Forbidden (3 page)

“I want to live,” she said quickly, before the ethereal queen could tell her vengeance was an unacceptable reason for living. It was only one of them. And it wasn’t vengeance so much as a powerful desire for justice.

“Justice is one of the best reasons to fight for survival,” the other woman countered as she reached out to touch Docia’s face. But just before she made contact, she stopped. Docia realized the Egyptian beauty was breathing hard, her hand shaking as it hesitated in the air. That was when Docia realized the grand and composed woman was more than a little afraid. She glanced over her shoulder once again, and there was another
wash of warmth, again like sun radiating off well-baked sand.

“Go. It is well past your time, love. You will be very needed,” the male encouraged her in a warm whisper of strength that seemed to emanate all throughout.

“I will see you again,” the beauty whispered to him just before she touched Docia’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed her full on the lips. It was a kiss of warmheartedness, almost tender at first, but it quickly grew stronger and more passionate. Docia was shocked by the aggressive sensation of a tongue parting her lips, reaching to touch her own. She wanted to balk … she would have balked … but the moment that tongue touched hers, a searing golden light began to pour into her from every orifice, starting with her hot, burning mouth.

She breathed in, a reflexive reaction, and just like breathing in ice-cold water, the act of breathing in the fiery heat of this burning light was excruciatingly painful. She felt as though her body and soul were bursting apart, devolving into a molecular state where all the tiny bits of atoms that made up Docia came apart, unraveled, and hung suspended in that hot, golden light. Then the molecules slowly drew together again … only this time when they connected, there were newer little atoms weaving their way into her makeup.

By the time she was whole again, she had collapsed into unconsciousness and let the comfort of darkness take hold of her.

Of them.

“Jackson!”

Jackson Waverly felt the back of his neck cringe a little at the familiar bark of displeasure his boss managed to make of his name. Then again, everything his boss said came out as a bark of displeasure. It just got on his nerves some times more than others. And this was one of those times. One of those days. So far, he’d accidentally let Sargent, his dog, get past him, allowing him to run loose in the neighborhood for a full hour before the untrained and defiant SOB had finally tuckered out and come to his call, tongue wagging in a full-on doggy pant while he looked at him with eyes that said very clearly, “That was fun! Can we do it again tomorrow?”

Mmm. No.

But no doubt about it, Sargent would do his damnedest to get his way. However, that was the least of his worries at the moment. His main concern was his boss, who was headed for him in ground-devouring strides. Jackson thought he could actually see steam coming out of Landon’s ears. Not that any of this was unexpected or surprising, seeing as how he’d shown up almost a full hour late for work and as a result had missed the morning briefing.

“Where the hell were you this morning?” Landon demanded instantly.

Chasing a multi-thousand-dollar police department investment across a four-lane highway.

Mmm. No.

“Car trouble,” Jackson lied smoothly. “Couldn’t be helped. Say, when are we starting group basic with Sargent?” He was convinced that Sargent was one of those dogs that would absorb training better and faster in a group setting.

Landon opened his mouth, but the seemingly strange change of gears threw him off his game. Little did Landon know they were still talking about the same thing.

“I think you’re on the new schedule. Provided you can manage to show up on time.”

“Eleven years on the force and I think I’ve been late maybe three times. Are we really going to smash heads over this, Landon? Do I need a union rep or something? Gonna formally write me up? Or should I just hang my head in shame? What’ll get you off my back?”

Jackson had no idea what propelled the sudden release of ichor, but something inside him snapped loose and he lost patience with his boss, his dog, and the world in general. Right there. That very second.

It was clear to him how out of character the jolt of temper was … and how out of line it might actually be … as the entire room fell silent. Well, shit. If Landon can be an asshole, so could he. Right? And he was far more justified in his show of temper than Landon was with his constant griping and his seemingly dogged way of finding flaws in his staff where they didn’t exist. This was a good team of cops. In a small-town police department that couldn’t afford specialized forces full-time, each man and woman cross-trained to fill whatever shoes were needed at any given moment. Jackson was not only one of two K-9 cop teams, he was also a bomb
disposal tech and a SWAT team member. Hell, he’d be on the hostage negotiation and retrieval team, too, if he could, but SWAT, bomb squad, and HNART sometimes had counterpurposes, and even he couldn’t be split into thirds.

Jackson ran a hand through the haphazard curls of his hair, the length one of many signs of neglect that made up his life of late. And now Landon was giving him one of those dark appraisals that inevitably was followed by …

“Jackson, do I need to send you to Psych?”

And there it was. As if sitting across from some tenderhearted touchy-feely shrink clutching a pen in one hand and a tape recorder in the other would be like waving some kind of magic fucking wand and make things all better all at once. Well, until that magic wand could bring Chico back from the dead … thanks, but no thanks.

“Nope. No need. I did my time. I got my happy stamp of approval. Didn’t you get the memo? They even gave me a new dog and everything. I just want to train the little bastard and get him on track for duty.” Jackson gave his boss the fakest, brightest smile he could muster. He did everything but hug the prick. “It’s just been a crappy morning and I’m itching to get back to work, boss.”

Landon frowned and eyeballed him as if he were a brick of C4 jammed full of blasting caps. Jackson gritted his teeth, counted the seconds while he waited for Landon to figure out he was wasting his time. Finally Landon nodded, his perfect buzz cut accentuating his squared-off head and making him look a lot like the typical jarhead he had once been.

Jackson sat back with an exhalation of relief as Landon retreated to his office. It wasn’t that the man didn’t deserve his job. In truth, he was a strong captain
at what Jackson imagined was a stressful helm to manage. He did respect Landon, it was just that they were both men of very strong opinions, and often those opinions clashed. And Jackson didn’t much appreciate the fact that Landon didn’t seem to trust him enough to let him have a little autonomy. Jackson didn’t take it personally, because Landon was a control freak and treated everyone the same way. It was kind of a craptastic quality in a leader of strong individuals, and Jackson had to wonder who the hell had thought it was a good idea to put Landon in a leadership position. Then again, he doubted Landon had ever been introduced to a rule book that he didn’t enjoy following to the letter. In a bureaucratic environment like the upper echelons of the SPD, that was no doubt an excellent quality to have. An attractive one, too, to those who were looking for a police lieutenant they could be assured wouldn’t go maverick on them.

Jackson decided to take his sister’s lead and switch his attention away from his boss’s more irritating qualities. Touching his laptop’s mouse, he woke up the screen. He went straight for the schedule, and sure enough, he was off the streets for the next three weeks. It was an immersion schedule, where there would be nothing but him, Sargent, and an entire class of K-9 pups from the Catskill region with nothing to do but learn how to listen to their partners and start learning what it meant to be a cop.

It wasn’t that Sargent didn’t have the goods. Anyone who knew what to look for could see everything he needed right there in his personality. He was strong, fearless, and determined almost to a fault. But his willfulness needed to be worked with. Not broken per se, because that strength would serve him well once properly molded.

The truth was, Jackson hadn’t been molding him. Every time he looked at the goofy little booger, he felt … cheated. Angry.

Crap.

Jackson glanced across the bullpen and down the hall, the blue-rimmed glass in the door of Dr. Marissa Anderson’s office jumping out from all the others. But that was a whole other can of worms, he thought as her door opened suddenly and she stepped into the hall, taking a moment to adjust to the bustle of the corridor. As if she were trying to blend into her surroundings and become a part of them.

The very idea made him exhale a short, hard, and soundless chuckle. It was utterly laughable, the idea of the tall, flawless woman, wrapped up tight in a snug gray business skirt and a plain white oxford-style blouse, being able to blend unnoticed in the sea of blue unis and unkempt older detectives with their doughnut bellies. As she turned and walked toward the bullpen, every step she took in her high heels sending an impact of bouncy shimmers through her breasts and the long curling ends of her red-penny bronze hair, he recalled exactly why he couldn’t wait to get her to sign him back on to duty and put an end to their required sessions together. She was entirely too hot to be some egghead doctor he was supposed to shed all machismo in front of as he plumbed the depths of his grief over the loss of his partner. He’d almost taken the option of seeing an off-site doctor, but damn it, he wasn’t about to run away from her just because every time he looked at her his mouth went dry and his penis grew hard. Rather like what was happening right that minute as she hurried through the bullpen and headed for Landon’s office.

But just before she entered his lieutenant’s office, she glanced in his direction, her pretty blue-green eyes be
neath a wrinkled brow of concern settling on him just long enough to kick him out of his shallow objectification of her and provoke a frisson of concern down the back of his neck.

Jackson sat up straighter in his chair and watched through the glass as she exchanged succinct words with Landon, which then made Landon look in his direction in exactly the same manner. Landon barked at Marissa and swept up the phone. The call lasted about thirty seconds, if that. Then Landon looked back up and saw him still looking on with interest. His boss immediately rose to his feet, lifted two fingers, and beckoned to Jackson.

He couldn’t help it. Jackson looked behind himself, just to make sure that call forward wasn’t meant for someone else.

No such luck.

The thoughts that raced through his mind as he stood up and made his way to Landon’s office were tremendous and varied. In the end, it boiled down to some kind of paranoid conspiracy they must have cooked up between them to pull him back off of active duty. And if that was the case, it was absolutely insane! He’d done everything he was supposed to do, and neither of them could say otherwise. She couldn’t suddenly change her mind about approving him for duty, could she? He wondered, as he opened the door, if he had his union rep’s number handy, his free hand touching his pocket where he kept his wallet and an assortment of crucial cards whose names and numbers he’d never found the time to enter into his cellphone. He shut the door, the tension in the room telling him he wanted to be free to let his temper rise in relative privacy. Not that the glass provided much of that. Luckily, most of the bullpen was empty; everyone else had already begun their shift on patrol or working cases.

Jackson felt his gut burn when Marissa moved to close the blinds over the glass in quick, practiced movements. He could smell her warm, delicious perfume as she moved past him, but it only put him more on edge as the response it created in his blood warred with the anxiety ratcheting up his adrenaline.

“Have a seat, Sergeant Waverly,” Landon offered, tension making a muscle in his jaw twitch, betraying the way he must be clenching his teeth.

“I’d rather stand. What is it?” Jackson asked, trying to temper the defensiveness he was feeling so it wouldn’t echo in his voice. He wanted to play this as cool as possible. Manage his emotions. Prove to them just how in control he was.

“Sergeant, you really should sit,” Marissa repeated, those warm eyes as clear as the Caribbean Sea they emulated, but far more turbulent than gentle waves against a beach in Aruba ought to be. It was as irritating as nails on a chalkboard, and he was ready to snap.

“Jackson,” Landon overrode Jackson’s hostile refusal with a brusque, no-nonsense tone, “they just pulled your sister’s body out of the Hudson River.”

His eyes jerked to his boss. The words seemed to bounce off him like icy hail, stinging cold and hard in tiny bits over all the exposed parts of his skin. Then, as if someone had plucked his spine out of his back, leaving him with no way of supporting himself, his knees gave way. Landon wasn’t close enough, but a surprisingly strong feminine body was under his arm and plastered to his side like a warm, exotic-smelling crutch. But she had no hope of holding up a man who towered over her by nearly a foot and had nothing but muscle strapped to his 215-pound body. And all that machismo he’d held on to so diligently in front of her for three months of sessions mockingly abandoned him in the face of the one thing … the absolute single most
thing … that could take him out like that bullet to Chico’s brain that had stopped his partner dead in his tracks.