baritone voice. Deep and resonant, it didn’t leave any room for argument from anyone except the most foolish and reckless. Neither of which A.J. Green, the doorman, was. He stepped back as Zane entered the building. “Elevator’s on your right, Officer,” A.J. called after him.
“I kind of figured that out,” Zane commented as he pushed the up button with his thumb.
A minute and a half later he was knocking on the door of apartment 5E. The hall, he noted as he’d walked up to the door, was as silent as a tomb. There was no sound of an argument, heated or otherwise.
Just as he’d expected.
“Who is it?” a soft voice on the other side of the door wanted to know.
“Officer Calloway,” he announced. “NYPD.” He stepped back two steps so that the woman could verify the information for herself if she looked through the door’s peephole. “We received a call from someone reporting some kind of domestic disturbance going on in this building.” Try as he might, he couldn’t quite manage to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Was that you?”
Alyx opened the door, expecting to see, given the man’s tone, a slightly down at the mouth, scowling police officer. Most likely somewhat paunchy. Definitely not friendly.
What she saw, instead, could have best been described as the answer to every woman under the age of a hundred’s fantasy dream man. At the very least, the man for whom the phrase “tall, dark and gorgeous” had been coined.
Because he was.
He was also scowling fit to kill.
Chapter 2
Something about the officer’s tone put Alyx on the defensive. She studied his face attentively as she answered his question. “I made the call, yes.”
He gestured impatiently around the well-lit hallway with its alabaster walls. “So where is this alleged disturbance?” he asked.
“It was—” she emphasized the word because there was nothing but silence in the hallway now “—coming from the apartment next door. 5F,” she added in case his sense of direction took him to the apartment on the other side of hers.
He turned his head toward 5F and remained quiet for a moment, straining to listen. Nothing but silence met his ear.
“Sure it wasn’t just the television you heard?” he suggested. “Some of the programs on the cable channels can get pretty loud and violent.” Obviously, he thought this was the source of the commotion. But Alyx knew what she’d heard and she intended to stand by it, even if Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous-Policeman was smirking at her.
“It was the man next door,” she told him firmly, then added for good measure, “and he was shouting at his wife.”
All right, maybe she had heard raised voices, Zane allowed. But that didn’t automatically mean that there had to be violence or abuse involved. “Some guys get a little hot under the collar and they don’t realize how loud they sound when they shout.”
Why was this policeman so adamant about her being wrong about what she’d heard? Was he a friend of Harry’s and trying to protect the man?
“There was also banging,” Alyx insisted.
“Maybe he slammed a few drawers or cabinet doors to knock off some steam.”
“His wife had bruises.”
The statement caught him up short. “You saw bruises?” Zane demanded.
Moment of truth, Alyx thought. She could either lie and hopefully get him to go next door to confront the bully, or she could tell the skeptical-looking officer the truth and pray he’d still do the decent thing and question the man next door.
Opening her mouth, Alyx was about to go with the first choice, but then she stopped. If this policeman caught her in a lie, he’d dismiss her 911 call and everything else she said or would say as merely being a case of an overactive imagination.
So she went with the truth. “Yes. She tried to cover them up with makeup, but black and blue is a hard combination to camouflage if you’re looking at a person close up.”
“If the domestic violence was in progress when you made the call at—” Zane paused to look at the paper he’d been given to confirm the time “—twelve-fifteen, when would the alleged battered wife have had the time to try to cover the bruises up with makeup?” he asked suspiciously.
She’d hoped not to have to admit to this part. “I saw the last set of bruises. Or what I assume were the last set.”
Just as he’d thought. His deep-blue eyes pinned her, leaving no wiggle space whatsoever. “And exactly when was this?”
Her reluctance increased—but she really had no choice. She doled out the information between gritted teeth. “Two weeks ago. In the elevator. He was with her. And she looked very afraid,” she stressed. The officer appeared utterly unconvinced. Frustrated, Alyx added, “He came on to me. His wife was standing right there.” Didn’t he see what a reprehensible reptile Harry was?
“This got under your skin,” he theorized. “So are you trying to get back at him now by accusing him of being guilty of domestic abuse?”
How the hell had he gotten that out of what she’d just said?
Her eyes flashed. “I am not trying to get back at anyone,” she informed him indignantly, struggling to hold on to her frayed temper. “I am trying to prevent someone from getting hurt—or worse. I’m a doctor,” she informed him. “I know the signs that go with abuse. I also have excellent hearing. He was threatening her—and slapping her around, from the sound of it.” She drew herself up, wishing she was taller than her five-foot-four stature. “Now if you don’t want to go next door and talk to him, send over someone who will.”
The woman was feisty, he’d give her that, Zane thought. Whether or not that was a good quality in this particular case he hadn’t made up his mind yet.
“I will talk to him,” Zane replied, his voice distant.
It was essentially a matter of crossing his “t’s” and dotting his “i’s.” Otherwise, he would have told her to do whatever she felt she had to do and just walked away.
It wasn’t indifference on his part that was the deciding factor in the way he viewed this case. Neither was it that he condoned battery of any kind, whether it was against a wife or a husband. But he had seen the extent of damage a false accusation could create, the kind of havoc it could bring about.
He’d lived through it.
In an effort to get sole custody of her children when she divorced his father, Annie Calloway had filed charges of domestic abuse against her husband. False charges of domestic abuse. His father, a man he’d idolized from the first moment he drew breath, had been devastated that the woman he loved would have accused him of such a terrible thing.
At first, Jack Calloway fought the charges tooth and nail, but the court sympathized with her and ruled in his mother’s favor. Eventually, despondent and drinking heavily, his father wound up losing everything, including his job on the police force. His friends
