Taking the Heat

Brenda Novak’s Snow Baby “should appeal to readers who like their romances with a sophisticated touch.”

—Library Journal

“Brenda Novak weaves a vivid, completely unforgettable romance.”

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“Brenda Novak skillfully blends richly developed characters and emotionally intense issues to create a powerful romance.”

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—Cindy Penn, WordWeaving

“One thing is for sure: I know I never, ever want to miss a book by Brenda Novak.”

—Suzanne Coleman, The Belles and Beaux of Romance

Dear Reader,

The research for this novel took me to the small desert town of Florence, Arizona, a unique place where seven prisons (including the juvenile detention center) dot the arid landscape. Atmospheric and intriguing, Florence still has the feel of the Old West, without the gimmicks and tourists that clog so many towns with similar roots. The Old Territorial Prison is there, as authentic and captivating as the town, from the Pauper’s Graveyard behind the complex to the original cell blocks.

But this isn’t a story about the town or the prison. Not really. It’s about an innocent man stripped of everything he holds dear, a man left only with his character and his courage, and the woman who sees him for what he is. It’s a story about a woman who is torn between justice and mercy, and ultimately follows her heart. I hope you enjoy their journey.

I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to contact me at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611. Or simply log on to my Web site at www.brendanovak.com to leave me an e-mail, check out my news and appearances page, or learn about my upcoming releases.

Best wishes,

Brenda Novak

Taking the Heat

Brenda Novak

To my third daughter, Alexa, for possessing the purest heart I’ve ever known. Alexa, you’re always loving and remarkably kind, quick to smile even when things don’t go your way and the first to sacrifice for others. I truly admire your generosity. In short, you’re a rare jewel and a blessing to all who know you, especially your mother. If you forget everything I’ve ever taught you, remember this: my love is everlasting.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I owe special thanks to the state of Arizona’s Department of Corrections for their willingness to provide me with a tour of the Arizona State Prison, Florence. Rhonda Cole, Public Information Officer, and Blaine Marshall, Deputy Warden, ASPC-Eyman/SMU II were both more than kind and provided me with a wealth of information. I would especially like to thank Officer James A. Robideau, CO II, for the time he spent reading this story when it was only in manuscript form and double-checking my prison facts. Meeting these wonderful people was truly a pleasure. They made my trip to Arizona well worth the time.

I would also like to thank my husband, Ted, for his support of my career. He’s read every book I’ve written and always gives me plenty of love and encouragement.

This is a work of fiction. I saw nothing at the prison that would indicate corruption of any kind.

“The truth which is certain is known by means of intuition, the probable truth by means of proofs.”

James Beattie, Scottish professor of moral philosophy

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“DON’T WORRY, Mr. Tucker, it’s almost over now.”

Randall Tucker sat next to his attorney in the courtroom, feeling utterly alone, even though the gallery behind him was packed to overflowing. He prayed to God she was right. In all his thirty-two years he’d never experienced anything so confusing, so terrifying or so painful.

“They can’t convict you without a body,” she said, repeating what she’d told him the moment he hired her. “When the jury gets back, you’ll see.”

When the jury gets back…

They were sure taking a long time. They’d been deliberating all day, and every minute seemed like an eternity.

Regardless, it’ll end well. They won’t put an innocent man away. Truth and justice will prevail.

“I never touched her,” he said, but he’d been saying that ever since his wife had gone missing, and it hadn’t made any difference before.

His attorney smiled confidently. “You’ll be home with your son in a few hours.”

He might go home, but their lives would never be the same. Andrea wouldn’t be there. They’d lost his wife, Landon’s mother, and there’d be big adjustments to make—

The door opened and fear clutched at Tucker’s throat as the jury filed into the courtroom and resumed their seats. Their foreman, a tall, balding man with a dark mustache, remained standing.

“Have you reached a verdict?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Will you read the verdict, please?”

The man glanced nervously around the room, then looked down at the paper in his hand. “We the jury find the defendant, Randall C. Tucker—” he cleared his throat and peered at the judge, who nodded for him to continue “—guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.”

Guilty? The word hit Tucker like a crowbar to the gut, momentarily stunning him. Numbly, he tried to raise his hand to rub away the pain, but it was no good. His chest had constricted so tightly he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

“But I’m innocent,” he said, or maybe he only thought it. Someone was screaming inside his head, drowning out the chaos that erupted around him, drowning out his lawyer’s soft, concerned words, blocking everything but the memory of his promise to Landon. I’m not going anywhere, buddy. I won’t leave you, I promise.

And then the judge, his voice mere background noise until that moment, said something about reconvening for sentencing. Randall was pushed and prodded from the room. He spent the next few days in numb incredulity, caught in a nightmare he couldn’t escape.

When he faced the white-haired Judge Forester again, the subtle contempt Tucker had sensed during the actual trial was more apparent. Forester said it was a sad commentary on the state of society that such a successful man as Randall would murder his wife in cold blood. He asked Randall to tell authorities where he’d hidden the body so Andrea’s friends and family could receive some sense of closure. And he added his regret that the death penalty wasn’t an option in this particular case. Then he said the words that echoed through Randall’s soul.

“I hereby sentence the defendant, Randall C. Tucker, to prison for the rest of his natural life.”

CHAPTER ONE

OH, GOD, a fight!

Gabrielle Hadley quickly turned off the bathroom faucet and sought a paper towel to dry her soapy hands as hoots and hollers resounded outside. What had started as a few distinct shouts was quickly growing into a loud roar that bounced off the prison’s cinder-block walls. It was a sound she knew, a sound she feared.

“Not again,” she moaned. “This is only my third day!”

Her heart in her throat, she tossed the wadded paper into the wastebasket and left the small corner rest room in the guards’ station. Lunch break or no, she had to get out there and back up the other officers. And she’d probably have to wield her baton, as well, even though the thought of actually cracking it against someone’s skull still turned her stomach.

“Have you radioed for the Designated Armed Response Team?” she asked Eckland as she dashed by him. The only other officer in the small caged station outside the bathroom, he didn’t answer. But she was in such a hurry to get inside the cell block, she scarcely noticed. “Open the door.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I don’t think—”

“What are you waiting for?” she cried. Through the metals bars that separated her from the inmates and their cells, she could see a small group of jumpsuit-clad men circling something or someone in the cement-floored common area. Feverish cries rang out from those who watched, along with a chorus of support from the men still locked in three stories of old-style cells above. Yet she could hear the thud of fist on bone, a grunt of pain and a few muttered curses.

“Eckland!”

Finally the gears began to turn. The door slid to the left. She slipped inside the cell block and began looking for the other officers as the door closed immediately behind her.

She caught a glimpse of brown and khaki, a uniform like her own, and realized Hansen and Roddy were already in the middle of the fight. Swallowing hard, she started after them, hoping the Designated Armed Response Team would arrive soon, their shotguns filled with birdshot.

“Back off. Go to your cells now, or we’ll lock you down for three days!” she shouted, hoping to sound far more forceful than she felt.

Someone showed her just how much he respected her authority by grabbing her ass. Brandishing her stick, she whirled to face at least five inmates who could have done it. They grinned, their eyes alight with insolent challenge. But a particularly filthy string of curses called everyone’s attention back to the blows being leveled only a few feet away and they forgot her in their effort to gain a better view.

Forging on, Gabrielle broke through the ranks to find four men ganging up on one.

“That’s enough! Break it up,” she said. She half expected one of the brawling men to punch her in the jaw, but Sergeant Hansen was the only one who touched her. He took her by the shoulder and yanked her back, motioning for her to wait. Then he spread his arms wide to keep the onlookers from crowding too close. Roddy was doing the same.

What was this? Gabrielle gaped in surprise at the look of rapt attention on Hansen’s and Roddy’s faces. They weren’t trying to break up the fight; they were only keeping things from getting out of hand. And they were enjoying the spectacle as much as the inmates, maybe more.

“They could kill him!” she cried, hoping to bring them to their senses.

“They’re not gonna kill him.” Hansen’s terse words barely reached her ears for the noise.

“They’re just teachin’ the cocky sonuvabitch a lesson,” Roddy muttered, closer to her. “It’s about time somebody did.”

But it wasn’t up to the prisoners to teach anyone a lesson. And it certainly wasn’t up to Roddy, or Hansen for that matter, to decide whether or not an inmate deserved a beating!

Fortunately the lone prisoner knew how to fight, or he wouldn’t have lasted this long. He was lighter and more thinly built than his assailants, but as Gabrielle watched with wide eyes he whirled and knocked one of them to the ground with a karate-style kick. He deflected a fist aimed at his face and smashed a third man’s nose with a rapid jab, but he couldn’t possibly recover quickly enough to prepare for the man coming up from behind. A blow to the back of his head sent him face-first to the ground, and the others instantly swarmed and started kicking him.

Blood spatter brought another round of raucous cheering. The crunch of each blow caused bile to rise in Gabrielle’s throat. The victim was curling up, trying to protect himself as best he could, but she was afraid they were going to kill him. Someone had to do something.

Her heart pounding so hard every beat vibrated out to her fingertips, she raised her baton, jumped into the fracas and clubbed one of the four attackers. Adrenaline must have lent her strength because all two hundred and fifty pounds of him dropped to the floor like a stone, giving her the chance to hit another before the rest knew what was happening.

“Get off him,” she cried. “Get off him or I’ll club you senseless.” She glared at the remaining two, who paused to look at her with hatred contorting their sweat-and blood-streaked faces. They shuffled a few steps away, but their eyes flicked repeatedly to her baton, and she knew they were only waiting for an opportunity to disarm her.

The two on the ground stirred and shoved themselves up, but before anyone could make a move, Roddy and Hansen finally rallied and began to break up the fight.

“That’s enough now. You’ve had your fun,” Hansen said. “That’s enough for today.”

Roddy grinned with satisfaction. “You finally took him, Manuel. You finally took him.”

With a little help from his friends, Gabrielle wanted to add as she stared, shaking, at the man on the floor. Eyes closed, lip and forehead bleeding, orange jumpsuit torn, he was lying perfectly still. Was he unconscious? Seriously hurt?

The violence sickened her. Fighting the urge to throw up, she bent to feel for a pulse at his neck and found herself staring into a pair of the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Framed by long, thick lashes that matched the black of his hair, they were also, by far, the prettiest.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He tried to sit up, but she gently pushed him back. “Wait. Let me check a few things first.” Quickly she threaded her fingers through his hair and felt his skull, searching for cuts or lumps, anything that might indicate a concussion. She knew he’d been hit in the back of the head. He could have been kicked there, as well. But she didn’t find anything indicative of serious injury, other than the knot she’d expected, the obvious busted lip and the gash above his left eye.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, batting her hands away as though impatient to escape her probing. He staggered to his feet but favored his left side so badly, Gabrielle was sure he had some damaged ribs. He held his hand at an odd angle, too.

“I’m afraid you’ve got a few broken bones,” she said. “And your forehead probably needs stitches.” She glanced at his blood on her hands and knew touching him had been foolish. He could have AIDS. Prisons were full of HIV. In training, they’d warned her about that. She even carried a pair of gloves on her belt. But she hadn’t been at the job long enough to have established any kind of habit and in the heat of the moment her natural impulse had won out.

“Why don’t you sit until I can bring a doctor in here?” she asked.

“He doesn’t need a doctor. He’ll be fine. Get him back where he belongs.” It was Sergeant Hansen, her supervisor. He’d overseen the herding of the men back to their cells, but now he hovered over her, frowning at the injured convict, who stood half a foot taller than both of them. “Afterward I want to speak to you at my desk,” he told her.

Maybe she’d been stupid to break rank with the others; maybe it was going to cost her her job. But Gabrielle had acted according to her conscience and wasn’t prepared to back off yet. “He needs a doctor,” she insisted. “I’m pretty sure he’s got a couple of—”

“Save your breath,” the inmate interrupted. “I’m not going to get a doctor because, according to your boss and his henchmen, this little incident never happened. Too many fights in one cell block might lead to the truth—that they’re being staged. And staging fights could cost your buddy Hansen, here, his cushy job.”

His voice held a distinctly challenging edge, but even his anger couldn’t fully eclipse the smooth, cultured tones underneath. After seeing him fight like a man born to the streets and witnessing firsthand the power of his muscular body, the fact that he sounded more like a business executive than a maximum security prisoner came as a surprise to Gabrielle—but no more so than his accusation.

“Of course it’ll be reported,” she said. “The response team is probably on its way right now.” She looked to Hansen for confirmation, but the narrowing of the sergeant’s cool gray eyes and Eckland’s strange reluctance when she’d demanded to be let into the cell block shook her faith.

“I was thinkin’ of doin’ you a favor, scumbag,” Hansen said. “I figured you wouldn’t be too eager for me to report another fight, seein’ as how you could lose your privileges again. But maybe you don’t know when a guy’s tryin’ to be nice. So I’ll report it if you say so. Is that what you want?”

The inmate didn’t answer, but a muscle flexed in his jaw and his eyes turned hard and glittery.

Hansen grinned. “That’s what I thought. Now get your ass back where it belongs before I change my mind.”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK you were doing out there?” Sergeant Hansen shouted once Gabrielle had composed herself enough to appear at his desk.

“I was trying to stop a convict from sustaining physical injury,” she said. “I thought I was doing my job.”

“You were risking your fool life, that’s what you were doing. I had things under control.”

Gabrielle had promised herself she’d be diplomatic. She needed her job. The small desert town of Florence, Arizona, revolved around seven prisons, including the juvenile detention center. There wasn’t anything else that would pay her enough to survive, at least not anything she could get. After running away from home at least a dozen times in her teen years, she’d barely graduated high school. College had been out of the question. But she was too honest to suck up to Hansen and pretend she agreed with his actions, so she folded her arms and kept her mouth shut.

“Randall Tucker killed his own wife, Officer Hadley,” Hansen announced as though he were playing some kind of trump card. “I’ll get his jacket so you can read it if you don’t believe me.”

Gabrielle didn’t want to read his jacket or anyone else’s. The inmates’s wrap sheets were sometimes available to the officers, but she purposely avoided anything she didn’t need to know for fear she’d lose the nerve to do her job. Working for the state provided good medical and dental benefits, an excellent retirement plan and favorable hours. Arizona needed corrections officers in Florence so badly, they’d even offered her bonus money to work in this particular prison, and they’d given her days even though most rookies had to take the night shift.

“That’s his name, Randall Tucker?” she asked. “I think I read about him in the paper when I was living in Phoenix.”

He nodded. “Then you know he suspected his wife of having an affair, got insanely jealous and hired a private detective to follow her around. When he found out she was cheating on him, he flipped out and beat her to a bloody pulp with that karate shit of his. No one’s ever found the body.”

“If they’ve never found the body, how do we know what happened? Did he confess?” she asked in surprise, wishing she could remember more about the story. She was new at corrections, but she’d seen enough court TV to know the rarity of such a conviction.

“Hell, no. Tucker’s too smart for that. He’s still trying to get out of here. But a whole roomful of people watched him drag her away from an aerobics class the night she disappeared, and he was the last person to see her. He didn’t even report her missing for three days. By then her friends were getting suspicious, but all the police could find was blood spatter in the garage consistent with a blow to the head. The kind made with a fist.”

Shying away from the mental picture Hansen was purposely creating in an attempt to intimidate her, Gabrielle went back to the name—Randall Tucker. For a moment his deep, angry, fathomless blue eyes flashed into her mind. She recalled his face. A rugged, very interesting face. The face of a man who’d killed his wife in his own garage.

Gabrielle stifled a shudder. “I don’t care what he’s done,” she said, remembering her ideals. “It’s not up to me to punish him.”

“I’m not punishing him. I’m just letting him pick on someone his own size.”

“Four to one is hardly a fair fight.”

The muscles of Hansen’s arm flexed as he rubbed the top of his blond flattop, studying her. What he lacked in height he tried to compensate for in the weight room, which made him appear almost square. “You think his wife would want him to have a pleasant stay here?”

“I don’t have to answer that. The government dictates what his stay is like, not me. Or you,” she added.

He chuckled bitterly, finally seeming to accept that he wasn’t going to convince her. “Damn bleeding heart liberal, that’s what you are. It’s a shame what people like you have done to this country. Prisoners are treated like guests at the taxpayer hotel while we work like slaves to keep food on the table.”

“What good does it do to behave like them?” she asked. “Just because we work with depraved men doesn’t mean we have to lose our humanity.”

“You think I’ve lost my humanity, Officer Hadley?”

Gabrielle hesitated but, in the end, her natural frankness won out. “I don’t think what you did back there was right. And I sure as hell don’t think you should have denied Randall Tucker a doctor. He’s obviously hurt. We should send him to the health center.”

“Let me tell you something, little lady. Randall Tucker is fine. He can take two men easily, and I’ve seen him take three. Far as I know, today’s the first time he’s ever been beat. He’s been fighting since he came here and he’ll continue to fight until he dies, or his appeal is finally heard and the judge overturns his sentence. But he’s already been denied twice, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that. He’s tougher than nails and stronger than a bull. He’s a survivor.”

Hansen put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “And you know what? So am I. I’ve been workin’ here since college, nearly fifteen years, and I’ll be workin’ here in fifteen more. It’s only the weak who have to worry, the young, the old—” he cocked an eyebrow at her “—the fairer sex. At least those who don’t mind their own business and keep to their place.”

Indignant, Gabrielle shot out of her chair. “I don’t appreciate the implication, Sergeant Hansen.”

He sat back, laced thick fingers behind his head and smiled. “The implication? I’m not implying anything. I’m just reminding you of some basic facts, Officer Hadley. You lack the upper-body strength of a good prison officer. You lack a killer’s instinct. I don’t think you got it in you to do this job. Bottom line, you might need a lot of support from your fellow corrections officers, so you’d better be careful not to piss them off.”

Or? The word hung in the air, but Gabrielle refused to say it. She was afraid she’d pushed Hansen too far already. The tentative relationship that had developed between them over her first two days had degenerated into open hostility, and she needed her job. She pictured herself trying to break up a fight like the one this afternoon and having him and his henchmen, as Randall Tucker had referred to them, hold back, stalling several minutes before coming to her aid. She could be seriously injured.