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  CHASING CHARLIE

  By C. M. NEWMAN

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author, with the exception of brief quotations within critical articles and reviews.

  PROLOGUE: PARTNERS

  CHAPTER ONE: I’M A TREE

  CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST TO KNOW

  CHAPTER THREE: BACK TO WORK

  CHAPTER FOUR: MESSENGER

  CHAPTER FIVE: ANGELA

  CHAPTER SIX: CHARLIE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FLIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHT: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  CHAPTER NINE: PIZZA

  CHAPTER TEN: GREEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: FLEETING NOTIONS

  CHAPTER TWELVE: MITCH

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A BAD IDEA

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CHURCH REVISITED

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GOING AWAY

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DR. CHARLES GLASSER

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: FRANKIE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SURPRISE VISITORS

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: BAD HAIR DAYS

  CHAPTER TWENTY: TAKE TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: SPONTANEITY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: MOTHERS AND BROTHERS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: EXPECTATIONS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SECOND HOME

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: AMATEUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: FRIENDS WHO KISS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: FIRST DATE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: CHIVALRY ISN’T DEAD, BUT IT’S DYING

  CHAPTER THIRTY: A NEW DIAGNOSIS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: COMING CLEAN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: AWAKENING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE ANGELA FAN CLUB

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: BABIES

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ANGELA’S SECRET

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: GRUMPY OLD MEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: UNINVITED

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: GREASY AND DELICIOUS

  CHAPTER FORTY: THE REAL DEAL

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: STAGE THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: CONFRONTATION

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: BAD BREATH

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: AN HOUR’S NOTICE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: HUNGRY PILLS

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: TIPPING POINT

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: A CHANGE OF HEART

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: VINCE’S WILL

  FORTY-NINE: ARMS

  FIFTY: I BELIEVE YOU

  FIFTY-ONE: GEORGE AND RUTH

  FIFTY-TWO: CHARLIE’S LAST NIGHT

  FIFTY-THREE: FAR BETTER FOR HAVING LOVED YOU

  FIFTY-FOUR: THE TEAM

  FIFTY-FIVE: TELL HER

  FIFTY-SIX: I HAVE YOU

  FIFTY-SEVEN: PANIC

  FIFTY-EIGHT: DEPARTING SUN

  FIFTY-NINE: THE MOURNING AFTER

  SIXTY: SUCKER PUNCH

  SIXTY-ONE: SIGNS

  EPILOGUE: MADISON

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  To PL, who read bit by bit as I churned this out and was just as invested as I was.

  To RB and GM, who lent their medical expertise when the Internet couldn’t tell me everything.

  To SL, for being the hero at the very end.

  To all my friends who have encouraged me even when they weren’t reading along.

  To SR, one of my biggest supporters since the beginning.

  To Sharon and Kari, my generous editors.

 

  PROLOGUE: PARTNERS

  Vince Glasser had been shot once before. Thanks to a bulletproof vest, a desperate criminal’s shot to his chest had merely knocked the wind out of him in his rookie year. But on this sticky summer night in one of Chicago’s worst South Side neighborhoods, he learned true pain as a bullet blazed into his stomach with no vest to stop it. As he crumpled to the ground on the cracked pavement, he could hear his assailant jumping a chain link fence, dogs barking from every direction, and the voice of his partner running toward him.

  “Vince!” Angela cried. To Vince it felt like several minutes later, but in reality, Angela had only been a few steps behind him in their chase. It just as easily could have been her taking the bullet. Gun at the ready, she looked for the shooter but he was already gone.

  Vince just grunted in pain, rolling onto his back and grabbing hold of his gut. “Go after him,” he protested when she got down on the ground next to him. “He went over…that fence, I think.”

  “I don’t care where he went,” Angela said, using one hand to transmit a radio call and the other to begin applying pressure to the entry wound. She prayed there wasn’t an exit wound and ignored Vince’s groaning beneath her for now. “Federal officer down, I repeat, federal officer down! Gunshot wound to the abdomen. One-thirtieth and Lowe—suspect is moving south through back yards. Caucasian, twenties, six-foot, baggy jeans, dark t-shirt, dark baseball cap.”

  “Hawkins…” Vince stopped and coughed.

  “What?” she said, taking only a quick second to tear a sleeve off his dress shirt.

  “How bad—is it?” Vince asked between shallow breaths. He could see her round face, already creased with worry as she rolled up the piece of his shirt and pressed it firmly to the wound.

  “Not too bad,” she panted, gradually adding more and more of her body weight to her effort. “Just relax, okay? I need to keep constant pressure. Sorry if it hurts.”

  Vince’s breathing turned to hissing. He tried to obey Angela’s orders to calm himself, but he could only stay silent for a minute. “If I d—” He could say no more than that before the relentless coughing began.

  “You’re not going to die. Not on my watch,” she told him with initial resolve, though her final word came out too shaky for her to believe herself. “But I need you to lie still.”

  “Cha…”

  “Don’t worry about Charlie, do you hear me? You’ll see him soon. You’ll be just fine.”

  Vince coughed again. He could hardly hear a thing once his senses focused on something new. Even above the searing pain, he felt something different.

  Blood. And it wasn’t issuing from his abdomen or his back. The metallic taste on his tongue sent him to his side, spitting up on the sidewalk.

  Angela saw the crimson line down Vince’s paling chin. “Oh, no, no, no,” she whispered. “Hey, can you wiggle your toes for me?”

  “My toes are…fine. Where…are the medics?” Vince sputtered.

  They both listened for sirens, but all they heard was an echo in their minds of a dispatcher informing them that help was on the way. That had been a couple of minutes ago.

  “This could…be…a while…cops hate…FBI anyway…” he joked tiredly. He tried to be optimistic, but suddenly all he could see was a mahogany casket perched above a freshly dug grave—that of his ex-wife, Kate, killed only a month ago. Though it hadn’t done a thing in the way of assuaging his pain, the Minnesota State Patrol had assured him that Kate hadn’t felt a thing when the truck had hit her car head on. He hadn’t comprehended the true mercy of a painless death until right now. He closed his eyes and kept them that way, trying to give Angela a moment to herself. She was obviously struggling with the same reality he was—help wasn’t there yet and there was no sign of it arriving within the next crucial couple of minutes. That was their own fault. They hadn’t even been actively searching for the suspect when they’d caught a glimpse of the face they’d seen in a dozen different composite sketches and pursued him. They’d merely been on their way to get dinner from a favorite hot dog joint as a morale booster for the tired team and police force. With no plans to go on any ch
ases that night, they hadn’t had any backup and hadn’t already been in vests. Vince had taken off unprotected.

  “Mmm…I’m tired…” he whispered.

  “No, no, stay awake,” Angela said when she saw that Vince’s eyes were still closed. “Stay with me. Do you feel blood underneath you?”

  Vince had to force himself to focus on what part of his body was his back. He shook his head. “No.”

  “Good, there’s no exit wound. Hey, I—I saw that new picture of Charlie that you brought in for your desk the other day. He’s getting so big, isn’t he?”

  The pain became so great that Vince felt himself growing numb to it. “Yeah…talks up…a storm…”

  “You don’t have to talk, just keep your eyes open for me,” Angela instructed when she heard the rattling inside Vince’s body. “Still another year before he starts preschool, right?”

  Vince nodded before more blood sputtered over his lips.

  —

  “Agent Hawkins?” a nurse asked, pushing through the double doors of the quiet surgical lounge.

  Angela stood so fast she almost spilled her burnt coffee all over her hands. “How is he?”

  “It’s going to be a long operation, but he’s finally stabilized. We’ll keep you posted.”

  Angela felt queasy as she sat back down. She called the remainder of their team to give them the good news. They had insisted on staying behind with her, but Vince’s shooter—as well as his unknown partner—was still on the loose. Their string of drug-related murders had brought their Minneapolis-based Abduction and Violent Crimes Unit to Chicago two days ago. With so much work left to do, it hadn’t taken much convincing on Angela’s end to get the others back out on the streets to do their jobs while their leader had a long surgery ahead of him.

  Nine hours into the operation, Angela’s body began to protest against a record-breaking waking streak. She made sure the entire nursing staff knew who she was and what she looked like, then let herself fall asleep with a plastic bag of Vince’s personal effects tucked under her arm. She was nudged awake by the surgeon not much later. “Agent Hawkins.”

  “Hmm…Oh—” Angela’s eyes snapped open and she sat up properly.

  “I’m Dr. Ferris, Vincent’s surgeon. He sustained substantial internal damage, mostly to his stomach, but he pulled through. Recovery will be rough, but he’ll be just fine. He has you to thank,” the young-looking woman told her.

  “Where is he? Can I see him?” Angela asked, now wide awake and tying her greasy brown hair back behind her neck.

  “He’ll come off the anesthesia soon. He was actually rather difficult to keep under. Come on back. I can have someone show you to recovery.”

  “Thank you,” Angela said, wiping the smudged makeup from her eyes. She checked her watch. Ten in the morning. She gave the team a quick call on her way to the recovery room.

  “Absolutely no cell phone use,” a nurse instructed. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn it off.”

  Angela’s phone was nearly dead, anyway, so she took no issue with shutting it down and clipping it to her belt. Through three aisles of curtains she followed the nurse until she saw Vince’s pale face and faintly greying hair. She took the dinky plastic chair next to his bed.

  Back when things had been more touch-and-go, before Vince had stabilized, Angela had called Jenna, Kate’s sister. Since Kate’s sudden death, Jenna had been taking care of Charlie while Vince got back to work. Upon finding out about the shooting, Jenna had wisely decided not to bring a near three-year-old to a faraway hospital in the middle of the night to find his father in intensive care at best. But Angela now realized the need to update her anyway. She discreetly took Vince’s phone out of his bag and used it to send a text message.

  She knew Vince also had somewhat of an estranged brother, and unless she was mistaken he lived right here in Chicago, the Glasser family’s hometown. She’d tried to call him, too, but his number wasn’t in Vince’s phone and she wasn’t even sure Vince would have wanted him there, no matter the outcome of the surgery. Maybe it had something to do with his brother not even showing his face at Kate’s funeral. Vince was a fairly private person, but Angela knew not all was well between the men.

  She wasn’t bothered with such details for long, though. In keeping close watch over Vince, she was staring right at him the moment his eyes cracked open. She stood so he wouldn’t have to move to see her. “Hey,” she said gently, taking his frigid hand without a thought.

  He gave her a little squeeze back as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Water,” he mouthed. She poured him a glass just as a nurse came over. She recorded some vitals, asked Vince how his pain was, and left them.

  “What’s the damage?” Vince murmured, watching the room move slowly above him. The fluorescent lights irritated his eyes. Thankfully, that was about all that bothered him. As long as he didn’t move, the medication allowed him to ignore for the fact that he’d been shot in the gut.

  “It did a number on your stomach and recovery’s going to bite, but they said you’ll be okay. Jenna’s up to speed and so is the team,” Angela told her groggy but lucid boss who inspected his surroundings with his tired, steely blue eyes. “I tried to call your brother. His name’s Mitch, right?”

  “You—you didn’t—” Vince said in a near panic.

  Angela shook her head. “Relax. I couldn’t find his number and then I thought better of it anyway. I decided to leave it up to you. So you don’t want me to get in touch with him?”

  Vince shook his head. “Wouldn’t want…to inconvenience him…”

  Angela looked for a way to a different conversation. “Can you promise me something?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You never go on a chase without a vest ever again. I don’t care if you don’t think you have a few spare seconds to put it on. You do it anyway.”

  Vince nodded. “All right. I need to…sleep now…” He held his hand open, waiting for Angela to take it again. “Thank you.”

  “For letting you run ahead of me unprotected? Yeah, I’m a great partner,” she muttered.

  “You are.” Vince used the last of his bodily strength to grip her hand before he drifted off.