Shadows May Fall (3 page)

“That’s yours.” Dillon stated as he turned down the music.

Lou looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “What’s me? I didn’t do that!”

Dillon chuckled and shook his head. “Your phone! That is your phone ringing. Do you want me to answer it?”

“What the hell?” Lou rifled through her pockets as the obnoxious buzz sounded again.

“Geez, hang on...” Dillon pressed a button on his steering wheel. “Detective Donovan’s phone, you’re on speaker.”

“Dillon?” A woman’s honey toned voice asked, her slight southern drawl reverberating through the SUV.

“Yeah, Caroline.” Dillon grinned. “It’s me. I paired Lou’s phone with my car.”

“When the hell did you pair my phone?” Lou asked, still unable to find her phone. “How can you have my phone and your phone?”

Dillon snorted as he glanced over to watch Lou digging under the car seat. “Man, you are a clone of Vinny right now. That is a total Vinny question.”

“Oh! Low blow Newbie!” Caroline scolded through the speakers, only half serious.

“Watch it!” Lou wagged her finger at him. “I am still your superior and I can have Vinny knock you down to desk assignment if I tell him you called him a technotard!”

“I did not call him that!” Dillon protested. “You called him that! Yesterday! To his face!”

“Yes!” Lou and Caroline both giggled. “But he’s since looked it up and he will be pissed instead of confused this time”

“You two are killin’ me!” Caroline was laughing now. “Where are you, anyway?”

“We are headed back from Santa Clarita, exiting the freeway now.” Dillon informed her as he merged to make the exit.

“You on your way back to the Bureau?” She asked them.

“No. We cleared it with the boss. It would take too long to get back and there’s nothing going on so we are headed home. Ha!” Lou exclaimed, holding her cell phone in the air with triumph after finally locating it.

“Ha?” Caroline didn’t understand.

“She found her phone.” Dillon explained.

“Good thing you had her phone paired then.” Caroline snickering and Lou could hear the smugness oozing through the speakers.

“What did you call for, smarty pants?” Lou asked as she secured her phone in her front jacket pocket.

“Oh yeah!” Caroline giggled again. “I called to tell you I need a rain check on tonight. They’re rolling in a triple homicide from that gang shooting in Sunland this morning.” Her giggle turned to a grumble. “I’m gonna be stuck here until late. The A.D.A. wants all the slugs to ballistics before the morning.”

“What’s the rush?” Dillon found it odd that the Assistant District Attorney would be so johnny-on-the-spot with a gang shooting. They were a common enough occurrence.

“Way above my pay grade.” Caroline confessed.

“Rumor has it he’s gonna put his hat in the ring for Mayor.” Lou chimed in. “His polling numbers in Latino districts suck. He’s been catching massive heat for his failure to prosecute on gang violence.”

Dillon looked over at her with an odd expression. “Well thank you, ABC news, for that information. Since when did you get the inside track on local politics?”

“Yeah!” Caroline was curious too.

“Since I had to with this whole Principate crap!” Lou rolled her eyes. “I get text alerts from the Aegis on relevant crap for the region now. Not sure what the hell for, but I do!”

Dillon gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. “You know damn well why.”

“Guys, I don’t think I can do this.” Lou said meekly.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Caroline shrieked, making Dillon wince.

Lou grimaced. “Don’t yell at me!”

“Answer her, Lou.” Dillon demanded. “What the hell
are
you talking about?”

After Lou’s indoctrination, Max had seen fit to place Lou in the prominent position within the Sanguinostri. As Principate of the West, Lou was what amounted to Sanguinostri chief of police for California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado. The latter two places she had never even visited in her life. Lou was clueless and overwhelmed. “I have no clue what the hell I’m doing!” She tried to explain to them. Or rather, confess. “I’m still learning about the Sanguinostri! Who the hell am I to
be
anything?”

“Because you’re an excellent cop and Max recognized that from the start!” Caroline exclaimed. “Don’t pull this on me after I break our plans tonight! I can’t kick the crap out of you until tomorrow!” Caroline had a good chunk of skin in this argument. It had been her, after all, that had suggested Max appeal to the cop in Lou, her greater sense of justice, as a way to bring her into the fold. That and Lou’s mother being brought in at the same time had proven to work exactly as Caroline had hoped. “You can do this, Lou! You are doing it!”

“This is just nerves over the up coming meet.” Dillon was certain. “A face-to-face with your counterparts for the first time, not just as Principate, but as one of us, that would rattle anyone’s cage.”

“Right!” Caroline agreed. “Lou, you have been studying more than I did in med school! I understand this is all overwhelming. Hell, it’s all new to me too! I don’t think I could handle being shoved into a second job on top of everything. Especially one that’s such a major deal like Principate! Being the new kid on the block, under such a mega-microscope...”

“Caroline! You’re not helping,” Dillon cut her off. “She is right, though. You’re overwhelmed. You need to unplug for the rest of the day.”

Lou hoped he was right. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that she got herself thrust into this chaos by her own doing. She had refused to give up on an indigent homicide case which lead to her popping up on the Sanguinostri radar. The bizarre part was she had never been more than a stone’s throw away from it almost all her life. Her stepfather’s family had been Stewards to the Sanguinostri for eons. Even Lou’s captain was in the loop. It was unfathomable they had kept their presence a secret to normal civilization for millennia. But she couldn’t think about that. It was almost ridiculous when she tried to wrap her head around the magnitude of it all. Baby steps, Niko advised her numerous times. She was trying. Lou was never one to shy away from a challenge so it bothered her she was even contemplating caving now.

“Lou?” Dillon could see she was lost in thought.

“Yeah.” She snapped out of it. “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Do you?” Caroline sounded unconvinced. “Lou! In so many weeks you have almost died, twice! You find out about this secret world, you have to get a new partner...”

“Hey!” Dillon grumbled.

“I’m not saying it’s bad!” Caroline qualified her statement. “I’m saying it’s a lot, is all! It sure as hell is a lot to have to process in a short period of time.”

“Yeah, I know! You both are right.” Lou really did know. She also wasn’t about to bring up her feelings about Max or her crash introduction to feeling insecure. Lou had never once cared about her appearance or what kind of impression she made on anyone, let alone a man. That was another major new thing she was having to adjust to. Not like it would ever matter. Max was what amounted to the King of North America to the Sanguinostri. Lou was a scrappy, bull-dog cop. It was never going to happen no matter how many signals she imagined he was giving her. She knew in her heart he was only being kind. Taking care of his people was his job. She knew she wasn’t anything special to him. It didn’t stop her from dreaming though. That was another foreign thing to deal with. “Maybe if I can get through this weekend without making an ass out of myself, I’ll feel more comfortable.”

“That’s my girl!” Caroline took a much easier breath. “Go home, take a swim. Eat chocolate. You’ll be fine! I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Take care of her, Mr. Cole. Don’t make me whoop your ass.”

“Yes ma’am.” Dillon rolled his eyes and grinned.

“Talk to you tomorrow, girlie.” Lou said goodbye but wasn’t sure how to cut the call. As if reading her mind, Dillon pressed a button on his steering wheel and a small beep let them know the call had ended. “So how can you tell it’s my phone and not yours?”

“I assigned different rings.” He informed her. “Obviously I need to find a better one. That buzz is awful.”

“It is! How many people’s phones can you have piped in to your car? When did you do that, anyway?” She assumed it had to have taken time but couldn’t remember being without her phone for any length of time.

“I’m not sure how many, but it takes maybe three minutes.” He was guesstimating. “You left your phone in the car when we were at the Miller scene. I paired you when I got back to the car.”

“You got in the car like thirty seconds before I did!”

“Okay so it took thirty seconds!” And just like that, Dillon had calmed Lou’s nerves. They were back to the sibling camaraderie. Dillon smiled to himself knowing she would get over this and everything would be fine.

The clock hit four right as they were passing through the gates to the McAllister compound. The driveway was oddly void of any vehicles but it was a bit early so Lou expected everyone was still busy at work, or whatever it was they did. Lou knew that her parents were out of town until later that evening, but she wasn’t sure about their new house guests. Max, Abby, Frank and the Aegis Council had been staying at an exclusive hotel until a couple weeks ago. With everything that had transpired as of late, for security reasons and ease of access, Abby and Frank had moved in to two of the extra rooms in the main house. Max was in the guest house until construction on his own home was completed and the Aegis Council had set up shop at an estate up the road. The old neighbors had moved back east to be closer to their grand children. They were all too happy to lease the place. Handy how that all worked out.

With all of her stepfather’s travels, it was mostly Lou and her mother in the McAllister home, along with Marta, their housekeeper. Lou’s mother traveled with Joe whenever their schedules permitted so Lou had grown accustom to the peace and quiet of a big empty house. She never expected to love the hustle and bustle of their new house guests, let alone be sad when they weren’t around. Of course having Max only a stone’s throw away was both comforting and unsettling to her all at the same time. His travel schedule was even worse than her stepfather’s so Lou never really knew when he was there. Even when he was home, she tried to avoid him. Or did she? She found herself peeking out windows, skulking about her own home just trying to get an undetected glimpse all in an effort to stop thinking about him. Ironically, that seemed to make her think of him more. Lou felt foolish, like a stupid teenage girl with a ridiculous crush or a psycho stalker, she wasn’t sure sometimes. Lou had confessed her infatuation to her best friend before they even knew who he was but she had no way to back-track her feelings about him to Caroline now. Then, Max was simply an amazingly well dressed man she had passed in the halls of the morgue. After Lou found out he was a long time business associate of her stepfather, at least that’s the story they used, Lou’s mother also picked up on her feelings. Since then, Caroline and Lou’s mother had plotted and schemed at every conceivable opportunity to put the two in the same room.

Max was an impressive man. Brilliant, powerful, but also kind and generous. He was patient with Lou but handled her with the perfect amount of strength. He didn’t take her crap the way most people did. She could not bully the man and she knew he would never ever dream of trying to bully her. It was a potent combination of compassion and strength that had her hook, line and sinker. He could have any woman on the earth. There was no way in hell he would ever be interested in a tom-boy cop. Things like that just didn’t happen in the real world. But as her mother often reminded her, there were a lot of things Lou had assumed about the real world that were flat crap.

“It looks like no one is home. When do your parents get back?” Dillon seemed concerned about leaving Lou alone.

“Their flight doesn’t come in until later.” Lou gathered her things, double checking to make sure her phone was still in her pocket. “Marta is here though and I’m sure Frank and Abby will be around soon.”

“Do you want me to hang out until someone gets home?”

Lou smiled. She felt guilty that Dillon worried about her so much. Far more than any partner should have to. “I’m fine! Someone will be around soon.”

“I can stay. Let me call your cousin and tell him to meet me at my house later.” Dillon pressed the phone button on his steering wheel but Lou reached over and grabbed his hand.

“I will be fine!” She insisted. “Go! But don’t let Liam stay up all night with you playing video games. He’s still a rookie so he needs to kick ass, not fall on his own.”

“He’s helping me paint!” Dillon assured her. “Video game marathons are only for when he’s off the next day, I promise.”

“Sure. Uh huh.” Lou chuckled and got out of the car. “Call if anything pops up. I’m gonna swim laps while it’s quiet.”

“You bet. Take it easy on those ribs a little while longer.” Dillon advised.

“Sure.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Thanks, partner.”

Dillon smiled. He loved being her partner and the fact she had accepted him was a great feeling. “Pick you up in the morning, partner.”

Lou nodded and slammed the door of the SUV and headed toward her private entrance. When she reached the top of the stairs, she paused and grinned. There behind the gate, curled up in a sleeping mosh pit were her cat, Angus, and her two new Labradoodle puppies, Bonnie and Clyde. Angus had his paw wrapped around the neck of Bonnie while his head was snuggled in to Clyde’s belly. The three were sound asleep on her patio chair in the sun. Lou stood there for a while just watching the love pile. The puppies had been a birthday gift from Max. She couldn’t think of a more perfect gift. It wasn’t something practical, but it wasn’t anything romantic or indicative of any feelings he might have toward her.

Still, they were perfect. Yet another reason to adore him. It was Angus that noticed her first. The slow eye blink and the long lazy stretch before he shimmied himself out from between the two puff balls made Lou feel so relieved. She had been nervous that the new arrivals would be met with Angus’ wrath but instead, he thought they were for him and claimed them as such. As he hopped off the chair without a sound and sauntered towards her, Lou unlatched the gate as quietly as possible and took the brief alone time with Angus to nuzzle him and reassure him he would always be King of the castle. By the sound of his louder than usual purring, Lou took that as approval.