Once a Hero. Lisa Childs

on with you two?” she asked, her voice giddy with curiosity. She turned away from Erin, tracking Terlecki’s long strides toward the bar.

      “Uh…” Erin searched her memory for the girl’s name from the introduction part of the class. “Amy. Nothing’s going on, really.”

      The woman sitting on the other side of Erin snorted in derision.

      Amy giggled. “See, everyone knows that you two have something going on.”

      “No, we don’t,” Erin insisted.

      “But you both disappeared during the class, then you just walked in together,” the blonde stated, unwilling to let it drop.

      “Come on,” the other woman said, pulling Erin to her feet. Despite her thin build, her grip was strong. And despite her youthful appearance, fine lines on her fair skin betrayed her age as probably almost twice the college girl’s. “Let’s play darts.”

      Erin followed, willing to use any excuse to escape the nosy girl, even though she hadn’t thrown darts since she had with her older brother. And now she couldn’t play with him…thanks to Kent Terlecki, who had sent Mitchell to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. Mitchell would have never dealt drugs.

      “I’m surprised you walked in at all,” the older woman mused, “let alone with Sergeant Terlecki.” She pulled darts from the board and stepped back. Like Amy, she had long blond hair, but a couple of silver strands shone among the platinum. “I thought he’d finally gotten rid of you.”

      Erin turned toward her, surprised by her barely veiled animosity. She expected it from police officers, but not civilians, although some of them weren’t shy about telling her she was wrong. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

      “Marla. Marla Halliday.” She waited, as if Erin was supposed to recognize her name. Then she added, “My son is a police officer—Sergeant Bartholomew ‘Billy’ Halliday with the vice unit.”

      The name still meant nothing to Erin—it hadn’t come up in any of her research—but the woman’s attitude made complete sense now. “Oh.”

      “Yeah. Oh. When you attack the department, you’re attacking every one of those hardworking officers—not just Sergeant Terlecki,” Marla admonished, with a mother’s fierce protectiveness.

      “I’m sure your son is a fine officer, but—”

      “That’s your problem, honey. You’re sure regardless of the facts. You’re sure even when you’re wrong.” Marla’s porcelain skin reddened. “Not that my son isn’t a fine officer, because he is. But he’s not Sergeant Terlecki.”

      “Then he is a fine officer.” He wouldn’t frame a man for a crime he hadn’t committed just to pad his arrest record and further his career, as Kent Terlecki had.

      “But Billy’s not a hero,” his mother said.

      “You’re saying Sergeant Terlecki—Kent Terlecki is a hero?”

      Marla nodded. “Why do you think they call him Bullet?”

      “I have no idea.” The mystery of his nickname had been bugging her since she had moved to the west Michigan town of Lakewood. “Why don’t you tell me?”

      “Hey, Ms. Halliday,” Kent said as he joined them.

      “Do you have some kind of radar for whenever I ask a question?” Erin asked, her stomach knotted with frustration over how close she’d come to learning one of his secrets before he’d thwarted her again.

      “You have to be careful of this one,” Kent said to Marla Halliday. “She tries to interview everyone.”

      “No interview here,” Marla said. “We were just going to play darts.” Her blue eyes twinkled. Kent grimaced, but she ignored him. “Here, Erin, why don’t you go first?”

      Erin closed her fingers around the proffered bunch of brightly colored darts. She chose one to throw, then turned to the board to find someone had pinned a blown-up picture of her there.

      Not someone. Him.

      Kent Terlecki was no hero.

      Chapter Two

      A chuckle at the shocked expression on her face rumbled in Kent’s chest, but he suppressed it. Instead he moved up behind her, then closed his hand around her fingers holding the dart.

      “See?” he said as he lifted her hand and guided the throw. “A bull’s-eye is right between the eyes.”

      “My eyes,” she muttered. As the dart pierced the paper across the bridge of her nose, she winced.

      “Your chin and ears are five points, your mouth and cheeks ten and your—”

      “I get the idea,” she interrupted, tugging her hand free and stepping away.

      He hadn’t realized he was still holding her. Or that Billy’s mom had left them, to return to the others. Maybe it was good he wasn’t out in the field anymore. His instincts were not as sharp as they’d once been.

      “And I get to you,” she said, “whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”

      “Why?” He asked the question that had been nagging at him for a year.

      “Why do I get to you?” she asked, her lips tilting up in a smug smile. “Or why aren’t you willing to tell the truth?”

      “Why do you want to get to me?” he wondered. “I’m always the victim of your poison pen.”

      “A little paranoid, Sergeant?” she teased, her dark eyes gleaming with amusement. And triumph.

      He shook his head. “No. I used to think it wasn’t personal. That I was your target just because I represented the department.”

      “Now you’re a martyr,” she quipped.

      Remembering all those people who had tried to make him one, he suppressed a shudder. “God, no.”

      “Oh, I forgot. You’re a hero,” she said. “That’s what Mrs. Halliday called you.”

      The act that others called heroic had been sheer instinct—an instinct every cop had. He didn’t doubt that any one of his fellow officers would have done the same thing he had. “I’m no hero.”

      “You don’t have to tell me that.”

      He clenched his jaw so hard that his back teeth ground together. The woman was damn infuriating. “So it is personal.”

      “You’re paranoid,” she said, but her gaze slid away from his.

      “I heard what you said to the chief,” he admitted. “That you think I got my job by arresting innocent people. Why would you ask that?”

      Sure, a lot of people claimed innocence, but no one he’d arrested had ever gotten away with their crimes. There’d always been too much evidence.

      She shrugged. “How else would you have racked up the arrest record you have?”

      “Because a lot of people commit crimes, Ms. Powell.” He stated what he considered obvious. “And I’m good at catching them.”

      “Not anymore,” she taunted. “You sit behind a desk now. Your badge is all for show.”

      Damn, she had struck that nerve he’d sworn she couldn’t. But she had actually spoken a grain of truth for once. Sometimes he did feel as if his badge were only a prop.

      Her eyes sparkled as if she’d picked up on her direct hit to his pride. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked. “To move up in the department, to get ahead?”

      Getting desked was the last thing he’d wanted, but she was the last person to whom he would make that confession. “I know what you think of me, however unfounded,”