And as hard as he tried, Xander couldn’t quell the feeling of dread from building in the pit of his stomach as he pulled into the parking lot of the SWAT compound.
* * *
The scent hit Khaki the moment she climbed out of her patrol cruiser. She didn’t have a clue what it was, but it seemed both familiar and unique at the same time. Lately her nose had been doing that, picking up a scent so strongly she had no choice but to pay attention to it until she figured out what it was. She’d tried ignoring the urge when it first happened, thinking it would go away. But it never did, not until she’d identified and filed the knowledge away for safekeeping in a head that was becoming scary good at remembering smells. She was like a walking card catalog, but instead of being stuffed full of the Dewey decimal system, it was filled with scent samples. If it wasn’t for the fact that this new talent scared the hell out of her, she would have been amazed by it. But of all the smells she’d cataloged, none came close to this one. Instinct told her she should recognize it, but the source of the scent was just out of reach. Maybe that was why it intrigued her so much.
She was still trying to figure out what it was when a man stepped into her path. At first she thought it was her ex-boyfriend and current pain in the ass, Jeremy Engler. But the tall, muscular man standing in front of her definitely wasn’t Jeremy. Her ex was pretty big, but this guy looked like he could smash Jeremy flat as a beer can with one punch. That should have made her cautious, but she’d long since stopped being wary of people and things—just one more thing about her that had changed since the night she’d been shot three months ago. Plus, they were standing outside the Lakefront Police Station. If this guy was up to no good, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it here.
“Officer Blake?” The man held up a badge. “I’m Sergeant Gage Dixon from the Dallas PD SWAT team. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if I may?”
Khaki stared at him, so caught up in his unique scent she almost didn’t see the hand he extended for her to shake. Telling her nose to quit it, she reached out and took his hand.
“Sergeant,” she said. “You’re from Dallas, you said? What brings you all the way to the Pacific Northwest?”
“That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Do you have time to get a cup of coffee?”
It was late and all she wanted to do was go home and fall into bed, just so she could get up and start her personal groundhog day routine all over again. Working third shift sucked, but if a sergeant from the Dallas PD SWAT team had hung around until she got off duty, whatever he wanted to talk about must be important.
She smiled. “It’s been a long night, but I guess I can spare a few minutes.”
The twenty-four-hour diner next to the police station was empty except for two fellow police officers there to grab breakfast before starting their shift. They gave her a nod, eyeing Gage Dixon curiously as she led him to a booth on the far side of the old-fashioned diner.
“So, what can I do for you, Sergeant Dixon?” Khaki asked after the waitress took their orders.
Considering they were in a diner full of food, including a pair of apple pies fresh out of the oven that were sitting on the counter a few feet away, his scent shouldn’t have been so distracting, but it was making it hard for Khaki to concentrate.
Dixon rested his forearms on the table and clasped his hands. “I know you’re tired, Officer Blake, so I won’t make this complicated. I’m here to offer you a job.”
Khaki blinked. “In Dallas?”
“In Dallas,” he said. “On my SWAT team.”
A tremor of excitement rippled through Khaki. She’d been looking for a way out of the Lakefront PD for months and Sergeant Dixon was handing her the perfect opportunity. Then again, maybe she was dreaming. Why would a SWAT commander offer someone with no tactical training a job on his team?
Khaki waited until the waitress dropped off their coffee before asking Dixon that same question.
Dixon glanced at her as he added sweetener to his coffee. “Because you have other skills that outweigh your lack of experience and training.”
Khaki considered that as she added sweetener and milk to her own coffee. Now she was even more curious. Obviously, Dixon knew something about her that she didn’t.
“What kind of skills?” she asked.
Dixon lifted his dark eyes to hers. “For one thing, you keep your head and do your job when things go south. I’ve read about what you did during that firefight behind the Grace Park apartment complex. There are a lot of cops who would have abandoned that woman to save their own asses, but you stayed and you got her out alive. That says a lot about the kind of person you are.”
Yeah, it said a lot, but Khaki wasn’t so sure what. People she knew, people whose opinions she’d always respected, told her she’d been an idiot to risk her life for that woman. But she was a cop. It was her job to risk her life for other people.
She sipped her coffee. “Okay, but that doesn’t really answer my question. Why come all the way up here from Dallas? It can’t just be the fact that I risked my life that night to save someone else.”
“But it wasn’t just that one night, was it?” His eyes locked with hers. “How many commendations have you received since then?”
Khaki’s head rocked back. “How did you get a look at my files? They’re private.”
“I’ve never seen your files,” Dixon said. “But I’ve seen your name mentioned in the Tacoma papers a lot in the past few months. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that your actions would garner you some commendations. So, how many?”
She stared down at her coffee. “Three.”
She couldn’t tell him the reason she’d been given those commendations was because she’d become a pariah in her own department and that any request she put in for backup went unanswered—just like that night behind the Grace Park apartments. And if she couldn’t tell Dixon that, she definitely couldn’t tell him that with all the strange things that had been happening to her since that night, she preferred dealing with dangerous situations by herself anyway.
Khaki picked up her mug and took a swallow of coffee, not because she needed the jolt of caffeine, but because she wasn’t quite sure what to say.
