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Tuesday, July 15th
Mase was headed out of town along the river bluff south of River Ridge when he saw a sheriff’s SUV parked just off the road above the new shopping plaza. Just outside the city limits, it was a favorite parking spot for north county deputies between calls.
He thought about blowing on by. He wasn’t in the mood to chat, wasn’t even technically supposed to be out here, but after the morning he’d had, if he didn’t get out of town for a few, he was going to do or say something he regretted, so he’d headed south until he could calm down a little.
He’d completed a mountain of paperwork, only to have the department’s outdated computer system hiccup and lose his work so thoroughly he had to contact a tech to come and search for it. Then Lt. Garcia had informed him that like it or not, he was poster boy for River Ridge PD, and he would attend the next Chamber of Commerce meeting that very afternoon, as well as any other civic assignments for which his presence was requested. Since she was well within her rights to order him to do this, he had no choice but to accept.
And Mase was having a helluva time explaining even to himself, much less her, why he wanted no part of any more situations in which he had to stand up and accept the applause and praise of River Ridge. He’d accepted her edict with all the grace he could muster, which he knew hadn’t been enough to hide his disgruntlement.
He’d put on this uniform, become a cop in the first place to do the right thing with his life, and do it in such a public way that everyone would see he was no longer the showoff he’d been as a kid. That he’d moved beyond doing stupid shit and pulling others into the stink with him.
Except that when he’d made the ultimate sacrifice, putting himself between a bullet and an innocent civilian, all his old man had done was rant that Mase should’ve kept his head down and figured another way to do his job.
Lying in a hospital bed had left Mase with way too much time to wonder if his father was right. Maybe he had just pulled another grandstand play. Maybe River Ridge looked at him and saw a hero, but really he was just a boy hiding behind an illusion, like one of those super-hero cutouts they stood up at cons and movie theaters. Looked good, but no substance.
The chamber wanted the illusion, and didn’t much care what was behind it. And he wasn’t going to be able to talk them out of it without sounding like an ungrateful dickwad. Which maybe he was.
Mase had an hour before the meeting, so he’d taken off on his lunch break. But despite the fat sub sandwich, fresh fruit and cookies from the deli in the cooler beside him on the seat, his appetite was nil. He’d eat, because his muscular body needed regular fuel, especially now that he was healing, but he wasn’t hungry. He took another drink of water from his ever-present sport thermos instead.
An arm appeared out the open window of the other vehicle, held up in greeting. This close, Mase recognized Deputy Ivan Polescu, a Ukrainian-American who still had traces of the old country in his speech, and whose angled face and slashing smile were pure Slav.
Mase pulled into the small graveled area so their cars were side by side, pointed opposite directions. A flatbed rolled past, full of construction materials, and eased into the plaza parking lot to join a cluster of other vehicles by a new section of shops under construction. The driver waved as he passed. Mase waved back.
Mase’s radio crackled, the dispatcher bringing another call about a vicious dog menacing some kids on the north side of town. That would be one of the pit bulls behind the high school grounds. He listened until one of his fellow officers, Paul Teague, took the call.
Ivan’s radio mumbled in the background as well, running the county band.
“What are you doing here, out of your safe city limits?” Ivan greeted him, blue eyes twinkling. “Anything can happen out here in the country.”
“That’s because you country law-dogs don’t take care of business. What’s new?”
Ivan shrugged. “Not much, which is good, except I get bored. It’s a bad thing to hope for crime, you know?”
“Yeah,” Mase agreed. “Also, every time something happens, you gotta do the fuckin’ paperwork.”
He’d spent the morning, before his smackdown with the Lt. buried in it, and after taking extra shifts for the last week, he was beat. He was due to take his turn supervising at Club 3 tonight too. And that he did not want to miss, even if he had to catch a quick nap in one of the back rooms. He had a certain strawberry blonde—who didn’t want commitment, and he didn’t wanna be where he wasn’t wanted—to fuck off his mind. And he knew just the way to do it, or so he hoped. With a willing sub or two.
“You’re not having a good day?” Ivan asked.
Mase snorted. “No such thing lately. I tell you, I think my new boss is trying to drive me straight into the river. Now she wants me to give talks to everybody from the Scouts to the gardening club. I just wanna do my damn job.”
Although lately he wasn’t so sure about even that. Every irritation that he’d been able to shrug off before now seemed to stick to him like Velcro, piling on his shoulders in a heavy load.
“You are a hero,” Ivan said. “It is always so. They want pieces of you.”
“That’s what it feels like,” Mase admitted. And much as he might love showing off on his terms, this kind of public exposure fed the dark maw deep in his center—the fear that if the public took enough pieces, they’d discover that under the badge there was really nothing much worth keeping.
“Maybe they will make a statue of you in the town square,” Ivan went on solemnly. “This is the custom in Ukraine. Very fine ... until the birds shit on your head.”
He burst out laughing at the look on Mase’s face.
“Kiss my zhopa,” Mase retorted, but he had to chuckle. Birds shitting on his head indeed.
Ivan sobered. “You need good woman to go home to, my friend. A wife can help you forget all that happens at work.”
Mase blew out a breath and shook his head. “Oh-hh, no. You’re talkin’ to the wrong man about settling down.” That required a man to open himself up to a woman, let her see down deep inside him, to places that might be hollow.
No, at Club 3, all he had to do to please a woman was get it up and get her off. Please them both by performing. Enjoy the moment, revel in it. Then kiss it and her goodbye before she glimpsed behind the facade.
The way Natalie might have, had he gone back for more.
And, if he’d lingered beside that bed of hers, watching her sleep and wanting so badly to wake her up and hear her sweet voice again, see that smile one more time, well ... that was his own damn business. Hell, he’d done her a favor by not waking her up to say goodbye. She was the keeper kind, even if she didn’t want that. Someday she would, and she deserved a man who could do right by her.
“Nice talking to you,” he said, straightening and putting his hand on the gearshift, “but I better get back to town.”
“Ah.” Ivan snapped his fingers. “I almost forget. You like going to night clubs, yes?”
He motioned with his thumb to the south of the shopping center. “The empty bar down there ... Rambles, it’s called.”
“Yeah?” Mase peered over his shoulder at the empty graveled parking lot and corner of brown roof he could see from this vantage point. The place had only been open for a year or so before it closed down.
“It’s being re-opened,” Ivan told him. “This is not good for sheriffs, because we will have more drunks on the roads. But for you, it’s okay, yes? You can go there to relax.”
“Well, yeah,” Mase agreed. “Especially if it’s under new ownership.” The former owners’ reign had ended in heartbreak for a lot of people. “Last guy died. His little sister is a fire-fighter, Cassidy Roden.”
“I know who she is,” Ivan said. “Her brother went into the river, yes?”
“Yup. Wife left him and he got drunk and drove right out of that parking lot—in the wrong direction. Went right through the guard rail, which means it must’ve been a piece of shit, not built to code.”
Mase lifted his left arm from the window frame and dipped his hand to mime a vehicle diving over the brink of the river. Nasty way to go, although the guy may’ve blacked out. No one would ever know.
“You didn’t like the man,” Ivan guessed.
Mase shrugged. “I’m sorry for his family, but other than that, Tony Roden was no loss to the community, far as I can see. Local high-school football hero who never grew out of that, considered himself God’s gift to women.”
Roden had been a few years behind Mase in school, so they hadn’t known each other well. The man had a small group of hangers-on who always seemed to be in his bar. Mase hadn’t much cared for their vibe, so he’d avoided the place in favor of other brewpubs and then Club 3, where he could have a drink and great sex too.
“His widow is the one who opens the bar,” Ivan said. “She seems like a nice woman.”
“Never met her,” Mase said. Although he’d heard all the gossip. Had to give the widow points for bravery, if she’d come back to this small, gossip-ridden town to face the people who blamed her for her husband’s death, including his sister.
Mase had been out of town for two months when it happened, doing a training course up in Olympia. By the time he got back, the bar was closed and life had moved on. So had Roden’s widow, apparently. The county wasn’t his jurisdiction either, so he couldn’t recall her name.
“Well, guess I’ll run into Ms. Roden one of these days. See if she has horns and a whip.”
“No horns and no whip,” Ivan said cheerfully. “I met her few days ago. She’s pretty woman. Blonde, with really nice hrudy.” He cupped his hands before his chest and grinned. “My wife is prettier, of course.”
Mase nodded. Ivan’s wife was a shy, high-cheekboned beauty. Didn’t stop a man from appreciating.
Ivan’s radio crackled and the deputy reached for his radio, his vehicle already easing forward. “Time to go. See you, my friend.”
Mase nodded. He let the other man pull out before putting his own rig in gear. He looked both ways before heading back north for River Ridge.
A new bar in town, that was good. He’d drive by on his way home, check out the renovations. He wouldn’t be checking the owner out, though, despite Ivan’s praise. Number one, a woman who owned a bar was probably middle-aged, with a hard shell that he wasn’t interested in cracking.
And secondly, another woman was taking up all his available headspace lately—Natalie. Fuck, he could still smell her, that sweet, naughty mix of perfume, pussy and strawberries. And he could still feel her firm, silky ass and tits under his hand, still feel the way she’d convulsed around him when she came, her tight sheath milking him for all she was worth.
He moved his shoulders to ease the ache of his healing wound, then shifted again to ease his stiff cock in his pants. But no change in position would ease the guilt that nagged at him.
Because he might know it was best for both of them that he hadn’t stayed, but he still should’ve said something in the way of goodbye. She’d given him her body, her sassy mouth and her trust as a woman with a larger, stronger man—a stranger. In return, he’d slipped from her bed while she slept, her hair streaming over the pillow, her pretty legs tangled in the sheets.
He’d told himself that it was just a hookup, that both of them knew the score going in, that he hadn’t made her any promises, nor had she seemed to want any ... but a big part of him knew she’d deserved better—better than no goodbye, better than him.