FOR THE BABY'S SAKE

by Beverly Long

  He crinkled his nose and pretended to sniff the air. “Funny. That smells like coffee.”

  She’d been done in by hazelnut beans. “I’ve got a timer. It must have turned on.”

  “Great. I could use a cup.”

  He could pour his own. She intended to go finish packing, and then they would go their separate ways.

  “Fine. Cups are on the counter. I’ve got things to do.”

  He nodded and pointed at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve got just a speck of toothpaste there.”

  Oh, the nerve of this guy. “I was saving it for later,” Liz said, her voice dripping with sweetness.

  Sawyer laughed. “Good one. You’re funny in the morning.”

  He’d think funny when she left him standing on the curb.

  Ten minutes later, Liz walked into the kitchen. Sawyer stood at the counter, drinking out of her favorite cup and eating a piece of toast. “I made you some,” he said. “I didn’t know if you liked jelly.”

  “Sawyer.” Liz smiled, purposefully patronizing. She felt calmer now that she’d had a few moments to herself. “This is bizarre. You can’t come to my house at four in the morning and have breakfast.”

  “I packed enough to last a week. I suggest you do the same.”

  A week? He expected her to spend a week with him?

  Liz grabbed for the piece of toast he held out to her. She needed food. She surely had low blood sugar. He couldn’t have said a week. It would all be better once she’d eaten.

  “I did an internet search last night,” Sawyer continued, as if he had every right. “I’ve identified the most likely places.”

  Likely places? “Sawyer, stop. You’re giving me a headache. First of all, when did you have time to do an internet search? You left here just hours ago. Did you sleep at all? And more important, why are you doing this? Last night you didn’t seem to think that my information had much value.”

  “Any lead is better than no lead.”

  “Well, you can’t go with me.” She couldn’t spend a week with him. Heck, she couldn’t spend an hour with him without itching to touch him. Mr. Can’t-compromise-the-investigation had no idea that given another two minutes last night, she’d have been all over him. The man had no idea just how much at risk he’d been. The desire had been swift, hot, almost painful.

  Throughout the very short night, she’d relived the scene over and over again. By morning, she’d been almost willing to admit that he’d probably done the right thing. There was no need for the little spark between the two of them to grow into a really big flame. With air, a little encouragement and fresh sheets, it could be spontaneous combustion.

  They’d both be burned, hurt worse than they could imagine.

  Which was ridiculous. Absolutely not necessary. They both wanted Mary. He wanted to use the girl. She wanted to save her. Same goal, different objectives. No common values or mission statement. There was no need to share strategy. Certainly no need to share a car.

  “I want to go by myself,” she stated.

  “No.”

  Who had died and put him in charge? “You can’t stop me.”

  “I can,” he said, suddenly sounding very serious, more like he had the night before. “I’m the lead detective on the case. If you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a police investigation.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she accused. He just stood there, not blinking, not moving.

  “I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “You...you...” she sputtered, unable to find the word that captured her anger. “You cop.” It was the best she could do at four in the morning.

  He shrugged. “I want Mirandez. Mary’s my ticket. She testifies against Mirandez and we get to throw away the key. I haven’t made any bones about what I’m trying to do. You think they’re in Wisconsin. That’s as good a guess as any right now. Are you ready to go?”

  She wasn’t going anywhere with him. “I’m packed. I’m leaving. Solo. Alone. You can follow me if you want, but we aren’t going together.”

  “That’s a waste of gas if we’re both going the same way.”

  He didn’t really care about wasting gas. “You’re afraid that I’m going to warn Mary. You don’t trust me.”

  He looked a little offended. “I trust you. About as much as you trust me.”

  She didn’t trust him one bit. He’d steal her heart and never give it back. She’d be the Tin Man looking for the Wizard.

  “I want Mirandez to pay for his crimes,” Liz said. “If you’re right and Mary can testify against him, I’ll do everything I can to persuade her to do so.”

  “You still refuse to accept that she might be part of this.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Fine. I’ll be the first to say I’m wrong. But if I’m right, I’m going to arrest both of them. Maybe it would be in Mary’s best interests if you were with me when I find them.”

  Mary wouldn’t talk to Sawyer. Liz knew that. He was everything she despised. She’d clam up, or worse yet, she’d spout off and probably irritate the hell out of him. She didn’t think Sawyer would arrest her out of spite. He wasn’t that type of cop or man. No, Sawyer wasn’t the wild card. But Mary was. She needed to be there when the two of them met up again.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll go together. But you’d better not slow me down.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be there in three hours. Then we start working the river.”

  “Working the river?”

  “Yes. In that area, most of the major campgrounds and resort areas are close to the Wisconsin River. We’ll pick a point and then work both sides of the river, north and south. The girl at Jumpin’ Jack Flash said he was fishing. He’s got to be staying in the area. Could be a tent, a cabin or a damn resort. We’ll check them all. If we’re going to do this, we do it right.”

  That seemed like a whole lot of we. “Fine.” Did she just say fine? What was she thinking? “Let’s go.”

  “We can take your car or I’d be happy to drive.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Let’s take my car.”

  “Then follow me over to the police station. I’ll drop my wheels there.”

  How had this happened? She was drawn to Sawyer like some cheap magnet to a refrigerator. He could see the attraction, yet he had some crazy ethical, moral or puritanical code—she wasn’t sure which—that prevented him from acting on it.

  So, however much she tried to avoid it, she’d be squirming in her seat for days, and he’d be determined to withstand it. To prevail.

  It made her furious. With herself and with him. “I’ll get my bag,” she said. “While you’re waiting, find a thermos. I think there’s one in those cupboards. I’m gonna want coffee.”

  * * *

  SAWYER PULLED INTO a truck stop shortly after seven. They’d beaten the rush-hour traffic, scooting out of the Chicagoland area before lots of commuters hit the road. It had been a straight shot north up I-94, and now they were headed west, just twenty minutes shy of Madison.

  Liz hadn’t said a word to him since they’d left his car at the station and he’d climbed into hers. Not even when he’d ask her if he could drive. She’d just looked at him and dropped the keys to her Toyota into his open hand. He’d pushed the seat back and tried to get comfortable. She’d sat on her side of the car, drank coffee, fiddled with the radio stations and generally ignored him.

  He didn’t care. A little dislike between him and Liz could go a long way. He hoped it went far enough that it kept him from wanting her, from taking her into his arms, from pulling her under his body.

  He didn’t think he’d be satisfied with less. He knew he didn’t have a right to ask for more. He needed to keep his hands on the wheel and let her be pissed off at him
. It was safer and ultimately easier and better for the both of them.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Fine.” She barely spared him a look before she turned her face to the window.

  “We need gas, too.”

  “Fine,” she repeated. She reached down between her feet, opened her purse and pulled out a twenty.

  “I’ll buy gas,” Sawyer told her. “This is police business.”

  “Your boss knows you’re going?”

  “Of course. He thinks it’s probably a wild-goose chase. But since Mirandez has had us chasing our tails for over a year, he’s pulling out all the stops.”

  “When we find Mary, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me talk to her first. She’ll be scared.”

  She had no idea she was playing into Lieutenant Fischer’s hands. That was exactly what the man had hoped for. The lieutenant wanted Liz to draw Mary in, to get her to testify against Mirandez. Lord, he hated using Liz like this. “I’ll do my best.” Sawyer heard the stiffness in his voice. He ignored the quick look Liz shot in his direction and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Let’s go.”

  Sawyer took the lead, but no one even glanced up when they walked through the door. Not until Liz walked past the two men who were sitting in the middle booth drinking coffee. Sawyer heard the soft whistle first, then “Wouldn’t mind having those wrapped around my waist.”

  Sawyer stopped in his tracks. He balled up his fist and turned.

  Chapter Eight

  “Sawyer, please,” she said. “Let it go.”

  It was the look in her eyes that stopped him. She didn’t want a scene. Sawyer gave the men a look, and they had the good sense to take an interest in their eggs. He turned, walked another ten feet and slid into the empty booth at the end of the row. He faced the door. “They’re stupid,” he said.

  “Agreed,” she answered.

  “You should wear pants,” he lectured her. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not fair.”

  She waved a hand. “Nor practical. It’s going to be a hundred degrees today.” She picked up the plastic-covered listing of the day’s specials.

  “I imagine women get tired of men acting like idiots.”

  She sighed. Loudly. “Yes. Especially when they have dirty hair, food on their faces and bellies that hang over their pants.”

  It didn’t take much for him to remember how he’d ogled those same legs last night. Yeah, his face and hair had been clean and his stomach still fairly flat, but that didn’t make him much better than those creeps.

  “How much farther?” she asked.

  “We’re twenty minutes east of Madison. Then it’s another hour or so north to Wisconsin Dells. Our first stop is Clover Corners.”

  She shook her head, apparently not recognizing the name. “Why there?”

  “Like I said earlier, we look everywhere. But there are a few places that seem more logical than others, so we start there.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the logic.”

  “I know Mirandez. He’s a low-profile kind of guy. That’s what has kept him alive so long.”

  “I thought you said he was twenty-six.”

  “You meet very few middle-aged gang leaders.”

  “I suppose. What kind of fishing would a low-profile type of guy do?”

  “He’d look for a place where he could stay, eat and buy his bait without ever having to venture out. Especially because he probably can’t go anywhere without dragging Mary with him. People notice pregnant women.”

  Liz nodded in agreement. “Last week when I went shopping with her, four people stopped to pat her stomach. Four complete strangers.”

  He didn’t want to talk about Mary’s pregnancy.

  “It’s like her stomach has become community property,” Liz continued. “I told her she should get a sign for around her neck.”

  Despite himself, he wanted to know. “What would it say?”

  “Something along the lines of Beware of Teeth. Then they wouldn’t be able to sue her when she bit their hand.”

  There’d been a couple times that Mary had looked as if she wanted to bite him. Maybe a quick couple of nips out of his rear.

  “But the really sick part is that I—”

  “Two coffees here?” A waitress on her way past their booth stopped suddenly. She dropped a couple menus down on the corner of the table.

  “Just water, please,” Liz replied.

  “Coffee would be fine,” Sawyer said. Liz hadn’t shared in the car. She’d been too busy being mad at him.

  The waitress walked away. “What’s the really sick part?” Sawyer asked.

  Liz leaned forward. “Sometimes, I just can’t help myself. I just have to touch their stomachs. I always thought that a pregnant woman’s stomach would be soft, like a baby is soft. But it’s this hard volleyball. It’s so cool.”

  It had been cool. Cool and magical. His girlfriend had been thin. She hadn’t actually showed for the better part of four months. And then one day, her flat little stomach had just popped out. And suddenly the baby had been real. He’d had no trouble at all suddenly visualizing what his son or daughter would look like, how he or she would run around the backyard at his parents’ house, how he or she would hold his hand on the first day of school.

  Even though he was just a kid himself, becoming a dad hadn’t scared him.

  He’d been too damn stupid to be scared.

  He hadn’t even considered that his child would be born weak, suffering, too small to take on the world.

  He’d learned the hard way. Babies weren’t tough at all.

  The waitress came back with their drinks. “What can I get you this morning?”

  “A bagel and cream cheese, please,” Liz said.

  “That’s it?” Sawyer frowned at her.

  She nodded.

  Well, hell. He couldn’t force her to eat. “Ham, eggs, hash-brown potatoes, and a side of biscuits and gravy,” Sawyer said. The waitress wrote it down and left.

  “Work up an appetite driving?” Liz asked.

  Yeah, but not for food. But he wasn’t going there. He’d managed to pull back last night. It had cost him. He’d spent most of the night mentally kicking his own butt. It hadn’t helped that he knew he’d done the right thing. No, he’d been wound too tight, been too close to the edge. He’d wanted her badly.

  But he couldn’t sleep with Liz. Not with the possibility that he was going to have to arrest Mary. He knew that once he slept with Liz, once he let her into his soul, he’d be hard-pressed to be objective about Mary. And he couldn’t afford to let up on the pursuit of Mirandez now. Not when they were so close.

  “You may be sorry,” he said. “We’re not stopping again until lunch.”

  “It’ll be okay. If I get hungry, I’ll gnaw off a couple fingers.”

  “Mine or yours?” The minute he said it, he was sorry. He didn’t need to be thinking about her mouth on any part of his body. “Just remember,” he said, working hard to keep his voice from cracking, “the per diem reimbursement rate is $50 a person per day. They actually expect us to eat.”

  “Last of the big spenders, huh?”

  “Big spender? The city? No. They barely buy us office supplies.”

  She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. “Did you always want to be a cop, Sawyer? Was that your dream?”

  His dream had been to raise his child. “No.”

  “How did you end up wearing a badge?”

  It had seemed like the only thing to do. “I didn’t go on to college right out of high school. I worked for a while.” He’d worked like a dog when he’d found out Terrie was pregnant. He’d been determined to provide for her and his child. It was afterward, when he faced the tr
uth that Terrie had continued to use drugs during the pregnancy, that he thought he’d worked too much. He’d been so focused on providing for his child that he’d neglected to protect him.

  “But then...things happened, and I decided I wasn’t going to get anywhere without an education. I started at the junior college and then went on for a bachelor’s degree. I’ve been a cop for fifteen years. I don’t know how to do much else.”

  “You haven’t been in Chicago for fifteen years.”

  “How do you know?”

  She looked over both shoulders and leaned forward in the booth. “Like Mary said,” she whispered, “you talk funny.”

  “I do not. You people in the north talk funny.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. A body can go missing in the woods for a long time before somebody stumbles upon it.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Why Chicago?”

  “Why not?” He took a drink of coffee. That was probably all he needed to say, but suddenly he wanted to tell her more. “My father died two years ago. My mom had passed the year before. With both of them gone, there was no reason to stay in Baton Rouge.”

  “Aha. Baton Rouge. I had guessed New Orleans.”

  “I spent some time there.”

  She settled back in her booth. “Drinking Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s? Eating beignets at Café du Monde? Brunch at the Court of Two Sisters?”

  He’d been working undercover, mostly setting up drug buys with the underbelly of society. “Sounds like you know the place.”

  “I did an internship there when I was working on my doctorate. I loved everything about it. The food especially. After I left, I dreamed of gumbo.”

  “I can do a crawfish boil better than most.”

  She sighed. “Don’t tease me. You don’t really know how to cook, do you?”

  His mother had believed that cooking was everybody’s work. In the South, family meant food. Hell, maybe when this was all over, he’d have Liz over for dinner.