Witness Protection (Defenders of Love Book 1) (19 page)

Just like every single night of her adult life, sometime later Cyndi awoke suddenly. The room was dark, the house quiet. Only the soft, even hum of Jason breathing disturbed the silence.   After tossing and turning for a while, she decided to get up and see what the girls were up to. Just like most every night.

The group of insomniacs she referred to as her girls were members of an online police wives group she belonged to. Internet was the one real splurge neither she nor Jason could give up no matter how frugal they tried to be. Grabbing a blanket off the back of a chair, she curled up in the corner of the sofa and waited for the familiar log-in screen. The clock on the microwave had read 2:56 when she passed through the kitchen for a glass of water. So many years of Jason working the night shift had drastically altered her sleep patterns.

Even when he was home she never slept all the

way through the night. Three a.m. was the witching hour for her. Without fail, every single night, three hundred and sixty-five nights a year she awoke at the same time. Somewhere in the back of her mind she

believed that if something was going to happen out on Jason's patrol, it would be at three in the morning. Her

subconscious obviously believed that if Cyndi were awake, she could somehow prevent the horrible thing that was supposed to happen to the man she had loved for fifteen years.

The familiar blue background of the site filled her computer screen. Cyndi joined the secret group of police wives immediately. As far as she could tell, they were all there. She greeted the group with her usual conversation starter.

Cyndi: Good Evening, Ladies...It's 3 a.m. Do you know where your husbands are?

Angela: With a hooker...AND her john! LOL

Diana: Crack house!

Jessy: Jail!

Cyndi: Ah, so all the usual places then? LOL

Diana: Jason on duty tonight?

Cyndi: Nope. It was my work night.

Angela: How's that new job of yours going??

Cyndi: Made $300 bucks tonight...

Diana: That's something like $150 an hour!

Cyndi: I know.

Jessy: Does Jason know yet?

Cyndi: No. And he isn't going to.

Diana: How do you explain all the extra money?

Cyndi: *sigh* I don't... I only give him about $100 of it every two weeks. What I would make if I was still cleaning offices.

Angela: What about the rest?

Cyndi: Right now? It's in an oatmeal container in the back of the pantry. Jason hates oatmeal! LMAO

Diana: LMAO I might have to steal that idea. Donnie has no idea that all those calls coming in on Saturday night aren't actually from shopping network customers...Wouldn't it be interesting if Detective Massey discovered what his wife really did while he was working the night shift?

Jessy: Maybe he'll think it's hot that his wife moonlights as a phone sex operator? LOL

Diana: I totally doubt that! LOL Hard to give up though, been doing it since college... How do you think I paid for the Bachelor's degree? Ha-ha! I think I am as addicted to it as those creepers who call in every night!

Jessy: eeewww! LOL

Angela: So what y'all are saying is that your husbands work their asses

           off worrying about money and they have no idea you two sexy things are raking in the dough?

Cyndi: Trust me when I say Jason doesn't give a damn about money. All he worries about are

            perps...and potential perps...and people who don't even know they might qualify as potential perps...

Jessy: Your boy needs to get over himself, Cyn... not everyone is out to get him.

Cyndi: Try telling that to him! LOL I've been unsuccessful at getting through to him for too many years.

Diana: Donnie doesn't care about money either. As long as he has clean socks and    underwear and his next meal is always waiting he could care less about what comes in or goes out.

Angela: Yeah, my Jake is the same way. As far as he is concerned there is a money tree growing in the basement...oh wait...we live in the south, we don't have a basement.

Jessy: LOL Sam thinks we have a tree too, I swear!

Angela: Not to change the subject or anything but a weird call came in to dispatch tonight when I was

           on shift.

Diana: Weird how?

Angela: Some heavy breathing dude called in from one of those dump phones, you know the pay-as-you-go cell phones?

            Yeah, he called in, said "The girl is dead" and hung up.

Cyndi: That was all he said?

Angela: Yup. He didn't say anything else, just hung up. I couldn't even dispatch a unit to check it out, we had no idea where he was calling from. The number just came up as "cell phone."

Diana: Hmmm...maybe just a drunk playing games?

Angela: He sounded pretty sober and lucid to me but who knows? He could have been an escaped mental patient or something. I passed the information on to Jake. He was on duty tonight so he and his partner did a little digging but nothing turned up.

Jessy: Because there are so many escaped mental patients wandering around the streets of Virginia Beach... You are more likely to run into a fox! LOL

Cyndi: OMG! Jason and I were talking about the foxes tonight too! He thinks I give too much credit to that stupid article. 

Diana: The beach has foxes all right but they are more the two-legged variety just waiting to pounce on all the pretty bikini clad sheep!

Cyndi let out a big yawn. Harper would be awake in another three hours.

Cyndi: I am gonna call it a night, ladies. Little one will be up with the sun. 

Diana: Yeah, I'm pretty beat too. Night all!

The other ladies bid farewell and Cyndi shut her computer down. In no time at all, the sun was shining and little Harper was standing by her bed. The nightstand clock read 6:30, much too early to get up.

"I'm hungry, Mommy."

"Of course you are, my little sweet pea," Cyndi muttered. "How about you cuddle Mommy for a minute or two first?"

"Okay!" Harper wasted no time climbing in between her and Jason. Her husband never even stirred and it wasn't long before she and Harper both drifted back to sleep.

Coming Soon from Carolyn LaRoche

Will Logan's cousin Kaiden finally find love in Book Two of the Defenders of Love Series:
Homeland Security
?

Diana Massey learns that secrets kill in Book Two of the Secret Lives of Police Wives series:
In The Shadow of the Shield
.

Meet Ben Callahan, former Air Force Special Forces and Layla Evans in the Rescuer's Heart series:
Tormented Triology
.