by Tami Hoag
Before she could take a step, however, Mitch came to a halt in front of her and nailed her to the spot with a knowing gaze. With one finger he tugged the scarf down from her face.
“Take your coat off and stay awhile, O'Malley,” he said softly.
She gave him a wry smile as she unwound her scarf and draped it over a coat tree. She looked up at the little girl perched on his shoulder. “Hi, Jessie, how are you?”
“I don't have kindergarten tomorrow 'cause it's too cold for brass monkeys. That's what my grandpa says.”
“That's pretty cold,” Megan agreed, amusement tugging hard at the corners of her mouth.
“So I get to stay up past my bedtime and have fun,” Jessie said in a cautionary tone, as if it just might be too much for Megan to deal with.
Mitch rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you get to stay up long enough to have some of this ice cream Megan brought us. Wasn't that nice of her?”
“I like cookies better.”
“Jessie . . .” Mitch gave her a stern look as he set her down.
Across the room the phone on the end table rang, the answering machine picked up.
“Mitch? Mitch, can you hear me?” The woman's voice was nearly frantic. “It's Joy. I can see your lights on.” She turned away from the receiver and spoke to her husband somewhere in the background. “Jurgen, he's not answering! Maybe you should go over. They could have carbon monoxide poisoning!”
Forcing a weary smile, Mitch heaved a sigh. “I'd better take this.” He looked to his daughter. “Jessie, please take Megan into the kitchen and help her get out bowls for the ice cream.”
Resigning herself to her fate with a much-put-upon look, Jessie headed for the kitchen. Megan followed dutifully. The dog trotted past them both, the doll in his mouth smiling with one arm raised, as if waving.
“That's my dog, Scotch,” Jessie said. “I put that bow on him. I can tie my own shoes and ribbons and stuff. Kimberly Johnson in my class can't tie anything. She has to wear shoes with Velcro and she picks her nose, too.”
“Yuck.”
“And she eats it,” Jessie went on, digging the ice cream scoop out of a drawer crammed with spatulas and plastic spoons. “And she's mean. She bit my friend Ashley once and had to have time-out in the corner all through recess and didn't get to have any of Kevin Neilsen's birthday treats at milk break. And she said she didn't care 'cause they weren't really Tootsie Rolls, they were cat poop.” She gave Megan a look. “That wasn't true.”
“Sounds like a tough customer.”
Jessie shrugged, dismissing the subject. She pulled a chair across the linoleum and climbed up on it to get bowls out of a cupboard. Megan set about the task of opening the carton and dishing out the treat.
“I can eat two scoops,” Jessie said, peering over the edge of the tile-topped kitchen table. “Daddy can eat about ten. Scotch can't have any 'cause he's too fat.”
Megan's gaze skated around the kitchen, taking in the crayon and fingerpaint masterpieces taped on the wall and refrigerator. They tugged at a vulnerable corner of her heart—their naïveté, their unabashed enthusiasm and attention to odd detail. And the fact that Mitch displayed them so proudly. She could almost picture him, the hard-ass cop fumbling with Scotch tape, cursing under his breath as he tried for the third time to get the latest work of art straight on the wall. She couldn't help but compare this kitchen to the one on Butler Street in St. Paul that smelled of grease and cigarettes and bitter memories. A cardboard box under her bed had acted as treasure chest for the things she and no one else had taken pride in.
“You're quite the artist,” she said to Jessie. “You made all these pictures for your dad to put up?”
Jessie went to one that was taped at her eye level. “This is my daddy and this is me and this is Scotch,” she explained. Mitch was depicted in an abstract arrangement of geometric shapes like a man made out of building blocks. There was a badge as big as a dinner plate on his chest. Scotch was roughly the size of a Shetland pony with teeth like a bear trap. A long pink tongue hung out of his mouth.
“I used to have a mommy,” Jessie said as she came back to the table and rested her arms on top of it. “But she went to heaven.”
The statement was matter-of-fact, but it struck a chord in Megan. She slid down onto a chair and leaned against the table, her gaze steady on Mitch's pretty dark-eyed daughter with her crooked barrettes and purple sweatshirt.
“I know,” she said quietly. “That's hard. I lost my mom when I was little, too.”
Jessie's eyes widened a little at this unexpected common ground. “Did she go to heaven?”
“No,” Megan murmured. “She just went away.”
“Because you were naughty?” Jessie ventured timidly.
“I used to think that sometimes,” Megan admitted. “But I think she just didn't love my dad anymore and I think she didn't want to be a mom, and so she just left.”
The moment stretched between them. The refrigerator hummed. Mitch's daughter regarded her with somber brown eyes.
“That's like diborce,” Jessie said. “My friend Janet's mom and dad got a diborce, but he still wants to be her dad on Saturdays. It's hard to be a little kid.”
“Sometimes,” Megan said, amazed with herself. She didn't talk about her past, ever, with anyone. It was over, long gone, didn't matter anymore. Yet here she was having a heart-to-heart with a five-year-old and it felt . . . right, which scared the hell out of her. What was she doing? What was she thinking?
You've been working too hard, O'Malley.
Mitch stood in the dining room with his feet rooted to the floor. He hadn't intended to eavesdrop, had meant only to take a peek in through the door to see how Megan and Jessie were getting along. Jessie was very protective of him and jealous of their time together. He wanted to see if she behaved herself without him right there to enforce her manners. He sure as hell hadn't counted on overhearing a confession from Megan about her well-guarded past.
He remembered the way she had told him about her mother. Defiantly. Resentfully. Sticking out that chip on her shoulder as if it were a shield. The woman confiding in his daughter over bowls of chocolate chip ice cream was none of those things. She was a woman who had once been a little girl afraid she had done something to drive her own mother away. That truth struck a tender spot inside him.
Damn. He had decided he could manage the passion that sparked between them. He could understand it, control it to a certain extent. But he hadn't bargained for anything more. Didn't want anything deeper.
Keep it light, Holt. It's just sex, not marriage. She's married to the badge. Lucky you.
He leaned in the kitchen doorway, smiling a pained smile.
“Joy wanted to be certain I was aware Channel Four is doing a special segment on Deer Lake and our ‘troubles' on the ten o'clock news. They're going to give safety tips. I guess she thought maybe I could learn something.”
Megan bit her lip against a threatening smile.
“Yeah,” he drawled, picking up a bowl and spooning up a small mountain of ice cream. “That anchorman Shelby might know something about law enforcement I failed to pick up in fifteen years on the job.”
“She's just trying to help,” Megan offered.
He swallowed hard and bared his teeth. “If only.”
They ate their ice cream and played an exciting round of Candy Land, Mitch and Megan putting off their plan to go over statements until Jessie was in bed. Jessie struggled valiantly to remain awake until the news came on and protested when Mitch declared it time for her to go to bed. Tired and out of sorts, she cried a little as he carried her up to her room, but was asleep almost the instant her head hit the pillow.
When Mitch came back downstairs, Megan was prowling around his living room restlessly. Scotch lay on his back in the middle of the floor, waiting for a belly-scratching, wagging his tail hopefully every time she stepped past him.
“You've got a nice house,” she said, leaning a hip against his leathe
r recliner.
“Thanks.”
Mitch looked around the room, seeing it as a stranger would. The walls were blank sheets of eggshell white that blended with a Berber carpet the color of oatmeal. Bland and lifeless, rescued from complete dreariness by a brick fireplace and flanking glass-doored bookcases. The furniture was stuff he had picked out himself. He hadn't been able to bring himself to keep anything he had shared with Allison. Those pieces evoked memories that brought him pain. He had replaced them with uninteresting, overstuffed pieces in neutral colors that evoked nothing. His one indulgence had been the caramel-colored leather chair.
“I guess I should hang up pictures or something,” he mumbled awkwardly. “I'm not good at that kind of thing.”
Megan refrained from offering to help with his decorating. The idea was too domestic. Domestic and presumptuous. Like she wanted to stake a claim. They would have what they would have until it was over. That was all. They were colleagues first, lovers second. A long way from picking out wallpaper patterns.
“Jessie's asleep?”
“Like a rock. She was worn out, poor kid.”
Mitch went to the fire and tossed another log on the blaze. He poked at the glowing embers in the grate, then stood there with one hand braced against the thick mantelpiece, gazing down into the flames. “Her grandmother, the panic queen, has her all wound up over Josh's abduction. And God knows I haven't been paying much attention to her since all this started.”
“You've been a little busy.”
“The story of my life.”
“Well, now we've got Olie . . .”
“But we don't have Josh.”
“Maybe we'll get something from the lab we can use as leverage against him.”
Mitch didn't want to think about the bloodstains found in the van. More than anything about this case, he dreaded the thought of having to tell Hannah and Paul their son was dead. He didn't want them to know that pain, and truth to tell, he didn't want it reawakened within himself. And he didn't want to think that he had failed Hannah and Paul as he had failed Allison and Kyle. The chain went on and on, around and around in an endless loop, like a wheel in a hamster cage.
“Have you talked to Hannah about taking blood samples from her and Paul?”
Mitch pushed himself away from the fireplace. Across the room, Scotch was in an armchair watching Letterman. “I'll do it tomorrow.”
“The lab needs them to make comparisons.”
“I know. I'll do it.”
“If you don't want to—”
“I said I'll do it.” He wheeled around with his hands raised in surrender.
“Fine.” Megan mimicked his gesture, backing away from him. She stared down at the stacks of papers strewn over the oak coffee table. Statements from people associated with the ice rink, statements from neighbors of the ice rink, neighbors of Olie's, curling tubes of fax paper with information provided by the authorities in Washington State and NCIC in Washington, D.C. And amid the standard forms with their standard questions, the pages from Josh's think pad.
“Have you found any more references to Olie?” she asked. She already knew the answer, had already been over her own copy of the notebook half a dozen times. There were plenty of drawings of creatures from outer space, only one of Olie, and beside it the note that wrenched her heart when she thought of Olie Swain betraying Josh. Kids tease Olie but that's mean. He can't help how he looks.
“No.”
“And I've gone over these statements until my brain went dyslexic, and I still can't see anything we can give to the county attorney. Nothing but suspicion and conjecture and downright ugly meanness. Some of Olie's neighbors could stand a lesson in charity.”
They could have learned a thing or two from Josh. The irony was too bitter to contemplate.
“I don't like the way it feels,” Mitch said, prowling the room with his hands in his pockets, his head down, brow furrowed. “If the kidnapper took Josh's notebook two months ago and planned out this whole deal like a mastermind . . . that just doesn't feel like Olie. It feels . . . sinister. Olie's pathetic, not sinister.”
“So his partner is sinister,” Megan offered.
“That's the other thing that doesn't feel right. Olie is a loner. Always has been. Suddenly he's got a partner?” He shook his head.
“He's a convicted pedophile with means and a van that has bloodstains in the carpet,” Megan argued. “If you've got a better suspect than that, I'd like to hear about it.”
“I don't,” Mitch admitted. “I'm not saying he's innocent. I'm saying it doesn't feel right.”
“What part of this case feels right? The whole thing stinks like a slaughterhouse in a heat wave. His house was full of computer equipment—”
“But not the printer—”
“I've got a couple of guys checking print shops that offer the use of laser printers, all you have to do is take in your diskette.”
“Christ, you think he just walked into Insty Prints and ran off a bunch of psycho notes?”
Megan shrugged. “It's a long shot, but I'll take any odds I can get.”
Mitch said nothing. He stopped in front of the fireplace again and stared into the flames, turning the questions and facts and theories over and over in his head.
Megan watched him. His doubts irritated already sore spots. “Is it Olie you object to, or the fact that I made him?”
He shot her a narrow look over his shoulder. “Don't be a bitch. I already congratulated you, Agent O'Malley. I'd just feel better if we could turn up some hard evidence—or better yet, if he'd give us Josh.”
“Well,” Megan said on a long sigh, “that makes two of us.”
The phone rang yet again and the answering machine picked up. Mitch glared at it from across the room. “That makes fifteen thousand of us—fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety-eight of whom have called here tonight.”
Bone-weary, he shuffled toward the couch, stopping when he came toe to toe with Megan. She was giving him that skeptical what-do-you-think-you're-doing look that had probably backed off more aggressive males than he could shake a stick at. It didn't faze Mitch. It was part of the act, like the tough talk, like the tomboy clothes. He wasn't scared off by an act.
“What do you say we drop this for tonight?” he suggested. “I don't know about you, but my brain feels like fried eggplant. Let's just be people for a while.”
Megan glanced away and blew out a breath, shoving her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans. “Yeah, sure, fine.” Of course, that would pretty much kill their conversation, since she didn't have anything to talk about except work. Now is when you show off your amazing social skills, O'Malley. You're such a well-rounded individual.
Mitch watched her shoulders sag and her gaze drop to her wool socks. She was so sure of herself as a cop, so unsure of herself as a woman. Everything male in him wanted to confirm her femininity for her. The impulse brought a welcome rush of energy, and he let it carry him.
“Come here.” He towed her around the end of the coffee table to the couch. He sank down into the cushions, pulling her down with him. “We need to do something mindless.”
Megan struggled unsuccessfully to push herself back to her feet, unable to break his hold around her waist. “Sleep is mindless,” she said. “I should go home and get some.”
Mitch ignored her logic, nuzzling her braid aside to kiss the back of her neck. “Let's make out,” he whispered, his voice low and silky. “Like when we were in high school. You know how you'd come home with a date after the basketball game and your folks were asleep and you'd sit out on the couch and make out and hope nobody caught you.”
Megan stiffened a little against him. “I didn't date much in high school.”
Didn't date at all was more like it. She had been painfully shy with boys, too aware that she had no breasts to speak of and too aware of the blood that ran in her veins. She didn't want to be her mother's daughter, didn't want to give her father any more reason to dislike her
than he already had. There had been one boy in her honors English class, studious and serious as she was. Cute behind his thick glasses. They had traded a few kisses, done a little groping. Then he got contact lenses and suddenly became sought after by popular girls, and Megan was forgotten.
Mitch kissed her neck again, nibbled at her earlobe, his tongue caressing the tender bud of flesh. “Ah, well then, let me teach you. Learn from the master makeout artist.”
Leaning back without letting her go, he switched off the lamp on the end table, leaving the room illuminated by the fire and the television. He turned her to face him and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “See, the idea,” he murmured between kisses, “is for you to pretend you shouldn't let me do anything, even though what we both really want is to get naked and screw our brains out.”
Megan laughed softly, twisting out of reach as he tried to brush a hand against her breast. “So, did you ever get lucky?”
“I don't kiss and tell. Maybe I'll get lucky tonight.”
“I don't think so.” She gave him a teasing look from beneath her lashes as she scooted back toward the opposite end of the couch. “You'll ruin my reputation.”
She didn't let herself think about the truth in that statement. They both needed this time together, away from the burdens of the case. Time to be people instead of cops. Time to feel something good, something life-affirming.
Mitch followed her, moving over the cushions on his knees. A wicked grin curved his mouth.
“Oh, come on, Megan,” he whispered, trailing a fingertip down the short slope of her nose to the perfect bow of her mouth. “Just a kiss, that's all. I promise.”
Megan smiled, surprised at the way her body was responding to the game. Her heart was beating a little too fast. Her skin was warm and tingling with anticipation. Silly. They had already been to bed together. There were few secrets left between them physically. Still she felt excited at the prospect of a little heavy petting.