Keep Her Safe
K.A. Tucker
For all the Abraham Wilkeses out there, who risk their lives every day
PROLOGUE
Corporal Jackie Marshall
June 1997
“There’s gotta be a pound in each.” Abe nudges the ziplock bag of marijuana with the tip of his pen. The kitchen table is shrouded in these bags, along with bundles of cash. I’m going to take a wild guess and say there’s plenty more, hidden around this dive of an apartment.
I peer over at the guy we just busted, handcuffed and lying on his stomach, under another officer’s watchful eye, waiting to be transported for booking. He’s a scrawny nineteen-year-old with a temper. “Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be beatin’ on my girlfriend if I had all these drugs in my house.” His neighbors heard glass smashing and him making threats of death, so they called 9-1-1. He gave us cause to kick in the door when he uttered a string of racial slurs and then spat in Abe’s face. That’s how we found the bloodied blonde girl and this.
Now the paramedics are treating the gashes on her face, while we wait for Narcotics to swoop in.
Abe smooths his ebony-skinned hand over his cheek. “What do you think this is worth, anyway?”
“Depends how good it is. Ten grand? Maybe twenty?”
He lets out a low whistle. “I’m in the wrong business.”
“You and me both. We bounced our mortgage payment last month.” Blair told me we couldn’t afford that house. I ought to have listened to him. But I also hadn’t planned on getting pregnant when I did. Not that I regret having Noah. I just expected to have earned a few stripes before I was elbow-deep in diapers and formula.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be making the big bucks soon enough, Sergeant Marshall,” Abe mocks with a dimpled grin. He’s been calling me that for months, ever since I passed my test and was put on the promotion list. “Just don’t go forgetting about us beat cops when you start pinning those stars to your collar.”
“You’re ridiculous.” I roll my eyes at him.
“Am I? You are one damn ambitious woman, Jackie, and my money’s on you over half the clowns around here, present company included.” He sighs. “My days won’t be the same, though.”
“I’m gonna miss being your partner, Abe.” After seven years, there’s no one else I trust more in the APD—and in life—than Abe Wilkes.
He lets out a derisive snort. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me plenty enough. Heck, Noah’ll probably be at my house more than yours.”
“Dina’s managing alright, what with a baby of her own? Don’t want Noah to be a burden on her.”
Abe waves off my concern. “Dina’ll steal that kid away from you if you’re not watching. She insisted.”
I can’t be sure if it was Dina or Abe who offered to mind Noah while Blair and I work. I’ve never seen a grown man dote on a little boy as much as Abe dotes on mine. Even Blair doesn’t pay that much attention, and Noah’s his son. “That beautiful wife of yours is a blessing. I wish you’d have knocked her up and gotten married years ago. Would have saved me a ton on daycare bills.”
Abe struggles to keep that booming chuckle of his at bay—it wouldn’t be appropriate given current surroundings. “I’d say we’re movin’ plenty fast, don’t you?”
Pregnant three months into dating and married at City Hall the week after finding out? I’d say so. “Your mom come around yet?” A good Christian woman like Abe’s mother was less than pleased when she found out her twenty-eight-year-old son had knocked up an eighteen-year-old girl. An eighteen-year-old white girl. I’ve met Carmel Wilkes. I don’t believe she has an issue with Dina, per se; she’s more worried about other people taking issue with Dina and Abe together, and the problems that may arise. As progressive as Austin is, there’s still plenty of hate to go around when it comes to the color of a person’s skin.
Abe shrugs. “Slowly but surely.”
“I’ll bet that gorgeous little Gracie is helping.”
It’s inevitable, the second anyone says his daughter’s name, that Abe’s face splits open with a wide grin. He’s about to say something—probably tell another story about how cute she is—when our radios crackle with voices.
“The cavalry’s here.” I pat my stomach. “Good thing, too. I’m starving. Let’s get this lowlife booked and then get some food.”
“Hey . . .” Abe lowers his voice to a whisper. “I wonder, how honest do you think these narc guys are?”
“Honest enough. Why?”
His chocolate-brown eyes roll over the bundles of cash. “Wouldn’t it be easy for one of those to go missing?”
It’s a question you don’t pose, especially not while you’re in uniform and standing in front of a pile of drugs. “Pretty dang easy, I’ll bet.”
CHAPTER 1
Noah
April 2017
Austin, Texas
“Hello?”
A garbled string of code words over the police scanner carries down the darkened hallway, answering me.
My heart sinks.
She’s still awake.
Kicking my dusty sneakers off, I drag myself all the way to the back of the house. “Hey, Mom,” I offer as casually as possible, passing her hunched body at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering on the edge of a supper plate, a half-finished bottle of cheap whiskey sitting within her easy reach, her gun belt lying haphazardly next to it.
I don’t know why I was hoping for something different tonight. I’ve been coming home to the same scene for weeks now.
“Where were y’all at tonight?” That Texan twang of hers is always heavier when she’s been drinking.
I yank open the fridge door. “It’s Wednesday.”
She tilts rather than lifts her head and spies the basketball tucked under my arm. “Right. I can’t keep up with you.”
I could point out that there’s not much to keep up with. I’m a creature of habit. If I’m not at work, then I’m with my friends, at the gym or doing laps at the pool, or tossing a ball around. I’ve been going to the same pickup courts every Wednesday night since I moved back to Texas to go to UT seven years ago.
I twist the cap off the carton of orange juice and lift it to my mouth instead. Wishing she’d berate me for not using a glass. That’s what she used to do, back when she didn’t beeline for her liquor cabinet the second she walked in the door from work. She’d also remind me not to dribble my ball in the house and to throw my sweat-soaked clothes through the hot cycle of the wash right away, so my room doesn’t smell like a gym locker.
Now she doesn’t even bother to change out of her uniform half the time.
As if to prove a point to myself, I let the ball hit the tile once . . . twice . . . seizing it against my hip after the third bounce, the hollow thud of leather against porcelain hanging in the air.
Waiting.
Hoping.
Nothing. Not a single complaint from her, as she sits there, her eyes half-shuttered, her cropped blonde hair unkempt, her mind preoccupied with something far beyond the oak table’s wood grain that she stares at. She doesn’t give a shit about basic manners anymore. These past few weeks, all she does is sit at the kitchen table and listen to the radio crackle with robbery reports and domestic assault calls and a dozen other nightly occurrences for the Austin Police Department.
Her police department, seeing as she’s the chief. A female chief of police in one of the biggest cities in the United States. A monumental feat. She’s held that position for two years.
And, up until recently, seemed to have held it well.
Coughing against the lingering stench of Marlboros, I slide open the window above the sink. Crisp spring air sails in. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the smell of lemon Pledge and bleach.