Frisk Me (3 page)

“See you on Monday, Officer.”

Luc swallowed against the surge of panic. He couldn’t do this. He
wouldn’t
do this. It was one thing to be a local hero. Another thing entirely to become a “household name” as Ava had indicated. The last thing Luc needed was an even brighter spotlight on him, shining in places that should remain in the dark forever.

“I don’t like it either,” Brinker said gruffly, displaying a rare perceptiveness. “But I can tell you right now, there’s no point in fighting it. Your father’s replacement made it clear that this was an order. Not a request.”

Fuck.
Fuck
. If he were Anthony, or even Vincent, he would have pushed back. Would have shoved his principles down Brinker’s throat, superior or not.

But Luc wasn’t his brothers. Luc wasn’t a hotheaded hotshot. And he had far too much respect for the NYPD to pull a tantrum.

He would do his duty. He
always
did his duty. With pride.

Still, he couldn’t stop the groan of dread in anticipation of what lay ahead. Luc glanced down at the crumpled piece of paper that Ava had thrust at him. There was a coffee stain in one corner, and something that looked like lipstick smeared across the front, but there was no mistaking what he was looking at.

It was a three-year-old parking ticket.

She’d never paid it.

O
utside the precinct, Ava made it only a block and a half before necessity demanded that she stop.

With a quick glance to make sure
he
wasn’t following, she ducked off into the alcove of an apartment building entry and made the exchange that nearly every New York career woman was well acquainted with:

The shoe swap.

Out of her roomy
I-can-fit-my-whole-life-in-here
handbag came the beat-up flip-flops from Target.

Into that same handbag went the black stilettos. Also from Target.

Ava inhaled gratefully as her toes wiggled in happy relief at being freed from the pinching patent leather nightmare.

She’d have happily sent her gritty contacts the same way of the high heels (far,
far
away), but she’d very deliberately left her glasses at home today to avoid such temptation.

Prime-time news anchors didn’t wear glasses.

Of course, they didn’t wear their hair in messy ponytails either, but that didn’t stop Ava from pulling her hair—in which she’d spent half an hour creating loose, hair-sprayed curls—into a messy pony.

By the time she made it to the van, she looked a lot less
This is Ava Sims, reporting for CBC news
and a lot more, well, Ava
Nobody
Sims from Darrington, Oklahoma.

Luckily, the man waiting for her didn’t care.

Mihail Petrov was leaning against the CBC van smoking a cigarette, his severe features schooled into their usual indifference even as sharp blue eyes took in every detail of Ava’s appearance.

He blew out a long stream of smoke, and she stifled the urge to remind him—
again
—of the hazards of smoking. Mihail didn’t
do
friendly advice. Unless he was the one giving it. And even then, it was rarely friendly.

But she loved him anyway.

“Knew you wouldn’t make it,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette from her bare toes to messy hair that was completely at odds with her prim pencil skirt and no-nonsense blouse.

“I made it long enough,” she said, elbowing him aside so she could pull a bottled water out of the cooler they kept in the van.

“So they’re going for it?” His slight Bulgarian accent made this sound more like a statement than an actual question.

“They didn’t really have a choice.” Ava tipped the bottle back and took three large gulps. “This meeting was a formality more than anything else. This BS story was handed down from the top on both sides, apparently.”

“Huh,” Mihail grunted. “So they weren’t excited about it?”

“No,” Ava mused, tapping her fingernails against the water bottle. “They weren’t.”

Which she found surprising. Ava had yet to encounter anyone who wasn’t secretly thrilled to be at the center of attention, even when they threw up token protests.

And she would have thought a cop at the bottom of the NYPD food chain should have been a sure bet for delivering an, “aw shucks, I’m just a regular guy, but if you
really
think it’s a good story…”

But Ava’s reporter instincts told her Luc Moretti’s hesitation had been real. And actually,
hesitation
was too soft a word. He’d been
pissed
. And something else too. She tapped her fingernails more slowly as she replayed the encounter.

For a split second Ava could have sworn that Luc Moretti looked…scared.

But of
what
? The man had gone above the call of duty and was getting recognized for it. She could see him being embarrassed. Maybe annoyed. But scared…

Something was off there.

Ava took another gulp of water.

But on the plus side, his reaction to her had been everything she’d secretly hoped for.

As much as Ava was dreading this bogus, fluff-piece of a story, she
had
been looking forward to seeing his face when he saw her again. She only wished she would have stayed behind to see his livid reaction to that unpaid parking ticket she’d thrust at him.

Ava grinned at the thought. She wasn’t even sure what had prompted her to bring the ticket along in the first place. As much as she enjoyed pushing people’s buttons to get at what made them tick, this move had been risky, even for her. But she’d done plenty of Googling to see just how bad an unpaid ticket was.

And in the end, she hadn’t been able to resist needling him. She too-well remembered all that righteous indignation three years ago. Getting under the skin of what had to be the most upstanding cop on the planet was a delicious prospect.

And he’d let her walk away, so she must have at least been
partially
right about being able to get away with it.

Then again, Luc probably didn’t know that the unpaid ticket was no one-off fluke. Her eyes flitted to the back pocket of the passenger seat, which was bulging with small bits of paper. At least half of which were likely parking tickets for this very van.

Mihail watched the direction of her gaze before giving a little smirk, correctly reading her mind. “Freedom of the press, baby.”

Welllll…

As Officer Moretti had so sanctimoniously informed her during their heated altercation three years ago, freedom of the press didn’t
exactly
dignify breaking traffic laws…repeatedly.

But such explanations would go unheeded by Mihail. He’d been in the U.S. for almost twenty years, and a citizen for over half that thanks to a tumultuous marriage to a Queens-born bartender, but he was known to be a bit innovative with his interpretation of things like the Constitution and the law.

“Where to now, babe?” Mihail asked, flicking his cigarette to the pavement.

Ava put the cap back on her water bottle and rolled her shoulders. “Let’s head back to the station.”

Mihail’s eyebrows lifted. “You never want to go back to the station.”

Ava pulled down the visor and looked at the mirror there, checking for lipstick on her teeth. Yup. There it was. A rosy smear across her perfectly straight (thanks, orthodontics), perfectly white (thanks, network-sponsored whitening sessions) teeth.

She snapped the visor back up in irritation. She kept waiting for the day that looking perfectly put together became effortless. She’d been waiting a long-ass time.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I
want
to go back to the station,” she griped to Mihail. “But this story is the big-time. I knew when they gave it to me that it would mean more face time with the higher-ups.”

“So you think this is it?” he asked.

“Hmm?” she asked, distracted.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You know, it.
The
story.”

“It better be,” she muttered.

Mihail gave her a look, and she knew he was dying to start their usual argument. But for once he managed to bite his tongue, and instead of picking a fight, he pulled out one of his ever-present gummy worms from the bag in the middle console. He chewed grumpily.

Ava’s relentless quest to be a CBC anchorwoman was the one area where she and Mihail didn’t see eye to eye. It was cliché, and she knew it. The small-town Midwest girl dreaming of the bright lights and fame in the big city.

But she’d been chasing the dream since she’d moved to New York at twenty-two.

She wasn’t going to stop now.

Even if a little part of her sometimes whispered that it wasn’t
her
dream.

Ava started to bite her fingernail, then jerked her hand away when she realized it would chip the manicure she could never seem to keep looking fresh for more than twelve hours.

“Have you called your parents yet?” Mihail asked.

“Not yet. Tonight, maybe.”

“I’m sure
they’ll
be excited.”

“Don’t,” she snapped, catching his emphasis and knowing what it implied. Mihail had only met her parents once (disaster), but he’d heard enough phone calls over the course of his and Ava’s friendship to have formed a strong opinion on her family.

To his way of thinking, it wasn’t
Ava’s
dream that had her chasing the anchor chair. He thought it was her parents’ dream. With maybe a
dash
of pressure from her talk-show-host sister and foreign-correspondent brother.

Maybe he was a little bit right. A
little
bit.

In the same way the Moretti family was NYPD royalty (she’d done her homework), the Sims clan was broadcast journalism royalty. Or so her father had declared.

Her parents had been co-anchors in Darlington back in the day, and apparently the popular husband-wife team had been slated for bigger things in New York.

Until Ava’s mom had gotten pregnant with Ava’s brother.

Dreams dashed.

Or so the story went. Ava still didn’t quite understand why they couldn’t have pursued the NYC thing, even with her mom’s pregnancy.
Plenty
of anchormen and -women had family.

But then, that wouldn’t have given them something to complain about for thirty years.

It also wouldn’t have given them an excuse over never making the big time.

So they’d done what any pushy, interfering parents would do. They’d transferred their dreams to their children.

Ava’s brother and sister had fallen into line marvelously. Miranda had her own current events talk show in Los Angeles, and Daniel was a foreign correspondent for a competing network, although never in a country that was actually relevant in current events. He didn’t cover war or famine or natural disasters. No, Danny was well on his way to establishing a name for himself posing as an expert in art or food or wine, or whatever was popular in whichever country he was in. Emphasis on
posing
.

Her parents were proud of all their children. Their annual Christmas card was an embarrassing brag fest.

But Ava knew that
she
was their darling. The one who was really living the dream. The one who would do what they hadn’t been able to:

National Anchorwoman.

And this story would get her there. Ava was sure of it.

“I can’t believe we have to hang out with the fucking five-oh for two months,” Mihail grumbled.

“I don’t like it either,” Ava admitted. “But this isn’t your average cop.”

Mihail glanced at her and wiggled his eyebrows.

She punched him. “I don’t mean it like that.”

“Sure you don’t. I’ve seen pictures.”

Ava pulled out her phone and pulled up her video player before shoving the phone in his face. “Yeah, but have you seen…?”

Mihail made a grunting sound and tried to push her hand away. “I know, I know, I’ve seen it.”

Ava leaned toward him, holding the screen out so they could both watch it. For all of Mihail’s fussing, he didn’t look away.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Mihail?”

“Grainy, shitty-ass movie recording?”

“Pretend for a second that you’re not a damn cameraman.” She pointed. “That is Luc Moretti, son of a previous police commissioner. Handsome huh? Oh, and what’s that? He’s running to the railing and jumping headfirst into the stank East River? Whatever could he be doing…oh look!”

Even though she’d seen the video dozens, if not hundreds, of times, both she and Mihail watched the grainy footage wobble as the tourist with the phone dashes to the railing where Luc had gone over, showing him swimming easily toward a small ladder.

A tiny pigtailed little girl is in tow.

But the story doesn’t stop there. She and Mihail both watched as Luc easily hauls himself and the little girl out of the water.

Ava’s eyes watered as they always do when it becomes apparent that the little girl wasn’t breathing.

She’d seen the videos too often to count, but every damned time she felt her heart stop and then swell as Luc Moretti leans down and begins giving the little girl CPR.

Ava let out a gush of relieved air when the little girl turns her head and coughs up water, before being scooped up by her hysterical mother as Officer Moretti sits back on his heels.

The tourist holding the camera focuses mainly on the reunion between mother and daughter, but Ava always watched Luc in the corner of the screen. Watched as his chin dipped to his heaving chest, his palms resting against his thighs.

His face lifted, and he looked at the girl, and there was relief, obviously.

But there was something else in his expression too. Ava lifted her thumbnail and bit.
There was something else.

She wanted to know what it was.

She
would
find out what it was.

“Yeah, yeah it’s great,” Mihail muttered, pushing her phone away from his face and interrupting her thoughts.

“Right?” Ava poked him in his bony side with a finger. “It couldn’t be more perfect if it was a Spider-Man movie.”

“Spider-Man? That’s not wimpy Peter Parker; that guy is Clark Kent.”

Ava ignored this. She didn’t need Mihail’s reminder that Luc was tall, broad shouldered, and gorgeously dark-haired. She was doing her best to forget that little fact.

“Okay, now look at this one…”

“I told you, I’ve seen the damned videos.”

Ava pulled up the second video anyway. This one was shorter. Less than a minute, but it was every bit as poignant.

Taken a couple months ago in the middle of a late-winter cold snap, the frail figure of a homeless man sitting in the deserted Diamond District, his back against the wall of a long-closed jewelry shop, huddled against cold.

The now familiar figure of Officer Moretti approaches, his footsteps slowing as he spots the man. The video has no sound, but it’s easy to see Luc crouching down, speaking to the man, his face kind, his smile easy.

The conversation apparently doesn’t go the way Luc wants, because for a moment Luc’s chin drops against his chest, as though in defeat. Then Luc moves, shrugging out of his winter coat.

Luc extends the jacket to the man, who doesn’t reach for it. Then, incredibly, Luc creeps closer, gently maneuvering the man so that the warm coat is wrapped around him.

As though sensing the camera on him, the homeless man slowly turns his head, finds the camera before giving a heart-wrenching smile as he clenches the coat to his shoulders.

Officer Moretti stands, wearing nothing but his uniform as it starts to snow.