Amanda's Blue Marine (11 page)

He took a step toward her and she snapped, "You told me not to be such a lawyer. Maybe you should try to be a better cop.”

He didn’t reply and it took her a moment to realize what she had said. Then she put her fingers to her mouth and whispered, "I'm so sorry. I’m doing it again. None of this is your fault. You didn’t deserve that.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said huskily.

“Yes, it does. I don’t know why I’m always punishing you about any of this. You've done nothing but try to help me since the moment I met you.”

She looked at him remorsefully. “There’s no excuse for berating you. It’s just that so much time had gone by since the last note that I thought maybe it was over, I was hoping that he had given up or gone away….” She felt her throat tighten. “I feel awful for what I just said.”

“Forget it,” Kelly said tersely. “I don’t know why you’re not screaming. Don’t give it another thought.”

Mandy stared at him. “Seeing what he wrote about me at the time of his trial, knowing that it was all real and the threat wasn’t my imagination, it’s just made me…” She trailed off and then started talking again, softly. “I’m not brave, Kelly. I’m not like you.” She closed her eyes. Before she could open them again his arms came around her tightly and she felt once more the warmth and security of his embrace the night she had danced with him.

Help me, she thought. Only you can help me.

Mandy clung to him shamelessly and they stood wrapped together for several long moments. Once again the top of her head just came to his shoulder. She pressed her face into his shirt front, inhaling the unique scent she had noticed before when she was close to him. Time seemed to stand still and she heard the ticking of the art deco clock on her wall as she made the tactile moments last as long as she could. Then he gently disengaged her and led her to the sofa. She sat as he paced back and forth in front of her, his long legs making short work of her living room rug.

“There are some things I have to tell you because you should know them,” he said. “They won’t be easy to hear but I need you to listen carefully.”

Mandy nodded, wishing that he were still holding her.

“I talked to Jamila Shah on the phone after we came up empty when we tried to arrest Cameron. Jamila remembered that Cameron was always watching you the few times you were court, and I looked up more details in his record. They aren’t good.”

Mandy waited fearfully.

“Cameron is a SWAT team member gone bad, a special weapons and tactics expert who started his criminal career by going AWOL. He was trained by the army, selected for special classes in the deployment of complicated firearms. He’s skilled in the use of deadly force. Do you remember any of this from prosecuting his case?”

“He thinks you made a fool of him when the state won at his trial. You put him in jail and to him that means you got over on him.”

“I didn’t do it! I was a lowly assistant, it was my first year in the DA’s office. All I did was supply Joe Monte’s second with notes and answers to the questions that came up at trial, the results of research.”

“We found his apartment, a hole on 34
^th
street which was abandoned with everything tossed around, left in a mess. Something tipped him off that we were coming after him.”

“What do you do now?”

“We look for him, and I mean we really look for him. I promise you that this will not end well for James Cameron.” His tone was flat and menacing.

“He can hide anywhere,” Mandy said hopelessly.

“Not anywhere. We’re pretty good at locating people.” He came and sat next to Mandy on the sofa. He touched her cheek and she closed her eyes as he ran his thumb over her lower lip.

“I have to go,” he said huskily. “The uniforms are downstairs. You call me if anything happens. And I mean anything.”

Mandy nodded. Her gaze followed him to the door and when he turned back to look at her he said, “I’ll get him, Amanda. I’ll kill him before I let him touch you.”

The door opened and he was gone.

4

Kelly went down the steps to the parking lot of the complex and tapped on the window of the squad car. The two cops inside were kibitzing but snapped to attention when they saw Kelly. The cop on the passenger side rolled down the window and answered Kelly’s questions, declaring that everything had been quiet for hours and nobody suspicious had passed the security gate. Kelly moved on to his jeep and climbed inside of it, putting his head back on the rest and closing his eyes.

He felt like an ass. He had promised something he couldn’t deliver. He could still see the look on Amanda’s face when he’d had to tell her that Cameron had skipped and the police didn’t know where he was.

He sat up again and thought about his hasty exit earlier. He had lied to her when he said he had to go. The truth was he couldn’t stay with her for one more minute without doing something startlingly intimate and unprofessional, something that would cross the line and change their relationship forever. He had to get out of her place but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her completely, so he was sitting in the parking lot like an ex lover hoping for a reunion. God, he was pathetic. Pretty soon he would be stalking her like that jacked up jitterbug Cameron.

He leaned forward and lit a cigarette, opening his window. He tried not to think about her several floors above him, and how easy it would be to go back inside and take her into the bedroom. She was vulnerable and needy and she would follow his lead. At the moment he didn’t care about his job or her absent fiancé, the physical need to comfort her and claim her for himself was so overwhelming it submerged everything else.

Kelly inhaled deeply, thinking about how his life had changed since he met Amanda. His attitude about her background of privilege and wealth had altered once he got to know her. She was so beautiful and she had everything and he didn't care, he didn’t even resent it any more. In the beginning her supposed status had annoyed him but he had disguised it; now that he was personally involved with her all he cared about was her safety. She was suffering and in jeopardy and he just wanted that to end. But his dilemma was that if they solved her problem and caught the creep who was tormenting her, then his own reason for seeing her was gone. Their connection would be broken, their time together would stop. She would go on to marry Henderson, a showboat politician and a jerk who didn’t appreciate her, and Kelly would ...what? Continue to play basketball on Saturday mornings with a bunch of thirty year old high school kids? Continue to have sex with a succession of pretty girls who would grow less pretty as he grew older? His life was going in a direction he didn’t want. What he wanted was several stories above him, worried and scared and hungry for the comfort he could give.

And he couldn't give it.

He couldn’t even determine if he had a chance with her. He had observed her behavior closely in the last several weeks and he knew that in many ways she was a sheltered and spoiled child who was very influenced by her family. Even though she expressed frustration with them frequently he could see that they still controlled her. She was engaged to Henderson and it would take an enormous leap of independence for her to reject her parents’ choice. He didn’t know if Mandy had it in her. There were times when he thought she did, that she would jettison Henderson and the restraints of the past and take a chance. He saw the spark in her covert rebellion and he might be able to fan it into a flame, but the Redfields clearly had a strong hold on her. They were the type of wealthy people who supported the idea of a police force publicly and served coffee to cops in a 911 emergency but wouldn't dream of having their daughter marry one of them.

They would welcome him as her savior but not as her suitor.

Kelly tapped ash onto the macadam through the window as he thought about his situation. Was the best he could hope for an affair that would last as long as her peril did, after which she would move on and forget him as she did the terrible weeks she'd been stalked by a lunatic? He didn't want that. He was already dreading the time when his assignment would change and he would no longer see her. She was attached to him now, affectionate with him now, because she was in the midst of the crisis and he was helping her. But that wouldn't last beyond the day her stalker was caught. After that, through the years she would recall him only occasionally at a charity fundraiser. When a dark haired cop got up after dinner to thank the fatcats who had contributed to the FOP fund she would say to herself, he looks like Kinney or Kerry or Kelly, what WAS his name? Haven't thought about him in so long.

His eyes began to sting from the smoke and he pressed his fingers against his lids, opening his window wider to let in more fresh air. The cool draft revived him and he tossed his cigarette to the ground. He thought about the look on her face as he left her, faking a stoic smile while her eyes were wide with fear. He wanted her so badly sometimes he had to put his head down. He wouldn't take advantage of this situation, even though he was tempted to throw ethics into the trash and just take what he could get while he could get it. She was sending signals all the time and he wanted to pick up on them. He saw her looking at him, felt her longing and sensed that she wanted him too. What he didn't understand was that her approach was hesitant, almost virginal, and she was an engaged woman who supposedly had some experience. What the hell was Henderson doing anyway? He was gone right now on that business trip and never seemed to be around when Amanda needed support. Was he too busy cozying up to her old man's money to bother keeping her happy? Kelly suspected strongly that Tom Henderson was marrying the Redfield name, not Amanda. But she was going along with it for reasons he couldn't even guess. Kelly knew one thing: if she belonged to him he wouldn't leave her when she was in trouble to make buying trips to China. He would make her his priority in everything, especially in bed. He would explore the untapped goldmine of her desire and make her slender body sing.

But tormenting himself with images of what they would never experience wasn't going to help him. He had to stop it. He was falling in love with the unobtainable, and he had always thought he was too smart for that. She had blindsided him, looking like an angel and sounding like a college teacher, suddenly more vulnerable than she had ever been because of what was happening to her. She dealt with criminals every day in her work and had remained unjaded and seemingly unaffected, but it was a different story when she was the target. As long as she was one she would need him, but when that was over they would have nothing in common.

Kelly lit another cigarette and started his car. He had to get away from her tonight because he could feel himself weakening. Removing himself from the case was the only remedy he could imagine, but that was unthinkable. Turning her over to somebody else was also unthinkable. Amanda would be devastated and he would be unable to help her directly.

There was no way out of this quicksand, he could only hope to keep his head above it. And Amanda's too.

* * * * *

When Mandy got to the police station in the morning Kelly was waiting for her outside Manning’s office. He was wearing a gray pin striped suit with a light blue shirt and a darker blue tie which made his eyes look luminous. His badge was clipped to his belt and his hair looked like he had been running his hands through it, a sure sign of frustration.

Jonathan Redfield was also there, dressed in a six hundred dollar silk suit. His gray-to-white hair was neatly clipped, as always, his shoes had a high polish, and the gold signet ring which commemorated his graduation from Andover glinted on his right hand.

Both men looked at her guiltily, then avoided her eyes.

“Hello, Dad,” Mandy said evenly. “When Kelly called me he didn’t tell me you were coming to this meeting. What are you doing here?”