That was, she reminded herself—and her eyes once more teared up for absolutely no reason she could think of—if she would ever be able to fake anything with Joe Martinez again.
When she opened the bathroom door and joined him in the kitchen, he took one look at her and asked, “What’s wrong?”
She ducked her head to hide the latest surge of tears, moved over to where he’d tucked Maura comfortably into her infant recliner on the counter so she could talk to him while he chopped tomatoes, peppers and onions.
“Nothing.”
Blast it anyway, she was going to have her damned tear ducts removed if this didn’t stop. Lieutenant sheriffs didn’t have time to cry—especially not when they had kids to raise and protect, and photographer stalkers-who-mightalso-be-murderers to catch.
“Hallie, are you crying?”
“What, me? I never cry.” The tears streamed. “Absolutely not.”
Joe quit cutting vegetables, wiped his hands on the towel he’d tucked inside his gym shorts as an apron and stooped low enough to get a good look at her.
“You are crying.”
“No, I’m not.” She bent over Maura, playing with the infant’s fists.
“Don’t lie to me, Hallie.” Joe hooked one long index finger around her chin, made her face him.
“Okay.” Her temper blazed, brought fresh tears. She shoved his finger off her chin, backed up and, hands on hips, glared at him. “I’m crying, you great oaf. Happy now?”
“No.”
He reached for her, uneasy with this never-before-seen view of Hallie, but ready to gather her up and make a difference if he could. She slapped him away, warded him off to a stiff distance.
“It’s just hormones. It doesn’t mean anything and if you’ll quit tryin’ to be nice to me, it’ll stop.”
“What made it start?”
It was the wrong question, but it took a moment for him to realize that.
“You, you big jerk,” Hallie said. Then, when she couldn’t hold them in any longer, she turned her back on Joe and the sobs poured loose.
“Aw, man, Hallie...”
Again he attempted to touch her; again she yanked away.
“Don’t, God bless it, Joe. Don’t touch me.”
“I’m not going to touch you, damn it, Hallie.” He stepped around in front of her and opened his arms. “I’m going to hold you, then I’m going to find out what I did to bring this on.”
“No,” she insisted, vehemence clogged by tears. “I will not let you do this to me. I won’t do it to you.”
“Too late,” Joe said gently. “Already done.”
She watched him through streaming eyes. His shirtfrout beckoned, his solidness called, his desire to comfort even though he didn’t know why she needed comforting—how could he when she didn’t know herself?—undid her. She couldn’t bear it.
“Damn you to hell, Joe,” she gulped, then walked into his embrace and wept.
He folded his arms about her and hauled her close, pressed her into his shoulder, kissed the crown of her head—and watched his daughter kick her feet and wave her fists, blow bubbles and coo.
And got an inkling of what might be bothering Hallie’s maternal hormones this morning: Maura, clean and simple. Him taking the baby from her if it came to a fight. And the trouble was, he couldn’t tell Hallie it wouldn’t come to that because in all truth he couldn’t, with any certainty, tell Hallie anything.
He’d barely been back a day, after all.
So he charged himself with the better part of valor and, in a move of what for him was abnormal wisdom where Hallie was concerned, kept his mouth shut.
For five minutes she dampened his shirt, then she lifted her head, snuffled once and backed out of his arms. He let her go reluctantly. Holding Hallie, he understood with some trepidation, could easily become a vice, a habit, an addiction.
“That’s enough of that,” she said firmly, grabbed a tissue from the counter and blew her nose.
“You going to tell me what brought this on or shall I guess?” Joe asked gently.
She offered him a watery smile. “Neither.”
“Hallie.” He caught her hand. “Talk to me.”
She squeezed his fingers, wiped her nose. “If I can ever make it make sense to me, Joe, we can talk about it. Until then it’d be noise. Besides—” her tone grew brisk “—Maura’s waited long enough for her breakfast. Come on, Maurie-Mae, let’s go eat.” She picked the bubbleblowing infant out of her baby seat and headed off toward the living room with her, calling over her shoulder as she went, “After that, I’ll call in and see where we stand on the snow, then we’ll see what we can come up with on your pictures.”
“No,” Joe corrected her firmly. “First you feed Maura, then I feed you, then—”
She was back in front of him on his first “then,” stopped him on the second when she leaned over Maura in her seat, reached up and gave the dumbfounded Joe a lingering—and thoroughly scorching—kiss on the mouth.
“Then,” she agreed softly. “Now is bad, but then I can handle.”
Then she was gone again, down the hall and around the corner into the living room. Within moments he heard her chatting with the baby, telling Maura stories, singing her a Finnish nonsense song taught to her by her maternal grandmother about a grasshopper combing its hair with a rake, soothing her with a Cajun lullaby Joe had heard her sing to Sam and Ben when they were small.
His jaw set, he looked across the pass-through opening between the kitchen and dining room, found the photos they’d left on the table last night. Some things took no time at all to decide, and this was one of them.
He couldn’t take Maura from Hallie.
Emotion stung his eyes, tightened the corners of his mouth.
He wouldn’t.
As for himself and the rest of it—he’d taken that vow a long time ago. However long and wherever it took him, Mary’s killer would go down. Whatever she’d done to him—hell, for all he knew, whatever she’d done that he himself had driven her to—he owed both her and his sense of duty to her memory; he owed their daughter that much.
But the oath he took now over Hallie’s cutting board was different than the one he’d taken at Mary’s grave; more selfish, more personal, and potentially more costly because it involved more than his machismo or sense of honor.
It involved knowing exactly how far he’d go, how many laws he’d break without thinking—once, let alone twice— to make sure no one hurt the only mother Maura would ever know.
The only woman he could imagine wanting in his bed.
The cutting board rattled beneath the furious motion of the knife cleaving neatly, easily through the tomatoes.
He didn’t know what promises he could make if last night’s carelessness wrought consequences, but he knew this: the guy who’d shot Hallie had only done so because she was the law and he was desperate. But the reasons in that circumstance hadn’t mattered to Joe, only the consequence. And Hallie downed for doing her job was unacceptable to all of the codes by which Joe lived, so he’d dispensed his own bruising view of justice in that situation accordingly.
A stalker, however, was different. Stalking took planning, involved studying, learning, becoming intimately—if distantly—a part of your prey’s daily life. He understood this from experience; stalking was part of hunting, and hunting humans was what he did.
He also knew that stalkers couldn’t maintain their distance, that in order for the excitement to increase, they had to get closer.
And possibly become more dangerous.
Which to him meant only one thing. Whatever it took, Hallie’s stalker, like Mary’s killer—her stalker?—was going down, too.
Guaranteed.
The phones were down, the snowplow came through and pushed the snow out of the street into the driveway, and the snowblower—inanimate object though it was—had apparently decided to give itself a holiday.
Fortunately the power hadn’t gone out, but Hallie knew b
etter than to count her chickens over that yet.
Breakfast was strained with silences, filled with the things Joe couldn’t decide how to say and the things Hallie chose not to. Yet, in spite of the awkwardness, it was also coated with intimacies: laughter shared over Maura’s apparent delight in bouncing in her doorway jumper while George lay patiently beneath her feet cushioning the impact; touches that “just friends” might never note, but that lovers not only noted, but relished, courted and lured.
Glances that measured, made cautious offers, intimated desires.
Kisses that somehow couldn’t be avoided, because despite their private thoughts, Hallie knew their bodies were in perfect attunement. Her lips seemed to know exactly when Joe’s mouth would be even remotely in the vicinity and how to finagle Hallie’s finding and meeting it.
It was during one of these moments that the garage-toliving-room door opened and Zeke stepped into the house.
Startled, Hallie looked away from Joe. Joe rose to stand protectively behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
“Zeke.”
“Damn it, Hallie.”
Hallie’s jaw clenched, a muscle ticked in her cheek. Joe’s hands tightened painfully on her shoulders; she glanced up at him, found the same tension reflected on his face that she felt in her own. The look he sent her also suggested he’d be happy to field Zeke right into a snowdrift. She shook her head slightly, warning him not to interfere in her divorce.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “The roads should be closed.”
He shrugged. “They are, but I’ve got the snowmobiles. Dropped the boys off at your mother’s and came by to make sure everything’s okay. Your phone’s out.”
Exasperation made Hallie miss the point. “God bless it, Zeke. We’re divorced. You don’t get to be territorial—”
Alert to trouble, Joe covered her mouth with a hand. “What’d’you mean ‘your’ phone’s out?” he asked. “Isn’t everyone’s?”
Zeke shook his head. “No. At least,” he amended, “not Hallie’s parents’ or mine or the department’s. Phone company hasn’t had too many complaints about lines down—none around here. Frank’s been trying to reach you—” he looked at Hallie “—since seven. Can’t figure why, if you’re house phone’s dead he couldn’t reach your cell phone or your radio. He got worried. I could get here first, but I imagine he and half the department’ll be here before long. Said you guys are workin’ on somethin’ with Joe that can’t wait on snow removal—”
He caught sight of the photos on the dining table and stopped. Walked over and touched them almost absently at first, then with growing alarm. He looked at his ex-wife. “What’re these?”
Hallie pulled Joe’s hand away from her mouth. “Joe’s vacation pictures?”
The attempt at humor fell short.
Zeke’s patience fell with it. He fingered the picture of Maura and the boys, picked up the one with the welcome home message to Joe printed on it. His jaw tensed and clicked audibly. “Who took these?”
“We don’t know.” She shrugged her mouth. “It’s what we’re working on today.”
“These pictures of Mary?”
“We, uh...” She glanced up at Joe. His mouth tightened, but he nodded. “We think maybe the same person was taking pictures of Mary before she died.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do,” Joe began, but Zeke swung on him.
“No, you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t think,” he told Joe angrily. “You’re the kind who imagines he’s taking care of business when he’s running away, who puts my kids in danger by coming back to town—”
“Zeke,” Hallie warned.
“And keeps them up half the night askin me if Maura will still be here when they get home—”
“Zeke, stop it.” Hallie rose, moved between her ex and Joe to pick a starting-to-cloud-over Maura out of her jumper. “You’re scaring Maura.”
“I’m sorry, Hallie.” Zeke slumped onto one of the long benches at the table. “It’s just he’s got the boys worried. And then I walk in here and—”
“Yeah.” Hallie grimaced. “I know. Scary pictures and us kissing.”
She looked at Joe—a question without words, a suggestion between partners. A smile ghosted his features and faded to something grimmer; he nodded.
“If you don’t need me I think I’ll go see if I can figure out what’s wrong with the phones,” he said and disappeared. A moment later the basement door whined opened and closed.
Swaying Maura on her hip, Hallie eyed Zeke.
“Relax, Hallie,” Zeke advised. “I didn’t expect anything. I just knew that sooner or later...” He paused, shrugged. “Hell, we all figured that sooner or later, you and Joe...”
Another pause while Hallie fumed, muttering things like, “This better be good, Thompson. Better be good.”
“Okay.” Zeke pursed his lips, expelled a breath. “It’s like this. Everybody always knew you and Joe had a thing—”
“A what?” Maura startled and began to cry. Hallie swayed again and lowered her voice, repeated, “A what?”
“A thing,” Zeke said patiently. “A crush, affection, more than friendship—whatever you want to call it. You just never had it at the same time, and you never let it get away from you, but it was always there. Bothered Mary all to hell.”
“It—bothered—What?”
Zeke nodded. “Why do you think she always wanted to keep you so close? She was never sure she could trust you with Joe.”
“But I—we—never would have even—didn’t even realize—”
“I know. Knew.” One shoulder rose and fall. “Mary ... didn’t.”
“She talked to you?”
There was a long hesitation, a moment to consider. Then Zeke nodded. “She was my patient.”
Chapter 11
Hallie stared at her ex-husband. Joe’s wife, Zeke’s patient. The whole thing got curiouser and curiouser.
Or a lot more tangled, depending upon how you looked at it.
Or maybe not. As a psychologist, Zeke occasionally had members of the local law-enforcement community sent to him for evaluation or referral. The evaluations he made as a courtesy, but even when asked, he generally refused to take on members of the sheriff’s department as clients. He didn’t, he always said, like to treat friends or people he saw socially. Especially not people who worked with Hallie. Too much possibility, he told them, for conflict of interest.
Hallie would have thought that attitude doubled where accepting Mary as a patient was concerned.
“What do you mean?” she asked carefully. “That Mary asked to see you once in the office? Or that you saw her regularly?”
Zeke’s jaw worked; Hallie watched him consider patient confidentiality, weigh it against the fact Mary had been dead for nearly a year.
“I saw her regularly,” he acknowledged finally. “After you and I divorced. The last three, maybe four years of her life—since she lost the second baby.”
Hallie looked at him, watched his mouth twist almost defensively under her scrutiny. Then his face relaxed, shrugged philosophically with his shoulders.
“She needed to talk to someone professional and, given her own job, she said she wasn’t sure who else to trust. You know Mary. Give the sensible advice to other people, but don’t keep it for yourself.”
That, Hallie decided, given her unfortunate new knowledge of Mary, would be an understatement. And, although she hadn’t seen Zeke’s file on Joe’s late wife, she’d almost be willing to bet that an overview of Mary’s sessions would reveal that her friend had chosen to manipulate—er, “trust”—Zeke because of his own relationship to Hallie and Joe.
Her mouth hardened against her sense of judgment. Sometimes she really hated the cynical, draw-quickconclusions, cop side of herself.
“How often did she see you?”
Reluctantly Zeke thought back and gave up a little more of Mary’s puzzle. “Once a week, occasionally more.”
“More than once a week?” Hallie said, aghast. “Things were that bad for her and I never knew? Joe never knew? How is that possible?”
“She spent her life in denial, Hallie. She was thirty-two when she died. That’s a long time to pretend things are different than your nerves say they are without being able to believe in it yourself. Hell.” Zeke gave her his I’veseen-it-all-too-often face. “She only came to me because the depression after the miscarriage was more than she could handle by herself and she didn’t want to burden Joe.”
He shook his head regretfully. “I told her more than once that I didn’t think I was medically qualified to treat her by myself. But to her, seeing a specialist would have meant she was truly sick instead of just—” he laughed without humor “—‘depressed.’ Like depression isn’t its own symptom—”
“You didn’t tell her she should maybe talk to Joe or at least to me?” Hallie interrupted. “Maybe in a session? All of us together?” She’d heard Zeke’s thoughts on the subject of clients who refused to believe the symptom wasn’t the whole disease more than enough. “I’d have gotten assigned another partner, transferred departments, anything.”
“I know. I told her, Hallie. She couldn’t believe... confronting you or Joe would accomplish anything.” He sighed, a psychologist who couldn’t help a patient unwilling or unable to accept what she needed to accept in order to help herself. “She couldn’t believe talking to you didn’t have to be confrontation. From what I understood, in her experience honesty destroyed relationships, so she talked about everything but what she needed to.” Behind the analyst’s impersonal mask lay sadness. Trying to help Mary must have cost him more than he’d admit. “I think she would have played Little Mary Sunshine until it killed her if she hadn’t died first.”
Hallie breathed, gathering the reins of knowledge, trying to ignore the shape the puzzle pieces that made up the other side of Mary were forming.
“Did Joe know she’d seen you at all? Even once?” The question was taut with the effort to sound natural, controlled. Sessions with a psychologist that you didn’t tell your spouse about seemed like a lie that could affect the health and welfare of a marriage deeply.
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