by Tami Hoag
Mitch held Jessie close and gave Joy a warning look. “It's one incident, Joy, not an epidemic,” he whispered. “Jessie's just tired, aren't you, sweetheart?”
Jessie nodded.
Joy held her arms out. “Well, come to Grandma, Jessie. We'll go up to bed.”
“I'll take her,” Mitch snapped. Joy sniffed, but didn't push her luck. Clucking her tongue, she moved off into the living room where Washington Week grumbled along on the television and Jurgen was engrossed in a book.
Mitch took Jessie to her room and helped her change into her nightgown. He rambled on about the Snowdaze activities that would take place over the weekend and how much fun she would have with her grandparents. Maybe Grandpa would take her to see the ice sculptures in the park or the human snow bowling. Maybe they would be able to go for a sleigh ride. Grandma had tickets to the figure skating show. Wouldn't that be fun?
Jessie contributed nothing to the conversation. She dutifully washed her face and brushed her teeth and climbed into the bed Mitch had turned down for her. He sat beside her and brushed a hand tenderly over her hair.
“Say your prayers, munchkin,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
Jessie turned her face up to him, her big brown eyes swimming with tears. In a tiny, trembling voice, she said, “Daddy, I'm scared.”
Mitch held his breath. “Scared of what, honey?”
“Scared that a maniac will get me, too!”
She crawled into his lap as the tears came in earnest. Mitch wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. “Nobody's going to take you, sweetheart.”
“B-but s-somebody t-took J-Josh! G-Grandma s-says i-it h-happens e-every d-day!”
“Not here, it doesn't,” Mitch said, rocking her. “Nobody's going to take you, honey. Remember how we talked all about how to be safe? Remember how we talked about stranger danger and how you should run away when you feel afraid of somebody?”
“B-but they t-took Josh and h-he's a b-big kid. I'm just little!”
Mitch's heart ripped. He pulled Jessie's head back against his chest and rocked her harder, blinking furiously at the heat stinging his eyes. “Nobody's going to take you, baby. I won't let that happen.”
He would keep her safe.
The way he had kept her brother safe?
The thought was a knife. A stiletto driving deep, piercing flesh and bone and soul. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, squeezed his eyes shut until they burned. He held his daughter and knew she was his only child because he hadn't been able to keep her brother safe. And he knew that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how strongly he believed he deserved it, there were no guarantees he could keep Jessie safe, either.
Damn you, whoever you are. Damn you for taking Josh, for stealing this town's innocence. Damn you to hell and gone. I'll send you there myself if I ever get the chance.
He rocked Jessie and whispered to her until her tears ran out and she fell asleep. Then he tucked her under the covers with Oatmeal Bear and just sat there, watching her, drinking in the sight of her, loving her so much it was a physical ache. He sat there, unaware of time passing. He heard Jurgen and Joy come upstairs, knew Joy stopped and stood outside Jessie's door. He didn't acknowledge her and she finally turned away, shutting off the hall light as she went.
The house had been silent for a long while when he eased away from Jessie and slipped out of her room. He left the light burning on the bedside table in case she woke up afraid. He wished he could have taken her home with him, but Joy had asked for this weekend a month ago. Then there was the case. He had left standing orders to be called the instant anything happened regarding Josh. He didn't want to further upset Jessie by having his pager wake her.
The clock on the dash of the Explorer read 12:13. Around him the neighborhood was quiet and dark. The bars downtown would still be open, but he didn't want the noise. The Big Steer truck stop out on the interstate was open all night, but he didn't want the questions or the talk that would come from the patrons and the help. Across the alley his house sat empty, but he couldn't stand the idea of being alone.
He thought of Megan and almost laughed at himself. Of all the women . . .
Since Allison's death he had suffered an endless parade of eligible ladies. Nice women, gentle women, women who would have done anything to please him, and women who would have done anything to win his heart. He had turned them all away and sent them in search of worthier men. He had denied himself their company and their sympathy. When physical needs could no longer be ignored, he took himself to the Cities and found release with no strings attached. The one-night stands had become just another part of the cycle into which his life had settled.
It never occurred to him it was a pathetic excuse for a life. It was what he wanted and all he was ready for. It was safe and painless. And empty . . . and lonely . . . and he didn't want to suffer it tonight.
Without allowing himself to question the wisdom of it, he put the truck in gear and drove toward Ivy Street.
CHAPTER 17
* * *
DAY 4
12:24 A.M. 16°
Megan dreamed of a world coated in the fine black soot of fingerprinting powder. It hung in the air like smog, and her lungs ached as she tried to breathe, as if she had an elephant standing on her chest. Every surface was covered with fingerprints. They floated in space like cinders in the wind. She woke with a start to find Friday sitting on her chest, staring down at her, his eyes liquid gold in the dim lamplight.
“God, you weigh a ton! Get off!” Megan groused, struggling to sit up.
The cat hopped onto a box of books and shot her a dirty look, then lifted his hind leg up behind his head in a yoga move and calmly began to groom his rear end.
Megan dismissed him and tried to dismiss the disorientation she felt waking up in what was essentially a strange place. She had to unpack her junk soon and make this apartment into a home, she thought, tightening the belt on her old blue plaid flannel robe. She couldn't stand the feeling of transience. Of course, she admitted, transient might well describe her state in Deer Lake if DePalma's fuse got any shorter.
If she could get a lead on the case, it would take some of the heat off, direct the press to something more important than the state's first female field agent. More important, if she could get a lead, they might be able to find Josh and bring him home.
Using her own ident kit, she had lifted Olie Swain's prints from the Coke bottle, transferred them to lift cards, and faxed them to Records at headquarters to be run through the MAFIN network. The automated system would search through its database for a match. If they got a hit, she would be notified immediately. She had also faxed the prints to the National Crime Information Center at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to be run through their automated fingerprint identification system. They would do a search starting with the Upper Midwest and work their way out to the rest of the country.
Someone somewhere knew Olie Swain. Someone somewhere had sent him to prison.
In her mind's eye she saw again the fine blue lines on the backs of his fingers. A crude tattoo job. The kind cons gave other cons in the joint. She hadn't gotten a good enough look to swear, but it felt right. He smelled like a con in more ways than one.
The knock at the door was like another world crashing into her sphere of silence. Megan shot to her feet, automatically reaching for her gun on the end table. Out of habit she skirted around the door and flattened herself against the wall beside it. The knock sounded again. She waited, breath held deep in her lungs.
“Megan? It's Mitch.”
She blew out a breath, then undid the lock. “Did you drop in on Leo after midnight?” she asked, pulling the door open.
“No,” he said softly.
He stepped inside, his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets, shoulders still hunched against the chill he had left outside. His gaze strayed to the slim black nine-millimeter pistol she set aside on the kitchen table, but he made no comment abou
t it. Maybe all the women he visited in the dead of the night answered their doors with a fistful of firepower.
“I was driving by,” he murmured. “Saw your light.”
Megan debated telling him about taking Olie's prints. She had railed against him for keeping information from her, but she didn't want to bring up the subject now. It was late. Besides, maybe nothing would come of it. Beyond that, he didn't look as if he wanted to talk business. He looked exhausted and lost. He wandered through the maze of boxes to the window that looked down on Ivy Street and just stood there, staring out at the night.
She followed the path he had taken, absently brushing her hand over Gannon as she passed the box he had picked for his bed. The gray cat raised his head and blinked at her, then turned his steady gaze on Mitch and made a throaty sound of contentment.
“Why'd you skip out tonight?” he asked as she leaned a shoulder against the window frame.
“You needed to be with Jessie. I didn't want to intrude . . .” She let the thought trail off. “How was the parade?”
“Sad. They're all trying so hard . . . because they want to make a difference, because they're scared. They look to me to save them and they don't realize—” He looked at her, his whiskey-brown eyes bleary and bloodshot, the strain carved like knife lines into his face. “I'm nobody's savior. I'm just a cop. And I'm tired of it.” He turned back toward the window but closed his eyes. “I'm tired of it.”
Tired of the pain. Tired of the responsibility. Tired of the panic in his gut, the fear that he had no special powers to right all the wrongs, that he wasn't Superman, just Clark Kent with delusions of grandeur. He turned toward Megan, letting her read it all in his face.
The Megan of the slicked-back hair and gender-neutral wardrobe and the rules and regulations was not this woman who stood before him now. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. With nothing on her feet but a pair of baggy wool socks, she was short. Swallowed up inside an old plaid robe, she looked tiny, delicate. St. Joan without her armor. She stood there, waiting, silent, patient.
“I'm not much of a hero,” he murmured. “They ought to know that.”
“You're doing all you can,” Megan said. “We all are.”
My best wasn't good enough. Again. The words he had spoken the day before in the garage of the old fire station came back to her, heavy with regret and self-loathing.
He turned his gaze out the window again. “I keep thinking I should have been able to prevent this from happening, that I should have been able to see it coming, do something about it.” His mouth twisted with bitter black humor. “A recurring theme in my life.”
Megan didn't ask. She wouldn't beg and she wouldn't drag it out of him. He would tell her because he needed to or wanted to, or they would stand there all night, saying nothing.
“I had a son,” he said at last. “Kyle. He was six.”
Megan's breath caught on the lump in her throat.
“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shook his head at the irony. “Why do we always say that? They weren't in the wrong place. My wife and son went to the store for milk and bread. The doper with the sawed-off shotgun was in the wrong place. But I sent them there, so what does that make me?”
A victim, Megan thought, though she knew his answer would be “guilty.” No court would ever convict him, but he had convicted himself and for the rest of his life he would dole out the punishment. What a screwed-up world that a good man should have to pay again and again for something as small as a word or two, as simple as a decision of who should go to the store, while a killer would have no remorse, never feel a second's pain for the lives he had ruined.
“He just blew them away,” he whispered. “Like they were nothing.”
He could still see them, bloody, lying on the dirty linoleum floor, their lives drained out of them. Their bodies bent at odd angles, like dolls that had been cast aside, their eyes wide open, staring the bleak, hopeless stares of the dead. Allison with one arm outstretched toward their son. Kyle, just out of reach, his too-big baseball uniform dyed maroon with his blood, a pack of baseball cards clutched in one hand. That bright small life crushed, wasted, discarded as carelessly as an empty can.
“I heard the call on the radio,” he said. “Even before I saw Allison's car in the parking lot, I knew. I just knew.”
And the recriminations had started, as they started now. Relentless. Brutal. Inescapable. And the questions had started, as they started now, the rage building and building behind them. He worked so hard for right, for justice. He followed the rules. He had principles. He was a good man, a good cop, a straight arrow. He should have been rewarded, and instead, he had the most precious parts of his life torn out and blown apart.
“One hundred sixty-nine dollars,” he said, still staring out at the night. “That's what the crook got out of the deal. That's what their lives were worth to him.”
He closed his eyes and a single tear slid down his cheek. He was a proud man, a tough man, but the pain and the confusion undid him. He was a cop. He believed in right and wrong, black and white, but his world had turned into a hazy place of smoke and mirrors. Megan could hear it in his voice—the desperation of a man trying to make sense of the senseless.
It must have been unbearable to have loved a partner, to have made a child and loved and hoped for that child, and lost them both. Better to have loved and lost, the saying went, but Megan didn't believe it. Better not to love at all than to have the heart torn out by the roots.
“I think of Hannah and Paul,” he murmured. “I wouldn't wish this pain on anyone.”
Needing to offer him comfort, Megan slipped her arms inside his open coat, around his lean waist, and pressed her cheek to his chest. “We'll find him. We will.”
Wishing he could absorb her certainty, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. He didn't think about her rule against cops. They weren't cops now. In his mind he pared away all but the basic truth—he was a man and she was a woman, and the electricity between them was hot and compelling, inviting them to shut out the rest of the world. He had no intention of resisting the temptation. Tonight that was all he wanted—to be a man with no past or tomorrow with a woman he could hold and a need he could lose himself in.
He slid a hand through her hair, the glossy strands sifting through his fingers. He lowered his mouth to hers, his kiss smothering any protest she might have made. The taste of her was sweet. The feel of her body in his arms regenerated his strength. Desire burned away the fatigue and the kiss burned hotter, wilder.
Megan hung on, her fingers pressing hard into the small of his back. She couldn't find the words to tell him no. All she could find inside herself was need. He bent her back over his arm, his mouth trailing heat down the side of her neck to the V of flesh exposed by her robe. Then he was sweeping her up into his arms.
He crossed the room in a matter of a few long strides, tumbling boxes en route, sending a cat scurrying for safer ground. His eyes never left hers. The expression he wore was fierce, determined, intense, as if he thought blinking or glancing away would snap the spell. In the bedroom he deposited her in the middle of the unmade bed and stepped back to shrug off his coat, never looking away. He pulled his sweater and T-shirt off over his head and flung them aside.
Megan sat up on her knees, drinking in the sight of him. His hair was tousled. The shadow of his beard darkened his jaw and accented the lean planes and angles of his face. He had the body of a warrior who had seen his share of battles. Trim, lean, ridged with muscle, scarred in places. Dark hair swirled across the planes of his chest and flat belly, arrowing into a line that disappeared beneath the low-riding waist of his jeans.
Her eyes on his, she undid the belt of her robe and let the garment fall open and fall back off her shoulders. There was no right. There was no wrong. There were no rules. There were no words. There was only this incredible sense of expectation and merging, aching souls.
Mitch reached out and ran the
fingertips of one hand along her shoulder and down her arm. He traced the angle of her waist, the graceful flare of her hip. Her skin was the color of cream, the texture of silk. He kissed her slowly, erotically, his tongue probing deep into the warm, wet recesses of her mouth as his hand explored her. He wanted to devour her, to absorb the comfort of her soft warmth into his body—or better yet, be taken into hers. Lose himself. Feel the hard knot of loneliness and pain break apart and melt in the heat of their union.
They sank down on the bed, stretching against each other chest to chest, legs tangling. Megan arched into him, loving the feel of his hard body, the heat of his skin, the brush of his chest hair against her nipples. She gave herself over to sensation—touching him, tasting him, breathing in the warm musk of male need. She gave herself over to him, letting him take control. Surrendering . . . The word brought a shiver, but then his mouth was on her breast and thought was gone.
She tangled her hands in his hair, kneaded the muscles in his shoulders, ran the arch of her foot along the back of his leg, frowning at the fact that he still had his jeans on. Twisting beneath him, she reached for the button. Mitch allowed her, rising up on his knees as she tugged the zipper down over his erection.
Her hands were trembling as she pulled down jeans and briefs. Her whole body was trembling with the need to take him inside her. She curled her fingers around his shaft and stroked him gently. He closed his eyes and groaned.
“Come here,” he whispered, reaching for her.
Megan went to him, welcoming his kiss, pressing her body into his. She put her arms around his neck and let her head fall back as he trailed his mouth down her throat. His big hands stroked down her back to her buttocks and he lifted her and pulled her onto his lap as he sat back on his haunches. She reached between their bodies and guided him, held him steady as he lowered her.