Jesse Best didn’t do love.He didn’t do emotional involvement.For crying out loud, he barely did sentences.He’d said more to the person on the phone than he’d said to her, collectively, in all the time she’d known him.
“I don’t think I should.”
She started to get up, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“Please stay.”
When her eyes filled with tears, she closed them, hoping that would keep the tears from spilling over and giving away her secrets.It didn’t work.
“We’re leaving in the morning for Shenandoah to assist the FBI.”He kissed her bare shoulder.“We could leave from here and drive down together.”
Wow.Two whole sentences in a row.That had to be a record.She pulled free of him and got up to find her clothes, blinded by tears that made it hard to see anything in the dimly lit room.
All at once, he was there, with his arms around her from behind and his forehead on her shoulder.“Please.”
She stiffened out of sheer self-preservation.
Then he dropped the bomb.“I need you.”
Memphis Rose crumpled for a second before she found her inner source of strength, although where it was coming from after he said that was anyone’s guess.Did he needher, or would any warm body do after that phone call reopened the wound on his soul?“I have to go, Jesse.Please let me.”
He held on for another long, breathless moment before he released her.
As she got dressed, she told herself he wouldn’t remember in the morning that he’d needed her in the dark of night.In the morning, it would be back to business as usual, with him grunting and calling it communication, with her wondering where she stood and what it all meant, and him going on, oblivious to her until they were back in his bed, when the cycle would begin again.
Since she was the only one aware of this cycle, it was up to her to control her involvement in it.
Getting dressed had never been more of a challenge than it was with hands that didn’t want to follow the directions she was giving them.Buttons, clasps, zippers…
She grabbed her phone off the bedside table and left the room without giving him so much as a glance.
When she was in her car, driving back to her place while fighting to see through her tears, she acknowledged this situation was unsustainable.It had been from the start.Maybe it was time to request a transfer.Her mom and grandmother were always after her to come home to Memphis.That would be a step down, careerwise, from the assignment in DC, but she needed to decide which was more important—her career or her sanity.
She wiped the tears off her face, furious with herself for the emotional reaction to three simple words.
I need you.
I need you.
How long would it take for those words to stop echoing through her overcommitted heart and soul?
Probably forever.
Freddie Cruz had rarely beenangrier than he was watching the playback of the Hector Reese interviews that’d aired earlier in the day on cable news.Hector had hit all the major networks with his tale of how the first lady cop had beaten him when he was in custody.
Freddie, who’d been shot by Hector’s brother, Clarence, when he’d returned to the scene of one of the worst crimes any of them had ever worked, had little sympathy for Hector.After all, Hector had enabled his brother’s efforts to run from the police after he murdered his wife and children with a baseball bat—and then shot Freddie.
He still had nightmares about the murdered baby in the crib.Shuddering, Freddie quickly pushed that thought to the back of his mind, locked away with all the other horrors he’d witnessed on the job.
In addition to that, a reporter had called Jeannie McBride to ask about the Fitzgerald investigation and whether Sam—and her father—had failed to charge Cameron Fitzgerald with murdering his younger brother.
Though his tour was over, and he was free to leave work, Freddie couldn’t go home when his best friend was under attack.After texting his wife, Elin, that he’d be home late, he went to find Captain Malone, who was on the phone in his office.He waved Freddie in.
He shut the door and took a seat, trying to remain calm as his entire body vibrated with the kind of tension that reminded him of the days that followed Skip Holland’s death.They’d reopened the investigation into his shooting, and when the leads had begun to point to people under their own roof holding on to facts that would’ve closed the case years earlier, the fury had been palpable.
Thinking about that case had brought him to Malone, who was still on the phone and seemed annoyed by whomever he was speaking to.He rolled his eyes and made circular motions with his hand.“Yes, I hear you.I’ll take care of it.I’ve got to run.”He put down the receiver of his desk phone.“Some people like to hear themselves talk.”
“I’ve been thinking about who else might’ve known about what Skip did for Alice Fitzgerald, and I keep coming back to one person.”
