Once a Lawman

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“So you decided he wasn’t too old for you after all?” Tessa said, intending her comment as teasing, but couldn’t help that a little bitterness had crept into her voice. But she wasn’t jealous—not at all.

Amy shrugged. “He is, but he sure is yummy. And I know there’s something going on with Sergeant Terlecki and Erin—”

“No, there isn’t,” Erin Powell denied hotly as she slid into the chair on the other side of Tessa. “There’s nothing going on between me and the sergeant.”

“Sure,” Amy humored her.

The girl obviously didn’t read the Chronicle, or she would have realized the only thing going on between Terlecki and Erin was mutual hatred. Yet the reporter had been part of his group for the tour…

Tessa turned and studied the other woman. “What is that old saying about love and hate?”

Erin shook her head and sighed. “Not you, too.” She leaned closer and whispered. “Not every female is here to land a lawman, you know.”

Tessa chuckled. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I don’t even have time for this class, let alone a man.”

“I have time for only one man,” Erin shared.

Tessa glanced toward the officers’ table, at the handsome blond sergeant and then she turned back to Erin with a raised brow.

“Not him,” she repeated, a scowl marring her smooth forehead. The furrows cleared when she smiled and explained, “My little man is only three and a half feet tall.”

“You have a son?” Tessa would have guessed Erin was not much older than Amy, but then age had nothing to do with parenting. Her mother had gotten pregnant with Tessa before finishing high school.

“Nephew,” Erin said, “but he’s my responsibility right now.”

Tessa understood those kinds of responsibilities, the ones that really belonged to someone else but had become yours. “I have—”

“Please turn your attention to the overhead where we’ll be playing tapes of some traffic stops,” Lieutenant O’Donnell directed, interrupting Tessa before she could share the number and ages of her siblings.

The watch commander nodded and someone flipped off the lights. “This will give you an idea of the day in a life of a patrol officer and what some of you will have to look forward to on your ride-alongs. This shows you how we don’t know what to expect with even the most routine of traffic stops, so each of you will need to stay in the cruiser until your officer indicates you can leave the vehicle. Your safety, the public’s safety and our officers’ safety are of utmost importance to the Lakewood PD.”

Next to her, Erin snorted in derision.

Tessa closed her eyes. Because she was not a police groupie, nor participating out of any interest in law enforcement, she intended to recharge from her long day of running from sales call to sales call to high school to middle school to elementary school, dropping off and picking up kids and taking forgotten lunches or lunch money or books or homework…

But then a familiar deep voice requesting, “License and registration, please,” drew her attention to the screen. Lieutenant Michalski stood next to an equally familiar black SUV.

She cringed and slumped in her chair as a woman coyly remarked, “Good afternoon, Officer. I must have a taillight out, right? How sweet of you to stop and inform me.”

Yet the SUV’s lights burned red even in the fuzzy video footage.

“Both lights are working, ma’am.”

“Then I can’t imagine why you stopped me.”

“You were speeding,” he said, lifting his hand toward her open window. “License and registration.”

As she passed them over, her hand lingered on his, her index finger stroking his skin. “I can give you my card, too, if you’d like my phone number.”

Chuckles emanated from the darkness, and Amy nudged her with an elbow. “That’s you!” Then in a louder voice, she exclaimed, “That’s Tessa!”

Tessa’s face burned with humiliation, but her screen image knew no such shame. “Officer…Lieutenant Michalski,” she murmured as she leaned through the open window, reading the thin brass pin with his name above his badge. Then she blinked up at him. “I can’t imagine why you think I was speeding…”

“Because you were,” he stated unequivocally, with no discernible reaction to her flirting, the dark glasses hiding his eyes. “I’ll be right back with your ticket.”

“Wait!” But he walked away from her in the video. If only that had been the last she’d seen of him…

Chad clicked off the computer, freezing the frame on his handsome face as he walked back toward his car. Even with the low quality of the footage, the muscle twitching in his cheek was visible as he clenched his jaw.

“That was the classic,” he said, having taken over for the watch commander, “flirt-your-way-out-of-a-ticket reaction—”

“Starring CPA member Tessa Howard,” one of the other participants said, laughing. The kid, who had shared in the introductions last week that he was in the criminal justice program at Lakewood University, acted as if Tessa had starred in another kind of video.

“So did you give her the ticket?” one of Chad’s fellow officers asked as he chuckled, too.

“Why do you think I’m here?” Tessa replied for him, lifting her palms and sighing with resignation.

“So the flirting didn’t work?” Amy asked, her eyes wide with disappointment.

Tessa shook her head. “Not with the lieutenant.”

“But you gave a valiant effort,” someone praised her—the older woman who had talked her husband into joining the program for “thrills.” Bernice, or Bernie as she preferred, began to clap, and the other CPA members joined in the applause.

Tessa stood up and bowed, as if she had just performed a play. In a way she had, a very public play for the lieutenant’s interest.

As if he hadn’t noticed her sassy response, Chad continued speaking, “It’s an officer’s duty to uphold the law and treat all violators fairly.”

“No matter how pretty they are,” Terlecki interjected, but his focus was on Erin, not Tessa.

“So my ugly mug won’t cause me to get more tickets?” Bernie’s husband, Jimmy, asked from where he sat next to his wife in the middle of the room.

“You’re just as handsome as the day I married you,” Bernie dutifully assured him.

“Then what the hell were you thinking thirty-nine years ago?” he joked.

Relieved the attention had shifted from her, Tessa released a breath. Then she risked a glance toward Chad and found his gaze on her. Did he care that he had embarrassed her? Or had that been his intention when he’d included the footage of her traffic stop? As in the video, his face was unreadable.

“Let’s turn back to the screen, folks,” he directed everyone. “We have a few more examples we’d like you to see.” As the next video flickered across the screen, he warned, “If anyone finds foul language offensive, you may want to plug your ears…”

The few laughs that emanated from the CPA participants died out as the young female officer on the screen walked up to the open window of the car she had pulled over. The driver hurled insults and curses at the officer, who didn’t even flinch. But Tessa tensed, fisting her hands at her sides as she took exception to the chauvinistic remarks.

When the young officer asked the man to step out of his vehicle, the driver gunned the engine and took off. A gasp spilled from Tessa’s lips, which others echoed.

“He was later apprehended,” Chad assured them, “with a blood alcohol level well over the legal limit. But he filed a complaint against the department and that officer for harassment.”

A few curses of outrage emanated from the CPA participants.

“So Tessa was the honey and that guy was the vinegar,” Jimmy said.

Lieutenant Michalski ignored his remark, of course, and played the next video. An officer stood beside another vehicle. The audio had been turned down so Tessa couldn’t hear what either the officer or the driver said. But then metal crashed against metal, the sickening crunch reverberating in the quiet conference room.

Tessa jumped, startled by the noise and horrified by what she saw on the large screen. A truck hit first the police car, so that the camera shook but kept recording the image of the officer’s own vehicle hitting him.

Even though he didn’t make a sound, Chad drew her attention. In the flickering glow from the screen, his face was eerily pale, his green eyes dark and haunted. Sweat beaded on his upper lip and his brow. She rose a few inches from her chair, compelled to go to him, to see if he was all right, but then he spoke.

“Officer Jackson’s injuries were surprisingly minor,” he said. “A broken leg and bruised ribs. He recovered quickly to return to work.”

Tessa settled back on to her chair, but remained on edge, unsettled by her response to Chad’s reaction to the tape. She didn’t understand it, either. Since Officer Jackson hadn’t been seriously injured, why had Chad tensed so much?

“And this next officer also survived,” he told them in advance of running the tape.

Yet the warning wasn’t quite enough to prepare them for what they saw. On the big screen an officer walked up to a vehicle, and before he approached the driver’s side, someone clad in a dark hoodie and baggy jeans jumped out the van’s back door and started shooting. Due to the camera angle, it appeared as though the bullets were coming straight out of the screen toward the viewers.

The class uttered gasps of horror—except for Amy who screamed. Tessa held her breath, horrified by the images she’d just seen.

“Officer Bowers’s vest and his quick thinking saved his life,” Chad assured them.

While these officers had survived, Tessa knew there were officers who hadn’t been as fortunate, based on the daily reports on the evening news. And she remembered those images, but in her mind, each of those fallen officers was Chad. She squeezed her eyes shut to ease the sting of tears.

When the lights flipped back on, silence hung heavy in the room—everyone was as stunned as she was. Then someone, maybe the kid now rethinking his college major, asked, “Why do you do it?”

“Because it’s our job,” Sergeant Terlecki answered, but all the officers nodded their agreement.

Tessa shivered at how matter-of-factly they faced the potential of danger every day.

“In the back of your binders is a release form and sign-up sheet for ride-alongs,” Lieutenant O’Donnell said. “Consider this footage when you make your decision for whether or not to participate. Then pick a few dates that’ll work for you. Our shifts are twelve hours long.”

“Twelve hours?” Jimmy gasped.

“You won’t have to stay for the whole twelve-hour tour,” the watch commander assured him. “The officer you’re assigned would be happy to bring you back early.”

“That’s no fun,” Bernie said, patting her nervous husband’s hand. “You have to stay for the whole shift so you don’t miss anything exciting.”

“It’s not always exciting,” O’Donnell warned her. “But this is a great opportunity for you to experience, firsthand, a day in the life of an officer.”

A day in Chad’s life. It was not all flirting girls. It was uncertainty and danger. That bothered Tessa—and it bothered her more that it bothered her. That he bothered her.

KENT SLAPPED Chad on the back as they filed out of the empty conference room just ahead of Paddy, who shut off the lights. “Way to go, man, on standing firm with Blondie.”

“What?”

“The video feed of your traffic stop with the hot blonde,” Kent explained as if Chad didn’t know exactly about what and whom his fellow officer spoke.

He shrugged. “Hey, you’ve been there.” Just not since he’d taken a bullet for the chief three years ago, earning his nickname and desk job because of his inoperable injury.

“And I’ve let a few go with a warning,” Kent admitted, “especially when they turn on the waterworks.”

Paddy clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Makes you wonder how Bullet holds the department’s arrest record, huh?”

“But Junior holds the citation record,” Kent reminded them. “He never lets anyone off with a warning.”

Luanne hadn’t listened to all his warnings; now she was dead. He’d failed her. He didn’t want to fail anyone else. That was why he’d included the footage of not just Tessa’s traffic stop but of Officer Jackson’s accident, too. That sound of metal crunching metal rang yet in his ears, reminding him again of Luanne’s accident. He tried to block it out as his stomach lurched.

Had Tessa understood that speeding could have killed a police officer? That if she didn’t slow down and focus on her driving instead of on her cell phone, she could have another accident, one in which more than a mailbox got hurt?

He cleared his throat and asked Paddy, “Did Ms. Howard turn in her sign-up sheet?”

Paddy shook his head. “I don’t think she’s interested in a ride-along.”

“She needs to do it,” Chad insisted. “The whole purpose of her being in the program is so she’ll stop speeding.” Or else he wouldn’t have suggested the CPA as an alternative for her ticket.

Paddy nodded. “Sure, I’ll tell her the ride-along is mandatory.”

“Thanks.”

“He’s just saying that because he wants to be the one to drive her around,” Kent teased.

“Hell, no!” he protested, not liking the thought of a twelve-hour shift with Tessa sitting beside him—too close, too damn beautiful and sexy.

His fellow officers laughed at his vehemence.

“C’mon,” Kent persisted as they waited for the elevator. “We saw your face on that tape when you were walking back to your car. You might have given her the ticket, but she got to you.”

And that was why he couldn’t be assigned to her. She would distract him from his job, which was all he wanted in his life now and all he’d ever allow himself to care about again.

“Yeah,” he agreed with his friends, “she got to me. She annoyed me.”

“She could annoy me anytime,” Kent remarked with an appreciative whistle.

Chad sucked in a quick breath at a stab in his ribs. It was as if his friend had shoved a knife in his back. He couldn’t be jealous. He wasn’t interested in Tessa Howard, but somehow he found himself reminding Kent of his reporter. “You have your own annoyance.”

The other man uttered a curse then a heavy sigh. “You guys going to the ’house?” he asked, referring to the Lighthouse Bar and Grille, which boasted the best burgers in Lakewood.

Chad shook his head. “I’m finishing up Reynolds’s shift in a couple of hours. He could only work a half tonight. He’s gotta get some sleep before he goes to his kid’s show-and-tell tomorrow.” Chad was used to filling in for the guys who had families, and he didn’t mind working the extra hours because they usually helped him forget that he didn’t have one.

“I’ll buy you a burger before you go on duty,” Paddy offered. “I appreciate your help with the program.”

“I’m almost done,” Chad reminded his friend and himself. He was almost done seeing Tessa Howard. “I only need to explain the pursuit policy and demonstrate the traffic stop procedure, and my obligation to the program is fulfilled.”

Paddy shook his head. “I need you to do a ride-along, too, Junior. I need you to do her ride-along.”

Chapter Four

“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Tessa asked Audrey, the cell phone pressed to one ear while she plugged a finger into her other ear to block out the noise of the crowded bar.