KCPD Protector

She could hear the dog in the kitchen at the back of the house.

Her breath hitched in her chest at the disquieting thought that crossed her mind. Praying that she’d be proved wrong, Elise quickly returned to the living room and turned the AC unit back on high. The light in the foyer flickered at the sudden drain on the neighborhood’s overtaxed power grid as the machine roared to life and the cold air blasted her again.

Noisy enough. She couldn’t hear Spike anymore.

Then she opened the red front door and reached outside to press the doorbell.

The instant the bell chimed, Spike barked and came running from the kitchen. He barked again, eager to greet or warn off their visitor.

“Shush. It’s okay, sweetie. It’s just Mommy testing a theory.”

But the yapping and squealing continued until she picked him up and pushed open the storm door to show him no one was there. Greeted by a wall of summer heat and uncomfortable suspicion, Elise crossed the porch, mentally timing how long it took her to reach the railing at the edge of the house.

Elise hugged the dog against her shoulder, patting his back as if burping a baby. “He lied to us, Spike.”

Such a small slip of the tongue. Maybe nothing more sinister than a clichéd response.

I rang the doorbell.

No way had James stood on her front porch, announcing his arrival. He would have needed to sprint down the steps and around the side of the house to the back gate to reach her before Spike heard the bell and sounded his alarm. But James had strolled up the walk. His breathing had been perfectly normal, without a drop of sweat visible anywhere.

Glancing up and down the street, Elise peered into shadows beyond the streetlights but saw nothing out of sorts. The only thing that wasn’t right was the portentous wind that made her clothes instantly stick to her skin again, and the nagging suspicion about a man who claimed to be her friend.

Why would James lie? What was the point of sneaking around her house? And when she’d asked him about the flowers, he’d never actually confirmed sending them. Or denied it.

She’d gotten rid of the roses. She’d gotten rid of James.

But she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that her life had taken a very weird, very unsettling turn.

* * *

GEORGE HEARD THE hurried rhythm of a woman’s high heels tapping across KCPD headquarters’ marble floors behind him.

“Hold the elevator, please.”

Even if he hadn’t recognized the voice, he would have pushed the button to hold the doors open. It was the polite thing to do. But he did recognize Elise Brown’s articulate, slightly breathless tone, and his blood suffused with an instant warmth.

“Thanks.” Elise tilted her head and smiled as she darted into the car and moved to the railing behind him.

He knew it was wrong to identify his assistant by the warm contralto pitch of her voice. And he shouldn’t be familiar with the faint whiff of tropical fruits that emanated from the soft waves of her chin-length hair as she breezed past him. His gaze dipped down to the navy blue heels she wore without hose, a choice made in deference to the forecasted triple-digit temperatures, no doubt. While a part of him admired the sensible concession to the summer heat wave, George’s chest constricted and he resolutely averted his eyes.

He wasn’t admiring her sensibility. He was imprinting the curve of her smooth, tanned calves beneath a hemline that brushed the top of her knees to memory, coming up with another completely inappropriate, equally unmistakable way to identify Elise Brown.

Yeah, his life would be a heck of a lot easier if he wasn’t so observant of little details like that—especially where his executive assistant was concerned.

Pushing the button for the eighth floor, George tempered the quickened pace of his breathing and made sure his commander-in-chief expression was in place before he turned to greet her. “Good morning, Elise.”

He might have hit fifty, but he wasn’t dead. He was single and he was a man. Couldn’t blame a guy for noticing an attractive woman. Still, it wasn’t quite protocol to charge up with this rush of energy just because she’d smiled at him, just because he got to spend a few moments alone on the elevator with her clean, fresh scent. He felt more awake, more alert, than he had a few seconds ago. And he hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee yet.

She tucked her sunglasses into the modest neckline of her sleeveless dress and brushed a swath of nut-brown hair off her cheek. “Good morning, sir.”

Way to kill the buzz. It was one thing for the men and women he outranked at KCPD to refer to him with the respectful title. It was something else again for the woman he worked with every day of his life to call him sir. Hearing that from Elise, no matter how well intended, always made him feel like one of her father’s friends or a Dutch uncle. It was easy to squash any perky urge to smile now.

The doors drifted together and the elevator made a slight bounce before starting its ascent. “It’s George, remember?”

“I’m sorry. Good morning, George.”

“No need to apologize. I’ll just keep reminding you until you get it right,” he teased.

Only, she didn’t seem to get the joke. Her blue gaze darted up to his before she suddenly needed something from her flowered purse and focused her attention there. “Of course.”

While he was careful about crossing the line into anything that could be construed as sexual harassment, there was no harm in being friends. Yet Elise seemed to shoot down every overture of appreciation or concern that could take them to being more than polite acquaintances who shared the same connected office space.

Even yesterday afternoon, when the delivery of those flowers had clearly upset her, she hadn’t opened up one bit. Maybe a small stab of unprofessional jealousy had made him linger in her office longer than he’d intended. She’d lit up at first, once she found out the bouquet was meant for her, and he’d been curious enough to find out what kind of man she was dating who could turn her serious, practical head like that.

But even when Elise’s smile had changed to a frown, and her troubled thoughts had been written on her face, she hadn’t been interested in sharing a thing. She hadn’t even wanted him to dust off his rusty investigative skills and make a few quick inquiries to find where the bouquet had come from for her.

The elevator continued its familiar climb, but there was little familiar about Elise’s oddly distracted behavior this morning. She pulled a ring of keys and fobs from her bag and clutched them in her fist, staring at them. Tugging back the front of his suit jacket, George propped his hands at his waist. “Is everything all right?”

“What?” Her eyes locked on to his, telling him one thing before she stuffed the keys back into her purse and told him something else. “Oh. I couldn’t find the spare key I leave on my front porch after I walked the dog this morning.” She patted her purse. “I like to use it so I don’t have to carry all these and be weighed down. Don’t worry. We got in through the keypad by the garage door. That’s why I’m running a little late today.”

Uh-uh. She wasn’t dismissing the confusion he’d read in her gaze. Not this time. “Are you worried someone stole the key?”

The corners of her mouth tightened as she fixed the smile on her lips. “I probably locked it inside the house the last time I used it and forgot. I didn’t have much time to look.”

George valued Elise as his assistant. His office had been a chaotic mess after the previous assistant retired. Elise had come in, quickly grasping the old information management and communication systems and updating them in ways that made his job easier, and made the entire deputy commissioner’s office a model of professional efficiency that other administrative departments were now copying.

But he’d been friends with each of his partners over the years. He’d gotten to know officers and staff alike. He knew the names of their children; whether they were football, baseball or basketball fans, or if they were even into sports at all. He knew what their favorite places to eat were and what issues they might be struggling with on the job or off the clock.

Elise went to great lengths to keep her personal life out of the office. He knew the names of her parents from her personnel file, but had never met them. And other than noting she wore no wedding ring and kept no pictures except one of a small black poodle on her desk, he couldn’t confirm whether or not she was in a relationship with anyone.

As stormy as his marriage to Courtney had been, he’d always kept a memento of her on his desk or in his wallet. And now that they were divorced, he had family pictures from his nephew Nick’s wedding on the shelves in his office, as well as a group photo from his twenty-fifth reunion at the University of Central Missouri on his desk.

But Elise? No pictures. No personal touches. Just the dog in her lap in one five-by-seven photo, and an invisible wall that said Keep Out.

George butted in, anyway. “Something’s upset you again. Something more than a misplaced key.” He shifted his stance, feeling the elevator slow its ascent. “What is it?”

For a few endless seconds, she tilted her cornflower-blue eyes up to his, giving him a glimpse of the turbulent emotions darkening their depths. Feeling an instinctive urge to respond to that unspoken plea for help, George stepped closer and reached for her.

But the elevator jerked to a stop. Elise blinked her gaze from his and moved to the front of the car. “I’m okay,” she lied.

The doors slid open and the chance to help was lost.

A lanky cop with dark blond hair that needed to see a comb rose from his chair behind the eighth floor security desk to greet them. “Good morning, sir. Morning, Elise.”

“Wilkins.” George slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks, not sure what to do with the fingertips that itched with frustrated anticipation at the interrupted moment on the elevator.

Elise hurried across the lobby ahead of him to swipe her ID badge over the computerized card reader that Officer Wilkins set on top of the desk. Her serene smile was firmly in place as she looped the ID lanyard around her neck. “Hey, Shane. How are you today?”

The young uniformed officer hooked his thumbs into his utility belt and pulled his shoulders back. “Fit and fine. Ran my five miles this morning.”

“In this heat?”

Shane laughed. “That’s why I do it before dawn. No matter what the weather does to us, I have to stick to my training if I’m going to place in KC’s half marathon on Labor Day weekend. It’s only a few weeks away.”

Elise gave an exaggerated groan. “I barely want to walk out to my car in this heat. I admire your persistence and dedication.”

The younger man winked at her. “I try.”

George swiped his card and then clipped it to his belt beside his badge. He was out of smiles this morning and ready to work. “Is Commissioner Cartwright-Masterson in yet?”

Shane rightly turned his attention to his superior officer. “No, sir. Do you want me to tell her you’re looking for her when she checks in?”

George shook his head, hating that he was in such a mood. “No. I’m just curious if there’s any news on her son Seth’s baby yet. I know she wants to take a few days off then, but I’m hoping to get a little heads-up before it happens and the extra workload kicks in.”

“If I hear anything, you will, too,” Shane assured him.

“Thanks.” Elise was already heading around the corner into the hallway that led to their offices. Running away from him and his questions, it seemed. Whatever she’d been about to share in the elevator had been locked up tight inside her again. He’d be a smart man to respect her privacy and forget his concern. He’d be a smarter man to take care of the people he was responsible for. He flattened his hand on top of the counter, demanding Shane’s undivided attention. “In between screening visitors, you ought to apply some of that ‘persistence and dedication’ to studying for your detective’s exam. You got your degree in May, right?”

“Yes, sir. Finished it in three years instead of four. And that’s while I was working full-time.”

With that kind of drive, Shane was probably frustrated getting stuck on guard duty at KCPD headquarters. “You know I’ll put in a good word for you with the promotions board as soon as you pass the exam.”

“I appreciate that.”

George nodded. Sometimes, it was nice to have clout and be able to make a difference in a deserving person’s life. “Have a good one.”

“You, too, sir.”

And sometimes that clout didn’t do him a damn bit of good. George followed Elise to the reception area and the suite of offices at the end of the hallway. When he nudged open the door to her office, he was instantly hit with the sickeningly sweet smell of roses filling the air. And in the split second he wondered if a woman really was impressed with that stinky kind of excess, he plowed into Elise’s back.

“Whoa.” Before he sent her flying across the carpet, George grabbed her by the shoulders and kept her from falling. “Is there a reason why you stopped in the middle of the room?”

“They shouldn’t be here.”

And that’s when he realized she was frozen. In more ways than one. Her upper arms felt like ice beneath his fingers. He couldn’t seem to help rubbing his hands up and down her chilled skin, trying to instill some warmth. He looked over her shoulder to her desk and the yellow roses that had transfixed her, and this time, he wasn’t budging until he got an answer. “Explain.”

Elise never averted her gaze, never took a step away from him, so George never let go. She eased a sigh out on a deep, stuttered breath, then inhaled again before answering.

“It bothered me that I didn’t know who sent the roses, so I dropped them off at St. Luke’s on the way home last night. They’re too much and I didn’t want them.” She hugged her arms in front of her and shivered in his grip. “I got rid of them.”

George stepped up beside her to get a better look, dropping a steadying hand to the small of her back. “You’re certain these are the same?”

She nodded, recoiling a bit against his palm. “Cut-glass vase. There are only twenty-three roses, not twenty-four. One stem is broken. He brought them back.”

George quickly verified her description and began formulating possible scenarios to explain this twisted prank. Judging by her behavior in the elevator, he could guess this wasn’t the only worrisome puzzle Elise had been dealing with.

But how much of the story was she willing to share? How hard would he have to push her to get to the truth? And were her troubles any of his damn business?

Yes.

This was a threat to his office. A breach of security at the highest ranks of the police department. Besides, seeing cool, calm and collected Elise Brown rattled like this—to see his right arm, his executive partner being hurt this way—felt personal. They were a team. And nobody messed with his teammates. He’d had his partners’ backs for years when he’d worn a uniform or cleaned drugs and thugs off the streets. Even though his gun was locked in his desk drawer, he was still a cop. He couldn’t allow this kind of thing to happen in his office, not on his watch. Not to Elise.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, turning her back out of her office. The fact that she didn’t argue with him was as much of a red flag as the creepy reappearance of the bouquet. Something was seriously wrong here.

George led her to a couch in the reception area before marching down the hall to have Shane get a list of everyone who’d been on this floor in the past twelve hours, as well as any cleaning and maintenance staff or personnel who had master keys. He’d make sure every last one was accounted for. He’d make this right.

Or else he’d never be able to shake the memory of Elise trembling against the palm of his hand and murmuring to herself, “He brought them back.”

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