Paranoid(69)

Yeah, Ryder, but you were the driver, weren’t you?

His partner at the Chinook County detective division had moved on and had been replaced by Kayleigh O’Meara and they’d spent many a night on stakeouts like this one, getting closer, enjoying the camaraderie and the hours alone. She’d broken up with a boyfriend—Travis Mcsomething or other—and Cade’s marriage was crumbling. He’d confided more than he should have on those long, dark nights, and he’d recognized that she was starting to fall for him. He should have put the brakes on, headed her off at the pass.

But he didn’t.

Once in his old sedan, Kayleigh had been bold enough to kiss him and he hadn’t stopped her. Her warm lips felt like heaven after weeks of being shut out from a wife who was falling apart. One kiss led to another, and soon they were fumbling at each other’s clothes before he came to his senses and stopped the madness. “I can’t,” he said, breathing hard, looking away from her. “And . . . and we need to pay attention here.” They were on a stakeout of a suspected drug dealer, in a sketchy area southeast of Astoria near the bay, a small, one-story house tucked among similar crumbling residences, some abandoned and boarded, trash littering the cracked road. There was a chance that this was a meth lab, a small operation but one that might lead to others, part of a larger system.

He straightened his clothes, and from the corner of his eye he saw her do the same, her lips pursed, as she swallowed hard. Embarrassed. As he was.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be.” She stared straight ahead through the bug-spattered windshield to the house with a single lamp glowing in a cracked window. “My mistake.”

“Kayleigh—”

“Don’t. Just don’t.” Her lips had barely moved, but in the weak streetlight he saw that her eyes were glistening, a tear starting to slide down her cheek.

“Oh, God, I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m married.”

“Are you?” She swung her head around to stare at him. “Really? All you’ve done for the past month or so is talk about how miserable you are, how miserable she is, how you don’t know what to do.”

He couldn’t deny it. He’d crossed a line. But he wasn’t going to cross another.

“I thought your marriage was over; Jesus, Ryder, I usually don’t make this kind of mistake!”

“Neither do I.”

“Oh, shove it.” She sniffed loudly, but her eyes, almost luminous in the night, glared at him, her pain turning to a palpable fury. “I’m sick of this. Really sick of it. I’ll ask for a new partner in the morning.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yeah,” she said, cutting him off and pulling her sidearm from its holster. “Yeah, I do.” And with that, she opened the door and slid out of the car. “I’m over this.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Finding out if we’re wasting our time out here.” She closed the door and, in a half crouch, ran toward the house.

“No. Oh, fuck!” Frantic, he called for backup as he exited the car, closed the door, then took off after her. What the hell was she thinking? Not only might she blow their cover, but she was going to get herself killed in the process! And if these guys were cooking meth . . .

And they were. He smelled it, that acrid odor filtering through a crack in the windows somewhere. Maybe from the attic where one small dormer peeked from the dilapidated roof, the glass of the window nonexistent.

Kayleigh had made it to the broken-down fence of the backyard and was slipping past a leaning post when he heard the creak of a door.

Oh, crap!

A second later a scrawny man with thin, stringy hair stepped onto the porch to light a cigarette. Beside him, a beast of a dog, gray and bristly, wandered into the yard only to stop suddenly, turn, and bark wildly. A sharp, loud warning.

No!

Cigarette dangling from his lips, the man turned, peering in the direction of Kayleigh just as the dog spied Cade. Snarling, it leapt from the porch and the man twitched, his gaze shifting from the fence to the street. He raised his gun.

“Police!” Cade yelled. “Drop your weapon.”

“You heard him!” Kayleigh screamed. “Drop it. Now!” She was aiming straight at the back porch. Then, “No! Cade! Watch out—!”

Blam!

A gun fired.

Cade’s body jerked, then spun. He took a wobbling step backward before he stumbled, his pistol clattering to the broken pavement. His knees folded and he felt a sharp, burning sensation on his neck. He’d never seen the man on the porch lift his weapon, but Cade had gone down, the world spinning as more gunshots blasted and somewhere far in the distance the sound of a siren wailed through the night.

He found out later a second shooter had been in an attic window and had fired at him, while stringy-hair and the dog had backed down. The dude had dropped his weapon and commanded the dog to “stay,” rather than risk shooting an officer. Kayleigh had gotten off several shots, hitting the assailant in the window. Both of the suspects had been arrested, charged, and convicted and were now serving time, their small operation shut down, the link to the larger system never discovered.

Now Cade stared at Rachel’s house, dark again, Rachel having, he presumed, turned off the computer and returned to bed. Not that she would sleep; he knew better. When she had the nightmares she had trouble finding sleep again. He knew. He’d been there. Had held her and whispered that “everything’s all right,” and that she needed to “calm down” as he’d kissed the top of her head and felt her trembling in his arms.