Forever (15 page)

“Jesus, you couldn’t just wait a few minutes?” she demanded of him, hurrying to lever her body against his under his right shoulder. Once he had her strength supporting him he was able to turn with her toward the door leading into the house.

And all the while Sargent had never left Jackson’s side. Even now he sat there with his head tilted, as if in concern, watching every move she and Jackson made. It was as though he knew Jackson was in trouble and Sargent was determined to oversee her actions to help him. When he saw they were moving he stood up and hurried to take up a new position beside the door. Supervising from an entirely new angle.

“You know, I think that dog adores you,” she said to Jackson, trying to inject some lightness into the moment.

“No, he obeys me. It’s you he adores. He has a crush on you.”

“Me?” She laughed the word out with incredulousness. “He doesn’t even know me!”

“Oh, he knows you.” Jackson’s words were more lucid, but it was still a struggle for him to speak. “If I had a dime for every time he’s tried to sniff or paw at your office door I’d be rich.”

“But …” She was perplexed. “Well I certainly didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

“Maybe he’s just returning your admiration for him,” Jackson theorized as they neared the door. Good thing too, because Jackson was no small amount of weight even though he was mostly on his own two feet, and she was just about at the end of her second wind. Or was it the third by now?

“Admiration?” He had to be taunting her. Surely he realized she was very uncomfortable around dogs. Especially dogs she had seen in action hurtling into men and dragging them down in a fury of huge white teeth.

“Well, I assumed that’s who you were staring at from your office window the past few weeks, since you’ve made it clear to me you think I’m something of an ass.”

Marissa’s face felt like it had gone up in flames as mortification tripped through her. All those times she’d been watching him, struggling with herself and her inappropriate urges, he’d seen her?

She was really glad it was dark so he couldn’t see the embarrassment on her face.

“I was just … it’s … very compelling, watching him do what he does,” she tried to explain with haste, trying to judge how believable her tone of voice was. “The strength … not to mention theem;
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div.toc_vg. intelligence he has. He’s quite … um …”

“Compelling,” he said.

“Well, yes.” She reached to open the door. He tried to take back all of his weight, but he nearly buckled down to the ground. “Will you please just let me help you?”
she demanded with no small amount of exasperation. “God, Jackson, you don’t have to be this all-powerful man all the damn time. Maybe if you’d learn to depend on other human beings you wouldn’t invest so much of your own identity into your job and your dogs!”

Oops. She hadn’t meant to say that. She just hadn’t been able to help herself. The man just had a way of frustrating the hell out of her.

“Is that what you think I do?” he asked quietly, leaning into her once again. “I have friends, you know. I have a life beyond what you see at the station.”

“Well that’s damn miraculous,” she said with irony, “because outside of your sister you never mentioned one. And the only reason I know about Leo Alvarez being even remotely close to you is because of the way he had your back when you were looking for Docia. But other than that, with the way you like to pick up double shifts, I could only assume you had nowhere special to be.”

They entered the kitchen and she headed straight for the nearest chair. Truth was, she was wiped out and was afraid of falling on her face herself. She dumped him not too gently into the chair and straightened up, smoothing her hair and her clothes as best she could in light of the fact that it had been twenty-four hours since she’d put the skirt and sweater set on.

“Now, neither of us has had anything to eat in ages and I think it would be best …”

“Are you hungry, hummingbird? Because knowing you and the way you work at top speed all the time you have to be exhausted. Frankly I can’t eat just yet and I think going to bed would be the best thing for us both.”

“Well I …” she began to argue.

“And you say
I
don’t admit when I’m licked?”

Shoot. He had a point. And she was far more tired than she was hungry. “Okay. There’s only one bedroom
here. It’s the darkest room in the house. I’ll sleep out here on the pullout.” She gestured to the living room on the other side of the openly designed kitchen. “As you see it’s impossible to get all the light blocked out here but the bedroom is dark as night.”

“The pullout is fine for me. It’s dark enough.”

Marissa made an exasperated sound and dropped into the chair nearest him. “God, what a pair we make.” She huffed in frustration. “Neither one of us wants

Leo Alvarez was sitting at Jackson’s desk, his feet propped up on the file cabinet right next to it, his eyes half closed as he relaxed and waited for Jackson to show up for his shift. His friend was a little late, which was highly unusual. Also unusual was the distinct lack of activity in the precinct in spite of the fact that it was shift change. He checked his watch to be sure, but of course he was right. He had an impeccable internal clock.

Yep. Something wasn’t right in cop land. Avery Landon, known for coming in early just so he could catch anyone so much as a millisecond late, because the man lived to bitch about something, wasn’t in his office. He waited until he spied the nearest mid-level officer … not a rookie who didn’t know what was going on and not an old salt who knew better than to discuss police business out of school … and he stood up with a stretch.

“Hey,” he said to the cop, “what’s going on here? It’s like a ghost town.”

“Missing kid,” the cop said. “They’ve got all available manpower on it. Don’t you watch the news?”

Not from the bottom of a bottle of tequila he didn’t.

“Oh yeah. Must have slipped my mind. So I take it Jackson took his dog out?”

“They were out all night last night. I heard that Sargent came up lame round about dawn so he had to take him out of the field.”

“Well, that blows,” Leo said with a scowling frown. “Guess I’ll catch up with him later. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Leo strolled out to the parking lot, scratching his head. He’d already been to Jackson’s house and there was no sign of him or Sargent. Jackson wouldn’t be running around doing errands if Sargent was injured and he sure as hell wouldn’t put him back in the field with only a few hours’ rest, either. So where the hell was he?

He was a big boy and could take care of himself, it was just that …

Leo couldn’t explain it but, ever since they’d found Docia after she had gone missing, something had been a little bit off about Jackson. Actually, not even a little bit. A lot of bit, as Docia would say. The most notable part being that Jackson had been avoiding him as if he were a plague carrier. Granted, he’d been in Honduras and a couple of other places these past few weeks, but usually Jackson would be the one picking him up at the airport or be game for a few beers the minute he rolled into town.

“See Bud? Leave me alone long enough and I’m nearly two bottles of Cuervo into bleached-blonde trouble. I blame you, my friend,” he said as he dialed Jackson’s number. “Hey jackass, this is the fourth message since I got back. You’re starting to hurt my feelings. If you don’t—”

He broke off when a man loped across his path. Or rather, skipped across it. Like a child. And while he was big enough to be a short adult, he—

“Hi! I’m Andy. I know you.”

The minute Andy turned to face him Leo put the pieces together. The distinctive shape of his face and
eyes and that always definable innocence proved him to have Down syndrome. And Andy was right. He did know him. He’d been involved in some parallel crime, as an innocent witness, the day Docia had “disappeared.” He had seen him briefly before someone had come to pick him up.

“That’s right, Andy. How are you, kiddo?” Leo looked around, trying to see if there was someone with Andy this time. “What are you doing here, Andy?”

“Looking for Officer Jackson. I’m his deputy.”

That made Leo grin. Andy mispronounced deputy, but far be it for him to correct him. Jackson had clearly taken a special interest in Andy if he was coming here to see him with any regularity.

“I’m sorry to tell you, Andy, but Jackson isn’t working today. He had to work late last night so he took the day off.”

“Oh.” He looked absolutely crestfallen. “He said I could turn on his siren. It’s very loud, but I’m not afraid.”

“That’s a very good thing. Nothing you need to be afraid of as long as you’re a deputy and on the right side of the law.”

Of course Leo wasn’t exactly choirboy material, but Jackson liked to carry on their friendship in an “ignorance is bliss” fashion. Back when Leo had been an army ranger and on the side of the white hats, he and Jackson had never had a difference of opinion on anything. They had raised Docia by themselves, Leo paying the majority of the bills while Jackson went to college and the Academy. But by the time Jackson had graduated from the Academy Leo had seen two tours in Afghanistan and was looking at a third if he didn’t ring out while he had a chance. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hack humping around seventy pounds of gear in the scorching desert heat, watching a man being blow up
right next to him after he was unlucky something else entirely.n when enough to step on a land mine. No. What had chapped his ass had been something else entirely.

The things they
weren’t
allowed to do. Protect villagers from gunrunners or other such bullies. Keep the local children from being forced to walk a field in order to test for land mines before the enemy moved forward. Or bomb-detecting dogs who were treated as “equipment” in the army, ferried onto planes not properly pressurized, heated, or cooled, and not given the rights of the true soldiers that they were. Including contented retirement with a loving family who would be given the funds for the animal’s room and board. Perhaps it was Jackson who had made him more sensitive to that. But more likely it was from his own eyewitness accounts of those dogs’ infinite bravery and devotion that saved lives. Outside of their handler’s praise and some food, they didn’t ask for much of anything else.

But the clincher had been the women. Whether it was coming into a village and seeing the remnants of a raid of killers and rapists and hearing those unforgettable wailing cries, or the frustration of female soldiers being mishandled and maltreated by a bunch of arrogant sadistic motherfuckers, he simply couldn’t abide being part of an army that let those things happen … and then let it slide by, neatly swept under a red-tape rug and a code of silence that, basically, victimized the woman all over again because she couldn’t bring her rapist to justice. Now granted, it didn’t happen on a constant basis, it all depended on who was investigating and just how important the soldier accused was to the unit. It had been the final straw for him. He’d gotten out of the army. From then on he’d set his own moral compass, a code of honor really, and gone from there. For a guy like him, mercenary just seemed the way to go. He’d just pick an underdog that appealed to that code
and hire himself out. He wasn’t Superman of course; he looked for compensation in order to pay the mortgage, buy some beer with a good dose of pay-per-view, and the occasional .44-caliber hollow-point bullet. But sometimes some jobs compensated for the lack of funds of others.

Now, because of the sometimes polar sides of the law each of them operated on, he and Jackson had agreed that, for the sake of their friendship, Leo wouldn’t talk about doing anything overtly illegal, and he wouldn’t do anything construed as misbehaving in Jackson’s jurisdiction.

He could live with that. He knew Jackson would be there when he needed him most, no matter what the circumstances. It was just his job to see that those circumstances never arose.

Since Jackson was the closest thing he had to a brother, Leo’s actual blood brothers being contemptible douches, he was inclined to do anything that might make life easier for him.

“Hey, since Jackson is AWOL at the moment, what do you say I take you to my place for breakfast? I’m pretty hungry and I’m just around the corner.” He hadn’t even been home yet since landing, so he’d have to hit the Price Chopper on the way.

“That sounds great!” Andy said eagerly. He followed Leo to his truck and they both got in. Leo stopped at the store and then went to his house. Actually, it was Docia’s house. Or used to be. She’d left it vacant in order to abandon all her loved ones and run off with some golden boy. The man could do no wrong in Docia’s estimation and Leo could swear he saw stars twinkling in her eyes when she looked at him. But after she’d moved out she’d let him move in and take over the mortgage. It was a nice little historical bung his shirtag.alow on a nice little historic street. She’d been slowly improving it with
Leo’s and Jackson’s help and he figured he’d probably pick up where they had left off. It wasn’t very big, but it was a damn sight better than his old apartment and it felt a little homier to boot. And it was nice to feel Docia’s whimsical touch to the place. It reminded him of her constant attempts to bring a feminine touch into their house as she was growing up. It was like having her there, even though she wasn’t.