Mitch

I got the radio call halfway to Stella’s house. Shots fired. Ambulance en route. God. Memories slammed into my brain, choking me. It had been the same. Just the same. I’d heard those words on patrol all those years ago. I knew in my heart it had been Brian, even though the dispatcher couldn’t say it over the air. Too many ears. I’d raced across town going lights and sirens, knowing it was already too late. But I hadn’t believed it. I’d hoped against hope Brian was still hanging on. That I could get there and hold his hand before he took his last breath. So he would know. So I could tell him I was sorry. So he wouldn’t have to do it alone. There were others there with him that night. His partner. The EMTs who’d gone in before the scene had been secured. But I hadn’t gotten there in time. I’d failed him, no matter what psych bullshit Ken Bardwell wanted me to swallow. And now, if Stella was …

I arrived just after the uniformed guys. The ambulance was already in the driveway, its great big diesel engine chugging at idle. I parked at an angle down the street and ran. It felt like I’d run that half a block for the rest of my life. If she was dead. If I lost her too. I choked past the bile rising in my throat, nearly staggering to my knees as I got to her yard. Two of the uniformed guys turned and tried to stop me. Luckily, one of them recognized me just in time. If he hadn’t, I might have decked him to get past him.

Stella’s front screen door opened and the EMTs came out pulling a stretcher. Stella ran next to it, trailing behind an older guy with his hand on the shoulder of the victim on the stretcher. She was sobbing. Her face bloodless. She looked small and scared and my heart twisted at the same time my own blood started pumping again.

Stella. Thank God. She was walking. She was crying. She was okay. I ran to her as they slammed the stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

“Phil?” she cried, looking up at the guy holding her hand. He was older, sixties, with balding brown hair, deep-set eyes, and a hooked nose. But he carried himself straight and tall. Military posture. He must have sensed me approaching. He looked up and met my eyes.

“You’re for her?” he said, his voice ragged with emotion.

I gave him a quick nod and put a hand on Stella’s shoulder. She looked from me to him and back again.

“We need to move, sir,” one of the EMTs shouted. “You riding with?”

The guy nodded and moved past us, climbing into the passenger seat of the rig. I had my arm around Stella and pulled her out of the way. I held her close, pressed my lips against her temple.

“Are you all right?”

She shook her head and sobbed. “Not even close. God. Mitch. They shot him. Right in front of us. It came through my front window.”

My heart turned to stone. Two more patrol cars pulled up, parking at right angles on either side of Stella’s street. They made quick work of blocking the area off. One of our unmarked cars pulled in behind him and Detectives Chapman and Linley stepped out. Good guys, both of them. Baby boomers still hanging on because the economy was so bad. But they were decent, old-school cops who didn’t cut corners.

“These guys are going to need some information from you,” I said to her. Stella was strong. She stood with her back rigid, but I felt her hummingbird pulse beneath my fingertips where I held her hand. “You up for it?”

She nodded. “He’s still out there. Whoever took a shot at my window. I didn’t see anything. Just the laser light. A little red dot. It was on my shirt. Young Phil saw it. I didn’t. He grabbed me. I didn’t get why. Then I saw that light on Old Phil. Then his chest …”

She dissolved into a hiccupping sob as I waved the detectives over. She’d have to give them what she could as quickly as she could, but I wanted her out of here. Even with the police presence, she was exposed here. Whoever was looking for her would figure out pretty quick they’d missed their target. My stomach dropped to the ground. It took everything in me not to throw her over my shoulder caveman style and get her the hell out of here.

“Hang tight,” I said. “Let me talk to these guys for a second. You stay here with the uniformed officers. You got me? You don’t leave their sides. I’m going to get you out of here. You’ll stay with me tonight. You understand?”

Stella nodded. If I expected a protest, she was too damn scared to voice it. My heart cracked into a thousand pieces. This could have gone so much worse. Oh God.

Chapman and Linley listened and took notes when I gave them the broad strokes of Stella’s situation. They’d need to check with Caulkins about how public they wanted this investigation to go. If we had a rat with the State Police, the fewer details made it out, the better. We couldn’t be sure someone at Northpointe might tip them off. Stella told them what she could. They needed to follow up with the victim’s son. Stella explained who he was. She said he was ex-military and seemed to sense the danger before she did. It also meant he might have seen more. I prayed his old man pulled through. He’d taken a round straight in the chest from something high-powered. It didn’t look good from what I saw, but if he was stubborn and lucky enough, he might have a shot.

“I want to go to the hospital,” she said after she’d given her statement.

“No,” I said, the word coming out harsher than I meant. “No. Stella, whoever did this, they’re going to find out pretty quick they didn’t succeed. If you were the target, I mean. The hospital isn’t a safe place for you. We’ll send some uniform guys over there to keep an eye on your neighbors. But I want you someplace safe. I want you with me. And we need to get you out of here and out of sight like now. Can you pack a bag in a minute? We need to leave.”

Sniffling, Stella nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

I waited at her back door while Stella went in to pack a suitcase. The crime scene unit arrived and were busy doing forensics. My whole body vibrated with rage. In the back of my mind, I thought Ken Bardwell might think this was progress. I wanted to bust some shit up. Instead, I stood stone still with my hands clenched to my sides. Waiting. It took everything in me not to run through that house and tear her away from it.

Stella finally came down. She tucked a hair behind her ear and looked up at me, slinging a backpack over her shoulder.

“You pack light,” I said, trying to smile.

“I couldn’t think straight. I must have walked in a dozen circles around my bedroom trying to figure out what to take. I settled on two changes of clothes and a toothbrush.”

“Perfect. Let’s get you the hell out of here.”

She came quietly, leaning against me as I slid an arm around her waist and walked her to my car. I gave a quick nod to the detectives as they interviewed some of Stella’s neighbors. Chapman lifted his chin when he saw me and gave me a tight-lipped smile. He knew where to find Stella if he needed to talk to her again. He also knew I’d want them to give her the night.

She was quiet as we drove across town, hugging her arms around her body as she pressed her forehead against the window. When I pulled into my driveway on the other side of town, she just sat there, staring straight ahead. I grabbed her bag from the backseat and came around to get her.

She shifted her weight when I opened the car door and I squatted down to meet her at eye level. “Stella? Are you okay?”

She looked up at me, unblinking. “Don’t ask me that anymore. Since Brian died, it’s all you ever ask me.”

I reared back, ready to deny it. But I couldn’t. She was right. I reached across her and unsnapped her seat belt. “Come on.” I rose to stand and held out a hand to her. She smiled and took it. Her skin was warm and smooth. A tiny pulse near her wrist fluttered and seemed to send a spark straight through me. I wanted more. I wanted to pull her close and never let her go. She seemed fragile, but I knew better. When everyone around her fell apart, Stella had always been the strong one. She knew I knew that better than anyone. So she was right. It was time for me to stop asking.

“I can’t believe you still live here,” she said as we walked up the sidewalk. It was my parents’ house. After my dad died, I’d bought my sister’s half out. She went to live in Denver with her husband and kids. I lived in the place where Northpointe got its name, along the banks of the Detroit River. A two-story brick house built right after World War I. The place was bigger than I needed. A long time ago, my mother wanted me to have it so I could raise a family here. About a dozen times over the last ten years, developers had tried to get me to sell. They’d offered me twice what the place was worth, but I’d turned them down every time. This was home to me and probably always would be. Even if I never shared it with anyone but the other cops during our monthly poker games.

“Where else would I go?” I said as I opened the front door.

Stella walked in. She loved the stucco walls. The wood floors. She said something about how hard it was for her to refinish the ones in her new place. We both lamented the travesty of putting carpeting over them. She was tired. She talked a mile a minute, her brain still processing the trauma of what she’d been through. I let her. I sat with her in the kitchen. Made her tea. I drank in the tiniest details. The fine bones of her long fingers as she gestured with them. Her skin, pale and white, almost translucent. She pulled her hair back into a loose knot and wispy strands pulled free at her temples. She pushed them behind her ears. Her eyelids fluttered. She had long, dark lashes that I knew most women would kill for. Her eyes, gun-metal gray, penetrated me as I told her time and again that I’d keep her safe.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the task force and my fears about the continued threat to her life. Whoever had swapped identities with her had obviously tangled with someone dangerous. Whoever they were wouldn’t give up. They’d keep coming until they finished the job. It made it all the more urgent for me to help crack this case and find them. As much as I wanted to be with her, I was also itching to talk to Caulkins and the others to see where we stood.

“Mitch,” she said, her voice raspy from talking so long. I liked the sound of it. It skittered over my skin and warmed me.

“Keep talking,” I said. “It will help.”

She set her cup down and reached over to take my hand in hers. “You have to let me go to the hospital. The Phils were at my house in the first place because of my stupid leaky faucet. I have to know. God. Mitch. If Old Phil dies.”

She couldn’t finish the thought. She let out a gurgled sob and tears rolled down her cheeks. Her expression gutted me. I’d seen it before. Her grief. Her pain. I wanted to take it into myself and keep her from feeling it. I wanted to strike down anything and anyone who ever made her feel that way again.

“Baby, I know.” I shouldn’t have said it. I felt it. I’d always felt it. I wanted her to be mine. The need for it fierce, unyielding. But she wasn’t mine. I took a breath and started again. “It’s not safe. There are some things I’m going to have to try and explain to you. Some of it is going to be hard to hear. Some of it won’t make sense. But Stella, I will make you a promise. We will figure this all out.”

She looked up toward the ceiling, new tears spilling out the corner of her eyes. Then she locked eyes with me. “Don’t promise me. Please, don’t promise me. You, of all people. You can’t tell me everything is going to be all right. It isn’t always all right. So just tell me what you know.”

I let out a breath. “Okay. I don’t want to jump to conclusions. But we think the stuff that’s been happening to you is part of a larger criminal enterprise. Identity theft and swap. Someone switched out your information for someone with the criminal background you keep getting tagged with.”

She sniffled. “I figured it was something like that.”

I nodded. “And it’s possible that tonight was connected to that.”

She ran her thumb along the seam in my kitchen table where the leaf fit in. “And you think whoever this other person is … you think someone’s trying to do them harm only they think that’s me?”

I reached for her. I put my hand over hers then hooked my fingers under her chin and brought her gaze back up to mine. She blinked her pale eyes once. Her body stiffened but she didn’t pull away. I knew the truth of my words would slam into her piece by piece. If she was the target, it meant her friends got caught in the crossfire. She’d blame herself. She’d try to take it all on. And I wanted so desperately to spare her from it.

“I think that’s a very real possibility. Until we have a lid on this, I don’t want you going back home. You need to stay out of sight.”

She made a choked noise but didn’t pull away from me. “Phil. Old Phil. He could die because of this. They were aiming for me. You said that at my house. I didn’t really process it. I’m the target. This wasn’t random.”

“We don’t know that yet for sure, but yeah. I think there’s a fair chance that’s true. But you can’t blame yourself. You hear me? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She jerked away from me and buried her head in her hands. “Oh God. I can’t. I think I’m going to be sick.”

She stood up and kicked the chair away. She took a few staggering steps and wound up in front of my kitchen sink, her palms flat against the counter. I went to her. I put a hand at the small of her back and pulled her hair away from her face. She put up one hand to stop me.

“Just give me a minute,” she whispered. She took a breath then turned to face me. I had my hands against the counter and she stood between them. Her body pressed against mine. I didn’t move. Didn’t dare breathe. My heart seemed to pound through my chest. As I looked at her, twin images slammed into my brain. I saw Stella in front of me. Scared, beautiful. Strong. I saw the ambulance in front of her house and relived those few seconds when I didn’t know if it was for her. So close. Inches. Nanoseconds. It could have been her. They could have taken her from me before I even had the chance to tell her …

“Mitch?” My name on her lips. A whisper of air against my cheek. So close. So damn close.

“I never should have come back here,” she said. Her words hit me as if they had physical weight. What if she had never come back here? I couldn’t think it. I pushed violently against that thought. She was here. I never wanted to go back to not having her in my life. Until that moment, I hadn’t allowed myself to realize how much that was true. I’d been empty for so long and hadn’t even known it.

I lost myself. With my hands digging into the granite counter, I pressed my lips against hers and took what didn’t belong to me. Soft heat. Salty tears. Oh God. My body was charged. Combustible. I should have pulled away. I couldn’t. Then the tipping point. Stella’s hands went up. She laced her fingers through my hair and pulled me closer, then kissed me back like liquid fire.