by Rachel Lee
He nodded. “Yeah, I can imagine. I’m pretty good at eyeballing a kilo of cocaine.”
That surprised a laugh out of her, and her blue eyes met his. They were still wistful eyes, he noted, but not as shadowed as they had been a few minutes ago.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve been getting careless lately, so I’m here to get back on track.”
“Yeah. This seems like a good place to do it Nice folks.”
“I’ve known Emma since college. This is the first time I’ve met Gage, though.”
“I don’t really know him,” Rafe offered. “We met a couple of times, but we never worked together.”
“That’s what he said.” She hesitated. “Would you...would you mind very much if I held the baby?”
Women, he thought. They just couldn’t resist. But while he usually said no, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain to himself, he didn’t feel his usual resistance. Somehow it seemed okay for Angela to hold Peanut for a little while. And it sure would ease his aching arm.
He walked over and handed his son to her. She was a little tentative at first, and Peanut felt it. He let go of the nipple and made an irritated sound.
“Relax,” Rafe said to her. “You’re not going to drop him.”
She settled the baby more firmly against her breast, tucked the bottle nipple back in, and Peanut went back to his midnight snack. “He’s so incredibly light,” she said. “Such a bitty thing.”
“Until you’ve carried him for half an hour.” Rafe shook out his arm as Angela laughed quietly. He took the opportunity to pour himself a glass of milk, then sat with them at the table.
“So how do you like being a father?” Angela asked.
Questions again. Rafe hated them. He chose to answer with humor. “I’ll let you know when he’s grown up.”
She laughed again, a pleasant sound. “I’m from Iowa,” she said. “Where are you from?”
“Miami.”
“Wow. This has to be a change for you.”
“Yeah, it is.” A pleasant change, he found himself thinking. For the first time since Manny had shown up on his doorstep, he didn’t feel a compelling urge to look over his shoulder. He hadn’t exactly relaxed—he suspected that after the way he’d been living these past ten years, he would probably need months to completely relax. Nor was he sure it would be wise to let himself relax that much.
Peanut had lost interest in his bottle and was busy pushing the nipple back out.
“I think he’s done,” Rafe remarked.
“It looks that way.” Angela put the bottle on the table, and Rafe took the baby, putting him on his shoulder and patting his back gently. The child clutched Rafe’s shirt and bobbed his head as he looked around.
Angela laughed quietly. “He doesn’t look sleepy at all.”
“I’m not surprised. This one’s a regular little night owl.”
“He probably takes after you.”
“How did you guess?” Their eyes met again, and again Rafe felt that inexplicable tug. He didn’t like the feeling. When he had time to be aware of women, he was usually aware of a sexual pull. This was...different. Angela Jaynes wasn’t the type of female he usually felt attracted to. For whatever reason, he tended to be drawn to Latinas like Raquel Molina, darkhaired and fiery. Not once in his life had he been interested in a blonde.
So he wasn’t feeling sexually attracted to this woman, but he was feeling...drawn to her. At an emotional level. At some place where he’d never in his life felt pulled toward another human being.
Not good. He dragged his gaze away and returned his attention to bringing up a gas bubble. The peanut promptly obliged with a belch that would have done an adult proud. The sound brought another one of those pretty laughs out of Angela.
“Well, you’ll have to excuse me,” she said after a moment. “I need to go take my insulin.”
He turned and looked at her. “You take shots?”
“Four times a day.”
“That’s miserable.”
“You do what you have to.” She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Styrofoam box. Opening it, she took out a small vial, then put the box back in the fridge. “Good night,” she said.
He watched her go, surprised to realize that he would have liked her to stay.
“Now isn’t that ridiculous?” he said to the baby. “We don’t even know her.”
Peanut apparently agreed. He answered with another little burp, then closed his eyes and gave every indication of falling asleep.
Upstairs, Rafe changed the kid’s diaper and put him to bed. Then he was alone again, with no company but his own. For a couple of hours he didn’t have to play daddy, but he didn’t have to play D.E.A. agent, avenging angel of the U.S. government, either.
It felt weird. At home he would have been kicking over what he had to do the next day. Whether he was undercover or between assignments, there was always something he needed to be planning or working on.
Now he was alone, with nothing to do, and the yawning chasm of his own self loomed uncomfortably before him. The feeling disturbed him. Without a role to play, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He wasn’t introspective by nature, and didn’t want to sit around pondering the mysteries of life and the universe. Nor did he want to think about the shadowy self somewhere inside him.
Finally he grabbed a book off the shelf near the bed and opened it up to discover some thriller about a D.E.A. agent. It wasn’t long before he was laughing quietly at the absurdities of the novelist’s view of life undercover. Which was fine.
Anything was better than shaking hands with himself.
Angela woke in the morning feeling more rested than she had in months She made quick work of testing her blood sugar and injecting herself in the thigh with fast-acting insulin.
Her thighs were a mess, she thought, looking at them. Needle tracks and little depressions from years of poking herself. Oh, well, nobody had to see it except her. She pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of biker shorts that concealed the damage fairly well, slipped her feet into jogging shoes and headed downstairs.
Emma was in the kitchen making bacon and eggs and ready with a glass of orange juice. “Can you wait a few minutes to eat? It’s almost done.”
“Sure” The orange juice would tide her over.
“White or wheat toast?”
“Wheat, please.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Better than I have in a long time. Thanks, Emma.”
Emma smiled at her. “I’m glad to have you here. You know that. It’s been too long, Angela.”
Emma put a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of her, and a moment later added a couple of pieces of toast. “Is there anything else you need?”
Angela did a quick mental survey of the grams of carbohydrate on her plate. “This should be perfect.”
“You know you can help yourself if you need anything, right?”
Angela smiled at her. “I know. Thanks.”
Emma joined her with a cup of coffee. “I’ve got to leave for the library in about twenty minutes. You don’t mind, do you? Being alone today, when you just got here?”
“I don’t mind at all. I don’t expect you to upend your whole life for me, Emma. Giving me a bolt hole is quite enough.”
Emma waved a dismissing hand. “It’s no trouble at all. We certainly have enough room. You just make yourself at home and let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.”
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while Angela ate.
“How sick have you been?” Emma asked presently.
Angela sighed. “My blood sugar has been all over the place. I wound up in the hospital twice in the past couple of months. I was lucky I passed out in public places. God knows what would have happened if I’d been alone.”
“I hate to think. Was it just stress?”
“Stress and not paying attention to myself. I was so upset sometimes that I wouldn’
t eat enough. Or I’d forget my insulin. Hard to believe, isn’t it? You’d think that since I’ve been doing this since I was eight it would be automatic. Or I’d be in the middle of a meeting with some couple, trying to work out how they could possibly save their home, and lunchtime would come and go before I realized it...” She shook her head. “My doctor says I was blaming myself for other people’s problems, but it’s hard not to, when you’re sitting across the table from some decent couple who, through no fault of their own, have had a couple of bad years.”
Emma nodded. “It would be hard.”
“Especially since these people got to be my friends. It’s not like the problems happened suddenly and they were total strangers. The trouble comes on for a long time. I did everything I could to keep them going. Darn it, Emma, I even got to know things like exactly how much they were spending on milk and clothes for their kids, trying to find some way to help them cut costs so they could make it.”
“It sounds like you did everything you could.”
“Everything I was allowed to do.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t enough. Anyway, it’s obvious I’m not cut out for that kind of work. I couldn’t even forget it when I went home at the end of the day. I was lying awake running numbers, looking for ways to work things out the same as I would have been if I were the one in trouble.”
“And so you decided to quit.”
“Now I’ve got to think about what else I can do with a background in banking.” Angela grimaced. “My main fear is that I’m locked in.”
Although that wasn’t quite true, Angela thought after Emma left for the library. She was afraid of a lot more than that she might have to take another job in banking. That life was pointless, for example. Because it sure seemed like it.
She stepped outside and began her morning jog, heading up Front Street toward the downtown area. The air was crisp and dry, and small dark clouds scudded across a sky that was painfully blue. One of Emma’s neighbors, an elderly man, was out raking leaves in his front yard and he waved as Angela jogged by.
Boy, was she out of shape, she thought after about a half mile. It had been too long since she’d jogged regularly. She’d forgotten how good it felt, even with her lungs burning and her legs aching.
But whether it felt good or not, there was still the pointlessness of her existence, and it shadowed her every step.
A life had to have meaning, she thought. It wasn’t just enough to get through the day. There had to be a purpose. But somewhere along the way she’d become absorbed in just making it through the day and had lost track of the point of it all.
Just because she couldn’t have a family and children, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a purpose. The problem was, she couldn’t find one. Without children to work for or a husband to take care of, it all seemed pretty pointless, a matter of getting up every morning and working so she could pay for her insulin, food and shelter, so she could get up the next morning and do it all over again.
So, she was depressed. Probably not depressed enough to need a doctor, but depressed enough that she needed to get her head screwed on straight before it got any worse.
When she reached the far side of town, she stopped jogging and turned around to walk back. She wasn’t sure how this was going to affect her blood sugar, and she probably shouldn’t have done it, she thought as her legs began to seem wobbly. When her blood sugar had started to roller coaster a few months ago, her doctor had changed her regimen, upping her number of shots each day to four to get better control.
When she reached the town square in the shadow of the courthouse, she sat on a park bench for a little while, watching the passersby and wondering if they were ever plagued by feelings of pointlessness, or if they felt fulfilled and content with their lives.
Probably not, she decided. She had certainly seen enough people in her office whose lives were messed up and who didn’t seem to be able to hang on, no matter how hard they tried. By comparison, she supposed she was damn lucky.
A woman with twins in a side-by-side stroller walked by. The children looked happy and healthy, but the mom looked fatigued. Angela felt a twinge of envy but scolded herself for it. Some days that mother, probably wondered if she was going to have enough energy to make it until bedtime.
Just then Gage Dalton came out of the sheriff’s office on the corner and saw her. He waved, and she waved back, then watched him as he limped across the street. Funny, she hadn’t noticed last night that he limped.
He joined her on the bench. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“Great. I just took a run. It’s a beautiful morning for it.”
He shifted, as if sitting made him uncomfortable. “It most certainly is. I was getting cabin fever looking out my office window.”
“So you decided to make a jailbreak?”
He laughed. “Actually, I was just playing messenger boy. We had a call from Miami today. Somebody needs to talk to Rafe. I tried to call him, but he’s not answering the phone, probably because it’s not his.”
“A job that follows you on vacation, huh?”
His face sobered. “It’s a job that never stops following you. Want a lift home? Or do you want to walk back?”
She accepted the ride, figuring she’d better check her blood sugar-again-to-make-sure-she hadn’t thown it out-of whack by running.
“So you know Rafe from the D.E.A.?” she asked to make conversation as they were driving down the street.
“Not really. I ran into him a couple of times. I heard he had a good reputation for working undercover. That he was a bit of a wild card.”
“What does that mean?”
Gage shrugged. “Sort of...independent in his methods. Apparently whatever he’s doing is working.”
“It’s a dangerous job, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. High on-the-job death rate. It’s not for the faint of heart. It requires...hell, I don’t know. Adrenaline addiction? You have to like living on the edge, taking risks. And you have to stay on that edge or you’ll get yourself killed. It’s not a great way to make a living.”
“But you did it, didn’t you?” Angela remembered Emma saying something about it long ago.
“Yeah. When I was young and wild. And it cost me. That’s the thing. The piper has to be paid eventually. And there’re a lot of ways he can get his pound of flesh. Rafe’s evidently been at this a lot longer than most people.”
“Does it...do something to you?”
Gage nodded. “It sure does. It can get hard to remember you’re one of the good guys when you spend most of your time acting like one of the bad guys.”
“I take it you mean you don’t come home at the end of the day.”
“Too dangerous. No, you might live months or years trying to get close to the guys you’re after, and all that time you have to be sure not to leave any trail that’ll lead back to who you really are. I was married and had kids. The two things don’t go together, so finally I had to get out of that end of it. Didn’t keep somebody with a grudge from coming after me, though.”
He pulled into the driveway, parked and turned off the ignition. Then he looked straight at her. “D.E.A. agents might be the stuff of romantic legends, Angela, but we’re lousy mates, at least when we’re working the streets. And even when we’re not, we can be away for days or weeks at a time when a case is coming to a head.”
She felt faint color stain her cheeks. “I was just curious.”
He smiled. “I know. But I figured I’d give the warning anyway.”
Feeling uncomfortable, Angela wanted to get to her room without running into Rafe, afraid he might suspect her interest in him the same way Gage had, but there was no way to manage it. Rafe was sitting on the front porch with the baby, the two of them evidently enjoying the beautiful morning.
“Hi,” Rafe said as they came up the steps. Angela smiled and tried to edge past Gage to get into the house, but couldn’t do it without being both obvious and rude.
“You ne
ed to call Kate Keits,” Gage told Rafe.
Rafe’s smile faded. “Did she say why?”
“Afraid not”
Rafe rose and handed the baby to Gage. “Do you mind? Can I use your phone?”
“Help yourself.” As soon as Rafe disappeared inside, Gage looked at Angela. “Can you take the baby? I need to get back. I’ve got an appointment in ten minutes with an attorney who wants to depose me for a case.”
Angela nodded, figuring she could wait another few minutes to measure her blood sugar. She felt all right. But, for safety’s sake, she sat in the wicker chair and made sure that even if she started to fog out the baby couldn’t fall. Then she waited, hoping Rafe’s phone call wouldn’t take too long. Right now the baby was sleeping, but she wouldn’t know the right thing to do if he woke and started screaming.
She found herself absorbed in looking down at the small, sleeping face. There was something so peaceful there. Something soothing just to behold. She also felt an unmistakable ache in her heart for something that could never be.
Rafe dialed Kate Keits’s number with a reasonable degree of trepidation. He knew his boss, and knew if she was calling him here there was serious trouble afoot. Maybe some legal maneuvering in one of his cases. Maybe they needed him back for depositions. Or maybe she was getting ready to reassign him because he was useless to her. Or all of the above.
It turned out to be none of the above. Once he was transferred past the gate guardian with the blinding teeth, Kate came on the phone immediately.
“Rafe,” she said in her usual brisk tone, “are you absolutely sure that kid is yours?”
The question took him by surprise. “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you so?”
“You said you had a DNA test.”
“That’s right. What the hell’s going on, Kate?”
“Are you listed as the father on the birth certificate?”
“Hell, yes. Kate, what’s going on?”
She sighed. “Buckle your seatbelt, Ortiz. Four days ago Manuel Molina was here looking for you. He said you were supposed to meet with him about arranging visitation with the baby.”