The Promise He Made Her

Bloom wasn’t Sam Larson’s compliant, needy charge anymore, though. She wasn’t going to sit back and let him take care of her as she had in the past. Which was why she wasn’t telling him about the number that had shown up on her caller ID that morning. The call she hadn’t answered.

Ken had called her a few times from prison. The first time she’d taken the call because she hadn’t recognized the number. The second time, she’d taken it because she’d still been under his manipulative influence. And probably still a bit in love with the man she’d thought him to be.

She hadn’t actually spoken with him, other than that first time. After that she’d just answered the calls and as soon as she’d heard his voice she’d hung up.

This most recent time she’d just let it ring. He hadn’t left a message.

And Bloom wasn’t telling Sam. The detective already believed that Ken was a threat to her. That he wanted her. And she was giving him no reason, no excuse, not to use her as the bait that would reel him in.

Sam Larson turned his nondescript SUV. Bloom turned the Jaguar. They weren’t far from her house. A few miles, maybe. But the meticulously manicured landscape that stretched along all of the roads around her part of town had disappeared, giving way to tangled growth, underbrush with thorns, weeds and as much roadside trash as there ever was anywhere in Santa Raquel city limits. Because this area, on the outskirts to the north of town, was last on the day’s cleanup schedule.

Curiosity rose inside her. Maybe even a hint of excitement. She was a thinker. And like Ken—worse than Ken—a planner. Her mind never rested.

Which left very little room for anything akin to adventure.

Still, north of town? With beaches that were more rocky than sandy and cliffs that prevented easy access to the water, the area was only popular with those who could afford no better.

On the coastal road, she sped up as the speed limit increased, thinking about pushing the button on the steering wheel that would allow her to make a call and find out just where Detective Larson was taking her.

She’d stressed to him her working hours. Her need to be close to the office. And as far as she knew, there were no other habitable places in this direction until they came to the next town, more than ten miles away. She saw nothing but roadway ahead, lined on the right by brush and trees and on the left, hills and cliff face that fronted the ocean down below. He signaled a left turn.

There was no road to the left. He slowed, anyway. Almost to a stop. Heart pounding, Bloom wondered what was wrong. And wondered why she was overreacting so much since she wasn’t afraid.

She saw the two dirt tire track paths as he turned onto them. And because he was Detective Sam Larson, the man who’d saved her life, figuratively if not literally, she followed him. The track wound back and forth up the hill beneath a thick canopy of trees that were growing so close to the track that branches scraped against her car.

Clearly the detective hadn’t driven a Jaguar lately. He should have warned her that getting where they were going could scratch the paint job on a vehicle she couldn’t afford to purchase a second time. If she was going to drive her dream car—a Jaguar—this was it.

She worried about the car so that she didn’t have to think about where they might end up. He’d said the house had private beach access. Or rather, what he’d said was that there was a single path down to the water and that the property was fenced off.

They hadn’t driven through a fence. Anyone could access the road from down below. They wouldn’t be able to hang out down there, though. The busy highway didn’t have enough shoulder to allow anyone to hang out without being noticed. And in the way.

Almost as though he’d read her mind, Larson pulled to a stop, and when she crept up as close to his bumper as she could get without hitting him, she saw the newish-looking double-story gate that had prevented him from going any farther. The iron bars were slowly opening.

Looking to the right and left of that gate, she also saw the ten-foot-high fencing that went as far as she could see. Iron poles that were cemented into the ground, placed only an inch apart, crisscrossing at the top. No way for anyone to climb the fence, or shimmy up a pole, either, since there wasn’t enough room in between them to wrap an arm around.

Holy crap, she thought. He hadn’t been kidding about getting her someplace safe. He’d lied to her when he’d promised her that, if she testified, she’d never have to deal with Ken Freelander again. Not that a crooked prosecuting attorney was anything he could have predicted or prevented.

But the point was, he made promises he couldn’t possibly keep.

Like promising her that he’d protect her this time around. He was only one man. So many things were out of his control. So much could go wrong.

Still, at the moment, she was better with him than without him. And it was good to know that he hadn’t lied about the place being protected from easy intrusion.

Keeping her mind focused on the goal in mind—getting Ken back behind bars—she followed the detective through the gate.

CHAPTER SIX

THE...HOUSE...WAS a shock. Gray boards, peeling slivers of wood in places, had long since lost their paint. Leaving everything but her purse—which held her cell phone—and pepper spray key chain, she climbed out of the Jaguar and stood for a moment, staring at the smallish building.

It wasn’t the Taj Mahal. It wasn’t even as nice as the freshman dorm she’d lived in in college. Or the tract home she’d visited the previous week to see a client whose bones were not yet healed enough to allow her comfortable travel to Bloom’s office.

Sam Larson wasn’t looking to her for approval or even a reaction. He was all business as he headed up decaying steps toward a door. Bloom stepped gingerly forward—not sure she trusted the steps, in spite of the fact that a man twice her size had just bounded up them—until she noticed the new boards giving support underneath the porch.

For some reason that small sign of repair, of attention and care, gave her the impetus to focus on Ken behind bars, and not on the fact that this place was supposed to be her new home. Albeit temporarily. Stepping with as much authority as she could muster, she made it to the front door without shaking.

Or even feeling like shaking.

The door was as ancient-looking as the rest of the house, but it was solid. And bore new dead bolt locks. Two of them. He unlocked them and handed her the keys.

To say the inside wasn’t what she’d been expecting would be a huge understatement. Nor did it resemble anything like any of the places she’d lived over the last two decades. But it was...doable. Reminded her of the little place her folks had lived in on the farm when they’d first married. Before they’d built their current, more modern, fancier home. Also on the farm. The old place was a guest house now, of sorts. Nothing fancy. Isolated. But clean if you didn’t look too closely.

Sam’s choice of safe house was certainly off the beaten path. So far off Ken would never believe she’d inhabit such a place. Or probably ever visit himself. But those trees, the snarls of weedy undergrowth, the dirt road, the...dirt...in general, wouldn’t be an impediment to the types of people Ken had supposedly befriended.

“There are two bedrooms,” the detective was saying, heading from the entry, past a galley kitchen, through the great room toward a hallway at the back. “One has its own bathroom, the other uses the bath here off the hall.” He was opening doors as he went, showing her an iron tub that reminded her, again, of that old house on the farm. It had been a place she’d gravitated to when she’d been home for summer vacations. More home to her than the house she’d lived in with her parents before her uncle and father had decided to ship her away for being too smart.

Before her mother had chosen to side with them.

Plush white towels in varying sizes hung on the rods. She caught sight of a price tag on the back of one of them. The toilet was new. Linoleum, like that in the other parts she’d seen of the cottage, was yellowed and curled around the base of the new white porcelain.

Three types of shampoo, a full bar of soap and a container of body wash lined the back wall of the tub. The shower curtain still had creases in it from being packaged.

Had the house just been made habitable for her purposes? And if so, who’d paid for it?

Could they somehow stick Prosecutor Trevor Banyon with the tab?

The bedroom immediately across the hall was small, but as clean as the rest of the house. An old double bed sat on scarred linoleum. The comforter and pillow cases resembled the shower curtain in their even creases. A window faced the front yard. It was a little low for her liking.

“It’s bolted shut,” Larson said, observant as always, apparently. She’d been eying the old latch and wondering...

“It’s completely reinforced with rebar.”

“Rebar?”

“It’s steel bar used in construction to reinforce concrete.”

She nodded. Feeling a bit cramped standing there alone with him in the small room. She noted a dresser. A door that she assumed opened to a closet. And she moved toward the hall, grateful when he stepped aside to give her clear passage.

Her wedge sandals had a two-inch sole, but her eyes only came to his nose as she passed. She didn’t look closely.

Instead, she concentrated on what had to be new paint in the hallway. The same off-color, not bright enough to be white and not golden enough to be beige—that she’d noted on walls in the front room.

He led her to the second bedroom. Stood back while she looked around. A charging station sat on a nightstand on one side of the king-size bed. The comforter, a nondescript beige, had no crease marks. If anything, it was slightly wrinkled, as though it had been crammed into a dryer that was too small for it. A couple of paintings hung on the walls. They were washed-out prints of boats that looked as though they’d come from a dollar store.

They made Bloom want to paint. The entire place cried for her brushes. For color.

I choose joy, her inner voice piped up unexpectedly. Yes. She consciously always chose color—in her clothes, her adornments, her walls, because color brought her joy.

In the bathroom she noticed a used bar of soap in the shower. Along with identical bottles of everything she’d seen in the other, smaller bathroom off the hall. Even the new towels were there. Minus any visible tags.

And the toilet paper roll, as in the other room, was full, as though it hadn’t had a single sheet torn off from it.

But that soap...

“Is this someone’s room?” she asked.

“Not currently, why?”

“The soap in the shower.”

He blinked, looked a tad put out and retrieved the bar. “That shouldn’t have been left there,” he said, sounding apologetic.

Or annoyed. She couldn’t tell which. Unlike Ken, Sam Larson kept his emotions well in check.

He’d said she could have either bedroom.

“You’re sure I’m not putting somebody out of a home?”

“Positive.”

There’d been new towels in both bathrooms. As though both were expected to be used.

“I’m not staying here alone am I?” For a brief second her heart rate sped up.

She didn’t want Detective Larson to stay with her. He hadn’t offered, either. But for a second there...

“No, you’re not,” he said, as though brooking no argument.

The place was remote. And while she prided herself on being self-sufficient, the place was...remote. And yet...she didn’t want to stay alone with him.

Transference was a powerful tool the mind used to emulate the sense of safety and security that was on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Right behind physiological. She was noticing him. Noting odd sensations. She couldn’t afford a personal setback. Most particularly not with Ken soon to be back in her picture, however briefly.

“Who’s going to be staying here with me?”

“Detective Chantel Harris,” he said. “She’s giving us some time to get you settled and then she’ll be along. I’ll introduce you before I go.”

She could pretend she wasn’t disappointed. Though she’d like to think that for her own good she’d have refused to stay there alone with him. But her inner voice wouldn’t let her get away with lying to herself, so she went ahead and dealt with the feeling of dismay right then and there. He was her safety net. What she was feeling was normal. She nodded.

She thought about Ken being free and needed him back behind bars. Those bars that held him had given her her life back. Had taught her about freedom. Given her the first real taste of it she’d ever known.

“So what is this, someone’s summer home?” she asked, following Sam back out into the great room. She could see dishes stacked on shelves that a cupboard door had once covered. “If it is, they’ll be needing it soon.”

It was July. Summer visitors were already there in full force. Ever since Memorial Day the beaches—and bed-and-breakfasts that lined the streets around them—had been filled.

“This house is yours for as long as you need it,” he stated, clearly undaunted.

“I’m not going to need it long,” she pushed back.

He studied her. Put his hands in his pockets. And said nothing.

Bloom understood the tactic. And didn’t like the response.

At all.

* * *

AS SOON AS Sam heard Chantel’s car coming up the drive, he started to breathe easier. His associate had promised him that she wouldn’t say anything to Bloom about the cottage being his house. He knew she’d refuse to stay.

And there was no place else safe enough, that he could afford, that was also close to her work. He’d yet to receive financial approval from the department for his plan, but with Freelander’s imminent release, he hadn’t been able to wait for it.

Lucky for him he heard the old Mustang just as Bloom was letting him know that she wouldn’t be in his house long. All he had to do was hold his tongue for thirty seconds or so and be home free.

He told himself that he’d cut out a minute after introductions because Lucy was alone in a one-room...room, and would need to be let out. And added that Chantel and Bloom were better off getting to know each other on their own.

He was happy with both points. Sam’s conscience had learned long ago to leave well enough alone.

He spent the evening with Lucy, walking on the beach. Because Bloom was his responsibility, he chose the stretch directly below his cottage. He’d had to drive through the gate, but had left his vehicle there and then hiked to the side path that led down to the beach. Lucy loved bounding through the trees almost as much as she liked running in the sand, spraying it up behind her. He was glad to see lights flickering through the trees.

Glad, too, to verify that he couldn’t see enough of the window to make out anything, or anyone, inside.

He talked to Chantel just before bed. And again the next morning when she showed up for work after tailing Bloom to her office.

Freelander wasn’t out of prison yet, but word was that he’d specifically stated that he was going to have the pleasure of watching his wife find out that he was in charge as he taught her about proper respect.

Sam and Chantel were setting their routine for the days to come—when Freelander would be out. Taking it through a dry run. They’d put in a request for a guard to be placed with Bloom throughout the day. For round-the-clock protection.

“So far so good,” the unadorned blonde said as, in brown tweed pants, a white shirt and a matching jacket that only partially blocked her holster and gun from view, she slouched down in the chair beside his desk. They weren’t partners. Didn’t even work in the same area. But High Risk Team aside, he’d heard incredible things about her.

She was tough. She didn’t give up.

And she’d risk her life to help someone she believed deserved help. The job aside.

“How’d last night go?” The eagerness with which he awaited her response left him feeling slightly voyeuristic.

“Good. Fine. She worked. I watched TV.”

“What do you think?”

“I like her. She’s nice.”

“I meant about our chances of keeping her safe until we can figure out a way to get the guy to make the mistake that will send him back to jail.”

Chantel’s pause gave him indigestion.

“You get the idea she’s not going to cooperate for long?” He put the concern right out there. He had her in the house. She was cooperating. But keeping her there...

“I get the idea she has a mind of her own and doesn’t plan to let that creep husband of hers hold her hostage.”

Minor discomfort became not so minor. “Meaning?”

Shaking her head, her ponytail swaying, Chantel twisted her mouth and said, “I don’t know, Sam. She’s a hard one to read.”

Not if you knew her well enough.

The thought came unbidden to his head. He held on to it.

“Anyway, I’ve got a thing with Colin tonight and I know you wanted to be with Bloom when Freelander’s officially released, so can you get her from work? Stay with her until I get there?”

He welcomed the chance. “Any idea how late you’re going to be?” he asked, because it seemed like an expected response.

“If that rich and powerful fiancé of mine had his way it would be all night. But I’ve already told him I’ll attend his fund-raiser with him as long as he has me back to my car by eleven.”

Which would put her at the house by eleven-fifteen. Give or take five.

“You going to show up in your finery?” He’d heard talk around the station of the astonishing change she could pull off in very few minutes, but he’d never seen it for himself. From what he’d heard, she’d never seen it either until she’d been forced, while working as an undercover dilettante, to buy some designer clothes and learn how to wear makeup.

“I’m stopping by my place to change,” she said, shrugging. And then grinned. “It drives Colin nuts, and it’s good to keep him on his toes,” she said. “Keeps him from taking me for granted.”

He harrumphed. Had no interest in being privy to any romantic entanglements between...anyone.

“I thought you were living with him.” He only thought about the arrangement because she’d been the talk of the station a few months before. A real Cinderella tale. And he’d had his doubts about how a beat cop tomboy would fit in with the highfalutin lawyer’s fanciness. Eating off fine china every day.

“Him and his sister, at the family estate,” she said. “But I kept my place, too. Colin’s actually started to like slumming with me a night or two a week. Gives us time alone. And gives Julie, his sister, a chance to entertain without us around.”

He’d heard about the girl only enough to know she’d been a victim of date rape. He nodded politely, ready to move on, and noticed his captain coming toward them.

The grim look on the black man’s face didn’t bode well. If it was a case that was going to take him out of commission he’d have to pull some kind of favor and get out of it.

“You’ll be getting the email shortly, but I wanted to tell you personally, you didn’t get the approval for extra coverage,” Captain Salyers said. He didn’t sound happy. “With the new regime, with everyone looking, we can’t pull favors. Most particularly not for the town’s elite.”

The words running through Sam’s mind weren’t for speaking.

Chantel’s booted feet landed on the floor. “How is it a favor to protect a woman whose ex has threatened her life and who’s getting out of jail on a technicality? How is that not a given?”

“That’s just it,” the captain said, looking between the two of them. “The threat against her life hasn’t been substantiated in any official way. And the reversal on the case wasn’t our mistake. The commissioner said to take it up with the prosecutor’s office. Get them to come up with the money for off-duty cops. If the prosecutor’s office does it, it’s fair pay for wrongdoing. If the commissioner allots funds, without wrongdoing on the part of the police department, it’ll look like he’s doing favors.”

And the new commissioner had some heavy footsteps to obliterate.

“Because we don’t have a crime here,” Sam said succinctly. Nodding. He understood. Cops weren’t officially in the business of prevention. Only cleanup. It was messed up.

But nothing he was going to change in time for his purposes.

Salyers made a couple of suggestions regarding requests made to the district attorney’s office, who to contact, what he might want to say. Sam could feel Chantel’s gaze on him as he listened to his superior. He nodded, took down a name and thanked him.

“You think the DA’s office will move on this today?” she asked as soon as Salyers was out of earshot.

“I’m not going to risk it,” he told her. He’d put in the request. Stupid not to. And if approval came at some point, great. But in the meantime, “I’m on to plan B,” he told her.

“You can’t afford to pay for round-the-clock protection on your own, Sam.”

“I made a promise to that woman. I promised that if she testified she’d be safe.”

“You promised her her ex would be in prison for the rest of his life.”

Chin jutted, he nodded slowly. “He will be. And I intend to keep her safe until that happens.”

“I’ll talk to Colin...”

Sam’s head shot up. “I did not ask you to help me with this to get money out of that rich fiancé of yours.”

“You didn’t ask, period, Larson. I’m on the High Risk Team, too, remember? I offered. And Colin donates money all over the state. He’s giving regularly to The Lemonade Stand now...”

A unique women’s shelter in town that was changing the world one life at a time. Sam had been there several times, interviewing victims. It was a good place. Necessary. Deserving of any monies it could get.

Bloom had spent time there after the trial...

“Colin’s sister was a victim of an unethical police commissioner,” Chantel reminded him. “He’ll gladly support someone who is now caught in the system due to the commissioner’s professional demise. And even if he wouldn’t, Julie would. She has half of the Fairbanks fortune.”

Sam wasn’t feeling charitable. Mostly because he couldn’t afford to be as charitable as Chantel’s intended. Or Bloom’s ex.

Or Bloom, either, for that matter.

All night he’d been aware of the fact that he’d taken the lovely princess out of her castle. Wondering how Bloom was acclimating.

She was “slumming it,” as Chantel had just said about Colin. And Sam’s home was the slum.

The dichotomy was not lost on him.

And shouldn’t matter. He was in her life to do a job. Period.

“I’ll make some calls,” he told Chantel. “Get a crew together. I’ll plan to pay them. If you come up with donations, they’ll be appreciated.”

He’d only been married once. Hadn’t made any more money than his wife had so he hadn’t had to pay alimony. He’d acquired the cottage at a steal. Lucy didn’t care about diamonds or furs; she ate out of a forty-pound bag. And he made a good salary and had enough put away to pay for protection. For a while, at least.

Plus, he had years ahead of him to rebuild his heirless savings.

What good was a safety net if it couldn’t be used to keep someone safe?

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