The Precinct: SWAT

As her top veed open to the night air, and the chilly dampness bathed her in goose bumps, Rafe left her. “No. Don’t stop.”

But Rafe wasn’t leaving, he was looking for a little more privacy. He tossed her bag inside and before Josie could follow his lead, he lifted her onto the seat, shutting the door behind him and following her across to the passenger side. With little heed for long legs and cramped quarters and layers of clothing, Rafe maneuvered her onto his lap. He tugged off his belt and placed his gun safely in the glove compartment as Josie’s fingers tested the contrasts between his short, silky hair and the rougher texture of his stubbled jaw. And then she had his full attention again. Rafe slid his arms beneath her jacket and blouse and pulled her hard against him, his hands roaming at will against her skin, his mouth claiming hers. The urgency of every touch, every kiss, conveyed the depth of emotion that Rafe had been unable to speak.

Josie cracked open a little more of her battered heart and answered. This wasn’t about slow seduction. It wasn’t about finesse. It was about needing and caring, giving and taking.

“I don’t ever want to have a child look at me that way again,” Rafe rasped against her lips. “I don’t want to hurt like this. I don’t want to feel…”

“Shh. It’s okay. Let it go.”

With Josie’s knees splayed on either side of Rafe’s thighs, and the hard bulge of his zipper pulsing against the seam of her jeans, he left no doubt about what he was asking of her. “We never… I shouldn’t…”

His face was buried against her neck, and he was shaking so hard with the effort to restrain himself that her body vibrated right along with his. But she could also feel the heat and moisture of the tears he blinked against her skin. She pulled away just far enough to hold his face and turn his golden-brown eyes to the dim moonlight. The tears she saw pooling there made the decision for her. Her heart couldn’t say no.

“You know I’ve wanted this. Wanted to be more than friends.” Josie reached down to unzip her jeans, to assure him of his welcome and her own desire.

He studied her face, looking as surprised as she by the unexpected passion and soul-deep empathy burning between them.

“It’s okay, Rafe.” She leaned in and kissed him. “We’re okay.”

And then Rafe began to move with the urgent efficiency with which he defused bombs and took down bad guys. It was all fast and furious—a physical expression of every powerful emotion surging between them. Zippers crunched. His billfold came out. Clothes were pushed aside.

“I need you, Jose. I need you. I need…” Molding hands and desperate kisses made her blood drum through her veins. The heat rising inside her was almost unbearable. She could only hold on to his sturdy shoulders as he slid inside her, moving and rocking until they were both mindless with this physical, sensual outpouring of emotion.

“I love you, Rafe,” she whispered as he crushed her in his arms and plunged inside her one last time, groaning with the release that she freely and willingly gave him.

HE SHOULD BE feeling better than this.

Rafe drew his fingers through the condensation forming on the side window of his truck and brushed the cool moisture across his feverish cheek. Oh, his body was well and truly satisfied—too spent and content to want one more thing. And those hated emotions that had raged through his system had dissipated under Josie’s patient insistence and undeserved generosity.

She was snuggled up against his side in the truck now, her rumpled clothes refastened, her breathing slow and even. When he felt her stirring, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the crown of her dark sable hair. When she tilted her chin and smiled at him, he knew what he was feeling.

Guilt.

He’d taken slaps across the face and a belt across his backside that didn’t hurt as bad as this. He’d betrayed a friend tonight. Two of them. On the day Aaron had died, he’d made him a promise. Visiting his son in jail and boinking his daughter weren’t exactly how he’d intended to honor Aaron’s memory.

Some damn fine protector he turned out to be.

Josie’s soft smile turned into a quizzical frown. “What are you thinking about?”

“Your dad.” He shifted a little space between them, so that his thigh was no longer touching the tempting warmth of hers. “This wasn’t my finest moment. I took advantage of that big heart of yours. I needed…” His deep sigh of remorse echoed in the truck. “I just needed.”

“You needed to connect with someone who cared. Someone who would listen and let you feel what you needed to.” She zipped her jacket and folded her arms across her middle. Was she cold? Rafe slid over to the steering wheel and pulled out his keys to start the truck and turn on the heater.

“Yeah, well, I should have stopped at talking.”

“Not your strong suit,” she teased. “You’ve always been a more physical being.”

“I told Aaron I would always take care of you. Tonight, I just used you.”

“That’s insulting.”

“Josie.”

“Hey, I’m not a naive girl anymore. You’re not my first, Rafe, so I knew what I was doing. It’s not like you forced me.”

“Damn close.”

He found her crystal-blue eyes across the cab, saw them blanch wide and then darken. She turned in her seat, twisting the argument back on him. “You would have stopped if I’d asked. But I didn’t want you to stop. Sometimes a relationship works that way. One partner needs more than the other at a given time. It’s a mutual give and take.”

“We don’t have a relationship like that.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

Oh, yeah. He was not relationship material. Definitely not with his former partner’s daughter. After tonight, he might not even be friend material. “My emotions were out of control. That was a mistake.”

She sat up ramrod straight, her Irish temper coloring her cheeks. “Making love was a mistake? Or feeling something was a mistake?”

Making love? She thought that wham-bam, thank-you, ma’am, was how it was supposed to be between a man and a woman? Just what kind of jerks had she been dating, who hadn’t shown her how good it could be if a man took his time and… Ah, hell. Put on the brakes. Don’t go there.

He squeezed his hands around the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Jose. I made a promise to your dad to take care of you. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. I always figured it would be intense with you. That’s kind of exciting. And you know I…care about you.”

And he cared about her. But he couldn’t keep trouble away or screen those jerks or even make sure she got safely to her car when she worked too late if his senses were blurred by his emotions and his focus was distracted by long legs and lush lips and that gorgeous fall of dark hair. He could hardly do right by her if he was the trouble. “Look, I already failed Patrick. I couldn’t keep him off drugs and out of jail. I don’t want to mess up what we have.”

“Rafe, what about what I want?”

He opened his door and stepped out into the night. The bracing air filled his lungs and cleared his head of her lingering scent. “You’ve got class in the morning and you need to get home. I need to get back to the precinct garage and get the SWAT van cleaned up and refitted for our next call.”

She grabbed her backpack and climbed out her side of the truck. “You have to do that tonight?”

Oh, yeah. He needed to get his hands busy doing something besides itching to reach for Josie again. He needed to busy his mind with a task where he didn’t have to second-guess his every move. “I’m a jerk, okay?”

“Please stop. It hurts me to hear you talk like this.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want things to change between us. I want you to be able to trust me. I need you to trust me. Nothing like that will ever happen again. I promise.” After she unlocked her car, he opened the door for her and waited while she slid behind the wheel. Man, he wished she’d let him pick out something more reliable than this rattletrap for her. At least she let him change the oil and keep the motor tuned up and running as well as a beater car like this one could. “Go on, I’ll wait to make sure your car starts. I’ll see you next time you work at the Shamrock.”

She turned the key. Once the engine growled to life, he started to leave. But Josie put out her arm to keep him from shutting the door. “Just for the record? You weren’t a jerk for making love to me. Now you’re being a jerk.”

Of that he had no doubt.

He jumped back as she slammed the door, knowing he deserved worse. Once inside his truck, he followed her out of the parking lot but turned in the opposite direction toward his condo. He’d better be keeping a lot more than a few miles of physical distance between them. What the hell was he thinking? That was the problem—he hadn’t been thinking.

Josie’s skin was cool and pale in the frosty moonlight. Her touch was so gentle, so certain. He’d gotten more drunk on her lips than the beer she’d served him earlier that night. And her body—her tall, lithe, sweet body with those long legs snugged around him…

“Damn.” He was breaking out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the heater in his truck.

Josephine Erin Nichols was his friend. His unofficial ward. His penance for letting his friend and mentor die ten years ago.

She was pretty and kind and sexy and funny, and strictly off-limits. And yet, for several mindless minutes tonight, she’d been everything he needed. Exactly what he needed.

He’d been a rutting bull who’d taken advantage of her friendship and compassionate nature. Hell, he’d barely gotten a condom on and hadn’t even asked if she was on the pill. In his saner days before this one, he hadn’t wanted to know if his sweet, hardworking buddy was sleeping with anyone. She was either working one of several part-time jobs, studying or going to school, so he knew she didn’t have much time to date. He hadn’t even had the presence of mind to make sure that she’d found the completion he had.

He was a jerk. A lonesome, selfish, let-friends-and-children-die-on-his-watch jerk. He’d been on his own since high school for a reason. And it wasn’t just because he’d severed all ties with his worthless parents. He’d become obsessed with his job and the sweetheart he’d been engaged to had left him. He was alone because he couldn’t make a relationship with a woman work.

But he could find solace in her beautiful, willing body.

Rafe picked up speed and merged into the late-night traffic that was mostly big rigs at this time of night on Interstate 435, and waited for the lightning bolt of her late father’s spirit, or his own troubled conscience, to strike him dead.

Chapter Two

The Present

“You didn’t bring me any cigarettes?”

Josie Nichols let the accusation in her half brother Patrick’s tone sink in and curdle with the nausea already rolling in her stomach. “By the end of this summer, I’ll be a registered nurse, and I’m not going to support such an unhealthy, expensive habit. Anyway, you promised me you were quitting.”

“That was last month.” Patrick leaned back from the plastic table in the KCPD detention center where she’d come to visit him between classes at UMKC and her nightly shift at the Shamrock Bar. His blue eyes narrowed as he brushed his dark hair off his forehead. Their black-Irish looks were about the only thing she had in common with what was left of her so-called family. “I’ve got pressures in here that keep me on edge, and a couple of smokes could go a long way toward making me feel better. Besides, they’re like cash in here.”

Josie slipped her hand below the tabletop, gently rubbing at the small bump on her belly, trying to coax some cooperation from her stomach. “What do you need to buy in jail?”

“Protection. Weed. Private time in the shower.” He leaned forward again, propping his elbows on the table. She noticed the sinuous lines of a snake circling his forearm. Great. He’d given himself another tattoo. Sanitary considerations aside, their father would be so proud. Not.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

He paused for a moment, blinked, then sat back, silencing whatever he’d been about to share. “No more than usual. You bring me cigarettes next time you come.”

Although her regular bouts of morning sickness had passed, long times between snacks and stress like this visit could easily trigger that unsettled feeling. Josie hadn’t told Patrick about the baby. She hadn’t told anyone beyond their Uncle Robbie—who’d found her in the Shamrock’s restroom kneeling over the toilet two afternoons in a row, and said he recognized the signs from his own dear late Maureen—and the nurse practitioner-midwife who was taking care of her. The midwife was paid to be discreet, and no one kept a secret better than Robbie, even though he’d pestered her time and again to give him the father’s name so he could “set the ruddy bastard straight.”

Her relationship with Rafe had tanked after that night in the parking lot. Oh, he was just as protective as ever—annoyingly so—showing up to escort her to her car after work, coming over to her apartment to fix her car when it wouldn’t run. But he’d turned into such a bear, nit-picking her every decision as if she was a child, arguing over trivial things, refusing to discuss anything deep or meaningful. He put in as many hours with his SWAT team—training, answering calls, volunteering for off-duty assignments—as she worked in a day, leaving them no time to sit down to talk and reconnect. Rafe had once again become the loner she’d first met all those years ago—afraid to attach himself to anyone, afraid to care.

Josie splayed her fingers, cradling the precious life growing inside her even more carefully. Sooner or later, her secret could no longer be hidden beneath loose clothes. But if Rafe couldn’t deal with her in a healthy, reasonable way, then how would he deal with a child? If nightmares of dying children and his own abuse growing up still haunted his sleep, then why would he want one of his own? While she had no doubt that Rafe would do right by her once she found the courage to tell him, she knew his support would be all about providing money or a name or whatever the kid needed that didn’t involve any emotional commitment.

If he couldn’t or wouldn’t love her or their child, then how could they ever hope to be a real family?

So Josie intended to treasure this baby all by herself, delaying the fight and the blame and the guilt Rafe would surely heap upon himself once he found out. She’d never known a man to hurt as deeply as Rafe Delgado did. He’d suffered so much loss in his life that he trusted duty and honor more than his heart. Or hers. So Josie kept her secret.

Yeah. Aaron Nichols would be real proud of both his children.

“I brought you the magazines you asked for.” Even the seedy ones she’d swallowed her pride to purchase at the convenience store for him. “Happy Birthday. I’d have baked you a cake and brought that, too, if it wasn’t such a stereotype. You know, hiding a hacksaw inside it.”

But Patrick didn’t laugh with her, or even smile. Or thank her.

Instead, he signaled for the guard at the door, indicating the visit was over.

“I love you, Patrick. Be good. I want you to make your parole and get out of here…” by the time the baby comes. So she wouldn’t be quite so alone. But Patrick didn’t care about her wishes any more than Rafe did. “I want you out of here soon.”

“Me, too. Bring me those cigarettes.”

No “I love you.” No “thanks, sis.” No “goodbye.”

Tears blurred her vision as the guard released him from the room and another escorted him to his cell. Josie pulled a tissue from her pocket and quickly dabbed them away, wishing she could blame the sudden sense of loss and loneliness she felt on her fluctuating hormones. She sniffed loudly enough to embarrass herself and glanced over at the two men across the room, shaking hands at their table. The prisoner in the orange jumpsuit seemed startled by the consideration that her own brother hadn’t even shown her. But the man in the suit and tie—his lawyer, most likely—said a few words that calmed his client. A few gentle words, some show of caring and support would have been enough for her as well.

The tears welled up again and Josie quickly turned away to dab her eyes and collect the sack she’d brought Patrick’s magazines in. Ashamed by her weakness, she stood and hurried toward the exit. She’d taken only three steps before plowing into the attorney’s chest.

Instinctively, her hand went to her abdomen and she backed away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking.”

She looked up to offer him an apologetic smile, and would have grinned outright when she saw his toupee sitting slightly askew on his forehead. But there was a blank look behind his glasses, something so cold and devoid of emotion in his light-colored eyes, even more so than Rafe’s, that her smile died and she took a second step back.

“My fault entirely, ma’am.” He smiled. But even that outward gesture of civility didn’t reach his eyes. He was wiping his fingers with a crisp, white handkerchief. And was that…? Were those drops of blood she glimpsed before he tucked the crisp white cloth back into his pocket?

“Are you all right?”

“No harm done.” He nodded to the guard and reached for the open door. “After you.”

Maybe her hormones were out of whack and her imagination was working overtime. He’d probably suffered something as simple as a nosebleed. Lord knew the air in this place was dry as a bone. “Thanks.”

But a gurgling sound behind her caused Josie to stop and turn. And go on instant alert.

The prisoner had slumped over the table, clutching his throat.

“Wait a minute. Is he…? Is your client all right?” When she spun around, the man had disappeared and the guard was closing the door behind him. “Guard!”

The uniformed black man hurried right behind her. The prisoner was shaking now.

“He’s convulsing. Help me get him to the floor.” All of Josie’s training kicked in as she cleared the man’s throat and turned him onto his side.

The guard was on his radio, calling for backup, while she checked the prisoner’s thready pulse and fixed, pinpoint stare of his pupils. He wasn’t breathing. His heart was stopping. She had nothing but her hands to help him. He needed a tracheotomy. Now. “Do you have a knife?”

Fifteen minutes later, the medic on staff at the detention center pronounced what Josie already knew. “He’s dead.”

She wiped the blood from her hands and dashed over to the corner of the room to empty her stomach.

THE NOISE OF clacking pool balls and TV broadcasts and dozens of conversations was particularly grating tonight. Josie waited a moment in the Shamrock Bar’s walk-in freezer, counting the clouds formed by each breath, savoring the utter quiet of insulated walls and cold, heavy air.

But she was already shivering. She’d be hypothermic if she waited in here long enough for her headache to pass.

Ignoring the throbbing inside her skull and the twinge in her lower back, she lifted a crate of bottled beer off the shelf and backed her hip into the door release. The noise assaulted her eardrums the moment the door swung open. But this was rent money, or maybe that oak crib that was in such good shape at the thrift store. So she’d sucked up the pain and pasted a smile on her face by the time she left the back hallway and pushed through the swinging door that took her behind the Shamrock’s polished walnut bar.

“There you are, girlie.” Uncle Robbie plucked the crate from her hands and winked one crinkling blue eye. His robust Irish voice warmed with concern. “I wondered where you’d got to. Everything all right?”

Josie nodded, resisting the urge to touch her belly out here where the other staff and customers could see. “I just needed some fresh air.”

“You know I’ll give you all the time off you need.” His silvering dark curls bobbed up and down as he cradled the beer on his hip and opened the cooler behind the bar to drop the bottles in one by one. “You only have to ask.”

Josie eyed the two waitresses at their station, waiting to have trays filled, and took note of the customers standing two and three deep behind the green vinyl bar stools while Lance, another part-time student bartender hurried back and forth. Robbie Nichols was short-staffed, as usual, his nose for business not nearly as reliable as the charity in his heart.

“Who called in sick tonight?” Josie asked, answering the high sign from one of the waitresses and pulling two pilsners from the rack above the bar to draw a pair of beers.

Robbie’s thick stomach jiggled as he laughed. “You know me too well, girlie. Enrico called, said he was under the weather. Odds are that’s a lie, but what can I do?”

It was a bet she wouldn’t take. Knowing Enrico Gonzalez, he was probably under the sheets with his girlfriend—or sleeping the evening away after staying too late at her apartment the night before. Josie set the beers on the tray and took the next server’s order for a round of whiskey shots.

How was she ever going to leave Robbie to his own devices long enough to finish her nursing practicum at the Truman Medical Center or go on maternity leave? “Why don’t you let me run this for a few minutes, and you go in the office and call Allison to see if she can come in and help out. You really need to fire Enrico and hire someone more reliable, too, so we don’t get shorthanded like this again.”

“You sure got your daddy’s level head, didn’t ye?” He crushed the box between his meaty hands and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Fine. I’ll go call. But I don’t want to come back and find you lifting anything heavier than that whiskey bottle, understand?”

Josie grinned and shooed him toward the swinging door. “Yes. Now go before we lose any more customers for being too slow to serve them.”

“I’ll wait as long as you need me to, Miss Nichols.” Josie set the shot glass she’d just filled on the tray and turned to the red-haired man in a suit and tie sitting at the corner of the bar. Something about him seemed familiar, but with the chaotic distractions going on all around her, she couldn’t immediately place him. He pulled a leather wallet from his suit coat and flashed a brass and blue enamel badge. “My name’s Spencer Montgomery. I’m a detective with KCPD.”

Maybe that’s what she recognized. Being located just a few blocks from KCPD’s Fourth Precinct station, the Shamrock Bar drew the majority of its customers from cops and KCPD support staff. He must be a returning customer. “What can I get you, Detective Montgomery?”

“A cup of coffee is all right now. I’m on the clock.”

Josie went to the counter behind the bar to pour him a mug of coffee. “Here you go. The coffee is always on the house.”

But his light green eyes warned her that he wasn’t really here for something to drink. “When the baseball game rush is over, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

“About the murder you witnessed today.”

AT 1:42 A.M., Josie locked the door behind her and turned to face the Shamrock’s parking lot. What she needed after this endless day and longer night was a hug and a hot shower.

What she got was Rafe Delgado.

The springtime air was cool and pleasant, but a shiver rippled down Josie’s spine when his truck door opened and he strode out across the parking lot to meet her. He was still wearing his SWAT uniform, crisp black from head to toe, with only KCPD and his last name embroidered in white on his chest pocket, the badge on his belt and a gun strapped to his thigh to break up his lean, dangerous look.

“Are you on duty?” she asked, pulling her shoulders back, bracing for another impersonal, duty-motivated meeting. “How many times have I told you I can get someone else to walk me to my car when you’re working?”

“And who’s that going to be?” He propped his hands on his hips and scanned the nearly empty lot from side to side. He glanced up at the dark windows on the building’s second floor. “Did Robbie already turn in? He should walk you out.”