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

  With that, she headed past the exam room door and slid the privacy curtain aside. Her pulse took an immediate roller coaster ride at the sight of Amour on the gurney in the center of the room, the dim lights casting dark shadows beneath her eyes, deepening the bruises already forming there. Her blond hair was matted and pulled back, yielding to the mass of gauze covering the right side of her face, and Tara choked down the noise her throat wanted to make.

  “Hey, Amour,” she murmured, marshaling her voice to steadiness she sure as shit didn’t feel. “Are you up for visitors?”

  The young woman blinked her eyes open, looking startled. “Tara?”

  “It’s me,” Tara assured her, moving swiftly to the gurney to scoop up Amour’s hand. Damn it, she was trembling. “I’m right here with Detectives Walker and Garza, from Intelligence. Do you remember them?”

  Amour bit her lip. “Yeah.” Her eyes darted to Xander, who had hung back behind Isabella. “I remember you, too. You were there. Holding my head, after.”

  Xander took one step forward, but still stayed far from Amour’s personal space. “Yes, ma’am. Officer Matthews. Would it be okay with you if I stay while you talk to the detectives? I’d really like to make sure you’re alright.”

  “Oh.” Amour blinked, then lifted a too-thin shoulder partway before letting it drop. “Sure, I guess. I’m fine, but whatever.”

  “You gave us a bit of a scare, kid,” Garza said as he moved to Amour’s other side, his gruff demeanor replaced by a look of empathy so deep, it shocked Tara. “How are you feeling?”

  “I just want to get this over with,” she said, her hand starting to shake again despite the steel she’d tried to put in her voice.

  A frown flickered over Garza’s face, and yeah, that made two of them. “Okay. Can you tell us what happened?”

  “I don’t remember anything,” Amour said, her words nearly crashing into Garza’s, and okay, something about this didn’t wash.

  “You just said you remember Officer Matthews,” Tara pointed out, ignoring the way Garza’s jaw tightened beneath his five o’clock shadow. For Chrissake, she’d graduated in the top ten in her class at Stanford. She wasn’t going to ask anything that would give Sansone’s lawyer, as scummy as the guy was, an advantage.

  Amour paused. “I don’t remember anything about the guy who did this.”

  “Except that it was a guy,” Isabella said. Gently, she added, “Amour, we want to help you.”

  “Well, you can’t,” she said, her eyes filling with angry tears, and in that instant, it clicked.

  “He threatened you.”

  At Amour’s wide-eyed stare in reply, Tara continued, “Amour, listen to me. If Sansone did this to you, we can go to the judge and get an order of protection. With your testimony, we can—”

  “It wasn’t him.”

  Tara tried again. “Amour, I know you’re—”

  “Tara, you’re not listening. It wasn’t him.”

  “But someone threatened you,” Garza said, and Amour finally eked out a tiny nod.

  “This guy was big. Bigger than Sansone. Like you.” Her stare flickered over Garza before dropping to the thin blanket draped over her lap. The detective had to be six foot two, and he’d definitely eaten his Wheaties as a kid, because damn, he wasn’t coming up short in the muscles department. “I was in the kitchen, getting a drink. I’ve been working a lot of late nights, so I wanted to crash early, but then I heard footsteps on the porch. I barely had time to turn around before the door came crashing in.”

  Amour paused for a shaky breath. “I ran to my bedroom. I know it was dumb, but he was blocking the front door, so it’s not like I could get out that way, and my phone was on my nightstand, charging. He caught me before I could get to it, though.”

  This time, her pause lapsed into silence, which Garza filled with, “You’re doing great, Amour. This is giving us a really good idea of what happened.”

  Whether the encouragement worked or she just wanted to be done with her statement, Tara couldn’t tell. But Amour kept going. “He grabbed me by the tops of my arms and hit me once in the face, really hard. I was so surprised, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even scream. It was like I was just stuck there. So stupid.”

  “That’s a very common reaction,” Isabella offered gently. “And it’s very likely that he hit you for just that reason—because he knew you’d probably freeze. Did you manage to get a good look at him?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “He was wearing a ski mask and a hoodie. Maybe jeans? I don’t remember.”

  “That’s okay,” Garza said. “What about his hands? Could you tell what color his skin was?”

  Recognition lit Amour’s eyes, and Tara squeezed her fingers in encouragement. “He was wearing gloves, but when he grabbed me, the cuffs of his hoodie slid up a little. He was white, and I could see a tattoo. Not a lot, but it had numbers. What do you call them, when you keep count with those lines?”

  “Hash marks?” Tara supplied, and Amour nodded, just once before realizing her concussion made it the worst sort of idea.

  “Yeah. I tried to get away from him, but he put his hands around my throat and squeezed, just enough to make it hard to breathe unless I was really still. And he said…”

  Amour broke off, the tears that had been hanging on to her lashes finally spilling over her face. “I can’t. I can’t tell you.” She looked at Tara. “I’m sorry.”

  Tara’s heart vaulted against her breastbone, and she fought for composure. “Amour, listen to me. We can keep you safe. Whatever he said—”

  “You can’t,” she insisted, pulling her hand out of Tara’s, her defenses locked and loaded in her glare. “You don’t understand. He knows where I live. Where I work. What I did! He’s fucking crazy, Tara. Nobody can keep me safe from that but me. I’m not telling you what he said, and I’m not testifying in court. I’m done with all of it.”

  Oh, no. No, no. “Amour—”

  “Save your breath, girl.”

  “Amour,” Isabella tried.

  “No!”

  The half-shout was enough to snare Dr. Riley’s attention. “Okay, that’s enough. Either we get a whole lot more chill about this or interview time is over.”

  Tara battled the panic starting to rise in her chest. Amour wouldn’t be safe unless they got this guy and Sansone—who had surely hired or bribed this guy to scare her—behind bars, permanently, and without Amour’s cooperation, they were screwed. She had to do something, God, anything, to get her to talk. “Amour—”

  “It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”

  Xander’s voice slipped through the tension in the room, surprising the hell out of Tara.

  Amour, too, if the look on her face was anything to go by. “What?”

  “I said, it’s pretty scary, being threatened like you were tonight.” He stepped a little further out of the shadows, but still didn’t come close to Amour’s personal space, as if he wanted to give her literal room to breathe.

  She eyed him with tough disdain. “What do you know about it? You’re a fucking cop.”

  “I’m also a Northie, born and raised. And I know exactly what you’re feeling, because two years ago, I was in the same situation.”

  Amour eyed him with a solid dose of mistrust, but enough curiosity flickered through her stare that no one intervened. “You’re a Northie?”

  “Lived on The Hill for most of my life. Sullivan Street,” he added, and Amour’s brows lifted.

  “In that apartment building by the park?”

  “Where all the junkies hang out at night,” Xander confirmed. “And the pawn shop on the corner, by Old Lou’s market.”

  Amour remained wary, but she kept talking. “I know it. Old Lou’s not bad.”

  “He used to give me and my sister milk on the expiration day when we were tight on money. He’s a good guy. Mean as a snake if you mess with his candy displays, though.”

  “So, what happened to you?” Amour asked, and Tara had to
admit her curiosity was burning through her, too.

  Xander said, “I got jammed up with someone I shouldn’t have—you know how it is. You’ve gotta make a living, and you can’t look sideways in North Point without your eyes landing on someone with crappy intentions.”

  Amour huffed out a laugh, although it carried very little joy. “Yeah. I don’t exactly love wearing a leather bustier and getting groped for shitty tips, but…”

  She shrugged off the rest, and Xander filled in the blanks all too smoothly. “You don’t exactly have great options. So, you keep your head down and try to make things work. But then a guy like Ricky Sansone comes along, doing all sorts of nasty stuff to people, and the next thing you know, you’re in over your head.”

  Isabella and Garza seemed all too happy to let Xander go with the lead he’d so smoothly taken, and Tara watched, half-mesmerized, as Amour nodded.

  “He was hurting people, putting guns on the street. North Point is bad enough, you know? Most of us have enough shit to worry about without having to dodge bullets, so when I saw the chance to put him away…”

  She broke off. Xander’s expression never wavered, as if he had nothing in the world more important to do than sit there and wait until she was ready to keep going.

  And she did. “But I was supposed to be safe. I didn’t sign on for this.” She waved a hand around the exam room. Xander took a careful step forward until he was right beside the gurney, never dropping eye contact with her.

  “Believe me, I get it. I have the scars to prove it, too.” Rolling up his right uniform sleeve, he revealed a two-inch burn scar that made Tara’s heart race. “I was scared out of my head the whole time.”

  “But you got out,” Amour said, with just enough curiosity for Xander to take the opening she’d given him.

  “I did, but in order to make it work, I had to do something that scared me almost more than the person who did this to me. I had to be honest with these guys.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder in Isabella and Garza’s direction. “Look, none of us can tell you what to do. What you say or don’t say in this interview is entirely up to you. But I can tell you this. Telling these detectives the truth saved my life, and I know that if you’re honest with them, they’ll do everything in their power to save yours.”

  The silence that stretched through the exam room felt like it lasted for a month before Amour broke it with, “Would…would you help them keep me safe for real? If I wanted to talk, I mean.”

  Tara’s chest tightened with hope, and it took every single shred of her self-control not to interject.

  “These detectives are the real pros, Amour,” Xander said, looking at Garza and Isabella with a nod. “But if I can help them in any way, I will.”

  “I’m here, too.” Tara squeezed Amour’s hand. “I promise.”

  Letting out a slow breath, Amour said, “Okay. I’ll tell you everything.”

  5

  Xander walked into the lounge Tess had cleared for their group and bit back a curse. True to her word, Amour had told them exactly what her assailant had said as he’d wrapped his fingers around her throat.

  You’ve been running that filthy mouth of yours, haven’t you, you little whore? Xander was helpless against the soundtrack in his head, the one that had played on an endless loop ever since Amour had set it into motion.

  “I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about,” she’d said. “But he just squeezed tighter.”

  You know exactly what I’m talking about. Either you shut your cock-sucking mouth or I will find you. I will rip out your tongue so you can’t scream, and I will cut off every one of your fingers so you can’t fight back. I will violate you in every way possible, and it will hurt. But not as bad as when I cut up the rest of you once I’m done. Do you understand?

  She’d said yes.

  He’d pistol-whipped her on his way out the door anyway.

  “Okay,” Isabella said, breaking Xander’s gut-clenching rewind. “I’ve gotten Sergeant Sinclair up to speed, but obviously, this is going to be a high-priority case.”

  Sinclair, who had arrived just as they’d been finishing up their interview with Amour, ran a hand over his gray-blond crew cut. “That may be understating it. Threatening an informant isn’t exactly unexpected for someone in Sansone’s situation, but it is serious. I’ve spoken with your boss”—he looked at Tara—“and he made it clear that he believes the threat is real.”

  Xander silently agreed. Amour’s injuries were proof positive. What the guy who had delivered them had said as he’d done it? Even worse.

  Tara raised a coppery brow, her expression pure are you kidding me? “Of course the threat is real. But”—she paused to bite her bottom lip in a move that Xander would have to be pulse-free not to notice—“Sansone clearly knows Amour is our CI, and he very clearly wants her out of the picture so she won’t testify. Why not just have her killed? It’s not as if this guy didn’t have the chance.”

  “It isn’t one he can take,” Isabella said. “If Amour ends up dead, he knows we’ll come crawling up his ass with a microscope, and he doesn’t want that kind of heat. But if she decides not to testify…”

  This time, Xander let his curse fly under his breath. “Then the case falls apart and he walks.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him to tie up loose ends after that happens, either. Sansone was a nasty SOB the first time we went after him,” Garza said, and Sinclair nodded his agreement.

  “Well, now he’s nasty and smart. Whoever he got to do his dirty work tonight knew exactly what to say to make this case an uphill climb.”

  “More like what not to say,” Tara muttered. “The man who assaulted Amour never said Sansone’s name. Never mentioned the case, or anything even related to it. Sansone’s attorney will argue that he has no idea what we’re talking about. And I’d bet a Maserati that he’s got an airtight alibi for tonight, with no less than ten witnesses who can put him across the city from Amour’s house.”

  “We’ve broken cases open with less,” Isabella said. “One good thing about riding a desk is that I have plenty of time to go over every inch of this case. Video surveillance, forensics from Amour’s house, witness statements. Name it, and I’m in.”

  “That’s a good start,” Sinclair said, and Xander had to agree. Isabella had some of the sharpest eyes he’d ever seen. “We’ll have to do the obligatory meet-and-greet with Sansone and his attorney. Who’s presiding over the case?”

  Tara made a face. “Alana Waters. Look up Stickler in the dictionary, and her face will be right there, front and center.”

  “That bad?” Xander asked.

  Tara snorted in time with the Intelligence detectives’ nods. “She once corrected my grammar while I was arguing against a dismissal in her chambers.”

  Ouch. Still… “Okay, but no one can deny that Amour’s life was threatened.”

  “It doesn’t matter if we can’t prove Sansone’s the one behind it,” Tara said. “The first step is getting on the record with Judge Waters, though. I’m going to have to figure out how to get Amour to agree to testify, but keeping her safe is a good place to start.”

  Garza lifted his chin in agreement. “Capelli’s already working on getting her into protective custody.” At the mention of the Intelligence Unit’s tech and surveillance guru, Tara’s shoulders seemed to relax by a fraction. “But he’s running into an issue finding a good place with immediate availability.”

  The RPD kept a handful of places on tap for protective custody, offsite surveillance and ops planning, and other various and sundry tasks that required the utmost secrecy, Xander knew. Apparently, they were all in use.

  “What about an extended-stay motel?” Tara asked, but Sergeant Sinclair shook his head.

  “That’s six weeks’ worth of variables we can’t predict. Staff who could be pressured or bribed. It’s too risky for a case this big.”

  “There’s a vacant apartment on my floor,” Xander said, only realizing he was
going to put the thought to words after it had bolted past his lips. But now everyone in the room was staring at him, so great. Guess he was running with it. “The guy who lived down the hall from me moved out a couple days ago. The building is pretty nice. No doorman to worry about, but all residents need a keycard to get in and guests have to be buzzed through, so the security’s pretty tight.”

  Isabella’s brows lifted as she slid a look at Sinclair. “That’s not a half-bad idea. I know the building—Gamble used to live there, right?”

  Xander nodded. He’d taken over the lease at his brother-in-law’s place when the guy had moved in with Xander’s sister a couple years ago.

  “It’s over on Delancey, about fifteen minutes from the fire house,” Isabella said for everyone else’s benefit. “As good a location as any for something like this. And it would keep Amour close.”

  “Let’s schedule a walk-through first thing in the morning,” Sinclair said. “Amour’s going to have to stay here overnight anyway. Dr. Riley runs a clean ship, but we’ll put an officer outside her room, just in case. But if this apartment pans out, we’ll have Capelli roll through it with all the bells and whistles so we can get Amour in there as soon as possible.”

  Tara put her hands on her hips, accentuating both her determination and her curves. “I’m staying with her until she’s released. She’s already rattled, and telling her she has to go into protective custody is only going to prove how much danger she’s in. She needs an anchor.”

  “Lucky for her, she’s getting two,” Sinclair said, prompting a whole lot of WTF to cross Tara’s features.

  And that made two of them. “What?” Xander asked.

  Sinclair turned to pin him into place with a steely gray stare. “Isabella told me you earned Amour’s trust during her interview.”

  Shock twisted through Xander’s rib cage, and he made every attempt to keep it far from his expression. “Yes, sir, but—”

  “Nothing,” Sinclair finished smoothly. “It worked. She asked for help from you, specifically. I’m not inclined to tell her no. Unless you feel like you’re not up for working this case?”