Baby Jane Doe

And she knew she was next.

Though she was already moving, the sinking certainty slowed her reaction time. When Shauna lifted her head to locate the dead man’s weapon, she looked up into the glint of fluorescent light reflecting off the shooter’s sunglasses. She didn’t need to see the eyes behind the lenses. They were focused on her.

Just like his gun.

Nanoseconds ticked off like eons.

He smiled.

Shauna dove for the floor.

He squeezed the trigger.

A gust of steel-tipped wind rushed past her ear.

But the bullet never hit her.

“KCPD!” With the clean precision of a surgical blade, Eli Masterson put a bullet center-mass in the shooter’s chest, knocking him off balance. The shooter stumbled backward but didn’t fall. “Drop your weapon!”

But the man ignored the order and swung his gun toward the unexpected attack.

“Cease fire!” Staying low to the floor, Shauna picked up her cell phone and threw herself against the counter, keeping her back to the only protection the lobby offered her. “Dammit, Masterson, we’ve got hostages. Cease fire!”

“Negative!”

She redialed her 911 call and snagged her purse to retrieve her service weapon. From the low angle of the fire, Detective Masterson was down. Was he hit or had he taken cover?

“Masterson? Report!”

Shauna crawled to the end of the counter for a visual. The gunman lunged toward the elevator doors, chased by a hail of bullets, unable to return fire. Two more rounds hit the back of his trench coat. The man jerked, but stayed on his feet. The elevator doors opened. He jumped inside. Swung around. Raised his gun and grinned in triumph. “You’re out of ammo.”

Idiot!

She could kick herself for forgetting. “He’s wearing a Kevlar!”

Before she could get her own gun aimed, Masterson rolled. As the doors drifted shut, he snatched up the dead thief’s discarded Smith & Wesson and put a bullet in the killer’s knee, taking him down.

The man in the elevator screamed in agony as Shauna and Masterson scrambled to their feet and approached, guns drawn.

“KCPD,” Shauna announced in a clear, firm voice. “Drop your weapon and come out.”

“Like I could, you bitch.” Several more obscenities tainted the air, condemning KCPD and her own parentage, as well as promised retribution against the man who’d crippled him.

“Shut up.” Detective Masterson’s big brown shoe blocked the doors before they could close. With his gun trained on the wounded man, he pushed the doors open and picked up the rifle. He handed it to Shauna before stepping inside to lock the doors open and drag the man out into the lobby. “The lady said to move.”

With the man’s curses abruptly silenced by something whispered in his ear, Detective Masterson pinned him to the floor, patted him down for other weapons and cuffed him. “He’s got no ID on him.” He tossed aside the sunglasses and jerked the perp’s chin up toward Shauna. “You recognize him?”

Icy gray eyes like that she would remember. “No. But we’ll run his prints if he doesn’t cooperate.”

“Like I’m gonna—”

Masterson ground the man’s face into the carpet, silencing him.

By the time the detective was on his feet again and holstering his gun, Shauna had retrieved the briefcase and given the dispatcher instructions for police and paramedics to move in.

Maintaining his protective stance over the perp, Detective Masterson glanced down over the jut of his shoulder at her. “You all right?”

Other than some bruises and rug burns she wouldn’t complain about, Shauna was in one piece. She nodded. “You?”

“He had you in his sights.”

Shauna pretended his deep-pitched admonition didn’t send an ominous chill through her veins. “I’m fine.”

She took note of the two-inch cut oozing blood along the edge of his short, coffee-colored hair. But, for the moment, she ignored his forehead and watched the piercing intensity of his dark eyes cool to golden brown detachment. More than his 20/20 aim with the gun, they hadn’t missed a detail of all that had transpired here. Not even the personal threat to her life.

Which Shauna refused to comment on. It was all part of the job, right?

She tucked her phone and the gun in the waistband of her tweed skirt and stuck out her hand for an official introduction. “I’m Shauna Cartwright.”

“I know.”

She waited until he took her hand. His grip was as strong and firm as the rest of him had proved to be. And though an often-ignored part of her wished she was meeting such a seasoned, attractive man under different circumstances, she knew succumbing to her feminine longings was out of the question.

“Eli, was it?” He nodded. “May I see your badge, Detective?”

A scoffing sound marred his smile as he let her hand go to reach inside his jacket. “I heard you were a tough one for rules and regs. Are this morning’s events going into my file?”

Shauna ignored the taunt and quickly read the ID beside his badge. Eli Masterson. Thirty-six years old. Fourteen years on the force, the majority of them having filled a necessary but difficult role.

“Internal Affairs?” She glanced down at the man moaning at their feet. “And you made that shot?” She indicated the small gold star on his ID before handing it back. “Why would an I.A. detective maintain his sharpshooter’s badge? You planning to transfer to S.W.A.T.?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Does Captain Chang,” she referred to the chief of the I.A. division, “have this much trouble getting you to cooperate with your fellow officers?”

“Yes, ma’am, he does.”

She almost laughed at his dry delivery of the truth, and though she appreciated a man with a smart wit, she never allowed the humor to soften the taut curve of her own lips. “Well…, thank you for saving my life, Eli. You saved all our lives today.”

He seemed hesitant to accept her praise. “No problem.”

Leaning in, she caught him off guard as she nabbed his handkerchief from the pocket where he’d stuffed his wallet. She surprised him further by pressing the cotton to the wound on his forehead. “Make sure one of the medics clears you before you leave. I can’t tell if that’s a shrapnel cut or a bullet graze, but it looks like you could use a stitch or two.”

It felt almost intimate, like a woman caring for her man, to stand there in the midst of the bustling recovery team, gently tending Eli’s wound. She felt herself warming beneath the scrutiny of his gaze as he tried to figure out whether her kindness was genuine or a ploy he should guard against. His fingers brushed against hers as he took over staunching the wound and retreated a step. “I’ll do that, ma’am.”

“Good.” Wouldn’t it be nice to skip the ma’am’s for once and just be a woman with a man? But she was more than that. And the suspicion in Eli Masterson’s eyes said he knew it, too. So she pulled rank. The way he expected. The way she was supposed to. “You got away with playing cowboy today, Masterson. But when I tell you to do something, I expect it to happen. The chain of command needs to be followed, no matter what the situation is.”

“I’ll remember that next time.”

“Please do.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ll expect a report from you tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Shauna watched him turn and disappear into the crowd of officers, medics, CSI techs and curious thrill-seekers bustling about outside.

“Damn,” she muttered, spotting the deputy commissioner, Michael Garner, breaking through the same crowd and flashing his ID to the scene commander. If the main office already knew she’d been involved in a shoot-out, that meant the reporters would be following shortly. Once the press got wind of this, her children would find out. They’d worry. But Seth and Sarah were adults now. She could handle them.

What worried her was the possibility that he would find out. He seemed to know every secret about her life. Shauna shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air or the scene around her.

When Michael waved to her and hurried over with concern shining in his eyes, she wished she could disappear as easily as Eli Masterson had. Michael certainly was an efficient one. He’d wasted no time in getting here. She glanced down at her bloody hands and the stains on her cuffs and skirt. Her appearance should earn a few personal questions she was in no mood to answer. If she asked, Michael would organize the reports from this deadly fiasco and handle the press. She could go home and clean up, lock her doors and isolate herself from the death and destruction surrounding her.

But she couldn’t ask.

KCPD’s Commissioner of Police didn’t have that luxury.

Chapter Two

“Masterson.”

Eli topped off the coffee in his plastic cup before acknowledging the unmistakable sound of authority behind him. “Captain Taylor.”

“What brings you to my precinct?”

Though he doubted running into each other in the break room was a coincidence, Eli took his time before stepping aside for the patriarch of the Fourth Precinct to fill a Kansas City Chiefs mug with the thick, steaming brew. “Routine follow-up on the shooting by your man, Banning.”

No sense wasting pleasantries. There was no love lost between Internal Affairs and the Taylors since Eli and his former partner, Joe Niederhaus, had investigated the captain’s cousin, CSI Mac Taylor, four years ago. Especially since his old buddy Joe had done such a bang-up job of framing Mac and nearly getting Mac and his future wife killed. Turned out Joe was the one taking bribes, stealing evidence and blackmailing fellow cops.

Eli had been a much younger detective then, naively blinded by loyalty to his veteran partner and unable to see the truth until it was too late. There was nothing naive left inside Eli anymore. And though he’d been the one to put the cuffs on Joe and had even, reluctantly, testified against him in court, several members of KCPD judged Eli guilty by association. He already triggered guarded suspicion whenever he entered a roomful of cops. He was Internal Affairs—the cop who policed other cops and held them accountable to the highest standards of their sworn duty. But there were some, like Captain Mitch Taylor, who seemed to take their distrust a little more personally.

Polite and professional as the captain might be, he wasn’t here to make Eli feel welcome. “Will anything go into Banning’s permanent file?”

“Everything points to a clean shoot.” Eli chucked an empty creamer into the trash, stalling for privacy while two younger plainclothes officers waltzed in and grabbed a snack and a seat at the table on the far side of the break room. After a friendly scuffle over ownership of the remote control, they turned on the television and debated the merits of each show as they scrolled through the channels. “But any detective who’s been involved in more than one previous incident deserves a thorough double check.”

Captain Taylor watched and waited as well before adding, “I hear you’re nothing but thorough.”

“I do my job. I do it well.” Except for the glaring error of not seeing his partner’s corruption, Eli’s reputation made it a fact, not a boast.

Taylor sipped his coffee, but there was no nonchalance in the steely set of his shoulders. “Just make sure you do it right. Banning’s one of my best investigators. I don’t want him stuck behind a desk indefinitely.”

“Barring any glitch in the paperwork, you can have him on the streets by lunchtime.”

The teasing scuffle on the far side of the room grew louder.

“Your mama’s on TV again, Cartwright.” The taller of the two young officers, a lanky smart-mouth with a shaved head, razzed his partner. “You know, if she wasn’t old enough to be our mother, and I wasn’t so damn handsome—”

“She is my mother,” the shorter one articulated. “And you’re not that good-lookin’. So put your eyeballs back…”

It wasn’t their friendly, ribald banter that caught Eli’s ear so much as recognition of the name. Cartwright.

As in Shauna Cartwright, owner of the tempting backside pressed to his groin in the heat of gunfire, and the clean, subtle scent that had fueled some forbidden dreams last night. As in Commissioner Cartwright, the memory of whose laser-sharp tongue and official rank had rudely awakened him from his fitful sleep and sent him into the bathroom for a mind-clearing shower before dawn.

The commish had a kid? A man she’d raised? The family resemblance was there in the blond hair and the green eyes. But mother and son? No way. This stocky guy was twenty-five if he was a day. And she was… Hell.

Shauna Cartwright had to be a decade older than Eli. But the illicit beat of his pulse didn’t slow with the knowledge.

Instead, it irritated him to discover he was attracted to a woman who was off limits for too many reasons to keep track of.

“You’re not dating my sister, either,” the young Cartwright warned to his fellow officer. “I’ve seen how you operate.”

“A sweet guy like me?” Baldy feigned offense and saluted the television with his last bite of bagel. “I’m just sayin’ she’s—”

“Gentlemen.” Taylor subdued them with a single word.

Eli’s gaze slid to the TV, where a stock photograph of the commissioner graced the corner of the screen while the commentator related highlights of yesterday’s robbery and double homicide at the Cattlemen’s Bank’s downtown office. Masking his interest behind a swallow of coffee, he listened for any mention of the other police officer who’d been on the scene and had taken down the alleged gunman with a shot to the knee.

But the focus was all about Commissioner Cartwright and how KCPD’s top bureaucrat hadn’t been behind a desk so long that she’d forgotten how to protect and serve the citizens of Kansas City when danger struck.

“Ah, c’mon, sir,” the bald one was protesting. “We’re on our fifteen.”

“The morning briefing’s in ten.”

“Then we’re on a ten-minute break?” Baldy tried to appease his boss.

“Better make it nine and a half so you can get front-row seats.”

The two young officers echoed a dutiful, “Yes, sir.”

“Front and center,” Baldy added for good measure.

“Just be there.” Taylor shook his head as though Cartwright and Baldy were the problem children of the Fourth Precinct. But there was no smile, indulgent or otherwise, when the captain took his leave of Eli. “Masterson.”

“Captain.”

“Whoa, man, there she is.”

Eli pulled his gaze from Taylor’s departure and tuned in to the television, too, to catch highlights from yesterday’s news conference outside the Cattlemen’s Bank.

A dramatic shot of two ambulances with their swirling red lights, and the bank’s shattered front window formed a backdrop as Shauna Cartwright faced off against the press of reporters and photographers. The spotlight from several stations’ television cameras bathed her even features in a cold, harsh glare. Her short hair formed a careless fringe about her cheeks and forehead, but there was an energy shining from her intelligent eyes and upturned chin that seemed to command the crowd—even more than the guarded stance of the man at her side. With the distinct, receding points of his dark brown hair, and the impeccable suit that masked the gun he wore at his waist, Deputy Commissioner Michael Garner was instantly recognizable.

Garner’s dark, narrowed eyes scanned the crowd as he inched closer to Shauna’s shoulder. The man was expecting danger. An answering tension squeezed like a tight fist at the back of Eli’s neck. Even through the television screen, Garner indicated that he sensed some kind of threat in the audience behind the camera. Maybe the man was protecting the office—not the woman. Maybe he was guarding KCPD itself from any questions that probed too far into events from the robbery/homicide.

Meanwhile, Shauna seemed unaware, or perhaps impervious to any potential danger as she fielded a barrage of questions.

She pointed to a dark-haired woman with a tape recorder. “Ms. Page.”

The reporter wasted no time. “Having finally put a man on trial for the Baby Jane Doe abduction and murder, and now personally thwarting a bank robbery, do you feel you’re settling into your new role as the head of KCPD?”

“You had to bring up Baby Jane.” Officer Cartwright shot his wadded napkin at the TV screen, nailing the reporter’s image. “Mom’s had the job for almost a year now, toots. She had to take command before we finally got the damn case solved.”

“Down, Tiger,” Baldy raised a hand to calm his partner.

Young Cartwright crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. From the most seasoned veterans to newbies like these two, the Baby Jane Doe murder case was a sore point that had plagued KCPD for over two years. A mutilated baby girl left in the city dump—unclaimed, unidentifiable. No parent had come looking for her; no clue had led to a real suspect. For months, the city had lived in fear for its children. Kansas City had mourned for the little girl whom no one seemed to miss, while they railed against the idea that such violence had come to their town. Through a charity drive headed by KCPD, citizens had raised money to give the girl a proper burial. But they still couldn’t give her a name.

Closure was a long time coming for a weary police force with its reputation on the line. Eli knew firsthand there was often that one case which haunted a detective throughout his career. Baby Jane Doe’s senseless murder was a case that had united the entire department, in frustration and sorrow.

But things had changed a few months ago. When Shauna Cartwright had been appointed to finish the term of the ailing commissioner, one of her first acts was to appoint a task force dedicated to the Baby Jane Doe investigation. Kansas City finally breathed a little easier. The task force arrested Donnell Gibbs, a known pedophile, who’d confessed to the killing. The D.A.’s office was set to prosecute Gibbs for murder. Preliminary hearings in Gibbs’s trial made news reports almost every night.

The story made good press, Eli supposed. But until Gibbs was in prison and the girl’s story was laid to rest, there wouldn’t be any real closure for Kansas City or KCPD.

Now there was one cool lady, Eli mused, mesmerized by the TV screen.

Without batting an eye, Shauna looked into the camera and diverted attention away from that hot-button topic by talking about the bank’s two wounded security guards. “All of KCPD is keeping them in our prayers.”

“Do you have the officers’ names?” shouted another reporter.

“Not at this time. We’re waiting, of course, until their families can be notified. The men are in good hands at St. Luke’s Hospital, and I know their families will want to join them there.”

“What about the two men who were killed? And the man you took into custody?”

The first detectable glitch in her control came when she rolled her shoulders as if she’d suddenly discovered a stiff muscle, no doubt a result of Eli’s flying tackle. But she still made no mention of him.

Michael Garner had noticed the change, too, as he dragged his gaze from the audience down to the woman at his side. He whispered something to her, out of ear-shot from the camera. Shauna shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her palms along the sleeves of her white blouse as though nothing more ominous than a chill had shivered through her.

“We’ll be sharing more information as it becomes available,” she continued, ignoring Garner and her own discomfort. “In the meantime, we appreciate you honoring the guards’ privacy and giving the doctors time to do their work. Thank you.”

Before the news clip faded and the picture returned to the studio anchors, Eli zeroed in on the blood staining the commissioner’s cuffs. The tension in his neck shifted and throbbed at his temple. He reached up and touched the two butterfly bandages that cinched the wound in his hairline.

Was that his blood? For all her cool, calm and collected facade, Shauna’s hands had been surprisingly warm and urgent as she’d tended him. And her shapely body had shaken with fear, or perhaps simply an over-abundance of adrenaline, when she’d been sandwiched between Eli and the floor.

“What the hell?”

Before Eli could quell his hormones’ masculine response to the vivid memory of his boss’s subtle feminine attributes, her grown son shot to his feet, swearing at the television.

“What?” Baldy asked, scrambling to catch up with his partner’s mood swing.

“Did you see her clothes?” Cartwright tugged his cell phone from his pocket. “She didn’t tell me she got hurt.”

Eli drained the last of his coffee and observed the interchange, a very curious fly on the wall.

Mr. Comedy sobered up with a remark to calm his partner. “If it was serious, she would have told you. I heard she gave first aid to one of the downed guards. It’s probably his blood, not hers.”

Cartwright punched in the number. “Damn it, Coop, I’m calling her.”

Baldy stood and tapped his fingers against his partner’s fist. “Seth, your mom’s a grown woman. And she didn’t get the job she has just because she’s pretty. She can take care of herself.” He crushed his paper cup and made a neat, three-point shot into the trash can. “Besides, Captain Taylor will be waiting for us. Maybe he’s going to finally brief us on that gambling case he wants us to work on.”

“I guess you’re right.” Seth Cartwright paused to consider his partner’s words, though his posture remained stiff and unyielding. “But after the meeting—”

“—I’ll dial the number myself. C’mon.”

Cartwright nodded. He flipped his phone shut and turned to follow his partner from the room. That’s when he realized the six-four fly on the wall had never left the room. Cartwright’s chest expanded with a deep breath as he glared at Eli. “What?”

Eli shrugged off the taunt. “Nothing. Just got caught up in the news report. The commissioner’s your mother?” No response. Why didn’t that surprise him?

Thick arms crossed in front of his wrestler’s chest. “You’re Masterson. That I.A. guy who’s going after Detective Banning, aren’t you?”

Going after? Hell. Would it kill anybody to say good morning around here? “How about, I’m the I.A. guy who’s doing his job? Just like you. Banning has nothing to fear from me unless he did something wrong. Personally, I don’t think he did.”

“Uh-huh.”

The visual standoff lasted a split second longer before Seth’s partner, Coop, called him to get his butt in gear and get to the meeting. With a dismissive nod, effectively telling Eli to mind his own business and keep any comments about Seth’s mother to himself, the young officer strode from the room.

So Seth Cartwright was defensive about his mom. His partner’s teasing was probably a mild example of the heat he took from his coworkers for being the head honcho’s son. Probably had to prove himself a dozen times over to show he’d earned his spot on the force.

Of course, the young man had almost blown a gasket when he saw that blood. Maybe he wasn’t defensive about his mom so much as he was defensive of the woman who’d raised him. Eli could have confirmed that none of the blood on the commissioner’s clothes was her own. But it wasn’t his place to say, nor was it his habit to make friendly reassurances.

Time to seek out Merle Banning and finish up the paperwork. Eli was anxious to clear his desk before he had to sit down and answer to a hearing about his involvement at yesterday’s bank shooting. At least his name and face had been kept out of the media. Publicity generally meant even closer scrutiny. And while Eli had developed a knack for flying under the radar, he knew it was only a matter of time before one of his colleagues at I.A. called him into his or her office.

Eli hadn’t even cleared the doorway when his cell phone rang. If he was a superstitious man…

Shaking his head, he pulled the phone from his belt and glanced at the number. Though he recognized the KCPD prefix, the number was unfamiliar. Hell. Why not? He wasn’t superstitious.