“He’s just getting out of the shower. I have to go. Thanks, Greg.”
Rick was getting out of the shower. Greg was getting in. Wondering if he’d ever find someone who fit him as well as Rick fit Liv.
