In a Heartbeat Read online

  In a Heartbeat

  by RJ Nolan

  Copyright © 2014 by RJ Nolan. All rights reserved.

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2014

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  About RJ Nolan

  Coming From Ylva Publishing in 2014

  Other Books From Ylva Publishing

  OTHER STORIES IN THE L.A. METRO SERIES

  The Wish

  L.A. Metro

  A Treat for Halloween Tricksters

  Two Hearts—One Mind (coming soon...)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  It has been a long and often bumpy road as I endeavored to complete this novel. If not for the support and assistance from a group of wonderful people I would not have completed the project. Thank you all.

  As always to ETJ. Your love and support keep me going every day.

  To Pam. You stuck with me through it all and I’m very grateful for your friendship. You told me things I needed to hear, even when I didn’t want to hear them. Thank you.

  To Jae, my critique partner. Thanks for catching all those danglers. Glad I could provide some humor along the way.

  To Eleanore. Thank you for having faith in me, even when I had lost faith in myself. Your unflagging support means so much.

  A special thank-you goes to my editor, Sandra Gerth, for making the editing process as stress-free as possible. It was a pleasure working with you.

  Thanks to Glendon at Streetlight Graphics for creating a fantastic cover.

  Thanks go to Day Peterson for editing and to Blu for proofreading.

  And last, but certainly not least, a big thank-you to my publisher, Astrid. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

  DEDICATION

  To my sister, Gwenn.

  No matter what separates us, be it time, distance, or barriers of our own making, you will always be in my heart. I miss you.

  Chapter 1

  Officer Sam McKenna strode across the street to the station house. Pausing for a moment before entering, she glanced at her navy blue uniform shirt and adjusted the bulletproof vest underneath, then settled her equipment belt more firmly around her hips. Satisfied with her appearance, she pulled open the door and stepped into the main lobby.

  Long-ingrained habit made her scan the room.

  At this time of the morning, things were fairly quiet. An overweight man paced the length of the bulletproof glass that boxed in the main desk area. The wooden chairs lining one side of the room were empty except for one forlorn-looking woman whose already pale face was given a sickly pallor by the industrial green paint on the walls. She kept glancing at the door through which prisoners were released, a sure sign that she’d been there before.

  As Sam passed by the desk on her way to roll call, she waved at the duty sergeant, who was tied up on the phone.

  “Hey, Sam. Wait up.”

  At the sound of Marina’s voice, a smile tugged up the corners of Sam’s mouth. Memories of their brief time together as lovers filled her mind. The passion had burned out fairly quickly, but they had ended up becoming good friends.

  “What’s up?” Sam asked as they made their way toward the room where roll call was held.

  “Have you heard how many rookies we’re going to get?”

  Sam grimaced, not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. Marina had just qualified as an instructor for the Field Training Officer program, but with the limited number of rookies being assigned to their division wouldn’t be training one this time around.

  “Only two.”

  “Damn!” Marina smacked her hand against the doorframe as they entered roll call. “We need at least six.”

  “I know.” Sam shook her head. “Budget constraints, resources spread thin, and all that crap.”

  Today would bring the new training assignments for the next eighteen weeks. As one of the senior FTOs, Sam would be assigned one of the incoming rookies.

  “Come on. Let’s grab a seat,” she said. The rows of long tables and folding chairs in the briefing room were rapidly filling up.

  Marina groused under her breath but slid into the chair next to Sam.

  From her place in the back of the room, Sam scanned for the two rookies. They weren’t hard to spot, even though she could only see them from behind. Where the veteran officers were all relaxed, joking and enjoying their breakfast as the briefing continued, the rookies sat stiffly, almost at attention.

  As always, the sergeant left the introductions for the end. “One last thing before I let you go,” he said. “We have two new rookies with us today, Brad Davidson and Kellie Matthews. Stand up, you two.”

  The rookies stood to face their fellow officers. Greetings and catcalls echoed through the room.

  “Okay, everyone is dismissed,” the sergeant said. “Howard, McKenna, come get your rookies.”

  As the other officers crowded out of the room, Sam made her way to the front to appraise the rookies.

  Matthews was short, probably just making five feet four. But she was sturdily built, with well-muscled arms showing beneath the sleeves of her uniform shirt. Her long blond hair was done up in a tight French braid. Davidson, sporting a military-style haircut, personified the description of ordinary: brown eyes, brown hair, average build. Both had to be at least twenty-one, but they looked like kids to her. She shook her head. Thirty-three suddenly felt old.

  Davidson was working hard at appearing relaxed, but his rapid blinking and the flickering of his gaze around the room gave him away. Matthews, on the other hand, wasn’t even trying to hide her nerves. She still stood at attention, not daring to move a muscle.

  Smothering a grin, Sam gently bumped her shoulder in passing and winked when scared green eyes met hers. “Relax before you strain something,” she said, her voice pitched just for the woman’s ears.

  Matthews’ rigid
stance eased a little, but not much.

  Sam propped her hip against a nearby table and glanced over at her fellow FTO. Howard was a know-it-all blowhard, who filled rookies’ heads with a lot of outdated nonsense and was not a big fan of female police officers.

  Assign her to me, she mentally willed the supervising sergeant.

  “Officers Howard and McKenna are the FTOs you’ll be working with for the next eighteen weeks. Matthews, you’re assigned to Officer Howard. Davidson, you’re with Officer McKenna,” the sergeant said, pointing to each of them in turn.

  Sam grimaced internally. Damn. She spared Matthews a sympathetic glance before turning to the rookie assigned to her.

  His gaze roamed her body before finally making it to her face.

  Not the way to make a good start with me, rookie. Sam straightened, watching his eyes widen when she easily matched his height, and pinned him in place with a withering glare.

  He gulped and quickly averted his gaze.

  “Let’s go, Davidson.” She turned and stalked out of the room, never looking back to see whether he was following.

  It was going to be a long eighteen weeks.

  Chapter 2

  “You should’ve seen Davidson’s face after this little bit of nothing took him down,” Sam said.

  Laughter erupted from the women gathered in the back room at O’Grady’s bar for their regular Friday night bullshit session.

  “Yeah, but did a kick in the crotch cool his jets toward you?” Karen asked.

  Sam snorted. “I wish. I still can’t believe no one at the station clued him in.” She shook her head. “I thought for sure Howard would. I finally just told Davidson that asking me out was a lost cause.”

  A bottle of beer appeared over her shoulder. Looking back, she grinned at the new arrival. “Hey, Marina. I didn’t think you’d make it.” She took the offered beer and set it down among the bottles and snack bowls that littered the table. “We were just getting ready to pack it in.”

  Marina greeted the other police officers at the table, then pulled a chair over and sat down next to Sam.

  Waggling her eyebrows, Sam asked, “How was your vacation?”

  “Good,” Marina said with a soft smile.

  Tilting her head, Sam peered at her friend. For a while, she had thought Marina was like her—out for a good time and leery of commitment. Marina had been the one to end their affair and suggest they just be friends, but her attitude had changed when she met Elizabeth a few months ago. Sam quashed a brief surge of envy. Face it. You don’t do girlfriends. You proved that once again with Christy.

  Marina tousled Sam’s hair. “I like the new look.”

  “Cut it out.” Sam rubbed her hand through her freshly shorn locks, still not used to it. While she had always worn her hair short, it had never been to this extreme. She had seen the pixie haircut on a TV newswoman and on a whim decided to try it.

  “She’s going for the butch look, hoping to cool off her overeager rookie.” Darcy smirked. “Or was it to try and attract some new women you haven’t managed to bag yet?”

  Sam shot her a dirty look. Talk about holding a grudge. Their falling out had been two years ago, and she’d apologized—twice.

  Marina turned her back on Darcy. “So what happened with your rookie while I was gone?”

  As Sam began to relate the story, the other women at the table said their good-byes. Soon, she and Marina were alone.

  Marina winced and laughed when Sam got to the climax of her story. “Poor kid. Bet he never looks at a ‘little lady’ quite the same way again.”

  Sam joined her laughter, then sobered. “Better a kick in the crotch early on than something worse later because he thinks he’s invincible. You know as well as I do, there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. And this kid was on the wrong side of it.” She blew out a breath and snagged her neglected beer.

  “I hear you on that one.” Marina grinned. “Maybe I should add that to my teaching techniques: if a rookie doesn’t listen, deliver a swift kick to the crotch. It would work on men and women.”

  Laughing, Sam dropped her hands into her lap and covered her sex. “Youch! Talk about a motivational technique.”

  “Enough work talk. Are Kim and Jess going to be back from their honeymoon in time to come to our game next week? I want to ask them which island they liked best in Hawaii.” Marina’s expression grew soft, her eyes shining with emotion. “Elizabeth wants to go there for the Christmas holidays.”

  Sam smiled, still not quite believing that her big sister was married. Refusing to give in to the feelings of inadequacy that tugged at her, she focused on Marina, and being happy for her as well.

  While she really was pleased that her friend had found someone special, that wasn’t going to stop her from tweaking her. “Marina, it’s barely summer. Isn’t it a little early to be planning for Christmas? Geez, three months together, and you’re pussy-whipped already.”

  Marina laughed and waggled her eyebrows. “Chica, you don’t know the half of it. And it is so worth it!”

  “They’ll be back on Sunday. Kim is the one you want to talk to. She planned it all out. If it was up to Jess, they probably would have just stayed at home, so she could keep Kim all to herself.” Sam grinned. Not that I could blame her for that.

  “I always knew your sister was a smart woman.”

  An image of Jess, her face aglow with love as she stood beneath a rose-covered arbor with Kim, flashed through Sam’s mind.

  You’ve got that right.

  Chapter 3

  “This is so not fair.” Davidson slapped the steering wheel. “After six weeks together, you finally let me drive, and what do we end up doing? Following an ambulance transporting a drunk with a cut on his head to Grandview. Come on, they’re not even running lights and sirens.”

  He sounded just as Sam had when she’d been a rookie. “What have I told you? Most police work is routine and boring.” Still, she couldn’t resist nettling him. “What? You didn’t get enough excitement in the bar?”

  Davidson scowled. “You call that excitement? It wasn’t even a bar fight. The guy just trashed the place because the bartender cut him off. He was passed out on the floor by the time we got there.”

  “So that’s what you want? Some excitement?” In her almost nine years on the force, she’d had more than her share of excitement. She would take a nice, boring day any day, as would most experienced officers.

  “Couldn’t hurt. Our whole day is shot. We’re gonna be stuck babysitting this guy for hours in the ER, then more time processing him at the station. What a waste. We could be out stopping actual crime.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the old Chinese proverb about that? You know, the one that says, ‘Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.’”

  His brow furrowed. “Huh? Isn’t that the point of wishing for something?”

  Sam shook her head. The kid still had an awful lot to learn.

  * * *

  Trying to distract herself from the guy’s deafening snores, Sam surveyed the patient cubicle where they had been relegated to wait with their suspect. Her surroundings had not gotten any more interesting in the minutes since the last time she had done so. Three ugly gray walls, one dingy brown curtain, one wall cabinet, one IV stand, one—

  With a loud snort, their suspect woke up and looked around blearily. When he tried to sit up, he realized he was cuffed to the gurney. “Let me go! I didn’t do nothing.” He jerked on the cuffs and drummed his feet against the gurney. “Let me go. Let me go.”

  Sam pressed her hand against his shoulder. “Settle down.” She looked over at Davidson on the opposite side of the gurney and arched an eyebrow. This the kind of excitement you were looking for?

  A panicked yell, followed by what sounded like falling equipment, from somewhere close by drew her attention.

  It’s an ER. People are hurt, and they yell. Still, Sam felt compelled to check it out. She peeked out from behind the c
urtain, just in time to see a man in a business suit drag a woman wearing a lab coat into the last cubicle and then whip the curtain closed.

  “Someone call security,” a woman in blue scrubs shouted.

  Sam pulled open the curtain and stepped out. “I’m going to check this out.” Davidson moved to follow her. “You stay with him.”

  “But—”

  “Stay with him.” Sam tapped the mike clipped to her shirt. “I’ll call if I need backup.”

  She raced up to the staff milling around outside the cubicle where the man and woman had disappeared. “Everyone get back,” she said quietly but firmly and herded the group away from the closed curtain. “Did any of you see a weapon?”

  “No,” one of the nurses said. “The guy just walked up to the nurses’ station and grabbed Dr. Connolly.”

  The rest of the gathered staff nodded.

  “Did he call her by name? Did she seem to recognize him?”

  The assembled staff glanced at one another, but no one offered any information. The nurse who had spoken up the first time said, “I think she might have known him, but I’m not positive. He didn’t say anything, just snatched her before anyone could react.”

  Sam kept her eye on the curtain but saw no sign of movement. It was deathly silent behind the curtain. What the hell was going on?

  She quickly surveyed the area, motioned to one of the nurses, then pointed down the hallway at the single row of curtained rooms. “Quietly clear any patients from those cubicles. Get everyone back to the nurses’ station. Stay there and wait for security.” The last thing she wanted was a confrontation with innocent bystanders nearby.

  As soon as the hospital employees had moved out of the way, she stepped up to the curtain and eased it aside.

  The perp had the petite doctor pinned against the wall next to the gurney. He had one hand over her mouth and was tearing at her clothes with the other. She was fighting him for all she was worth.