by Kate Aeon
The mission called.
Hank was still waiting when she jogged back to the parking lot. She slid into his passenger seat; it was a given that they would ride together while they worked out how they were going to signal each other and otherwise communicate during their mission. And she liked watching him drive; he was good at it.
But they didn’t have much to say. Not yet, anyway.
Hank nodded as they passed Goldcastle on the way, and Jess noted the neighborhood. Moderately better than the one that Hank lived in, but not spectacular. Some furniture stores, a handful of restaurants, and a sleazy little strip mall sat around the Goldcastle Gentlemen’s Club, which had its own restaurant with side entrance — Sharra’s — and a big parking lot in back. Goldcastle’s was open for business, with a valet out front parking cars. The club had the parking lot tucked away out of sight, Jess knew, because most strip clubs did what they could to hide the presence of their customers from wives or girlfriends who might go cruising past. Goldcastle’s was trying for an upscale appearance, but the look of the place did not give her a warm feeling inside.
Hank chose a twenty-four-hour diner that served all-day breakfast, located not too far from the club. “I want an omelet,” he said. “Sometimes you just want an omelet.”
“That works. This will still be breakfast for me, too,” Jess said. “I woke up too late to eat.” They settled into a booth at the back, and Jess ordered pancakes and bacon and a big glass of juice and hash browns and a couple of biscuits — this place called her breakfast “the Lumberjack.” Hank waited until the waitress was gone, then said, “You going to need someone to hold your hair back when you throw that all up?”
Jess laughed. “I do an hour or two of ballet a night, four or more nights a week. Plus katas in the morning before I go to work. Three trips a week to our training facility to lift weights. My problem is keeping weight on, not taking it off. I can’t be a skinny little nothing. I have to be able to be physical, even though it’s been years since I had to.”
“You’re a detective now. That’s not a particularly physical job. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all behind staying in shape. But...” He shrugged. “That seems like a lot.”
He was right. Her obsessive nightly ritual with the barre and the cleared floor in what would have been the apartment’s second bedroom was exactly that. Obsessive. She didn’t do it because it contributed to her safety. She didn’t do it because it was fun anymore. Those hours of dance were like penance. Like dancing on the grave of her dream. They were a painful reminder that she had turned her back on something she’d loved, to do something that kept her lonely. She thought she could have been happier as a cop if only she could have forgotten about the stage, and the bright lights, and the flow of body to music.
Everything she needed to do to be safe in the everyday run of her work, she could have done by keeping up at the firing range and working out in a dojo a few times a week with the other cops.
But something inside of her, some masochistic part of her, wouldn’t let her let go.
She pushed that thought away. Told Hank, “Well, then... maybe I just like pancakes.”
He nodded. “That’s enough reason for a big breakfast.” He frowned a little and said, “So... tell me about you.”
“Not much to tell.” She leaned back in the seat and looked out at the parking lot, at two young men who were loitering around a car parked in the far corner. “I do my job, I go home and sleep for a few hours, I go back and do my job some more. My work helps people, it gets criminals off the streets, and in a lot of ways it matters to me.”
“That’s good. I understand that. But if you don’t mind me saying so, it sounds lonely.”
“I have friends.”
“Other cops?”
“Sure. Other cops and criminals make up the vast majority of the people I know.” The kids in the parking lot looked up, saw her watching them, and faded away. She looked for another few seconds, then turned and grinned at him. “Not too interested in being friends with the criminals.” The food arrived.
Stacks of it, most of them placed by the waitress in front of her. Jess waited until the woman left, then said, “I’ll be honest with you, Hank. You seem like a really decent guy. A hero. You have the dojo, you’re teaching something valuable, and if you weren’t doing that, I have no doubt you’d be doing something else worthwhile.” She spread butter on her pancakes, then looked over the syrup selection and decided on plain maple. As she always did.
She poured the syrup on her pancakes, watched it fill the bottom of the plate, and put it back in the syrup rack. Looked him in the eyes. Frowned. “So why the hell are you shilling the psychic crap?”
Hank gave her a little smile. “Can you eat one-handed?”
“Sure.”
“Then give me the hand you don’t need, and let me tell you about you.”
“I’ve heard all the vague, mystical nonsense you people spout—” she started to say, but he took her hand and looked into her eyes.
She grew very still inside. His touch — his fingers around her fingers, his warmth, his strength — surrounded her. His voice still made her shiver. She could have fallen into the depths of his eyes. She didn’t believe in him, but she realized that she was tired of window-shopping. That she liked the way their hands fit together.
And she pushed that thought away.
Hank said, “You have three green dresses in your closet that you have never worn. And sometimes in the evening you go in and turn on the light in the closet and touch them.”
Jess’s heart thudded to a standstill, and for an instant she wasn’t sure it would start again. This was not “You’re lonely, and you yearn for fulfillment, and for someone to appreciate you.” This was as specific as specific got, and while she was going to have to backtrack to see if there was any mundane way he’d gotten that information, at least now he had her attention.
“How did you know that?”
He looked at their hands touching. “It’s a strong picture in your mind. What’s more interesting is why you do it,” Hank said. “You have a recurring dream about a green dress. About you, and a faceless man, and being someplace wonderful in an emerald-green dress. Your words — emerald green. But you don’t think you have time for the man or all that he symbolizes: commitment, love, a future. Yet each time you find a perfect green dress, one that reminds you of the one in the dream, you buy it, promising yourself that if the moment ever comes that you can capture that dream, you’ll have the one element of it that you can control.”
Jess pulled her hand out of his. She had a lump in her throat and had to blink back tears, and suddenly she was afraid of him. He could see her. He could really see her — see the things she didn’t let anyone else look at, see the things she didn’t have the courage to look at herself. She didn’t want to know any more about herself. She sure as hell didn’t want him to know any more about her. She’d put away parts of her life that no one — no one — was ever going to think about again.
Hank gave her a sad smile. “Jess, I’m sorry. That was fresh in your mind, right up there on the surface.”
She shook her head, not saying anything. She didn’t look at him; she kept her head down and ate her pancakes and choked them past the lump in her throat, and she blinked to keep from getting tears in her food.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. She shouldn’t be reacting like this. The green dresses... they were a stupid game she played with herself. Nothing important. They were a little ritual she performed out of superstition. She knew when she bought them that she would never wear them, and she was okay with that.
She looked up at him. Smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “Sorry about the... reaction. Clearly I haven’t had anywhere near enough sleep.” She took a long sip of orange juice, and told herself to feel all right again. Steady slow breath. Separation of all the things that hurt from the simple realities of living from day to day. Pain folded up, tucked away. There. Fine. Ever
ything was back in the box, lid shut, and she was okay.
“That’s all right. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He smiled a little. “I have to confess that I have my own ways of getting through being single and telling myself it’s for the best.” He shrugged. “I suspect if someone read me, that would be the first thing he or she picked up, too. It’s... human nature, maybe.”
Jess nodded. “So you’re not married, huh? Ever been?”
“No. Long story. Boring, and not a lot of fun.”
They sat in silence, with the voices of other patrons drifting around them, and the occasional click of a fork on a heavy dish.
And then, out of nowhere, Hank asked, “Why are the words ‘Virginia’ and ‘stripper’ so important to you?”
The floor fell out from under Jess. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. A wave of nausea rolled over her; unthinking, reacting, she pushed out of the booth and fled to the bathroom, grabbing the first stall and leaning there, hands against the back wall, bent over, gagging, trying not to throw up.
How the hell, how the hell, how the hell had he done that? Oh, God.
He acted like he didn’t know. But suddenly she suspected that he knew a lot more than he was showing. That he was going to keep doling out these bombs until she confessed everything. She felt naked in front of him. Dizzy. Helpless.
Scared.
Everyone had secrets, she thought. Everyone had reasons for doing what they did — reasons that, after a while, not even they dared examine. Her reasons were locked away, and that bastard out there at the table had picked the locks right in front of her, and opened the lid.
Her stomach heaved.
Virginia.
Stripper.
He knew, didn’t he? And if he knew, who else knew? Who else knew about Ginny? And who else knew about how Jess had spent her free time for almost eight of her years on the force?
At the table, Hank stared at Jess’s empty place and wondered what sort of vein he’d hit.
Something big was going on inside that woman. She was hiding something huge. Something that had beaten her until it almost broke her. And it had to do with Virginia. With stripping.
He had the feeling he ought to turn what he knew over to Jim and Charlie immediately. Maybe they didn’t know about Virginia and strippers. Maybe Jess had some horrible past as a stripper. She’d sure known the moves. Maybe something terrible had happened to her, almost destroyed her life.
If Jim had known about the stripper past, would he have put her on this case? Probably not. If Jim found out, he would drop Jess from this investigation, and bring in some woman who didn’t make Hank feel like he’d collided headfirst with a speeding train. That would be the course of action that would no doubt most benefit this case. And Hank.
And maybe even Jess, because whatever she had going on inside of her, she needed to deal with it.
One cell phone call, he thought.
Simple solution.
He looked at the cell phone in his hand.
Thought about the stricken, stunned look on her face as that relatively innocent question of his sank in.
And he thought, Since when does a Ranger take the easy way out?
He rose, walked back to the ladies-room door, and knocked.
“You all right in there?”
She came out looking like hell. She was pale, had sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip, and yet...
She gave him a weak grin. “Underdone pancake,” she said. “I’m all right now, though. And we have a whole lot of things we have to do today. Or at least I have a whole lot of things. You really don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”
“And leave you to find a place to live while you’re feeling like this?” She was going to tough it out. Whatever was going on inside that head of hers, she’d kicked it back into place again, and here she was, up and fighting.
Sonuvabitch.
How could he dislike a woman like that? He would have recommended her for promotion if he’d been her NCO. Well, once he’d gotten the truth out of her, anyway.
He said, “A cold wet cloth on the back of your neck will make you feel better.”.
“I’m okay. Really. I need some sort of fizzy drink while we drive around getting things done. That’ll settle my stomach.”
“This happen to you often?”
“Haven’t thrown up in…” She paused. “Twelve years, four months, and change,” she said. Paused again. “Twelve years, four months, eleven days. And I still haven’t.”
He laughed. Sonuvasonuvabitch. “You have me beat by four years. Came out of anesthesia on one of my last surgeries, nearly took out a nurse.”
“That shouldn’t even count,” Jess said. “Anesthesia...” She waved anesthesia away with a broad sweep of one hand.
“My stomach insists that it counted.” Why, talking about throwing up, did he keep seeing this woman naked? He was a normal man with normal urges, and puking didn’t show up anywhere in his turn-on menu.
But.
There she was, naked all over, and he was hot and bothered and uncomfortably hard, with visions of the two of them in some amazingly creative positions, and in some shockingly public places. Restaurant table. Restaurant bar. Restaurant floor.
Well, it had been a while. She was hot. She was down-to-earth. She remembered how long it had been since she’d last barfed... and he remembered how long it had been for him, and he didn’t know why that made her feel like a friend, but it did.
“Come on,” he said, leaving too much tip on the table and picking up the bill. “You actually are looking like you might make it.”
He bet if he got her into bed, he could get the truth out of her.
James Bond-ian scenarios of her confessing her stripper past in Virginia while clawing the sheets with her legs wrapped around his neck, the two of them magnificently hot and sweaty, her eyes glazed, her hair wild and tangled, him driving into her, her swearing to tell him everything if he just... wouldn’t... stop.
Okay.
Now he really needed to sit down.
Chapter Five
If their breakfast-for-dinner was a barely averted disaster, Jess had to consider it a fitting prelude for the rest of her day. Hank stuck with her while they drove around looking at horrible rental rooms. While he drove, the two of them managed to discuss how they could work together, and how they would communicate with each other. They devised a couple of hand signals so that she would know when he had something to tell her, when he had someone he needed her to check out, and when she had someone she needed him to check out.
She couldn’t help noticing how carefully he avoided any hint of personal questioning after the incident in the restaurant.
So maybe he’d bought her excuse about bad food. Maybe he really didn’t suspect anything.
Probably, though, he hadn’t believed her. Maybe her reaction had given him some last bit of information he’d wanted, and he was going to say something to Jim. And then, for a while, her life would be awkward and uncomfortable.
She settled on the least horrible of the weekly places that had a vacancy. The studio didn’t look all that secure, but the parking lot was well lit, the flimsy door at least had a decent lock, and she saw a black-and-white parked in one of the resident parking spaces near hers, so at least another cop lived close by. The studio was furnished — after a fashion — though she couldn’t remember when urine-yellow Formica was a surface of choice for decorators. The table, the counters, and the cabinets were all variants of the same awful color scheme, with someone deciding that chartreuse for the bedspread and curtains made a perfect complement. A maid would come in a couple times a week to change the sheets and clean. There were a couple of lockable cabinets for personal things.
Jess didn’t intend to bring much.
But she realized she did need Gracie clothes, and getting them would give her a good excuse to lose Hank. She found that she wanted very much not to be with him right then. Being with h
im was causing uncomfortable feelings she simply didn’t want to examine.
He dropped her off at her apartment so that she could pick up her car, and he took off, leaving her to wallow in paranoia about what he might be thinking, and what he might know. She shopped for clothes that suited the character she intended to play, and picked up a few household items — a couple of aluminum pans, the cheapest four-place-setting plastic dinnerware set she could find, soap, shampoo, toothbrush, and toothpaste, and two good padlocks for the lockable cabinets. She didn’t want to have anything in the place that she couldn’t bear to walk away from.
She dragged her collection of bags into her new, temporary home. The furnished studio had been designed to give claustrophobes the willies, she decided. She dumped everything on the floor, debated searching out the public laundry room, and decided against it. Instead, she hung up the skirts and blouses straight out of the bag, and put the underwear in drawers.
Thongs and G-strings. Ugh. She was a huge fan of cotton high-cuts. She preferred coverage and comfort, and contemplating lace underwear actually designed to crawl up her butt filled her with no joy.
She put away her other purchases, then sprawled on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, cell phone in hand.
If she went to Jim now and told him the truth, she’d have a lot less to deal with than if Hank started talking. Odds were that Jim would be fairly understanding, even if he would almost certainly take her off the case.
The fact was that the whole reason she’d become a cop was to use the resources available to the police to find her sister. To let her detective’s shield open doors that nothing else would open. To imply an official weight to pressure people into the truth. If it had all been to no avail, that didn’t change anything. If, over the years, she’d transferred her failed mission into a relentless dedication to her work that benefited other people, that didn’t excuse anything.
She hadn’t become a cop for any noble reason. She’d become a cop out of pure self-interest. To find out the truth for her mother and herself.