Thief of Hearts (15 page)

A police dog, a husky German Shepherd, snarled at him on his way to the desk. Jared snarled back and the dog blinked, surprised. A busy night at the one-ten precinct, Dr. Jared Dean found himself marching past various drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and burglars, all protesting to different police officers, in various tones of voice, that they had been framed.

He stopped before the desk sergeant; miraculously, there was no line. “It was all me!” he proclaimed loudly to the room. “I’m the guy who hit the cop with the pail. I request—no, I
demand
that you arrest me in Kara’s place. And let me post bail for her! Right now!”

The desk sergeant, an attractive blonde with eyes almost as pretty as Kara’s, eyed him with no change of expression, then said, “Fine, thanks. And you?”

Jared held out his hands, wrists together. “Arrest me! Book me, Danno! I am guilty, I am scum, I am—”

“Guilty scum?”

“But first, how much to bail Kara Jayne Jones out?”

“Have a seat, I’ll look into this for you.”

“No, you have to arrest me, throw the book at me, handcuff me, lock me—”

“Yes, yes, plenty of time for that. Have. A. Seat.”

Cowed—not so much by the woman’s tone of voice as her completely unruffled manner—Jared did. He passed the time by spot-diagnosing the many people in the room, as well as fantasizing about all the things he would say to Kara once he had his hands on her. Thirty-five minutes had passed when the desk sergeant crooked a finger at him. Jared was in front of her in three bounds.

“First, no charges have been filed against Ms. Jones.”

“What?” Jared could feel his mouth pop open. “But that’s imposs—I mean, great! So when are they taking me away?”

“They aren’t. Yet.” The sergeant—Ristau, the nametag read—gave him a level look and continued.

“And a good thing for you, because you can’t be arrested yourself
and
post bail for somebody. Officer Carl isn’t pressing charges because he really can’t. He didn’t identify himself to you and your girlfriend as a police officer, you apparently honestly believed he was a danger to you, you were obviously
not
with Carlotti and the officer in question doesn’t even have a concussion.”

“But I hit him so many times…” Jared heard himself and shut up.

Sergeant Ristau looked smug. “Well, you must be a real lightweight, pal, because they aren’t even keeping him overnight for observation. Says he doesn’t even have a headache.”

In a flash, Jared saw it—it would be much more an embarrassment to the police officer if they
did
file charges, than if not. How to explain how a mild-mannered (usually) physician got the better of a trained officer of the law? Better to ignore it and hope the situation went away.

“So, your ladyfriend is free to go…for now.”

“Really?” Jared was dazzled. He had no idea the police were so pleasant and flexible. None of the officers he’d run into tonight had even raised their voices, much less tried to slap him around or took off their pants to show off their butts. It wasn’t much like NYPD Blue.

Ristau lowered her voice. “Some of the detectives know her—know about her, anyway. And we all heard about the Freibur mansion and how that went down. That bust is going to result in a lot of gold shields. Your friend’s a popular girl around here.”

“She’s my fiancée,” he bragged, slinging an elbow against her desk and casually leaning closer. His relief was so great, he felt like swooning. “We’re going to have babies.”

“That’s nice. Anyway, you and Ms. Jones can go, but she’s got a meeting at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow with the District Attorney. She gave her ‘word of honor’ that she’d show and I guess the detectives believe her, because she’s free to go. They’re gonna finish processing her and you can pick her up. If she doesn’t show,” Ristau added, gently shoving Jared’s elbow off her desk, “a warrant will be issued for her arrest.”

Another warrant, you mean, he thought, but didn’t say aloud. He had trouble believe this was happening—no assault charges and even though the cops
knew
who she was, they were letting her go?

He had no idea the real world worked this way. Law enforcement was much more pleasant than medicine.

He thanked Sergeant Ristau, then found his way to Holding to wait while they let Kara go. He was allowed to go where the cells were and wasn’t sure what to expect. Scenes from “Chained Heat” and other women-in-cages movies flashed through his mind, beautiful women dominated by handsome guards, lush female prisoners turning to each other for sensual comfort…he shook his head. The movies couldn’t be completely true.

They weren’t. Instead, he saw no more than a half dozen women in the cell with Kara. She was showing a prostitute how to radically extend her pimp’s index finger the next time he laid a hand on her. “Bend it waaaaaaay back,” she was saying, gently demonstrating, “and whenever he moves, or even says something you don’t like, bend it back a little further. You can actually walk him where you need him to go. But it’ll probably only work once…he’ll never let you near his fingers after that.”

Three other women were poring over last month’s issue of
Glamour’s
Do’s and Don’s and another one sat by herself in a corner and gazed at Kara with what could only be described as heroine-worship. The last woman was sleeping peacefully on the top bunk. Except for the bars, it looked more like a teacher’s lounge than a hotbed of hardened female criminals.

Kara heard his footsteps and looked up. Her eyes widened in surprise, which annoyed him. “What did you think?” he snapped by way of greeting. “I was going to let you sit in jail all night?”

“What are you yelling at
me
for?” she protested, rising and coming to stand before him as close as the bars would allow. “And what are you doing here?”

“I’m cracking you out of this pokey.” He glared at the janitor, who was quietly sweeping the floor near the door. “And God…help…
anyone
…who gets in my way.”

Kara rolled her eyes; the janitor didn’t trouble herself to look up.

The tremendous stress of the past few hours caught up with him. “You’re in a lot of trouble, Kara Jayne Jones!” he roared in a tone that brought two of Kara’s cellmates to their feet. “Turning yourself in, trying to take the heat, having to see the D.A. tomorrow…you just wait until I get you home.”

“You sound like my father,” she said, exasperated, but she was doing, he saw with surprise, an awful lot of smiling. Shit, was she really that surprised and pleased he’d come? What did she think, he’d have gone gaily back home to eat leftovers and watch PayPerView while she rotted in prison? Well, rotted in Holding? “Somebody’s father, I mean,” she added, “I don’t remember what mine sounded like.”

“Kara! Will you focus, for Christ’s sake?”

“Her man’s comin’ down hard,” one of the jailed women said to another, not bothering to lower her voice.

He ignored the peanut gallery comment and stuck his finger through the bars, shaking it just under Kara’s nose. “We are getting out of here and going home and—and then you’re in big trouble, a lot of trouble and you just wait.”

“I wouldn’t keep my finger in her face, I was you,” another woman advised. She mimed cracking the index finger backward.

“Jared, you’re hysterical. Calm down.”

“I am not!” he practically shrieked. Then decided she was right and forced several calming breaths. He didn’t say another word to her until they were in his car, on the way back to his place, half an hour later.

“Well!” Kara said brightly. She was, he noticed, more relaxed and cheerful than he had ever seen her.

She was staring a lengthy prison term in the face and didn’t seem too worried. It was beyond weird.

Actually, it was kind of irritating. Didn’t she care that she was leaving him? For about thirty years? “It certainly is a relief to be done with hiding. I’m almost looking forward to meeting the D.A. He’s been this big boogeyman in my mind so long…yeek!”

She’d said ‘yeek!’ because he had abruptly pulled over and slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a smoking, sliding stop.

“You’re not,” he growled.

“I am.”

“You’re
not
.”

“Jared. I’ll meet with the D.A. tomorrow, who’s going to insist I be held over for the grand jury. And I’ll pull some serious jail time for all the hacks.”

“But,” he said patiently, as if she knew none of this, “you stole from the corrupt, the baby-rapers and murderers and drug dealers. And gave the money to the people they victimized.

She smiled sadly. “You’re so adorable, you know that? I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. Rules are rules.

I’m going down, Jared. For a long, long time. And you’re letting me go—”

“The fuck I am.” He could hardly recognize his own voice. That low, dangerous tone wasn’t at all like him. That wasn’t Dr. Dean’s bantering tone. That was the voice of a desperate man driven to great lengths to protect the woman he loved.

She ignored him. “—because I won’t have you waste your life waiting for Visiting Day. You’ll be old, Jared. Old before your time, old when I get out. I’ll be old, too. It won’t be allowed.”

“You’re right about that. Kara. You have to run. I’ll drive you to the train station or the bus station or the airport or to Chicago where you can disappear or…whatever. You—”

“Jared.”

“—can have every penny in my account for tickets. You don’t—”

“Jared.”

“—deserve jail, not like Carlotti does. All you did was try to stay alive and dammit, you’re not going to jail and that’s final!”

“But I am. And that’s final. Jared. My darling, my only—” Her voice caught, then firmed, then went rock-steady. “I’m done with running. It’s like banging your head against the wall…it feels so good when you stop.”

“I’ll—I’ll do something—something really terrible to you if you don’t come with me to the airport, right now.”

She looked at him and dared to smile. “No,” she said softly, sweetly. “You won’t. You love me. You’d never hurt me. Don’t you see? That’s why this is so hard. You’re making it hard. Poor Jared. I warned you. Never say I didn’t warn you.”

He was silent. She was right. She had tried. She had fought him, their mutual attraction, tried hard to keep it purely business. She had known from the beginning that he meant despair and heartbreak to her and she to him. She had tried to tell him; he’d been too infatuated to listen.

He put the car in gear and pulled back out into traffic.

“I know that look,” she teased. They had entered his apartment, hung up their coats and Jared had silently fixed Kara a light supper. They were doing dishes now, shoulder to shoulder at the sink. It had been, to put it mildly, a long day.

Jared found it mildly unbelievable that they were doing something so undramatic and domestic like the dishes. But he had to do something with his hands. He was too emotionally exhausted to think about anything else at this point. “You’re thinking about bashing me with a pail,” Kara continued, “and hiding me somewhere so I miss my appointment tomorrow.”

He coughed and hoped like hell he wasn’t blushing. That had been exactly what he was thinking.

Trouble was, he’d need something along the lines of an Army tank to stop Kara…he supposed he could inject her with a sedative from his bag while she slept, but the chances of doing that and a) not getting his arm broken and b) maintaining his self-respect, were slim.

“You could never pull it off,” she said kindly, as if reading his mind. Sad, really, that she seemed to know him as well as he felt he knew her. Knowledge that should have thrilled them had come too late. “You’d never do it. You’re too nice.”

He grunted.

“Are you going to spend our last night together sulking?”

“Yes,” he growled. Then groaned and shut the water off. “Screw the dishes. Screw
all
of this. I can’t believe you won’t let me talk you out of going tomorrow. You spend twenty years on the run from authority and pick tonight—
tonight
—to do the right thing? Cripes.”

“It’s worth the cost,” she said quietly.

“Not to me.”

There was a long silence while she finished drying the last glass, then she laid the towel on the counter, turned him toward her and rested her head against his chest. He stood stiffly, not returning her embrace.

“I love you for saying that,” she said. “I’m sorry about all of this. I should never have gotten you involved.”

“Don’t say that,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Wouldn’t have missed knowing you for anything.”

She laughed and stepped away from him. “God, don’t talk like that! You’re acting like I’m in my grave.

I’m just going to prison for a while.”

“A long while.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?” He threw up his hands, turned his back on her. “What do we do?”

Her hand came to rest on his shoulder and she said softly, more breath than sound, “We make the most of tonight.”

He swallowed hard. “Oh, Kara.” He turned and pulled her against him, found her mouth, lost himself in her kiss. His lips parted hers, her small tongue curled up to meet his. His body was responding with enthusiasm, but his mind held back. Lovemaking tonight would be agonizing, all the more potent and heartbreaking because it would be their last evening together. He wasn’t sure he could do that. Put his heart on a sacrificial alter like that.

Her thoughts seemed to run in the same direction, because she pulled back and looked at him, her eyes mesmerizing pools of deep blue. Her lips were rosy and swollen from his kiss. “Coward,” she whispered and he shuddered and tightened his grip on her.

He swallowed the lump in this throat and abruptly scooped her up. “Saw this in a movie once,” he said hoarsely, trying to banter with a voice that wanted to crack. “Always wanted to try it.”

“Was it An Officer and a Gentleman?”

“Porky’s IV, actually.”

She snorted, then giggled, then laughed outright, which got him started and by the time they reached his bed, he was staggering and roaring, trying not to drop her and the tears that rolled down his cheeks were surely from laughter.

He dropped her on the bed and she sat up, reached around and started tugging at the clip that held her hair up. He stopped her, said, “Let me,” and gently freed the large barrette from her hair. The lush blonde waves tumbled past her shoulders, almost to her waist. He held the length in his hands, gently combing his fingers through the strands, then brought her hair forward. He slowly pushed her back until she was lying flat on the bed and rubbed her hair, like a coarse silk blanket, over her breasts until her nipples were poking stiffly through the strands.