Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  Frank grimaced but nodded. Badging people who didn’t know he was the law was one of the small but pleasurable power trips he allowed himself on the job. The plainclothes deputies acquiesced without visible demur.

  “Hallie,” Joe said quietly.

  She looked at him. “I know,” she said. “I promised. But this is what we do, Joe, and we’re good at it We let this go till tomorrow, he’s gonna smell something wrong. A man and a woman have already knocked on the rest of the neighborhood doors, why not this one? If he’s seen anything at all, we’re already in trouble. I knock on this door, a loco lady looking for her cat like maybe the woman who’s already been all over the neighborhood was, maybe we got a chance to at least make a positive ID.”

  His laughter was wry and silent. Joe shook his head. “The first time you ever came home from school with me my mother told me to look out, you were hell on wheels.”

  “That’s all right.” Hallie grinned, shrugged. “My mother told me she saw right off the bat we’d be trouble if we kept hanging out together. Now all she does is say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Oh, good,” Joe said dryly. “Always nice to know some things never change.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silent communion was brief.

  “Okay,” Joe told her finally. “You play crazy cat-lady at the front door. Just give me enough time to oil and pick the side lock if I have to. If there really is a woman in on this, too, I don’t want to get stuck with her answering the door and him having time to get between us and the kids.”

  Hallie gave him a clipped nod. “You got it.”

  Then they moved.

  Frank and the plainclothes deputies went first, easing up to the chain-link fence on the darkest side of the house, then down through the next-door neighbor’s open side yard where they could clip the fence and enter their quarry’s yard as silently as possible. Joe moved second, melting from streetlight shadow to streetlight shadow until he could move within the shadow of the bungalow to approach the side door. Hallie gave him thirty seconds before approaching the house herself.

  The thing about bringing down fleeing felons was that, while it sometimes proved a real, physical, adrenalinepumping chase, the rest of the time it was just that easy and that anticlimactic. This was one of those times.

  Hallie rang the bell and stepped a little to the side, ready for anything. When the curtains to the left of the door moved a bit, indicating someone looking out, she waggled her fingers and looked contrite, a friendly person with a problem. A medium-everything woman wearing jeans and a thick sweater turned on the porch light and opened the inside door, but held the storm closed. Loud enough to be heard through the glass, Hallie did her cat schtick, first milking sympathy from the obviously anxious but painfully lonely-appearing woman, then gradually moving sideways. Drawn in spite of her anxiety, the woman opened the door and stepped onto the porch, pulled deeper into the conversation.

  At precisely the same moment that she seemed ready to relax a bit with Hallie, Joe loomed at the front door with his handcuffed quarry, retrieval papers at the ready. In less than a second, Frank hovered into view behind Joe. Then Tom appeared, offering a brief salute to Hallie that stated as clearly as words, “Kids okay, all’s clear.”

  “Call children’s services and visiting nurses,” Hallie told him. “Get someone down here to pick up the kids and make sure the uncle’s all right.”

  The younger detective nodded and disappeared from sight. Hallie returned her attention to the woman.

  Stunned, the woman stared from Joe to the man she’d been living with. “What—Who—” She sucked air, trying to breathe, questions lodged with fear somewhere deep in her windpipe.

  Joe showed her his papers. “Fugitive retrieval, ma’am.” He jutted his chin at his captive. “Are you related to him?”

  “I—” She stopped, swallowed, studied the papers in confusion, looked up at Joe. “I’m his wife.”

  “Are you aware he’s wanted for jumping bond, and also in connection with his ex-wife’s murder and for kidnapping his kids?”

  “I—the kids—” She paused, drew a harsh, frightened breath, then asked, “He killed her? He said—” She looked at her husband. “You said—you said—it was just the kids. You’d get me the kids, get ‘em away from that witch. They’d be happier with me. With us. You said we’d stay here an’ she wouldn’t find us coz she didn’t know about your uncle. You said she’d quit after a while and we’d be able to move someplace safe, change the kids’ names before they were old enough for school and—” She gave a gulp of pure panic. “You killed her?”

  “She wouldn’t give over.” Guilt made a brief foray across her husband’s features before sullen bravado set in. “You an’ me, we want them kids, not her. She hated ’em coz they’re mine, only wanted ‘em to use ’em against me. Control me, she says. Don’t matter to her none where they live or with who, ’s long’s it ain’t with me an’ she gets her money fer bringin’ ‘em along. She lef ’em alone half the time—they’re too young fer that. I ain’t never hurt ‘em, but I got a history with her. Court won’t give ’em to me no matter what I tell ‘em about her. Don’t matter I was gettin’ counseling—” Sullenness and bravado departed in a breath; he sent his wife a genuinely beseeching glance. “You know that. You were with me so we could both make sure I wouldn’t hurt you. She says things ta me—”

  He stopped. Shrugged. “That rage the therapist talks about, it came back. I don’t know what all I did, but it was bad.” Earnest, pleading. “Kids didn’t see nothin’, though, you gotta believe that. Wouldn’t let ’em see nothin’ like that, even state I was in.” Matter-of-factness returned. “When it was over, I didn’t even look, just grabbed ’em outta their beds an’ ran.” He looked at her, his face twisted with apology. “Don’ mean nothin’ now, but I’m sorry it’s gonna hurt you.”

  Horrified, disbelieving, the woman studied him, her head canted, tongue working around a trembling mouth. Her throat convulsed, her lips moved without sound; she shook her head, as though attempting to find some better angle to view that which was incomprehensible within her experience and imagination. Then she stilled, stared at her husband, and the knowledge that he was indeed capable of the unthinkable settled on her face.

  For an instant, comprehension was everything; in the next, the woman swallowed, her mouth twisted, and anger shaped her features from the inside out. Before anyone could blink, she closed a fist, stepped forward and planted a hard left on her husband’s jaw, a knee to his groin, then jerked the same knee into his nose when he doubled over. She was getting set to do more damage when Hallie and Frank hooked her arms and pulled her back, restraining her.

  “You bastard,” she spat at her husband, struggling to reach him. “You lied to me. You told me you’d get me the kids when we couldn’t have our own, then you go and take ‘em away from me again. You think they’re ever gonna let me near ’em now? I got no legal claims, you flipping idiot. You screwed it up bad, you—”

  They didn’t wait to hear the rest of what she might have to say. While Gina kept the kids and the uncle in the back bedrooms, and Tom hung on to the wife, Joe hustled his prisoner out to his truck and set off to turn him in. After a brief confab with Hallie regarding the legalities of the situation, Frank handcuffed the man’s wife and put her in the back of his unmarked car to take her in as an accessory to the children’s kidnapping. After that, Hallie hung around until children’s services arrived bearing teddy bears, then she and Gina accompanied the frightened and sleepy children to Children’s Village, where Hallie remained until arrangements were made to place all three kids in the same foster home—at least for the night.

  When Hallie finally arrived home it was the “wee small hours” of the morning, as Frank’s mother would say, and she was exhausted—and incensed and disheartened and too many other things to name. One day—twelve blessed hours, give or take however many minutes—Joe Martinez returned to her life, and her heretofore quiet hormones h
ad turned over a new leaf, she faced a possible custody battle over Maura and she’d been exposed to the lengths two childless women would go to to get children in graphic, horrific detail.

  There was a lesson in this insanity somewhere, she was sure of it, but at the moment she was having a hard enough time simply putting one foot in front of the other climbing her newly snowy front-porch steps to decide what that Solomon-like wisdom might be. Something to do with Joe, undoubtedly. With surrendering Maura to him out of love for the baby, or finding a way to work with him and Maura, rather than dragging them all through a custody battle in which there could truly be no winners. She could hope the entire subject would be moot, that Joe would take his fled back to Duluth, turn him in and keep going, but she knew better than to believe Joe would let go, now that he knew about Maura—especially not with those pictures floating around. No, she had to face it: at best she had a week before he returned. At worst...

  She put out a hand to open her front door and he pulled it open for her.

  “I turned him over to the local feds and came back,” he said without preamble. “Cat said Maura slept through. I just checked on her, she’s fine. Milk’s in the microwave. You look like you could use a hot nightcap before we turn in.”

  “We?” Hallie mustered the energy to arch a brow at him. “We are not doing anything like turning in. I am going upstairs to bed by myself and you are going... wherever it is you go when you’re not making a mess of my life.”

  “Your couch will fit me fine,” Joe said affably.

  “My couch,” Hallie countered, “is a little short and narrow for someone of your dimensions.”

  “It’s a queen-size bed when you pull it out. Or I can spread out my sleeping bag on the floor. Doesn’t matter which, I’m staying.”

  “Joe—”

  “Losing battle, Hallie.” He took her coat and hung it on a peg beside the door. “You’re too tired to fight it tonight.”

  “I’ll get you for this, Martinez,” she promised, giving in. “You know I will.”

  “Yeah.” His grin was fleeting. “I do. We’ll talk consequences in the morning, though, huh?” He caught her hand, pulled her toward the kitchen. “It’s been a long night, the milk’s hot and Maura’s feeding time’s what, four hours away?”

  “More—” Hallie covered a yawn with the back of her hand “—or less.”

  He nodded. “More or less. Okay.”

  He paused to open the microwave, pulled out two mugs of frothy milk, picked up a pint of brandy from the counter, waved it in question at her. It looked good, but she shook her head.

  “Nursing,” she mumbled. “Gets into the milk.”

  “Didn’t think of that.” He unscrewed the cap, poured a dollop into his own mug, closed the bottle and put it into the cupboard over the refrigerator. “Anyway,” he said, picking up the conversation where he’d left off, “I’ll get up with Maura in the morning. Take care of her diaper. Bring her to you. You stay in bed.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Joe. I have to get up for work anyway, remember? We’ve got a squad meeting to see about setting up a net to bring in whoever’s been taking those pictures.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been back to work for, what did you tell me? Two weeks? Means you’re still on postpartum light duty, right? You’ve got to rest. We’ll make the meeting.”

  “Joe—”

  He put a finger to her lips. “Shut up and drink your milk, Hallie. Let me just this once do something for you for a change.”

  For an instant the craving that had been banked until he’d kissed her earlier flared and curled between them; the finger on her mouth was invitation; the light in his eyes said please. Then the “please” faded, his finger withdrew; he brushed a roughened palm across her cheek, bent his head and kissed her temple.

  “Drink your milk and go to bed,” he whispered.

  Both disturbed and tempted by his nearness, a simple human warmth she hadn’t known until this moment she’d missed, Hallie swallowed. Only partially of its own volition her right hand lifted toward his mouth. He caught it, trapped it for an instant against his chest.

  Time hovered in heartbeats counted beneath her hand, became the air Hallie breathed, the half wish she wouldn’t bring herself to name aloud—the ghost of a desire she wouldn’t claim for herself, but would give in to if he fed it. She waited, not hoping yet anticipating all the same. Then Joe stirred and sighed, turned and picked up the mug without the brandy, put it into her hand.

  “Go,” he repeated. “Before we do something you’ll regret.”

  Too tired to argue further, Hallie did as she was told. Twenty-five minutes later she hauled herself upstairs, undressed and collapsed across her bed to fall deeply asleep, uneasily aware of feeling that for the first time in their lives, she and Joe Martinez were really home.

  Chapter 9

  She dreamed about him, doing there what she would not allow herself to consider when she was awake.

  She touched his face, traced his brow, his cheekbones, his jawline; held the well-loved visage between her palms and drew him down, into her kiss.

  Their kiss. Fierce and hot, all-consuming and endless, breath on breath, fire fed and exchanged. A fall into a roaring blackness without thought, where the only light was from distant stars.

  She woke in the predawn dark—sweating, heart pounding, mouth still reaching for the lingering taste of his lips on hers, body aching for a touch even her dreams wouldn’t let her imagine. Across the room Hallie heard Maura stir, turning in her crib; then the soft sound of her night breathing resumed.

  No such luck for Hallie.

  Closing her eyes returned Joe to her imagination’s embrace, took her into his. Staring into the grayness of her room was like standing before a broad canvas upon which the only portrait her mind would paint was Joe’s. Instead of him putting his finger to her lips to shush her as he’d done earlier, he put a finger to her mouth and she parted her lips, touched it with her tongue, drew it into her mouth and sucked on it. And around his finger was only the first of any number of places on his body she could envision putting her mouth.

  None of the visions allowed her to sleep.

  In short, the entire experience gave new meaning to the phrase “no rest for the wicked.” She’d used the axiom all her life without ever understanding where it might have originated—until now.

  She’d never considered herself a prude—hell, first as a deputy, and now as a lieutenant sheriff in a county where few of the suddenly population-exploding townships had their own police departments, she’d seen pretty much everything, right? Had to. But neither what she’d witnessed as the law, nor encountered within her marriage to Zeke, had prepared her for the limitless—and probably depraved—things she wanted to do with Joe.

  Hadn’t quite prepared her to comprehend the lengths Mary or the woman she’d taken into custody tonight would go to have children, either.

  The thought was a sobering-though-hardly-calming counterpoint to the druthers of her body.

  Restless, she rose and checked Maura, then sat on the half-circle bay window seat nearby, blessing and envying the infant’s sleep. She turned and pulled aside the heavy shade to look into street below.

  The light snow that had accompanied her home a few hours earlier was heavy now, loading trees and bushes. Even as she watched, one of the maples edging the street in front of her neighbor’s house lost its main branch to the snow’s weight. A small lone pickup with an empty bed inappropriate to the season slewed slowly up the street through the hub-deep snow, searching for unavailable traction.

  Already she could see it would be a trying day for the larger part of the department: if the snow continued they’d have to close roads and freeways, deal with fender benders, help emergency medical personnel get to work, rescue stranded motorists and tackle hazardous driving conditions because no matter how many announcements were made calling for people to stay home, too many wouldn’t. People who felt they couldn’t afford
to miss a day regardless of how far they lived from work would still try to make it in. Travelers returning home after an extended Thanksgiving holiday would wind up buried up to their door handles in snow drifts and have to be rescued before they took it upon themselves to leave their vehicles and seek help on their own.

  Assuming roads would be cleared as the day progressed, mothers at wit’s end because of thrilled kids home for their first snow day of the year would head out for the nearest mall—forty miles away in the next county—by late morning or early afternoon to get the kids out of the house and do a little Christmas shopping. Then, when they wound up stuck in the middle of the street three doors from home in snow falling too fast for the road commission plows to keep up with it, they’d call the sheriff’s and complain because even the wreckers would have trouble reaching them.

  On the upside, though, the crime and fugitive rates would be down, and Mary’s stalker would be as stalled by the snow as everyone else.

  Except “whoever” wasn’t Mary’s stalker anymore; he was Hallie’s.

  She hissed a breath between her teeth at the thought, rose to prowl impatiently, her mind churning.

  After twelve months of digging, she knew there had to be an angle Joe had missed; something he either couldn’t bring himself to face or a puzzle piece Mary herself had hidden where he couldn’t know to look. Something that wouldn’t have come to light during the department’s overtime investigation even after Joe had left. Something Joe would have overlooked in his obsession, in his being way too unobjective about this case. He was too good an investigator not to examine the nooks and crannies—unless for some reason he either couldn’t, or wouldn’t let himself. Heck, why else would he be the one to figure out where to look for his bond jumper when public law enforcement failed to find the guy?