32. Night
Excerpted from Hollowpoint
He was an idiot. A stupid, moronic, overbearing, jack-assed idiot. And at that, Danny had only started with the mental berating. He'd had a late start, having spent the better part of the evening filling out paperwork and glaring at anyone who even looked like they were going to ask him about the incident. And the one time one of the duty officers had, Danny had damn near snapped the poor bastard's head off.
That had driven him out into the cold but snowless Chicago night to try and walk off some of his anger and frustration.
It was a good thought, a brilliant idea that was working out in completely the opposite direction he'd wanted. Instead of feeling even the least bit justified about what he'd done, what he'd said, he only felt worse. And on top of that he was cold. He was cold and angry and miserable. Just abso-fucking-lutely miserable. Because it really was his fault, when it came down to it.
Supposed to be a nice calm night. The most strenuous assignment that had been dropped on his desk was to pick up a dealer for questioning. Nothing big. Frisk him, confiscate anything he had on him, then take him back to the station and toss him in lockup to sweat for a few hours before playing good cop and bad cop. Hell, he'd even been instructed not to charge the guy if he was carrying any ice.
Danny was only supposed to arrest him if he and Sam (he was never going to be able to think of her as Manson) could get a confession out of him.
But Sam had gotten a little more than a confession. The case was less than a day old; the vic had been shot execution style with a little .22 that had distinct crosshair filings at the end of the barrel. That had been what Danny had recognized first as the dealer had pulled the tiny weapon and aimed it at Sam's head as he pulled her close into him.
The second thing was that the son of a bitch had touched her in anger.
Given that, Danny couldn't understand why she was so angry with him for shooting the guy. Wasn't like he'd died. They'd stopped the bleeding. As soon as he was released from the hospital he was going straight to the jail to be tossed into the population until his trial. And after that he'd go to prison, because the whole scene had been caught on tape, and the Chicago DA didn't take nicely to people threatening cops with deadly force.
It was after that the fireworks had started. With Sam yelling at him that she could take care of herself and he needed to quit treating her like a rookie. She'd been a cop for years, and dammit, he was so freaking overprotective.
It would have been alright then, she was blowing off steam. Near death experiences mostly made people, even cops, jittery and on edge. She was looking for someone she could trust to vent those sudden nerves on without being sick. And he'd turned it around on her. Blown up, yelled and hollered and made a scene that was going to have him in the captain's office in the morning.
He'd called her a terrible cop. Said she was worse than a rookie. That she should have found the gun on the frisk, never mind that they'd only just walked up to the asshole when he'd flipped and pulled it. Told her she was incompetent and arrogant and that he was going to request a new partner as soon as he got back to the station. Insulted her intelligence and then, worst of all, asked her if she even remembered how procedure went for talking to a perp on the streets.
That had been the straw that broke the camel's back. He knew very well that she remembered it. But it was a subtle dig at her lack of memory before the last twelve years. She didn't know he knew, and he knew it, and he used it against her anyway just because he was angry and frustrated and…
And scared. Scared that he could have lost her. Not that he had her, but he couldn't lose her. Not again.
How he found himself on the front stoop of her brownstone he'd never know. But he was grateful, and more grateful when he didn't have to be buzzed into the warmer air of the hallway. It had started to snow just a bit in the last hour, and the flakes melted against his hair, his jacket as he trudged up to the third floor and knocked hesitantly on her door.
He had to wait. But he'd wait forever if it gave him the chance to apologize.
The door opened and there she stood in nothing but an oversized shirt. That in itself was enough to make his brain go numb. Long pale lengths of leg peeking out from beneath the hem. She was taller than he remembered. Somehow he always remembered her as petite as she'd been as a freshman. But she'd gained inches, and it showed in her legs, the length of her torso. The slender grace of her arm as it rested against the door as she stared at him with sleepy violet eyes.
But the real kick in the gut was that it was one of his shirts. An old shirt from high school, one that he'd probably left at her house during one of their sleepovers. Maybe one she'd worn home after a nasty ghost fight where her clothes were trashed. And the way it looked… He'd love to see how she looked in any of his shirts. Or out of them.
"Manson," he said softly.
She gave him a questioning look. "Dan. What are you doing here?"
He gave a half hearted shrug. "I wanted to make sure you're okay."
She arched an eyebrow. "Do I look okay?"
He swallowed and blinked and shrugged again. "I, uh… I wanted to apologize. I was out of line. I had no right to say anything I said, especially when it's not true."
And he wanted to replace the memory of tear-filled amethyst eyes with something else. If not happiness, at least something not as painful as that.
"You came by to say you're sorry," she said slowly. He nodded. "At two in the morning?"
"Ah, no watch?" His smile itself was apologetic.
She bit her lip. And then smiled. The first real smile he'd seen on her since she'd been assigned to him and he'd started treating her like something less than a rookie. "Accepted, Dan." She gave him a another smile, a little more confident than the last.
He could only smile carefully back.