No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 16

Am I the only one that calculates how much sleep I’ll get before bed?

-text from Taos to Fran

TAOS

Two weeks later

My days of teaching classes almost full time were almost over.

I’d done my job.

I’d done my duty.

I could now go back to the back of the gym and ignore everyone and everything.

Couldn’t I?

“Hey,” came a voice that I now craved to hear.

I turned slowly from my contemplation of the sunset and smiled. “Hey.”

She tilted her head. “Everything okay?”

I thought about that for a second.

Was everything okay?

Not really.

The murders that the chief had pulled me in on had gone unsolved. Maria’s murder was still unsolved.

The teaching classes that kept me seeing a certain someone on a daily basis were now over.

And I already missed her.

I didn’t even know if she was going to keep coming to CrossFit or not.

I mean, sure we’d done ‘things’ that some would automatically assume meant a relationship, but life had gotten in the way over the last two weeks since Maria’s murder.

I’d volunteered myself full time to helping solve the murders with the FBI agent, Easton. Yet another murder had occurred, and we realized that the more manpower on the investigation, the better. Or, I did. I hadn’t quite been able to leave it behind once they’d told me that I could.

Then Fran’s nephew had gotten sick to the point where she was babysitting or working, and barely had time for me when I could find the time to break off.

Which meant, the only time I for sure saw her was when she was here…

“I, uh...” She paused. “I want to sign up for a full membership.”

My heart all but flip-flopped in my chest.

I grinned down at her, unable to help it, and her breath caught, giving me my first official sign that she was into me.

I’d wondered these past few weeks, after very little communication, if she was done with me. She was able to keep a lot hidden and close to her chest.

Hell, half the time I couldn’t even tell if she was struggling with the workout.

Other than sweating, her face was always blank. She had one hell of a poker face.

“Sweet,” I said as I jerked my chin to the office. “Sophia is up there. She can get you taken care of.”

Fran’s face fell slightly, and her shoulders drooped. “Oh, okay.”

When Fran started to walk away, I caught her forearm and halted her. “I’d help, but I have absolutely zero idea how to get memberships started. That’s always been Sophia’s domain.”

Fran’s shoulders picked back up, and a small smile lit her face. “I thought you worked in the office.”

I shrugged. “I do… when I’m working on writing. I will do the books now and then, and check to see small stuff on accounts if someone calls asking, but I mostly just stay silent as a partner. And I’m mostly here so people can do open gym if they need to.”

Her lips quirked up another notch.

Together we filed through the people milling about after the class to the office, but before I could go all the way up, she halted me with her hand on my forearm this time.

She looked like she started gathering courage before she started to speak.

“I’ve been struggling the last few weeks on telling you this but… a few years ago, I was running,” she whispered, sounding lost. “I was…”

The moment she said the word ‘running’ I knew exactly what she was going to say. The fact that she’d agonized over telling me the last two weeks had meant quite a bit more to me than she thought.

I’d felt, from the very beginning, that I’d known her. I’d had a connection to her. And I hadn’t been able to figure out exactly why.

But the moment that she said ‘running’ everything started to click into place.

That night. That night that had prompted me to end my career with the police department.

• • •

Two and a half years ago

“Hey, Taos.” The dispatcher who was working tonight got on the line. “I have a girl that needs a welfare check done on her sister.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

That was the last thing I wanted to do tonight.

Most likely, I’d get there, and there would be a dead body to deal with.

Which would then cause me to have paperwork to do, and all I wanted to do at that moment in time was go home, eat, and go to bed.

“Sure.” I paused, sounding just as hesitant to my own ears as I felt. “Where at?”

“Actually,” the dispatcher said, “it’s at the trailhead, I believe. The sister says that her tracker says that she was running, and that she stopped at a spot but never moved from there. When the sister calls, there’s no answer.”

I groaned. “Which one? I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Two and a half minutes later, I was pulling onto the trailhead that the sister said the tracker was pinging as the location of the missing girl’s phone. I pulled out my flashlight, scanning the ever-brightening area with it in large sweeps, when I heard what sounded like a muffled shout.

My stomach froze, and then I was running.

So not a dead body.

A person, a woman, in trouble.

I could hear her screaming now.

The closer I got to the bend in the trail, the one that went two ways, one up toward a fitness center, and the other that took us toward the main part of the trail, I could hear even more screaming and scuffles.

My flashlight lit the area, and the first thing I saw was a pair of hot pink running shoes that were covered in mud.

The second thing I saw was a male, about two hundred pounds, trying to force that woman onto her stomach as he did something with his hands that I couldn’t see.

I don’t know what came over me.

One second, I was about ten feet away, and the next I was hitting that man like a linebacker.

We hit hard.

The sound of our bodies colliding startled the woman, and she cried out in surprise.

“No!” she cried.

I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, or the asshole that’d been trying to rape her.

Whatever the reason for her crying out, I ignored it and subdued the asshole underneath me, easily apprehending him, cuffing him, and then ordering him to stay put or else in under twenty seconds.

Clockwork.

I may not be on the beat anymore, but I could still arrest an asshole with the best of them.

“Now, you can either sit there and play nice, or I’ll make you play nice. Understand?” I ordered as I moved to the woman that was quietly crying in a crumpled ball just a few feet away. I depressed the mic button on my shoulder and said, “Ambulance requested. And backup.”

She had her hands over her face, and she had her head tucked into her upraised knees as if that would help protect her.

Sadly, it wouldn’t.

“Ma’am,” I urged as I walked toward her.

She curled even further into herself.

“Ma’am,” I said, glancing back at the suspect that was glaring daggers at me. “Are you okay?”

The guy got up to leave, and I moved before he could even get to his knees.

I had him hugging the biggest damn tree I could find, face pressed into some sap that was leaking from it, and handcuffed to it in the next second.

Only when he was well and truly unable to take off anywhere did I go down onto the ground beside the woman.

“Ma’am,” I whispered. “I’m going to help you, okay?”

She sniffled, and the damn sound literally tore shreds into my heart. “Okay.”

Her lips were bleeding. Her teeth were stained with her blood. And I could barely make out the white of her eyes.

I placed the flashlight on the ground between us and said, “My name is Detective Taos Brady. Do you think that you can sit up? Or do you want to continue lying there until medical help arrives?”

She shivered. “Lie here.”

I didn’t urge her to do anything differently. Instead, I shrugged out of my sports coat and then laid it over the top of her.

Her shirt was ripped. There were contusions in places that I could make out. And there was quite a bit of bruising.

“I’m going to fucking kill you if you talk, bitch!” the would-be rapist yelled.

The woman squeezed her eyes closed tightly and whispered, “His name is Jackson Norris.”

Before I could get any more information out of her, her entire body went slack.

“That stupid bitch wanted it!” Mr. Jackson Norris, soon-to-be inmate Jackson Norris, hollered.

I pressed my fingers to her throat to ensure that she wasn’t dying, and found a strong pulse.

Then I turned my glare on the asshole. “I’m fairly sure that she didn’t. You know, you might not know this word all that well, but when they say ‘no’ that usually means that they don’t want you to do something. Just sayin’.”

• • •

“That morning, I was nearly raped and assaulted by a man that I’d seen on that trail a hundred times,” she whispered. “One that had asked me out six times, and I’d turned him down all six of those times.”

I instantly wanted to kill someone.

Preferably the asshole that I knew was locked up in a maximum-security prison for serial raping other women exactly like Fran.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “I…”

She looked over at me with those eyes the same color as my blue jeans and said, “You what?”

“I worked your case that night,” I murmured, almost too quietly to hear.

She tilted her head at my words. “What?”

“That night,” I said. “I was there that night. I… your case is why I quit.”

She blinked.

“I know.”

And before I could say another word, she was hauling ass out of the building.

“I gotta go.” She grabbed her stuff and started running, but she didn’t make it far.

In the time that it’d taken for her to talk, everyone but the two of us, Madden and Sophia had left.

It’d also gotten dark, the dumbbells that we’d used during our workout became almost invisible, meaning that she tripped on them and went down hard.

She hit the ground with an oomph, and I was immediately there to help her up.

She gasped when my hand met her skin, and I instantly pulled back, worried that I was scaring her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, offering my hand instead of touching her again.

She sighed and pressed her forehead to the mat that was underneath of her. “I’m dumb. It’s okay.”

She didn’t take my hand when she helped herself up. What she did do, though, was bury her face into her hands. “I need a day.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I didn’t.

She stood up and walked out without another word, and it broke my fucking heart to watch her run across the parking lot to her car, as if the past six weeks hadn’t even happened.

“What was that about?” Madden asked.

I didn’t answer him.

Instead, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and said, “Fran needs a membership. Put it on my tab.”

Then I left and didn’t look back.

When I got home, I sent out a text to Easton and Schultz telling them I was indisposed and proceeded to get drunk.