O’Hara shook his head and averted his eyes. “No. Nothing like that. Uh, listen, Darling. I need to ask you for a favor.”
“I make it a policy never to do favors.”
O’Hara eyed him with a mixture of desperation and hope. “I remember you from college. We didn’t run in the same circles, but I heard about you all the same. I went to school on my old man’s bank account while you earned a football scholarship. Star quarterback, right?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Yeah, well, see, my father followed your career. He followed mine, too, if you call sex and drugs and rock and roll a career.”
“What’s your point?”
O’Hara leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “You were honest. Straight-arrow. Hardworking. My father liked that, and when you needed a break, he loaned you the money to start up your firm. Now I need a break. I’ve turned my life around only to find…” His voice faltered and he stared at his hands. His knuckles stood out in white relief. “I need your help. I have nowhere else to turn, nobody honest, straight-arrow, hardworking I can trust.”
“What about your sister? She—”
“Nobody can know. This has to be a secret, just between you and me. It has to be. At least until I get to the truth.” He looked into Ethan’s eyes, misery and despair plain to see on his haggard face. “For the sake of my father who helped put you where you are, help me.”
Ethan thought of Walter Perez, shot to death for no good reason. He thought of a woman in a dotted dress, and an old bum in an alley. As unconnected to each other as numbered balls in a lottery barrel. Was the man sitting across the desk from him the common denominator?
Only one way to find out. With a curt nod, he said, “All right.”
Chapter 19
If a dead friend or loved one appears in a dream and asks you to go with them, don’t go!
FOLKLORE
She stood looking at herself…but not herself. The image was distorted in some way, as though she were staring at her own reflection in moving water.
A hand reached for her, touched her, caressed her cheek, and the image cleared. She knew now who she was, where she was, and what. She was the dreamer. She was the dream.
His thumb stroked her bottom lip. She raised her face to him, and he kissed her. Beneath her palm, she felt the steady beat of his warrior’s heart.
She heard him laugh inside her own head and felt his happiness, his confusion. Stepping back, she gauged the length of his strong body, his wide stance, the gun he gripped in his fingers.
He spoke to her, but the words bounced against her own thoughts and she missed what he said. Somehow she knew the words were important, so she closed her eyes, trying to recapture them. When she opened her eyes again, he was a teenage boy. His weapon was gone, and in his fist he held an iron key.
“It’s not enough,” he said to her, flinging it to the floor. “It’s useless.”
He turned and walked toward a table where his mother and Ethan and Andie sat, deep in conversation. The table was heaped with foods of all kinds, but instead of joining his family, he stood to the side and watched, staring, but not uttering a word. He waited for them to acknowledge him, but they never did.
And still he waited…
Tabitha’s eyes fluttered open as she slowly became aware of where she was. Nestled in Nate’s arms, her head on his shoulder, their hands clasped, she heard the steady rhythm of his breathing, watched the rise and fall of his bare chest. He was still in the throes of his dream…the dream she had seen as clearly as if it had been her own.
As she eased her hand from his relaxed fingers, the images began to fade and her own thoughts started to tumble back into her head like autumn leaves drifting one by one to the ground.
She curled in closer, and his arm came around her, pulling her snugly against him.
Saturday’s daylight had faded, and they had made love again, and then again. Throughout the night, he had sought her, gently roused her from sleep, and she had eagerly complied. In the wee, quiet hours just before dawn, he pulled her on top of him and she’d come the moment she straddled him. Now spears of bright sunlight stabbed through slits in the drawn shades, announcing Sunday had broken and was well on its way toward afternoon.
“We’ve been in bed for nearly twenty-four hours,” she said sleepily. “What exactly do you eat? Is there some special soy concoction…”
He opened one eye. “You tired? Because I don’t have to be to work until nine tomorrow, which gives us plenty of time for at least ten more rounds—”
She placed her fingertips over his mouth and laughed, “Hush. I think it would be a good idea to pace ourselves.”
Letting her smile fade, she lowered her hand and traced the taut muscles of his flat abs with her fingertip. She hesitated only a moment, then, “Tell me about your family, Nate. About your mom, and Andie and Ethan. Why are you and your brother so…unfriendly toward each other?”
Nate took a deep breath and blew it out slowly before he answered. “We flipped a coin when we were kids. Heads got to be the easygoing fun brother, tails became the SOB.”
“And you got tails?” she chided.
He snorted and tickled her ribs until she giggled and shoved his hand away. Pressing onward, she said, “What about your sister?”
“Girls don’t flip coins. They pick a number between one and ten.”
Giving it a moment’s thought, she said, “Huh. You’re right. Because guys have coins in their pockets and girls generally have to go hunt one down.”
Lifting his head from the pillow, he looked at her. “Precisely. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat somewhere.”
“Don’t change the subject. Tell me about your family.”
He let his head fall back onto the pillow and made a face. “Is this the part where we tell each other our life stories?”
How can I fall utterly and completely in love with you if we don’t?
“You’re right,” she mumbled. “It’s silly.”
He shot her a glance. With a quick lift of his shoulders, he said, “Look, mine’s really not worth mentioning. My parents had a bad marriage. When I was thirteen, they finally called a halt to the hostilities and got divorced. We kids were all supposed to live with my mom, but my dad seemed so, I don’t know, dejected. The odd man out. I hated to see him go off all by himself, so when he left San Francisco to take a job in Olympia, I went with him.”
“Was he a cop, too?”
“Police officer. We prefer police officer, and yes, he was.”
“Your leaving—didn’t that upset your mom?”
Sighing, he said, “Yeah, I guess. I don’t really know. My mom and I, well, we’re very different. I suppose I’m more like my dad. She was probably happy not to have to deal with me all the time.”
“I’m sorry.” Tabitha placed her hand over his heart and snuggled a little closer.
“I love my mom and she loves me,” he assured her, “but we don’t see each other very often, and it works for both of us. She’s very dramatic, very femme fatale. Ethan deals with her a lot better than I ever did.”
Twirling her finger around his taut belly button, she said, “How did your going with your father affect your brother and sister?”
“Andie was too young to really get what was happening, but it sure pissed Ethan off. He’d never gotten along with Dad, so he didn’t understand the choice I made. He accused me of abandoning Mom and Andie. I guess he’s never forgiven me.”
“But you were just kids, right? Teenagers, and the victims of your parents’ divorce, not the cause. You were both forced to make choices that were hard and painful.” Edging up onto her elbow, she looked down at him. “When you grew up, didn’t you want to reunite or something? Establish a better relationship?”
He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he said, “Yes. And no. Being apart physically only reinforced that we were apart emotionally. Family reunions were few and far between, and never long enough
to mend any fences, even if we’d known how. Besides, in the last twenty years, Ethan learned how to take the meaning of hard-ass to the wall. He’s so rigid, I don’t think he knows how to compromise anymore, and I’m tired of trying.”
“You know, it’s possible it hurt him that you chose your father over him; at least, that’s how he may have perceived it when he was a kid. Maybe he’s afraid that if he attempted to reconcile with you, you’ll reject him again. It could be he’s just afraid.”
“Ethan’s not afraid of anything.”
Stroking Nate’s forehead, she brushed a lock of stray hair back into place. “I can see how you’d think that, but maybe if you tried looking at things from his point of view…”
“I’m willing to do it, but he’s not going to reciprocate, so there you are.”
“You assume.”
“I know.”
“Now who’s being rigid? Sounds like you two boys are a lot more alike than you’d care to admit.”
“Thank you, Dr. March,” Nate snorted.
“Okay, what about your sister?”
“Andie grew up not really knowing me at all, and I guess you could say I don’t know her, either. She used to write to me when she was a kid, but after a while the letters sort of dwindled down to a card at Christmas, and maybe one on my birthday.” He paused for a moment and slid one arm under his head. “Andie’s a police officer, too. Wants to be a detective. Must be something in the water.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He died about five years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m so sorry. Do you miss him?”
Nate swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Silence stretched between them. Tabitha settled back down next to him and pulled the sheet up around her chin.
A moment passed, then another.
“I had a sister,” she said softly. “But you probably knew that.”
He made an angry noise in his throat.
“Yeah. Look, Tabby, about that background check thing. I didn’t know you then, and—”
“Ellie was beautiful,” she interrupted, closing her eyes. “That probably wasn’t in the file. Daddy had opened the trunk of his car to get something, and left it open. I thought it would be fun to climb inside and close the lid and scare him when he came back. Boo! Like Halloween. So we did, we climbed inside. Ellie and me. She was a couple of years younger, and did whatever I did.”
Nate went very still. Against her ear, she heard the steady, stalwart beating of his heart, and hearing it gave her courage.
“The trunk had only seemed big because we were so small,” she whispered, “but the air went fast. We were in there, like spoons in a drawer, my arms around my little sister. And she…she fell asleep. I tried to wake her up so she wouldn’t miss surprising Daddy, but she wouldn’t wake up.”
Growing more terrified by the moment, she’d kicked and pounded and screamed. For a long time. Forever.
“It was so dark in there, and hot. I remember the darkness and how it seemed to clutch at me. Then I went to sleep, too, and I dreamed of white lights and gentle ladies, and Grandma was there and Uncle George. And then I woke up and my mom was holding me and sobbing so hard…”
But Ellie didn’t wake up, and all Tabitha knew for sure was that it had been her idea. Ellie had gone to sleep forever and always, and it was Tabitha’s fault.
“I wondered if Ellie had dreamed, too,” she whispered. And if she had seen Grandma and the gentle ladies and Uncle George, and if she had liked it so much, she decided to stay with them. When I discovered I could see other people’s dreams, I thought maybe it was Ellie, forgiving me, letting me know it was okay with her, that she had stayed. That maybe helping people understand their dreams was what I was meant to do, because I knew what it was like to wake up and not understand, like on that day, that day I woke up, and Ellie didn’t.”
He made love to her again. Tenderly, with the utmost passion and care. How could he not? What she had said, the stark look in her eyes, the torment in her simple words. Making love to her didn’t nearly begin to soothe the heartache she felt, but he did his damnedest to try.
When they were finished, he held her in his arms and rocked her, and she cried a little. And with her head against his chest, and her eyes closed so she couldn’t see, he did, too.
A million thoughts jumbled together inside his head. A million scenarios formed. A million words he wanted to say. Not a million. Just three. But he knew she wasn’t ready to hear them, so he rocked her, and stroked her hair, and swallowed down the grief he felt for her.
After a while, she raised her head. “I need to go wash my face,” she said, and pushed herself away. Wiping tears from her eyes, she gave him a watery smile, then padded into the bathroom.
As he lay there with his hands folded behind his head, letting his mind work on what he was going to say to her next, his cell phone vibrated.
“Not yet, goddammit,” he mumbled, reaching for it on the nightstand. Pressing the button, he growled, “Nate Darling.”
“Where are you?”
Ethan. Shit.
“It’s my day off,” Nate snarled. “What’s so important—”
“Meet me at my office in an hour. And bring your girlfriend.” The line went dead.
“Bastard,” Nate muttered as Tabby came out of the bathroom.
“Do you have to go to work?” She was wearing a silky white robe and had washed her face and combed her hair. She looked sweet and vulnerable and beautiful, and, again, those three words clamored inside his head to be spoken.
“Not work,” he said, tossing the sheet off his hips and standing. “Let me take you to dinner in the city. Someplace real fancy.”
Smiling, she said, “What’s the occasion?”
He reached for his clothes. “It’ll be your reward for enduring a stuffed-shirt meeting with my dickhead brother.”
An hour later, he and Tabby walked through the unlocked double glass doors of Paladin Private Investigations.
The reception area was furnished more elegantly than most penthouses. A U-shaped mahogany desk, complete with computer and gigantic bouquet of fresh flowers, dominated the space. The carpet was thick, the sofa made of fine fabric. Nate had seen the place a couple of times before, but Tabby hadn’t, and next to him, she stood looking around, her eyes wide, her mouth open.
“Nice paintings,” she said, gesturing to the original oils displayed on the walls. “I’m assuming your brother serves a particular clientele, and not just your average Joe looking for his fugitive Yorkie Poo.”
Behind them, Nate heard a snick, and realized the locks on the glass doors had been thrown. A moment later, Ethan’s voice came over the intercom.
“The door to the inner offices is open.”
Escorting Tabby through the heavy mahogany door, he raised his head to see Ethan standing above them at the top of the wide landing, a coffee mug in one hand, a remote control in the other.
“Hello again, Ms. March,” Ethan said as she and Nate climbed the steel and glass stairs and took a seat at the table in his office. “Nate.”
Their eyes met and locked. Ethan was the first to look away.
The private office was large and tastefully decorated. In mahogany and chrome, it was all polish and sharp edges, just like Ethan. Nothing of a personal nature had found its way into Paladin’s inner sanctum, except for one small, curious item on the desk. Nate couldn’t recall having seen it there before.
It was a photograph of two little boys sitting close together on a couch, grinning broadly for the camera as they held a crying baby girl awkwardly in their arms.
When Ethan caught Nate staring at the photo, he moved a stack of files in front of it, obscuring the small portrait from view.
“You work on Sundays, big brother?” Nate asked as Ethan walked to the conference table to settle in a chair across the table from him.
“I work every day.” Turning toward the big-screen TV that took up the entire far end of
the office, he said, “I think you’ll be interested in this.”
The tape started, and a face appeared. Next to him, Tabby caught her breath. Her fingers flew to her mouth as she stared at the screen.
“You recognize him, then,” Ethan said to Tabby.
Nate watched her nod her head, her blue eyes shocked and filled with what appeared to be sympathy.
“That’s Peter,” she choked. “Dear God, he looks awful. Where did you get this, Ethan?”
“He paid me a visit.”
Nate shot a look at his brother. “He came to see you? Where is he now?”
“I let him go home.”
Nate felt his temper start to rise. “You had him, and you let him go? What in the hell, Ethan? You waiting for him to buy a one-way ticket to Timbuktu before you contacted me?”
Ethan’s hazel eyes narrowed as he relaxed back into his big, fat, expensive chair. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, if it’s so frigging complicated, why did you even bother bringing us down here? The SFPD is interested in talking to this guy, and you know it. Why didn’t you hold him here? If you couldn’t stomach talking to me, you could have called Stocker.”
Ethan shrugged. “I could have done a lot of things, but what I did was, I let him go. Like I said, it’s complicated.” Leaning across the table, he narrowed his gaze on Nate. “I want him more than you do, so quit your bitching. I’m handling it.”
Nate placed his palms flat on the polished surface, and leaned toward his brother until they were nearly nose to nose.
“How are you handling it? Who is this guy, and why did he come to see you? Enlighten me, Ethan, or I swear to God, I’ll arrest you for obstruction.”
It was like watching two gladiators in the arena, and Tabitha was terrified they’d come to blows. They were both big healthy men, well muscled, fit, equal in every way. It would be a disaster.
She watched as they glared at each other across a chasm of years too deep, too difficult, too painful to span, especially when their only bridge was the anger they shared.
“He tried to hurt Tabby,” Nate bit out between clenched teeth. “He names her in his diary. He describes murdering her. Tell me who he is.”
Arousing Suspicions Page 19