Mia scanned the interior of his truck. It had all the alpha-male accessories she would have expected—GPS attached to the dash, discarded baseball cap on the floor, mud-caked cowboy boots tossed in back behind the driver’s seat.
She spotted a plastic CD case peeking up from the door pocket and felt a twinge of discomfort. Taylor Swift. That would definitely be Ava’s.
Ric had a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw and a hard, world-weary look in his eyes. She wasn’t sure why the idea of him as a father should make her uneasy, but it did. She sensed that it was a part of his life he kept closed off, at least from her. And for some reason, that hurt her feelings.
Ric passed the turnoff to her street, and she glanced over warily. “Where are we going?”
“Klein’s.”
“I already ate.”
“I didn’t.”
Mia gritted her teeth and looked away. This was a bad idea. She wasn’t sure she could sit across a table and lie to him for an entire hour. She wasn’t sure she could do it for five minutes. But evidently, she wasn’t going to have a choice.
When they got there, he led her through the now-familiar foyer that smelled like hickory, but this time, she detected the scent of homemade bread, too.
And this time, he didn’t hold her hand.
He walked all the way to the back of the restaurant and claimed an enormous circular booth in the corner. It could have accommodated eight people, and Mia felt relieved until he slid around and ended up right beside her, even closer than they’d been the other night. She scooted away and gave herself some space.
The waitress appeared almost instantly. Ric got good service here. Mia glanced up at the woman’s flirty smile and realized he probably got good service everywhere.
Mia pulled a menu from the condiment holder in the center of the table and tried to tamp down this sudden flare of resentment toward some college girl barely out of braces.
“Get y’all started with some drinks?”
“I’ll have—”
“Two Bud Lights.” Ric took Mia’s menu and handed it to the server. “And two rib platters, extra sauce.”
Mia stared at him as the waitress dutifully wrote down the order and disappeared.
“I wanted chicken.”
“No one eats chicken at a rib joint.”
“I do. And I wanted a Diet Coke, too. Jeez.” Mia crossed her arms and turned away. He was trying to get a rise out of her. It was some underhanded strategy to draw her out, and she wasn’t going to fall for it. She’d eat a platter of freaking ribs if she had to.
Ric leaned back against the booth and rested his elbows on the back. She had a great view of his nice, firm pecs in that faded T-shirt. Oh, and the very mean-looking gun plastered to his hip. An accident? She didn’t think so. He was absolutely trying to intimidate her, and she absolutely wasn’t going to let him.
“Okay, Mia, let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“What the hell’s going on?” He glanced around and then nodded at her. “No cops. No prosecutor. Just you and me.”
“Last time I checked, you were a cop.”
“Is that a problem for you?” A dark brow quirked up, and she realized where he was going with this.
“Why should it be a problem? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You lied to detectives in an ongoing murder investigation.”
“I didn’t lie,” she said. “I misplaced evidence.”
“Don’t you mean you lost it?”
“Yes, I lost it.”
“Which is it? Lost or misplaced?”
“I lost it.”
“Bullshit.” He leaned forward and nailed her with a look. Every cell in her body wanted to shrink away, but she forced herself to hold his gaze. “You didn’t lose anything.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t. You make notes to yourself about damn near everything. You organize your grocery list like the aisles in the supermarket. You alphabetize your fucking CDs in your fucking living room. Don’t tell me you lost three separate bags of evidence.”
“That’s what happened.”
He leaned closer. “Don’t lie to me, Caramia. I don’t like it.”
“I’m not.” Her heart was thudding in double time, and she stared at the fierceness she’d never seen on his face before. And she realized she was cowering. She’d slid down in the booth and was gazing up at him, wide-eyed and skittish, like a rabbit in the presence of a wolf.
She shifted away from him on the vinyl seat and straightened her spine. “I’m human, all right? Anyone can make mistakes and get distracted. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
“Yeah, like what? I want details. You’re holding out on me.”
“Like … everything. Life.”
He scowled. “You don’t have a life. Your job is your life.”
She stared at him, stunned that such a brief statement could hurt so much.
And here, all this time, she’d thought he didn’t know her. He knew her entirely too well. And clearly, he didn’t like what he knew.
“Two rib platters, extra sauce.”
A plate the size of a hubcap appeared in front of her and she sucked in a breath. The aroma of barbecue sauce, tangy and spicy, rose from the table.
“Anything else?”
She blinked down at the food and thought of asking for a small shovel. But of course, the question was directed at Ric, not her, and he’d already dismissed the waitress with a wink.
Mia’s temper festered. He was pretending to be angrier than he was. It was a ploy, as she’d first thought, to get her emotions stirred up and make her open up to him.
And she’d almost fallen for it.
She reached for the silverware beside her plate.
“Don’t even think about it.” He picked up one of his ribs with two hands and chomped down. Rich brown sauce decorated the tips of his fingers. He licked some from the corner of his mouth, never moving his gaze from her face.
“You make a lot of assumptions, you know.” She unrolled the silverware from the napkin and smoothed it over her lap. “I mean, what? You snoop around my house a little and think you can psychoanalyze me?”
“I haven’t snooped anywhere. Yet.” He tugged the last bit of meat from a rib with his teeth, then set the bone aside.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re lying. I don’t know why yet, but I will.”
She shook her head and looked down at her plate. Platter. As in it belonged on the buffet at a Thanksgiving dinner, right beneath the turkey.
“This is a ridiculous amount of food,” she said.
“A lot of it’s bone.”
She sank her teeth into a rib and pulled the meat loose with as much delicacy as she could. The flavors exploded in her mouth, and she was back at her grand-parents’ farm on the Fourth of July. She’d always liked barbecue, but she hated eating it—ever since she was fifteen at a family picnic and her cousin had oinked at her when she had a plate of ribs in front of her, much as she did now. Mia dabbed sauce from her mouth and took a sip of beer.
For a while, they ate in silence. The ribs and homemade bread tasted amazing, and the creamy coleslaw was going to have to count as her salad for the day. She felt better with some food in her stomach. More settled, actually. And the sting of his earlier words started to fade.
Of course, it was probably the beer. Her third one of the evening, and she’d never been much of a drinker. Everything was getting fuzzy around the edges, including all of the reasons she needed to be on her guard. He probably had a lot of interrogation techniques up his sleeve, and sooner or later, one was bound to work on her.
Beside her, he seemed to have moved closer, but their place settings were just where they’d always been, so it must have been her imagination. He was watching her from beneath those thick black eyelashes. She’d always loved that feature about him. Mia’s lashes were pale and gold, and she had to use mascara all the time.
Sam’s face flashed into her mind. He had his mother’s freckles. And Mia’s, too. It was a family trait, one no one had escaped, not even Amy with her pretty dark hair.
She took a deep breath and looked over at Ric again. Thinking of her dead sister was not a good sign. She’d had too much to drink, and she should leave now.
As if tuned in to her thoughts, Ric caught the waitress’s eye and signaled for another round of beers. The next thing Mia knew, he was leaning back in the booth, watching her intently as she licked barbecue sauce from her fingers. Something warm and sexual flared in his eyes, and she felt an answering pull of lust. But that didn’t mean she was going to let her guard down.
“Come on, Mia.” His hand found the nape of her neck, and he rubbed it lightly, making her shiver. “Talk to me. Something’s going on with you.”
She pushed her plate away and sat back. The rubbing continued, soft strokes down her neck with the pad of his thumb. She slid away from him, because it was the only way she could talk and keep her thoughts straight.
“What’s going on is that I’m having a bad week. A bad two weeks. And I’m tired. And stressed. And human. I made a mistake, okay? Quit accusing me of lying, especially when you haven’t had the guts to be upfront with me from the moment we met.”
His eyebrows lifted. “How am I not upfront?”
She shook her head.
“You want upfront?” He leaned his elbow on the table and turned, creating their own private booth-within-a-booth. “I’m attracted to you. Very. I’ve wanted to get you in bed from the second I saw you in that lecture hall, going on and on about mitochondrial DNA or some crap. But I made myself stay away because I like you, all right? And I respect you—or, at least, I did until today. Too much just to use you for sex and walk away. That upfront enough for you?”
Mia stared at him, and for the first time, she knew he was being completely straight with her. Which made the middle part so much worse. He didn’t respect her anymore.
She lashed back. “What makes you think I would let you use me? Maybe I’m not attracted to you.”
He just looked at her. And his you-have-no-life comment reared its ugly head again. He thought she was desperate.
All right, she’d had enough for one evening. She couldn’t do this, and she didn’t have to.
She grabbed her purse off the seat and yanked out some money, which she left on the table. “I need to go.”
His sigh was filled with resignation as he leaned back to dig his wallet out of his jeans. “Put your money away.”
“This isn’t a date.” She scooted all the way around the big booth. “And I can walk myself home.”
But he was right behind her on the seat and grabbed her wrist as she stood up. The warm pressure of his hand pushed her closer to the edge. She felt the beer and the stress and the emotion closing in on her and knew she was on the verge of a meltdown she couldn’t have in front of him. She jerked her wrist, but his grip tightened.
“Ric, just let me go, okay?” She heard the quiver in her voice. “Please?” It was a whisper.
He searched her face for a long moment. And then he released her.
Mia got through the restaurant somehow and even managed to make it to her street corner before the tears started leaking, making icy little tracks on her face. She dabbed the end of her scarf to her cheeks and tried to shake off the encounter. It was over. She’d done okay. She hadn’t really told him anything, and she’d escaped with at least a little bit of her dignity intact.
She felt emotionally wrecked, but so what? She could deal with that. She’d protected her secret, and she’d protected Sam, which was the only thing that mattered. Whatever relationship she might have had with Ric Santos had been doomed anyway, from the very start, by his opinion of her.
He thought she had no life, and she didn’t. The Delphi Center was her life. Her work was her life. Being a cog, however small, in the justice machine was her life. It was all she had, and very soon she might not even have that.
I have to leave. I should have left already. Even more than the alcohol in her system, the memories of what she’d done made her stomach turn. She’d betrayed one of the few institutions she believed in. She’d betrayed her profession. Worst of all, she’d betrayed Ashley Meyer, who deserved nothing less than the justice Mia had committed to seek out for her. Now she’d never get it. Her family would never get it. And someone who had ruthlessly torn apart so many lives would be free to do it again.
Mia wrapped her arms around herself and hurried on, as if somehow she could outrun herself and what she’d done. She turned onto her tree-lined street, and the familiar porches and driveways and yards emerged from the blur. Many of the windows had gone dark already. It must be late. She saw the abandoned skateboard on her neighbors’ lawn and immediately thought of Sam.
She’d done it for Sam. Her actions might not be moral or wise or even understandable to many, but they’d been motivated by love. And she knew that no matter how wrong she’d been, no matter how selfish and impulsive, she’d do the same thing all over again if she believed Sam’s life was at stake.
But there wasn’t going to be a do-over. Her actions were permanent. All that remained was for her to face up to the horrible mess she’d created and hope the fallout wouldn’t be as widespread as she imagined.
What she imagined was bad. For the first time in her life, she was regretting the relentless efficiency with which she’d attacked her job. Who would have thought she’d one day come to regret taking part in so many cases?
Mia swiped the last of her tears away as she reached her house. She did a quick security scan of her drive-way and shrubbery as she pulled the keys from her purse and climbed the steps to her door. Once inside, she moved quickly to silence the beeping alarm. She flipped the lock, tossed her jacket and scarf onto the bench in the foyer, and pulled off her boots. She took a deep breath.
Home again. And alone again. But it didn’t feel eerie now, as it had when she’d come home from work. It felt like a relief. She’d had more than enough company tonight and wanted nothing more than to be alone with her burgeoning headache.
She padded into the kitchen and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Sixteen ounces and two aspirins were exactly what she needed to stave off the hangover she suspected was coming tomorrow. She twisted off the top and turned around.
Something lay on her breakfast table. She stepped closer to look—
And let out a scream.
CHAPTER 11
Her shriek reached him just as he’d turned his back on her house and started heading back to his truck. Ric bolted up the sidewalk and tried the door.
“Mia!”
He threw his shoulder into it, but it was locked.
“Mia, open up!”
No more screaming now, just a silence that put the fear of God in him. He sprinted around the house and up the driveway. A light was on in the kitchen, casting a yellow square on the driveway. Ric pounded on the door, then cupped his hand to the glass and peered in.
The kitchen was empty. He jerked the sleeve of his jacket over his fist and aimed a punch at the glass.
Mia walked into the room. She met his gaze through the window and moved straight for him.
His heart started beating again. She looked pale and a little shaky, but she was definitely in one very nicely shaped piece.
The door pulled back, and he stepped inside.
“What happened?”
She shook her head and glanced around.
“Mia?”
“Nothing. I just … I was standing here in the kitchen, and I thought I saw someone.”
“Where?”
“In the driveway. I was looking through the window above the sink, and a shadow moved.”
“Stay here.” Ric slid his Glock from his holster and went back out to prowl around the perimeter of her house. No shadows. No footprints. No broken windows. No cigarette butts or food wrappers or signs of anyone camped in
her yard, staking out the place. At the side of her garage, he found an overturned trash can. A plastic bag had been torn open and garbage strewn everywhere. Ric cleaned up the mess and secured the lid back onto the can.
When he returned to the kitchen, she was leaning against the sink and watching the back door, her arms folded tightly over her chest. He noted the pepper spray on the counter at her elbow. He rested his Glock on the counter and nudged her aside to wash his hands.
“Nobody out there,” he said, reaching around her for a dish towel. “But it looks like you might have had a raccoon in your trash.”
She stared at him, and he noticed the makeup smudges under her eyes. Goddamn it, she had been crying on her way home. Ric’s gut twisted. He’d meant to coax information out of her, not make her cry.
He tossed the towel onto the counter, then pulled his phone from his pocket and started dialing.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling a patrol unit. We should have one in the area.”
“You said it was a raccoon.”
“It probably was. But it doesn’t hurt to have someone do a loop through your neighborhood.”
“No cops.” She snatched the phone out of his hand and disconnected the call. “It’s fine. There’s nobody there.”
He frowned at her as he gently unfolded her fingers from around his phone. Her hand was shaking. Her whole body was shaking. Was this a delayed reaction to getting shot the other night? He’d never seen her so uptight, but she’d probably never been under this much stress.
He put the phone on the counter and slid his hands up the backs of her elbows. His fingers stopped just shy of her bandage. She tensed. Little tremors shook her shoulders.
“Hey.” He slid his hands up her neck and tilted her head back to look at her face. Her blue eyes were wide and watery and filled with so much anguish it made his chest hurt to see it, so instead he looked at her mouth. And when those pink lips parted, he leaned down and kissed them.
Ric’s tongue was in her mouth. The knowledge was a five-alarm, cymbal-clanging wake-up call to every dormant nerve in her body as she stood there, pressed against her kitchen sink, being kissed by him and kissing him back. He tasted hot and spicy and fierce, and he kissed her like he was starving for her. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into him and kissed him the same way right back. And then his hand was sliding up under her bulky sweater, curling warm around her rib cage, and clutching her against him as he pulled her up to her tiptoes and fed on her mouth some more.
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