Free Deathblow by Dana Marton

Five
     
     
    Joe closed the door behind him and stood on the front stoop for a minute. So there. He could be in the same room with her, want to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to bed, and he could still remain professional and walk away.
    The street was quiet, no cars. The sky stretched clear over Broslin, its onyx bowl dotted with stars. He loved his town, loved every damn thing about it.
    Wendy took him for a small-town jock. So maybe he was. He liked beautiful women. Frankly, he didn’t see the crime in it. Her opinion of him shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter .
    He checked his gun, then walked around in the cold night air. He’d spent too much time on work lately, especially with the undercover gig. He needed to go out and have some fun. He hadn’t been out with a woman in a while. Since that night with Wendy.
    That can’t be right. He squinted his eyes, turning his face up to the sky. Had it been that long? Huh. It had been.
    A couple of weeks ago, the new waitress at the diner had asked him out for coffee, but he’d been busy. Then there’d been that old high school flame who’d been looking to rekindle things. He’d put her off too, had wanted to do extra research on the Brant Street Gang.
    Which wasn’t right. A person had to make room for fun in his life, or it wouldn’t be worth living.
    He walked around the house again, leaving Wendy to her online class inside, checked up and down the street, but saw nothing suspicious.
    His thoughts kept circling back to Wendy.
    She’d been eighteen when she’d met Keith—living alone in a big city, without her parents, only her agent to watch over her. And her agent had probably only been concerned about how much money she was making him.
    She’d been a magnet for a predator.
    Joe rolled his shoulders. He had some stiff tension he needed to work out of his system. What were the chances that Sophie kept some weights in her basement? Probably slim to none since she wasn’t supposed to overtax her new heart.
    He pulled his phone from his pocket and called in to see if Lil’ Gomez had turned up yet.
    “I just talked to the chief a minute ago,” the captain said. “Nobody has seen or heard from the kid. What happened, happened. You can’t let it get to you. You did what you could for him.”
    But Joe didn’t feel like he had. He was Broslin’s favorite son. He wasn’t expected to lose. He was expected to win.
    His body still ached from the crash and the beating it’d taken in the river. Circling back, he stretched his muscles on the deck. He did a hundred sit-ups and a hundred squats, then a hundred push-ups, using exercise to block Lil’ Gomez from his mind, the desperate look on the kid’s face as he’d floated downriver in the night.
    Then he walked around the house one last time before going in through the front.
    Wendy was still studying, all rapt attention and poised grace as she sat in front of her computer.
    He tried his level best not to think of her as she’d come apart in his arms three months ago. He browsed the bookshelf, rows and rows of paperbacks, but couldn’t focus on the titles. He saw her naked before him, back arched, dusky nipples drawn into tight buds as he grazed his lips over them.
    The sound of her voice had him dropping the book he was holding. He caught it before it hit the floor, turned to her. “What?”
    “Guest bathroom is upstairs at the end of the hallway,” she repeated, then she went back to her computer. “If you want to get ready for bed.”
    That unleashed another batch of X-rated images in his brain.
    He went and took a cold shower. He knew exactly what his fascination was with her. She posed a challenge. She wasn’t easy. He reminded himself that he liked easy. Easy was fine. Better than fine, great . Who needed complications?
    He pushed the images of their one night together out of his mind, spent another few minutes under the cold water, then put on a Broslin PD T-shirt and