Fatal Frenzy: Book 9 of the Fatal Series Read online

  He broke the kiss slowly, backing off until his lips were barely touching hers. “How do you propose we get ourselves out of here?”

  Sam squeezed her internal muscles tightly, drawing another gasp from him. “I have no idea. This was your big idea.”

  “I was lying here minding my own business until you came in and seduced me.”

  “Who shut off the TV?”

  “I might’ve played a small part in what happened, but I’m the innocent victim of an older, wiser woman who had her wicked way with me.”

  “Oh, can we play that game sometime?”

  He cupped her ass and dipped a finger between her cheeks. “We can play any game you want anytime you want.”

  “I think I might want to keep you for longer than high school.”

  “I think I might let you keep me forever.”

  “Yes, please.” Sam kissed him again, hooking her arm around his neck to keep him from escaping. “I’ve heard,” she whispered many passionate minutes later, “that you’ve got a big day tomorrow so you ought to go home and get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting my Eagle Scout award. Will you fuck me again after that?”

  Sam rocked with quiet laughter. “I’ll fuck you anytime and any place.”

  “I have to be the luckiest guy in the history of the world.”

  “You are pretty lucky, but then again so am I.”

  After one more long tongue-tangling kiss, he finally withdrew from her before they could forget where they were a second time. “You take the blanket.” While he pulled up his pants and removed her jeans completely, Sam wrapped herself up in the blanket. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  They tiptoed up the stairs and into their room, drawing only the attention of the agent who was positioned outside of Scotty’s room. He nodded to them and returned to the book he was reading.

  Inside their room, they fell against the door laughing quietly.

  “You know that someday they’re going to write bestselling memoirs about all the stuff they see in our house,” Nick said.

  “Let them. What do we care if the whole world knows we’re wildly in love?”

  “We don’t care at all.”

  Sam dropped the blanket and the rest of her clothes into a pile on the floor, locked her service weapon and badge into her bedside table and headed for the shower to clean up. By the time she brushed her teeth and returned to the bedroom, he had folded up the blanket and her clothes, which were in a neat pile on top of his dresser. “Anal-retentive freakazoid,” she said as she climbed naked into bed with him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. And this is so much better than high school because we get to sleep together after we fuck on the sofa.”

  “Did you do a lot of fucking on the sofa?”

  “I’m not answering that unless you do too.”

  “I did my share of fooling around,” he said bluntly. “But I never made love until the first time I made love to you.”

  “That was very smooth. You ought to be a politician when you grow up.”

  “You think? They always seem so seedy.”

  “I think you could be anything you wanted. Hell, you could be president someday.”

  He smiled at her. “You never answered my question about sofa sex.”

  “I did my share too, although usually not at my house due to the overwhelming fear of the father with the gun.” She cupped his face and looked into his gorgeous hazel eyes. “But I never made love until the first time with you.”

  Nick buried his fingers in her hair and tugged her closer for another kiss and then settled her into his arms, her head on his chest, his fingers running through her hair. This was her absolute favorite way to end a day.

  “You going to tell me what happened to your hand?” he asked, running his finger lightly over her swollen knuckles.

  “I punched Detective Ramsey in the face, sending him backward down the stairs. Something about a broken wrist and concussion, but he deserved it after saying he thought Stahl would’ve taken some of the starch out of me.”

  “Fucking right he did. Good for you. Are you in trouble over it?”

  “Who knows? Least of my worries right now. Oh and you’ll be glad to know that Hill is pissed with me because I forgot to stroke his ego.”

  “You’d better not be stroking anything of his.”

  “Shut up,” she said with a laugh.

  “Guess who showed up at the White House today demanding to be let in to see me?”

  Sam went immediately on full alert. “Who?”

  “Nicoletta.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? What did she want?”

  “I don’t know. I turned her away.”

  “Oh my God, and now you feel guilty because you wouldn’t let her in.”

  He shrugged ever so subtly but Sam felt it.

  She raised herself up so she could see his face. “You will not feel guilty for refusing to allow her to screw up this huge moment in your life. Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah, babe, I hear you.”

  He said what she wanted to hear, but the wounded look in his eyes infuriated her.

  “I hate that she does this to you. I hate it.”

  “I do too.”

  “What right does she have to show up at the White House of all places and demand to be let in simply because she’s the one who gave birth to you? She was never your mother. Ever. Laine O’Connor is your mother.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “If you turned Laine away I’d tell you you’re a heartless bastard and never to do that again. But turning away Nicoletta is you taking care of you for a change. You don’t ever need to feel guilty about doing what’s best for you when she has never done that.”

  “I know.”

  “But you still feel bad, don’t you?”

  “I wish I didn’t, but old habits are hard to break.”

  “I’m talking to Brant in the morning, and I’ll make sure she doesn’t get anywhere near you tomorrow or ever. I swear to God I’ll claw her eyes out if she tries anything tomorrow.”

  Nick chuckled softly. “Easy tiger.”

  “I’m not kidding around.”

  “I know, baby. In other news, I broke Twitter today.”

  “You did what?”

  “I got more than two million followers in three hours after they made my Twitter account live. That apparently broke some sort of record or something.”

  “That is so cool. My hubby, the Twitter rock star.” She moved so she was on top of him, her lips hovering just above his. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Again?”

  “Stop,” she said, laughing. “I’m being serious.”

  He filled his hands with her butt cheeks and squeezed. “I’d do anything for you.”

  “Will you please focus on the two million people who love you so much they couldn’t wait to follow you on Twitter and not give one more second of your time or attention to the woman who has never loved you the way you deserve to be loved? Will you do that? Will you do it for me?”

  “Yeah, baby. I’ll do that for you.”

  “Good. Now go to sleep. You’re getting sworn in tomorrow. I don’t want you looking like shit.”

  His arms encircled her and he exhaled, relaxing as much as he ever did. Now hopefully he’d sleep rather than lying awake all night thinking about the woman who’d already hurt him too many times in the past.

  Never again. Sam would kill her before she’d let that happen.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  For a long time after Sam left, Gonzo sat staring at the foot of Skip’s hospital bed, uncertain of what he was supposed to say to him.<
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  “Not a day goes by that I don’t relive the moment Steven was shot,” Skip said after a prolonged silence. “You know what I remember so vividly?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The smell of gunfire and exhaust. It all happened so fast. One minute we were standing on the sidewalk, the next he’d been shot and the car that carried the shooter was roaring away. I didn’t know what to do first—see to him or go after the car. I chose him, and I’ve wondered every day since if I made the right call. He was already gone, and the shooter got away because I made that choice.”

  Gonzo struggled with his emotions as he listened to Skip.

  “He was just picked off randomly because he wore the uniform. I honestly believe that. Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it was some sort of gang initiation thing or something like that. They didn’t care who he was or what he meant to the people who loved him. They set out that day to kill a cop, and they not only succeeded, they’ve gotten away with it. But what it did to us… I can’t even begin to describe the devastation.”

  “You don’t have to,” Gonzo said.

  “No, I guess I don’t. It hurts like a son of a bitch. No other way to say it. And in your case, you feel responsible because he was under your command. Steven and I were the same rank, but I still felt responsible because it happened feet from me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I didn’t even see the car until it was racing away from us. Rank and responsibility don’t matter between partners. There’s a bond there that supersedes the department BS. When you’re out on the streets, it’s just the two of you against everyone else and no one cares who outranks who.”

  “He was pissing me off with his complaints about the cold, the long shift, the boredom, so I said if he shut up I’d let him take the lead. He was all excited about that because I never let him take the lead. Hadn’t felt he was ready yet.”

  “If you’re waiting for it to make sense, it never will.”

  Gonzo had come to that conclusion on his own in the awful hours since it happened.

  “You will live with this for the rest of your life. You will relive those few minutes every day, and it will never add up to something that makes sense.”

  “How do you live with it?”

  “You just do. What choice do you have? I was like you—I had a young family counting on me and didn’t have the luxury of walking away from the job that paid the bills. I had no choice but to go back out there with a new partner who could never take the place of the one I’d lost and continue to do the job. My family needed me to do that. But I didn’t want to. I did not want to.”

  “How long did it take before you got over that?”

  “Truthfully? Until I made captain and was off the streets. I hated every second I spent pounding the pavement after Steven was killed. It was never the same for me after that. And it may never be the same for you either. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still be effective on the job. It doesn’t mean you can’t successfully supervise junior officers. It will just be… It’ll be different now.”

  Gonzo took it all in, processing what Skip was saying and trying to figure out how he felt about it. His mind was so muddled with disturbing memories and anger and despair. So much despair.

  “The most important thing you can do now is to not make any big decisions. Focus on getting through this hour and then the next and the one after that and then the funeral. A few weeks from now that painful knot in your chest will begin to ease up a little, and you’ll feel like you can breathe again without every breath causing you pain. That will happen. I promise.”

  Gonzo leaned forward, arms on his knees and head bent to hide his tears from a man he admired so greatly. “His parents were so nice to me, and I just wanted to scream at them that they should hate me for letting this happen to him.”

  “They’ll never hate you. They may hate the man who shot him, but they will never hate you because he loved you, and they know that. You might be blaming yourself, but they never will. Steven’s wife never once made me feel like it was my fault. Not once. It took me a long time to understand how it was possible that she didn’t blame me.”

  Gonzo pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, wishing he could stop the tears.

  “I want to say one other thing, and I hope you’ll really hear me on this one. After Steven was killed, I was so caught up in how it affected me that I neglected the people who loved me most. I was obsessed with caring for his wife at the expense of my own. I ruined what had been a pretty good marriage up to that point, and we never got back on track. If you let this take over your life, you may wake up one day to find that the people you loved before aren’t around anymore. Don’t let that happen. You’ll regret that almost as much as you regret what happened to your partner. Christina is going to want to be there for you. Let her in. If you freeze her out, you’ll be sorry for the rest of your life.”

  Gonzo nodded in acknowledgment because that was all he was capable of at the moment.

  “A terrible, awful thing has happened, Gonzo. But you will survive this, even if it doesn’t seem like it now.”

  “I took him for granted. I hate that, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do. It never occurred to me for one second that anyone other than Steven would be my partner for the rest of my life. We all take for granted the people we’re closest to. You’re no different than anyone else that way.”

  “He saved my life, but there wasn’t a damned thing I could do for him.”

  “Even knowing what was going to happen to him a short time later, do you think he would’ve done anything different the day you were shot?”

  “No.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t have. He did for you what you would’ve done for him if you could have. He’d never hold it against you that you couldn’t save him.”

  “But even after what he did for me, I still busted his balls and gave him shit. I should’ve been more… Appreciative.”

  “Did you thank him for what he did that day?”

  “Yeah, a couple times.”

  “Then he knew you appreciated it. I bet that other than you yourself, no one wanted things back to normal between you guys more than he did. He was probably thrilled to have you back to busting his balls because the alternative didn’t bear consideration. He probably had many a nightmare about the day you were shot and lots of sleepless nights to think about what could’ve happened. You ever think about that?”

  “Not really, no.” He was ashamed to admit that he’d spent very little time considering how traumatic his shooting had probably been for the young partner who’d saved his life. “I owe him everything. I feel like he deserved better than what he got from me.”

  “You’re going to have to let that one go, Gonzo. There was nothing in this world you could’ve done to change the outcome the other night. Somehow you’re going to have to accept that. It won’t happen today or tomorrow or even next month, but you will find a way to live with this.”

  “I really appreciate you talking to me about it, especially at this hour.”

  “I’m always here for you. I hope you know that.”

  Gonzo took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll get out of your hair so you can get some sleep. Big day for your family tomorrow.”

  “Indeed it is. Never expected to have a son-in-law who was vice president of the United States.”

  “I don’t think Sam ever expected to be married to the VP.”

  Skip replied with a bark of laughter. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  Gonzo stood and reached over the bed rail to squeeze Skip’s right hand. “Thank you.”

  “Take care of yourself, Tommy. You’re a good man and a great cop. Anyone would be privileged to partner up with you.”

  “Means a lot coming from you, sir.” He left Skip’s room and went into the l
iving room.

  Celia jumped up from the sofa.

  “So sorry to keep you folks up late,” Gonzo said.

  “No apology needed. I hope it helped to talk to Skip.”

  “It did.”

  “I hope it’s okay that I really want to hug you again right now.”

  Gonzo forced a smile for her. “I wouldn’t say no to that.”

  She hugged him tightly. “We’re all here for you, Tommy. No matter what you need. We’re here.”

  “Thank you. I’ll get out of here so you can go to bed. Have a great time tomorrow.”

  “We will. You’ve got a ride home, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call Patrol.”

  “Take care, honey.”

  Gonzo stepped out in the frigid darkness and walked over to the Secret Service checkpoint, flashing his badge again. The agent waved him through. As he walked toward Capitol Hill, he thought about calling for a ride but then decided to walk, even though it was freezing and home was a couple of miles away.

  The talk with Skip had helped to put some things into perspective. Though he couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, it was good to know that someday he would. And in the meantime, he would heed Skip’s very good advice to not let the rest of his life fall apart. He loved Christina and Alex too much to do that to either of them.

  * * *

  Inauguration day dawned snowy and bitterly cold. Nick had been awake early, so he’d already showered and shaved when he brought coffee up to Sam. He tried kissing her awake, but she didn’t budge. So he sent a hand under the covers to find a warm soft breast to play with.

  Her eyes popped open. “Oh thank goodness. I was thinking my husband was going to be awfully pissed if someone else was doing that.”

  She made him laugh even when he was nervous about the day to come and still agitated by the unexpected appearance of his mother yesterday. Thank God for Samantha. He had that thought at least ten times a day, and today, he was doubly thankful that he got to have her by his side for what would be one of the biggest days of his life.

  Nothing would ever top last March 26, but this was a close second.