The Hearts Series

  “Both of you need to back off. This is your last warning,” I shouted with authority. When neither of them heeded my advice, I started to approach. Somebody placed their hand on my shoulder, and I turned swiftly to find Tony standing there.

  “Let me help,” he said, and I nodded, allowing him to go ahead of me. Grabbing one guy’s arm and twisting it behind his back, Tony managed to subdue him, while I went straight for the other man. Sliding my baton back in its holster, I pulled out my cuffs.

  “Hands above your head,” I ordered, making the mistake of touching his shoulder. He interpreted it as a sign of aggression, too drunk to realise I was a police officer, and swung around. Luckily, I managed to duck quickly and avoid a blow. Seeing he’d missed his mark, he threw another punch, but I was faster. Sidestepping the hit, I grabbed his other arm and locked it firmly behind his back.

  “You fucking bitch,” he slurred, struggling in my hold.

  “Oi,” Tony shouted, seeing him resist me. “Do as the constable tells you.”

  “Piss off!” the drunk spat as I slapped a pair of cuffs on him.

  “Stop acting like a twat,” a bystander put in. It didn’t help matters.

  The drunk man grew incensed and lunged for the bystander. I was momentarily distracted, and he slipped out of my hold. Still cuffed, he dove forward and head-butted the man, who threw his hands out in an effort to defend himself. A couple of people tried to break up the scuffle, but it only resulted in more fighting. Soon I was standing in the middle of a riot, and I couldn’t see Tony anywhere. My heart rate picked up, my palms growing sweaty. How the hell had things escalated this quickly?

  Bodies seemed to be everywhere, and before I could react, somebody ran right into me. I caught myself before I fell, reached for my baton, and ordered several rioters to cease and desist. The thing was, there was one of me and dozens of them, and they completely ignored my instructions. I approached two men, both in their mid-twenties, my baton out. I shouted a warning, but neither of them listened, so I gave one of them a measured blow to the shin. He immediately turned on me.

  “Get down on the ground,” I ordered at the same moment he grabbed for my baton. I levelled a kick to his abdomen and he bent over, knees hitting the tarmac. Just as I about to pull out my second pair of cuffs and arrest him, a glass bottle somebody had thrown came sailing through the air, hitting me right on the forehead.

  “Shit,” I swore, growing dizzy, and saw the man crawl forward to steal my baton once more. Before he could get away, somebody slammed their foot down on his wrist and I heard a voice threaten, “Drop the stick and fuck off.”

  Looking up, I saw Lee, but I was too busy trying to regain my composure to pay him much attention. A second later he was in front of me, his hands on my face. “Karla, are you okay?”

  “I’m…I’m fine,” I said as he settled an arm around my waist and pulled me forward.

  “No, you’re not. Come on, let me get you out of here. It’s not safe.”

  The urge to protest almost bubbled out, but my head hurt too much to speak. Lee’s body heat sank into me, warming my bones. He kept glancing at me in concern as he led me away from the rioting. Seconds later I was standing in a narrow doorway as he crowded me in. I allowed my weight to rest against the wall while he pulled a napkin from his pocket and began dabbing at the cut on my forehead.

  He muttered angrily to himself, but I was too out of it to properly listen to what he was saying.

  “Where’s Tony?” I finally managed to ask in an unsteady voice.

  Lee’s hand paused. “Lanky bastard? Didn’t see him.”

  I tried to push him out of the way. “I need to go back and help.”

  He stood firm, his hands bracing my shoulders. “You’re hurt. You won’t be any use. Now hold still and let me clean you up.”

  I took a deep breath and went quiet. This was probably the closest we’d ever been, and I found myself studying his face. He was concentrating on dabbing the blood from my forehead, so I had a chance to properly take him in. God, he was handsome. There was a hardness to his features, and I felt a strange need to smooth my fingers over the crease between his eyebrows. It seemed like he worried for me, which made those butterflies begin to flutter once again.

  My eyes traced the lines of his strong jaw, angled cheekbones, and masculine lips. Then I looked up and found him watching me study him. Those lips I’d just been staring at now curved into a smile. His body moved forward, his heat surrounding me, and against my own will I trembled.

  “Oh, Snap, what are we gonna do?” he whispered right into my ear, and I flushed the second his breath hit my skin. The way his weight pressed on me wasn’t unpleasant.

  The noise of people shouting and glass shattering rang out, but somehow Lee’s presence seemed to mute everything. All I could hear were his breaths and mine. All I could smell was his soap and cologne. His fingers came to my neck, but my collar was too high for him to be able to access much skin. Still, the parts of me that he was touching were on fire.

  “Do you feel dizzy or sick?” he asked, and I shook my head. I’d had a concussion enough times in the past to know I didn’t have one then. Our gazes locked, and I wasn’t quite sure how much time had passed when he asked another question.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “What?”

  “The other week you came by my house. How did you know where I lived?”

  I tried to think of the least embarrassing answer, because the truth was that I’d gone snooping. “All of your brothers have a record, Lee. Not to mention Stu served six months in Feltham as a young offender. Your address is in the system.”

  “Yeah, but you went looking, didn’t you?” His smile returned.

  “That’s correct. I went looking right after I caught your brother trying to steal someone’s car,” I told him pointedly.

  He quirked an eyebrow like he didn’t believe me. “You’re that quick, huh?”

  My throat grew dry. “All it takes is a call to dispatch.”

  His chest rubbed off mine, and even through my stab vest I could feel it. “And how did you recognise Trevor? You’d never met him before.”

  Christ, was this an interrogation? “He has your eyes,” I blurted without thinking.

  This gave Lee pause, and a long silence fell between us, his gaze searching mine. “That’s a whole lot of attention to pay to someone you don’t want to know,” he said finally, throwing my own words back at me, the ones I’d spoken the first time we met.

  “Lee,” I pleaded, desperately needing him to back off. “You’re too young for me.”

  “Karla, I’m perfect for you,” he countered, right before his mouth dipped in and his lips brushed lightly across mine. It was hardly anything, and yet, every nerve ending in my body came alive. Just as his mouth was about to descend on mine again, I dug my heel into his ankle. He grunted and reared away, leaving me enough space to get by him. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far. I’d barely taken three steps when Lee caught hold of my arm and pulled me to him, my back to his front.

  “What you just did, not advisable,” he breathed harshly.

  There was no mistaking the threat in his voice, and a shiver ran through me. Gone was the playful flirtation, and I was reminded once more that this man was bad news.

  “Take your hands off me right now or I’ll arrest you,” I ordered, my tone harsh.

  Seconds passed, like he was deliberating over what to do. Then he released me, but not before delivering a final statement. “One day, Karla, you’ll understand that me having my hands on you is never a bad thing.”

  My skin prickled. It took me a moment to absorb his words, but by the time I turned around, he was already gone.

  Once I’d managed to regain my sanity after my encounter with Lee, I called in the troops. An hour later we had the rioting under control, a number of people were arrested, and the remainder were emptied from the stadium. The wound to my forehead was superficial, so, thanks t
o Lee’s clean-up job, I was still able to finish my shift. It was difficult to comprehend the fact that he’d helped me, but I reminded myself it was all an act. He only wanted to bang a police woman so that he could brag about it to his mates afterward.

  I was just leaving the locker room that evening when I heard somebody ask, “Shit, what happened to you?”

  I winced slightly at the sound of my ex, Gavin’s, voice. Usually, I went out of my way to avoid him, and in the ten months since we’d broken up, I’d managed to reduce the number of times we ran into one another to the barest minimum. Gavin worked for the armed unit, and his job tended to veer toward the more dangerous end of the spectrum, while my daily shifts were usually less hazardous. Today was not the usual.

  “I was stationed at Emirates Stadium. I presume you heard about the rioting,” I said, stepping past him and hoping he wouldn’t try to prolong the conversation. In my mind, there were two categories of men who signed up for the police. You had the well-meaning, family kind, like Tony, who just wanted to make the streets a safer place for his daughters to grow up. Then you had the borderline sociopathic kind, like Steve, and, let’s face it, my dad, who joined the force because it meant they got to wield power over people.

  Gavin fell into the latter category. I’d broken up with him for two reasons. One, he’d been a controlling fuckwad, and two, I’d caught him shagging another woman – on my birthday, in the ladies’ bathroom of the club where my party was being held. Nothing like a bit of adultery on your birthday to make you feel like truly celebrating – that was sarcasm, by the way.

  In conclusion, Gavin was a dickhead, and I was better off without him.

  “I did hear, but I didn’t know you were there. Shit, that cut looks bad, Karla. Have you had it checked out?”

  “It’s fine. Now if you don’t mind….” I lifted a brow and gestured for him to get out of the way, but he didn’t move.

  “Ah, come on, don’t be like that,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and walked around him. He wasn’t even worth the effort of a hostile conversation. He called after me, so I threw my hand in the air and gave him the finger. His growl of irritation was infinitely satisfying. I’d just climbed into my car when my phone went off with a call from Alexis. I put it on speaker.

  “Hey.”

  “Karla! I just saw the riot on the news. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, nothing a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep won’t fix. I’m on my way home. Do you need anything?”

  A pause. “Well, now that you mention it, you wouldn’t mind popping by the McDonalds drive-through, would you? I have a hankering for chicken nuggets and a chocolate fudge sundae for dipping.”

  I resisted the urge to gag. “Bloody hell, that sounds disgusting. Are you pregnant?”

  She snorted down the line. “Piss off. I’m not pregnant. I’m depressed. There’s a difference.”

  “Fine. I’ll get you McDonalds. Be home in twenty.”

  “Aww, you really love me, don’t you?” she crooned.

  I laughed. “Yeah, to my detriment sometimes.”

  Three

  The next day at work, Tony pulled me into one of the briefing rooms, opened up a laptop, and hit “play” on a video. It was surveillance footage from an apartment building, showing the outside grounds. Nothing happened for a second, and then off to the left a man approached. He wore a dark hoodie and jeans, his face shielded by a black balaclava as he reached up and grabbed hold of a window ledge on the bottom floor. Swinging himself up, he balanced himself perfectly on the narrow space, his movements swift and graceful like a stuntman or an acrobat.

  “What is this?” I asked, glancing at Tony.

  “Just keep watching,” he urged me, his lips curving into a smile.

  My eyes returned to the video, where the masked man grabbed onto the next ledge and swung his body up the same as before. The footage cut to a camera higher up, showing he’d climbed something like ten floors, only to land on a thin brick outcropping that ran around the middle of the building.

  “Somebody watched too much Spiderman as a kid,” I said cynically, though really, I was impressed, very impressed. No average person could pull off something like this without some extreme amount of skill. The pit of my stomach began to tingle with a little rush of excitement to see what would happen next.

  The footage cut again to another camera, showing the man stop at a window and push it open with ease before slipping inside the building. Tony fast-forwarded a couple minutes and the man was back, emerging through the same window. However, this time the rucksack he wore appeared distinctly fuller than it had previously. He began moving along the ledge the same as before, only now he didn’t climb between the windows.

  For some reason, my eyes fixed on the line of his shoulders, the way he moved his body, and some strange sense of familiarity hit me. I couldn’t quite pin down what it was, so I concentrated back on what was happening.

  The video cut to yet another camera, where a scaffold was set up on one side of the old building. The man began swinging from bar to bar, his movements more panther than monkey. When he got as low as the top of a nearby street lamp, he leapt through the air, caught onto the lamp, and swung deftly to the ground, like a fireman going down a pole. The camera was angled just right to catch him running off into the night, and then he was gone.

  “The boys down in evidence had this footage put together after somebody dropped off a rucksack full of jewellery and a note tipping us off about one of the units in that building,” said Tony. “We paid a visit, and it turns out there was a cash-for-gold scam being run out of the same flat our guy broke into. They target older people, usually those who live alone and don’t have anyone to tell them it’s a scam. They put leaflets through their letterboxes saying if they send their old gold to a P.O. box in the city, it’ll be valued, and a cheque for the same amount will be sent back to them.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that one.”

  Tony sighed. “Obviously, weeks go by, and the cheque never comes. Bunch of scumbags, taking advantage of the elderly like that.”

  “So this bloke stole the jewellery back?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  I had to admit, I was sort of fascinated. “Forget Spiderman, maybe he thinks he’s Robin Hood. Perhaps his granny got scammed, and he was pissed and decided to dole out some vigilante justice,” I joked.

  “Whatever way you want to spin it, you’ve got admire his gumption. Though I don’t condone the method, at least there’s a few less people out there being taken for mugs.”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring at the frozen screen of the laptop and again trying to shake off that odd sense of familiarity. “At least there’s that.”

  Confession time: I had a crush on my eskrima instructor.

  His name was Felix, and he came from the Philippines. He was also in his forties and married with three kids, but hey, it wasn’t like I ever planned on doing anything about it. I was simply happy to admire him from afar. He was short, but he had a perfect body, muscles draped in smooth tanned skin.

  The truth was, I had a thing for small, handsome men. Give me James McEvoy, Elijah Wood, Daniel Radcliffe, hell, even the guy who played E from Entourage, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl. I think this derived from my deep-seated resentment of my father, who was the opposite of a small, handsome man. Therefore, they represented a comfortable ideal, something non-threatening and safe.

  Lee Cross was neither small nor extremely tall, but somewhere in the middle. He was unclassifiable. Huh.

  I sat on the mat beside my good friend Reya, stretching and staring at Felix as he stood by the doorway, chatting with a guy who was interested in joining the class. For some reason, there was an abundance of new members today. We practiced twice weekly at my gym, which was handy because it meant I could go for a swim afterward to cool down, or spend some time in the sauna.

  “You’re staring again,”
said Reya, nudging me with her shoulder.

  I chuckled sheepishly and pulled myself out of my Felix-induced trance. “Sorry. But look at the man. He’s perfect.”

  She laughed. “You’re such a weirdo sometimes.”

  Reya and I had met under somewhat unusual circumstances. I’d been out one night at a jazz bar with Alexis, and Reya had been on stage, singing and playing piano. She performed under the stage name Queenie, and was perhaps the shyest singer-songwriter I’d ever come across. All through her act she never once opened her eyes, but her lyrics had hit me square in the gut. They were just so brutally honest, full of pain and heartache, and I couldn’t understand how a girl so young could have experienced that amount of hurt. It was clear that she’d been a victim of some kind, so I’d determined to approach her after the show.

  When I did, I told her how much her music had affected me, invited her for drinks with me and Alexis, and the rest is history. Somewhere along the way, I suggested that she learn how to defend herself, and now she was a full-fledged member of the class. I went to see her play gigs whenever I got the chance, but she still never opened her eyes. I guess you could call it a work in progress.

  After a few minutes, Felix came and gave a little talk to all the new members, and we finally got started. When we were done I was a hot, sweaty mess. Apparently, another gym nearby had gone into receivership, which accounted for all the new members. Reya and I were making our way toward the showers when I heard a familiar voice shout, “Come on, Smithy, you’ve got more in you than that!”

  Glancing to my right, I got a shock to see Lee Cross and a couple of other guys sparring in the boxing ring. Fuck my life. I couldn’t seem to get away from him. Only yesterday I’d seen him at the football match, and now he was attending my gym. Some higher being was seriously trying to test my willpower. It was too ridiculous for words.

  So ridiculous that my feet were suddenly glued to the spot as I watched him throw a punch. He wore protective gear, of course, but he had no top on.