LOVING HER SOUL MATE (40 page)

“Chief Malone,” she heard Cliff’s
voice say and she looked up just as John was walking toward her, ignoring the
officer.
 
He looked grim like he usually
looked and wouldn’t take his beautiful blue eyes away from her.
 
He was in shirt sleeves today, which
highlighted his thick, muscular arms, and, as usual, Shay’s heart beat
quickened at just the sight of him.

“Hello, John,” she said when he
made his way up to her.

He sat down beside her.
 
“I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,”
he said.
 
“Where have you been?”

“Really?” she said.
 
She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled
out her cell phone.
 
It was only then did
she realize that, after talking with Ed, she had angrily turned it off.
 
“My cell phone is off.”

“That much I’ve already
gathered.
 
Why
is it
off
is the question?
 
And what is
this about you wanting to see Glazer?”

Shay swallowed hard.
 
She hadn’t planned on telling him right here
and right now, but here was as good a place as any.
 
“Today was my first day at work,” she
said.
 
“I didn’t want any distractions.”
  

John didn’t say anything to
that.
 
He stared at her.
 
“Your first day at work?”

“That’s right.
 
And I didn’t want any distractions.”

Shay could tell that he was
confused.
 
But before she could tell him
anything, he placed his hand on the press badge around her neck and turned it
over.
 
Brady Beast
was written in bold, semicircle letterings.
 
John looked at those words and then looked
into her eyes.
 

“They hired me on the spot,” she
said.

“I’m sure they did,” replied John.

“Upset?”

“Hell no,” he said, standing to
his feet.
 
She stood too.
 
“At least you’ll be doing what you love.
 
It beats crawling back to that asshole Ed
Barrington.”

“So you weren’t the one who told
Ed to call and offer me my job back?
 
You
didn’t talk to him?”

“I talked to him, yes.
 
But I didn’t tell him to offer you any
job.
 
I told him to apologize to you.”

Shay’s heart swelled with love for
this man.
 
“Thanks.”

“So he offered you the job?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you told him to go fuck
himself.”

Shay smiled.
 
“Something
like
that, yes.”

“Good,” he said.
 
John then stared at her.
 
His feelings for her had always been strong
and intense, but now that she was back within his grasp, his feelings seemed
stronger and even more intense.
 
It was
as if he was suddenly realizing just what her two-year absence really meant to
him.
 
He was seeing what he almost lost
in a new light, and it was a disturbing realization.
   

“So why were you trying to reach
me all morning?” she asked, hoping he would say something sweet, like he was
calling to say he loved her.

“I wanted you to meet with a
realtor friend of mine.”

Shay looked at John.
 
“A realtor?
 
Why would I need to meet with a realtor?”

“She can help you find a new
home.”

“I have a home.”

“In Dodge,
Shay.”

“I like my house.
 
It’s paid for.
 
I’m not about to sell Aunt Rae’s house just
so I can stay in some supposedly better neighborhood.
 
Crime is everywhere, John.
 
There are no safe havens.”

“I know that.
 
But---”

“No but.
 
I have a home that’s paid for, and I intend
to keep my home.
 
Case closed.
 
For real.”

John stared at Shay.
 
Those two years away had toughened her too,
although, he’d be the first to admit, she was already pretty tough.
 
He exhaled.
 
“I just want you safe, babe.”

“I understand that.
 
But I feel like I’m safe.
 
My neighbors are nice people.
 
They’re poor, yes, some of them are very
poor, but they’re good people.
 
I like
where I’m living.”

John nodded.
  
“Okay,” he said, especially since he knew,
right now, he didn’t really have a vote.
 
“So you want to see Glazer?” he asked her.

“That would be great.
 
My supervisor, Paige Kent, I don’t know if
you know her?”

“I know her.”

Shay wondered why he said it as if
Paige was a bitter taste in his mouth.
 
“She wants me to hear what he has to say.”

“I can tell you what he has to
say.
 
‘I’m innocent, I didn’t do it,’
that’s all he always says.”

Shay smiled.
 
“Understood.
 
But I sort of have to hear it directly from
the prisoner before I can put it in a story.”

John snorted.
 
And then walked, with Shay
following him, back over to the desk cop.
 
Cliff stood to his feet.

“Take us to the visitor’s room,
Cliff, and then call up Glazer.”

“Yes, sir, Chief,” Cliff said and
immediately pressed the button that opened a steel side door.
 
He then hurried through the door.
 
John and Shay, with John placing his hand in
the small of her back, followed Cliff.

Cliff unlocked a tiny visitor’s
room where Shay could sit down and talk to the prisoner by way of phone and a
bullet-proof window.
 
Shay was surprised,
however, when John walked into the room with her.
 
She had expected a private conversation with
Glazer.
 

John knew she had wanted some
privacy, but no way was he leaving his woman back here with this killer.
 
Even though it was virtually impossible that
he could get out, John still wasn’t taking any chances.
 

Shay didn’t like it, but she
didn’t say a word. He was already breaking protocol by allowing her back there
to begin with.
 
She wasn’t about to play
the diva and push it.

She took a seat in the chair while
John, standing beside her in his gorgeously-appointed Armani suit, pulled out
his handkerchief and wiped down the phone that she would be using to
communicate with Glazer.
 
When he finished
he leaned toward her and they kissed on the lips.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for
you at the Trib,” he said as he kissed her again.

She smiled faintly.
 
“Me too.
 
But I plan to do my best for the Brady
Beast.”

John placed his hand on the side
of her face, a look of consternation on his face.
 
“You deserve better than the Beast.
 
If it was up to me you’d own that
got
damn Tribune and fire Ed’s ass.”

Shay knew what he meant.
 
“Thanks,” she said.
 
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“What are you thanking me
for?
 
You’re my woman.
 
I’ll do anything for you.”
 

John’s words hung in the air like
an alien object.
 
He was stunned that
a man like
him, who was rarely emotional, would have said
such emotional words.
 
And Shay was
stunned too.
 
Because
something between them changed at that very instant.
 
And it was an earth-shifting change they
couldn’t even begin to verbalize.
 
They
stared into each other’s eyes.

Although John Malone was still the
most attractive man Shay had ever known, those burdens he bore were beginning
to show in his face.
 
His youthfulness
was fast becoming a thing of the past, and he was beginning to look every inch
of his thirty-nine years.
 
Although, Shay
also noticed, he was still the best looking, sexiest, most desirable
thirty-nine year old she’d ever seen.

John, however, saw Shay in just
the opposite light.
 
To him she didn’t
look anywhere near her twenty-eight years.
 
It was as if time had stood still for her, in a wonderfully youthful,
vibrant way, and time was accelerating for him.
 
And he, too, knew it was the burdens he bore.
 
Of losing his son, of being
forced to kill his ex-wife, of being responsible for a police department that
had him in crisis mode almost every day of every week.
 
But his heart was relieved to see that those
two years away had helped Shay.
 
They had
devastated him, but they had helped Shay.
 
It made their separation worth it when he saw just how much she’d been
helped.

Willie Glazer, a short,
light-skinned black male with curly red hair, entered the prisoner’s room still
in shackles.
 
He walked up to the chair
in front of Shay’s window and plopped down.
 
Although both hands were chained, he was able to retrieve the telephone
without effort, as if he was well familiar with maneuvering in chains.
 

“Who are you?” he asked her as
soon as the phone hit his ear.

“I’m Shay Turner, a reporter with
the Brady Beast,” Shay said, pulling a pad and pen from her shoulder bag.
 
“And I take it you’re William Glazer.”

“Willie,” Glazer said, and then
looked over at John.
 
John was now leaned
against the wall behind Shay, his big arms folded like a prison guard.
 
Glazer frowned.
 
“Why he got to be here?” he wanted to
know.
 
“I don’t want that bastard sitting
in on my conversations.”

“Tough,” John said.
 
“Now get on with it.”

Shay waited until she had Glazer’s
attention before she began her questioning.
 
But it was a fruitless interview.
 
Because John was right.
 
Every answer he gave was the same: I’m
innocent, I didn’t do it.
 
Over and over.
 
He
would never deter from his rock hard profession of innocence.
 

Shay was accustomed to that.
 
She’d been a reporter long enough to have
interviewed many prisoners.
 
All of them
were always innocent.
 
But, by the end of
her interview with Glazer, she was kind of confused.
 
He admitted many things unfavorable to
him.
 
He admitted being a drug
addict.
 
He admitted being strung out on
drugs during that entire year when thirteen prostitutes were killed.
 
He even admitted hanging out with
hookers.
 
But he kept insisting that he
never killed anyone.
 

As she and John walked down the
corridor toward the exit door, his hand once again in the small of her back,
she was concerned.
 
“That was strange,”
she said.

“What was strange about it?” he
asked.

“The way he admitted so much.
 
It’s been my experience that liars never cop
to anything.
 
They claim to be as
innocent as the driven snow on everything.”

“Or,” John said, “
they’re
more sadistic than your average liar and know how to
finesse it.”

Shay didn’t say anything to
that.
 
She knew she wouldn’t have a
willing audience with John.
 
He arrested
Glazer and as far as he was concerned they had the right guy.
 
Pointblank.
 
She’d run her feelings by Paige.

John held her by the arms when
they reached the exit door, before he pressed the request to exit button.
 
Shay looked into his eyes.

“I don’t want you to get caught up
in any drama that newspaper loves to whip up, Shay,” he said to her.
 
“Don’t get caught up in it.
 
I want you to remain the level-headed journalist
I know you are.”

Shay smiled.
 
“I will.
 
You know I will.”