The Precinct: Brotherhood of the Badge

“Somebody had some money and connections behind the escape. One prison escort is dead and another critical. At least three other personnel from the courthouse are hospitalized in serious condition. I don’t know how many others suffered minor injuries. They kidnapped the stenographer, but dumped her before their getaway car went into the river. The feds are already on-site, along with the DOC and local authorities. They’re still cleaning up the mess. State police claim at least one of the prisoners was hit before they rammed the car and knocked it off the bridge. They’re dredging the river where the car went in, but have come up with nothing.”

“Three escapees and at least one accomplice if those guns were planted, but no bodies have been found?” Sawyer didn’t know whether to curse or laugh.

“Not one. No John Doe gunshot victims reported at any local hospitals. No one washed up on the banks. The Missouri has a deep channel and strong currents in that part of the state, so they could be miles downstream by now. Longbow and the others could be anywhere in Missouri, anywhere in the country by now. Hell, if he survived, he could be back here in K.C.”

Sawyer’s muscles jumped with the desire to join in the manhunt. But pacing off the length of the kitchen seemed to be his only option right now. “And there are no leads?”

Seth’s no was colorful and emphatic. “It’s no secret that Longbow’s former boss, Theodore Wolfe, took out a hit on Longbow—to shut his mouth and keep Ace from testifying against him. As easy as it is to off a guy in lockup, why go to all this trouble? Besides, we shut Wolfe down—turned over all his men to Interpol or local authorities. If he still has the connections to pull off something this big, then he’d have left the body to prove it.”

Seth had survived turning on the Wolfes himself. Saywer’s father had survived bringing the Wolfe family to justice. Was John Kincaid’s murder related to Longbow’s escape from prison?

“I thought you should know,” Seth went on, explainingthe real purpose behind this call on this day. “You were there at the casino to provide backup for me while I was undercover with the Wolfe family, and I know you developed some kind of…attachment to Longbow’s ex-wife.”

The pacing stopped.

Melissa Teague. Single mom and cocktail waitress. Sawyer had been playing bartender and bouncer back then and had worked with Melissa. An image of her small, perfectly proportioned figure filling out that skimpy saloon-girl costume the waitresses had worn popped into his mind, as vivid and distracting as the real woman had been. He remembered Melissa as a pretty little slip of a thing—all blue eyes and golden hair. And bruises. Sprained wrists.

And fear.

“We all wanted to take care of her.” But they had all failed her.

The sandwich Sawyer had wolfed down to appease his mother churned in his stomach at the memory of seeing Melissa in a hospital bed, looking small and pale as she lay in a coma, fighting for her life. The last time he’d seen her awake, she’d rolled over in the hospital bed and turned her back on him. Even though he’d told her he’d been working undercover, that he was a cop and the bartender she’d known as Tom Sawyer was really Thomas Sawyer Kincaid, she still associated him with the Wolfe crime family and the place where Ace Longbow had tried to kill her.

Or maybe an oversize, overbuilt truck of a man lurkingin her doorway was too much of a reminder of her abusive ex.

Sawyer hissed a frustrated breath through tightly clenched teeth. He had no special claim on Melissa. She’d made it clear that, despite sharing a few cups of coffee before work, or walking her to her car after closing, she wanted nothing to do with him. Maybe not with any man. Considering her background, he couldn’t blame her. “Why call me?”

“So far, we’ve been able to keep the escapees’names out of the press and the details sketchy. We’ve got every man on this. As soon as we got the wire from Jeff City, we dispatched a car to Melissa’s house to keep an eye on things.” Seth’s long pause bespoke the depth of the favor he was asking of Sawyer. “I know the timing sucks. But I figured she’d rather hear the news from a familiar face than a stranger.”

“Ah, hell.” He finally had it fixed in his brain that he’d never see Melissa again. That was the only way he’d been able to get past the guilt and the wanting.

“Can you handle it tonight? If not, I’ll take a break and go over there myself. She should know that her ex-husband escaped, and that he’s either dead or missing.”

Sawyer had been a cop for ten years. He’d been John Kincaid’s son long before that. Doing the hard thing—doing the right thing—simply because it had to be done wasn’t something he’d backed down from before. He wouldn’t skip out on his duty now. No matter how raw he was already feeling inside. “No. You know the players better than any of us. You need to be there at the precinct office to keep track of information as it comes in. I’ll go.”

“Thanks, Sawyer.” Seth apologized for his and his wife’s early departure after the funeral. “I’m sorry Bec and I didn’t make it to the reception. You know how much John meant to both of us. But when the call came in—”

“Forget it. I’m glad you’re there to handle it.”

“I had a lot of respect for your dad.”

“We all did.” The heartfelt words should have calmed him, centered him. But for a man who was used to doing rather than talking, the lengthy conversation made him antsy to get this errand over with. “You go back to work. I’ll get over to Melissa’s.”

Seth seemed to understand, and traded instructions instead of goodbyes. “Flash your badge to the man in the squad car. Captain Taylor gave him orders to shoot first and ask questions later if anyone approaches the house.”

“Got it.”

“Is there a problem, son?” The swinging kitchen door closed behind Susan Kincaid as Sawyer hung up the phone. She looked tired, like she wasn’t eating enough, like maybe there were a few more threads of gray in her dark brown hair than had been there a week ago.

But Sawyer still stood up a little straighter when she crossed her arms and tilted her chin with that I-dare-you- to-lie-to-me look that had gotten him to fess up from the time he was a small boy. “I’m sorry. Something’s come up at work. I need to go take care of it.”

That stern-mama look had never lasted for long. It didn’t now. Instead, Susan reached up and tugged Sawyer’s wrinkled tie free from his collar. She smoothed the front of his unbuttoned uniform jacket and straightened his shirt. “Of all my boys, you never were one to sit still and worry things through for very long. Probably why you were the one we always had to drive to the emergency room.” Her hands settled at the center of his chest, warming Sawyer all the way through to his heart. “Staying dressed up and putting on a game face all day long must be driving you crazy.”

Sawyer grinned. “You think you know me that well, huh?”

“Please. After thirty-two years, I know you better than you know yourself. If you need to crash out and take care of something, do it. Your father’s assistant, Brooke, is here to help me, and she’s keeping things running so efficiently that there’s nothing much for any of us to do. Your brothers will understand if you need to leave. I understand.” She turned him toward door and gave him a push. “Now go. Just give me a call later so I know you’re all right.”

Though Susan Kincaid’s will was a force to be reckoned with, Sawyer was twice her size and refused to be ushered out just yet. He turned at the door, scooped her up in a bear hug and planted a kiss on her cheek before setting her down. “I love you, Mom.”

She smiled. It was the first real smile he’d seen on her throughout this long, long day. “I know.”

Chapter Two

Twenty-five minutes later, Sawyer pulled his truck up behind the black and white, killed the lights and wipers and turned off the engine. A smile from his mom had improved his mood if not his trepidation about tonight’s visit to Melissa Teague’s tiny white house in the Kansas City suburb of Independence. The place was neat, but plain and unassuming, showing the signs of its age in the sag of the front porch and the cracks running through the brickwork along the house’s foundation.

He pulled his badge from his jacket and slipped it back into his wallet before checking the gun on his belt and climbing out. Squinting into the rain, he braced his shoulders for the unpleasant task at hand and moved toward the officer in the squad car.

“I’m a friend of the family,” he explained, fudging a little on the friend part as the blue suit read his badge and ID and okayed him to approach the house.

Sawyer caught a glimpse of his drowned-rat reflection when the officer rolled up his window against the moisture splashing into his car. Big scary man coming in from the dark and the storm. Yeah, he’d be a real re-assuring sight.

One more reason to hate the rain.

Muttering a curse that was half damnation, half resignation to the inevitable, Sawyer jumped the torrent running along the curb and hurried across the street. Pausing for a quick scan up and down the sidewalk and into the side yards, he made sure there were no unwelcome eyes watching the place. In fact, other than the officer in the car, the block was deserted. The isolation of locked doors and dark windows nagged at him almost as much as the sight of someone spying on the house would have. But he supposed he was the only one without the sense to stay in on a night like this. Tomorrow, he’d order a rundown on all the neighbors to make sure there were no empty houses and that the residents were who they said they were.

Resolved that he could at least do that much to keep Melissa safe, Sawyer climbed the steps onto her front porch. The wood shifted and creaked beneath his weight, groaning like an ominous portent of unseen danger. But the light beside the door was on, so she’d be able to get a good look at him before opening it.

He pressed the doorbell, then shook the excess water from his unbuttoned jacket, making sure his Glock was tucked out of sight behind his back. He was squeegeeing the rain from his hair when the inside door nudged open a crack.

Sawyer braced for the impact of seeing Melissa again.

But the breath he’d been holding eased from his chest in an odd mixture of disappointment and relief as he caught his first glimpse of the woman peeking over the chain latching the door to its frame.

Not Melissa. Just as petite, though, maybe five foot two or three at the most. Pretty in a soft sort of feminine way that must be an inherited trait. The wary suspicion in this woman’s eyes was similar. But the hair was shorter, curlier, laced with silver amongst the gold. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Teague?”

“Who’s asking?”

Sawyer held his badge up beside his face. “KCPD, ma’am. I’m Detective Kincaid from the Fourth Precinct.”

The older woman squinted. “The Fourth Precinct’s in downtown Kansas City. What are you doing out…? Oh, shoot.” She turned away from the door and shouted inside. “Benjamin? Bring Grandma her glasses. Please.” She looked back through the screen that separated her from Sawyer. “I wondered when someone was going to come up to the house. That police car has been sitting out there for a half hour. I was still cleaning the dinner dishes when he pulled up. Makes me nervous.”

“It’s just a precaution, ma’am. He’s keeping an eye on the neighborhood.” Sawyer tucked his badge onto his belt and retreated a step to hopefully ease her concern. “Is Miss Teague here?”

“Gandma?” Short, chubby fingers pushed a pair of glasses into the woman’s hands, and then a little boy with shaggy black hair, barefoot and dressed in overalls, peeked around her leg.

Sawyer’s pulse hitched in recognition as he looked down into a carbon copy of Melissa’s clear blue eyes.

“Hey, pal. How’s it goin’?” Sawyer grinned at the little guy. He must be three years old. He barely cleared Sawyer’s knee, but there was no mistaking the bold curiosity in his expression as he inched his way around his grandmother’s leg and craned his neck to look up into Sawyer’s face.

“I can’t talk to stwangers,” he announced very wisely.

Sawyer nudged the boy’s age up to four, or maybe twelve or thirty-six, judging by his verbal abilities. “That’s smart.” He held out his ID again, now that the woman at the door had her glasses on. “Did your mom teach you that?”

“How come you’re so big?”

Laughter was the only option with a question like that. “My mom’s a good cook. And I’m a good eater.”

“I’m a good eater, too.”

“Of course.” The woman snapped her fingers in recognition, drawing Sawyer’s focus back up. “You’re that man who came to visit Melissa in the hospital. The co-worker from when she was waitressing at the Riverboat Casino. I don’t know that she was ever awake while you were there. For a long time, I didn’t think she was going to come out of that coma. I’m Fritzi Teague, Melissa’s mother. This is her son, Benjamin.” Her welcoming chatter slowed into suspicion once more. “I thought she said you were a bartender, though.”

“That’s how she knew me at the time. But I was working a case. I assure you I’m a cop.” He wondered if he should offer to let her call in his badge number for verification. “It’s a long story. Is Melissa here?”

“She’s at her accounting class tonight. She usually gets home around nine-thirty.” Fritzi hugged little Benjamin closer to her leg and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Is something wrong? Has something happened to her?”

“No, ma’am,” Sawyer quickly reassured her. “I wouldn’t be asking for her here if I thought she’d been hurt in any way.” Logical words in almost any case. Still, a tremor of uneasy awareness rippled over his shoulders at the idea that Ace Longbow had somehow survived his bloody escape and had already found a way to get to the Kansas City area and track down his ex-wife. “I’d like to wait and speak to her in person if I could.”

The older woman’s gaze darted down to her grandson. She offered Sawyer an apologetic smile when she looked back up. “My daughter doesn’t like anyone to come inside when she’s not here. Especially at night.”

Sawyer glanced over his shoulder at the steady curtain of rain whipping ahead of the wind. A soft drumbeat of thunder mocked him in the distance. But even as he shifted inside his soggy clothes, he had to admire the Teague women’s efforts to keep their little family safe. “No problem, ma’am. I’ll be out in my truck.”

“Wait.” Fritzi called him back from the edge of the porch. “It’s not like you’re a complete stranger. And since you’re the police, well, I just made a pot of decaf coffee. I don’t suppose it could hurt if you came inside and warmed yourself up. Just let me get the door.”

As she closed the door to unlatch the chain, Sawyer made a mental note to ensure there were secure locks on every entrance to the house. If Fritzi Teague thought that flimsy chain would keep unwelcome visitors out, she was living with a false sense of security. He hated to tell Melissa’s mother that he could have cut through the screen and busted down the door with little more than a shove. If she didn’t keep the dead bolt fastened, the chain and the knob lock would barely slow him down, much less stop him if he wanted to get inside. And they sure as hell wouldn’t stop a fanatic like Ace Longbow.

Sawyer fixed a smile on his mouth and, for the moment,

kept his concerns to himself when she reopened

the door and invited him inside.

MELISSA TEAGUE SPOTTED the black-and-white police cruiser parked in front of her house the moment she turned her old Pontiac around the corner.

The ingrained alertness that had become as much a part of her as breathing kicked up to warning levels, speeding her pulse and sharpening her senses. She squeezed the steering wheel in her fists and pressed a little harder on the gas.

She didn’t recognize the black truck, either.

Melissa splashed through the lake pooling at the end of her driveway and parked her car up beside the house. She left the bag of groceries tipped over in the passenger seat, grabbed her keys and climbed out into the rain.

“Mom?” She turned up the collar of her trench coat, blinked the beads of moisture from her eyelashes and spared a glance for the officer in his car. Drinking his coffee. Just sitting. He wasn’t on his radio or writing up a report as though the truck was illegally parked or stolen, or if there’d been a break-in. Still, surprises had never been a good thing for her. Especially this close to home. “Benjamin?”

Forcing her lungs to breathe deeply and evenly, she ran across the slick grass to the porch. She quickly unlocked the knob and dead bolt, cursed when she discovered the chain wasn’t fastened and pushed her way inside. “Mom!”

The screen door slammed shut behind her as she hurried toward the light streaming through the archway from the living room. “Ben? Mom? Why won’t you answer—”

She turned the corner and froze.

Her mother was sitting on the sofa, cradling a coffee mug between her hands and laughing with rare abandon—laughing at the man wrestling with Melissa’s precious son on the braided rug.

For one awful moment she thought that Ace… But no, Benjamin might be a dead ringer for his father with his black hair and olive skin, but her ex had never claimed him. He’d seen their child as a threat—as competition for her love. To Ace, their son was an abomination. A betrayal. Ace had never accepted any other males in her life—not even his own child.

All the more reason to hold her little boy close and keep him safe.

The man’s deep voice cracked as he teased Benjamin with a high-pitched plea for mercy. “Aagh! Big Ben got me!”

“Get me! Get me!”

“You asked for it.” Her four-year-old squealed in delight as the dark-haired man closed him in a scissor hold between his knees and rolled back and forth on the floor.

You asked for it. Melissa blocked out the painful memory the words conjured and found her voice. “Mother!”

The wrestling ceased in an instant. Her mother’s smile vanished. “Melissa.”

“Mommy!” Benjamin beamed from one flushed cheek to the other. “’Tective got me!”

Melissa gripped the door frame and retreated half a step as the man sat up and scooted Benjamin onto his lap.

Oh my God.

She wasn’t ready for a reunion like this.

“Hey.” The slightly breathless laugh that lingered in their guest’s bass voice should have reassured her with its familiarity. His lazy grin should have struck a pang of welcome recognition instead of tensing every muscle with the urge to turn and run from the remembered horrors of her old life.

Melissa Teague didn’t run anymore. But standing her ground still didn’t come easy.

She knew this man. Not exactly a stranger. Not exactly an old friend, either. His straight, coffee-brown hair was shorter than she remembered, his clothes certainly different. Tom Sawyer. No, that wasn’t right. Tom Sawyer Kincaid. He’d said something about his mom being an English teacher who’d named all her sons after characters in books. He’d said something about being a cop—something about asking her out and getting to know her better.

“What are you doing here?” was the only greeting that worked its way past the guarded tension squeezing her throat.

“Melissa—your manners!” her mother chided, setting down her coffee and rising to her feet.

As her initial panic ebbed, an embarrassing self-consciousness took its place. He was looking at her in that way. The way a man who wanted something looked at a woman.

Before she was completely aware of doing it, Melissa combed her fingers through the hair at her left temple, urging a golden wave over her cheek. But just as quickly, hating even that revelation of weakness about herself, she squared her shoulders and marched across the room to pluck her son from the officer’s arms. “Benjamin’s too small for roughhousing with you.”

“Mommy, you’re wet. I want down.”

“I didn’t hurt him. Boys like to wrestle—”

“Get me again!” Benjamin reached for their guest.

“See?”

The man’s lopsided grin was just as innocently boyish as her son’s. In another lifetime, she might have succumbed to its charm.

But this was the life she had to deal with. Despite Benjamin’s squiggles to climb down and resume the game, she wedged him firmly on her hip. “Why is there a police car parked in front of my house?”

“I let Detective Kincaid in, dear,” her mother explained. “He’s only been here a half hour or so. I checked his ID before opening the door. Don’t you remember him?”

“Of course I remember—”

“Better let me handle this.” The man she’d known as Tom Sawyer, a bartender with a sweet but misplaced sense of responsibility for the waitresses who worked with him, smoothed the scattered strands of hair off his forehead and rolled to his feet. He stood. And stood. Melissa’s pulse quickened with an instinctive self-preservation and she backed away.

His warm brown gaze darted to the subtle movement of her feet. But she didn’t apologize or make excuses.

He didn’t ask for any. “It’s good to see you again, Mel.”

She forced her gaze up past the evening beard that studded his square jaw, and acknowledged his greeting with a nod. “Tom.”

He raised his focus and skimmed her face, probably noting the newer, shoulder-length cut of her hair—probably satisfying his curiosity about how her injuries had healed as well. “You look great.”

He looked…male.

Ignoring the little tremor of awareness that blipped through her brain, Melissa concentrated on all the reasons why she’d never picked up a phone to resume their friendship, never encouraged him to turn that friendship into something more. One, he was an old-fashioned kind of guy—the sort who held open doors, sent flowers and who’d try to make everything right for her. Two, nice as he’d seemed back at the casino where they’d worked together, he’d lied about who he was. What he did for a living. Why he’d been so interested in her. And whether or not the lie was unavoidable and he really was one of the good guys, she couldn’t afford to be fooled by good intentions and false promises. She couldn’t allow herself to drop her guard and be taken in by any man—even a nice one. Especially a nice one. She needed her independence in order to survive.

And three? Oh, hell. She remembered thinking Tom Sawyer Kincaid might be the one man in her life with the brawn and bravado to stand up to her ex-husband. The man who’d come galloping to her rescue. But any chivalrous fantasy she might have toyed with scared the hell out of her, too. She’d forgotten just how imposing he could be, with those broad shoulders and thick forearms, every sinew and hollow made blatantly evident by the sticky second skin of his damp white shirt and rolled-up sleeves.

She couldn’t help but compare. There’d been so many times she wished she’d met a man like Detective Kincaid before Ace had ever walked into her sheltered life back in South Dakota. But wishing didn’t help reality. There were no more fantasies to be dreamed, no trust to be given. There was only survival.

So she sloughed off his compliment and ignored the spark of interest her female instincts tried to rouse in her. “I look worn-out from a day that’s gone on way too long.”

“It’s been a long one for me, too.” He splayed his fingers at his hips, drawing attention to the badge with the black stripe bisecting it that was clipped to his belt. Did that black stripe have anything to do with this surprise visit?

“More ‘Get me!’” Benjamin pushed against Melissa’s chest, saving her from the compassionate impulse to ask about that black stripe and the length of his day.

“Not now, sweetie. It’s getting late.” She stroked his silky black hair and hugged him a little tighter, to settle her own nerves as much as his. But she kept her eyes on their guest. She needed a safer topic. “What’s it been? A year?”