Kansas City's Bravest

She might never be.

Let Dorie satisfy her curiosity. Meghan wanted no part of this. “Been there. Done that.” She had already backed up to the open doorway. “I’ll just go hang with Eddie in the backyard.”

The older woman nodded without tearing her gaze from the television screen. “The little ones are outside, too. Would you mind checking on them?”

“Sure.”

The evening air didn’t feel any less scorching than this afternoon’s. But Meghan inhaled a muggy breath, grateful for the chance to be outside, far away from the uncomfortable image of her freckled face plastered on the news for all of Kansas City to see.

She stood at the top of the stoop and let the worries of the day fade into the present. Crispy charged across the length of the yard, with Eddie and a tiny toddler in hot pursuit. Little Mark Grimes had just turned two. About the same size as the dog, Mark’s dark brown curls bounced atop his head with each stiff-kneed waddle. His chubby fingers reached out for the dog, though he wasn’t catching anything but air. And his delighted giggle as Crispy changed course and circled around him could only be described as a chortle.

So young, so innocent. Orphaned six months ago by a tragic house fire, all he wanted was someone to love him.

Meghan did.

As he toddled past, she dashed down the stairs and scooped him up into her arms. “Whee-ee!”

Mark laughed. He stuck his arms out like an airplane and she twirled him around, finally setting him down in the middle of the yard where Eddie and Crispy were wrestling. Meghan plopped down onto the ground next to Mark and let him climb on her as if she were a jungle gym.

Mark was an adorable little tyke who would have been snatched up by adoptive parents in an instant if it wasn’t for one not-so-small thing. His brother.

Speaking of which…

With Mark and Eddie occupied, she let her gaze slide around the perimeter of the yard. The swing set was empty, the sandbox unused. The remote-control car on the patio sat untouched.

A tight fist of unease gripped her stomach.

She plucked Mark from her shoulders and sent him toddling off after the dog again. “Eddie?” She rose to her knees, then purposely climbed to her feet. “Where’s Matthew?”

Eddie’s thin chest rose and fell as he panted for breath. He pointed to the garage. “Last I saw, he was in there.”

Unlike his brother Mark, four-year-old Matthew Grimes remembered the night his home was destroyed and his parents were killed. The brothers were a matched set, legally and emotionally bonded to remain together. And Matthew was definitely a much harder sell to any prospective parent. Though child therapists had worked with him, he refused to talk about that night.

He refused to talk, period.

Feeling more than a twinge of concern tingling in her belly, Meghan hurried to the faded side door that opened onto the backyard. With the main door closed, the interior of the garage was dark and stale with humidity. She stood with her hand resting for a few moments on the peeling paint of the door frame, giving her vision a chance to adjust to the shadows. “Matthew?”

Not that she expected him to answer. She couldn’t imagine the terror and grief that must have shocked the boy into such a sullen silence. She scanned the interior, much as she would a smoke-filled building, holding herself still and patiently waiting for some sound or smell to give away the location of any victims trapped inside.

Dorie must have mowed today. The air in the garage was pungent with the scents of cut grass and gasoline. But she detected no light, soap-water scent of boy. Until…

The creak of old wood and the rattle of metal on metal turned her attention to the workbench that had once belonged to Jim Mesner. Perched on top, with his short legs hanging over the edge, sat Matthew.

“Hey, big guy.” Meghan greeted him with a smile and walked slowly toward him. The tension in her stomach eased a fraction at having located the boy, but the sadness in his eyes kept her from celebrating. “What are you doing out here? You know the garage is a ‘no’ place. Dorie wants you to play outside or in the basement or in your room. With the van and the tools—” not to mention the pesticides and can of gasoline for the lawnmower “—this isn’t a safe place to play.”

His gaze drifted over to her shoulder without really looking at her. Meghan climbed up beside him on the bench. Maybe he was making progress, after all—he didn’t slide over or jump off to get away from her.

“I’ll bet you didn’t come here to play.” She knew he hadn’t. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d actually seen him holding a toy or chasing a ball or doing anything as carefree and therapeutic as letting loose and running through the yard with a child’s energy and abandon. She tucked her hands between her knees and continued in a gentle voice. “Did you come in here to be alone?”

She’d almost given up hope of getting any kind of answer when he slowly nodded his head. Meghan pressed her lips together to keep herself from startling him with an effusive smile.

“I like to be alone sometimes, too.” She shrugged her shoulders with an honest sigh. “Especially on a day like today.” She skipped any talk about the fire. “Did you know I was on TV? Dorie’s making a tape. I looked pretty silly holding that dog. Did you meet Crispy?”

Matthew was watching her face now. This was the kind of therapy his counselor had said he needed. Just keep talking to him. Keep interacting. Keep including him in day-to-day activities. Eventually, when he was ready, he’d join in. He’d start talking when he had something he wanted to say.

With his brown hair and brown eyes, Matthew was a miniature version of Gideon. Instantly the illusory pain in her belly returned.

Just keep talking. “I met an old friend of mine today.”

Well, not exactly a friend. Not anymore.

“He looks a lot like you. Dark brown hair. Dark eyes.” She offered him a gentle grin. “He’s taller, though. I imagine you’ll be just as tall one day.”

Nothing.

“His name is Gideon Taylor.” She’d steer away from his being a firefighter and wouldn’t mention his big family. That left her with, “He’s a very special man. Strong. Quiet, like you. Sometimes he communicates without using any words at all.”

Matthew made eye contact.

Meghan’s smile wavered. “I wish you could meet him.” He’d make a perfect daddy. “He’s patient.” Matthew’s eyebrows lifted into a questioning frown. “That means he takes his time to do things. He doesn’t push anyone to go faster than they need to.”

Her mind drifted back to all those evenings Gideon had worked with her after a training session to help her build her strength or to teach her a new skill. She thought of all those nights when he’d patiently shown her the way a man and woman could please each other. He hadn’t minded the scars that showed on her belly. He’d treated her as if he thought she was beautiful. She remembered all the mornings after when they’d cuddled in bed and talked.

He’d made her feel as if she was a beautiful person—almost.

“He was a wonderful teacher.” Her breath hitched on an unexpected gasp. Oh, God. Were those tears stinging her eyes? Meghan turned her head so Matthew couldn’t see.

She was the one who had screwed things up. She was the one who had broken Gideon’s heart without an explanation. He’d been willing to take a chance she couldn’t allow him to take.

She didn’t have the right to cry.

“The grass on that lawnmower must be getting to me.” She’d never had an allergy in her life. Meghan wiped her hand across her eyes. “You’d like him.”

On impulse, needing the human contact as much as she suspected Matthew did, she leaned over and hugged him. She squeezed him tight and pressed a kiss onto the crown of his silky fine hair.

Matthew didn’t hug her back. But he didn’t push her away, either.

This was as close as she’d ever come to having a child of her own. So she held him close a few moments longer, inhaling his sweet, clean scent and damning the fates for making her so flawed in the first place.

“Meghan!” Eddie’s young tenor voice nabbed her attention before he appeared at the side door of the garage. Was there a problem with Mark? Crispy? She left a comforting hand on Matthew’s shoulder and focused in on the rapid-fire delivery of Eddie’s words. “Dorie says you have to come into the house right away. There’s a phone call. It’s Alex. I think he’s in trouble again. She looks like she’s gonna pass out. You gotta come.”

Alexis Pitsaeli was the oldest boy who lived at the group home. He was all of sixteen and ready to take on the world. Unfortunately he didn’t always choose the smartest way to conquer it.

Meghan jumped down off the workbench and took Matthew’s hand. She never released him as he climbed down. Pulling him along behind her, she picked up Mark and followed Eddie into the house.

They found Dorie standing in the kitchen, grasping the disconnected phone in one hand and the counter in the other. Her skin had faded to an alarming shade of ash and her cheeks were splotched with color. This wasn’t good.

“What’s wrong?” Meghan asked, depositing Mark into Eddie’s arms and sending the three boys down to the basement. She hung up the phone and guided Dorie to the table to make her sit.

“It’s Alex. He’s at a police station in downtown K.C. The officer said he’d been in a fight.” Dorie breathed in shallow puffs of air and patted her chest. “I can feel my blood pressure going through the roof already. I hope he’s all right.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, or the officer would have said otherwise.” She hoped. “How can I help?”

“Will you go down to the precinct office for me? I don’t think I can handle the paperwork or his attitude right now.”

“I’ll go.” She turned Dorie’s wrist between her thumb and fingers and checked the older woman’s racing pulse. “You been taking your medication?”

“Yes. And watching my diet. There’s not a lick of salt in that spaghetti tonight.” Her vehement protest faded on a pant of breath. “It’s just stress. And my seventy-year-old heart.”

Meghan frowned. She fully intended to help Alex understand the consequences of his actions. “Why don’t you lie down? I’ll feed the boys, and when I get back with Alex I’ll bring you some dinner.”

Dorie shook her head. “Nonsense. I can feed the little ones. You just bring that teenager home so I know he’s safe.”

“I will.”

Reluctant to leave Dorie alone, but understanding that this was the best way she could help, Meghan pressed a kiss to her grandmotherly temple and hurried toward the front door. She slowed her pace as she neared the entryway, thinking something looked odd. She stopped when she realized what was out of place. A large bouquet of yellow roses sat on the hall table. Long-stemmed and studded with statis and greenery. Meghan released a long, low whistle. Someone had spent a fortune.

On one very sick idea of a joke.

Meghan felt a corresponding tension quiver through her muscles, setting her entire body on edge. She looked over her shoulder to Dorie. “Where did these come from?”

“Oh, those came for you while you were out back. After that phone call, I forgot to tell you.” Dorie pressed her hand over her heart. “Imagine. A dozen roses. You must have an ardent admirer.”

Meghan frowned. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all. “There are only eleven roses.”

“I didn’t notice.” The older woman shuffled into the foyer beside her. “Did the florist make a mistake?”

“I don’t think so.”

One anonymous rose she could write off as a little weird and donate it to the hospital with the rest of her flowers.

Eleven golden mates showing up on the same day to complete the gift was downright creepy.

“Did you see who delivered them?”

“The doorbell rang during the news.” She could hear the agitation in Dorie’s voice as she picked up on Meghan’s tension. “By the time I got to it, the bouquet was on the doorstep and a white van was backing out of the driveway. The sun was reflecting off the windshield and I didn’t have my glasses on.”

“Was there a name on the side of the van?”

Dorie shrugged an apology. “If I remember, there were some red letters or markings on the driver’s door.”

Meghan pulled a thorny stem aside to get a closer look at the blank envelope. “And you’re sure they’re for me? There’s no name.”

“Honey, my Jim’s been dead goin’ on ten years now. Who’d be sending an old girl like me flowers?”

Meghan traded worried looks with Dorie. “How did they know where to deliver them? Why didn’t they go to my apartment?”

Only John Murdock and the chief knew that this was her second home. And she doubted anyone at Family Services who knew she volunteered here would be sending flowers. She supposed someone could have tried to deliver them at the station house and been redirected here. But John was off duty, too. Who else knew to find her here? Had she been followed?

Dorie tapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t stand there gawkin’ at ’em. Open the card and see who they’re from. Maybe that’ll solve the mystery.”

An uneasy feeling settled around Meghan’s shoulders as she plucked the envelope from its plastic mount. That uneasy feeling knotted into a combination of fear and anger—a sense of violation deep in her gut—as she pulled out the card and read it.

“That’s odd.” Dorie’s confusion echoed her own. “It doesn’t say.”

Meghan crammed the note into the pocket of her shorts. The discomfiting words were already emblazoned in her memory.

You are truly Kansas City’s Bravest.

You know I love you.

Only one man had ever claimed to love her.

And she’d thrown his proposal back in his face and walked out of his life forever.

Chapter Four

The drive into downtown Kansas City gave Meghan plenty of time to plan what to say to Alex, and then dismiss each version of her speech three times over. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t even his legal guardian. She was just a friend. He was a young man who needed someone he could count on. He needed a role model to learn from—someone who could teach him to make smarter choices without compromising his self-respect.

Meghan didn’t think she was up to the task. But she had to try. She had to put her own self-doubts on hold, ignore her nagging curiosity about that odd bouquet of roses, and be there for him. Whether he’d admit he wanted someone around who cared or not.

The drive also gave her plenty of time to fuel her paranoia. Every flash of white on the road seemed to catch her eye. Trucks. Cars. Even a white van.

But no red letters on the side. No florist’s logo.

Hundreds of nameless, faceless travelers shared the highway with her. Did one of them know her? Had someone followed her from the warehouse fire to the station house? To Dorie’s? Was that someone following her right now?

Or was someone from the station playing a tasteless practical joke on her?

If it was a joke, she wasn’t laughing. And if she had picked up a resourceful secret admirer, flattered wouldn’t be the word she’d use to describe her feeling about the anonymous flowers. She had no interest in gifts from admirers, secret or otherwise. If that admirer thought his boldness or cleverness would be appreciated in return, he was sadly mistaken. She just wanted to know the truth, and then she wanted to put an end to it.

But first things first. Though it was nearly 8:00 p.m., the summer sun was still bright in the sky, giving her the flagging energy of a never-ending day as she pulled up to the white stone building that served as the Fourth Precinct headquarters. By the time she’d secured her visitor’s badge at the front desk and pushed the button for the elevator, Meghan had made only two clear decisions. Her first priority would be to make sure Alex hadn’t been hurt.

And the eleven roses were going into the trash.

Beyond that? She took a deep, fortifying breath to prepare herself for whatever Alex’s story might be. She’d never had much luck with long-term plans, anyway.

The elevator opened up to a maze of desks and partitions, set apart from the hallway by a tall, circular work station. A bank of offices with blinds at each window lined the opposite wall. A handful of men and women, dressed in professional street clothes, sat at their computers or talked on phones. The bulk of the night shift seemed to be made up of uniformed officers, though, wearing their familiar light blue shirts and black slacks.

Meghan clutched at the ID card hanging around her neck and crossed to the sergeant’s desk. A tall, female officer with a strawberry-blond braid down her back was arguing with someone on the phone.

“You can’t do that.” The woman swallowed hard, probably schooling her temper. Unsuccessfully. “Dammit, Danny. You can’t keep her this weekend. You know I’m going to Minnesota to see my family. Let me talk to her. Danny?”

She held out the receiver and glared at it for several moments before finally setting it down in the cradle of the phone. The Danny who had her so upset must have just hung up on her. The woman stood and stared at the phone for several moments.

When it seemed as though she might be calming down a bit, Meghan cleared her throat, subtly diverting the woman’s attention. “Are you all right?”

The female officer laughed as she turned around to face her. “Sure, why not?” But her red-rimmed eyes looked as if they were fighting back tears. She nodded toward the phone. “My soon-to-be ex. Need I say more?” Shutting off the emotional pain she must be feeling, the officer shifted into cop mode. “Thanks for asking. I’m Sergeant Wheeler. How can I help you?”

“The front desk sent me up here to pick up Alex Pitsaeli.”

Several minutes passed as the sergeant verified Meghan’s ID and typed the information into the computer. “I’ll have him brought out. We’ve had him in one of the interrogation rooms, just to separate him from his buddy.”

Buddy? Not good. Like the other woman, Meghan clenched her teeth and held her emotions in check. She couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger or disappointment trying to make itself heard—probably a combination of the three. “Do you know what they were fighting about?”

Sergeant Wheeler shook her head. “The preliminary report doesn’t say. But from the looks of the kids when they came in, it might be gang related. His buddy’s got a Warrior tattoo.”

Definitely not good. One of the conditions of Alex remaining in Dorie’s home was that he sever all connections to the Westside Warriors. Though he, too, sported a stylized W tattoo on the back of his right shoulder, his career as a gang-banger had ended.

Supposedly.

“Is he free to go?”

Sergeant Wheeler nodded. “The papers will give you the date he has to appear in juvie court.” She pointed to a row of empty chairs beside the elevator. “Have a seat. He’ll be right out.”

Meghan chose to pace rather than sit. “Police reports. Court dates.” She swiped her loose hair up behind the nape of her neck, then let it filter through her fingers down her back. “How are we going to handle this one?” She supposed most kids had families they could count on. They’d have a parent or sibling who could guide them through their trouble. Right now, all Alex had was her. She cocked her eyebrows into a wry frown. “There’s a comforting thought.”

About as comforting as the anonymous love note that pressed against her hip inside her pocket. Meghan stopped in her tracks. Why hadn’t she pitched the thing? Now it was calling to her. That all-too-suspicious voice inside her head that longed for security was demanding answers. Closure.

She pulled out the wadded card and smoothed it flat between her palms.

You know I love you.

Maybe John had sent the roses, and she was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. They were getting to be pretty close friends. But a dozen roses as a platonic gesture? And wouldn’t he have signed the card? Or confessed to leaving her the rose in the fire truck?

She didn’t have any family to speak of, at least none alive who’d claim to love her.

Of course, there was always…Meghan caught her breath at the crazy possibility. She’d run into Gideon this afternoon—after almost two years apart from each other. Though he’d touched her so tenderly, his mood had been distant. Cool. As if he was trying to hide something. Surely, he didn’t still feel…he couldn’t.

Her heart did a crazy flip-flop in her chest. But she quickly squelched the foolish hope with common sense. The reasons she’d had to leave were the same now as they’d been two years ago. Gideon had talked about kids and family and forever.

How long would his love have really lasted when he found out she couldn’t guarantee him any of those things? And noble son of a gun that he was, he’d have probably stayed with her anyway—not because she made him happy, but because he thought it was the right thing to do. She refused to sentence him to a life of sacrifice like that.

Maybe the flowers were just a misguided thank-you from a dog lover who’d seen her after the fire. But then, the note didn’t make sense.

You know I love you.

She didn’t want anyone to love her like this.

She slipped the card back into her pocket, no closer to finding answers than she’d been earlier.

Her therapist had told her that she needed to tell Gideon the truth, that that would be the only way to bring closure to that chapter of her life. She’d come a long way in the past two years, developing the emotional courage she’d lacked for so long. But along with that courage came a sense of responsibility. Gideon deserved to know why she’d turned down his marriage proposal, running out of his apartment and his life with little more than a backward glance. But he didn’t deserve any more pain. And she wasn’t sure how the truth could do anything but hurt him all over again.

It seemed both a curse and a blessing to have someone else’s troubles to worry about for a change.

“Alex.” She recognized the sixteen-year-old by his short, stocky dimensions as a young police officer escorted him down the hall to meet her. What the sixteen-year-old lacked in height, he packed on with muscle. He was perfect for the wrestling program at the local high school. He’d even made the varsity team his sophomore year. But that had been last winter. Since school had gotten out for the summer, he’d been moody and mysterious and had missed Dorie’s curfew more than once.

Now he’d been detained for disorderly conduct. If he was lucky, the judge would only order community service and not assign him to a probation officer. Meghan shook her head, wishing she knew what had caused his backslide from reformation success to juvenile delinquent.

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