AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This was it. Now she’d tell him a secret, too. Reward him for opening up. For trusting her. But instead, she asked for more about him.
“Is that how you ended up in law enforcement?”
He couldn’t give her any more, so he shrugged. “Probably. How did you end up doing this? Were your parents artists?”
She drew her hand back. “No.”
“Doctors?” he pressed.
“No, I’m just an oddball.”
Tom felt suddenly furious. He wanted to help her, and he didn’t know how, and she wouldn’t give him anything. Did she think he told that story to everyone?
Just as quickly, his fury washed away on a wave of self-loathing. He had no right to be angry. She hadn’t asked for his story, and for all he knew, she wanted nothing more than to usher him out the door and tell him to take his emotional baggage with him. And if he was realizing now that it had felt good to share his secrets with her, that wasn’t her fault. If there was closeness between them, maybe it was one-sided.
All he really needed to do was tell her the truth. I know you’re Beth Pozniak, and I want to help. But then he’d have to admit that he’d lied. She wouldn’t trust him at all. She might even run again, and then he’d have to get the FBI involved. Even if she didn’t run, if she shut him down, he’d have to take her in and turn her over, and there was something wrong about it all. He could feel it.
He just wanted to get her story first, so he could decide what to do. Had she helped her father escape? Had she helped conceal evidence? Did she know where he was now?
One more day, and then he’d tell her. He just needed more information first. He had to figure out what he was missing.
He barely registered when Isabelle swept his plate away.
Her father had been a good cop, by all standards. Steady, but not ambitious. Almost anyone could’ve made sergeant after fifteen years. He hadn’t gotten there until nineteen, and he’d never bothered with a detective rank. So, unremarkable, but a decent, steady, average guy. Until he’d shot a fellow police officer to cover up a ring of cops who’d been skimming drugs and money from busts for years.
Quite a fall from grace. A jettison from grace, really, once the extent of the corruption had been revealed.
Still, it all would’ve been just another Hollywood movie script ab
out crooked cops. Standard Chicago stuff, even if the public would be shocked to hear that. Tom had tracked down ex-cop fugitives before. There were bad cops all over the place, and in Chicago it was practically tradition.
The corruption ring would’ve carried on for another twenty years if some young idealist with a new badge hadn’t become suspicious about cocaine missing from the evidence locker.
It had been her bust. She’d been protective. She’d asked a few questions. Fine. But she hadn’t been willing to be waved off. She’d dug in. Pushed the wrong guy. Followed the wrong cop. She’d seen things she shouldn’t have seen, and it had all exploded.
The hit on her had gone wrong. It was supposed to have looked as if she’d stumbled onto a drug deal in public housing while checking an outstanding warrant. But she’d been only wounded before managing to escape from the apartment complex onto a crowded street. She would’ve gotten away and ID’d the cop who’d shot her, so she was chased down.
The eyewitnesses to the second gunshot had given chaotic descriptions of exactly how many cops had been there and what had gone down, but in the end, Sergeant Malcolm Pozniak had been arrested for the murder of a fellow police officer. And then he’d talked. Just a little. Just enough to make everyone nervous before he lawyered up.
A few weeks later, he’d run.
Isabelle slid a plate of pie in front of Tom and sat next to him at the table.
“Aren’t you having pie?” he asked. “I heard it’s your favorite.”
“It is. I had a piece for breakfast. And lunch. This one is yours. You look like you need it.”
“I don’t want to eat your pie,” he said then smiled stupidly at her when she laughed.
“Well, that’s kind of disappointing, Marshal Duncan.”
“Too easy.” He held up the spoon when she started to speak. “I meant the joke, not you.”
“Then you don’t know me very well,” she countered.
“We’ll share the pie.” He took a bite and offered her the spoon. “No forks?”
“I got distracted halfway through loading the dishwasher this afternoon. It happens.”
