“Dull,” she said and he saw her step forward and pick up a bar rag while she cradled the phone with her shoulder.
“So who’s the guy you’ve been flirting with for the last half hour?” he said, not able to control himself.
“What? You’re kidding, right?”
He could see her look up at the window on the north side of the bar where he had parked his cruiser in the past.
“Oh. Tell me he’s just another old friend from high school like that last one,” he said.
She kept looking north and then walked out from behind the bar over to an empty table, wiped at the clean surface.
“Yeah, old is right,” she said into the phone. “He’s forty-eight. He’s married to my old boss out at Ranchers.”
She was trying to keep an easy, teasing tone in her voice. He wasn’t close enough to see the tiny prick of fear that stained the light in her eye.
He was silent and watched her give up on the table and then disappear behind a wall and then come back into view in another window. She was wearing that loose white button-down blouse, open wide down the front. She had on a cotton jersey underneath that stretched tight around her breasts and accented her cleavage.
“You gotta wear that shirt open like that all the time?” he said, watching her move close to the window and look out in his direction. The reflective paint on the side of the squad car glowed like neon under the lights and he saw her eyes stop.
“You always seem to like it,” she said and cupped her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone and moved closer to the glass. Her face was shadowed by the angle of the light.
“You know I get jealous,” he said. “It’s just that you’re so beautiful.”
She knew she was not beautiful. It was a line she’d heard a thousand times from men on the other side of the bar, spoken on the scent of bourbon and beer. But his was different. He had been different. She’d liked it when he said it because it wasn’t a joke, or some bad come-on. Even when he’d said it the first time, it was with a touch of passion that made her believe that he believed it. Now she knew too much about where his passion came from and she had to tighten the hold on her stomach to keep the bile from rising in her throat.
In the patrol car the radio squelched again.
“All units, officer in foot pursuit of a fleeing suspect in the nine hundred block of Third Street. Requesting backup.”
The dispatcher had cranked her flat voice up a notch.
“Two-oh-four?”
His was the only specific call number she used.
“Two-oh-four responding,” he answered into the set while turning the key in the ignition and gunning the engine to life. He’d left his cell phone connection open and said into the phone, “Gotta go catch some bad guys, babe,” and then hit the light bar and siren and pulled out of the parking lot into the street.
He was smiling now, jacked at the chance to show off. She watched the red and blue lights flash across the south windows and felt the small jump of adrenaline nip into her blood.
“But you’ll be back to get me, right?” she said, surprising herself with the coolness of the request.
“Sure, babe. I’ll be back.”
He cut the siren at Ninth Street but kept up the speed, taking a corner with just enough control to keep the tires from yelping on the concrete. He was listening now to the radio crackling with the sounds of the foot chase and location of Roger’s suspect. He could hear his fellow patrolman breathing hard while trying to talk into the microphone that all road officers kept clipped to the shoulder lapel of their shirts.
The sounds of Roger’s handcuffs ringing and his baton clacking on his belt came through the transmission each time he keyed the mic to speak. This asshole was giving him a pretty good run.
He pushed up his speed and then rode the brakes just a touch while blowing through a stop sign. He was watching for the telltale sweep of headlights. Anything dark was just SOL. From other radio traffic he could tell other units were closing in like some kind of foxhunt. But he wanted to get in there first, and without announcing himself or flushing the runner into somebody else’s hands.
“Two-oh-four. What’s your location?” Dispatch bitch again.