Diamonds Can Be Deadly by Merline Lovelace Page A

realization she’d come to crave his company as much as his touch.
    He’d craved hers, too. The connection hadn’t been all one-sided. Jordan had sensed it in the shared laughter, the verbal sparring matches, the discovery of mutual likes and avid dislikes. She had to know how he could abandon that—and her—without a backward glance.
    â€œWhy did you go undercover, TJ? Why give up twelve years on the force and let all your friends believe you’d turned?”
    He didn’t answer right away. Hooking his elbows over his knees, he stared out at the dark, restless sea.
    â€œIt started with an arrest I made,” he said finally. “A street punk who’d robbed a convenience store. He was young, just twelve it turned out, and so stoned he couldn’t remember his name. I’d busted twelve-year-olds before. Too damn many of them. But something about this one got to me. Maybe the fact that he puked all over me before I got him to the juvenile detention center.”
    â€œThat would certainly endear him to me, too.”
    The comment drew a wry smile.
    â€œI sort of made him my personal project after that. He didn’t have anyone else who cared what happened to him. His mother had taken a hike. His father had already written him off as a dopehead and a loser. I worked with his caseworker, talked to the judge, got the kid into rehab. Social services managed to place him in a decent foster home after rehab.”
    Jordan had spent a number of years on her own. She knew how tough it was to climb out of the gutter and stay out. So she wasn’t surprised at what came next.
    â€œTwo weeks after he got out of rehab, he OD’d.”
    TJ’s shrug disguised the bone-deep frustration of a cop who dealt with such tragedies every day.
    â€œThe kid was just another statistic, one more throwaway, but I decided then I was tired of going after the street pushers and two-bit junkies. I wanted the big guys, the ones flooding the schools with snow and coke and meth.”
    â€œAnd you couldn’t get to them as an NYPD narc?”
    â€œNot the ones I wanted. Not the ones funneling the crap in by the plane-and boatload.”
    â€œSo you talked to the feds.”
    â€œI talked to the feds. Then I started putting the squeeze on the pimps and pushers on my beat. Word soon got out I was looking to make more than what I could earn as a cop.”
    It wouldn’t take long, Jordan knew. That kind ofthing was like mold. It spread to dark, dank corners almost without check.
    â€œAfter I was busted for taking bribes, I let it be known I was available to the highest bidder. Surprising how many scuzz-balls wanted to hire the same cop who’d sent their friends to Rikers. Eventually, I worked my way into the inner circle of some heavy hitters. A number of them are now behind bars,” he said with fierce satisfaction. “They still don’t have a clue who put them there.”
    Three years, Jordan thought. He’d been living among scum for three years. The same kind of scum she’d once accused him of being.
    â€œIt never occurred to you to tell me you were undercover?”
    â€œI wanted to, Red. You have no idea how badly. But I couldn’t take you where I was going and I sure as hell didn’t want to expose you to the kind of people I’d be dealing with.”
    â€œThat’s pure unadulterated crap. What you mean is that you couldn’t trust me with the truth.”
    He slanted her a quick glance. “I’d say that worked both ways. I was a cop, a good one as far as you knew. Yet you never gave me a hint you were anything other than a supermodel turned entrepreneur.”
    He was right. She hadn’t.
    Scooping up a clump of damp sand, she crumbled it and let the grains sift through her fingers. With it went the anger at what she’d always believed was a betrayal.
    â€œWe had a chance at something,” she said after a