Fool Me Once (Codie Snow #1): A Romantic Suspense Series (2 page)

Chapter Two

AS IF THEY were an orchestrated team, Ray and Pete were on the two guys storming out of the bar.  Good thing, too, because both were angry, even though they were unarmed, and Codie was pretty sure they were ready to exchange blows.  Pete gave Codie a look that urged her to back up a little, for her own safety if nothing else, and she complied, walking back to the police car and leaning against it, straining to hear while Pete questioned one of the guys and Ray the other.  She couldn’t hear much over the strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin flooding out of the bar and the radio chatter that continued ad nauseam, but she managed to piece most of it together.  Apparently, the Dalton Devils were out partying away from their club—meeting another motorcycle club, it sounded like—and tempers had risen.  The guy talking to Ray kept trying to head back inside, and Ray finally cuffed him and threw him in the back of the car.  The guy talking with Pete finally shrugged and lit up a cigar, walking to an ashtray the requisite fifteen feet away from the entrance.

Pete returned to Ray and the two men talked quietly for a few minutes.  Codie debated rejoining them and decided against it.  She was a little concerned about her instincts to react, because she’d frozen in the face of danger.  She imagined that cops who did that didn’t live to see thirty.  Maybe they were trained for that.  She’d have to ask Pete later what kind of training she’d have to have if she chose this profession.

Soon, they were back in the cruiser, Pete explaining that Ray said they had things under control.  As if to affirm it, while Pete tapped in a quick few notes into the tiny notebook computer, several cops exited the bar—along with a crowd of bikers Codie figured had been told to leave.  While pulling away from the scene, Pete said, “Don’t be surprised if something else happens tonight.  Angry drunk bikers either go home and take it out on their old ladies in a number of ways or they continue their business elsewhere until they’ve resolved it to their own satisfaction.”

Codie was trying to soak up any little gems of wisdom she could glean from Pete’s words.  “I can’t imagine either scenario is preferable.”

But Pete didn’t hear her.  She knew it because, even though his eyes were looking forward (and even though it wasn’t bright as day in the car), she could tell he’d tuned her out.  She got ready to act irritated by it, but then she could tell he was paying attention to the chatter coming from the radio.  He picked up the small mike attached to the dash and held it up to his mouth.  “Eighteen.  Go ahead.”

“Report of a possible domestic violence situation.  Suspect reported to have left the area.  Victim in need of assistance.”

“Roger that.”

“1752 Yucca Drive.”

“On my way.”  As Pete set the mike back in place, he asked her, “You buckled in?”

Codie couldn’t remember but a quick glance down confirmed it.  “Yeah.”

“Hang on.”  Before she could even fully register what was happening, Pete was making a U-turn and then flying down the road again and, in spite of the fact that she was secured to the chair by seatbelt, she could feel her body swaying back and forth with each turn.

They were hauling ass.

In less than five minutes, they arrived at the front of 1752 Yucca.  Codie felt some comfort knowing that Pete hadn’t wasted any time, and now she knew that a cop could make it halfway across town quickly.  If she were truly in danger and needed the police, they could be there in a flash.

Pete muttered something unintelligible into the radio and unbuckled his seatbelt.  Codie followed suit but he said, “No, you stay here.”

She felt her brow furrow.  She did
not
come on the ride-along just to score a free cup of coffee and a cherry pie. 
This
—what was happening
right now
—was what she’d signed up for.  “But this is the good part.”

Pete’s eyes grew dark.  Codie could tell that even inside the cruiser.  “This is the
dangerous
part, Codie.  I can’t endanger you when there’s a potentially hostile situation.  You can roll the window down if you want.”

Oh, yeah.  Great idea.
  “Pete, I can take care of myself.”

“I said
no
.”  And that was all there was to it.  He was out of the car and striding up to the door before she could ask again.

Damn.
  He did have a nice ass.  And she had to admit that part of her tingled at the way he’d grown all bossy and commanding of her.

She took a deep breath and shook her head.  The radio continued to chatter with multiple voices and things Codie had no possible way of translating.  She watched Pete knock on the door and a woman opened it, inviting him in.  Codie sighed and looked at the white house—it must have, at one time, been the pride and joy of its owners.  Now, though, the rusted wheelbarrow in the yard full of overgrown vegetation made her believe that the owners didn’t care much about the place.

But it was quiet.  She couldn’t hear any yelling coming from the house and there was definitely no action like there’d been at the bar.  See?  No danger.  “Potentially hostile, my ass.”  Codie opened the passenger door and got out, breathing in the cool evening air, and then began walking up to the front door.  As she began traipsing up the sidewalk, though, she could hear a female screeching inside the house.

That
couldn’t be good.

She knew she should head back to the patrol car and wait it out for Pete, but it wasn’t like he was her boss.  Her need to know trumped everything else.  Besides, if Pete was angry with her for disobeying, maybe she could tease him and tell him he needed to punish her after work.  Encouraging herself into further defiance, she took her time approaching the house.  The windows at the front were open, so she could hear everything as she got closer, and it sounded like the woman inside had completely lost her shit, but Codie could also hear Pete talking, and it sounded like he was doing a fine job de-escalating her.

Scratch that.

Once Codie could actually hear Pete’s words, she heard him giving her an ultimatum, telling the woman if she didn’t cool it, he was going to cuff her and drag her in.  And,
oh
, the sound of his voice.  It was continuing to have an unexpectedly inappropriate effect on Codie that she never would have expected.

Holy hell.

But she made it to the front steps.  There was a closed screen door but the inner door was ajar and she could see and hear everything through it.  Pete’s back was to the door so he couldn’t see her—and she knew better than to simply barge in—but she hung back and listened.  Apparently, the couple had been having a knockdown-drag-out fight and a neighbor had heard the ruckus and called it in.  Both were denying injury or fear to Pete, but it was starting to sound to Codie like the woman was ready to beat her significant other’s skull in with a cast-iron skillet.

Pete spoke again.  Even though Codie had a hard time understanding the man’s muttering and the woman’s shrieking, she had no trouble hearing Pete’s forceful words.  “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to back away some.”  Another couple of seconds and Pete added, his voice firmer, “A few feet.”  Codie could imagine the look on his face as he tried to communicate to the woman that he meant business.  “Now, I need you to tell me what happened. 
From the beginning.
”

Codie could hear the man talking again, but it wasn’t loud enough for her to make out any actual words.  The woman then started yelling again.  “That’s bullshit, Vern.  Bullshit!  And you know it, ya bastard!”

“Ma’am, I’m not going to ask you again.  I need you to keep some distance between you and your husband while he tells his side of the story.”  It was relatively quiet for a few seconds, save the TV droning in the background, and Codie inched closer to the house before Pete said, “Sir?”

“Like I said, I just sat down with a beer when the old lady started throwin’ shit at me.”

“I wasn’t just throwin’ shit at you, Vern!  It was the goddamned cable bill that we can’t afford!”

Over her voice, Codie could hear Pete telling her once again to back off, but soon those sounds were drowned out by the short blast of the siren from another cop car.  Codie turned around and saw the red and blue lights whirring on top of it, but the driver turned the siren off.  It almost sounded like the cop had turned it on for just a second so the people inside the house knew he was there.

Oh.  Not he. 
She.
  The cop was a woman.  It wasn’t hard to tell once she was out of the car, because the uniform hugged her like a glove, and there was no mistaking her feminine figure.  The look on her face, however, was determination and attitude.  Codie knew she wouldn’t want to mess with this cop.

Unfortunately, she was on the cop’s radar, and before she could even turn back to the action to hear what was going on inside, the cop said, “Hands up!”  The cop pulled out her gun, pointing it toward Codie.

Why was it
now
that she didn’t feel the freeze instinct?  Jesus Christ, she was going to get herself killed.

Chapter Three

CODIE COULDN’T SEE the cop’s face, even though the red and blue behind her highlighted her body, because there wasn’t enough light from the porch and the front of the house to illuminate her expression, so Codie couldn’t get a read on her.  She knew, though, that the cop thought she was part of the problem, and Codie needed to nip that notion in the bud right this second.

“I’m not—”

But the cop wasn’t listening, and she rushed at Codie before she could finish her sentence.  The cop shoved her up against the side of the house next to the screen door, pushing her face into the siding and twisting her arms behind her back.  In seconds, she could feel the cold metal of the cuffs digging into her wrists.  Because her face was mashed into the wall, speech was difficult.  She wanted to try talking once more anyway to tell the cop that she was
with
Pete and not a criminal, but she suspected it wouldn’t be worth the effort.  The cop would find out soon enough.

It wasn’t until the officer led her by the wrists behind her back into the house that it got all straightened out.  As soon as Pete saw the woman shoving restrained Codie around, he said, “Breske!  She’s not a suspect.  She’s on a ride-along.  Uncuff her!”  In the meantime, he was cuffing the woman who’d been yelling.  The husband just stood to the side, and Codie tried not to laugh.  The guy had to be pushing seventy—same with the woman—and here they were, yelling at each other like passionate youth.

Well, not so much.  They were probably just set in their ways.

Once the cuffs were off Codie’s wrists, she rubbed her skin because it already hurt.  She could see the red marks the metal had dug into her flesh.  The tight-faced cop said, “My apologies, ma’am.”

Pete looked half-amused, half-pissed when he said, “Breske’s just an eager beaver.  You’ll have to forgive her.”  Breske frowned but said nothing.

Codie tried not to give away that she was upset, but she didn’t know that her face could quite hide how she felt at the moment.  In spite of the strange feeling of embarrassment and anger, she shrugged and said, “It’s cool.”  She knew it was a better move to forgive and try to forget than to be whiny and bitchy.

Breske, though, said the words but her acting was horrible.  She didn’t act sorry in the least.  Pete might have been oblivious to it, but Codie could
feel
waves of indignant anger coming from Breske, washing over her like waves of nausea.  Codie knew it would be best to play it cool and be grateful that all she’d gotten out of it was red wrists and a sore cheek.  It could have been much, much worse, especially with a cop her friend had described as overly eager.

It was already in the past, as far as Pete was concerned, and he addressed Breske.  “Can you get her side of the story?  I’ll question the husband and we’ll go from there.”

“Ten-four” said the eager beaver.  It took all Codie had to not roll her eyes.

Pete turned his attention to Codie.  His voice was low when he said, “
You.
Stay there and don’t move.”

After getting past the part of herself that found ultra-masculine Pete quite titillating, Codie felt her eyes grow wide and she nodded.  She couldn’t tell if he was angry at her or not, and she tried not to feel a bit of irritation herself.  When she’d first talked to Pete about going on a ride-along, she’d made it quite clear that she’d wanted to see the action.  Up close, mind you.  Sitting in a cop car, staring at a house, and listening to a lot of nonsensical chatter on the radio with nothing to do and no idea of how long she’d be doing it was not what she’d had in mind.  In fact, it sounded a little less fun than lying in a dentist chair while some tech scraped on her teeth.

Add to it, she was pretty sure other people would have gotten to follow him inside—whether that would have been
male
citizens or just people who weren’t Codie, she wasn’t sure, but she suspected he was trying to protect her.

And that kind of misguided chivalry—especially when she hadn’t asked for it—pissed her off.

Pete had no idea of her internal conflict and continued working.  He asked the man a couple of questions, but it was a matter of minutes before the woman’s voice started rising again, even though she was in another part of the room and not part of the Q-and-A between the two men.  Codie figured Breske’s prickly-pear attitude didn’t help the situation much, but the woman was riled up already—Breske just seemed to make it worse.  “I told him I’m tired of him sittin’ in that damned La-Z-Boy day in and day out, watchin’ TV we can’t afford and drinkin’ beer we can’t afford.  He’s—”

“Dammit, woman,” the man barked back, no longer looking at Pete.  “I earned them comforts!”

Pete was on the one side, trying to pull the man back to their own conversation, while Breske was doing the same with the woman, but it was no use.  This was an argument the two seemed destined to play out, law enforcement be damned.  The woman continued screeching, but then Pete moved over to block her some, and only then was he able to recapture the older man’s attention.  “I just need to know if either of you is in danger.”

“Mean am I gonna beat her or kill her?”  Pete’s facial expression didn’t change and Codie was impressed, because she could feel the incredulity changing her own features—either that, or she was going to start laughing at any moment, because the situation was becoming comical.  But then the man said, “No.  We fight all the time, but she’s just extra feisty tonight.”

Feisty.  Yeah.

Pete said, “Describe what you mean by
fight
.”

“Bicker.  Having words, you know.”

Pete nodded.  “No physical altercations?”

The man grinned.  “Eh.  She’s not worth the effort.”

Codie could barely register the action as it happened, but the woman suddenly pushed herself past both Breske and Pete and no one could stop her.  The woman started slapping the man on both sides of his face repeatedly, as though she were a boxer training with a speed bag.  Codie had no idea what had set her off this time, if anything, but she wasn’t surprised when Breske cuffed her with just a couple of quick motions and started marching her out the door.  Codie could hear the woman kept yelling all the way toward Breske’s cruiser, but her voice faded as they got farther away.

She and Pete stayed with the man a bit longer and Pete then took a full statement from him, telling the man his wife would probably be out the following day but that she’d probably have a restraining order.  “That means the two of you shouldn’t be around each other.”

“Eh…her bark’s always worse than her bite.”

Pete tried doing some low-grade counseling with the guy, but Codie could tell her friend felt out of his league and uncomfortable as hell doing so.  And the guy obviously wasn’t interested.  He just wanted to get back to whatever he was trying to watch on TV so he could nurse a beer or two—and now he could do it in peace and quiet.

Once they were back in the car, Pete told Codie that they sometimes had to arrest both parties in domestic violence situations, but here it was clear who the aggressor was.  He typed out a quick report on the laptop before driving off.  When they stopped at a red light on Main Street, he arched an eyebrow before glancing sideways at Codie, and his forceful tone of voice returned.  “You do know who’s the cop here, don’t you?”

Codie was quiet for a few seconds, because she knew why Pete was irritated with her.  She’d disobeyed a direct order from him.  Now, granted, he wasn’t her boss or her father or anyone who should matter, and at this point she didn’t really care if he was angry with her or not.

But she didn’t want him to end the ride-along.  She wasn’t nearly ready to go home yet.

“Look, Pete, I know you’re mad at me—”

“I’m
not
mad at you, Codie.  Yeah, I’m a little peeved that it’s like you didn’t hear a word I said, but I’m not mad.”

Huh.
  His voice told her otherwise…but Codie wasn’t going to say another word.  Instead, she turned her head to look out the passenger side of the window.  She had never spent hours driving around their little town, especially in the dead of night.  There’d never been any reason for it.  She’d always figured it was a lot like when she was a little kid—maybe one car somewhere on the road shrouded by the shadow of darkness, and you were lucky if the largest convenience store stayed open till midnight and reopened at six.  The bars stayed open later than any other business, and even they rolled up shop fairly early.  But nowadays the small town never fully slept, and even though Codie had known that, she hadn’t witnessed it.  The truck stop at the edge of town was open 24/7—but that hadn’t been the edge of town when she was a kid.  That particular business had been out of town a bit.  Now it was part of Dalton and the town wholly embraced it.  There was also another coffee and pancake restaurant in the middle of town that stayed open twenty-four hours, plus two convenience stores, and a good many businesses stayed open till eleven PM.  Oh, and the giant super center on the west end of town never closed—except for Christmas.

Yeah, lots had changed.

Pete’s voice pulled her out of her introspection.  “Thing is, Codie, I still have to protect you.  That’s my job.  You might have heard that one before?  ‘To serve and protect’?  That still applies, even to you, even if you’re riding along.”  After a second, he said, “And if you’re getting ready to argue again that you were never in any real danger, let me tell you something.  The supposed suspect, who we were told had fled on foot, was still there, drinking a beer and chilling in front of his TV.  It doesn’t even matter that the supposed victim was actually the aggressor.  What does matter is what if the guy had been really violent?  What if he’d had a gun?  If you’d bebopped in the house without a care in the world while I was trying to hold the guy at bay, someone could have gotten hurt.  You, me, the victim.  There are all kinds of possibilities, none of which are pretty.  And if the situation had gotten hairy, I would have had you in the way, making my job even harder than it already is.”

Codie understood where he was coming from, but it was lame.  “Then why’d I even bother?”

Pete sighed.  “Look…we usually have ride-alongs wear a vest and sign a release, so if they get hurt, it’s on them, right?”

“I signed a release.”

“Yeah…”

And then something began to dawn on Codie.  “Why didn’t I get a vest?”  Pete turned a corner in the cruiser and kept his eyes on the road.  “You were supposed to give me a vest, weren’t you?  What the hell’s going on, Pete?”