BLACK WIDOW (Book #1 of The Black Widow Series) Read online

  “Enchanted is more like it,” I mumbled under my breath.

  His head tilted to the side. Before he could speak, I changed the subject. “Why don’t you have a car?” It wasn’t unheard of in the city, but I was still curious. Most of the people I knew could match their cars to their outfits if they wanted.

  “Haven’t really needed one until now. I drive an assigned car when I'm on duty, and public transportation works when I’m not. I used to have a bike, but I lost it recently.”

  “A bike?” I asked, picturing this gigantic man on a kid’s bicycle. It was like imagining a circus act.

  “Harley Davidson. Dayna Wide Glide. It was the anniversary edition. Custom everything.” There was a wistful gleam in his eyes as he shook his head at the memory of it. “God, I miss it.”

  I didn’t know what a Dayna Wide Glide was, but I had no trouble imagining him cruising the streets of Chicago with a rumbling engine between his legs. His hands on the handlebars, pulling his big broad chest taut. I went ahead and put the uniform on him too and nearly sighed at the magnificence of the image. And then I pushed the image away because I didn’t need to be thinking about such things.

  “Was it stolen or something?” I asked. “Because that would be kind of ironic.”

  He chuckled. “People steal from cops too. But no. I had an … accident.”

  An untold story hung heavily in the air around us. I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I gave him an out. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay, but I couldn’t accept a ride with you anyway.”

  His lips curled into a smile. “Now that we’re dating, you’ll have to get in a car with me at some point.” He raised his eyebrows. “Of course, I’ll have to get one first. I’ll put it on my list of things to do tomorrow.”

  “We aren’t dating,” I protested, though I couldn’t help but smile at his insistence. “I don’t even know you.”

  The train began to slow. We both looked up to see the bright lights of the station ahead. He turned in his seat so he was more squarely facing me. His knees hit mine again, and I nearly fell out of my chair from the slight contact.

  “But I think you should. I have a feeling it would do us both some good.” His intense blue eyes, which had been laser focused on mine, dropped to my mouth. My stomach dived with them.

  He leaned forward, so close I decided he was actually going to kiss me.

  Right there on the train.

  A complete stranger.

  The faint but spicy smell of bourbon beckoned me. Something inside me tightened. Fortunately, a small gasp from the seats across from us snapped me out of it.

  I pulled back and glanced at Gladys, who sat with her hand across her chest, her eyes riveted on us. She must be appalled at the thought that I might kiss a complete stranger. My grandmother would’ve been.

  “Ilsa would approve,” she said, nodding her head and surprising me.

  I shook mine as the train came to a complete stop. Ilsa had been a fool. I would not be an Ilsa. I'd learned my lesson.

  “In addition to not taking rides from strange men, I also don’t kiss them.”

  I stood as the doors opened. I gave him one last smile before walking away from what could’ve been the next best thing to never happen to me.

  HIM

  “You’re not really going to give up that easily, are you?” Gladys asked.

  I was a little shell-shocked after being shot down after what I’d considered a pretty good effort on my part. I’d put myself out there. Really stepped out of my comfort zone, thanks to Melinda. I wondered if she’d be proud of me, or if she might get a little satisfaction from the brush-off I’d received.

  Why had I let her get to me anyway? Sure, train girl was a brunette. Sure, she talked about Casablanca as if she was delivering a goddamn dissertation. That didn’t mean she was the brunette with big brains I was supposed to give a chance to. She’d literally been the first woman to cross my path, and I’d mistakenly thought since she’d seemed a little battered and beaten herself, she might be the perfect woman to help me get over Elena. And maybe Melinda, too. A week with a stranger? If that couldn’t cure a bruised ego, I didn’t know what would.

  But giving up was exactly what I’d intended to do. So when I slipped through the doors of the train behind her, it wasn’t because she was beautiful. Or because she had the most stunning green eyes I’d ever seen. Or because she’d blushed when she’d thought I might kiss her. I followed her because someone else followed her first, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  I knew it could be nothing more than coincidence, but something told me it wasn’t. So fueled by nothing more than intuition, I jumped up from my seat and took off after them.

  “Attaboy,” Hugh said with a raised fist.

  I made it through the train’s doors just as the buzzer sounded and they began to shut. The kid in the black trench coat was walking too fast, his steps too deliberate. The nagging voice in my head, a whisper before, became a thunderous roar I could feel in the tightening of my chest.

  The only warning she got was the pounding of my feet on the pavement behind her.

  I was still five steps too far away when he made a grab for her. She managed to hang on to the bag tucked under her arm, but he succeeded in knocking her off her feet. She fell across a bench, crying out as she landed. When he reached for her a second time, he was the one who got the surprise.

  I barreled into him full throttle. My back grazed the edge of the bench as we fell and landed on the concrete below. Something clattered against the pavement and pain tore up my back, but I hardly felt it. When I raised my fist, I was no longer an officer of the law trying to apprehend a suspect. I was the man Trevor had warned me about. Anger roared through me as I thought of every woman I’d seen wronged by scum like this guy. I thought of the girl I’d saved and the one I hadn’t. I wanted to hurt him. Needed to hurt him.

  But as I looked down at him, my fist ready to fall, I realized I couldn’t do any more damage to him than I already had.

  He lay as still as the dead.

  My stomach clenched as I scrambled to my knees. My heartbeat, a deafening roar in my ears, racked my entire body. A trickle of blood fell from his nose. From the backside of his head, more seeped out, staining the concrete in jagged streaks that all seemed to point at me. A knife lay next to his lifeless hand. I closed my eyes and willed my heart not to explode as I listened for breathing other than my own.

  When I opened my eyes again, all the anger in my body had seeped out, replaced with fear. I watched his chest, praying it would rise and fall.

  Breathe, you asshole, I commanded.

  “Call 911,” I said while reaching for his wrist to look for a pulse.

  When she didn't answer, I glanced at the woman to see if she was okay. Surprisingly, she'd pulled herself up from the bench. She stood beside it, staring down at the kid with a remarkably calm, if not a slightly glassy expression.

  “No,” she said.

  I knew shock when I saw it. I’d had victim impact training. Fight, flight, freeze. That was the pattern. The woman was obviously in shock.

  It wasn’t surprising. A routine mugging was no big deal until it happened to you. And this wasn’t a routine mugging. He’d targeted her on the train and then followed her for the sole purpose of attacking her. Maybe he’d intended to rob her all along, or maybe he was pissed she’d brushed him off or because I’d lied to him about being with her. It didn’t really matter at this point. They both needed help, and there was only one of me. That was what mattered.

  “He needs medical attention,” I said more gently. “But I need my hands to stop the bleeding. Can you make the call?”

  Her gaze traveled to the knife on the ground. “No,” she said again. Her voice was firm with not an ounce of uncertainty. Her green eyes rose from the kid to me. So stunning before, they seemed darker now, colder. “Were you following me?”

  Was she serious?

  “I was following him because he f
ollowed you,” I explained.

  I gave up looking for his pulse and reached into my pocket for my phone. As the call went through, I watched her face soften a bit as she seemed to be considering what I’d said. She nodded once at me and then looked again at the bleeding kid.

  “911. What’s your emergency?”

  “This is Detective Scott Russell. I need a bus at the Foster station. We have an attempted mugging. The perpetrator took a fall and likely has a serious head injury.”

  “Is the victim breathing, Detective Russell?”

  I checked again. “Yes, though it’s shallow. And it’s the perpetrator, not the victim.”

  “We have a bus en route. Approximately six minutes away. Are there any other injuries?”

  My gaze scanned over the woman. Her coat hung off one shoulder. She still held her purse tightly against her. “I think the victim is in shock.”

  She shook her head, and her eyes danced with panic.

  “Should I send a second ambulance, officer?”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  An approaching train—the one she’d been waiting for—rumbled from somewhere not too far down the tracks.

  “I’ll stay on the line until they get there,” the dispatcher said.

  I didn’t respond. My attention was torn between the kid bleeding out at my feet and the woman staring wistfully at the train. She turned back to me, her eyebrows pinched together in resolution. Before she even began backing away, I knew what she was going to do.

  “You can’t leave. You need to give your statement to the police. You need to tell them what happened.” If she left, it would be my word against the kid’s and my credibility was getting thinner and thinner with every incident.

  There was also the fact that I wasn’t even on the force anymore. My unemployment was only hours old, and I’d still managed to find trouble. I needed her to corroborate my story.

  “You are the police. You tell them what happened. They'll believe you.” There was something in the way she said it. As if she thought they might not believe her. She took two more steps away from me.

  A groan came from the kid. I looked down to find him grimacing. There was no way I could leave him to chase her. And I wouldn’t physically detain a woman who was in shock. I could do more harm to her than good.

  She looked from me to him and to the approaching train again. She surprised me then by returning to us and grabbing the phone from my hand.

  “Detective Russell and I were on the Purple Line when a Caucasian male approached me on the train and harassed me,” she said into it. “Detective Russell ran the guy off, but when I got off at the Foster station, the same man followed me. Detective Russell followed too to make sure I was okay. The man pushed me down and tried to take my purse. When he came at me again with a knife, Detective Russell pushed him away from me. The man fell down and hit his head.” She looked down at the bleeding kid. “He doesn’t look so good. You should probably hurry.” She said it matter-of-factly as if she’d watched it happen to someone else instead of living through it herself.

  She handed the phone back to me. “I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

  The train stopped and the doors opened. Like the one we’d been on before, it was mostly empty at this late hour. She turned and walked toward it.

  Now, I was the one in shock. “How will I find you if I need to talk to you?” I called after her.

  Once on board, she turned and cocked her head and shrugged. “You’re the detective. I guess we’ll see how good you are.”

  As the train pulled away, she held my gaze through the window. The small, almost imperceptible smile on her face felt like an apology. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.

  HIM

  I watched the movers load the last box into the back of the truck and wished, like them, that I didn't have to go back inside. The truck pulled away and rolled down the street toward my future.

  I was right behind it. I just had to clean up a few things and walk away from life as I knew it.

  Piece of cake.

  I trudged my way through the lobby, up the elevator, and through the front door of my apartment.

  The landlord had already been by. He'd done the final walk-through, casually noting every scar my twelve years had left on the apartment. To him, each one was a deduction from my deposit. To me, they were itemized failures.

  Teeth marks on the baseboard from the dog my ex-wife had taken with her.

  A scorched countertop from the anniversary dinner I'd tried to cook years before that.

  Ruts in the living room carpet from her grandma's rocking chair where she'd worried herself neurotic when I'd worked nights. Four years and countless passes with the vacuum hadn't lessened those ruts. It was almost as if no time had passed at all.

  What Melinda had said was true. I hadn't given her a chance. Maybe it was because memories of Elena and my failed marriage still surrounded me. I walked through the apartment, flipping off lights and replaying the end in my head.

  It had come on a typical Tuesday night. The fight had started out ordinarily enough, too. It's funny how one bad decision about the most mundane and inconsequential thing can change your entire life.

  I'd worked the night before and had slept all day. Instead of waking refreshed and ready to spend the next two nights off with Elena, I'd been agitated, my mind still on a domestic disturbance I'd worked the night before. She'd come in exhausted from a day of preparing her college students for final exams, and I'd snapped at her over something as silly as her toothbrush touching mine on the counter—an irrational, but well-noted pet peeve of mine. Of course, if I'd known I was one snide remark away from a divorce, things would have gone down differently that night. But it would’ve just delayed the inevitable. We’d been doomed from the start.

  “It won't happen again,” she said as she threw clothes and shoes into an overnight bag.

  I was quick to apologize. I could be an inconsiderate asshole, but I wasn't always unreasonable.

  “You're being ridiculous,” I said when my apology wasn't enough. I'd fought many times with my headstrong wife over the years but never had she threatened to leave me.

  “If you think this is about a toothbrush, you don't get it. You'll never get it.”

  When I'd stomped to the kitchen for a beer, she followed me. “You're never here, Scott. Even when you are, you're not.”

  “Neither are you.” She worked all the damn time. Long days teaching classes. Late nights writing papers for publications I never saw. My wife had always been ambitious, but the more respect and money she earned, the more she craved.

  “I called you yesterday and left you a message. Did you even listen to it?” she asked.

  I must've looked confused because she'd thrown her hands up in the air and stomped off. “If you had, you'd know the new cleaning lady came today. I didn't move your toothbrush. She did.”

  Apparently, since I slept like the dead, I'd had no idea she’d even been there, probably because my wife had been considerate enough to ask her to be quiet.

  “I thought it would be nice to have a clean house for your days off.” She stalked to the closet and pulled another bag off the top shelf. She haphazardly grabbed a handful of clothes from the rod. “Though I don't know why you even bother taking days off. It's not like you even allow yourself to enjoy them.”

  “You're one to talk,” I huffed. I couldn't count the number of Saturdays she was home instead of at the college.

  And that was the entirety of our problem. We were both obsessed with our jobs, never fully disengaging from them. I knew our marriage had suffered for it, but I already had a solution in place.

  “I have news,” I said. “I was going to take you to dinner tonight to tell you.”

  “What?” she asked as she threw the bag on the bed and began stuffing the clothes inside, hangers and all.

  “I made detective.”

  She stopped and turned. I breathed a sigh of relief
as a smile spread slowly across her face. “You did? That's wonderful!”

  “So no more nights, babe. I'm on days starting next week. Monday through Friday. Eight to five.” I put my arms around her waist and attempted to pull her to me.

  Instead of melting into me as she usually did, she placed her hands against my chest and pushed back to look into my eyes. “But … how? When did you take the test?”

  “I've been waiting for a position to open up. Found out yesterday I got one.”

  Her smile faltered, and she shoved me away. She repeated herself. “When did you take the test, Scott?”

  “Six months ago. I was waiting until a position opened up to tell you.”

  She glared at me and snatched her bag off the bed. I followed her into the bathroom and watched as she yanked out a drawer, causing everything to fall to the floor. She scooped the stuff up, throwing it into the bag on top of everything else.

  “You can't leave me. This changes everything.”

  “It changes nothing,” she said, waving her hair dryer at me.

  I was at a loss for words as I followed her back to the bedroom. I didn't see how it couldn't. She'd always said she wanted more time with me, and now, she would have it.

  “Six months, Scott? Who does that? Who takes the biggest test of his career and doesn't even share the news with his wife? Did you study?”

  “Of course, I did.”

  “Did you hide that, too? Didn't want me to know?”

  “I studied during the day. You weren't here. Besides, I thought I might not pass. I didn't want to disappoint you.” Elena was the smart one. She was the one with the big fancy job at the college. When she was home, she always had her nose in a book. I'd seen her walk through the apartment and run into walls while reading.

  She rolled her eyes and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change. Your heart isn't in it. We both know it never was.”

  She was being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic. She knew I loved her, and I told her as much.