Dead Calm

“Long speech. It’s a wonder you didn’t pop a gasket holding all those words in this long.”

“No speech. Telling it like it is.” Finished with the irrigation, she yanked the edge of the beard around his jaw. “Beard’s got to go, Claus. I can’t stitch the wound with this mess dangling in the way.”

He turned. His face was suddenly too close, his warm, coffee-scented breath mingling with hers, the strands of his beard tangling with her hair. He reached up, those long fingers separating the commingled strands, and his palm brushed against her cheek, lightly, accidentally.

Then, as if he weren’t aware of his movement, as if his fingers moved with an unwanted will of their own, he tucked her hair behind her ear, a curiously personal touch that rippled all the way down her body to her toes, curling them in her damp green socks.

She blinked.

He frowned, dropped his hand.

Sophie spun to her feet. The stool wobbled and rolled away, careened into the wall. Like a crazed horse, her blood leapt and bolted through her veins.

Behind her, Santa cleared his throat.

Snapping open the supply cabinet, she pulled out cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol. As if it had a memory of its own, her ear still tingled where he’d touched. She stared blindly at the objects in her hands.

Coffee-fragrant? No smell of liquor on his breath? Alcohol stink only on his clothes?

She glanced back over her shoulder. His eyes were tired, bloodshot. Drifting shut, but focused.

That didn’t fit either.

Caught up in her irritation, she’d missed that sharpness.

And there was that damned, niggling sense that she should know him.

Not wanting to look at him, not wanting to be stranded in the unsettling ocean of his gaze, she pivoted and began pulling at the sticky edges of his beard, lifting it from his neck. She rubbed the alcohol-dampened swabs along his jawline, working swiftly, loosening the glued-on beard until it fell free.

And all the while her hands skimmed along his jaw and chin, she thought about the contradictions and that warm, intimate scent of him.

Tossing the blood-soaked mass of beard and swabs into the waste container, she turned and saw his face, fully, for the first time.

“Nice bedside manner, Dr. Brennan.” Santa was motionless.

“Oh, hell.”

His face was one of those southern Florida faces she’d come to recognize, long, all bones and angles. His blue eyes watched her carefully now, eyes she really, really should have recognized staring at her from a face that had given her sleepless nights for months.

“Swell to see you haven’t lost your gentle touch,” he said.

Not a drunken bum after all.

“Why didn’t you say something as soon as I walked in?” Her throat was tight, squeezing shut.

“My name’s on the chart. You should have seen it. I wondered if you knew who I was.”

“I didn’t look at the name. Detective Finnegan.” A sigh, the name slipped out as she stared at him.

“Yeah. Me. In the flesh. Alive and well. Disappointed, Sophie?” A flame that burned cold, challenge flickered in his chilly eyes.

After that first appalled glance, she couldn’t look at him. Still, she was proud of herself. Her hand didn’t tremble. She hadn’t flinched. But Finnegan would have heard a thousand things in the sound of his name. Even during their short time together a year ago, his ability to analyze every little bit of body language and nuance of voice had astonished her. Even then, even under the awful circumstances that came later.

On that disastrous Christmas Eve that changed everything between them.

Oh, yes, even then Detective Finnegan had been good at reading between the lines.

Both hands bracing him on the table, he leaned closer, so close that it was all she could do not to lean back as he murmured, “I didn’t know you were on duty, Doctor.”

She wouldn’t move an inch. Not for Finnegan, she wouldn’t. Not for anything he threw her way. “Why? You would have gone to a different hospital?”

“Hell, yeah. I don’t care if this is the only hospital in the county. If I’d known you were working ER tonight, I would have driven myself one-handed down to Sarasota instead of coming here. But here I am. And here you are. Fate’s a bitch sometimes, isn’t she?” His thin mouth tightened. “So, Dr. Brennan’s on duty the day after Thanksgiving.”

“Where else would I be?” She made the mistake of looking up.

“At Home Depot? Picking out a tree?” The tubing lifted with his shrug. “And if I’d had the least bit of luck tonight, another town? Another state?”

With jerky movements, she lifted the suture tray from the counter and placed it near the stretcher. Damn Judah Finnegan. Taking a deep, steadying breath she faced him, her smile as false as the tatty fur on his Santa suit. “I’m needed here.” In spite of herself, that year-old pain spilled out. “Besides, you look as though you’ve done enough celebrating tonight for both of us.”

“Appearances to the contrary, I don’t do trees, Christmas, or jolly.” Aggression radiated from every line of his long torso. “I’m not really a holiday kind of guy.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t be. Not under the circumstances.” She tightened her mouth and stared down at the suddenly foreign needles and antiseptic, a fine tremble now vibrating from her to the plastic tray.

“No, not under the circumstances.”

“But time passes. Things change. People change. Life goes on.”

“Not for all of us.” Gripping her chin with one hand, he forced her to look at him. Too thin with all those severe angles and hollows, his face was still compelling in its strength, a strength even she had to acknowledge. “And how tacky of me to bring up Christmas, huh, Sophie?” His fingers were cold against her flushed skin. “But I had to know. I would have bet a thousand dollars you’d forgotten. After all, hey, it’s been a year.”

“Really? You think you know me that well, Finnegan? How nervy can you get?” She jerked her head free.

“Pretty damn nervy when the occasion calls for it,” he said, tapping her with controlled ferocity on the chin. “But hell, yeah, sugar. You bet I’ve got your number. I think you put that episode with my partner out of your mind the minute you left the hospital last Christmas Eve. I wouldn’t have expected anything else, not from you. Not after the run-ins you and George had already had. You had it in for him from the get-go—”

“Never—”

“Sure you did. You and George were oil and water. Yeah, he was loud and crude. A jerk sometimes. But that night, hell. That night the patient was more than just another drunk who’d screwed up on Christmas Eve.” He leaned forward until his face was all she could see. “That night you couldn’t wait to run the blood test. Because it was George. Because he bugged you. Because he was mouthy and vulgar. You prissed up like a prune every time he came within five feet of you. It was George. It was personal.”

“No!”

“Shoot, sugar, your little butt was just quivering with righteousness. I thought you were going to cheer when the test proved Roberts was DUI.”

“He wrecked his cop car. He hit a light pole with the squad car, for God’s sake. He was lucky—” She stopped, appalled, wishing she could take the words back.

“You think he was lucky?” Finnegan smiled, a smile as bitter as any she’d ever seen. “Yeah, Roberts was lucky that the suits would probably let him ride the desk for the last three months before his retirement. Sure, he was going to be disgraced, demoted. His pension cut. Hell, you’re right. He was lucky.” He paused, and then, as smoothly as a surgeon’s scalpel, he added, “Personally, I never could figure out what the big deal was. Sure didn’t seem to me like he had any reason to go home that night and eat his gun.”

Instruments clattered on the tray she held.

“Or didn’t you know what happened to Sgt. George Roberts?”

“I read about his suicide in the Herald the next day.”

“And what did you think, when you read that bit of news? Anything? Feel bad about how you’d handled things? Wished you’d done anything different?”

“What I felt or didn’t feel isn’t any of your business. I did what had to be done.”

“Did you?” Soft, soft the accusation.

“You bet I did.” She’d walk across glass before she’d let him inside her soul to know how she felt about that night. Any doubts or second thoughts were hers and hers alone.

“Now get out of the rest of your suit, Detective. I can’t stitch you up like this.”

“Oh? I thought you could do anything. I thought you knew everything. You sure seemed damned certain you knew best last year. No doubts. No hesitation. Just a ‘gotcha’ for George.”

In the face of his bitterness, Sophie fell like a drowning woman on the raft of professional competence. She motioned to the green suture kit. “I’m going to numb the area before I sew you up.”

“Why bother?” With his free hand, he jerked apart the Velcro tabs along the front of his Santa suit. “Just more needle sticks.” Shark-like, his teeth flashed as he shrugged off the padded belly and jacket, letting them fall in a blood-red pile on the floor. “Besides, you might enjoy it too much.”

“I might.” She saw the rest of the old scar that curved down over his ribs and flat stomach to the tight semi-circle of his navel. “But I’m the doctor and you’re the patient. Guess you’ll have to trust me, won’t you?” She smiled in return, a smile as controlled and taunting as his had been. But her stomach twisted in knots.

“Trust you, Sophie? Lord, that prospect makes me shake in my boots. But stitch away. If you can stand it, I can.” He winced as she dabbed cold antiseptic along the line of the wound. “But hurry up. I have to get back to a stakeout.”

“Right,” she said, her grim face reflected back to her from the shine of the table. “Right. Whatever you want, Detective.”

She bent forward, and as she did, he whispered into the curve of her ear, his warm breath sliding around the rim and curling deep inside her. “In case you were wondering, Dr. Sugar, I’ve already filled out the police report. This was a job-related injury.” Contempt lifted the corners of his mouth. “You don’t have to worry that I’m getting away with anything.”

For a moment she paused. There were things she could say, should say. She wouldn’t. He was her patient. She’d give him the same care she gave everyone. The same care she’d given his partner last Christmas Eve. She could do that. And then he’d be gone.

She stitched. Silently. She didn’t trust her unruly tongue.

And the entire time she felt the burn of his eyes on the back of her neck as she bent to her task. Doggedly she moved the curved needle through his skin and wondered why in the name of all things good, Judah Finnegan had landed in her ER tonight.

She dressed the wound. Silently.

But even as her brain registered the animosity that rose like shimmers of heat from him, she was aware, too, at a tactile level, of his sleek skin and the supple muscles beneath it. Aware of the heavy stillness between them, a stillness and silence that would take only a movement, a word to turn into something…reckless.

She smoothed down the last piece of tape and took a deep breath. Almost home free.

As if she’d spoken aloud, Finnegan moved suddenly, his thigh brushing her hip.

She stepped back, a shade too quickly, but he remained seated.

“Done.” She handed him the list of instructions. “I need to go over these with you. One of the nurses will explain—”

The curtain flew open behind Sophie. She turned, relieved. “Oh, good, here’s—”

“Dr. Brennan!” Cammie stood there, the chubby shine of her face flattened with tension.

Just over Cammie’s shoulder Sophie glimpsed Billy Ray’s ponytail swinging against the back of his shirt as he hovered in the hall.

“Room 4. Code Blue.”

The beating victim.

There would be no miracles tonight.

Sophie dropped the instructions on the examining table, shoved her pen into her pocket, and pointed a finger at Finnegan. “You. Sit. Stay!” Her coat billowed around her as she ran to catch up with Cammie, who’d already disappeared.

The muttered “woof” behind her didn’t even slow her steps.

Finnegan eased off the table. He watched her race down the hall, her shoes jingling.

Sophie’s curly hair bounced wildly against her white medical jacket. Dark brown with the glow of fire. Not red exactly but not brown either. There was a word for it. Russet. Yeah. That was it. The gray material of her skirt bunched and pulled against the length of her thighs as she darted between oncoming techs, hands out, warning them out of her way.

Long, smooth-muscled thighs.

His fingers curled around the curtain. When she’d leaned in close to him, she’d smelled of cinnamon and pumpkin.

And antiseptic.

In a full-out run behind her, a tech followed with a crash cart.

Electricity buzzed along his skin. Whatever was happening was bad. He understood that sudden crackle in the air—like ozone before a storm. He’d smelled it on stakeouts gone sour.

It was always bad.

He watched as Sophie and her colleagues entered a room at the end of the hall and shut the door. For a second everything down the long corridor slowed down, became too quiet, one of those moments between a breath, a moment between life and death. Irrevocable what the next tick of the clock would bring.

He knew that too.

And then, as if everyone had inhaled, exhaled, movement and noise resumed. Only an occasional furtive glance at the closed door revealed the enormity of the moment.

Finnegan glanced at the examining table in back of him. Nothing there that he needed. Nothing more he needed or wanted in this place. Shrugging, he pulled the curtain silently shut behind him and walked toward the exit, stepped out into the night and took a deep breath of his own, sucking the damp air deep into his lungs.

Life and death. A thin line, nothing more than a second or a wrong turn, a wrong word, separated the two.

An hour later, heartsick and exhausted to her bones, sweat beading her forehead, Sophie returned to the examining room and shoved the curtain aside.

A pile of red velvet and bloodied white acrylic lay puddled on the floor of the empty room.

Chapter 2

In a cold, driving rain at two in the morning, they found the baby lying in the manger of the Second Baptist Church, directly across the street from Beth Israel, the only synagogue in the tri-county area.

“What the hell,” Finnegan muttered as rain spat into his eyes and seeped down the neck of his yellow slicker.

“Lord have mercy.” Tyree Jones squatted and reached under the rough wood roof of the manger. His broad dark hand touched the cradle, hesitated. Rain dripped from the edges of the straw spilling over the edges of the cradle. “Shoot, man, it’s a baby, that’s what.”

The spotlight in the shelter shone down on the baby. Chocolate-brown eyes stared back at them.

“I can see it’s a baby, Tyree, an Asian baby, in fact. The punk knifed my shoulder. Not my eyes. What’s a baby doing here?”

“All right, I’ll play.” Tyree’s forefinger brushed against the baby’s cheek. “What?”

“Damn it to hell, Tyree. Get the kid out of there. It’s got to be freezing.” Finnegan rolled his shoulders, easing the ache of the stitches, and stooped down beside Tyree.

“She’s not an it, Judah. She’s an itty-bitty baby girl, that’s what she is.” Tyree said as Finnegan bent over him and scooped her up with one hand, tucking the pink Winnie-the-Pooh sheet around her. “What a pretty girl you are, too, honey,” Tyree cooed. “Now why’d somebody go off and leave you here all by your lonesome, huh?” Tyree poked his face close to the silent baby.

Coming at them sideways now, the rain sliced against Finnegan’s face and drizzled under his slicker. “Go back to the car and get the blanket. She needs to be kept warm—”

“Judah,” Tyree said patiently as he rose to his full six feet three, “I have babies of my own. I know what to do.”

“Yeah, reckon you do, all right.” Holding the baby in a football grip, Finnegan shot him a wicked grin.

“Well, shoot, that too.” Tyree grinned back and loped toward their unit parked on the sidewalk. “Making babies is part of the re-ward, you know?”

“Kids? A reward? I don’t know. All those late nights and early mornings. Diapers and all that—”

“Be the same if I still worked patrol. I’d still have late nights, early mornings. More fun my way,” Tyree called back as he dashed toward their unmarked car.

Finnegan hunched forward, keeping the baby under the manger roof and near the warmth of the spotlight. “Got a story to tell, don’t you?” he said to her before looking off into the shadows at the sides of the church.

Rain glistened against the stained-glass windows. The branches of the huge banyan tree on the right side of the church lifted with the wind. Rain drummed the wide leaves and streamed to the ground. “You sure didn’t walk here by yourself.”

Considering him carefully, the baby’s eyes followed his face.

“Not very talkative? Can’t say I blame you.” Judah looked toward the unit, turning carefully so he wouldn’t slop water from his slicker onto the baby. “Not a fit night for dogs to be out. Much less you.” He looked away from the solemn face. Sheesh. Somebody dumping a baby on a night like this. On any night. What a world. First the undercover Santa lookout earlier in the evening, now this. No wonder a cop’s job was never done.

In the blaze of the car’s dome light, he could see Tyree speaking into the mike, shaking his head.

Huffing back, Tyree pulled the cotton blanket out from under his slicker and tossed it to Finnegan. “Nobody’s reported a lost baby tonight. Nothing but an anonymous call into dispatch saying we should check out the prowlers at the Second Baptist.”

“Prowlers?” Judah looked off into the darkness of the wind-whipped trees and back down at the unprotesting lump in his arms. “Funny kind of call, don’t you think? No prowler left this package.”

“Nope. Probably the mom. Not wanting to leave our little darlin’ completely alone.”

“You’re figuring it was the mom, then?”

“Most likely. Some kind of twisted maternal instinct.”

“Could be. I don’t know.” Judah stared back at Tyree’s face gleaming with rain and shadowy reflections. “Prowler? That’s an odd word choice, isn’t it? I think a mother abandoning her kid would refer to the kid as ‘my baby.’ ‘My child.’ Something, anyway, that would give a heads-up about an infant. But not prowler. It would be interesting to find out who made the call.”

“Going to worry it like a dawg with a bone, aren’t you? I swear, you think too much sometimes, Judah.” Tyree swiped rain out of his eyes. “Anyway, my man, whatever, whoever, our orders are to have li’l missy here checked out at our fine medical facility. Guess we’ll be making another run to your favorite establishment.” He sent Finnegan a sly, sideways look. “Some nights just don’t get any better, do they? This one’s been a world-beater. Got to play Santa, saved a baby, and now you get to revisit your favorite doc.”

“We haven’t been riding together long enough for you to go there, Tyree. Back off.”

White teeth sparkled as the big man gave him a huge grin. “So? I got my opinions. You gonna beat me up because I say what I see, Judah? You with that baby slung under your arm like you’re ready to gallop into some end zone? Huh? You think you can take me?” His grin glinted again as he did a little two-step in the rain, his arms moving in a smooth rhythm. He tapped Judah lightly on the chest, the shoulder. “Bring it on, then.”

“Oh, go to hell, Tyree.” Hunching over and draping his slicker across the baby, Finnegan stomped off toward the car.

“It’s a wonder Yvonna hasn’t whomped you upside the head, you know that?”

“Hey, I’m Yvonna’s sweet-talking man.” He slid under the steering wheel, fired up the engine, and slammed the door.

The baby jerked in Finnegan’s arms. He laid his hand lightly across her forehead. Too warm.

“Sorry ’bout that, baby girl. Didn’t mean to spook you.” The low velvet of Tyree’s words moved through the darkness, easing the sudden tension. Not looking at Judah, Tyree added quietly, “We got to talk about George sometime. You know we do.”

“No. We do not.”

“Fine. Be a jackass. But I’ll still be your partner.”

Finnegan clipped his seat belt in place and settled the still-silent child into his arm. “That can be changed, too, Tyree.”

“Partners share, Judah. That’s all I’m saying. We’ve partnered for four months now. And you don’t share. Ever. Hard enough being a black cop in this town without wondering if my partner’s gonna be at my back.”

For a long moment there was only the hiss of the heavy tires and the sound of the rain beating against the windows. Finnegan ran the back of his forefinger over the baby’s cheek and stared out at the neon lights sliding past in the darkness. The slap-slap of the windshield wipers punctuated the silence.

He sighed. “I’ve got your back, Tyree.”

“Okay, then.” Tyree let out a sigh of his own. “Didn’t mean to push so hard.”

“Yeah, you did.” Finnegan scooched down farther into his seat, adjusting the quiet infant against him. “You realize you’re plumb irritatin’, don’t you?”

“Hell, yes.” Tyree’s smile was quick and open. “Part of my charm.”

“Whoever said that was a damned fool.”

“Hey, man, don’t you go insulting my Yvonna, hear?” They slid to a stop under the protected entrance of Poinciana’s ER. Water spurted onto the side windows. “Not if you want any more of her potato salad.”

“Well, there you go then. Obviously Yvonna, a woman of brilliance and charm of her own, has adopted you as her very own charity case, Tyree. That’s the only explanation.” Yanking the hood of his slicker up with one hand, Finnegan hoisted the blanket over the baby, tucked her under his rain gear and slid out of the car. As he did, he added, “But in spite of her unfortunate taste in husbands, I sure do admire that woman’s potato salad.”

At his sudden movements, the baby waved its tiny fist under the blanket, gave a burp of movement and then lay still again as Judah shouldered his way through the ER doors.

He saw her, of course.

It had been that kind of night from the start. One screw-up after another. Why should he expect anything else at the end of a lousy day?

A flicker of movement caught his gaze, nothing more than her arm rising to her forehead, but he slowed. He wanted to look away, felt the urge so strongly that he almost believed for a second that he was walking toward the desk and the crowd of people in front of it.

But something about her gesture checked him, rooting him to the floor.

Unable to look away from the figure at the end of the hall, he watched her.

And resented her because he couldn’t look away. Resented the power she had to compel his attention.

Resented her most of all because he didn’t want to look away.

They were standing close together, Sophie and another doctor, the man stooping down to her. Her head was bowed. She’d jammed her hands into her pockets. From time to time she nodded as the man jabbed his finger in the air. With each nod, her dark hair bounced, swung forward, hid her expression.

It was the slump in her shoulders that held Finnegan’s attention.

Exhaustion.

Defeat.

He understood defeat, its nasty-ass gut-punch. That’s what his eyes read in the sag of her shoulders, in the brace of her sneaker against the wall behind her.

He just hadn’t figured cocksure, bold-as-brass Sophie Brennan for someone who’d ever look this defeated.

This diminished.

All the sparking, combative energy had drained away, leaving her small and helpless, the bells on her goofy socks silent.

Suddenly, as if he’d whispered in her ear, Sophie’s head jerked upright. She looked straight at him for a long moment.