Be Afraid

by Mary Burton

  Do you remember me?

  “No one seems to remember her.”

  A frown furrowed deep creases between his eyes. “I would have remembered a kid reported missing. I always remembered the child cases.”

  She straightened her shoulders, knowing she’d been one of those child cases. Just ask him!

  “Yeah. They’re the worst.”

  Folding his arms, he cocked his head. “Georgia told me you were born in Nashville?”

  So Rick and Georgia must’ve talked about her. “That’s right.”

  “Why come back?”

  She wasn’t fooled by the easy questions. She’d bet he’d played good cop back in the day. “Asked myself that question a lot.”

  “I was a cop long enough to know when someone is searching. What’re you searching for?”

  A breeze caught the music from the honky-tonk’s open door and sent the sounds swirling around her. Her heart thudded faster and faster in her chest. “Can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t.”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  He rubbed his hand over the line of his jaw. “You can talk to me, Jenna. I’ve got no dog in the fight.”

  She reached for a chalk and started to draw the outline of a face. “I bet there’re places in your past you don’t want to look.”

  A frown furrowed his brow. “You’ve been asking around about me?”

  “No.” She’d not asked but had read up on him shortly after she started drawing here. He’d appeared in quite a few newspaper clippings. There’d also been articles about Georgia, Deke, and Rick. And if she dug deeper, she knew there’d be articles about her. She’d been unable to muster the courage to read those accounts.

  His breath rushed, carrying with it words he rarely spoke. “There was some crap last year in my life. A person I trusted turned on me. Tried to hurt people I love.”

  His story had been covered in the paper. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t like talking about it. Do my best to pretend it never happened. As much as I deny the memories, they find me when I least expect it.”

  Shadow Eyes. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected that specter to haunt her. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “So what do you do?”

  He shoved out a breath as if expelling poison. “Come here to work. Sometimes I drink.” His gaze narrowed. “What do you do?”

  That teased a bitter smile. She almost denied she had troubling memories and then heard herself say, “I draw.”

  “What do you draw?” She focused on the sketch, quickly drawing KC’s nose, lips, and finally his eyes.

  “You draw me?”

  Smiling, she handed him the picture. “No, I draw this.” She flipped through several pages in a sketchbook until she reached a page filled with dark, penetrating eyes.

  He grabbed reading glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and adjusted them on his nose. “Eyes. Who’s that supposed to be?”

  She traced the bottom edge of the page. “I have no idea. But the image won’t leave my mind.”

  “Is it attached to one of your cases?”

  “I’m not sure where it comes from.”

  He arched a brow as he studied the picture. “Is that why you’re in Nashville?”

  Yes. “Maybe. I think so.”

  “Jenna, you aren’t giving me the whole story.”

  A grin tipped the edge of her lips. “I’ll work up to it eventually.”

  Before he could respond, a family with two blond girls stepped out of a barbecue restaurant and caught her eye. The girls were about five and six and wore matching pink shirts decorated with rhinestone guitars. The mother studied the easel and Jenna spotted her first customer of the night.

  “Much as I want to chat, KC, I got a customer.”

  He looked past her to the family. “They aren’t Rudy’s customers.”

  “Ah, you know how it works. A couple of cute kids get their sketch done and folks stop and watch me draw. Before you know it, you got guys promising girlfriends they can have a picture. I always send the ones willing to wait into your place.”

  A sly grin tugged the edge of his mouth. “It’s worked out pretty well.”

  “Darn right. Now get back to work.” The order came with a smile, which had him rolling his gaze and calling her sassy before he vanished back into the bar.

  The father of the family approached. “You open for business?”

  He was a pleasant-looking guy. Midsize, dark hair, glasses, and a round belly. A very dad kind of guy. “You would be my first customer of the night.” She smiled at the mom, knowing she’d cinch the deal, not the dad. “I could draw them together.”

  The mom brushed back long bangs hanging over deep-set eyes. “I doubt they’d sit together right now. They’ve been fighting for the last couple of hours.”

  She studied the girls. Red cheeks and a couple of yawns told her she’d not have more than fifteen minutes to capture them on paper. “I’ll make it appear they’re together. You can even walk one around while I work with the other.”

  The mom considered Jenna’s suggestion and then nodded. “Fair enough.” They negotiated a price and Jenna was soon sketching the younger of the two. Millie. She had large green eyes, a pug nose, and lips that curled up a little even when she wasn’t smiling. She was cute, but clearly not up for sitting still. Her mother sat on the stool set up for customers and held Millie on her lap.

  Jenna talked about cowboy hats and guitars and songs as she quickly drew the girl’s face and outlined her eyes. She hesitated only briefly and then quickly finished the last details. No time to fret or worry. Just draw.

  When Jenna had been in high school, she’d set up an easel in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. With the waters of the Chesapeake lapping gently, she’d refined her portrait skills. She’d charged only a few bucks for the first drawings, but as that first summer had gone on, she’d gotten better and better. She’d even caught the eye of a guy representing an amusement park in Virginia. The park was two hours south of Baltimore, but the offer was too good to resist. She’d found someone to bunk with the following summer and had spent ten hours a day drawing. Drawing-crazed families at a park had honed skills that would later serve her well on the Force.

  Jenna glanced at the picture of Millie and smiled. She could have spent longer, shading and refining, but forty bucks only bought so much detail. Next on Mom’s lap was the older sister who looked like a slightly older carbon copy of Millie.

  “What’s your name?” Jenna asked.

  “Sara.”

  Jenna’s heart stilled for an instant. Memories of another Sara flashed in her mind. Her Sara wasn’t smiling but arguing with her father. “Leave me alone! You don’t understand!”

  The memory fluttered away as quickly as it had come. “My sister’s name was Sara.”

  The mother gazed at Jenna over her daughter’s head, clearly catching Jenna’s use of the past tense. “Did you two look alike?”

  Jenna nodded. “Mom said we could’ve been twins if not for the decade separating our birthdays.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “A very long time. I was only five when it happened.” Emotion clogged her throat. She could never remember a time when she’d talked about Sara and here she was with a stranger opening up.

  The mom hugged her Sara a little closer. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sara nestled closer to her mother. Jenna ignored the tightening in her chest and focused on face, hair, and eyes and when it came time to draw the girl’s mouth she laughed. “You don’t want me to draw that thumb in your mouth, do you?”

  The girl nodded. Mom pulled her thumb free and talked about eating an ice cream if she could smile. She smiled.

  A crowd had gathered around Jenna as it did most nights here. Any other night and she’d have welcomed the scrutiny.

  Jenna rolled up Millie and Sara’s portrait, put a rubber band around it, and handed it to Mom while Dad paid
her with two crisp twenties. Soon, she had a young girl sitting in her subject’s chair. The next couple of hours went quickly and she drew a half-dozen people. She’d earned nearly three hundred bucks. A nice haul.

  It was nearing ten and her hands and back ached. She rose, ready to pack up and call it a night as a man approached. “Still open for business?”

  She looked up into a lean, rawboned face with blue eyes that cut and pierced. Her heart skipped a beat as she thought about Shadow Eyes in her sketchbook. “Sure.”

  She searched around for a girlfriend. Most men didn’t sit for a picture but were happy to treat their lady. “For you?”

  “Yeah. Mom will love it.”

  This guy had to be in his early forties so she didn’t picture him as the type worried about Mom but if life had taught her anything, sometimes a book didn’t match its cover. “Forty dollars for twenty minutes.”

  He dug two rumpled twenties from his jeans pocket. “Sure, why not?”

  She sat back down and he took his place across from her. She loaded a clean piece of paper on the easel, fastening it with binder clips. She reached for the charcoal and started to sketch the outline of his long, lean face. “So what brings you to Nashville?”

  “I lived here all my life. I normally don’t get down to Broadway. Too many tourists but figured what the hell tonight. What about you?”

  “New to the area.”

  “From where?”

  She didn’t mind asking the questions but didn’t like answering them. “Back East.”

  He nodded. “You sound like an Easterner.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. Where?

  “D.C. area.” Give or take thirty miles.

  “So what’re you doing tonight after you finish up here?”

  She sat a little straighter. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  “Too bad.”

  She didn’t comment as she rose and began to pack up her supplies. “Thanks for the business.”

  He hesitated and then with a quick nod, turned and left. She watched him move down the sidewalk crowded with laughing tourists and then vanish around the corner. Her fingers trembled. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  She thought about the Lost Girl’s picture in her case and suddenly had a real need to give it to Rick and be done with the case.

  Jenna packed up her supplies, loaded them in her car, and drove to the Nashville Police Department. She parked in the nearby lot and shut off the engine. Large humming lamps cast an eerie glow on her pale skin as she grabbed her sketchpad and headed across the lot to the front doors. She moved to the main desk where a uniformed officer sat.

  “I need to leave a sketch for Detective Rick Morgan.”

  The female officer had red hair twisted into a tight bun at the base of her head. The sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose did little to soften her demeanor. “And you are?”

  “Jenna Thompson.” Explaining herself had not been as easy as she’d hoped. Carrying a sketchpad and saying she knew Rick Morgan didn’t mean squat to the officer on duty, who would not let her inside without a badge.

  “I need identification.”

  She’d left her badge in Baltimore. “Best I can do is a driver’s license.”

  “That’ll do.”

  She dug it out of her purse and handed it over.

  A glance at the license prompted a frown before she handed it back to Jenna. “Detective Morgan should be back in the next fifteen minutes. You can wait or give whatever it is you need to give him to me. I’ll see that he gets it.”

  Instinctively, she hugged the sketchpad closer to her chest. “Thanks. I’ll wait.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She moved to an empty bank of chairs and sat. Seconds later, two uniformed officers moved past the front desk, flashing badges and exchanging smiles with the redhead before vanishing behind the locked double doors.

  How many times had she breezed through the lobby of the Baltimore Police Department, barely tossing a glance toward the people in the waiting room? She’d never given a thought or questioned her total access.

  And now here she sat. She was on the other side of the desk. An outsider. She’d chosen to take leave from the Force. She’d needed the break. But until this moment she had never felt like an outsider looking over the thin blue line. She missed belonging to a fraternity that was more family than job.

  Ten minutes passed. She drummed her fingers on her thigh as she sat and watched people come and go. Whether they were laughing, frowning, or stoic, they moved beyond the double doors with ease.

  Rick Morgan pushed through the front door. His jaw was set, his gaze hard and focused. Not a happy camper by her estimation.

  Good. Join the club. She stood. “Morgan.”

  At the sound of her voice, he turned, assessing her with a quick sweep of his gaze. “Jenna.”

  With her sketchpad tucked under her arm, she moved toward him. “I have your sketch.”

  Surprise widened his eyes a fraction as he met her halfway. “It’s finished?”

  “Yes.” She nearly explained that, as always, she’d struggled with the eyes but caught herself and remained silent.

  “Come on upstairs. I’d like to have a look at it.”

  She could have handed it off to him and been done with it. In fact, that’s exactly what she wanted to do. But she couldn’t do that to the Lost Girl. Somewhere along the way she’d become invested in this case. She might have crossed the blue line, but this case was as much hers as it was his. “Sure.”

  They took the elevator and wound through a series of cubicles and desks until they reached a windowless conference room. He flipped on a light and reached for his cell. “I’ll text Bishop. He’ll want to see this.”

  “Okay.” On a credenza, a coffeepot filled with stale coffee that resembled sludge reminded her of the Baltimore Police Department. The furniture looked overused and tired. The walls had faded from white to a dullish gray. Some things were universal. She set her sketchpad on the table.

  Rick’s phone vibrated and he checked the text. “He’ll be here in twenty.”

  More waiting. She’d not have done it for anyone other than the little girl whom she’d captured in her sketch. “Sure.”

  “Can I get you coffee?”

  She laid her sketchpad on the table. “Was it made in the last decade?”

  A smile quirked the edge of his lips. “Within the last few weeks. I’ll make a fresh pot.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “I could use one.”

  “Then, sure.” The coffee would mean she wouldn’t sleep but her racing mind had already signaled this was going to be a long night.

  “Be right back.” He vanished and reappeared minutes later with two steaming cups. “I’m fairly good at making coffee.”

  It smelled fresh, rich. “A man of hidden talents.”

  He nodded, and a smile curled his lips as he raised the cup to his lips. “Sugar or milk?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He motioned for her to sit and if she’d been left alone, she’d have stood. Too much energy buzzed in her body. But if she stood, so would he.

  She sat in the chair and watched as he sat and angled his seat away from the table so that it faced her. “Can I have a look at the sketch?”

  “You don’t want to wait for your partner?”

  “No.”

  She hadn’t been away from the Force so long that she’d forgotten how to read a tense vibe. “There a turf war between you two?”

  His fingers tensed a fraction as he sipped from his cup. “No. I just don’t feel like waiting.”

  “You ooze tension, Morgan.”

  The next smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t know what you’re seeing.”

  She opted not to press. “Long as it doesn’t interfere with this case, then I don’t care.”

  “You talk about it as if it were your case.”

  “It is. Not officially, of co
urse, but I’m invested. I want her killer caught.” She opened her sketchbook and flipped past several pages filled with sketches of half-drawn faces.

  He studied her a beat. “You miss the job, don’t you?”

  “Sure. I miss it.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  Ah, there was the question. The elephant that danced in the room each time they were together. “I didn’t quit. I took leave.” He’d turned the tables on her. “Does it really matter?”

  “Not in the big scheme but I’m curious.”

  “Just needed a break.”

  He shook his head. “That’s a lame answer, Thompson.”

  Just because he asked, didn’t mean he deserved an answer to the question. “Didn’t you take a break after you were shot?”

  “A bullet to the hip forced the time off so I gave school a try while my body healed. Matter of time before I returned.”

  “We should all be so lucky to have your clear vision.”

  Jenna shifted, her discomfort growing like a flame fed with dry kindling. “Let’s look at the sketch.” She opened her sketchpad, more than ready to be finished with this conversation.

  As she flipped through the pages his attention was drawn away from her to the page filled with eyes. “What’re those?”

  “I’m always drawing. Often, I’m intrigued and work on a face and then I lose interest and don’t finish it.”

  “You got a thing for eyes.”

  “They’re the mirrors to the soul.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I do.”

  “Seems odd that you wouldn’t finish the sketches. Or maybe that’s kinda your thing. Not finishing a job.”

  “Damn, Morgan, does your brain only entertain one thought at a time?” Irritation burned under her tone.

  “I’m like a dog with a bone.”

  Did he just want her gone from Nashville? “I didn’t come here to talk about me. These partial drawings are a part of the drawing process.”

  “Whom are you trying to draw?” he said, pointing to the eyes.

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “You don’t know?”

  This close, his energy radiated. She offered another shrug of her shoulders to soften another incomplete explanation. “Artists and their quirks.”