“I’m free to night,” Alex says. “What’s your schedule look like?”
“I have off. I can call my neighbor, have her watch Melinda.”
The woman is a few steps away now, so close Alex can see the trickle of blood leaking from her nose.
“Officer!” the woman calls.
“That would be so cool,” Alex says into the phone. “You’ve got my number, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you. Awesome!”
“See you later.”
She hangs up just as the woman is tugging on her arm.
“He hit me and took my purse!” The woman’s voice is high-pitched, tinged with hysteria. Her cheeks glisten with tears.
“I’m off duty, ma’am.” Alex points at her cart with her chin. “You should call 911.”
“You have to help me! Please! There he is!”
Alex follows the woman’s finger in the direction of a teenager sporting gang colors, heading for the exit. He’s about forty yards away, young, moving fast. He’ll be out the door in a matter of seconds. A challenging target.
The holster on Alex’s hip has an unfamiliar snap holding the gun in place, and she loses half a second fumbling with it. But the draw is smooth, her aim is sure, and the kid flops to the ground minus his right knee.
There’s a moment of shocked silence, then pandemonium, people diving and ducking and screaming and shouting. Alex drinks in the reaction.
“I can’t see from here, but it doesn’t look like he has your purse.” Alex talks louder than normal; her ears are ringing, and so are everyone else’s. “But he probably has your cash and credit cards on him. I’m guessing he ditched your purse someplace in the store.”
The woman’s jaw is hanging open. Alex tips her cap, holsters her gun, and pushes her cart toward the exit.
The gangbanger is on the floor, clutching his knee, face wrenched with pain. Early teens, peach fuzz on his chin. His running days are over. And from the amount of blood on the floor, his walking days might be over as well. He sees Alex approach and fumbles for something in his loose-fitting jeans. Alex draws again, pointing the barrel at his groin.
“I blew off your kneecap from over a hundred feet away,” she says. “You want to see what kind of damage I can do this close to you?”
He shakes his head, his whole body twitching, and slowly raises his empty hands. Alex digs into his pocket, takes out a battered.22. She tucks it into her belt.
“Do yourself a favor, kid, and quit crime. You suck at it.”
She walks out of the store with a cop swagger and a cart full of merchandise she didn’t pay for.
CHAPTER 35
PHIN AND I STARED AT EACH OTHER for a little bit. I put on my cop face to keep my emotions hidden. But instead of Phin wearing his tough-guy face, he looked like the last kid picked for kickball.
“I’m not going to be around for long,” he said.
I folded my arms. “I’m not forcing you to help me, Phin. You can leave whenever you want to.”
“I meant being alive. I’m dying of cancer, Jack. I might not make it through winter.”
“Oh.” I was trying to be strong, not be an asshole. “Sorry.”
“It’s just-women carry pregnancy tests for two reasons. Because they think they’re pregnant…”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“…or because they want to get pregnant.”
“I don’t want to get pregnant. And you had no right to search my purse.”
“I wasn’t searching your purse. You told me to take money for donuts.”
“And you saw something wrapped in toilet paper and decided to take a look?”
“It wasn’t wrapped in toilet paper. It was sitting on top of your wallet.”
I wasn’t buying. I reached into my purse, pulled out the wad of toilet paper I’d used to wrap up the EPT, and waved it like a surrender flag.
“Are you saying this isn’t toilet paper?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, that’s toilet paper. But it wasn’t wrapped around anything.”
“Why else would I have toilet paper in my purse?”
Phin shrugged. “Emergencies? Afraid of being caught without it? How should I know? I’m not a chick, I don’t own a purse. I don’t know why you women keep half that stuff in there.”
“I only keep essentials in my purse.”
“You’ve got a wind-up plastic nun in there.”
“That’s Nunzilla. She shoots sparks out of her mouth.”
“That’s essential?”
“It was…a gift.”
Latham gave it to me, on our first-year anniversary.
“Look, I know you’re hurting. I know you miss him a lot. But if you’re trying to get pregnant to fill a void in your life, you should find a father who will be around for a while.”
I wasn’t sure what rankled more, Phin thinking I slept with him to get pregnant, or Phin thinking I needed a child to fill some void in my life.
“It’s not any of your business, but since you brought it up, I missed my last period and thought I might be pregnant, so I bought a pregnancy test when we were at the gas station last night. If you’d bothered to look closer, you’d see there was only one blue line, not two. I’m not pregnant, so this conversation is over.”
Phin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then cupped his elbow and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I believe you,” he said.
“Good. Because I’m telling the truth.”
“But if it’s negative, why did you save it?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. What was I supposed to tell him? That part of me wanted to be pregnant, so I could always have part of Latham with me? That maybe I did have a void that needed to be filled? That keeping a negative pregnancy test was one more way I could punish myself, as a reminder of what never would be?
I wasn’t ready to tell him that. Especially when he was high on coke.
“If you think I slept with you because I wanted a sperm donor-”
He raised his palms. “I’m just trying to understand you a little better.”
“Why? Why the hell do you need to understand me?”
“Because…”
He gave me that look again and I knew that he was going to say the L word, and I did not need to deal with that right now.
“Never mind,” I interrupted. “We need to get to Gurnee and meet Harry. You want to drive, or rifle through my purse some more?”
He went from lovey-dovey to wounded, which I preferred.
“I’ll drive.”
I followed Phin out to the Bronco. The day was gray, overcast, and matched my mood. We got in the truck and didn’t say anything to each other for the first half hour of the drive. I finally got hungry and picked out one of the donuts he bought.
“Sprinkles,” I said, after swallowing a bite.
“Excuse me?”
“I like donuts with sprinkles.”
“Oh. Good to know. Anything you want to know about me?”
He sniffled, rubbed his nose. I resisted the temptation to ask which coke he preferred, Colombian or Panamanian. I also resisted asking him about criminal acts he’d committed in his past. I was curious how bad this bad boy really was, but I was also a cop and might feel compelled to act on the information. Sometimes ignorance makes things easier.
“Does it hurt?” I asked instead.
“The cancer?”
I nodded.
“Only some of the time.”
“When doesn’t it hurt?”
“When I’m asleep.”
“The pain is bad?”
He nodded, took one hand off the wheel to rub his elbow again. I reached out, touched his injury.
“Jesus, Phin! It feels like you have a beanbag in your elbow.”
“It’s pieces of cartilage. I’m supposed to keep it immobile.”
“You should have it in a sling. You don’t want permanent damage.”
“It won’t be permanent,” he said.
He didn’t say it with regret, or self-pity. He said it matter-of-factly, like he was talking about the weather.
I’d met some tough guys. Cops. Military. Bikers. Mobsters. Killers. With one sentence, Phin took the tough-guy crown. Which made me want to kiss him.