‘ It’s over,’ Danny stated through gritted teeth. ‘Now leave me alone.’
The lift clattered to a halt at the ground floor.
‘ Please, God, let there be someone waiting to get in,’ Danny grovelled in her mind. Sands’s finger was pressed on the button for the fifth floor and he was standing across the doors. He wasn’t going to let her go anywhere.
Danny’s legs became wobbling strips of blubber when she thought that somehow Sands had succeeded in preventing the doors opening. An agonising couple of seconds passed. She eyed her ex-lover fearfully
… until, thankfully, the doors opened. Several people were in the corridor, waiting to get in. A gush of relief flushed through her system.
Sands glanced over his shoulder, a look of rage on his face. Danny took advantage of the moment to duck past him, shove her way through the waiting people with a strained, ‘Excuse me,’ and head for the exit.
Her legs, having turned back from blubber into muscle, carried her swiftly down the corridor, past the entrance to the custody office, out of the back door and into the rear yard.
Head high, vision tunnelled, she commenced what had become a very long walk to her car.
She sensed, rather than saw, felt or heard, Sands by her shoulders. Walking with her. Slightly behind.
‘ Fuck off, Jack,’ she hissed without turning her head.
‘ We haven’t finished.’ He sounded breathless. ‘You can’t cut me out like this, Dan. It’s not on. You owe me more.’ His voice was pleading and threatening at the same time.
She refused to rise and make a reply, and carried on walking. As she wheeled into the parking area where her car was parked, she saw it was dark, badly lit. Making a quick decision, she stopped abruptly and spun to face Jack.
‘ Don’t come to my car, Jack. I’ve let what happened pass, but I’m not prepared to do that again. Next time you touch me, you’ll get locked up. I won’t have any hesitation whatsoever — and if you want the hassle of our affair finding its way to your wife’s ears, then so be it.’
Sands said nothing, simply stared unemotionally at her.
She nodded quickly and made towards her car. The walk seemed to take an hour. Each footfall reverberated around her skull. All the time expecting Sands to pounce and drag her to the floor.
Nothing happened. She reached the car unmolested, but her hands were trembling wickedly.
Next thing she was reversing out of her spot, engaging ‘D’ and driving out of the car park.
Sands lounged against a wall near to the exit. He was holding his right fist out towards her. The consideration of running the bastard down quickly entered her head. As she drew alongside him, he opened the fingers of his fist, showing Danny the palm of his hand… in which was a Mercedes three-pointed star.
Danny’s foot rammed down on the gas. The car surged ahead with a squeal of tyres. She gunned out of the yard, glancing fleetingly in her rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of Sands’s face. He was laughing uproariously.
Danny yelled something incomprehensible as the implication of what she had seen smacked her with the force of a slab of concrete coming through her windscreen.
It was now confirmed. Jack Sands was the person responsible for smashing her bedroom window, nearly causing her serious injury and damaging her beloved car.
Sands turned on his heels and slid the badge into his pocket. He walked back into the police station, a smirk of superiority on his face.
He failed to notice the lurking figure of Henry Christie in the dark shadow next to the police van.
‘ That was a one-off — two-off, actually, I suppose — but having said that, it was definitely the nicest two-off I’ve ever experienced,’ Myrna Rosza admitted to Steve Kruger. ‘It can’t happen again. It’s just that we seem to have gone through so much together in such a short space of time that my head was spinning with it all. I needed some sorta relief… but with someone who understood.’
Kruger uttered a kind of reply from deep in his throat.
He understood completely. It was one of the reasons why so many cop marriages failed. Non-cop partners didn’t fully comprehend some of the situations and emotions that only other cops could. Usually those of the opposite sex, although not necessarily so. Too often, when he’d been a cop, he’d found himself in similar situations, one of which was responsible for the demise of his first marriage.
Kruger and Myrna were lying askew his king-size bed. He was on his back, an arm thrown lazily around Myrna’s wonderfully soft-brown shoulders. She was tucked under his armpit, his fingers playfully curling the thick hairs on his chest.
Their legs were entwined, toes playing with each other’s toes. The heat of Myrna’s sex pumped against his thigh.
It had been incredible.
From the shallow end of the swimming pool, right through the house, taking a few moments to dry each other off before hitting the sack. Then an unbelievable fuck in the greatest tradition of the word.
Even though all the time he had been telling himself what a stupid fool he was being.
Firstly by breaking rule number one — never ever fraternise with the staff.
Secondly because he knew Ben Rosza, Myrna’s husband. A soft, gentle man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. A decent hardworking doctor who Kruger quite liked and whose wife had just mounted him from several directions.
But hell, it had been good, the second one even better. And good sex was something Kruger had been short of recently. Actually he had been short of sex, full stop.
She ran her long nails lightly down his stomach, making him quiver.
‘ I love Ben,’ she said. ‘He’s a good man. I don’t want to do anything to harm him or hurt him, okay?’
Kruger caught her hand. He pushed himself up onto one elbow and gazed into her eyes, aware that in the periphery of his vision he could see her breasts and nipples pressed into his ribs and beyond that her legs wrapped around his.
Her eyes were serious. Kruger was suddenly aware he was looking at a vulnerable individual who had just taken a big step in her life. Gone was the facade of the sassy, cheeky woman.
‘ No one will ever know about this,’ he reassured her. ‘No one. This is between me and you alone. What happened here happened for a reason and for a brief moment in time we needed each other. And that’s the end of it. When you walk out of this house, we’re back to square one, okay? End of story.’
He knew it was a lie. Even if they never jumped into bed again, their relationship would never be the same in the future. But he did not feel bad telling her what she wanted to hear.
She nodded, also knowing it was a lie.
Their eyes stayed in contact, holding onto the moment.
Kruger fought it, so did Myrna, but suddenly they both knew they needed each other again.
Kruger pulled her up towards him. Their lips mashed together, parted and tongues darted together. Kruger became short of breath as his manhood sprang back to life again. At the same moment, Myrna curled her long fingers around it.
She broke away from the kiss, her breathing heavy. She pushed herself down the bed, taking him into her hot mouth.
Kruger groaned and flopped back onto the bed luxuriating in the pleasure. When the bedside phone rang he nearly leapt out of his skin.
Myrna was not phased by the interruption. Her head rose and fell.
Kruger fumbled for the phone, answering it with a little squeak which came as the result of a flutter of Myrna’s tongue. ‘Yep?’ he managed to say.
He listened for a few moments, ‘Jeez, no… That can’t be right.’ He tapped Myrna on the shoulder and indicated for her to stop. Reluctantly she did. ‘This has got to be some kinda joke,’ he said, sat up, his mind nowhere near sex now.
‘ Okay… okay. I’ll be there soon… yeah, no problems. Thanks for phoning.’