In The Line Of Fire

“You got it.”

“To whom? May I watch?”

“I—” He broke off and looked down at the other end of the gym.

Five of the kids from yesterday remained. They were all sitting beneath the basket, watching them, their new shoes gleaming white in the overhead lights. Bobby J.—and all the rest of them—had vanished.

“Damn it,” Danny swore. “Now see what you’ve done? You chased off my kids!”

Molly turned away with a quick little twitch of her hips. God help him, but he noticed. How could any woman look that good in khakis? He hated khakis. And loafers. She wore loafers that were clicking their hard little heels all over the floor he’d polished late into the night. She was a genuine handcuff-toting, law-abiding priss. With really great hips. He wondered what she’d look like in Cia’s leather.

He watched her sit down among the kids beneath the other basket. A few minutes later she and Anita peeled off from the rest of the group and went outside. Danny took a deep breath and walked toward the rest of them.

“Back to basketball.”

“It’s going to be a little bit of a walk,” Molly apologized as she and Anita turned the corner onto the next block.

“Where’s your car?”

“In Ethiopia.”

“How come?”

Suddenly her mother’s voice filled her head, something about cutting off her nose to spite her face. Molly’s mother had been full of axioms, bless her soul.

Linda Lee French’s heart hadn’t given out until she was fifty-two. Which was a miracle, Molly had always thought, given her mother’s life. She’d raised two children on her own—one of which hadn’t been able to stay on the right side of the law to save his life, literally. She cleaned houses day and night, taking in enough extra seamstress work that Molly couldn’t remember her ever not having some piece of fabric in her hands. Any men she’d attracted after Molly’s father had run out on them had always seemed more interested in having Linda Lee support them than the other way around. And she’d always done it, generously, hopefully, until each of them left her high and dry. Finally, at fifty-two, all her hope had run out.

“The fire department decided they needed direct access to the front door of the center,” Molly explained, her heart cringing a little at the lie.

Anita laughed. “You’re a cop, not a fireman.”

Molly looked at her sharply. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Danny said you did it.”

He’d told the kids that? “What else did he say?”

“He said you did it because you’re hot for him.”

Molly choked as she unlocked her car door. “That’s not true.”

“Yeah. Whatever. Happens to all of us, right?”

Molly grabbed the drugstore bag out of her passenger seat. It held a pregnancy test and a box of condoms. “But most of us take precautions.”

“I knew you were going to get around to a lecture.”

She pushed the bag into Anita’s hands. “Just listen to me for a minute. Please.”

The girl rolled her eyes but she took the bag.

“You are a special, intelligent human being. You don’t need to let some guy paw you just to prove that to him.”

“Cia—”

“Forget Cia. This is about you.” Molly took a deep breath and plunged in. They hated it when she talked to them this way. “When they’re pawing you, most guys aren’t thinking about how special you are. Most guys are just thinking about themselves. If you sacrifice yourself—your life—to that, you’re only betraying yourself.” And because she knew Anita would probably do it, anyway, she’d bought the condoms. “There’s more to this than just pregnancy, Anita. There’s HIV and all kinds of other nasties out there. So try to make sure of who you’re with. Make sure of where he’s been and try to find out if he’s that one guy who knows you’re special. I promise you, he’s out there. And even then, even when you find him, promise me you’ll use what I put in that bag.”

Anita opened the top, peeked into it and groaned.

Molly cleared her throat. “I put a pregnancy test in there, too. Can you pull that off at home without anyone knowing, or do you want to spend the night at my place?”

The gratitude in the girl’s eyes wrenched Molly’s heart. “I can do it at home. My dad’s hardly ever there.” Molly knew Anita’s mother had died years ago of a drug overdose.

“Okay, then let me know. Whatever the result, we’ll take it from there. I’ll help you, Anita, all I can.”

“Thanks.” Anita started to turn away. Then she looked back over her shoulder. “I’m really scared, Molly.”

Molly couldn’t tell her not to be. She just nodded. Then, when Anita was several strides down the street, she stopped her again. “By the way, where’d the new gym shoes come from?”

Anita turned to walk backward, looking down at her feet. “Coach,” she said, glancing up again.

Coach? He’d been here twenty-four hours, Molly thought, as something tried to choke her, and already he was Coach? “The rec center doesn’t have that kind of money!”

“He paid for them his own self. He robbed a bank, you know.”

“He did not! It was a convenience store!” What had he told these impressionable kids, anyway? Molly felt herself moving, taking a step back toward the center, ready to take another strip off his hide. Then she realized that Anita was laughing.

“I knew that,” the girl said. “I just wanted to find out if you did.”

Molly let out her breath and slumped back against her car.

She really, really hated him.

Molly dragged herself home at 12:20 in the morning, bone tired. She tossed her uniform cap on her bed, dragged the scrunchie from her hair and dug her fingers into her curls. When her hair sprang free in her hands, she blew it out of her eyes.

The small of her back hurt from where a teenage behemoth—not one of her rec center kids, thank heaven—had gouged her with his knee as she had wrestled with him on a very hard sidewalk. He’d been higher than a kite. He was in a holding cell now. It broke her heart. But even worse was the fact that suddenly she was getting all the dangerous and waste-of-time calls thrown her way—and she didn’t even have a partner on this shift yet. She had to wonder if it was her comeuppance for having squeezed her way onto the task force.

She undressed and found a T-shirt in her drawer, this one sporting the logo of the Dallas Cowboys. She hadn’t worn her Texas A & M shirt since Danny had turned up in an almost identical one. Danny again. She shook her head. Why couldn’t she get him off her mind? Because he was an enigma, she decided, going into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Because—damn it—he wasn’t what an ex-con was supposed to be.

She’d known her share. She’d put in her time and she’d met the best and the worst the world had to offer. Danny just didn’t have that same sly glide to his eyes.

Didn’t mean a thing, she told herself, staring at her reflection in the glass. There were exceptions to every rule.

Why was he coming on to her? she wondered with her next breath. Because he definitely was.

Molly took a step back from the glass, eyeing herself critically. Okay, she was cute. Curly brown hair, big green eyes—they were good, but not dazzling—and that dusting of freckles over her nose. But there was nothing especially worth coming on to there, at least not for an ex-mobster who had probably had more than his fair share of exotic, olive-skinned women with come-hither eyes over the years.