Julie Walker - Born Wild

“But I haven’t finished speaking with my daughter,” her father announced, still trying to play the I’m-rich-and-entitled-and-you-don’t-scare-me card even though everyone in the elevator knew it was all just a show. Because even Eve, naïve, sheltered Eve could see the fear in her father’s face.

“I believe you’ve said just about everything that needs sayin’,” Mac informed him. “Now, please be so kind as to step back.”

The words might’ve been phrased as a request, but Mac’s tone was more in the line of do-as-I-say-or-find-yourself-eating-my-fist.

Her father obeyed. But before the silver doors slid shut completely, Blake got in one final, parting shot.

“And if someone’s trying to kill you,” he yelled, “start looking at your father! That business deal he got us involved in? Well, it’s sunk! We’re all bankrupt! And your inheritance and life-insurance policy are probably looking pretty sweet right now!”

Okay, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She tossed her head back and cried out with her all her fury and betrayal, all her grief and hurt. Billy raked her into his arms, pressing her face against his chest, whispering in her ear, “Shh, sweetheart. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, and nobody’s gonna hurt you again.”

Oh, if only she could believe him…

Chicago Police Station, District 2, Second Floor, Homicide Division

10:45 p.m.

Bill stared down into his Styrofoam coffee cup. Its contents reflected his mood. Black. And bitter…

“They still back there?” Mac asked after returning from the vending machine. He ripped open a box of raisins, dumped a handful into his palm and tossed the lot to the back of his mouth before slumping onto the bench beside Bill. Bench? Ha! That was a nice name for the mesh and metal ass-cheek-torture device that was pushed up against the drab, taupe-colored wall.

Taking a quick swig from his cup, Bill winced at the acrid taste—as far as he could figure, the only people who liked their bean juice stronger than covert operators were cops—before glancing across the sea of messy desks that made up the bullpen of Chicago’s overworked homicide department. The place looked like an office supply store had thrown up. Post-its were stuck everywhere, white boards were covered with pictures and notes and magnets, and inboxes were overflowing with thick manila file folders. The air smelled like years of desperation, frustration, and sweat…and stale doughnuts.

Yeah, doughnuts. Stereotypes were stereotypes because they were usually true.

The late hour meant the floor was nearly deserted, though one detective still sat over in the corner wearing a half-undone tie and wilted suit jacket—apparently that was the standard uniform for Chicago’s murder-cop force—and henpecking his keyboard with the index fingers on each hand. The sharp, intermittent click-clack was setting Bill’s teeth on edge.

Or maybe it was the fact that, for the last hour, Eve and Delilah had been MIA, sequestered in separate interrogation rooms, getting grilled over the details of the stick-up and murder at Delilah’s and that nasty scene up in her father’s condo. And his not being able to check on Eve to make sure she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown was making him…well…teeter on the edge of having a nervous breakdown.

“Yeah.” He reached into his hip pocket to pull out his trusty bottle of Pepto. If anything deserved an antacid chaser it was that coffee. “They’re still being questioned.”

And damn, but the thought of Eve having to relive this awful day was enough to have his ulcer doing hat tricks that had nothing to do with the strength and acidity of the police station java. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle of pink medicine, he tossed back a mouthful. The chalky liquid was a welcome relief to his burning stomach. Too bad there wasn’t a similar cure for his blistering thoughts or the hot ache in his heart.

Poor Eve…

She’d been through so much in less than twelve hours. Hell, more than that. She’d been through so much over the past three months. Wait, back up and rewind again. Because after that little exposé in her father’s penthouse, he realized she’d been the victim of years upon years of schemes and plots. And, to his utter shock and perhaps horror, he realized she hadn’t really thrown him over for Blake Parish as he’d always thought. At least not in the traditional sense. It’d been her father who pushed her at the man.

Then again…she had ended up marrying Blake…

So, yeah. There was still that.

Why, Eve? Why? Even after today’s revelations it seemed it was the same ol’ question spinning through his cerebral cortex.

Mac interrupted his dismayed musings. “Did you see those photos they were talkin’ about?”

“Yeah.” He blew out a breath. It ruffled the hair that’d fallen over his forehead. “But not until months after they’d been published.” One of his teammates who’d been sick and tired of his hangdog face had shoved one of the articles under his nose in an attempt to snap him out of his funk. Unfortunately, it’d had the opposite effect. Because even though at the time he’d already known he’d lost Eve forever—she’d been married for two weeks by then—seeing her in another man’s arms, seeing her laughing and smiling had ground Bill’s already broken heart into a fine powder. “Apparently during the time those stories were running in the papers, I was cut off from the world.”

Mac lifted a brow.

“I was drowning—sometimes literally—in the third phase of SEAL training,” he explained. “And by the time I was able to come up for air, I discovered Eve’s phone had been disconnected, and her letters had stopped.” Of course, now Bill understood it was because she’d been caught red-handed out with another man, and she undoubtedly didn’t want to have to come face-to-face with his anger and betrayal. She’d likely thought it was easier just to cut off communication altogether. Make a clean break as opposed to dealing with the drama.

Damnit, Eve! Why didn’t you at least try to talk to me? Why didn’t you give me a chance to listen to an explanation? Didn’t I deserve that?

Of course, coulda, woulda, shoulda. It was all water under the bridge now. Or was it? Did this change things? Change the way he thought about her? Felt about her? He looked inside himself, at all the years of hurt, at all the years of wondering, why, goddamnit, why? And realized he didn’t know. The truth of the matter was she betrayed him and the vows they made to each other the moment she agreed to go out on that date…

Shit on a stick. Why the hell does life, and matters of the heart in particular, have to be so craptastically complicated? Seriously. That wasn’t a rhetorical question. He was really throwing that silent inquiry out into the ether, waiting for the universe to answer him.

A couple of seconds ticked by, but he heard nothing but radio silence. Go figure. In his experience, the universe was, more times than not, a total wad when it came to replying to the big questions.

“And then two days before I was due to finally get leave—I’d planned to fly to her university to figure out just what the hell was going on—I received an invitation to her wedding,” he finished the story in one long, weary breath. Once again, he glanced across the expanse of desks to the gray metal door leading to the interrogation rooms.

“Harsh,” Mac muttered, and Bill snorted.

“Yeah. You might call it that.” Or you might call it friggin’ heartbreaking. Lord knows his ticker had damn near exploded inside his chest cavity when he opened that envelope. To this day, he could still see that red and white invitation, still quote it word for word: With a joyful heart, Patrick Alastair Edens requests the honor of your presence at the marriage of his daughter Evelyn Rose Edens to Jonathon Blake Parish. The ceremony will take place at half past two o’clock on the afternoon of blah, blah, blah…

Christ.

Why had she sent him that awful invitation? He’d never taken her to be spiteful. Not the Eve he’d known then, and not the Eve he knew now. Unless…perhaps she’d thought it would be a signal for him to come crash the party? Perhaps she’d thought—

“Then again,” Mac mused, his lips pursed in consideration, “sounds to me like she might have been manipulated into the marriage. After those articles ran in the papers, perhaps she felt there were expectations placed on her. You know, from friends and family. Maybe she thought she didn’t have another choice.”

Bill wanted to tell Mac he was wrong. That she’d had another choice, goddamnit, because she’d had him. But the wide set of double doors connecting the elevator bank to the bullpen burst open, revealing the deep frown of none other than Chief Washington himself. Directly on his heels were Blake Parish and Patrick Edens.

At some point, Blake had changed his blood-soaked shirt for a fresh button-down and a linen sport coat. But the getup looked a bit ridiculous considering the man’s nose was three times its normal size and both of his eyes were swollen and turning a painful-looking purple. Bill didn’t even try to hide his gleeful smile. And it only spread wider when he discovered Patrick Edens, freshly attired in a light summer sweater, was trying to stare holes through him.

“You better redirect that gaze, cocksucker,” he called to Edens. “Or else I might just decide to jump up and put a limp in that Jimmy Stewart swagger of yours.”

“Can it, Reichert,” Washington barked, just as the doors belched open again, admitting two gentlemen wearing pinstripe suits, shiny handmade loafers, and carrying briefcases.

Ah, yes. The ambulance-chasers. Although, Bill would bet a dollar to anyone’s dime that these two overdressed, and no doubt overpaid lawyers had never chased an ambulance, or anything else for that matter, in their entire lives.

“Thank God you’re here,” Edens said to the men, studiously avoiding Bill’s gaze as Washington led the group on a circuitous route through the desks in an attempt to bypass Bill and Mac’s position by the wall.

Probably a good idea, Chief, Bill inwardly admitted. Because the reality was it wouldn’t take much, maybe just a whiff of Edens’s overpowering cologne, for him to follow through on that threat he’d just made.

Of course, he was careful to make sure none of this showed on his face when Washington glanced at him over his shoulder. Instead, he lifted a brow, letting his eyes drift to the lawyers before returning his gaze to Washington and calling, “What was that I mentioned earlier about me being able to say I told you so?”

Washington thrust out his lower lip all pugnacious-like and glared with those black eyes that seemed to see straight into a man’s soul. Bill had always kind of figured the role of Sergeant Foley played by Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman was modeled after Washington.

“What did I just say, Reichert?” Washington bellowed.

He grinned cheekily. “About what, Chief?”

“About canning it,” Washington barked.

“Um,” Bill twisted up his face like the IQ fairy had passed him by on Extra Points Day. “That I should do so?”

“Exactly,” Washington said, holding the gray door leading to the interrogation wing wide so his train of murderers, manipulators, and, worse, lawyers, could precede him. “But don’t you leave,” the police chief added before following the group. “After I see these, uh, gentlemen in for questioning, I’m gonna want to have a word with you.”

“I’ll be right here, Chief,” he promised.

The detective pecking at his keyboard spared the group a brief glance before they disappeared behind the door. Then he went back to glaring at his computer screen. And when Bill turned to Mac, he found the man’s expression was as amused as Washington’s had been irritated.

“I dealt with a lot of police chiefs during my time as a fed,” Mac drawled. “But I never came across one with quite the…eh…what is that particular aura that hangs around our intrepid Chief Washington? I can’t quite put my finger on it?”

“It’s one part don’t fuck with me,” Bill supplied helpfully.

“And the other part?” Mac queried.

“Don’t fuck with me.”

Mac chuckled. “Yeah, I think you nailed it.”