Page 5

Not ten minutes later and Roni was in the kitchen in her big, pink, terrycloth bathrobe. Her shower cap removed, her afro was stunning again.

“That’s more like it,” Brax said when she sat down at the small kitchen table.

“What’s more like it?” Roni asked as he sat a sandwich on a plate in front of her.

“Your hair. I like it big.”

Roni smiled. “My big hair and your messy hair. Some pair we are.”

Brax smiled too as he sat down across from her at the small table. “Enjoy,” he said as she lifted the top slice of bread to see what was inside of the sandwich.

She smiled. “A baloney sandwich? Really, Brax?”

He laughed and hunched his shoulders. “What did you expect? I never rustled up a meal in my life. That’s the best I can do.”

“Thanks,” she said as she bit into her sandwich. She was starved. “You aren’t eating?”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on. I’ve never seen you so emotional.”

Roni glanced up at his big green eyes, and then she sat the sandwich down on the plate and stared at the plate.

“Veronica, what’s wrong? Is it your health?”

She looked at him. “My health?” Then she realized how much he worried about her. She quickly reassured him. “No, nothing like that. I’m quite healthy. I haven’t received any bad reports or anything like that.”

All kinds of thoughts had already gone through Brax’s mind. “Then what is it?”

“My partner shot a suspect tonight for no real reason.”

It was that job of hers. He already figured that would ultimately be it. “What happened?”

“We saw this kid snatch a lady’s phone and then he took off running. He couldn’t have been no more than nineteen if that, but he did steal her phone so we gave chase. We started the chase in our patrol car, but then we got out and chased him on foot, all the way to the end of this long alley. It was behind a housing project and we knew, if he got into those projects, he could easily disappear. So we gave it our all. But he still had the upper hand. Until he tripped and fell. I was able to catch up to him then. But when my partner, when Jerard got there, he was angry that the kid made him run. So he started beating on him.”

Brax shook his head. “Cops,” he said derisively. They were never his favorite people with their overinflated views of their power. It was why he never wanted Roni to become one. But ever since she was a kid it was her dream to be a detective someday, and to solve crimes.

“I tried to stop him, and I think he was going to let up, but then the kid spit at him. He spat on my uniform more than he spat on Jerard, but the next thing I knew Jerard pulled out his weapon and shot the kid twice. Killing him.”

Brax was shocked. “Damn,” he said. But he could tell by that distressed look in her eyes that there was even more to the story. “Go on.”

“Then Jerard calls Detective Mulvaney. He’s like the fixer for our precinct. Any time a cop does something he has no business doing, they call Mulvaney. So Mulvaney, who’s always nearby it seems, shows up. And even though I told him what happened, he suddenly grabbed my service revolver and shot the already dead suspect three times with my own gun.”

Brax frowned. “He did what ?”

“Then he put my gun in the suspect’s hand and fired a shot as if the suspect had stolen my gun, I got it back, and we wrestled and I had to shoot him just as Jerard was shooting him. It’s all so that we can claim self-defense. That’s the story they told the brass when we were all called in for interrogations.”

Brax was angry. “Didn’t I tell you that kind of bullshit went with the territory of being a cop? Didn’t I tell you that, Veronica?”

“I’ve been a cop for seven years now. Straight out of college. And I know the territory. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before in all of my seven years on the Force. It’s not like what you see on TV. This kind of shit don’t happen all the time, I keep telling you that.”

“But it happens,” said Brax. “And now it’s happened to you. Now they got you roped in it.”

Roni couldn’t argue with what was a natural fact. “Yeah, it’s happened to me.”

“I take it they wanted you to sign your name to the falsified report?”

She nodded. “That’s exactly what they wanted me to do.”

“Did you?”

“Hell no! I called Internal Affairs.”

But that distressed Brax even more. “Why would you call them?”

“What do you mean why? That’s protocol when a cop misbehaves.”

“But their asses are crooked too! They aren’t gonna help you.”

“Then what will? Signing that report so that Jerard can get mad again and shoot another petty thief? So that he and Mulvaney can get away with what they’ve done?” She shook her head. “No way. He can’t be a cop anymore. That’s the bottom line. Mulvaney either.”

“And you think going to Internal Affairs will get them fired? You actually believe that, Roni?”

Roni exhaled. “After my conversation with them, probably not.”

“But guess what it will do for you? It’ll put a target on your back, that’s what it’ll do for you.”

Roni was distressed. “But I followed protocol. What else was I supposed to do?”

“You call me dammit!” Brax was angry. “Or you quit this cop and robbers bullshit altogether!”

“It’s not bullshit! It’s what I want to do with my life, I don’t care how much you disapprove. I’m not quitting. I passed that detective’s exam and I’m going to become a detective one day and change this shit from the inside.”

“You passed that exam last year and they passed you over for some other guy.”

“He had more years under his belt. He was more seasoned.”

“But think about it, Roni. After what happened today, and after it gets out that you didn’t stand up with your fellow colleagues in blue, do you really think they’re going to promote you to anything but the backburner? Get real, Veronica. Get real!”

The emotions returned and Roni covered her face. She knew her career, her dream was over. She knew it when it happened. She knew it when she was talking with the brass and they weren’t trying to hear the truth. She knew it when she hung up with Internal Affairs and they were making excuses for Jerard already.

As soon as Brax saw that Roni was anguished again, he rose to his feet. “Okay that’s it,” he said affirmatively.

Roni, with tears in her eyes, looked up at him. “What’s it?”

“You’re getting out of this town.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’re getting out.”

Roni was baffled. “And going where?”

“Home. You’re coming back to Victorville. To our hometown. Yes, I know it’s no New York City. But it’s in upstate New York and it’s a half-a-million people strong with crime running rampant there too. You can be a cop there. You won’t have a target on your back there.”

“And I’ll have to start over there when I’m so close to promotion here, Brax. Once I become a detective I can move up the ranks faster. I can make changes then.”

“So what’s your plan? To stay here? To need backup and they don’t show up? To keep putting in for promotions that will never happen? To be a twenty year veteran cop still pounding the pavement?”

That look came over Roni’s beautiful face that Brax knew so well. She was facing the truth. The hard, cold truth. And she shook her head. “You’re right. I knew it after I left the precinct earlier. I knew my career was over then.”

“Then come home, Veronica. You’ll get promoted there.”

She looked at him hopefully.

He knew he couldn’t oversale it. “I don’t run the police department, or any other governmental agency in town, but I do have some clout. I do have connections. I’ll see what I can do. You know I will.”

“But if I quit, they’ll win. I can’t let them get away with what they did to that innocent kid. Yeah, he was a thief. But stealing an iPhone is not now nor ever will be a capital offense. Jerard and Mulvaney turned it into a capital offense. And I can’t stand by and let them get away with that.”

Brax placed his hands in his pockets. He exhaled. “If they pay, will you come home? Because whether they pay or not, you’ll still be the cop that snitched. You’ll still be the cop with the target on her back.”

“I know that.” She exhaled too. “I can’t live through another day like this.”

“If you stay here, there will be other days like this. Especially now that your own fellow cops will be gunning for you. I don’t put my foot down nearly enough when it comes to you, Veronica, but I’m putting my foot down now. You are not staying in this town. Nobody’s going to be targeting you and I’m on the other end of the state. It’s too damn dangerous for you to stay here.”

Roni stared at him in that serious, thoughtful way that was more her usual look than not. “I know my mother told you to look out for me, but I thought you said she told you, on her dying bed, that you shouldn’t discourage me from my chosen profession. A profession I love, by the way.”

“But that profession doesn’t love you back. Not anymore. Not in this town. You’ve got to face that fact.” Then he realized something else she said. “Your mother never told me to look out for you.”

Roni was surprised. “She didn’t?”

“No! She told me to stay away from you.”

Roni stared at me. “Why would she tell you that?”

Brax didn’t want to admit it. Especially not to Roni.

“What? Tell me. Why would she tell you to stay away from me?”

“She said when it came to women, that I’m no good.” He said it and looked at Roni. “She said it’s in my bloodstream.”

Roni’s heart sank. Her conclusions about Brax wasn’t just the little snippets she’d seen of him with other women, but it was actual fact if her beloved mother said it too.

Deep down, Roni had always hoped it wasn’t true. Now she knew it was absolutely true. She had called it right. “But if she didn’t tell you to . . . Why are you . . .”

“Looking out for you?” Brax asked her.

She nodded.“Yes.”

“I don’t know if your mother ever told you about this. My mother certainly never talks about him ever. But you remember my twin brother.”

Roni nodded. “Of course I do.”

“He moved away from Victorville when he went to college, and he only returned for holidays and birthdays, things like that. But on his twenty-eighth birthday, he was to be married to this woman that I thought was pure perfection. Everybody thought so. But two days before their wedding date, he caught her in bed with another man. That perfect woman was a piece of trash. And it broke my brother. It broke him to a point that he killed himself.”

When he said those words, Roni’s heart dropped. She remembered that hellish time well. She stared at Brax.

He still remembered it like it was yesterday. “When he died, it broke something in me too. It was that day that I knew I could never trust any woman ever. It was like the beginning of the end for me in that department. It was traumatizing. That’s why I hit and run with every woman I fool around with. And that’s why I intend to keep it surface like that forevermore.”

Roni and Brax shared a look that said it all. And neither one of them wanted to go there.

He frowned. “Let’s focus on tonight. Come home, Roni. It’s time for you to come home.”

He knew it sounded as if he was begging her, but he realized in that moment that having her in Victorville again would be his dream come true. He could keep an eye on her anytime he wanted to see her instead of only when he could get away to see her. She wouldn’t be in the kind of danger she would face in this town. “Will you come home?”

Roni exhaled again. She had no good choices. Just one bad choice after another one. Because going back home for her, after securing a job in the big leagues called the NYPD, would be like going backwards for her.

But she had to face facts. “When it gets out that I refused to go along with the big lie, then you’re right. I won’t be able to live that down. But they’ve got to pay, Brax. If Jerard and Mulvaney pay, then yes, I’ll go back to Victorville. I’ll go back home until I decide what I’m going to do next.” Her face scrunched up. “I don’t see where I have any other viable option.”

Then she looked at Brax. “But how will they pay if I’m quitting?”

Brax was so inwardly pleased that he didn’t consider the mountain he had to climb. “You leave that to me,” he said. “Now eat.”

She stared at him. He was a billionaire businessman with a lot of clout in the world, let alone Victorville. But what if news traveled fast and he couldn’t even get her a beat cop gig in her hometown? What would become of her then?

But the idea that she would be in the same town with Brax again was enticing to her too. It was as if she knew the truth about him and why he distrusted women, and that changing a grown man was damn near impossible, but she still had faith. That perhaps somewhere, deep within herself, that he would someday come to realize that she could possibly be enough for him and turn his life completely around. It would take a miracle she knew. And she knew she was probably living in fantasyland. But living in faith was far better than living in fear.

She ate her sandwich.