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The truth hurt more than Karen had ever expected it to. Worse yet was her terror that if Brick Bauer knew the truth, the rest of the men might know it, too.
“Bauer, I’d have to be run over by a locomotive to step down from this job,” she told him fiercely. It was the naked truth.
Slowly, he nodded. Karen thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes.
“I didn’t say you were a quitter, Captain. I just said you were scared to death to be swimming upstream.”
“I’ll do what I came here to do, Bauer. With or without you.” And I won’t yield to these sexual feelings, not now, not ever.
This time he shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you this, Captain. If you need me to shore you up, you’re not fit to command.”
“I don’t need you for anything, Bauer,” she insisted, desperately hoping that it was true.
And then he smiled, that lazy dimpled smile that had touched her so profoundly once before. “That remains to be seen, Captain. But I’ll make you a promise. I’m going to do my job the way I would if any other outsider was brought in here to run my station. I won’t go out of my way to keep you afloat, but I won’t stab you in the back, either.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I can’t expect any more than that.”
“You can’t expect any less, either,” he answered resolutely. “I’m not doing it for you, Captain. I owe it to the badge.”
There didn’t seem to be anything left to say after that. But as Brick took a step toward the door, Karen heard him chuckle.
“Lieutenant,” she demanded tartly, certain he was laughing at her expense, “you want to let me in on the joke?”
He laughed out loud, really beside himself now. “Do you do jokes, Captain? I wouldn’t think there was a place for them in the manual.”
“Dammit, Bauer!” she burst out. “Can’t you just—”
“Lighten up?” Again he laughed.
For no good reason, Karen started to chuckle, too. It was a brief moment of good feeling, but a shared one.
“Tell me,” she pressed. “God knows, after yesterday, I need a good laugh.”
“Forgive me, Captain,” he apologized, still smothering a fetching grin. “I was just trying to imagine if you’d be any good in a towel fight. It’s one of our favorite activities in the locker room. And then I had a sudden vision of your face if I whipped off this towel...” He stopped as a sudden flush darkened his neck.
Karen sobered, acutely aware of his gender. The look in his eyes warned her that he was acutely aware of the difference in their genders, too. “I, uh, have seen a naked man before, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, I bet you have,” Bauer drawled in a tone so richly laced with innuendo that it would have required a reprimand if he hadn’t taken that moment to march through the door to his room.
Karen drew a deep breath of relief and ordered her sizzling body to cool down. But before she could lock the bathroom door behind him, Brick opened it a crack and tossed her his towel.
“Hang it up, would you, bunkie?” he asked with a fresh chuckle in his voice. Once more he dazzled her with his dimpled smile.
Suddenly Karen saw the rest of him—every manly inch—in her female imagination. It didn’t seem to make much difference that his body was completely hidden by the door.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e2bf25ae-47c9-52ed-b229-e13eef663159)
BRICK MANAGED to beat Karen to the station house, but Sergeant Steve Fletcher poked his head out of the locker room and motioned him inside the moment he arrived. About Brick’s age and one of his closest friends on the force, Steve had been divorced for years and had two children. At the moment he was living with a pretty young woman in nearby Belton and trying to decide if he was ready to take the plunge again.
Steve was not alone in the locker room. Every man on the day shift was waiting for Brick, plus two guys from the night shift about to go home.
Some of them looked angry. Some of them looked shell-shocked. Orson Clayton, who was overweight and had trouble keeping his uniform buttoned, wore a pathetic frown. Brick remembered only too well Karen’s scathing comments the day before about Clayton’s appearance—delivered in front of the other men.
“You’ve gotta do something about Captain Curvaceous, Brick,” was Steve’s blunt greeting. “We’ve been talking it over, and we’re just not going to last. It’d be bad enough to take this kind of abuse from a man, even if we deserved it. But from a looker like that...”
“If I didn’t have another baby on the way, I’d quit right now,” vowed Clayton. “I’m a damn good cop, Brick. You know I’ve never shirked my duty, never run from a fight, never protested when you or Paul asked me to put in overtime. But I’ll be damned if I’ll take fashion lessons from a female!”
Each one of the men had a specific complaint to air. Some of them objected to writing meticulous reports; some objected to being told to shine their shoes. All of them objected to having to put the word Captain in front of a woman’s name. And all of them looked to Brick to make Karen vanish so everything would be the way it used to be.
Brick himself was torn. Up until this morning, he’d been quite certain that Karen Keppler was the enemy, a vicious-hearted woman who had no redeeming human features despite her tantalizing beauty. But during their latest sparring session, he’d glimpsed something in Karen he hadn’t seen before. A reason for her toughness...and a powerful longing for respect.
She wasn’t at all the cold fish he’d first expected. There was a genuine person inside that protective shell...an intelligent woman with hopes and fears and maybe even a sense of humor. Karen was determined to do her duty, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed being disliked. Brick was quite certain that his own resentment had truly wounded her.
After promising not to stab her in the back, he now felt a curious obligation to defend her from this communal onslaught. “Look, guys,” he said carefully, “we’ve got a difficult situation here. At the moment, this woman is the boss. Paul can’t help us anymore. I think our best bet is to try to play the game her way, at least until we get the lay of the land.”
“Why doesn’t somebody lay her instead?” one of the men joked.
“Well, hell, Brick’s got the best shot at it. He’s sleeping right next door to her.”
Brick battled with a sudden memory of the morning’s tango in the bathroom...Karen in her robe, he in his towel. He was rarely uneasy with women, but this morning he’d felt positively disconnected...and, to his absolute fury, he’d also felt aroused. He didn’t know what she’d been wearing underneath her robe and that magnificent black mane, but he knew it wasn’t a uniform. And he also knew, though he hated like hell to admit it, that he’d spent entirely too much time imagining what she looked like in the altogether.
His imagination was speaking to him now.
“I don’t know if ol’ Brick could stand sleeping with that porcupine. Talk about whips and chains! Can you imagine—”
“My point,” Brick said firmly, uncomfortable with the tone the men’s jokes were taking, “is that the oath I swore when I became a police officer means I have to obey her...at least when I’m on duty.”
Steve shook his head. “You can’t mean you’re just going to roll over and play dead, Brick! You can’t mean you’re just giving up.”
Brick’s lips tightened as he thought about the job that was rightfully his. But Karen’s rank required his public respect, and to his surprise, her honesty this morning commanded his personal respect as well.
Swallowing his own apprehensions, he insisted, “As long as she’s the captain, she’s the captain. No matter how bitter this pill is to swallow, in the line of duty we’ve got to give her the same allegiance we’d give any other cop.”
Orson Clayton said, “Hell, Brick, I’d like to strangle that broad, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever forget she’s a fellow cop when the chips are down.”
“Neither would I,” agreed Steve. “Neither would any of us. But I can’t see her rushing to an officer-in-need-of-assistance call if she’d scheduled the afternoon to dictate some damned memo.”
A day-shift guy said, “It’s just not fair.”
Another growled, “Dammit, we can’t count on her out there! I don’t want to get shot just because she does something stupid.”
Brick wondered, as the men shuffled out of the room grumbling, if Karen’s worst-case scenario might someday come to pass. What if she gave an order in a crisis and they all looked to Brick instead? Professional prudence would dictate that he relay his captain’s commands no matter what his own judgment told him. But his career wouldn’t be worth a damn to him if he ignored his own conscience and one of these fellows ended up dead.
* * *
BRICK LOOKED uncomfortable, but not surprised, when Karen asked him to give her a tour of the town later in the morning. Their odd encounter in the bathroom seemed to have cleared the air. She decided to ignore his whimsical farewell—bunkie, indeed!—and he seemed willing to give the illusion of respect during their encounters at the station house. There was a difference in the other men this morning also. They didn’t look quite so sullen and shocked as they had the day before.
Karen usually drove the first time she got in a car with a man, just to set him thinking of her in an equal light. This time, however, she decided that she needed to listen and observe. It was Brick’s town and Brick’s beat. She sat on the passenger side of the cruiser as he effortlessly took the wheel and filled her in on all the subtle things that a police officer needs to know about a new town. She couldn’t remember everything, but she made mental notes and a few written ones, too...especially on everything that pertained to Judson Ingalls.
As he drove, Brick recounted the highlights of Tyler’s history: tall tales of a Winnebago burial ground, stories of the original German and Swedish settlers, the beginnings of the now-fading tradition of dairy farming. When he told her a funny story about a local man who’d lost his favorite cow and found her in the middle of the town-square fountain, Karen was inspired to regale him with the highlights of her own disastrous first day as a rookie. They shared a hearty laugh together, and a little more ice was broken.
“This is the poorer side of town,” Brick informed her as they cruised to the south after riding for half an hour. “Not that any part of Tyler is really slummy. We’re not rich, we’re not poor. We’re just heartland.”
Karen took the opportunity Brick had unwittingly given her to probe into the subject of her secret investigation. “Does that go for the Ingallses, too?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do you know about the Ingalls clan?”
“Not a whole lot,” she replied vaguely. “Your aunt and uncle were talking about them last night at dinner. Tisha was bringing me up to speed about a lot of things.”
“Tisha!” He laughed. “You’d be surprised how many tips we get from her. Not that anybody confesses to her, you understand, but she’s a shrewd observer with some experience in these things.”
“What kind of experience?”
Brick shrugged. “The story’s a bit cloudy, but I understand she used to be a gangster’s moll.”
“You’re kidding! And she lives under our roof?”
“Captain, give her a break. It was a long time ago. Besides, Tisha’s a good person at heart. She’s just...distinctive. I’d rather have a woman like that than one who’s colorless.”
Karen wondered if he was talking about her. She did her best to appear colorless on the job—she didn’t dare come across as sexy, especially with men under her command—but that didn’t mean she wanted a hunk like Brick Bauer to think of her as a dishrag. Her potent response to him this morning didn’t change the fact that their professional situation precluded even the most subtle of flirtations.
Before Brick could divine her thoughts, Karen asked, “So when Tisha comes across some evidence, does she report it to the station?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. This is Tyler. She deliberately drops some seemingly innocent remark over dinner that no one can ever trace to her. I put two and two together and go check things out. Sometimes it doesn’t add up to anything, but sometimes I make an arrest based on her tips.”
Karen watched him closely. “Is that the way you carried out investigations under Paul Schmidt?”
Now his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s only one part of the picture, Captain. I use every tool. There’s doing it by the book, and there’s doing it by the seat of your pants. Sometimes you need both approaches.”
Karen took a deep breath before she asked carefully, “Which one is helping you find out the identity of that woman they found out by Timberlake Lodge?”
Brick turned a corner and waved to a toddler digging a hole in the front yard before he nonchalantly observed, “That’s not really an active case, Captain. We figure she was either Margaret Ingalls or one of Margaret’s out-of-town guests. Nobody local was reported missing around that time, and we’d have no way of knowing who all was invited to those wild bashes.”
“The Judson Ingalls I met at the Schmidts didn’t seem like the partying type.” Tall, gray-haired, still robust, he hadn’t seemed like a candidate for Worthington House, but he’d given Karen the impression that he’d just as soon spend his Saturday nights at home.
“He’s not. That’s one reason Margaret left him. But before she did, she often brought her Chicago crowd back to Tyler.”
“You’d think Margaret would have noticed if one of her friends had disappeared,” Karen observed, certain that some names could be unearthed with sufficient legwork. “Judson doesn’t remember her mentioning anybody?”
“No,” Brick replied unhappily. “He doesn’t like to talk about Margaret. His daughter is one of Aunt Anna’s best friends, and she says she’s almost never heard him mention Margaret since she walked out on the two of them.”
The words struck Karen hard. A father and daughter, left alone by a high-flying mother: this she could understand.
Ashamed of the tightness of her voice, she asked, “How old was Alyssa when that happened? Was she grown?”
“Oh, no. She was a little kid. It was a long, long time ago.”
“About the time that woman they found near the lodge probably died?”
Brick did not answer at once. When he did, his tone seemed more guarded than before. “Yes, it was, and yes, we checked to see if anybody had ever seen Margaret again. The answer is no. But we can’t find her dental records, to check them with what’s left of the body.”
Karen wanted to ask how hard he’d looked, but she knew that question would take careful handling. Brick must never suspect she was secretly investigating him—Commander Harmon’s directions had been most specific in that respect. “When we get back to the station, Lieutenant, I’d like to go over the file with you,” she suggested, deciding that the best course of action would be to covertly track down the dental records, then assign the task to Brick to see if he tried to dodge taking the same steps. “Sometimes a new pair of eyes can spot something that you miss when you go over and over the same thing.” Before he could take umbrage, Karen added, “It’s happened to me lots of times.”
Brick nodded without comment, then pointed to a cozy-looking diner near the town square. “This place belongs to Marge Peterson. It’s where Tyler cops eat on their breaks and hang out when they’re off duty.”
“In that case, it would probably be a good place to stop for lunch,” said Karen, who was getting hungry. She also wanted to see her men in a different atmosphere than the station house. She knew it wouldn’t be possible for her to be accepted as “one of the guys,” but she still might gain some valuable insights about her officers and their town.
“Is that an order, Captain?” Brick didn’t sound angry this time, just unsure.
“It’s an invitation, Lieutenant. My treat. Good heavens, I never had to explain it when I said the same thing to my partner.”
She’d intended the words as a cheerful pleasantry, but for some reason Brick’s tone was jarringly cool as he muttered, “I guess now’s as good a time as any,” and parked the car.
Karen was sorry to see that he was glowering again, just when she’d hoped they were making genuine progress. It was an old story, but sometimes it really wore her down. How many times in her career had she run up against professional hostility from men? How many times had they opposed her openly or sabotaged her career behind her back? Her file was bulging with undocumented petty complaints by misogynist fellow cops. She didn’t know why she’d ever hoped she could expect better from Brick Bauer.
“Sometimes I think you forget that I’m a police officer, too, Bauer,” she said bitterly. “I’m really not so different from the rest of you.”
“Captain, you convinced me you were a real cop the first night we met,” Brick snapped. “You didn’t even have to show me your badge. You just dumped me on my head.” He studied her gravely. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be working overtime trying to prove yourself?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Karen asked defensively. “I’ve taken over a substation where not one man likes me or trusts me. Every damn one of them would like to see my backside hightailing it out of town so you could take my place. I have nightmares about waking up with you standing over my bed with a knife!” She hadn’t meant to confess that, not to Brick, not to anyone. But the words were out, and now all she could say was, “I’m in an armed camp, alone against the enemy. In my position, don’t you think you’d be guarding your flanks, too?”
His square jaw jutted out as he faced her. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”
Warily Karen answered, “Of course.”
“You’re right that the men don’t trust you. They think you’re mean as hell. But you’re missing the whole picture of the Tyler substation if you think you’re surrounded by the enemy. You haven’t yet managed to destroy the camaraderie that makes being a cop in Tyler something special, and at bedrock, you’re still an officer, still part of us. We’re sworn to protect the public, and by God, we’re sworn to protect each other, too. The men may joke about you in the locker room and curse each time they hold one of your stupid memos in their hands, but if you ever have to draw your weapon in the line of duty, Captain, there’s not a man on the force who wouldn’t lay down his life for you.” Before she could respond, he finished, “What hurts us all is that we don’t think you’d do the same for any one of us.”
Karen wasn’t sure how to answer that. She was touched and wounded, honored and crushed. Clumsily she said, “I’m good with a gun, Bauer. If I thought I could save a fellow officer’s life, I’d use it without reservation.”
“That’s what Sara Ralston claimed,” he hissed. “Brave as a man! Every bit as smart. She was teamed up with Mark McVey when I made sergeant. She froze during a robbery, and some bastard shot him right through the heart!”
Brick made no effort to cloak his grief, and Karen knew he couldn’t have done so, anyway. She knew what it meant to lose a partner. Rob Laney had once come perilously close to death. The bullet scar on her left shoulder was a permanent reminder of how she’d saved his life.
“Oh, Bauer, I know how that hurts,” Karen sympathetically confessed. “When my partner was shot, I—”
“You froze on him, too?”
Karen pulled back, angry and hurt all over again. “Isn’t it remotely possible that I did my part? My God, officers go down all the time when they’re teamed with men! Nobody jumps at the chance to cast blame in those cases!”
“Maybe you did your part and maybe you didn’t,” Brick growled. “Maybe your partner was too busy worrying about you to cover his own back. All I know is that Mark McVey was my partner, dammit, and I know that if I’d been beside him, he’d still be alive!”
“Then blame yourself for leaving him behind when you got promoted, Bauer! Don’t blame me and don’t blame every female cop!”
He jerked back as though she’d hit him. “You don’t think I feel guilty for moving on and leaving him? You don’t think I feel the weight of it bearing down on me at night like a tombstone on my chest?”
The anguish that filled his eyes made Karen ashamed she’d added to his pain. In hindsight she realized that Bauer wasn’t trying to attack her. He was only wrestling with his own despair.
“Bauer, I’m sorry.” Instinctively she gripped his arm. “I had no right to say that. This is a terrible business. People die in any war. Your partner’s death was tragic, but it’s not your fault.”
