Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (13 page)

“Sac PD should be sorry they lost you.”

“Well, yeah. But it was my choice. I could have weathered the storm, but you know how the rumor-mill gets. So I took a good severance package and walked. I don’t regret it.”

That was a lie. She
might
have been able to weather the storm, but the hostility had stressed her, and she didn’t know if she could trust a new partner once she returned from disability leave.
If
they ever let her work the field again. She didn’t want to be a desk cop, but that might have been the only option once she was cleared for active duty. She missed her job because she
was
her job, so in that she did regret leaving. Yet, she wouldn’t have done anything different. How could she? Turning a blind eye to Tommy’s gambling and working for the Russian mob was hard enough, but walking in on him with that girl ... she lost it.

“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

“Not really. And truly, there are far more good cops than bad. It’s just the bad ones who get all the attention.”

“If it’s any consolation, I know how you feel. When I accepted the appointment by the Governor, I didn’t realize how much people hated politicians.”

She smiled. “I can imagine.”

The waiter brought their meals and Alex tried not to scarf it down. So she asked more questions. “How’s your staff handling the shooting? It must have been stressful for them. Your chief of staff, right? And legislative director?”

“Good memory.”

“You were a prosecutor, you probably have been threatened many times, dealt with some pretty shady defendants. But most people don’t get shot at.”

“They’re good. I offered them time off, neither of them took it. Both were in the office today, though I insisted they leave early.”

“Have they been with you long?”

“Both since I was appointed last year. Eric had worked for the previous LG, and Melanie I hired away from the Governor. She’d run one of his satellite offices, and I’d met her years ago. She was definitely underutilized by the governor.”

“It’s good that you have staff you can trust.” He glanced away, so Alex prompted. “Or, do you not trust them?”

“I do,” he said quickly. “I’ve been a little concerned about Eric. He’s had some ups and downs. Comes from a good family, is very smart, but had a bit of trouble from the friends he chooses.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“You’re sounding like a cop.”

She shrugged. “Can’t help that. But if he’s mixed up with some shifty friends, maybe what happened yesterday had something to do with him.”

Travis was surprised. “I can’t imagine that.”

“You don’t have to. You should tell Detective Perry—let him ferret out the information, figure out what happened. You need to give him the information so he can do his job.”

“Of course. I’m sure I told him everything, but when he calls me with an update, I’ll mention Eric’s friends to him.”

“If I join your staff, I’ll want to run deep backgrounds on all your employees, both in the capitol and on your campaign. Would you have a problem with that?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good.” She took another couple bites. The food really was delicious. “What exactly would I be doing for you?” she asked between bites. “The CHP will handle your day-to-day security in the Capitol, as well as home security and acting as escort, at least until the police wrap up this investigation. You said something about advance?”

“Let me ask you this. If you’d been working for me prior to yesterday, how would you have handled the hotel situation?”

She swallowed and considered. She didn’t have to spend much time thinking, because she’d already had an answer.

“I would have sent at least two people over to walk the event, from door to door. I wouldn’t have allowed the press to congregate in the lobby, and if they didn’t obey my directive, I would have brought you in through a different entrance. You hadn’t intended to hold the press conference in the lobby, did you?”

“No—we had a large meeting room set up.”

“If I told them to go there, they would have,” she said.

“One of the problems elected officials face is being accessible. We don’t want to close ourselves off from constituents. And truly, we never considered there would be a security risk like yesterday.”

“That’s the job of your security team—to consider every possible risk. Now that you know, you need to adjust accordingly.”

Hart sipped more wine and nodded. “I see your point.”

She continued her assessment. “If the event was impossible to contain in an isolated and controlled area, I would have sent in an advance team a few minutes before you in order to assess the situation and determine whether it was secure. I would have enlisted hotel security to stand at strategic points in the building—including the balcony where the shooter was standing.  Often, the presence of security is enough to dissuade a potential hostile.”

“Just like laws deter criminals.”

She shook her head. “Laws deter law abiding citizens. People who are generally good, if they think of doing something criminal, they don’t because they fear prison or embarrassment or getting hurt. Criminals just do it anyway because they don’t care about the laws—and when they get caught, they work the system. You know how it is, being a prosecutor. How often did you prosecute someone who had never been arrested before?”

He hadn’t been expecting the question. “I’ve never really thought about it. Not many, I suppose. A few felony DUIs, a homicide—crime of passion where the victim and killer had never had a run in with the law. A pedophile case.”

She nodded. “Because first time offenders rarely go to trial. They plead and clean up their acts and never do it again. People make mistakes. It happens. Everyone deserves a second chance. But the cases that go to trial are when someone repeatedly gets in trouble with the law. They get the plea once, twice, maybe more. Do small change in prison. But they keep doing the same things and land in the same position until they’re facing ten to twenty years and can’t talk or plead their way out of serious time. The laws don’t scare them, otherwise they would have changed after the first arrest.”

“I never thought about it like that,” Hart said. He smiled. “I see you liked the meal.”

She looked at her bare plate. “I was hungry. And it was really good.”

“Dessert?”

“I should say no, but I won’t.”

“Good.”

The waiter cleared their plates, brought out the dessert tray, and she picked the dessert that looked the most chocolaty—a double chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries, plus coffee.

“Caffeine at night?” Hart said. “I don’t think I’d go to sleep.”

“I’ve developed an immunity.”

He laughed. “So, will you take the job?”

“I need more information. I’ll consider it.”

“Information like salary? I’ll pay you twenty percent more than you were making at Sac PD.”

She didn’t know what to say about that. It was quite generous.

“Full benefits as well. It’s not a nine-to-five job, and therefore you should be compensated appropriately.”

“I promise, I will consider the position. I’ll let you know by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“Wonderful,” he said.

Their desserts were served and one bite was practically orgasmic. She almost moaned. “I have a thing for chocolate,” she said.

“Good to know.”

She took another bite because the mousse really was amazing. “I saw Detective Jefferson today, Jim’s partner, to sign my statement after the shooting. He had a list of your case files from the D.A.’s office. You tried a lot of cases during your tenure there.”

“That I did,” he said. “I have a copy as well. I started going through them this afternoon, but between meetings I didn’t have much time.”

“It’s important. The police will flag any cases where someone you sent to prison recently got out, but there could be something you remember from a trial that only you would know. A friend of relative of a victim or defendant. Something odd that happened. Though with that many cases going back what? Fifteen years? It’s a lot of work. Solid conviction rate, Steve said.”

He didn’t say anything, but stared at his wine glass. Alex didn’t know what she’d said that upset him.

“Something wrong?”

“No, not really. We all have our crosses to bear. Thinking about the D.A.’s office reminds me that I’m not all that confident about this gubernatorial election.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I ran for D.A. three years ago and lost.”

“Oh. I guess I remember.”

“Your father supported my opponent, Matt Elliott.”

“I—“ She of course knew that, but didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry?”

He smiled, leaned back and sipped his wine. “I don’t hold it against him. Elliott had the support of the outgoing D.A., Sandra Cullen. She brought over most of the judges. And Elliott isn’t a bad D.A.”

“But?” she pushed. She shouldn’t. She should drop this subject, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know what Travis Hart thought about the race. Wasn’t it that race where Matt noted his ties to Sergei Rykov?

“We do things differently. You must know him.”

“Sure. I know a lot of the prosecutors and judges, through my dad. I testified on a couple of his cases. In fact, I think I might have testified in one of yours years ago, when I was still in uniform.”

“I would have remembered you.” But he looked at her again. “Maybe—you look different with your hair down.”

“I also went through a blond phase. Lightened my hair repeatedly until it was practically white. Big mistake. Cut it real short for a few years to let the mess grow out and swore off hair dye. Except ... I saw a gray hair the other day.”

“I have many.” He nodded. “You were the responding officer in a domestic violence incident. But there was a twist—it was the wife who took a tire iron to her husband for cheating on him.”

“Hell hath no fury, they say.”

“I tried to get her to plead, but she wanted to tell her story to a jury. Convicted, aggravated assault. Five years, though I think she got probation after three. She could have been charged with attempted murder.”

“You felt sorry for her?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly, but people sometimes do the wrong thing for the right reason.”

“Have you?”

“I suppose—though I don’t know that I’d admit to doing something wrong, per se. Sometimes, it’s a matter of perspective.”

“Very true,” she agreed.

“I have a strict no dating policy in my office because of a mistake I made years ago,” he said. He gave her a half-smile. “Otherwise, I would ask you out on a real date. Of course, you can decline the job and then I would absolutely ask you out.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. “You’re just enamored because I saved your life.”

Hart said, “Perhaps.” He paused. “Early in my career at the D.A.’s office I was head over heels in love with my law clerk. Talk about completely inappropriate, but I was a new lawyer and a bit arrogant.” He laughed. “I know what you’re going to say, I still am.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Sharon was beautiful and smart and had a wicked sense of humor. I didn’t know she was dating one of my colleagues, otherwise I would never have encroached on another man’s woman. She said she was seeing someone, but it wasn’t serious, so I pushed, confident that I would win. And I did. Only, I didn’t know that she broke it off with Matt Elliott to be with me.”

Alex’s heart skipped a beat, but she didn’t say anything.

“Several people asked why I ran against Elliott when he had the support of the former D.A. I gave the line of needing a change, that my conviction rate was higher, that I had a vision, but there was another reason. Sharon.”

She was surprised she could even speak. She didn’t want to talk about Matt with Hart, and she didn’t want to know about his past loves. She’d dated men before Jim Perry; she was pretty certain Matt Elliott had plenty of girlfriends. And it wasn’t even like they were serious. They were simply attracted to each other.

Except, there was nothing simple about her feelings.

“Love triangles are complicated,” she said.

“True,” Hart said. “But this was .... different.”

He hesitated, and she didn’t push. It was better that she didn’t know.

Then he said, “I ran against him not simply for my ego, though I thought at the time that I’d make a better D.A. Still do. But I’ll never forget how he handled that disaster with Sharon. When he found out I was dating her, he made our lives life hell. He argued with me about everything, sabotaged my cases then came running in to save them at the last minute. He misplaced important documents to embarrass me in court. I could handle it, I figured it would blow over soon enough, or Sandra would put a stop to it. But how he treated Sharon—it was inexcusable. He intentionally made her look bad. Demanded she stay late to redo reports that didn’t need to be redone, simply because he found a small error—errors he made in the first place. He was vindictive. Petty. If he screwed up, he blamed Sharon. She didn’t know which way was up by the end of the year, she was popping pills to stay awake because she worked so many hours she couldn’t see straight. I finally went to Sandra, who agreed to reassign her to another team of prosecutors. But it was too late. Sharon crashed her car going home late one night. She had drugs in her system, went into rehab, decided she didn’t want to be a lawyer.”

Hart was staring into his empty wine glass, his mind far away. Alex didn’t know what to say to him. She wanted to believe that there was another reason, that it wasn’t Matt’s fault, but she didn’t know. She hadn’t known Matt back then. And he had a deep loathing of Travis Hart—it made sense now. They fell for the same girl and Hart won. Could Matt be that spiteful and ruin a young woman’s career because she chose another man?

What did she really know about him, anyway? She’d walked into this situation to right a wrong, she didn’t have to get involved with any of the people. That had been her mistake, mixing business with her personal life.

“I’m sorry,” Hart said. “I shouldn’t have told you all that. I thought I was over it, but going over some of those cases today reminded me of what I lost because of Matt Elliott.”