The memory crystallized. The anticipation. The exhilaration. Then the crushing blow of disaster. "Danny went in first-two, maybe three minutes before me. I waited until the last minute, then radioed for backup. I went in through the rear. We should have waited. We should have…" Her words trailed off as the weight of their mistakes pressed down on her. "Things went awry from the start. By the time I got inside, two men already had Danny down on the floor. They were well dressed. Armed to the hilt. Calm." Her voice sounded strangely foreign in the dead silence of her apartment. "They were going to kill him," she said. "Execution style. A cop, for God's sake. Just like that."
A shiver swept the length of her, and she realized with some surprise that her teeth were chattering. She hadn't expected the retelling of that night to be quite so difficult. Not after all this time. But it took every ounce of strength she possessed to continue.
"I couldn't let them kill my partner." Her eyes met Nick's. For the life of her, she couldn't guess what was going on in the depths of that cool, emotionless gaze. In light of what she was about to tell him, she wasn't sure she wanted to know. "I was outnumbered. Outgunned. But I wanted that bust. I didn't care about the risks. I didn't consider the possibility that someone might get hurt." In her mind's eye, she saw clearly the terror on Danny's face. She recalled her own terror with such stark clarity that she could feel her heart beating out of control, her breath coming shallow and fast, the oxygen stalling in her lungs. "I drew my weapon and ordered the men to drop their guns and get on the ground."
Nick stared at her, his expression intense. "What happened next?"
"There were only supposed to be two of them. That's what Danny's snitch had told him. He'd been reliable in the past. I didn't see the man on the catwalk until it was too late." The horror of that moment crept over her like an avalanche, cold and smothering. "He came out of nowhere. I looked up at the catwalk, and… like I told you before, he was just a kid. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. He smiled at me. That freaked me out." Leaning forward, Erin put her face in her hands, trying to shut out the images, the blood, the guilt. "He had a gun, Nick. I should have stopped him, but I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to shoot that kid. All my training-none of it mattered because I didn't have the courage to stop him. I just stood there like a stupid rookie while he raised his pistol and shot me down."
Across from her Nick cursed.
"I fired as I went down-and hit him, evidently-but by the time I got my senses back, one of the other two men had already shot Danny in the back."
"You're certain you shot the suspect?" he asked.
"Yes. I saw him fall from the catwalk."
She closed her eyes against the wave of emotion. She hated the thought of telling him the rest of it. In a small corner of her mind she wondered how he was going to react when he found out she'd traded her own life for her partner's.
"I could have stopped it. Had I reacted like a cop, I could have prevented both of us from getting hit."
"Hindsight is twenty-"
"Danny got shot because I didn't have the guts to do the right thing."
"You were under fire," he said. "If you weren't scared at a moment like that, you wouldn't be human."
"I wanted the bust so badly I didn't use good judgment. When the chips fell and things went awry, I panicked. I shot the kid, but only when it came down to saving my own neck. I didn't do the same for Danny. I didn't back up my partner. My God, that's unforgivable…" Her voice broke.
The ensuing quiet bore down on her with the weight of the world. Shame slashed her with the efficiency of a switchblade as the echo of the words she hated to the depth of her soul resounded inside her head.
I didn't back up my partner.
Steeling herself against the condemnation she expected to see in Nick's expression, Erin risked a look at him. To her utter surprise the only thing she saw was understanding.
"You did your best, McNeal. That's all any of us can do. You hesitated because the suspect was a kid. That's a tough call."
"A kid with a gun isn't any less dangerous than an adult."
"True, but the use of deadly force is never an easy decision for a cop, especially if there's a kid involved and you have a split second to decide whether or not to end his life."
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Erin looked down at her hands, pressed them hard against the pillow to keep them from shaking. "You make it sound as if it's all right."
"Maybe it's not all right," he said. "You had two choices and neither of them were easy. That's hard to accept, but we have to, because we don't have a say in the matter, Erin."
"Danny's paralyzed," she said. "He'll never work as a police officer again, not on the street. I can't help but ask myself, did I do that to him? I see that same question in his eyes every time I see him. He doesn't say it. He's too good a man to lay blame. But I see it. I see it in his wife's eyes. I see it in his children's eyes. And I feel it in my own heart every time I think about what happened that night." She raised her shimmering gaze to his. "So, tell me, Nick, did life go on for Danny?"
Chapter 10
Nick was no stranger to guilt, or the hell it could bring down on someone's life. He considered himself an expert on the subject. After all, he'd lived with his own twisted version for three long years. He knew firsthand the way guilt battered the mind and ravaged the spirit, much the same way cancer invaded, then ate away at the body.
That Erin McNeal suffered the same debilitating affliction over an event that hadn't been under her control disturbed him deeply. That he'd been so hard on her early on-and dead set against hiring her for a job she was clearly qualified for-sent a different kind of guilt tumbling through the wall he'd sworn he wouldn't let anyone penetrate.
"Did you try to ID the suspect you shot?" he asked.
"The hospital check didn't pan out-none of the area emergency rooms had reported a gunshot wound. The lab typed the blood. DNA tests were run, but there wasn't a match in the national database."
He nodded, realizing the Chicago PD had reached a dead end at that point. He and Erin had, too. If there was a connection between the warehouse shooting and the incident out at the Logan Creek bridge today, they weren't going to find it anytime soon.
Damn, he hated dead ends.
"You know what happened to Danny wasn't your fault, don't you?" he asked.
A smile whispered across her features, as soft and fleeting as a summer breeze. "So I've been told."
"But you don't believe it."
Her gaze faltered, and she looked down at her hands, stilled them. "The last time I went to see Danny, he wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't even look me in the eye."
Nick wanted to go to her, but he resisted the urge. Touching her was dangerous business under the best of circumstances. To touch her now would surely lead to disaster. He wanted to comfort her, but at the moment he wasn't sure he'd have the strength to pull away. Not when her intoxicating scent filled the small space around them, and he could still vividly remember the feel of her in his arms. The softness of her flesh. The taste of her mouth. He knew better than to pour gasoline on red-hot embers.
"Danny didn't expect you to take a bullet for him," he growled. "No cop expects that."
"He expected me to back him up. Let's face it, Nick, for a cop, I committed the ultimate sin."
"And you're going to make damn sure you pay for it, aren't you, McNeal? You punish yourself with guilt. You take crazy risks. Have you ever bothered to think of the people you'll hurt if something happens to you?"
Her mouth tightened. "Don't try your tough-love routine on me, okay, Chief?"
"You did your best. That's all any cop can do."
"Tell Danny that. Tell his wife. Better yet, tell his kids that when they ask their dad to play ball with them and Danny has to tell them he'll never get up out of that chair-"