“What are you thinking?” Sinclair asked Braddock as he started the engine. The rain had stopped and the sun was fighting to break through the clouds.
“The truth?” She laughed. “I’m trying to figure out what to buy Ryan for Christmas.”
“How can your brain jump from figuring out a murder to shopping for your husband?”
“Multitasking. We women have superior brains. Did you want to discuss the murder some more?”
“Hell, we’ve talked it to death.” Sinclair eased the car into the street and drove toward Lake Shore Drive.
“Good. There are only nineteen shopping days left. What would a man want for Christmas?”
“Jeez, Ryan’s married to a homicide cop who leaves him home to take care of two kids while she hangs out with me looking at blood and gore all day and night. With his forty or more hours a week at work, he obviously doesn’t have time to have any fun, so that eliminates all kinds of cool things like a road bike, golf clubs, or a motorcycle.”
“He’s not getting a motorcycle until the kids have graduated high school and their college is fully funded.”
“You both wear OPD badges for a living and you’re worried he’ll hurt himself riding a motorcycle?”
“What about you and Kayla? Are things serious enough to exchange gifts for Christmas?”
“I ended it a few weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There was nothing to tell. We lasted a month, had fun for a while, and then she got clingy and wanted to make plans for the future.”
“And you got scared and ran.”
Sinclair thought about what Braddock said. The longest he had dated anyone since his divorce almost four years ago was the six months he and Liz were together. That ended more than a year ago when she was nearly raped and murdered by the Bus Bench Killer and subsequently took a position as a news anchor in Chicago. He’d lost track of how many women he’d gone out with since then, but knew none lasted longer than a month.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I knew from the onset that she wasn’t the kind of woman I would settle down with. But she knew how to have fun. She was still into the party scene, though, and I’m just not into that anymore.”
“It’s got to be hard when you don’t drink.”
“I don’t mind going out with people who have a drink or two, but when the sole purpose of going out is to drink . . . Being around drunk people when you’re not also drunk isn’t much fun.”
“You’re not alone.” Braddock pulled out her phone and began texting as she talked. “These days, I start getting sleepy halfway through my second glass of wine.”
“It wasn’t just the partying. Kayla just wasn’t right for me.”
“If the right woman appeared, would you be ready for her?”
“If you mean am I ready to buy a house with a white picket fence and have a couple of little rug rats? I think I have a ways to go.” Sinclair glanced at Braddock. When she looked up from her phone, he continued. “But if you mean am I ready to give up the serial dating routine, then yes. I’m getting so tired of that.”
Braddock read something on her phone and put it into her purse. “Can we stop by ACH on the way back to the office? I need to pick up some paperwork on an old case.”
*
A patient yelled for more pain meds from one of the rooms as Sinclair and Braddock walked down the long hallway. Alameda County Hospital—ACH to cops—housed the regional trauma center and one of the busiest ERs in the Bay Area. Every cop wanted to be brought here if they were shot or seriously hurt, but as soon as they were stabilized, they’d want to be moved to a hospital with nicer rooms, a higher class of patients, and nurses less calloused by the workload and the worn-out facility.
A tall, thin white man with a ponytail and a stethoscope around his neck said hi to them as they slipped past the nurse’s station into the break room. A nurse dressed in purple scrubs got up from a seat at a chipped Formica-topped table. She smiled and gave Braddock a quick hug. Alyssa Morelli then stood there for a few seconds staring at Sinclair.
“Matt,” Alyssa said as she finally opened her arms and embraced him.
Sinclair’s chin touched the top of her head as she pressed her body against him. He was certain she could feel his heart pounding in his chest by the time she stepped back and looked up at him. Her hair, pinned up loosely on top of her head, glistened in the sunlight streaming through the window. The sun had finally peeked through the clouds that had blanketed Oakland for the last two days.
“You look good.” Her enormous brown eyes scanned him from head to toe. “I was afraid that you’d turned into some ruddy-faced bozo with a beer belly and blood-vessel-covered nose.”
Sinclair had been a long-haired, unshaven narcotics officer when he last saw Alyssa nine years ago. She was one of the nurses who hung out with a group of patrol officers that Sinclair used to work with. The nurses and cops skied together in the winter, boated and hiked together in the summer, and met at the Warehouse, the local cop bar, most nights after work. After months of being just friends, Sinclair and Alyssa had gone out on a few dates, but their relationship fizzled after that. She didn’t return his calls and stopped associating with the group. Sinclair heard she started dating a doctor. Shortly thereafter, she became engaged and left ACH for a hospital where the patients were cleaner, the workload lighter, and the pay better.
“You look the same,” he said.
“I’m hoping my wrinkles deepen so patients stop thinking I’m one of the student nurses or high school volunteers.” She laughed—a real laugh.
Alyssa’s Mediterranean ancestry showed in her olive complexion, and her hair was such a dark brown it appeared black under certain light. “We should catch up,” Sinclair said.
“I’d like that,” Alyssa replied.
Just then, another nurse poked her head into the break room. “We’ve got a trauma coming in. Car accident with two victims.”
“I have to go.” Alyssa took both of his hands in hers, rose onto her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek.
Sinclair felt his heart racing again.
“We’ll talk,” she whispered into his ear.
She hugged Braddock, and Sinclair noted a conspiratorial smile between them as they left the break room.
Sinclair waited until they were back in their car before he spoke to Braddock. “You set me up.”
Braddock laughed. “She’s wanted to see you ever since she learned we were partners but wanted it to be a surprise.”
“To watch me make a fool of myself?”
Braddock smiled. “It was funny to see you at a loss for words.”
“I had a wicked crush on her back in the day.”
“Duh! I’ve known about you two for years. Alyssa was working pediatrics at John Muir when I took Ethan there for an ear infection five or six years ago. We recognized each other from Oakland and became pals. She’s probably my best nonpolice friend. And she had a crush on you, too.”
“I don’t know what happened. She got scared or something, and the next thing I knew, she married some pretty-boy doctor.”
“You had that bad-boy thing going full speed back then. She saw you on self-destruct mode and couldn’t stand to watch it. She wanted normal. The intern she married was that.”
“What happened? There’s no ring on her finger.”
“Once her husband finished his residency and started making the big bucks, he got into the country club scene and wanted her to quit nursing, have babies, and become a Stepford wife. Last year, she finally decided she couldn’t be that kind of woman and filed for divorce. She got bored with the routine of working a floor at John Muir and came back to ACH last month.”
“How’s she doing? She looks great.”
“She loves being back in the ER and is happier than she’s been in years. She ran the San Francisco marathon last summer and teaches Pilates classes at her health club.”
“You have her number, right?”
Braddock turned in her seat to face Sinclair. “Like the rest of the world, she knows about your divorce, you and Liz, and your pattern of one-night stands. Alyssa is all goodness, and that’s rare in people who deal with the same slime as we do on a daily basis. Don’t disrespect her by using your Sinclair charm on her while you’re still dating other women. She’s not just another girl for you to screw and run from when it gets too real.”
Sinclair pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Braddock’s words stung. She knew his game. He wanted to tell her to mind her own business—that Alyssa was a big girl and could take care of herself. But he knew Braddock was right. Alyssa was smart to distance herself from him back then. He wondered if he had actually changed much since.
He turned onto Fourteenth Avenue, deciding to avoid the freeway since it was approaching rush hour. Braddock stared out the window silently as he drove.
“I was pretty hard on you,” she said, breaking the silence.
“I know. Why’d you set this up, anyway, if that’s how you feel?”
“Matt, I love you like a brother. I trust you with my life.”
“But not with your best friend?”
“You’re an awesome guy. You just don’t know how to do relationships. I don’t want to lose either one of you. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“She hasn’t been with anyone since her divorce and isn’t ready to date. She enjoys outdoors stuff—running, kayaking, hiking. When we get off standby, and if this rain ever lets up, maybe the four of us can go hiking or something.”
Braddock went back to staring out the window.
Sinclair remembered hiking up Mt. Diablo years ago with a group of cops and nurses, watching Alyssa’s tight butt in a pair of hiking shorts. Although Alyssa might be all goodness, as Braddock said, she was still damn sexy.