The Rookie: A Romantic Suspense Standalone (The Intelligence Unit Book 1) Read online

  Only a woman lay unconscious on the narrow stretch of carpet, a small but very real pool of blood beneath a wound at her temple, and Xander’s body moved before his brain even realized the command to do so.

  “Woman down,” he said, at the same time Dade said, “Clear.” Holstering his weapon, he yanked the pair of nitrile gloves he always had in his pocket over both hands, then knelt carefully beside the victim.

  His exhale came fast and hard. “She has a pulse.”

  Relief flickered through Dade’s dark eyes for the briefest of seconds before she reached for the radio on her shoulder to give Quinn and Luke the all clear. Xander stabilized the victim by cradling her head in his palms, trying not to let his gaze linger on the jagged gash spanning from her temple all the way into her matted blond hair.

  She stirred at the contact, her eyes flying wide a half-second later.

  “Whoa, okay, it’s okay,” Xander said in a rush. “My name is Xander Matthews, and I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you.”

  “He said…he was here, and he said…” Her voice trembled with raw fear, her body following suit beneath Xander’s hands, but nope. Not today.

  He parked himself directly in her line of vision, holding her glassy eye contact with his own steadier stare. “I’ve got you, now. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  The woman blinked, her body relaxing after a beat. Quinn and Luke crossed the threshold into the tiny bedroom less than five seconds later, working briskly to complete the Rapid Trauma Assessment that deemed a C-collar, backboard, and an immediate trip to Remington Mem necessary.

  “On my count. One, two, three,” Luke said, lifting the backboard in perfect tandem with Quinn and moving it to the gurney they’d had to leave in the hallway for the sake of space. All the better, really, since this place was clearly a crime scene.

  Speaking of which…

  “We’re going to need to figure out what happened here,” Xander said to Dade, who nodded her agreement as they followed about ten paces behind Quinn and Luke, heading back out into the muggy night.

  “I’ll call it in. One of us should—”

  Her words cut short at the sight of a redhead in a skirt and blouse that looked like they cost the rough equivalent of Xander’s monthly rent, beelining directly toward the ambo.

  “Amour! Oh, my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?”

  The sound of the woman’s voice sailed straight past Xander’s Kevlar and into his chest. No way. No fucking way. It couldn’t be.

  Quinn stepped in to intercept the woman before she could get too close. “Ma’am, I need you to calm down and take a step back, please.”

  “No, I will not calm down, and I sure as hell won’t step back,” she said, hands planted against her pinup-model hips as she glared at Quinn, and God damn it.

  Tara Kingston was in the middle of his crime scene.

  2

  Adrenaline replaced the fear that had taken up residence in Tara’s chest the second she’d seen all the flashing lights in front of Amour’s house. But at least the buzz of energy taking a swipe at her composure right now was familiar territory—occupational hazard of arguing with people for a living—and as nice as the paramedic standing in front of her seemed to be, the woman was entirely misguided if she thought Tara was going to sit idly by.

  “Tara Kingston, DA’s office,” she clipped out. Oh, God, Amour looked so frail and helpless strapped to that gurney, her head bundled in a pile of blood-tinged gauze. That bastard Sansone had to be behind this. “She’s a CI,” Tara added, much more quietly, because she couldn’t be too careful. Or, apparently, careful enough. “One of mine.”

  The paramedic—Q. Slater, according to the name stitched over the RFD logo on her shirt—flicked a heartbeat’s worth of a glance over Tara’s shoulder before saying, “Okay, but she’s got a head injury and we need to get her to Mem. Quickly.”

  Tara’s fear made a comeback tour, tightening her rib cage beneath her slate gray blouse.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Sorry, but it’s family only for transport,” the other paramedic, a guy with light brown skin and a serious voice that brooked no argument—not even from adrenaline-soaked attorneys—said quietly. “Plus, we need to keep her stable, which means we need room to work.”

  Wait, how had he opened the back of the ambulance so fast? “You don’t understand,” Tara tried again as they collapsed the gurney’s wheels with a hard clack. “She called me. Instead of nine-one-one, she called me. She doesn’t have anyone else she can trust.”

  The female paramedic paused. “You can follow us to Mem if you want.”

  “Actually, she can’t.”

  The male voice coming from behind Tara made her pulse stutter as she turned toward its source of origin. But the police officer standing in front of her didn’t make sense. That voice, somehow both rough around the edges and quiet all at once, belonged to someone the DA’s office had considered prosecuting. Someone she’d initially pushed to pursue. Granted, it had been two years ago, but the case had been pretty unforgettable. Arson. Fraud. Murder.

  And Xander Matthews had been smack dab in the middle of the whole thing…

  Right up until he’d broken the whole case wide open and helped the Intelligence Unit catch a killer.

  “Xander? What are you doing here?” Tara blurted, her cheeks instantly heating at her lack of decorum.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Ms. Kingston.” The muscle that pulled across Xander’s unfairly chiseled jawline translated the words into a lie, but Tara didn’t have the time or inclination to apologize for her iffy brain-to-mouth filter before he continued. “I’m here because it’s my job. And if you have any information on this assault, I’m going to need you to stay here to make a statement.”

  “No.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Okay, so that might’ve come out a liiiiiittle bit strong. But—no, no, no—the paramedics already had Amour in the back of the ambulance and were less than two minutes away from getting out of there, and Tara needed to be with her, to make sure she got anything she could possibly need.

  To make sure she didn’t die.

  She scooped in a deep breath. “I need to stay with Amour. She’s my responsibility.”

  “You are aware that this wasn’t an accident, right?” Xander asked, his dark brown brows lifted so high that they nearly disappeared into his just-long-enough-to-look-hot-instead-of-scruffy hairline.

  But not even his hotness, which had grown exponentially since she’d last seen him (along with his shoulders, holy shit) was going to distract her right now.

  “Since I was on the phone with her right after it happened, yes. I’m very aware of that.”

  Funny, he seemed totally unmoved by her Lawyer Voice. “Then you’re also aware that if you were on the phone with her right after this happened, you really need to give a statement as soon as possible so we can try to find the bastard who hurt her.”

  And shit. “She doesn’t have any family nearby, and she won’t trust anyone else. I need to be with her in case she needs something,” Tara said, even though Xander wasn’t entirely wrong.

  As if he’d sensed her blip of hesitation, he doubled down, his arms crossing over the front of his body armor. “You need to stay.”

  “Why don’t we do this,” said the other officer, a petite Black woman who clearly outranked Xander, if the way he’d just lowered his chin was any indicator. Not that it erased his high-level frown. “I’m going to take a gamble and guess Amour is working something active with you right now. Is that correct?”

  The officer, whose nameplate read L. Dade, kept her voice barely above a murmur, and Tara nodded.

  “That means we do need to act quickly, since we all want the same thing, which is to catch the person who hurt her. At the same time”—Dade lifted a hand to silence the argument that Tara had been concocting, and whoa, that was a powerful, Mom-level, don’t-even-think-about-interrupting-me stare—“you are her
point of contact, Ms. Kingston, and she’s probably going to want a familiar face at the hospital once she’s cared for.”

  Tara swallowed. “She’s going to be terrified.” Neither Dade nor Xander argued, making Tara’s stomach clench. “She’s barely eighteen. I really need to go.”

  This time, Dade sent The Stare at Xander, who looked primed to argue, before saying, “And we really do need a statement…which Officer Matthews is going to get from you before he escorts you to Remington Memorial.”

  Xander’s mouth fell open for a split second before he recovered. “You want me to take her statement and escort her to Remington Mem?”

  “I do.” Dade moved over to the ambulance, thumping the back door twice with her palm to signal an all clear and send the paramedics on their way. “It’s going to take the doctors a while to work on Amour, and I know Tess Riley personally. She’s the best emergency physician going, but she’s not going to let anyone see Amour until they’re done, so you have a little time to spare. And since you”—she slid a glance at Xander, who was looking more and more displeased by the minute—“seem to know Ms. Kingston already, you can take her statement and bring her to the hospital. I’ll call Sergeant Sinclair to get the Intelligence Unit involved and wait here for the crime scene unit I’m sure he’ll roll out. Matthews, you and Ms. Kingston should keep your eyes open for whichever detectives he sends to Mem to get them in the loop. Did I miss anything?”

  Tara blinked. “No,” she said slowly. “Sinclair knows Amour. She gave us the intel that led to a huge arrest, and she’s supposed to testify in six weeks against a guy who wouldn’t hesitate to try to hurt her to shut her up.”

  A frown formed at the corners of Dade’s mouth. “I’ll be sure to let him know you’re making a statement and that you’ll be headed to the hospital.”

  “Thank you,” Tara said, then turned toward Xander. “Can we get this over with so I can go?”

  She heard her impatience only after it had left her mouth, biting her lip even though it was too late to trap the words so she could rearrange them into something more polite. “I mean, I just—”

  “I get it.” Lifting one shoulder partway before letting it drop, he gestured to the police cruiser parked in front of the house. “We can do this in the car, if you want. It’s probably more comfortable there. Cooler, and all.”

  In that moment, Tara realized that her blouse was plastered to her body in no less than three places, two of which were her underarms and the third being the too-curvy bust she did her best to hide under normal circumstances.

  Xander, of course, looked totally unfazed by the heat even though he had Kevlar molded to half his beautiful body.

  “Fine,” she said, making her chin stay level even though she wanted nothing more than to blush her way into the ground. Xander led the way to the cruiser, popping the passenger side door before moving around the vehicle to the driver’s side, and Tara sent up a tiny prayer of thanks that the trip kept him from hearing her near-orgasmic moan as the cool interior air hit her skin.

  Situating his lean frame in the driver’s seat, he pulled out a notepad and pen. “Okay. Why don’t we start with where you were when Amour called you tonight?”

  “Work,” Tara said, as automatically as breathing. “Well, I guess technically, I was leaving work. I was on my way to my car, outside the DA’s office, downtown.”

  Xander was all concentration as he wrote. “And what time was this?”

  “Nine thirty. Maybe a few minutes after.”

  Something that looked a lot like surprise flickered through his light green stare, but he didn’t give it voice. “What did she say?”

  “I knew right away that something was wrong,” Tara said, a chill skating over her forearms at the memory of how Amour’s voice had trembled. “She sounded frightened. She asked me to help her.”

  Tara’s voice caught on the last two words, and damn it, she couldn’t lose control over this. Not now, and definitely not in front of Xander, who suddenly had the patience of a saint to go with those sinful shoulders.

  She cleared her throat and mentally kicked her own ass. “I put her on hold and dialed nine-one-one, then patched her through. I was worried she couldn’t do it on her own, and I didn’t want to lose her.”

  Xander nodded. He didn’t prompt her or push, and even though Tara knew it was Interview 101 to use as little guidance as possible with a witness, his calm, comforting gaze took a tiny sliver of the tension out of her chest.

  “She said she was hurt. The operator asked where she was, and she said she was here. Home.” Tara looked at the dilapidated house, with the blue lights throwing eerie shadows over the broken porch boards and the splintered doorframe she could just make out from her spot in the cruiser, her gut dipping. “She said there was a man, but she couldn’t tell if he was still there. That her head felt funny. She didn’t say much after that. Oh!” The memory slammed into Tara with a burst of awareness. “She said something about what the man had said to her, but she didn’t say what it was. She just said, ‘he told me not to’.”

  At that, Xander’s brows lifted. “But she didn’t say what he told her not to do?”

  “No, she must have passed out.” Tara stuffed back the fear that went with the thought. She had to be strong. She had to. “But Amour is supposed to testify against Ricky Sansone next month, and if he found out she’s the informant who gave us the intel that led to his arrest and that she’s testifying against him, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.”

  “What makes you think that?” Xander asked, and what? He had to be kidding.

  “Um, don’t you think the whole murder/gun-running thing is a bit of a giveaway?”

  Xander paused. “I think it’s something to explore, yeah. But Amour knows Sansone, right?”

  “Of course,” Tara said slowly. “She works for him at his club.”

  “So, if he’d kicked in her door and tried to kill her, she’d probably recognize him,” Xander led, and Tara connected the dots with a curse.

  “And if she’d recognized him, she definitely would’ve said so on the phone.” Still… “Sansone is smart, though. He’s out on a million-dollar bond. As badly as he’d want to do the job himself, if he knew Amour was an informant, he wouldn’t risk getting caught.”

  “He also probably wouldn’t have left her alive,” Xander said, his expression softening at Tara’s wince. “Sorry. Did she say anything else that you can think of?”

  “No.”

  Xander shook his head. “Any detail you can remember, even a small one, that might help ID who did this to her?”

  Tara’s frustration bubbled, and she took a deep breath to counter it. “No.”

  “A background noise, a voice, maybe? Anything like that?”

  Just like that, the last strand of Tara’s patience snapped. “No. Look, pull the nine-one-one recording if you don’t trust me. Then you’ll have the whole thing, word for word, complete with background noises and voices and Amour begging for help you can’t give her.”

  Tears pricked her eyes, hot and begging to fall, and oh, no. Not tonight. She would not lose control of this situation, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be weak enough to cry in front of Xander goddamn Matthews.

  A beat passed, then another, before Tara couldn’t stand the ear-punching silence or his wide, unreadable stare any longer. “I’ve told you everything I can remember. Can we go to the hospital now? Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice as indecipherable as his stare as he closed his notebook and turned away from her.

  3

  Xander sat in the luxurious leather passenger seat of Tara’s BMW and stared straight at the windshield. They’d traded less than a dozen syllables since he’d finished taking her statement, and those had only included necessary back-and-forth about taking her car to Remington Memorial so she’d have a way home. She hadn’t apologized for lighting into him—not that Xander had expected her to. Yeah, he’d only been trying to do his job when
he’d questioned her, and yeah again, sometimes the small details that seemed inconsequential could blow a case wide open. But in his eagerness to catch the asshole who’d assaulted Amour, he’d lost sight of the fact that Tara had been on the phone with her directly after it had happened. Listening to someone she clearly cared about in pain. Frightened. Maybe even dying.

  Tara might’ve been unrelentingly tough every other time Xander had clapped eyes on her—including when she’d tried to have him brought up on a laundry list of criminal charges two years ago—but in that moment, she’d been vulnerable. Enough to bring tears to her big, brown eyes.

  Tears he had put there, albeit inadvertently, and damn it, he needed an olive branch.

  “So, ah. Your car is really nice,” Xander said, and Christ, as far as olive branches went, that was barely a twig. Also, a colossal understatement, since his ass was currently parked in a seat that had programmable lumbar support and a built-in cooling system, in a vehicle that had probably cost more than he’d made in the last two years combined. Maybe three.

  Tara blinked and sent him a lightning-fast glance of surprise before saying, “Thank you.”

  Her delivery was a little on the prim side, but since she hadn’t said “fuck you” instead of “thank you”, Xander took the tiny victory. “How long have you had it?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted into a hint of a sardonic smile. “You don’t have to make small talk with me, Xander. I appreciate the courtesy, but I know you probably don’t like me very much.”

  “That’s a little extreme,” he said, unable to tell if he was more shocked or turned on by her lack of tolerance for anything resembling bullshit.