“Don’t know.” Juan answered the call. “Acosta.”
“Hi, it’s Star. You said for me to call you if I saw Cindy.” The soft feminine voice hit a few familiar notes, but not enough for him to know who it was. “When I was leaving the club, she was parked by my car. She offered to sell me some drugs. She obviously had sold some already because she had a wad of money on her.”
Juan remembered the waitress at the Black Diamond. “Is she still there?”
“No, I warned her that she could get into a lot of trouble doing what she was doing. She told me the money was for a good cause—some orphaned kid or something. And she looked bad, like someone beat her up. I told her she needed to go to the hospital, but I could tell she wasn’t going. Then I told her a hot cop had come by asking about her. She ran off.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Thirty minutes.”
Juan frowned. Cindy could be anywhere by now. “Thanks. Call me again if you hear from her, maybe quicker next time.”
He hung up and explained the call to Connor.
“You talk about me getting a nurse’s number when you got strippers calling you?”
“That’s work-related,” Juan said.
“Right,” Connor answered.
Twenty minutes later, Juan pulled into his driveway. He hit the garage door opener, but didn’t pull in right away. Instead, he sat there in his running car, staring at the house next door, thinking about Nikki.
Remembering…her smile, her laughter, and the way his blood hummed when he was close to her.
Her house was dark—it was after two in the morning, she was sleeping. A slow, seductive image formed in his mind. Nikki in her nightshirt, her hair scattered on a soft pillow. Him in bed with her, running his hand under that nightshirt, removing it. Him tasting her lips, tasting all the secret parts of her body. Him aching to bury himself inside her.
He raked a hand through his hair. It was going to be a long, hard night.
* * *
The sound of pounding on his door woke Pablo up. He rolled out of bed and looked at the clock. Two a.m. He knew who it was. Sam. It made sense, he worked Homicide. Pablo knew the body would be found sooner or later.
He went and took a piss, then started for the door. On the way out of the bathroom, he saw his face, the scratch marks down his cheek. He frowned. Marisol Willis, Vicki’s ex-employee, had gotten him good. The bitch had paid for it, though. His plan had been to just ask a few questions. Unfortunately, she’d recognized him. How was he to know Vicki’s employee would have recognized him? Even then, he hadn’t planned on making her suffer. He could have snuffed her out real quick-like, but no, she’d gone and made it hard on herself.
A damn shame, too. Because he hadn’t gotten anything useful. Not that she didn’t try. One mention of visiting her kids’ bedroom and the mother sang like a canary about how Vicki had seen him running from her condo the day he’d searched her place for his money. How she’d gone to the police about him being alive. But he’d known that. Sam had told him.
The knocking started again when he made the living room. He picked up his gun from the coffee table before moving to the door. Sam was gonna be pissed. Not that he’d try anything. Sam was a coward. Pablo wasn’t sure he’d ever used a weapon on the job.
“Stop,” Pablo said right as he turned the lock.
“You did it, didn’t you?” Sam barged in.
Pablo shut the door. “Keep your voice down. The walls are thin.”
“You bastard!” Sam seethed.
“And it’s your fault,” Pablo said. “If you’d found Vicki, or better yet, not fucking lost her two weeks ago, Marisol Willis would still be alive. This is on you, buddy!” He pointed his gun at Sam. “And don’t forget it.”
“What kind of animal are you?”
“The kind who wants justice. The kind who isn’t a coward. The kind who gets the job done. That said, I have to give you credit. You were right. She didn’t know where Vicki is.”
Sam’s face paled, went green like he might just throw up. “She didn’t do anything. She was innocent. And you killed her.”
“Not that innocent.” He turned his cheek and with his gun motioned to the scratches. “Believe me when I tell you that she regretted laying her hands on me.”
“You’re sick.” Sam cupped his hand over his mouth.
“I’m sick of waiting, but I’ve already told you that. Have you heard anything from the group that’s hiding abused women?”
“I left a number. They’re supposed to call me.”
“Call you? Fuck that. Find them.”
“It doesn’t work that way, damn it. They don’t trust cops. I was told they’d have to look into me before I’d hear from them.”
“I don’t have time! I’m running out of money and patience.”
Sam just stared at him. “I can’t believe you killed that woman. I told you I’d—”
“Stop whining. It could have been worse. I could have killed the kids. I chose not to. So give me some credit. But not too much credit. Because if you let me down, people you love will pay.”
For one second Pablo thought Sam might have grown a pair, because his hand reached in his coat as if to pull out his gun. Pablo slammed him against his living room wall, lifted his gun, and pressed it in the man’s right eye socket.
“Don’t do it, buddy. Even if I have to kill you, I’ll still go after your wife. So you’d better find Vicki Trever or more people are going to die.”
Chapter Ten
Bell’s shattering scream jolted Vicki from a deep sleep. Out of bed in a fraction of a second, she bolted through her room, panic zipping through her like lightning chasing darkness in a black sky. The thought searing through her mind as she cut into the child’s bedroom was Why didn’t I grab the baseball bat from the closet? But instinct said to get to Bell. Instinct said this was just another dream.
Bell stood in the middle of the room, her tiny fists drawn to her chest, her eyes closed, screaming.
She was alone. The only person hurting her right now was in her head.
Every nightmare Bell had, every time Vicki was yanked from sleep in the middle of the night, Vicki hated Pablo more. Hate usually led to anger, but sometimes it took her someplace else. It took her to fear. Fear Pablo would find them. Fear she wasn’t big enough, strong enough to stop a madman. That even her baseball bat wasn’t enough. Fear she’d failed to keep the last pinky promise she’d given her sister before they’d unplugged her from life support. A promise that Vicki would protect Bell.
“Sweetheart!” Vicki pulled her niece into a soft hug. “It’s okay. It’s just a bad dream.”
Sobs—deep, soul-hurting sobs—shook the child as she gripped handfuls of Vicki’s nightshirt in her fists.
“It’s okay,” Vicki whispered, rubbing her hand down the child’s head, gently cupping her shoulders and pulling her against her. Bell buried her tear-dampened face into Vicki’s nightshirt.
“It’s okay,” Vicki repeated. But it wasn’t. Damn it to hell and back. It wasn’t okay. A child should never have lived through what Bell had.
“It was just a dream,” Vicki continued. “I’m here. We’re okay.”
“He was hurting us again!” Bell said, then reburied her face into Vicki’s side.
Pain, raw and deep, rose in Vicki’s chest. She fought to push it away, fought not to let the child feel her rage.
“It was just a nightmare, baby.” Vicki scooped her up and carried her to bed. She dropped down on the mattress and pulled Bell’s tense body close. “I’m here. Everything is okay.”
The room remained silent for several minutes. Vicki continued to run her hand gently over Bell’s back.
“I wish I’d had a good daddy like Suzie.” Her niece’s voice shook.
“You’ve got me,” Vicki said. “And I love you to the moon and back.”
“You aren’t going to die like Mama, are you?” Her shoulders started shaking again.
&
nbsp; “No, I’m here. Right here with you.”
A few sleepy moments passed before Bell spoke again. “Why are some people so mean?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Vicki said. “But let’s think about good things. Look at your toes. They’re smiling at you.”
Bell didn’t look down, but instead wrapped her little arms around Vicki’s neck and hung on. “Can you sleep here with me for a while, please?”
“Yeah.”
Vicki lay there, running her hand over Bell’s tiny shoulders, staring at the ceiling. She felt her niece’s small body relax when sleep claimed her, but Vicki couldn’t sleep. Getting up, she checked the locks in the house.
Then she moved back into her bedroom, opened the closet, and stared at the baseball bat. It was one of the few things Vicki had brought with her. It had belonged to her dad. But it wasn’t his connection to the object that held appeal.
It had saved her mother’s life.
She’d been thirteen. Alison, eleven.
The memory played like a bad horror movie in her mind. Get in the closet, she’d yelled at Alison.
But he’s hurting her.
I know, I’m going to help, but you stay in the closet! They’d lost the house by then, lost the shed that they’d hid in when things got bad. If they hadn’t lived in a second-story apartment, she’d have made Alison climb out the window. The closet was all she had. But when she’d pushed Alison through the door and told her to hide behind the lower rack of clothes, she’d spotted the one thing she had of her father’s, his baseball bat. She’d grabbed it, shut her sister inside, and gone to help her mom fend off her crazy-ass boyfriend.
When she got into the living room, Andrew had her mother down on the floor. Her mom was kicking, her arms flailing at her sides, but she wasn’t screaming anymore. That was because Andrew had his hands around her throat. He was killing her.
Vicki screamed for him to let her mom go. When he didn’t, she did what she had to do. She swung. Swung hard. The sound that bat made hitting his head still haunted her sometimes. But she didn’t regret it. She couldn’t.
There wasn’t a doubt that Andrew would have killed her mom. She knew the police wouldn’t have arrived in time. As it was, they burst in the door a couple of minutes later. Her mom was still on the floor, gasping for air. Andrew was still unconscious, blood oozing from his temple.
Vicki was standing there in shock, still holding the bat. She thought he was dead. Thought she’d killed him. She still couldn’t find it in herself to be sorry.
The police had to pry the bat from her hands. Not that they blamed her. They blamed her mom. So did Vicki. Andrew was the sixth piece-of-shit man her mom had taken up with since her father’s death.
Andrew woke up before the ambulance got there. They took him and her mom to the hospital. That was the first time Vicki and her sister had been in temporary foster care. Mom went into rehab for two weeks. She stayed clean after that for about a year. It had been a good year, too. But it didn’t last.
Closing her eyes, Vicki tried to push the bad out of her head and think about something, anything good. Nothing came to mind. Instead, fear stayed in the pit of her chest. She picked up the bat and carried it with her back into Bell’s bedroom. If only she’d had that bat when Pablo had been hurting Alison and Bell. If only she hadn’t introduced Alison to him. If only Vicki had fought harder to stay in Alison’s life when Pablo started isolating Alison and Bell. If only Vicki had been closer, she’d have known about the abuse. If only Alison were still alive. If only…
She reached up for the missing necklace.
Vicki set the bat beside the nightstand and crawled into bed with Bell. An hour later, she still lay there, listening to her niece sleep, listening to her breathe, and still feeling afraid.
Right before slumber claimed her, one good thing whispered across her mind. Her neighbor, sharing wine and conversation, and, for a short while, making her feel less alone. He’d tried to protect her when someone was breaking in. If Pablo found them…? Just knowing Juan was next door made her feel…safer.
Was there any way to hold on to that, without letting him get so close that her secrets were exposed?
* * *
Sweetie’s gotta-potty whine woke Juan up at seven the next morning. “Female bladders,” he muttered, and pushed out of bed. The first thing he realized was that his hand was throbbing. The second thing he realized was that his hand wasn’t the only body part throbbing. The fantasies he’d indulged in last night had lingering effects.
Ignoring both body parts, eyes half-shut, he moved through the living room. He went to open the back door only to remember Sweetie had escaped again last night into Nikki’s yard. Wearing only his boxers, he snagged the leash, then shoeless, shirtless, and still sporting a stiffy, he walked into his backyard.
The sun, only peeking up past the eastern horizon, spit out a few golden rays. The cool night air hung on in the dusty morning and dew clung to the grass.
“Do your business,” he said, yawning.
Sweetie squatted, peed, and he’d started to lead the animal back inside when the sound of a door opening next door reached his ears. Sweetie barked.
Glancing down at his still-present early-morning problem, he turned his back to the fence. He scooped the poodle up and headed back inside to his bedroom. But suddenly energized by the thought of seeing Nikki, he yanked on his jeans, pulled on a T-shirt, stopped in the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee, and hurried back outside, alone.
He moved to the fence and peered through the slats, making sure it was Nikki and not Bell. It was. She lay stretched on the lounge chair, wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt. She had a book in her hands and a cup of steaming coffee sitting on the small plastic patio table.
She opened the book and her gaze lowered. A light chuckle escaped her lips, which lifted with a smile as if she’d read something funny.
Warmth flooded his chest.
When he started feeling like a Peeping Tom, he said, “Good morning.”
She jerked as if he’d startled her. Her arm hit the plastic table beside her, flipping it over. Her cup fell to the ground, spilling its precious liquid. Frowning, she dropped the book in her lap and glanced over to the fence.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you heard Sweetie a second ago.”
“I did, I just didn’t know you were…out.”
“Since she got in your backyard again, I can’t just—”
“Yeah, I forgot,” she said.
“I thought I could let her out and maybe you could call her and I could see where she’s escaping from.”
“Oh…sure,” she said.
“Is now good?” Damn if some of last night’s fantasies didn’t send a thrill down low in his abdomen.
“Yeah.” There was hesitancy in her tone.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“What?”
“Coffee. I just made a fresh pot. Good stuff. I special-order it.” He glanced at her mug lying on the ground. “Looks like I owe you one now.”
When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “Cream? Sugar?”
It took two more long seconds for her to accept. “Just cream.” Her tone still leery.
He rushed inside, ran to the bathroom, rinsed his mouth out with mouthwash, and ran a hand through his hair. He caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror. For a second, he didn’t recognize the man staring back. A man with hope. A man who felt alive.
* * *
Juan returned to the backyard with Sweetie and Vicki called the dog. The little escape artist barked and mere seconds later she ducked under some fencing and raced at Vicki. Almost immediately, Vicki heard her gate open and glanced back. Juan, walking toward her, wore a navy T-shirt just snug enough to showcase his hard chest, flat stomach, and tight muscles.
Holding two cups of coffee, he smiled and kept coming. His gait was slow. Sexy. Steam rose from the cups, but she wasn’t sure which was hotter, the coffee or the
man. He looked a little morning mussed, still slightly sleepy as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
She missed waking up with someone. Missed sleeping with someone. Not just the sex but the company. That first early-morning look at someone when nothing is between you and him but a smile, the sheets, and the promise of a new day.
She and Dan had stayed at each other’s home at least three times a week. Knowing that someone had taken her place stung. But not as much as it should have. Maybe it would’ve changed into something deeper. As crazy as it felt, she mourned not so much what they had, but what she’d hoped it would become. Her relationship with Dan had been comfortable, because they’d known each other so well.
But Juan was different. She barely knew this guy. And yet somehow she did. She knew he’d lost a wife he loved. She’d seen the remnants of grief in his eyes. She knew his heart was big enough, soft enough to love a fluffy and frilly dog. And she knew he bolted over her fence that first night to protect her for no reason other than that it was the right thing to do.
“Hope it has enough cream.” His hand brushed hers as she pulled away.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said, again feeling the tingle of his touch. “So you saw where she got through?”
“Yeah. She’s turning into a regular little escape artist.” He walked over to the fence with Sweetie at his heels, prancing as if proud of her accomplishment.
“You are a bad dog,” he told her, but the scolding came with a scratch behind her ears.
“Seriously, she wasn’t doing this until you guys moved in. I’ll fill it.” He felt around on the ground. “I might have to come over here and fill it on this side as well.”
He stood up, and she was aware of how small she felt beside him. Most of the time, she disliked that feeling. But Juan’s size didn’t intimidate her. He made her feel feminine. Aware of all the differences between a man and a woman.
“Sure. Just let me know.”
“Oh, I will.” He smiled as if teasing her about their first meeting. “I’m a quick learner.”
She remembered the novel she’d been reading. The shared smiles, whispered secrets, soft kisses, and…Stop.
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