Kitabı oku: «Twice A Hero, Always Her Man»

Chapter One

It felt as if mornings came earlier and earlier these days, even though the numbers on the clock registered the same from one day to the next. Even so, it just seemed harder for Elliana King to rouse herself, to kick off her covers and find a way to greet the world that was waiting for her just outside her front door.

It wasn’t always this way, she thought sadly. There was a time that she felt sleeping was a waste of precious hours. Those were the days when she would bounce up long before the alarm’s shrill bell officially went off, calling an end to any restful sleep she might have been engaged in.

But everything had changed two years ago.

These days, her dreams were sadly all empty, devoid of anything. The first year after Brett had been taken from her, she’d look forward to sleep because that was when he visited her. Every night, she dreamed of Brett, of the times they’d spent together, and it was as if she’d never lost him. All she had to do was close her eyes and within a few minutes, he was there. His smile, his voice, the touch of his hand. Everything.

She’d been more alive in sleep than while awake.

And then, just like that, he wasn’t. Wasn’t there no matter how hard she tried to summon him back. And getting up to face the day, face a life that no longer had Brett in it, became progressively harder for her.

Ellie sat up in bed, dragging her hand through blue-black hair Brett always referred to as silky. She was trying to dig up the will to actually put her feet on the floor and begin her day, a day that promised to be filled from one end to the other with nothing but ongoing work. Work that was meant to keep her busy and not thinking—not feeling.

Especially not feeling.

Work was her salvation—but first she had to get there.

Still trying to summon the energy to start, Ellie glanced at the nightstand on her left. The nightstand that held her phone, the lamp that was the first piece of furnishings Brett and she had chosen together—and the framed photograph of Brett wearing his uniform.

A ghost of a smile barely curved her lips as she reached out to touch the face that was looking back at her in the photograph.

And without warning, Ellie found herself blinking back tears.

“Still miss you,” she murmured to the man who had been her whole world. She sighed and shook her head. “Almost wish I didn’t,” she told him because she had never been anything but truthful with Brett. “Because it hurts too much, loving you,” she admitted.

Closing her eyes, Ellie pushed herself up off the bed, taking the first step into her day.

The other steps would come. Not easily, but at least easier. It was always that first step that was a killer, she thought, doing her best to get in gear.

She went through the rest of her morning routine by rote, hardly aware of what she was doing or how she got from point A to point B and so on. But she did, and eventually, Ellie was dressed and ready, standing at her front door, the consummate reporter prepared to undertake a full day of stories that needed to be engagingly framed for the public.

She knew how to put on a happy face for the camera.

No one except those who were very close to her—her mother; Jerry Ross, her cameraman; and maybe Marty Stern, the program manager who gave her her assignments—knew that she was always running on half-empty, because her reason for everything was no longer there.

Several times Ellie had toyed with the idea of just bowing out. Of not getting up, not going through the motions any longer. But she knew what that would do to her mother and she just couldn’t do that to her, so she kept up the pretense. Her mother, widowed shortly before Brett had been killed, would be devastated if anything happened to her, so Ellie made sure nothing “happened” to her, made sure she kept putting one foot in front of the other.

And just kept going.

“But sometimes it’s so hard,” she admitted out loud to the spirit of the man she felt was always with her even if she could no longer touch him.

Ellie took a deep breath as she opened the front door. It was fall and the weather was beautiful, as usual. “Another day in paradise,” she murmured to herself.

Locking the door behind her, she forced herself to focus on what she had to do today—even though a very large part of her wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over her head.

* * *

“I know that look,” Cecilia Parnell said the moment she sat down at the card table in Maizie’s family room and took in her friend’s face. “This isn’t about playing cards, is it?”

Maizie was already seated and she was dealing out the cards. She raised an eyebrow in Cilia’s direction and smiled.

“Not entirely,” Maizie replied vaguely.

Theresa Manetti looked from Cilia to Maizie. She picked up the cards that Maizie had dealt her, but she didn’t even bother fanning them out in her hand or looking at them. Cilia, Theresa knew, was right.

“Not at all,” Theresa countered. “You’ve got a new case, don’t you?” She did her best to contain her excitement. It had been a while now and she missed the thrill of bringing two soul mates together.

“You mean a new listing?” Maizie asked her innocently. “Yes, I just put up three new signs. As a matter of fact, there’s one in your neighborhood, Theresa,” she added.

“Oh, stop,” Cilia begged, rolling her eyes. “You know that’s not what Theresa and I are saying.” She leaned closer over the small rectangular table that had seen so many of their card games over the years as well as borne witness to so many secrets that had been shared during that time. “Spill it. Male or female?”

“Female,” Maizie replied. She smiled mysteriously. “Actually, you two know her.”

Cilia and Theresa exchanged puzzled glances. “Personally?” Cilia asked.

Maizie raised a shoulder as if to indicate that she wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually spoken with her friend’s daughter.

“From TV.”

Cilia, the more impatient one of the group, frowned. “We’ve been friends for over fifty years, Maizie. This isn’t the time to start talking in riddles.”

She supposed they were right. She didn’t usually draw things out this way. Momentarily placing her own cards down, she looked at her friends as she told them, “It’s Elliana King.”

Theresa seemed surprised. “You mean the reporter on Channel—?”

Theresa didn’t get a chance to mention the station. Maizie dispensed with that necessity by immediately cutting to the chase.

“Yes,” she said with enthusiasm.

“She didn’t actually come to you, did she?” Cilia asked in surprise.

“A girl that pretty shouldn’t have any trouble—” Theresa began.

“No, no,” Maizie answered, doing away with any further need for speculation. “Her mother did. Connie Williams,” she told them for good measure. Both women were casually acquainted with Connie. “You remember,” Maizie continued, “Ellie was the one who tragically found out on the air that her husband had been killed saving a couple being held up at gunpoint.”

Theresa closed her eyes and shivered as she recalled the details. “I remember. I read that her station’s ratings went through the roof while people watched that poor girl struggling to cope.”

“That’s the one,” Maizie confirmed. “As I said, her mother is worried about her and wants us to find someone for Ellie.”

“Tall order,” Cilia commented, thinking that, given the trauma the young woman had gone through, it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Brave woman,” Maizie responded.

“No argument there,” Theresa agreed.

Both women turned toward Cilia, who had gone strangely silent.

“Cilia?” Theresa asked, wondering what was going on in their friend’s head.

Maizie zeroed in on what she believed was the cause of Cilia’s uncharacteristic silence. Maizie was very proud of her gut instincts.

“You have something?” she asked.

Looking up, Cilia blinked as if she was coming out of deep thought.

“Maybe,” she allowed. “One of the women who work for me was just telling me about her neighbor the other day. Actually,” Cilia amended, “Olga was making a confession.”

“Why?” Theresa asked, puzzled.

Maizie went to the heart of the matter. “What kind of a confession?” she pressed.

“She told me she offered to clean the young man’s apartment for free because it was in such a state of chaos,” she explained. “And Olga felt she was betraying me somehow with that offer.”

Theresa still wasn’t sure she was clear about what was going on. “Why did she offer to clean his place? Was it like a trade agreement?” she asked. “She did something for him, then he did something for her?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Cilia quickly corrected, guessing at what her friend was inferring was behind the offer. “She told me that she felt sorry for the guy. He’s a police detective who’s suddenly become the guardian of his ten-year-old niece.”

Maizie was instantly interested. “How did that happen?”

“His brother and sister-in-law were in this horrific skiing accident. Specifically, there was an avalanche and they were buried in it. By the time the rescuers could get to them, they were both dead,” Cilia told her friends. “Apparently there’s no other family to take care of the girl except for Olga’s neighbor.”

Theresa looked sufficiently impressed. “Sounds like a good man,” she commented.

“Sounds like a man who could use a little help,” Maizie interjected thoughtfully.

Maizie took off her glasses and gazed around the table at her friends. Ideas were rapidly forming and taking shape in her very fertile brain.

“Ladies,” she announced with a smile, “we have homework to do.”

* * *

“But I don’t need a babysitter,” Heather Benteen vehemently protested.

“I told you, kid, she’s not a babysitter,” Colin Benteen told his highly precious niece, a girl he’d known and loved since birth. Life had been a great deal easier when the only role he occupied was that of her friend, her coconspirator. This parenting thing definitely had a downside. “If you want to call her something, call her a young-girl-sitter,” he told Heather, choosing his words carefully.

“I don’t need one of those, either,” Heather shot back. “I’ll be perfectly fine coming home and doing my homework even if you’re not here.” She glared accusingly at her uncle, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” Colin countered with feeling.

Heather fisted her hands and dug them into her hips. “Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” he told his niece patiently, “that I know the temptation that’s out there.” He gave her a knowing look. “I was just like you once.”

“You were a ten-year-old girl?” Heather challenged.

“No, I was a ten-year-old boy, wise guy,” he told her, affectionately tugging on one of her two thick braids. “Now, humor me. Olga offered to be here when you come home and hang around until I get off.”

She tried again. “Look, Uncle Colin, I don’t want to give you a hard time—”

“Then don’t,” he said, cutting Heather off as he grabbed a slice of toast.

Heather was obviously not going to give up easily. “I don’t like having someone spy on me.”

“Here’s an idea,” he proposed, taking his gun out of the lockbox on the bookshelf where he always deposited his weapon when he came home at night. “You can get your revenge by not doing anything noteworthy and boring her to death.”

The preteen scowled at him. “So not the point,” she insisted.

He wasn’t about to get roped into a long philosophical discussion with his niece. She had to get to school and he needed to be at work.

“Exactly the point,” he replied. “Olga will be here when I’m not, just as she has been these last few weeks—and we’re lucky to have her. End of discussion,” he told her firmly.

“For there to have been a discussion, I would have had to voice my side of it,” she pointed out, all but scowling at him in a silent challenge that said she had yet to frame her argument.

Colin paused for a moment as he laughed and shook his head. “Sue me. I’ve never raised a ten-year-old before and I want to get this right.”

The impatient look faded from her face and Heather smiled. She knew that they were both groping around in the dark, trying to find their way. Her uncle had always been very important to her, even before she’d woken up to find that the parameters of her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

She gave him a quick hug, as if she knew what was really on his mind. Concern. “We’ll be all right, Uncle Colin.”

“Yes, we will,” he agreed. He pointed toward the front door. “Now let’s go.”

For the sake of pretense, Heather sighed dramatically and then marched right out of his ground-floor garden apartment.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Colin found himself halfway around the city, tackling a would-be art thief who was trying to make off with an original painting he’d stolen from someone’s private collection in the more exclusive side of Bedford.

The call had gone out and he’d caught it quite by accident because his new morning route—he had to drop Heather off at school—now took him three miles out of his way and, as it so happened today, right into the path of the escaping art thief.

Waiting for the light to change, Colin saw a car streak by less than ten feet away from him. It matched the description that had come on over the precinct’s two-way radio.

“Son of a gun,” he muttered in disbelief. The guy had almost run him over. “Dispatch, I see the vehicle in question and I’m pursuing it now.”

Turning his wheel sharply, he made a U-turn and proceeded to give chase. Despite his adrenaline pumping, he hated these chases, hated thinking of what was liable to happen if the utmost care as well as luck weren’t at play here.

He held his breath even as he mentally crossed his fingers.

After a short time and some rather tricky, harrowing driving, he pursued the thief right into a storage-unit facility.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. Did the guy actually believe he was going to lose him here? Talk about dumb moves...

He supposed he had to be grateful for that. Had the thief hit the open road, he might have lost him or someone might have gotten hit—possibly fatally—during the pursuit.

As it was, he managed to corner the man. Colin jumped out of his car and completed the chase on foot, congratulating himself that all those days at the gym paid off. He caught up to the thief, who had unintentionally led him not only to where he had planned on hiding this painting that he’d purloined but to a number of others that apparently had been stolen at some earlier date.

It took a moment to sink in. When it did, Colin tried not to let his jaw drop. Things like this didn’t usually happen in Bedford, which, while not a sleepy little town, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, either.

“Wow, you’ve been quite the eager beaver, haven’t you?” Colin remarked as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on the thief’s wrists.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief declared. “Never saw these other paintings before in my life,” he swore, disavowing any previous connection.

“And yet you came here to hide the one you stole this morning,” Colin pointed out. “Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

“I never saw these before!” the slight man repeated loudly.

Colin shook his head as he led the thief out to his waiting car. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to lie?” he asked.

“I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” the thief announced, and dramatically closed his mouth.

“Good move,” Colin said in approval. “Not much left to say anyway, seeing as how all these paintings speak for themselves.”

Desperate, the thief made one last attempt to move Colin as he was being put into the backseat. “Look, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

“Uh-huh.”

Panic had entered the man’s face, making Colin wonder if he was working for someone else, someone he feared. “I can make it worth your while if you just look the other way, let me go. I’ll leave the paintings. You can just tell everyone you found them.”

Colin smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him just how dumb some people could be. “Maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you started putting this private collection together for yourself.” He saw the thief opening his mouth and sensed there was just more of the same coming. “Too late now,” he told the man.

With that, he took out his cell phone and called in to the station for backup to come and collect all the paintings. There were going to be a lot of happy art owners today, he mused. They wouldn’t be reunited with their paintings immediately, since for now, the pieces were all being kept as evidence, but at least they knew the art had been recovered and was safe.

He glanced at his watch as he waited for his call to go through.

It was just nine thirty, he realized. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. His week was off and running.