Once a Hero Read online

  Kent swallowed a groan. He probably shouldn’t have talked to her at all, let alone dragged her into an empty room. “And you wonder why I don’t answer your questions….”

  “Since you’re not going to, let me out of here.” Erin pushed past him to open the door and step into the hall. Beyond the conference room, in the atrium, the elevator dinged. She watched the doors close on most of the CPA participants, on their way to the ground floor.

  “Look what you made me do,” she declared. “I missed the last part of the class.”

  “Just tonight’s,” he reminded her. “You have fourteen more to go.”

  “You’re not going to get me kicked out of the program?”

  After what he’d heard her asking the chief, he admitted, “I’d love to.”

  “I’m sure you would. But you said you’re not in charge of the academy, remember?” she taunted.

  No one had ever antagonized him as she did, not even some of the belligerent drunks he’d pulled over during his years as a patrol officer. All he had to do to get her tossed from the program was tell Paddy he’d changed his mind. And Kent was damn tempted to do just that.

  “So what are you in charge of, as public information officer?” she asked. “Damage control?”

  “You.”

  “You’re only here to muzzle me? Did you purposely keep me from the second half of the program? Is there something you didn’t want me to hear?” She fired the questions in her usual manner, without giving him time to answer one before she moved to the next.

  He couldn’t get her thrown out of the program. She would never let up on the department—or him—if he did. But he hadn’t approved her application because he feared what she would print. He wanted to change her opinion of the department. The chief and his fellow officers worked hard for the community; they didn’t deserve the bad press she’d been giving them.

  “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.
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  “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—”

  “I get the idea,” she interrupted, tugging her hand free and stepping away.

  He hadn’t realized he was still holding her. Or that Billy’s mom had left them, to return to the others. Maybe it was good he wasn’t out in the field anymore. His instincts were not as sharp as they’d once been.

  “And I get to you,” she said, “whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”

  “Why?” He asked the question that had been nagging at him for a year.

  “Why do I get to you?” she asked, her lips tilting up in a smug smile. “Or why aren’t you willing to tell the truth?”

  “Why do you want to get to me?” he wondered. “I’m always the victim of your poison pen.”

  “A little paranoid, Sergeant?” she teased, her dark eyes gleaming with amusement. And triumph.

  He shook his head. “No. I used to think it wasn’t personal. That I was your target just because I represented the department.”

  “Now you’re a martyr,” she quipped.

  Remembering all those people who had tried to make him one, he suppressed a shudder. “God, no.”

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re a hero,” she said. “That’s what Mrs. Halliday called you.”

  The act that others called heroic had been sheer instinct—an instinct every cop had. He didn’t doubt that any one of his fellow officers would have done the same thing he had. “I’m no hero.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  He clenched his jaw so hard that his back teeth ground together. The woman was damn infuriating. “So it is personal.”

  “You’re paranoid,” she said, but her gaze slid away from his.

  “I heard what you said to the chief,” he admitted. “That you think I got my job by arresting innocent people. Why would you ask that?”

  Sure, a lot of people claimed innocence, but no one he’d arrested had ever gotten away with their crimes. There’d always been too much evidence.

  She shrugged. “How else would you have racked up the arrest record you have?”

  “Because a lot of people commit crimes, Ms. Powell.” He stated what he considered obvious. “And I’m good at catching them.”

  “Not anymore,” she taunted. “You sit behind a desk now. Your badge is all for show.”

  Damn, she had struck that nerve he’d sworn she couldn’t. But she had actually spoken a grain of truth for once. Sometimes he did feel as if his badge were only a prop.

  Her eyes sparkled as if she’d picked up on her direct hit to his pride. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked. “To move up in the department, to get ahead?”

  Getting desked was the last thing he’d wanted, but she was the last person to whom he would make that confession. “I know what you think of me, however unfounded,” Kent said. “Do you know what I think of you?”

  “I can guess,” she replied, gesturing toward the dartboard.

  He shook his head. “That wasn’t my idea. Someone else blew up the photo that runs with your byline, and pinned it there.” For him. He couldn’t claim that he hadn’t appreciated the gesture, though.

  “I don’t care what you think of me, Sergeant,” she insisted.

  “I’m going to tell you anyway,” he assured her.

  “On the record or off?”

  “Everything seems to go on the record with you.” Which he would come to regret, he knew.

  “The public has a right to know….”

  “Do they know about you?” he wondered. “That you’re ambitious to the point of ruthless? That you’ll use anything and anyone to further your career?”

  She shook her head. “The person you just described sounds more like you. You don’t know me at all, Sergeant.”

  “Then I guess we’re even.”

  He finally admitted to himself the rest of his reason for allowing her into the program. He hadn’t wanted to change her opinion of just the department—he’d wanted to change her opinion of him, too. After a year of trying to deal with her, he should have known better. She was a lost cause.

  ERIN TIPTOED INTO her dark apartment as if she were a kid sneaking in past curfew. And just like when she was a kid, she got caught. A lamp snapped on and flooded the living room with light.

  Was this actually her apartment? Someone had tidied up. Books had been put back on the built-in cherry-wood shelves. Nothing but polish covered the hardwood floor. Even the cushions were on the couch. If not for having just unlocked the door, she would have suspected she’d stumbled into the wrong place.

  “You’re late,” Kathryn Powell pointed out from where she sat primly, with her ankles crossed, on the sofa. Had her mother been sleeping like that or just sitting in the dark, waiting for her?

  Erin blinked against the glare of the halogen bulb of the floor lamp. “I’m sorry.”

  She should have called, but she hadn’t planned to go anywhere after class. Once she’d arrived at the Lighthouse, she hadn’t dared to call, what with the rowdy background noise. Her mother would have gotten the wrong idea. She tended to think the worst of her children.

  Kathryn sniffed as if doubting Erin’s sincerity, and patted her short brown hair, not a single strand of which was displaced. “Your father is upset that I’m not home yet. He doesn’t want me making that long drive alone at this hour.”

  Her parents lived about seventy miles southeast of Lakewood, in the austere Tudor home where Erin and her older brother, Mitchell, had grown up, in East Grand Rapids. Her brother had moved to Lakewood for college, and then, after dropping out, had stayed on because he’d liked being close to the water.

  “You can stay over,” Erin offered, although her shoulders tensed at the thought of more quality time with Mom. Despite her mother’s best efforts, she would never be able to tidy up Erin’s life.

  Kathryn shook her head. “I didn’t bring any of my things with me. I didn’t think your class was supposed to go so late.”

  “It wasn’t.” It hadn’t. “Or I wouldn’t have signed up. You can stay, Mom. You can borrow something of mine.”

  “No, I need to get home to your father.”

  Mitchell had resented their mother’s devotion to Erin’s dad, his stepfather. That devotion used to inspire Erin to want that kind of love for herself someday, but she’d given up on her dre
am of love for her dream of justice. She had to clear Mitchell’s name and get his conviction overturned.

  Erin passed through the neat living room to the hall, traveling a few steps to lean against the doorjamb of a bedroom. A night-light with a clown’s face illuminated a jumble of blocks and cars littering the racetrack rug. She ignored the clutter and focused on the bed and the small body curled into a ball under the covers.

  “How was he?” she asked her mother, who had followed her—despite her desire to get home to her husband.

  Kathryn sighed. “Hyperactive. And much too dependent on you.”

  Guilt surpassed the defensiveness her mother usually inspired in her, and Erin admitted, “Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for the course.”

  Kathryn stepped closer and sniffed her hair. “You smell like you’ve been in a bar instead of a classroom.”

  Erin shook her head. “Restaurant. It was easier to do interviews there than at the police department.” Or it would have been if she’d actually managed to speak to anyone without Sergeant Terlecki’s interference.

  “You’re wasting your time,” her mother claimed. “If what you’re really looking for is some evidence to clear your brother, you’re not going to find anything.”

  “Mom, I have to help him.” She would never be able to turn her back on her half brother the way her parents had. “Not just for Mitchell but for Jason, too. He can’t keep losing people he loves.”

  That was why her nephew had become so attached to Erin—he was afraid she would leave him, as his father had four years ago and then his mother just last year. Mitchell’s girlfriend had found someone else, someone who didn’t want to raise another man’s child. So except for Erin’s parents, who tended to be more disapproving than affectionate, Erin was all the little boy had now.

  “If you want to help your brother,” Kathryn advised, “then get him to admit the truth.”

  “He’s not the one lying.” Kent Terlecki was. He had to be, or else her brother was one of those many people of whom Kent had spoken who committed crimes. And her older brother, her hero growing up, could not be a criminal.

  A CURSE BROKE THE SILENCE in the living room, then books and CDs toppled to the hardwood floor as someone banged into a table in the dark. Kent snapped on a lamp, the light revealing the intruder: a tall, wiry guy with dark hair and a beard, dressed in dark clothes.