Badge Of Honor. Carol Steward
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hands and headed toward Sarah.
She spun, kicking her suspect’s legs out from under him. Then she jumped to her feet and put her knee between his shoulder blades. “Anything else you’d like to try?” she asked the guy laying with his face on the concrete. He had not only hers, but three other guns aimed at him.
Nick stopped on the other side of the prone figure, holding back a laugh. He waited as Sarah cuffed him, then helped her to pull the guy to his feet.
“Look what you did to me!” the bank robber said, blood dripping from his nose.
Sarah holstered her weapon and grabbed his arm. “I’d start exercising that right to remain silent if I were you.” She escorted him to the backseat of their patrol car. “If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law….” she said, then finished reading him his rights. She closed the door and looked at the prisoner sitting in a second cruiser. “Did you read your party his rights?” she asked Nick.
“Done. Unless you object, I’d like to send him ahead to the jail, put some space between these two so they can’t collaborate on any details.”
Officer Roberts jotted notes on a small pad. “Fine. We shouldn’t be too long here, should we?”
“A tow truck has already been called to deliver the Chevelle to the police lot for investigation,” Nick confirmed. “The officer who responded at the bank will meet us at the jail to help with questioning. The shift supervisor is contacting the Nebraska department to let them know we have their suspects.”
“So we need to finish writing up our reports before they can be extradited to Omaha on their warrants.”
“That’s right. How’s your report writing?” he asked.
“They’re done differently than I’m used to, but I think I’m catching on.” She looked up and smiled.
After the scene was cleaned up, they transported the prisoner to the jail and waited while the guards searched him and offered first aid. Since both suspects lawyered up, Nick and Sarah had to wait for legal counsel to arrive before they could question them.
“Good job out there, Officer Roberts,” Nick said as they left the jail afterward.
“Thanks,” she said, wondering if he was always so formal. She wanted to tell him to call her Sarah, but since he was her field training officer, she opted against saying anything. “I think it went amazingly well, considering no innocent victims were hurt and not one vehicle suffered any damage. I’m sure you have a few suggestions of how I could have handled it better….”
“I said you did a good job,” Nick stated quietly.
She felt her heart beat a little faster when the corner of his mouth twitched. Sarah didn’t dare let his compliment go to her head. Evaluation of a call was part of the job. She didn’t need his approval. Or so she tried to convince herself.
A second later, he smiled. “Do you want to grab a soda on the way out, to celebrate?”
“Celebrate what? An arrest? Thanks, but I don’t drink soda on duty.”
“Coffee? Water? The machines have it all. My treat.”
She finally gave in and turned down the hallway toward the lobby. “I need to call my sister real quick.
If you insist on buying, I’ll take a water.”
She found a quiet corner and dialed her cell phone. “Hi, Beth. How’re you doing?”
“Fine, until you called to remind me I shouldn’t be,” her baby sister mumbled. “I don’t want to talk now.”
Sarah paced the floor, knowing she’d feel much better if she was at home with her sister instead of counting on a bunch of uninformed friends to watch out for her. “Are your girlfriends there?”
“Yes. We’re watching a movie and having pizza.”
Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You didn’t let some pizza joint deliver to the house, did you? Did you even tell your friends what happened? Did you tell Steve yet?”
“I don’t want to. I want to forget it,” her sister said vehemently.
“That’s not going to make it go away,” Sarah warned in a hushed tone.
The line went dead as Beth hung up.
She felt a cold chill as a shadow made the corner go dark. “You okay?”
Sarah spun around, realizing Nick had returned with her bottle of water, and one for himself. “Yeah, you ready to go?” She hoped he didn’t push for more information, because tonight, she didn’t think she could stay quiet. She didn’t want to be here at all, but she knew her sister’s stubbornness would be as annoying in person as it was from a distance.
“I’m ready, if you’re sure you are,” he said skeptically. “Is your sister okay? You didn’t sound very happy.”
Sarah couldn’t talk. Not right now. She walked past the good-looking officer who had been through the mill with his own problems. “I’m not.”
“I don’t mean to push…” he said under his breath. “But if you need time off, it’s better to take it than try to carry on when you’re distracted.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Did I seem distracted out there?”
He stepped back and crossed his arms in front of him, then dropped them to his sides, probably afraid he’d split the seams of his perfectly ironed shirt. “No.”
“You probably know how irritating sisters can be when they make poor decisions, right?”
He looked at her, puzzled. “How’d you know I have a sister?”
Sarah couldn’t believe she’d opened her big mouth. For some crazy reason, she’d hoped he would remember her. “We went to high school together.” Suddenly she felt very awkward.
He didn’t respond, but studied her. “She’s not even close to our age. How’d…?”
“I saw her at basketball games.” Sarah had done enough interrogation in her career to know that his pause was due to discomfort. She was just rankled enough from her conversation with Beth to push the topic. “You don’t remember me, do you? I was older…. A geek with no social life….”
“I presume you still are,” he said with an ornery smile. “Older, I mean.”
She pursed her mouth and looked up at him. “Thanks for reminding me, Sergeant Matthews.” She shrugged. “Forget I mentioned it. It’s been a long time.”
His lips quirked slightly, forming an adorable smile that she remembered from all those years ago. “I confess, I didn’t make the connection at first. I thought you looked familiar. In this line of work, it’s hard to remember where I’ve met someone. You’re Joel’s twin sister. I still can’t believe you two are twins, he’s so much taller….” Nick’s face turned a shade pinker with her silence. “Sorry….”
She shook her head. “Yeah, thanks again for the reminder.”
“He was a senior on the basketball team when I made varsity my sophomore year.”
Sarah nodded in confirmation and his embarrassment faded. “And you bumped him out of the last quarter of the state championship game.”
Nick shrugged, the blush returning with her statement. “Is the chip on his shoulder, or yours? That happened…” He paused thoughtfully “…fourteen years ago.”
Sarah laughed at the puzzled look on his face. “Oh, I think it bothered the rest of us a lot more than it ever did Joel. He was just happy that the team took the championship.”
“We all were,” Nick said as he opened the door to the