It Must Be Love

'We sent someone over to her house. Your police vehicle was parked out front, but no one answered the door.'

Holy shit. He hadn't heard anyone knocking, but of course, at certain key moments, he wouldn't have heard a marching band passing two feet from his bare ass. 'Must have been when we stepped out to get some breakfast,' he improvised. 'Ms. Breedlove drove.'

Luchetti stopped as they entered the division room. 'You told her about Carter, and she felt like breakfast? She felt like driving?'

Time to change tactics. He looked the captain in the face and let go of the anger he'd held in reserve. 'Are you busting my balls about this? The Hillard theft is the most important case the Property Crimes Division has ever seen, bar-fucking-none, and I missed being in on the arrest because I was baby-sitting an informant.' Letting out some of the rage felt good-damn good. 'I worked hard on this and put in a hell of a lot of overtime. I had to put up with Carter's bullshit every day, and I wanted to slap the cuffs on him myself. I deserved to be there, and the fact that I wasn't just pisses me off. So if you're trying to make me feel like shit, you can forget it. You can't make me feel worse.'

Luchetti rocked back on his heels. 'Okay, Shanahan, I'll let it drop unless it comes up again.'

Joe hoped to God it wouldn't. There was no way he could explain about him and Gabrielle. He couldn't even explain it to himself.

'Are you sure you don't smell flowers?' Luchetti asked and sniffed the air. 'Smells like my wife's lilac bushes.'

'I don't smell a damn thing.' He knew it. He knew he smelled like a girl. 'Where's Carter?'

'Number three, but he's not talking.'

Joe walked to the interrogation room and opened the door. And there sat Kevin, one hand cuffed to the table.

Kevin looked up, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. 'When one of the cops told me an undercover detective had been working in Anomaly, I knew it had to be you.

I knew from the first day that you were a loser.'

Joe leaned one shoulder into the door frame. 'Maybe, but I'm not the loser who was caught with Mr. Hillard's Monet, or the loser who filled his house with stolen antiques. I'm also not the loser facing fifteen to thirty in the state pen. That loser would be you.'

Kevin's already pale complexion blanched a bit. 'My attorney will get me out of here.'

'I don't think so.' Joe moved aside to let Chief Walker enter the room. 'No lawyer alive is that good.'

The chief sat across the table from Kevin with a bulky folder filled with paper, some of which Joe knew had nothing to do with Kevin. It was an old police ploy to make a criminal think he had a thick police file. 'Shalcroft is being more cooperative than you,' Walker began, which Joe figured was just as likely to be a bald-faced lie as the truth. He also figured once Kevin faced the enormity of the evidence against him, he would flip quicker than a dancing poodle. If nothing else, Kevin Carter was an avid self-preservationist. No doubt he'd eventually give the names of the thief he'd used to steal the painting, and everyone else involved.

'You should give some serious thought to cooperating before it's too late,' Joe suggested.

Kevin sat back in his chair and cocked his head to one side. 'I'm not talking. Screw you.'

'Okay, then think about this instead, while you're in a comfy jail cell, I'm going to be at home, grilling up steaks and celebrating.'

'With Gabrielle? Does she know who you really are? Or did you use her to get to me?'

Guilt settled in his belly. Guilt and the same wave of protectiveness he'd felt the night he'd watched Gabrielle hang from that balcony. It caught him off guard and pushed him away from the door. 'Don't you talk to me about using Gabrielle. You used her for years to give yourself a legitimate front.' What he felt churning in his gut was more than just a sense of duty to protect his informant, but he wasn't in the mood to get in touch or get introspective.

Kevin turned away. 'She'll be fine.'

'When I spoke with her this morning, she didn't seem fine.'

Kevin turned back, and for the first time, something besides arrogance and belligerence flickered behind his eyes. 'What did you tell her? What does she know?'

'What she knows is none of your concern. All you need to know is that I was in Anomaly to do my job.'

'Yeah right,' he scoffed. 'When you had Gabe shoved up against a wall and had your tongue down her throat, it looked like more than a job to me.'

Walker looked up, and Joe forced an easy smile. 'Some days were better than others.' He shrugged and shook his head, as if Kevin was just spouting off. 'I know you're really pissed at me right now, but I'm going to give you some advice. You can take it or tell me to screw myself again, I don't care either way, but here it is: You're not the type of guy who really gives a shit about anyone but you, and now isn't the time to develop scruples. Your ship is going down, my friend, and you can either save yourself or drown with the other rats. I suggest you save yourself before it's too late.' He looked Kevin over one last time, then he turned from the room and walked to the holding cells.

Contrary to what the chief had told Kevin, William Stewart Shalcroft wasn't cooperating in the least. He sat cooling his heels in the cell, staring out the bars, the light overhead casting his bald head in a grayish light. Joe watched the art dealer and waited for the adrenaline rush. The surge that always came when it was time to scam a scammer, to get a guy to talk even though you've just told him not to talk or you'll use everything he says against him. The rush didn't come. Instead Joe just felt exhausted. Mentally and physically spent.

The high energy filling the station kept him awake and alert the rest of the day. Listening to the details of Kevin's and Shalcroft's arrest, then listening some more as the story was hashed and rehashed from beginning to end kept his mind occupied and kept him from thinking too much about Gabrielle and what he intended to do about her.

'Did someone bring flowers in here?' Winston asked from across the aisle.

'Yeah, smells like it,' Dale Parker, a rookie detective, added.

'I don't smell a damn thing,' Joe barked at his coworkers, then buried his nose in paperwork. He spent the rest of the afternoon smelling like a lilac bush and waiting for the ax to fall on his neck. At five o'clock, he grabbed the pile of paper on his desk and headed home.

Sam waited on his perch by the front door. 'Hello, Joe,' he greeted as soon as Joe walked in.

'Hey, buddy.' Joe tossed his keys and the stack of paper on the table in front of his couch, then let Sam out of his aviary. 'How was television today?'

'JER-ry JER-ry,' Sam screeched as he hopped out of the wire door and flew to the top of the oak entertainment unit.

Joe hadn't allowed Sam to watch Springer for several months. Not since he'd picked up bad language and repeated it at inopportune moments.

'Your mama's a fat hoe.'

'Jeezus,' Joe sighed and sank down on the sofa. He'd thought Sam had forgotten that one.

'You behave,' the mimic perched on the television admonished.

Joe leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His life was headed straight to hell. He'd just about flushed his career, and there was a real possibility that his job was still in jeopardy. He was up to his ass and elbows in paperwork, and his bird had a trashy mouth. Everything was out of control.

Without the distractions of his job, he thought of Gabrielle, of the day he'd first arrested her. His opinion of her had done about a one-eighty in less than a week. He respected her, and he felt real bad that she'd probably been right about her business. Her name and her shop were now connected to the most infamous theft in the state. She probably would have to close it, but thanks to her slick little lawyer, she wouldn't lose everything. At least he hoped she wouldn't

And then he thought of her soft mouth on his and her hard nipples grazing his chest Her touch on his back and abdomen. His penis in her hand as she rubbed him across her smooth stomach, back and forth right across that belly ring. He'd almost embarrassed himself right there on her silky skin. He could still see her beaded earrings nestled in her hair as he looked down into her face, still feel the warmth of her body beneath him.

She was beautiful with her clothes on. She was amazing with them off. She'd rocked his world, blown his mind,