Chicago Police Homicide Division, Wentworth Avenue
“God bless America! How do you manage to put your pants on every morning?” Samantha yelled.
“I’m sorry! What?” Ozzie tried to blink the water from his eyes. The second he had exited Christian’s car, he’d been drenched to his skivvies. Samantha was doing a pretty good impersonation of a drowned cat herself, all ragged hair and bristle as she skirted around the back of her Mustang where she assumed some sort of martial-arts pose. Ozzie felt his lips twitch at the ridiculousness of the situation.
“You know, over those massive balls of yours!” she cried. “You realize we’re at a police station, right?”
“So?” He was completely flabbergasted. It wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed.
“So I called ahead when I saw you following me!” she yelled just as an angry bolt of lightning sizzled overhead. The zigzag of electricity was followed by the deafening boom of thunder. Ozzie winced. A storm like this forced a man to admit his weakness, his feebleness in the face of Mother Nature. And this one in particular seemed to be personally mocking his plight when it came to making heads or tails of the crazy, stubborn, confounding woman in front of him. “They’ll be out here any second to take you into custody!”
“Take me into custody? Samantha, what the fuck are you—”
That’s all he managed before the door to the police station burst open and six uniformed officers came barreling down the steps, sidearms out and unmistakably aimed in his direction.
Here we go, he thought, automatically assuming the position, hands laced behind his head. He didn’t know what the hell Samantha thought he had done or was about to do, but one thing he did know. When it came to the CPD, you didn’t even hint like you were considering resisting arrest.
“On the ground!” the beefy officer at the front of the pack bellowed.
Ozzie immediately dropped to his knees. His injured thigh called him dirty names on the descent.
“He’s armed!” Samantha yelled oh-so-helpfully.
Ozzie groaned, bracing himself for what he knew came next.
Right on cue, he was hit by the crowd of policemen and shoved face-first into a shallow puddle. The water smelled like dirt and grease. It tasted worse. When his hands were whipped behind his waist and a knee shoved into the middle of his back, there was no way to stop his grimace and keep the foul sludge from slipping between his teeth and coating his tongue.
“It’s a nine millimeter in a shoulder h-holster,” he sputtered, trying to be helpful as rough fingers fumbled beneath his body, searching for his weapon. “I have a license to carry it.”
He was rewarded for being a good Samaritan. And that reward was the knee in his back doing its damnedest to break his spine.
“Oy!” he heard Christian yell. “What the bloody hell do you coppers think you’re doing to my—”
Ozzie turned his head and blinked the water from his eyes in time to see two things. The first was Christian stepping from his Porsche. The second was four of the six policemen charging toward Christian like a hulking group of Klingons rushing into battle, all bared teeth and bristling rage.
Christian took an instinctive step back. But it was too late. One officer broke away from the pack and took a flying leap toward the Brit. Two minutes later, they were both handcuffed and being gently—Ha-fucking-ha! If you believed the CPD boys were gentle, Ozzie had some beachfront property in Utah he could sell you—marched up the steps and into the police station. His teeth were chattering with the cold and the wet by the time they pushed through the front doors. But everything inside him was burning hot.
He was surprised the combination didn’t have steam pouring from his ears, especially when Samantha came to stand in front of him, her brown eyes searching his blues. “You have no one to blame for this but yourself,” she said.
He could have asked, Blame for what? But she’d been unwilling to provide any goddamn answers all night, and he was sick and tired of begging her to explain herself. And beyond that, he was…hurt. Hurt that after all the hours they’d spent getting to know each other, all the lunches and coffees and walks through the park, she could actually accuse him of…whatever the fuck she was accusing him of.
“Maybe,” was all he allowed through gritted teeth.
“And for the record,” she said, sniffling, “I’m blaming you too.”
Some of the fire inside him burned away. That sniffle had less to do with the cold rain dripping from her hair and more to do with the pain he saw in her eyes.
“Samantha, I—”
“Haven’t you ever heard the old newspaper adage that you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel?” she interrupted.
He’d always had a soft spot for the fairer sex. Supposed that protecting things smaller and weaker than himself had been stamped into his DNA at conception. He could remember being barely four years old when he jumped in front of the little neighbor girl after the dog from across the street lunged at her with slavering jaws and snapping teeth.
His terrified mother had barreled out the back door of their suburban Indiana home, shooing the dog away and taking Ozzie into her arms. With one breath, she had scolded him for being so reckless. With another breath, she had praised him for being brave and selfless. He could still remember the love and the tears in her eyes when she had brushed his hair back from his face. It was one of his last memories of her, and—
He pushed the old pain away and focused on the present. “Samantha, whatever you’ve got going on inside that head of yours, it’s just flat-out wrong. I wish you’d tell me—”
“Wrong? Wrong?” A hysterical edge entered her voice. “After everything that’s happened tonight, you’re still trying to convince me I’m wrong?”
