Taking the Heat

She could be seriously killed.

She hadn’t come to Florence to wage any wars against the powers that be. She’d come for other reasons, personal reasons. Her job was just that—a job, nothing more, nothing less.

“So, no doctor for Tucker?” she asked.

He shook his head in obvious disgust. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

Gabrielle returned his cold stare without speaking.

“No doctor,” he said at last.

“Then can I take a first-aid kit and see if he’s okay? There’s a cut above his eye that looks like it needs stitches. It should be cleaned, at least. And I’m pretty sure he’s broken a bone or two in his hand.”

“If you want to nurse Mr. Wife-Killer, you can do it on your own time, once your shift ends,” Hansen growled. “But if he attacks you, don’t expect me—or anyone else—to come running.”

CHAPTER TWO

GABRIELLE CLUTCHED the first-aid kit in one sweaty hand and moved purposefully down the aisle toward Randall Tucker’s cell. Roddy and Brinkman, another officer, flanked her, walking a few steps behind. Worried about the possible repercussions should something happen to her while she was visiting Tucker, Hansen had finally relented and told the two officers to accompany her. But it was time to go home, and Roddy and Brinkman weren’t any happier about her errand than Hansen had been.

Could she count on them? The fear that she couldn’t kept her eyes focused straight ahead and her chin held high while, inside, her heart thumped louder with each step.

Randall Tucker killed his own wife. Hansen’s words seemed to echo through the cavernous cell block, and with them, his promise. If he attacks you, don’t expect me—or anyone else—to come running…come running…come running.

Locked down because of the fight and with an hour still to wait before dinner, many of the convicts were listless and bored. They lingered near the front of their cells, tattooed arms dangling through the bars as they hollered back and forth to each other or simply stared at nothing, sullen and withdrawn.

Unfortunately, Gabrielle’s passing seemed to be just the thing to relieve the tedium.

“Hey, fine-lookin’ mama, let’s get it on!” someone called after her as small plastic mirrors began to spring up so the men could see her.

“Shut up, ho, she’s lookin’ fo’ a real man, a man like me,” came a shout two cells further down. “Come on, baby, lemme take you for the ride of your life.”

“Look at those tits,” a third man groaned. “What I wouldn’t give for five minutes with those—”

Previously, Roddy and Brinkman and the other officers had put an end to the taunts and catcalls the prisoners flung her way by threatening them with no recreation and only a sack lunch for meals. The fact that they said nothing now, did nothing, told Gabrielle they were as angry as she’d thought. They didn’t like her interfering and wanted her to know it. But now that she’d taken a stand, she needed to see it through—or Randall Tucker would receive no help, and she would have ruined her relationship with Sergeant Hansen for nothing.

In five minutes she’d be done with Tucker, she told herself. Then she’d be on her way home to Allie.

“Come back and give me some love. I got nothin’ but love for you, baby, nothin’ but love.”

Smooching sounds followed her on the rest of her walk to Tucker’s cell. When she reached it, she found him shirtless, hunched over the small stainless-steel sink in the back corner, trying to rinse the dried blood from his hair. Fortunately, all inmates in central unit lived alone.

Singularly intent on cleaning up, Tucker didn’t seem to notice her. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care that she was there. He continued his efforts until the moisture glistening on his hair dripped onto his broad shoulders and ran in thin rivulets down his chest and back—a chest and back devoid of tattoos and any ounce of fat. Then he toweled himself off, straightened and turned.

“Looks like I have a visitor,” he said, leaving his jumpsuit dangling around his hips.

Unless Gabrielle missed her guess, he regarded her with the same scorn Roddy and Brinkman reserved for him. Hatred or enmity she could understand. She’d seen plenty of both since starting at the prison. Officers and inmates were never meant to be friends. But disdain? Disdain implied superiority. Who did Tucker think he was? He reminded her more of a doctor or a lawyer than a murderer.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

Please, God, let this day end well, she prayed, telling herself that if there was trouble, Roddy and Brinkman would help. They might hesitate long enough to teach her a lesson, but they’d ultimately intervene.

Problem was, a lot could happen in a mere sixty seconds. And there were any number of excuses for delay….

Suddenly seven weeks of job-training didn’t seem like nearly enough.

In and out. Five minutes, that’s all. Hauling in a deep breath, Gabrielle removed the pin in the door and motioned to Eckland, down in the officer’s booth, to unlock Tucker’s cell.

Metal screeched on metal as the door rolled to the right. “I’ve brought something to clean your cuts, Mr. Tucker,” she said.

“Mr. Tucker?” He eyed Roddy and Brinkman, who stood with their batons drawn, as though eager for trouble.

“Isn’t that your name?” she asked.

“I think you’re the first person to use it since I came to this hellhole.” Still favoring his left side, he moved forward, and it was all Gabrielle could do to keep from dashing out and running for safety.

Evidently he read her fear because he stopped, giving her some space, and his voice took on a mocking note. “It’s going to be mighty hard to dress a wound from back there. Or are you planning to leave that stuff here with me?” A nod indicated the first-aid kit she held in her hands.

Inmates made weapons out of the most innocuous substances. Gabrielle could easily imagine Tucker honing a knife out of the plastic lid and stabbing someone with it.

“I’m not stupid,” she said, waving him toward the bed. “Will you sit down, please?”

“Please?” His lip curled into a bitter smile. “At least you’re polite.”

“Are you going to sit down or not?”

Holding his injured hand like an unwieldy club, he brushed against her shoulder as he sank onto the lower bunk. She suspected he did it on purpose, to test her, so she stood her ground and refused to back away. If she was going to do this job, she couldn’t act like she was about to run screaming in the opposite direction every time she came into contact with a prisoner. Besides, she’d noticed the lines of pain and fatigue in his face and was starting to lose some of her fear. He was hurting far more than he let on.

“This is probably a waste of the courage you screwed up to come here,” he said. “Unless you brought an X-ray machine and some plaster, I doubt there’s anything you can do for me.”

“Sorry, no plaster.” She set the kit on the bed beside him. “Some antiseptic and Band-Aids, though.”

“I’d settle for a couple of Tylenol.”

“It’s against the rules for me to dispense any medication. You can buy aspirin from the store.”

“Aspirin doesn’t work for me.”

“Well, it’s against the rules for me to give you anything else.”

The look on his face told her what he thought of her response. “It’s against the rules for you to be here now, but Hansen makes his own rules. What’s a couple of Tylenol? Think about it, Officer—” his eyes flicked to the name sewn on her shirt “—Hadley. Two capsules of extra-strength Tylenol and you can consider your mission here complete. Then you won’t have to dirty your hands by touching a monster like me.”

A monster like him? If he was a monster, it certainly didn’t show on the outside. Despite the injuries that marred his face, he was one of the most attractive men Gabrielle had ever seen. He practically exuded virility, from the comfortable way he fit his body to the aristocratic features of his face—the aquiline nose, the thin upper lip, the prominent jaw and those incomparable eyes.

“What makes you think I have a problem with that?” she asked, snapping open the kit and rummaging inside.

“You mean, besides the revulsion on your face? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see you’d sooner touch a leper.”

Gabrielle kept her focus on what she was doing and didn’t answer. He was right. He’d murdered his wife, and she didn’t want to come anywhere near him. But he could definitely use what little first aid she could give. Although the blood on his split lip had congealed, his hand had swollen considerably. The cut on his forehead was bleeding again, if it had ever stopped, and he had to keep wiping away the blood to stop it from rolling into his eyes.

“Can you blame me? Your record doesn’t do much to recommend you,” she said, pulling on the latex gloves she carried on her belt.

“You can’t believe everything you read.”

She folded a piece of gauze and doused it with antiseptic. “Oh, yeah? I suppose you’re innocent, just like everyone else in here.”

He sucked air between his teeth as she cleaned the gash above his eye. “I don’t think you give a shit whether I’m innocent or not. No one else does.”

She fumbled with one of the butterfly bandages from the kit, trying to figure out how to use it. The wound on his head needed stitches. She’d never seen one quite so deep. But the gloves made it difficult to feel what she was doing, and the darn bandage wouldn’t stick.

She looked back at Roddy and Brinkman, hoping they would finally see how unethical it was to deny Tucker the medical help he so obviously needed. But they stared straight ahead, stone-faced, and Gabrielle couldn’t decide whom she disliked more. Tucker, for being the murderer he was, the very scum of society. Or Hansen, Roddy and Brinkman for their refusal to do the right thing.

She studied the wound some more, knew it was too deep to leave as it was, and finally stripped off her gloves so she’d have a chance of making the bandage stick.

Tucker glanced at the discarded gloves. “Aren’t you taking quite a risk?”

“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think? I already got your blood all over me earlier.”

“And now you think you’re going to die of AIDS.”

“Am I?”

He shrugged. “Depends on who you’re sleeping with. You won’t get it from me.”

Ignoring his allusion to her love life, she concentrated on what she was doing so she wouldn’t ruin another bandage. Come on…come on. Once this is on, I’ve handled the worst of it, she thought, but his next question made her pause.

“Why did you do it?”

She met his gaze, then looked quickly away. There was something so clear and beautiful about his eyes, they could almost make her forget she was confronting a murderer.

“Do what?” she asked. She’d finally got the bandage to close the cut and was nearly limp with relief.

“Jump into that fight. If you don’t have a death wish, you’re either incredibly stupid or incredibly brave. I can’t decide which.”

“Fortunately you don’t have to. I was just doing my job.”

“If you were doing your job, what was Roddy doing?” He indicated Roddy with a slight nod.

“I’ll show you what I’ll do if you don’t shut your freakin’ mouth,” Roddy warned, slapping his baton against the palm of his hand.

Gabrielle shifted to block the officers’s view of Tucker. “You’re probably going to have a scar above your eyebrow,” she said to distract him from their hostility—and to distract herself from the odd sense of intimacy she experienced at standing between Tucker’s spread legs, only inches from his bare chest.

She tilted his chin up so she could clean the cut on his lip and was moderately surprised to find she felt none of the repugnance she’d expected to feel at touching him. He might be a convict, but he was a man of flesh and bone, and the more honest part of her had to admit that his flesh felt better than most. The rough jaw she cupped in one hand and the soft lip she pressed down with her thumb to reach the cut in the very corner sparked a response someplace deep inside her—someplace that didn’t seem nearly as concerned with character as it should have been.

She hurried to finish before he could read her grudging admiration of his physical attributes as easily as he’d read her earlier fear and reluctance. “How are your ribs?”

He didn’t answer, but he winced as she ran her fingers over his injured side. She was searching for something obvious, something that could possibly puncture a lung, but if his ribs were broken, she couldn’t tell. So long as Tucker was still breathing, she doubted she could get Hansen do anything about it, anyway.

“Maybe they’re only cracked,” she said at last, refusing to acknowledge how smooth and warm his skin was. His wife had probably enjoyed the same sensation…once.

A heartening amount of distaste finally came with that thought. Gabrielle put some space between them and started packing up. “At least your cuts are cleaned and bandaged. Hopefully time will take care of the rest.”

He said nothing. Now that she was finished, he looked even more exhausted and wrung out from the pain, which made Gabrielle do something she hadn’t intended to do at all.

“Let me see your hand before I go,” she said.

Tucker hesitated, as though his first inclination was to deny her, but then Roddy piped up. “Come on, you ain’t gonna to be able to do anything for his hand.”

“You’re done playing nursemaid to this lowlife,” Brinkman added.

Their intervention was enough to convince him. Defiance etched in every line of his face, he held out his injured hand.

Shifting to block Roddy’s and Brinkman’s view one more time, she rummaged through the first aid kit, came up with two Tylenol tablets and dropped them into his palm.

So much for rules. They’d all broken their share today.

“Now get some rest,” she said softly and left.

“TELL ME Allie had a good day,” Gabrielle said, stepping inside her single-wide trailer and letting the door slam behind her.

“She did great,” Felicia said. The eighteen-year-old girl she’d hired to watch Allie was sitting on the couch painting her toenails blue, while Gabrielle’s thirteen-month-old daughter toddled around the living room, using the furniture to help her walk. When she saw her mother, Allie gave a huge smile that revealed two new teeth.

“Hi, baby girl,” Gabrielle said, sweeping the child into her arms. “Boy, has Mommy missed you.”

“Are you okay?” Felicia asked, putting the fingernail polish away.

“Yeah, fine,” Gabrielle told her.

“You seem a little…I don’t know, flustered.”

“I feel bad for being late, that’s all. I was rushing, in case you have somewhere else you need to be.”

“No, I’m good. You’re not that late, anyway. It’s only a little after four. And you know Allie’s okay here with me.” She grinned at Allie, who grinned back, and Gabrielle noticed that Felicia had painted her child’s fingernails the same color as her own.

“She sure loves you,” Gabrielle said. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you take such good care of her.”

The girl shrugged. “We’re buds.”

Gabrielle dodged Allie’s chubby fingers, which were reaching for the earrings she’d put in as soon as she left the prison—sometimes she needed just a little something to remind her that she was still a woman and still living in the world she’d always known. “I wish I could afford to pay you more—”

“You pay me enough. A few more weeks with Allie and I’d probably be willing to do it for free. She’s such a good baby, aren’t you, Allie?”

Allie gurgled in response, and Felicia stood. “Sorry I don’t have dinner waiting. We’ve been playing. Want me to help you cook?”

Gabrielle stowed her purse on an end table. “Don’t worry about it. Dinner isn’t your job. Just keep me company for a minute. Tell me about your day.” Carrying Allie on her hip, she headed into the kitchen.

Felicia followed her and started washing out an empty bottle she’d left on the counter as Gabrielle checked the cupboards. “We went for a walk this morning, before it got too hot. Allie played in her little swimming pool for a while after that. She loves it when I dribble water on her. You should hear her giggle.” She shook her head. “Crazy kid.”

Gabrielle considered chicken noodle soup, thinking a salad sounded much better. But she was low on fresh vegetables, so soup would have to do. “Swimming is always a favorite,” she said. “Allie should’ve been born a fish. Did she nap?”

“She slept for an hour in the morning and an hour and a half this afternoon.”

“Good girl!” Gabrielle kissed her baby’s soft forehead as she delved into the freezer for something to add to their meal.

“I was going to take her for another walk, but it was too hot,” Felicia said.

Gabrielle noted the chugging of her air conditioner, knowing it had probably been on all day, and shuddered at the thought of opening her next utility bill. “August in the Arizona desert. We don’t get much of a break from the heat.”

“Yeah. My folks are sick of it. They’re talking about moving to Idaho,” she said, setting the bottle in the drainer.

Gabrielle felt a stab of worry and paused in her digging. “The winters here more than make up for the summer heat. We have months and months of beautiful, perfect weather.”

“I know. After living here most of their lives, they’re not thrilled about encountering snow. But they’re convinced they want to live where it’s green for a change.”

Though Gabrielle had spent the first seven years of her life in the Phoenix area, she’d moved with her adoptive family to the Oregon coast and knew all about green. She’d met Allie’s father while waiting tables in Portland. But a few years after she and David were married, she’d begged him to take her to the hot dry place she remembered from her childhood, trading the rolling, misty hills, forests and picturesque valleys of Oregon for the rugged, harsher beauty of the desert. Because his parents were already living in Phoenix during the winters, he was familiar with the area and agreed easily enough. Phoenix was growing; the economy was good. He’d felt confident that he’d be able to start his own mortgage company here, and his business had flourished almost immediately. Five years ago, his only brother had moved to Arizona, as well. So for most of the year his entire family lived in the valley.

Gabrielle had no family. Though her adoptive parents and their two daughters remained in Oregon, she didn’t miss them. They stayed in loose contact, but they’d always treated her more like a guest than a part of the family. She certainly wasn’t close to them.

“Would you go with your parents?” she asked Felicia, tensing as she waited for the girl’s answer. Gabrielle was finally establishing her independence. She’d moved far enough from David that she couldn’t lean on him too much. She had a steady job, a healthy baby-sitting situation for Allie and was just starting to find herself, to decide who and what she wanted to be. She couldn’t lose Felicia now.

Felicia folded her arms and leaned against the counter as Gabrielle discovered some frozen peas that Allie, at least, would enjoy.

“No, I’d stay. All my friends are here,” she said. “I’m going to live with my cousin and save up for school. But I doubt my parents will really move, anyway. They say they’re going to Idaho every time we have a monsoon.”

Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief as she put the peas on the counter and pulled two pans out of the cupboard. Dust storms hit Arizona every August, usually out of nowhere, often accompanied by thunder and rain. Once, a monsoon broke several large branches off the old olive tree she and David had in their backyard in Phoenix and swept the limbs and a bunch of dirt and leaves into the pool. But the storms were so dramatic and such a startling change from the constant heat that she actually liked them. “The last one we had was pretty bad,” she said.

“That’s what got them talking about moving again,” Felicia responded.

“I hope that’s all it is, talk. In any case, I’m glad you’ll be staying.” Gabrielle gestured at the neat kitchen. “Thanks for cleaning up, by the way.”

Felicia glanced around and smiled as though proud of the job she’d done. “You bet. I opened the bottom drawer, the one with all the plastic icebox dishes and measuring cups, and let Allie toss them out while I cleaned. She played for at least thirty minutes without a whimper.” She checked her watch and shoved off from the counter. “But I guess I’d better go. I’ve got a date tonight. You want me at four-thirty again tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah. I have to be to work by five.” In a little more than twelve hours. Gabrielle couldn’t face the thought of returning to the prison so soon.

Telling herself she’d let tomorrow take care of itself, she trailed Felicia into the living room and watched as the girl slipped on her sandals and gathered her purse.

“See ya tomorrow.” Felicia gave Allie a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried out.

“Have fun tonight,” Gabrielle called as the door banged shut. Then she and Allie were alone, with the whole night ahead of them and nothing much to do.

“Are you hungry, babe?” she asked.

Allie made another grab for her earring, and Gabrielle caught her hand just in time.

“I hope that’s a yes,” she said, but before she could return to their dinner prospects, the telephone rang.

“Gabby? It’s me, David.”

Her ex-husband. Gabrielle smiled. She and David didn’t work as marriage partners—she didn’t love him in the right way—but they made great friends. “You always seem to know when I need to hear from you. How are you?”

“Fine. Busy. Is something wrong? Did you have a bad day?”

Gabrielle hesitated. David had never liked the idea of her leaving Phoenix to move to Florence, an hour and a half to the southeast. He’d liked the idea of her becoming a prison officer even less. It wasn’t exactly most men’s number-one job choice for the mother of their children. But then, he didn’t understand what was driving her, didn’t understand why she needed to support herself, why this strange, rather barren place somehow felt like home to her.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “I’m not going to say anything. You’ve already heard all my arguments against what you’re doing.”

Gabrielle handed Allie a toy and set her in the middle of the floor, then sank onto the couch. She generally told David everything. Holding out now was only delaying the inevitable. But when she finished relating the day’s events, he didn’t react as she’d expected. He was completely quiet at the other end of the line.

“David? You said you weren’t going to say anything but I didn’t think you meant it quite so literally.”

“I’m thinking,” he said, “and I’m fighting my natural tendency to beg you to get the hell out of there and come back to Phoenix.”

“You know I can’t do that. I came here for a reason.”

“And have you done anything about that reason? Have you spoken to your mother, at least?”

Gabrielle closed her eyes. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “No, not yet.”

“Gabby, the investigator found her weeks ago. How long is it going to take to summon the nerve to let her know you’re there?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll do it someday. It’s not that easy, David. She abandoned me when I was three.”

“I know that was rough, but it isn’t as if you weren’t adopted within months by a good family.”

Gabrielle had no concrete complaints about the Pattersons. Her adoptive parents, Phil and Bev, owned a successful sandwich shop by the wharf in Newport, Oregon, and had, for the most part, provided for her physical needs. They’d never been abusive or overtly neglectful. They’d just never really embraced her as their own. They doted on their twin girls, who were only eighteen months older than Gabrielle. And the natural affinity between Tiffany and Cher had always made Gabrielle feel like an unwanted tag-along. She felt as though the whole family tolerated her presence, but didn’t really want her. Especially when she’d reached her teens and begun to rebel. Then she could definitely sense a limit to the Pattersons’s acceptance. They’d taken her in to do a good deed and had felt it highly unfair that she’d give them any trouble at all.