than some bruises and rug burns she wouldn’t complain about, Shauna was in one piece. She nodded. “You?”
“He had you in his sights.”
Shauna pretended his deep-pitched admonition didn’t send an ominous chill through her veins. “I’m fine.”
She took note of the two-inch cut oozing blood along the edge of his short, coffee-colored hair. But, for the moment, she ignored his forehead and watched the piercing intensity of his dark eyes cool to golden brown detachment. More than his 20/20 aim with the gun, they hadn’t missed a detail of all that had transpired here. Not even the personal threat to her life.
Which Shauna refused to comment on. It was all part of the job, right?
She tucked her phone and the gun in the waistband of her tweed skirt and stuck out her hand for an official introduction. “I’m Shauna Cartwright.”
“I know.”
She waited until he took her hand. His grip was as strong and firm as the rest of him had proved to be. And though an often-ignored part of her wished she was meeting such a seasoned, attractive man under different circumstances, she knew succumbing to her feminine longings was out of the question.
“Eli, was it?” He nodded. “May I see your badge, Detective?”
A scoffing sound marred his smile as he let her hand go to reach inside his jacket. “I heard you were a tough one for rules and regs. Are this morning’s events going into my file?”
Shauna ignored the taunt and quickly read the ID beside his badge. Eli Masterson. Thirty-six years old. Fourteen years on the force, the majority of them having filled a necessary but difficult role.
“Internal Affairs?” She glanced down at the man moaning at their feet. “And you made that shot?” She indicated the small gold star on his ID before handing it back. “Why would an I.A. detective maintain his sharpshooter’s badge? You planning to transfer to S.W.A.T.?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Does Captain Chang,” she referred to the chief of the I.A. division, “have this much trouble getting you to cooperate with your fellow officers?”
“Yes, ma’am, he does.”
She almost laughed at his dry delivery of the truth, and though she appreciated a man with a smart wit, she never allowed the humor to soften the taut curve of her own lips. “Well…, thank you for saving my life, Eli. You saved all our lives today.”
He seemed hesitant to accept her praise. “No problem.”
Leaning in, she caught him off guard as she nabbed his handkerchief from the pocket where he’d stuffed his wallet. She surprised him further by pressing the cotton to the wound on his forehead. “Make sure one of the medics clears you before you leave. I can’t tell if that’s a shrapnel cut or a bullet graze, but it looks like you could use a stitch or two.”
It felt almost intimate, like a woman caring for her man, to stand there in the midst of the bustling recovery team, gently tending Eli’s wound. She felt herself warming beneath the scrutiny of his gaze as he tried to figure out whether her kindness was genuine or a ploy he should guard against. His fingers brushed against hers as he took over staunching the wound and retreated a step. “I’ll do that, ma’am.”
“Good.” Wouldn’t it be nice to skip the ma’am’s for once and just be a woman with a man? But she was more than that. And the suspicion in Eli Masterson’s eyes said he knew it, too. So she pulled rank. The way he expected. The way she was supposed to. “You got away with playing cowboy today, Masterson. But when I tell you to do something, I expect it to happen. The chain of command needs to be followed, no matter what the situation is.”
“I’ll remember that next time.”
“Please do.”
“Is that all?”
“I’ll expect a report from you tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shauna watched him turn and disappear into the crowd of officers, medics, CSI techs and curious thrill-seekers bustling about outside.
“Damn,” she muttered, spotting the deputy commissioner, Michael Garner, breaking through the same crowd and flashing his ID to the scene commander. If the main office already knew she’d been involved in a shoot-out, that meant the reporters would be following shortly. Once the press got wind of this, her children would find out. They’d worry. But Seth and Sarah were adults now. She could handle them.
What worried her was the possibility that he would find out. He seemed to know every secret about her life. Shauna shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air or the scene around her.
When Michael waved to her and hurried over with concern shining in his eyes, she wished she could disappear as easily as Eli Masterson had. Michael certainly was an efficient one. He’d wasted no time in getting here. She glanced down at her bloody hands and the stains on her cuffs and skirt. Her appearance should earn a few personal questions she was in no mood to answer. If she asked, Michael would organize the reports from this deadly fiasco and handle the press. She could go home and clean up, lock her doors and isolate herself from the death and destruction surrounding her.
But she couldn’t ask.
KCPD’s Commissioner of Police didn’t have that luxury.
Chapter Two
“Masterson.”
Eli topped off the coffee in his plastic cup before acknowledging the unmistakable sound of authority behind him. “Captain Taylor.”
“What brings you to my precinct?”
Though he doubted running into each other in the break room was a coincidence, Eli took his time before stepping aside for the patriarch of the Fourth Precinct to fill a Kansas City Chiefs mug with the thick, steaming brew. “Routine follow-up on the shooting by your man, Banning.”
No sense wasting pleasantries. There was no love lost between Internal Affairs and the Taylors since Eli and his former partner, Joe Niederhaus, had investigated the captain’s cousin, CSI Mac Taylor, four years ago. Especially since his old buddy Joe had done such a bang-up job of framing Mac and nearly getting Mac and his future wife killed. Turned out Joe was the one taking bribes, stealing evidence and blackmailing fellow cops.
Eli had been a much younger detective then, naively blinded by loyalty to his veteran partner and unable to see the truth until it was too late. There was nothing naive left inside Eli anymore. And though he’d been the one to put the cuffs on Joe and had even, reluctantly, testified against him in court, several members of KCPD judged Eli guilty by association. He already triggered guarded suspicion whenever he entered a roomful of cops. He was Internal Affairs—the cop who policed other cops and held them accountable to the highest standards of their sworn duty. But there were some, like Captain Mitch Taylor, who seemed to take their distrust a little more personally.
Polite and professional as the captain might be, he wasn’t here to make Eli feel welcome. “Will anything go into Banning’s permanent file?”
