Once a Hero

“You can find out what you’ve missed. I’ll take you where they’ve all probably gone,” he offered.

“Home,” she scoffed.

“No. There’s another place.” Where officers went before or after their shifts, to eat, relax and just hang out with people who understood the complexities of doing their job. They wouldn’t appreciate his bringing her there. “Just don’t make me regret this….”

“YOU BROUGHT ME TO A BAR? This lighthouse is a tavern?” she asked as she passed through the door he held open for her. While all conversation didn’t cease as it had at the police department earlier, some people stopped talking and turned toward her and the sergeant. But the jukebox continued to play, over the sounds of several conversations and raucous laughter.

“It’s the Lighthouse Bar and Grille,” he replied, probably thinking she hadn’t seen the sign when they’d pulled into the parking lot in their respective cars.

The mingled aromas of burgers, steaks and salty fries filled the air. Peanut shells crunched beneath her feet as she followed Kent across the room toward a long table near the game area. Several members of the Citizen’s Police Academy sat together. She glanced around and noticed that except for those civilian patrons, the rest of the faces were familiar from law enforcement.

“How have I never known about this place?” she wondered aloud. She’d been living here a year. How had she not known that the Lakewood PD hung out at a lighthouse on the Lake Michigan shore? She’d asked around if there was any place the officers frequented, but no one had told her about this place. Out of loyalty to Terlecki?

“You don’t exactly inspire confidences,” Kent pointed out.

“So why did you bring me here?” she asked.

His lips lifted in a slight grin. “Where did you think I was leading you? Off the pier?”

“Of course. Right into the lake.” She had considered that might be what he’d had in mind. “Don’t tell me you weren’t tempted.”

“Trying to put words in my mouth again, Ms. Powell?”

“There isn’t room for me to put words,” she insisted. “Not with your foot there most of the time.”

He shook his head and laughed. “Nice try, but you’re not going to get to me.”

“We both know I get to you,” she said, “but then I don’t expect you to admit that.” She had to find some other way to extract the truth from him, because she had a horrible feeling he’d covered his tracks too well for her to get the evidence she needed. And if she didn’t find proof, she couldn’t help the man who mattered most to her.

“Erin,” Kent began, but he wasn’t the only one calling her name.

She ignored him, leaving his side to join the other members of the CPA. An older couple who had admitted joining the program for thrills waved at her. “Look,” the woman, Bernie, said. “We’re just like the police officers.”

Most of Erin’s classmates sat around the table, except for two teachers, the youth minister and the saleswoman who’d, thankfully, taken the chair between Erin and the college girl before class started. The participants all beamed as if they felt a sense of belonging—a sense that Erin envied, doubting she would ever feel it herself. Most of Lakewood, out of loyalty to the police department or Kent personally, disapproved of her articles.

The college girl who had earlier interrupted her conversation with Terlecki grabbed Erin’s arm and pulled her down onto a chair beside her. “What’s going on with you two?” she asked, her voice giddy with curiosity. She turned away from Erin, tracking Terlecki’s long strides toward the bar.

“Uh…” Erin searched her memory for the girl’s name from the introduction part of the class. “Amy. Nothing’s going on, really.”

The woman sitting on the other side of Erin snorted in derision.

Amy giggled. “See, everyone knows that you two have something going on.”

“No, we don’t,” Erin insisted.

“But you both disappeared during the class, then you just walked in together,” the blonde stated, unwilling to let it drop.

“Come on,” the other woman said, pulling Erin to her feet. Despite her thin build, her grip was strong. And despite her youthful appearance, fine lines on her fair skin betrayed her age as probably almost twice the college girl’s. “Let’s play darts.”

Erin followed, willing to use any excuse to escape the nosy girl, even though she hadn’t thrown darts since she had with her older brother. And now she couldn’t play with him…thanks to Kent Terlecki, who had sent Mitchell to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. Mitchell would have never dealt drugs.

“I’m surprised you walked in at all,” the older woman mused, “let alone with Sergeant Terlecki.” She pulled darts from the board and stepped back. Like Amy, she had long blond hair, but a couple of silver strands shone among the platinum. “I thought he’d finally gotten rid of you.”

Erin turned toward her, surprised by her barely veiled animosity. She expected it from police officers, but not civilians, although some of them weren’t shy about telling her she was wrong. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

“Marla. Marla Halliday.” She waited, as if Erin was supposed to recognize her name. Then she added, “My son is a police officer—Sergeant Bartholomew ‘Billy’ Halliday with the vice unit.”

The name still meant nothing to Erin—it hadn’t come up in any of her research—but the woman’s attitude made complete sense now. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. When you attack the department, you’re attacking every one of those hardworking officers—not just Sergeant Terlecki,” Marla admonished, with a mother’s fierce protectiveness.

“I’m sure your son is a fine officer, but—”

“That’s your problem, honey. You’re sure regardless of the facts. You’re sure even when you’re wrong.” Marla’s porcelain skin reddened. “Not that my son isn’t a fine officer, because he is. But he’s not Sergeant Terlecki.”

“Then he is a fine officer.” He wouldn’t frame a man for a crime he hadn’t committed just to pad his arrest record and further his career, as Kent Terlecki had.

“But Billy’s not a hero,” his mother said.

“You’re saying Sergeant Terlecki—Kent Terlecki is a hero?”

Marla nodded. “Why do you think they call him Bullet?”

“I have no idea.” The mystery of his nickname had been bugging her since she had moved to the west Michigan town of Lakewood. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Hey, Ms. Halliday,” Kent said as he joined them.

“Do you have some kind of radar for whenever I ask a question?” Erin asked, her stomach knotted with frustration over how close she’d come to learning one of his secrets before he’d thwarted her again.

“You have to be careful of this one,” Kent said to Marla Halliday. “She tries to interview everyone.”

“No interview here,” Marla said. “We were just going to play darts.” Her blue eyes twinkled. Kent grimaced, but she ignored him. “Here, Erin, why don’t you go first?”

Erin closed her fingers around the proffered bunch of brightly colored darts. She chose one to throw, then turned to the board to find someone had pinned a blown-up picture of her there.

Not someone. Him.

Kent Terlecki was no hero.

Chapter Two

A chuckle at the shocked expression on her face rumbled in Kent’s chest, but he suppressed it. Instead he moved up behind her, then closed his hand around her fingers holding the dart.

“See?” he said as he lifted her hand and guided the throw. “A bull’s-eye is right between the eyes.”

“My eyes,” she muttered. As the dart pierced the paper across the bridge of her nose, she winced.

“Your chin and ears are five points, your mouth and cheeks ten and your—”