“We have to, Joe,” she murmured back. “What if the kids, someone else comes?”
He nipped her ear. “Someone already came, and given a few minutes, would like to again.”
She laughed—naughty, eager—and pushed back to slide down his length until her feet touched the concrete floor. It was cold beneath her socks; she hadn’t even noticed kicking out of her shoes so Joe could remove her pants. “Later. I’ll figure out something.” It was a statement that encompassed more than the moment, more than mere physical union. It included Maura, and Mary’s killer, and later, combined. “I promise.”
“No.” He stooped to retrieve her panties and trousers, rose to plant a lingering kiss on her mouth before putting her clothes in her hands. “We’ll figure something out.” That will solve everything, he added silently. “I promise.”
“Okay.” Hallie nodded. Watched him turn away while she stepped into her pants and put herself to rights. Noted the tear she didn’t think had been in his shirt before they’d made love. Jeez Louise, who had she become where Joe Martinez was concerned? She’d never...well, but she guessed she’d never was in the past, because it certainly appeared she had now. And because she had, apparently torn his shirt, he’d need another one to put on before they went inside—and preferably one that was the same color.
Intent on finding him another shirt, she climbed into the truck and knelt on the seat to reach behind it, feeling for his duffel bag. Her fingers encountered and dragged out wool blankets, an extra jacket, a nylon stuff sack clanking with tools, before they stubbed painfully up against the sharp edges of something hard and metal.
“Ow, damn.”
She pulled her hand out, shook it, reached in again more carefully.
“Hallie, you all right?”
The question was automatic, curious but not overly concerned. Then she heard him turn, heard him swear, his feet skid across the cement to reach her at the same moment her questing fingers knocked the top off the shoe box he kept behind the seat.
“Hallie, don’t—”
“You got a clean T-shirt in here, Joe?” she asked, not hearing him.
She broke off and stared at his paling face, feeling the color drain from her own when her hand found the plastic rectangle. Slowly she brought it to light. The VHS cassette’s dull black case seemed to shine with malevolence in the waning afternoon light.
Joe’s mouth thinned. “I told you not to go there.”
Hallie’s throat tightened, her heart cracked. Hiding it all behind the facade of lieutenant sheriff, she raised her face. “Yeah? Well, I want to know what you haven’t told me, Joe.”
He looked away, a sure sign this truth would be limited at best. “I’ve told you everything, Hallie.” He couldn’t watch. How would she feel when she’d found it all? Angry? Betrayed? She would put a wall between them and he would lose both her and Maura in a wink, and for all his physical strength, nothing he could do would stop it.
Still, for all he hated the idea, it would be cowardly to turn his back; he might not want to watch, but he had to see. He repeated the assertion he doubted she’d believe. “Everything.”
“Everything?” She tilted her head, regarding him from various angles, seeking out the lie.
He set his teeth and nodded. “Yes, damn it. Every freaking damned thing I’m going to tell you and that you need to know.” He turned toward the steps. “It’s cold out here, Hallie. You found the tape, now let’s go in.”
She looked at him, said coolly, deliberately, “Not yet.”
His gut twisted. Funny, he thought dully, how the same phrase could be used so differently within the span of minutes. How different each use could make you feel.
“First tell me—”
“Read my damned lips.” Anger, frustration, fear shortened his fuse. He brought his face within inches of hers, enunciated each word clearly. “I have told you freaking everything, Hallie. You know everything I know. Hell, with whatever you had Zeke bring into the library, you probably know more and I don’t notice you sharing.” He swung away from her, ran his hands through his hair. Swung back and poked a stiff finger at her. “I don’t care who you are, we are, there are some truths that don’t belong to you, Hallie. They’re mine and I have to live with them. You don’t, so back off.”
She slapped his hand away, grabbed a fistful of his jacket and got in his face. “Would you if it were me?”
“It is you, Hallie.” He snorted with derision, peeled her fingers off his jacket. “What the hell did you think? Who else would I risk everything to protect?” He scrubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes, stepped to a garage window to watch the snow swirl. “Judas, think about it. I didn’t know about Maura, Mary was dead, that leaves you.”
“Me.” A quizzical statement, but not a question.
“Yeah, you.” A puff of humorless laughter fogged the windowpane. “Since I was five years old the only place all roads lead is back to you.”
“Wha—?” Stunned emotion stung the back of her throat, pricked suddenly behind her eyes, broke off the word before it could be uttered. She swallowed and tried to speak. Failed. Worked her tongue to moisten her mouth and tried again. “What if all my roads since I was five lead to you, too, Joe?” she asked hoarsely. “What then?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Hallie. I just know you can’t have this.”
She nodded, tightening the line of her mouth, jaw and cheek, the muscles around her eyes. Ridding herself of the appearance of emotion if not the emotion itself. “Okay.” She gave another nod, a flex of muscles in her throat, a tap of the videocassette against her thigh. “If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.”
“Thanks.” Joe turned, lifted a hand to her cheek, let it drop without touching her when she pulled her face away. “It’s the way it has to be. Now let’s go in.”
“Yeah.” A distracted response he should have recognized and reacted to the moment he heard it. “Sure. In. Right behind you. Just help me get a couple of things. I mean—” Idly she picked the camera off the seat, collected the microcassette recorder and the box of labeled tapes, and slid them with the videotape into the deep pockets of her trousers. Watched him make no move to stop her and nodded again. Glanced once more at the truck’s seat. Shook her head as if making a decision and tossed him the condoms. “We don’t want to forget these things, do we.”
He regarded her warily. She was about to tear him apart; he could feel it. The problem was sensing the direction she’d take so he could raise his guard. “No.”
“No,” she agreed, apparently pleased with common ground. “Because if nothing else, we sure have figured out how to get a damn good time out of each other, haven’t we?”
The tone was calm, the language intentionally coarse, guaranteed to inflame Joe. And it did. He rounded the truck, caught Hallie by the shirtfront and hauled her up, eye-to-eye with him.
“What the hell do you want from me, Hallie?” Volume and fury were controlled by sheer will. “What the hell more can I give you?”
“Everything, Joe. I want it all. Secrets and lies. Truth and consequences. I want Mary’s killer put down and I want this stalker taken out, even if they’re you or Zeke or anybody else I know who looks like a suspect. I want it done. I want to know. Most of all, I want you, and that’ll never happen if you don’t cut the cake right here and—”
“I told you,” he interrupted, breathing hard, “you’ve already got everything I can—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she snapped, cutting him off. “I know. You’ve told me everything.” She pushed herself out of his grasp, turned into the truck and put her hand on the seatrelease lever. “But the thing I want to know is what haven’t you shown me?”
“Judas stinking Priest.” He made a belated grab for the seat. “Hallie, you’ve got to trust me on this one. You don’t want to know this. You don’t.”
She swung the seat forward under his hand. “Joe, if you don’t quit hiding the facts from me and we don
’t start workin’ this together, this thing won’t get solved,” she told him positively.
And then she found his secrets.
Chapter 14
Or rather, they were Mary’s secrets, actually.
Sorted and filed, records kept in her neat, precise script. As he’d told her about Mary’s search for a breeding stud, the files were a sociologist’s, a scientist’s data, impartially collected and cataloged for future review.
It wasn’t as though he’d kept them in plain sight. Instead, Hallie had found the containers Joe had boxed them in and lifted the shoe box and two heavy metal strongboxes into the garage’s version of daylight. Joe took the shoe box from her before she had a chance to sift through its contents, and tucked the strongboxes under his arm.
“Trust me, Hallie,” he said tautly. “You don’t want to look through these with people here. This is somethin’ you’ve got to wait and do where there’s no one to see you punch the walls.”
She studied his face, understanding all at once that this was a whole lot more to him than hide-and-seek. “Sort of like what I’ve got to show you.”
His expression went closed; he wasn’t sure how much more he wanted to know about Mary. “What Zeke brought in?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll want to punch the walls?”
“I’ve seen you do it over her before.”
His curse was graphic, violent and self-directed. The last time he’d punched a wall over Mary was the night he’d discovered the records on her third miscarriage. His mouth twisted. He knew enough more about his late wife now that he didn’t think anything further would shock him the way what he’d kept in the strongboxes would hurt Hallie. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” The joke was as weak as his grin.
She smiled slightly and headed for the steps into the house. “We’ll put them in the library.”
Appropriately symbolic, Joe thought, following her. Confessions belonged in the confessional.
Especially when they were someone else’s.
As though she’d heard his thoughts, Hallie stopped on the landing and looked down at him, three steps below her. Something—perhaps mischief—that he hadn’t anticipated seeing, glowed in her expression, startling him, filling him, sharpening an appetite he thought he’d recently appeased.
“Got the condoms in your pocket?” she asked offhandedly—just as though she were asking him if he’d remembered to get the groceries out of the truck. “Don’t want to have to send you out for them later.”
If he could have reached her, he would have kissed her until she was as senseless as she made him feel. But since he couldn’t reach her without dropping his boxes or knocking them both off the steps, he simply grinned up at her from his heart and patted his pocket so she could hear the foil crackle.
“Right here,” he said.
She smiled back and opened the door to the blast of heat and voices that ushered them into the house.
It was a while before she and Joe had the chance to look over each other’s finds. People came and went, the reunion waned and swelled.
Zeke and Hallie’s mother gave them strange looks when Hallie and Joe disappeared individually to return wearing different shirts—although, to her credit, Hallie changed her entire outfit to hide the garage-floor muss stains on her trousers and simply looked like she’d decided to get out of her work clothes and into her civvies to finish out the day.
Rested and fed, Maura returned to the party with her and batted her father’s nose, bounced in his arms and stole his heart all over again.
Those of Joe’s siblings and old friends from the department and state police post who hadn’t arrived with the earliest group arrived throughout the rest of the afternoon as the roads were cleared and opened, and shifts changed.
Joe’s brother David plowed out Hallie’s driveway, creating huge mounds to either side that delighted the children who donned half-dry snowsuits and went out again to play king-of the-hill. Then the road commission beeped David and he took his borrowed road plow and left.
Hallie’s father arrived to claim her mother, left after a steely-eyed exchange of glances with Joe that would have intimidated a lesser man down to his socks. Since Joe wasn’t a lesser man, he was merely hounded with guilt.
Joe’s-uncle-the-priest enjoyed the food, the lively, irreverent and often “blue” discussions, and blessed the gathering collectively, Maura individually, then cornered the baby’s father to, as Joe’s mother put it, “administer to Joe’s faith.” Which was another way of saying his uncle took Joe aside, offered him reconciliation, then, when Joe politely refused the offer on the grounds that he had nothing to reconcile with anyone but Maura and Hallie, spiritually and none-too-gently busted him in the chops.
Though glad to have seen them again, Joe was not sorry to see the back of his family when they finally left—particularly after Gabriella took him aside and inquired solicitously, and with bat-her-lashes non-innocence, after his health and change of shirt.
. When he told her where to go and to mind her own business, she grinned at him and said, “Aha! Thought so,” as though he’d just confirmed every last one of her suspicions.
Which, of course, he probably had.
Late in the afternoon, one of the deputies ferried the captain, Crompton, Montoya, the other deputy and three of the detectives to their respective homes, the captain leaving Hallie with strict orders to “keep her apprised of the situation.” About the same time, a fresh pair of deputies in uniform arrived, leaving Joe uneasy at this obvious changing of the guard; they took their orders from Frank, who’d stayed behind, then helped themselves to coffee and leftover paella. On their arrival, and as though given the nod, all but one of the state troopers said their thanks and left.
If he hadn’t realized it before, the show would have made it very clear to Joe in just what high regard Hallie was held by her community of peers and underlings.
It was also clear from the new deputies’ and the trooper’s posturing exactly who they thought they were on hand to protect Hallie and Maura from. All three were men Joe had known for years; one had even graduated from high school with him and Hallie. They knew him. But apparently the years didn’t matter at the moment.
The territorial affectations made Joe as angry as they made Hallie when he and Zeke did the macho thing around her, but since he couldn’t really disagree with the men’s assessment of the situation, he had little choice but to accept it.
He also had more pressing things to occupy his attention. Like Hallie. For some reason, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Though she was obviously distracted by thoughts of impending revelations, to Joe’s mind her skin glowed the way some women’s did after they’d made love, or during pregnancy. Healthy, beautiful, he could see the on-duty officers watching her, too, seeing her somehow differently than they ever had before. And he could feel himself prowling between her and them, keeping them separated from her, claiming his own.
When he realized what he was doing he felt foolish; in the next instant, when the trooper offered her a cup of coffee on his way to get one for himself, Joe knew that if he’d been a wolf, he’d have growled.
Awareness of this fact made him uneasy.
It would have been bad enough if this was all he had to deal with where Hallie was concerned, but no. She also seemed hell-bent on driving him physically, mentally, emotionally crazy: flirting with him across a room one moment, making sure to brush or somehow touch him when she walked anywhere near him the next—quite clearly staking her own claim. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. To say he liked it was an understatement. To understand the invitation was excruciating, notably because with Frank, his deputies and the troop apparently dug in for the night, Joe had no idea when or if he’d be able to accept.
The thought of whether or not he should give in to temptation didn’t even cross his mind; he was already pretty damned sure he shouldn’t, but that hadn’t stopped either him or Hallie so far.
>
After another long private consult with Hallie, Zeke bundled Sam and Ben into heavy blankets, strapped them onto the toboggan attached behind his snowmobile and left. Then there was nothing between him, Hallie, and Mary’s collection of secrets but the library door.
And, of course, Maura. But since she didn’t seem particularly concerned about the content of her biological mother’s logs, pictures and diaries, or Zeke’s files on Mary, Hallie finally sighed, blew a raspberry on the infant’s tummy that made Maura laugh and brought her into the office with them.
It had been years since Joe had voluntarily set foot inside the room. The same feeling that had swamped him then engulfed him now: paranoia, guilt, the need to repent for sins he’d never committed. Then he took a deep breath and blew it out, clearing his head of dead history to really look at the room for the first time ever.
It wasn’t anywhere near as forbidding as his imagination remembered it. Painted in what he thought he’d once heard Hallie refer to as a “light sage,” with splashes of rose, blue and deeper green detail, it was cool and inviting. The front of the room was bounded by glass halfway up on two sides; he’d seen that from outside. What he didn’t recall were the cupboards and shelves lining the same two walls beneath the windows and the desk that held Hallie’s home computer setup built against the front-porch wall; the largely open area that made up the rest of the huge room contained several comfortable chairs, soft reading lights and a Scandinavian camp bed.
It was a room to retreat to, a haven for solitude—a spot that reminded him of some of the private growing-up places he and Hallie had shared. In an instant it washed away all the old memories, made him wonder why he’d always avoided this room in the past.
Perhaps because Hallie had made it easy by not inviting him into it, he admitted suddenly. Perhaps because when she was married to Zeke the door had always remained closed—his office at home, the threshold not to be crossed by anyone without the need to spill their guts and heal. Not by anyone who didn’t have concessions—whether secular or spiritual—to make.
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