Kansas City Cop Read online

  Mike glanced past her to Gina. She was the one blushing at her great-aunt’s compliments. “Tia Mami... Mike was giving me a ride home. He can’t stay.”

  “He doesn’t eat dinner?” The fragile woman’s grip on his arm tightened as if he’d imagined Lupe’s balance issues. “I made chicken pozole soup. I put on a fresh pot of decaf coffee. And I have cheesecake empanadas for dessert. You like empanadas?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I don’t want to intrude—”

  “Come in, come in. You join us.” A twenty-something man with a curling black ponytail strolled out of the kitchen, munching on an empanada. With her fingers latched on to the sleeve of Mike’s jacket, Lupe pulled him past Gina and Rollo to swat the young man’s arm. “Javi, those are for dessert.”

  “I’m hungry,” he whined around the doughy sweetness in his mouth. “Who’s the big dude?”

  “This is Gina’s friend, Mike.”

  He glanced up, then down at the white-haired woman. “The Mike Cutler?”

  “My brother, Javier,” Gina explained. “Where’s Sylvie?”

  “Yo, Mike.”

  Mike chuckled. “Yo.”

  Javier stuffed the last bite into his mouth and looked to his sister. “She’s out.”

  Gina came up beside Mike, tension radiating from her posture. “Out as in running an errand? Or...out?”

  Between Javier’s darting glance at his great-aunt and Rollo’s weary sigh as he shut the door, Mike could guess that, wherever Sylvie Galvan had gone, it didn’t meet with the family’s approval. Gina pulled out her cell phone. “Maybe I should go,” Mike offered.

  “Put that away.” Lupe touched Gina’s phone. “We have a guest. Sylvie makes her choices. She can eat without us.” Then she shooed her great-nephew out of her path. “Go wash up. You need good food before you go to work. Not sweets.” When she looped her arm through Mike’s and pulled him into the kitchen, he rethought his first impression that she was a fragile grandmother. Lupe Molina ran this home in a way that made it easy to see why Gina was such a determined woman.

  “Tia Mami—”

  “Senora Molina, really, you don’t have to—”

  “You saved my Gina’s life.” Lupe patted a chair at one side of a rectangular white table. “You sit. I feed.”

  Short of wrestling all one hundred pounds of the elderly woman out of his way, Mike had no choice but to do as she asked.

  Once he took a seat as the honored guest, Lupe bustled around the kitchen. By the time she’d set an extra place setting and the fragrant, steaming food was on the table, Rollo, Javier and Gina had joined them.

  Mike enjoyed Gina’s family as much as he enjoyed the spicy, hearty soup. Although his understanding of Spanish was limited to the classes he’d taken back in high school, he had little trouble following the mix of English and Spanish and the teasing, loving conversation. Lupe and Rollo were animated and charming. Javier was interested in Mike’s truck and Chiefs football. Gina was quiet in the chair beside him and, though Mike suspected that wasn’t typical, at least she’d stopped glaring a silent warning that he needed to leave as soon as possible.

  If anything, she seemed to be assessing his response to her family and circumstances. He could understand her concern for her family’s well-being. He could also understand her devotion to this tightly knit group. Maybe she was chalking up the apparent success of this dinner to him being a nice, polite guy, or maybe she was finally beginning to believe that he was more complex and able to relate to her and her background than she’d given him credit for.

  Javier popped a third empanada into his mouth and took off for the bus stop a couple of blocks from the house to get to his job as an overnight custodian at a downtown office building. In between, Mike answered a barrage of questions: no, he wasn’t married; yes, his father was the man Gina wanted to work for at KCPD; no, he didn’t live with his dad and stepmom and brother; and, yes, he owned his own home off Blue Ridge Boulevard. Yes, he thought Gina was making a good recovery that would get her back on the police force, although he wouldn’t promise how long it might take or if he could guarantee her a place on a new SWAT team.

  They answered a few of his questions, too. He heard a bit about how Gina, Javier and Sylvie had come to live with their great-aunt and -uncle, and a lot about how proud they were of each of them. Gina had gladly taken on the job of supporting them, in addition to Rollo’s pension check. Javi had enrolled in tech classes at one of the city’s junior colleges. And Sylvie, who was as pretty as their late mother and prone to being late, was set to graduate from high school in just a couple of months.

  Mike was sipping a cup of coffee that was richer and smoother than anything Frannie brewed at work and bemoaning the fact that he’d eaten that second empanada, when he heard the screech of tires braking on the street in front of the house.

  He couldn’t miss the instant bracing of alarm around the table, or the exchange of worried looks between Rollo and Lupe. Gina shoved her chair away from the table and hurried out of the kitchen.

  “Gina,” Rollo warned, reaching for his walker.

  Mike stood, putting up a cautionary hand to keep the elderly couple in their seats. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  The older couple reached for each other’s hands across the corner of the table and muttered a prayer as he went after Gina. Not good.

  He heard the slam of a car door and raised voices outside and saw Gina’s curvy backside storming out the front door. Even worse.

  “Gina?” Concern lengthened Mike’s stride, and he caught the storm door before it closed in his face.

  Ignoring him, Gina stepped off the porch and marched down the walk toward a cream-colored luxury sedan parked catty-cornered across the end of the driveway. Outside the front passenger door of the slick, pricey car, a black-haired man was kissing a young woman with long, curling dark hair.

  “Sylvie!” Gina called.

  Sylvie? That was Gina’s younger sister? The ankle boots and mini skirt showed so much leg that he’d question a grown woman wearing that outfit out of the house—much less a teenage girl.

  Although the man who’d mimicked shooting Gina outside the clinic had driven a darker tan car, Mike found himself checking the license plate for a familiar 3-6. No match. Different car, different plate number—didn’t mean Loverboy there wasn’t a threat. And judging by the money invested in that car, he could afford more than one vehicle. “Gina, stop.”

  She didn’t. Mike doubled his pace to catch up to her.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” the would-be lothario murmured, looking over the girl’s head to note their approach before adding an endearment in Spanish.

  The teen pushed away from her adult boyfriend and hurried up the driveway. Although the sun had set and the street’s tall maple trees blocked the moonlight, the glare of a nearby streetlamp cast a harsh glow across Sylvie Galvan’s pretty face. The streaks of mascara running down her cheeks indicated she’d been crying.

  The smudge of violet on her cheek bone hinted that she’d been hurt, too.

  Gina noticed the mark, too, and caught her sister by the arms. She looked up into Sylvie’s face, brushing the long hair away from the tears and the bruise. “Did he hit you?”

  Sylvie sniffled. “I’m fine.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Let it go, okay?” Then she tilted her gaze up to Mike. The young woman wiped her nose on a tissue and smiled, dismissing Gina’s maternal concern and cop-like probing. “Who’s this? You’ve been holding out on me. I thought you didn’t have time for a man.” She shrugged off Gina’s grasp and circled around her older sister. “Wait. You’ve only talked about one guy lately—are you Mike Cutler? The Mike Cutler?”

  “Guilty as charged.” He took the hand Sylvie offered, noting the bruises on her wrist that were only slightly smaller than the span of his own fingers before turning her toward the yellowish streetlight to inspect the injury to her face. Although he kept his smile friendly, he was fuming inside. He’d seen marks like that on Frannie, courtesy of her ex, when she’d started working for him. “You hurt anywhere else?”

  Sylvie tucked her hands inside the cuffs of her jacket, avoiding his questions, too. “You’re cuter than Gina told us.”

  And Gina was angrier than Mike had ever seen her.

  “Bobby Estes!” Gina whirled around and charged at the compact, muscular man in the black leather jacket. She spewed out a stream of Spanish Mike couldn’t follow, but he could guess it had something to do with accusation and condemnation.

  “Get inside the house,” Mike ordered Sylvie before running after Gina. “Go.”

  When Sylvie started to protest, he glared her toward the front door, throwing out any essence of Mr. Nice Guy and replacing him with the stern taskmaster who wouldn’t take no for an answer. With Gina’s protective instincts raging like a mama bear protecting her cub, Mike had a sick feeling this confrontation was going to escalate into something a lot more serious than a lovers’ quarrel.

  The black-haired man leaned against his spotless car, laughing at Gina’s approach. “You want a piece of me, Big Sister?”

  That’s when Mike spotted the telltale bulge beneath Bobby Estes’s black leather jacket. Aw, hell. “Gun!”

  Gina wisely backed off a step, her hand at her waist where her own weapon had once been. “I see it. Keep your hands where I can see them, Bobby.”

  While Bobby raised his hands into the air with a smug grin, the situation skipped from bad to worse and went straight to hell when a second man climbed out of the back of the car. He was armed, too. Mike shifted in front of Gina.

/>   Gina shifted right back. “Hands on top of the car,” she ordered. “Who’s he?”

  “A friend,” Bobby answered. “I have a lot of friends. They protect me when I need it.”

  “Protect you from what?”

  “People who threaten me?” With a gesture from Bobby, the second man held his position on the far side of the car, but did as she’d commanded, resting his hands on top of the car. “They’re jealous of my success, or they want what I have.”

  Mike’s stomach knotted right along with his fists at the obvious taunt.

  But Gina kept her cool. “Like my sister? She’s not a possession. If you really cared about her you’d leave her alone.”

  Bobby’s arrogant amusement turned smarmy with a purse of his lips. “Maybe she’s not the Galvan I want.”

  “You’re using her to get to me?”

  “Is it working?” he mocked, brushing his fingers against her hair.

  This was a neighborhood power struggle, not a romantic foray. Still, it stuck in Mike’s craw that the other man was putting his hands on her. He was already moving forward when Gina grabbed Bobby’s wrist and flipped him against the car. “Stay away from Sylvie. Stay away from my family.”

  “See? Can’t keep your hands off me.” Bobby laughed. Mike turned his attention to the young man on the far side of the car, who looked more alarmed than amused by the wrestling match.

  Gina bent Bobby’s arm into the middle of his back, shoving him against the vehicle. That spike of jealousy instantly switched to concern that she would get hurt if this physical altercation escalated any further. “Get in your car and drive away,” she warned, twisting his arm. “Lose Sylvie’s number. Get out of our lives.”

  She pinched his wrist tightly enough for Bobby to curse in pain and, suddenly, the joke was over. “My neighborhood. My girl. Get your damn cop hands off me.”

  Bobby jerked his hips, knocking Gina back a step. Then he swung back with his free arm, the point of his elbow connecting squarely with her bad shoulder. Gina grunted with pain, grabbing her arm as she stumbled to the sidewalk.

  Mike was right there to shove Bobby back against the car, his forearm pressed against the bully’s neck as he reached inside the leather jacket to pull the gun from Bobby’s belt. “Leave. Now.” With the smooth ease his father had taught him, Mike pointed the weapon over the roof of car at his buddy, who was reaching for his own gun. “Put it on the ground.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Gina scrambling to her feet and hurrying around the car to pick up the gun. Was she hurt? How badly? And just how much trouble would he get in if he pressed his arm more tightly against this sleazeball’s windpipe?

  Once Gina had the weapon trained on the other man and he’d wisely linked his hands over his head in surrender, Mike pulled back the Smith & Wesson pistol he was holding and leaned into Bobby’s ruddy, angry face. “You got a license for this?”

  “You a cop, white boy?” When Bobby shoved against him, Mike shoved right back.

  The tendons in his back and legs strained as he kept the shorter man wedged in place. A zap of electricity shot down his leg as one of the old nerves pinched. Pain gave way to numbness in his right hip and thigh and would eventually settle into a dull, bruising ache if the injuries he’d lived with for more than a decade followed their usual pattern.

  Mike gritted his teeth against any discomfort and kept Bobby a prisoner while he watched Gina cover the second man. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she ground out, grimacing with the strain of keeping the gun pointed at Bobby’s friend. She needed both hands to keep the weapon from shaking, but there was no mistaking the authority in her tone. “Get back in the car. Get in!” The man didn’t need a nod from Bobby to obey the order this time. Once he was in the backseat, with his hands out the window as she’d instructed, Gina lowered the weapon and circled around into the driveway again. “Let him go, Mike.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Keep the gun, and let him go.”

  Bobby was laughing again as Mike released him and stepped beyond his reach. “You sure you can handle Officer Gina?” The neighborhood thug straightened his shirt and jacket as if this had been a civilized encounter. “I know how feisty Sylvie can be. All the Galvan women have fire in them.”

  “If you’re so good at handling women, why did you need to hit a teenage girl?”

  “Prove that I did.” Bobby winked at Gina before circling around the hood and climbing behind the wheel of the car. He leaned toward the open passenger door. “May I have my weapon back, Officer?” When Gina hesitated, he added, “If you arrest me, I’ll file assault charges against your boyfriend here.”

  As far as Mike was concerned, anything he’d done to Estes was justified. Hitting a girl? Assaulting a police officer? But he wasn’t the cop here, and he’d defer to however Gina wanted to play this. He was right beside her as she dumped the bullets from each gun into her palm and tossed the empty weapons back into the front seat before Mike closed the door.

  “You’ll be seeing me again, Gina,” he promised before backing out into the street and speeding away.

  The car veered around the corner and out of sight before Gina moved again. She stuffed the bullets into her jeans and turned back to the house. “I want to get these to the crime lab. See if they match the bullets from any of the police shootings. Bobby might have been targeting me and using the other incidents as decoys to throw the investigation off track.”

  Checking one last time to make sure Estes and his buddy stayed gone, Mike followed, wincing at the nerves still sparking through his hip and thigh. A hot shower or a long run would ease the kinks out of those muscles and tone down the minijolts. It had been a lot of years since he’d gotten mixed up in a physical confrontation that twisted his body like that, and he’d be paying for it later.

  But he wasn’t the only one in pain here. Although Gina was booking it up the driveway, he could hear the soft grunts with every other step and see her rubbing her shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, catching up to her.

  “Bruised my shoulder. My fingers are a little tingly. At least I’m feeling them, right? I’ll be fine. I want to talk to Sylvie and find out what happened. If she presses charges, I’ll serve the warrant on Bobby myself.” She jumped onto the porch and reached for the storm door. “Could you drive me to the lab tonight? I don’t want to have any issues with chain of custody—”

  “Gina. Stop.” Mike put a hand on her arm. “Take a breath. Everyone is safe.”

  “Are they?” Gina whirled around on him, and he spied something he’d never expected to see in her beautiful eyes. Fear. “I couldn’t protect my family, Mike. I couldn’t defend myself tonight. How the hell am I ever going to be a cop again?”

  Chapter Nine

  Mike closed the door to Lupe and Rollo’s dimly lit room and moved down the hallway toward the bedroom Gina and Sylvie shared. It had been a long night at the Molina house. The family had gone through a second pot of decaf coffee, a phone call to Rollo’s doctor, plus lots of tears, terse words and hugs. He peeked through the open doorway to see Sylvie perched on the corner of her daybed, dressed in black-and-gold sweats from her school, while Gina stood behind her, arranging her damp hair into a long braid.

  As soon as her dark eyes made contact with his, Sylvie set down the ice pack she’d been holding against her swollen cheek and sprang to her feet. “How is Tio Papi?”

  Leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb, Mike crossed his arms, hoping the relaxed stance would ease some of the worry and regret from her young face. “I checked his BP on the monitor again. He’s resting comfortably now.”

  “But his pressure was elevated,” she confirmed with a woeful sigh. “That’s why he got dizzy.”

  Gina followed behind, winding a rubber band around the end of the braid. “His heart can’t take much more of this kind of stress.”

  “I’m sorry, Gina. I never meant to upset him. Or Tia Mami,” Sylvie apologized. “Is she okay?”

  Mike nodded. Nothing that a little less worry and a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix for any eighty-year-old. “I encouraged her to lie down, too. She’s getting ready for bed now.”