The wet heat of her body grabbed him, pulled him over the edge of sanity with her, and then he was the one crying out, a roar of pure male satisfaction. Of possession.
When his arms wouldn’t hold his weight a second longer, he collapsed to her side. Gradually their heavy breathing returned to normal.
When he threw an arm behind his head, he noticed the window over the bed. The curtains were open, but he didn’t think anyone on the street could have seen what had just happened between him and Mia. The heat of their bodies had fogged the glass.
She turned to her side and pillowed her head on his shoulder. Words weren’t necessary. Their bodies had said everything.
He fell asleep to the soft sough of her breath in his ears, the scent of her hair in his nostrils, and the feel of her drawing light circles through the hair on his chest.
His awakening was much less gentle. Someone was pounding on the front door and shouting. Still half asleep, he was on his feet and had his jeans pulled on before it dawned on him what the voices were saying.
“Sheriff’s department! Open up!”
Mia sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest with one hand. With the other she pushed a wave of dark hair off her face. Her eyes were glassy with fear.
“Stay here,” he told her and started for the door. The deputies shouted again, and he answered, “Just a second, I’m coming.”
Four cops stood in the hall when he opened the door. His stomach fell. Four. That couldn’t be good. The one in front slid the police baton he’d been using to rap on the door back into a loop on his belt. “Dr. Ty Hansen?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is Ms. Mia Serrat here on these premises?”
“Why—” he started, but never got to finish the question. Mia appeared in the hallway behind him, wearing the T-shirt he’d given her earlier. The thin white cotton draped to mid-thigh on her, but did little to disguise the enticing shape beneath.
The cops pushed past him. He stopped the last one with a hand on the man’s shoulder as he passed. “What the hell is going on?”
The man he stopped didn’t answer. The burly cop in front, the one who’d had the baton, told him all he needed to know when he pulled out a pair of silver handcuffs. “Ms. Serrat, I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Ty started toward her.
Her shoulders shook visibly, but her voice was steady. “What’s the charge?”
“Murder.”
“Oh my God. Todd? You found Todd. Is he—?” Her face went as white as the T-shirt she had on, and Ty reached her side just in time to catch her as she fell.
Chapter 15
“How can they charge her with murder if they don’t have a body?” Ty propped his elbows on Chuck Campbell’s desk and buried his face in his hands, trying to rub away the sleepiness. It had been a long night in the Eternal sheriff’s office lobby, waiting for some word on what was happening with Mia. Now the sun was rising outside the eastern window, and he still wasn’t sure.
“It’s uncommon, but there is precedent. Nine-year-olds don’t just leave bloody jackets behind and go missing by themselves.”
“Eight.”
“What?”
He sighed, straightened up. “Todd Serrat is eight years old.”
Chuck tapped the eraser end of a pencil on his desk. “Was eight years old, it looks like.”
“So they found Todd’s jacket with blood on it. It doesn’t prove anything.”
“It proves she was lying about him being in the house while she was supposedly attacked in the garage. I told you, the jacket was found in the woods near the sledding hill by some kids playing. Todd Serrat never made it home that day.”
“It’s circumstantial, at best.”
“A lot of criminals get put away on circumstantial evidence. Can you just admit for once that this case really is as simple—and as sad—as it seems on the surface? That she’s been playing you all along, and that there’s something wrong in her head that makes her want to hurt herself and her son?”
Ty’s stomach burned from too much coffee and not enough sleep. He didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, much less to Chuck, because if it was true, if Mia had done this, then the best night of his life was also the biggest mistake of his life.
He rubbed the back of his neck, sighed. “It’s possible.”
Chuck’s chair creaked as the deputy leaned back and propped a booted foot on his desk. “Would have done yourself a lot of good if you’d come to that realization before you slept with her, buddy.”
“Back off, buddy.”
Chuck held up his hands. “All right, none of my business. I’m just sayin’…”
“Can you get me in to see her?”
Chuck’s booted foot clomped to the floor. His chair creaked again. “Actually, I was hoping you’d ask that.”
Ty lowered his hand warily. “Why?”
“Because she trusts you. You’re the only one who has a chance of getting through to her. The detectives got squat when they interviewed her. The State Bureau of Investigation couldn’t even get her to look at them.” He leveled a hard gaze at Ty. “We need a confession, man.”
“Screw you.” He lurched to his feet, knocking his chair over in the process.
“No, screw that kid. Because that’s what you’ll be doing if you walk away from this.”
Blood drummed in Ty’s ears.
Chuck walked around the desk and stood next to him. “I know this case hits close to home for you,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry no one was there to stand up for you when you needed it, including me. I knew what was going on. I could have told a teacher, a cop. Someone.”
Ty cut his gaze away. They’d never talked about what had happened to him all those years ago. Some things just didn’t need to be said between friends. “You were just a kid yourself. And I made you swear.”
“Yeah, to an oath I have regretted keeping every day.”
Ty shrugged, his shoulders stiff. “Old news, Chuck. What does any of this have to do with Mia?”
“If there is even the slightest chance that kid is still alive, then he’s hurt and she’s got him stashed somewhere. We need to know where. We’ve got to find him before it’s too late.” Chuck put his hand on Ty’s shoulder. “I’m sorry there was no one there to pull you out of the hell you were living in. But we have a chance to pull Todd Serrat out of his hell if he’s still alive. Are you gonna walk away from that?”
Ty’s eyes burned with exhaustion and emotion. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Chuck clapped him on the back and nodded down the hall. “We’d better get a move on. We’re only going to get one shot at this.”
Ty followed Chuck toward the lockup. “Why?”
“Because she’s still in an interrogation room for now, so we can keep an eye on her through the two-way mirror. She’s being transferred in a few hours.”
“Transferred where?”
Chuck stopped to key open the door to a corridor lined with jail cells on either side ending in an unmarked door. “The mental health hospital. Family got the judge to reconsider the commitment petition based on the new evidence.”
Ty snorted. “I should’ve seen that one coming.”
Mia sat in the interrogation room fingering a scratch in the heavy varnish of the conference table in the middle of the room. Her back ached from hours of sitting here with the rungs of the chair digging into her spine, but she didn’t move, didn’t shift. She wouldn’t give whoever was watching her from the other side of the two-way mirror the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.
Bastards. They thought she’d killed her son. How could anyone think that? How could anyone accuse her of that? Every minute they wasted questioning her was a minute they weren’t out there looking for Todd. Bile rose in her throat to think about her baby out there alone, scared, hurt, or God forbid, worse. Outwardly she sat still, quiet, but inside her stomach twisted and burned.
The door opened behind her, and she angled her head just enough to see Ty slip into the room. He looked rumpled and tired and she’d never seen a more welcome sight in her life.
“Oh, thank God.” She stood up, raised her arms to him, but he stiffened and drew back.
Her arms fell uselessly to her sides. “Ty?”
He moved to the end of the conference table, sat and picked at the scratches much as she had been doing.
The wind gushed out of her and she slumped back into her chair. He laced his fingers restlessly and looked up at her. “We don’t have much time, Mia.”
“I know,” she said quietly. When he didn’t continue, she filled the silence. “You think I did it, don’t you? You said you weren’t decided before. Now you are. You think I hurt my own son.”
His jaw was harder than she remembered, even shadowed with soft blond stubble. The creases fanning out from his eyes were deeper. “I think you love your son. I don’t think you want to hurt him.”
She slapped her palms flat on the table. Hot tears burned behind her eyes. “The poor crazy lady just can’t help herself though, huh? Is that it? First I try to kill myself and now my son?”
“Look, I really do believe that you love Todd, on some level.”
“Some level?” A sick laugh gurgled in her throat.
He forged on. “And I really wish we had all the time in the world to sort out what you’re feeling—”
“Oh, please.”
“—to help you. But we don’t have time for that.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To help Todd.”
Her eyes felt too large for her face as she stared at him. “How?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, once again the professional in control. “Tell me what happened after I left the park.”
She hissed, physically pained to have to explain it again. To him. “Todd and I got in the car and I drove home. I pulled into the garage, and Todd went into the house.” She drilled a hole in him with her gaze. “He was wearing his coat. Then someone grabbed me from behind and tried to kill me—”
“How did the coat get back to the park?” he interrupted.
“I don’t know. Maybe whoever took him planted it there to put suspicion on me.”
“It’s all part of the grand conspiracy, huh? First someone is trying to kill you, and now they’re trying to frame you. Which is it?”
“I don’t know.” Her head felt too heavy for her neck. Sometimes her story sounded crazy, even to her. “Oh, God. Maybe some pedophile followed us home and snatched him.”
“I need you to think, Mia. Think about what really happened.”
“That is what really happened.”
“They’re going to take you back to the hospital in a little while, Mia. You know what it will be like there. They’ll put you on meds. This might be your last chance for a long time to talk to someone while your head is clear. If you really love Todd, you will tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Tell me where he is.”
“I don’t know where he is!”
He leaned forward, kept pressing her, rapid-fire. “Look, Mia. Whatever happened, whatever you did—”
She lurched to her feet, feeling sick, dizzy. “Son of a bitch.” She was shouting now, didn’t care. “You don’t know. You have no idea what it’s like to be a mother.”
She spun away, faced the wall. Didn’t hear him come up behind her through the clamor of her thundering pulse.
“No,” he said grimly, turning her around by her arm. “But I know something about mothers who love their sons, and yet still manage to hurt them. Look.”
He pushed his right sleeve up his arm. She tried to turn away, but he held her wrist in a grip like a vise.
“Look,” he commanded.
She remembered the scars. The crisscrossed white lines, the circles. He’d said he’d been caught in a piece of machinery as a kid.
“I don’t understand.”
“My mother loved me. I really believe she did. Does.”
Understanding dawned horribly as Mia watched the memories scroll across his face.
“That didn’t stop her from slicing me with a razor blade whenever the mood struck her. Or burning me with cigarettes or just knocking me upside the head.”
“Oh my God.” The pain he must have suffered, the torture—it was unimaginable that anyone could put a little boy through that. But that didn’t mean that she would do the same.
She eased her arm out of his grip. “I am not your mother.”
“No,” he said, meeting her gaze squarely as he let her go. “At least I survived my mother’s abuse.”
Crack!
Her palm connected with his cheek before she realized she was moving.
He hardly flinched, just drilled her with his honeyed eyes. “I believe you just made my point.”
Her fists clenched at her sides. The tears that had burned behind her eyes swelled around her eyelids. “Screw you.”
“You already did that.”
She blanched. Making love with Ty had been the only thing that felt right, that felt real about this whole week. Now that memory had turned into something ugly, too.
A knock on the door broke the strained silence between them. The deputy poked his head in and looked at Ty. “Time.”
Ty turned a sad face on her. “Last chance. Please let me help Todd, and you. Tell me where he is.”
She shook her head. Her voice broke. “I don’t know.”
As Ty shuffled out of the room with the deputy, her tears finally spilled over.
She would never hurt her son. Couldn’t. Farfetched as it sounded, someone had tried to kill her and had taken him. That was what had really happened, whether anyone believed her or not.
Chapter 16
Ty stepped out of the interrogation room just as the next door in the hall—the door to the room on the other side of Mia’s two-way mirror—opened. Karl Serrat stepped out, flanked on either side by attendants from the hospital. His face was an angry red and his lips were set in a narrow line. He stood chest to chest with Ty. “I hope you said your goodbyes.”
“I said what I needed to say to Mia.” Ty could hear Chuck shuffling his feet on the floor behind him.
“I meant at the hospital. You won’t be going back. You, Dr. Hansen, are fired. With extreme prejudice. Fired.”
Karl shouldered past and into the interrogation room while Ty stood rooted in place. He must have heard everything, he realized. Everything.
“Let’s go.” Chuck nudged him from behind. “You don’t need to see this.”
This. The Kaiser and his goons taking Mia away. Would they put her in handcuffs? Strap her to a gurney?
Ty made a beeline for the men’s room and heaved into the urinal. When his legs were almost steady again, Chuck was waiting outside the door with a cold soda. Ty followed him to the deputy’s desk and sat heavily.
Chuck leaned back in his chair and put his feet up. “You pressed her pretty hard, buddy.”
“You’re the one who made it clear a kid’s life is at stake.”
“Yeah.” Chuck lowered his gaze. “Still…”
Ty sighed. “Yeah.”
Not all of his bad attitude in the interrogation room had been about Mia or Todd, though he hated to admit it. He’d let it get personal. About him. The anger of his childhood he’d thought he’d buried long ago had seeped to the surface and mingled with the hurt feelings of his present. The sense that Mia had betrayed him somehow by making him care about her and then doing something so heinous as hurting her own son.
“Well, since it looks like your career as a psychiatrist is in the crapper, maybe I can get you on here. You’re one hell of an interrogator.”
Ty rolled his eyes over the rim of his pop can. “Not funny.”
Chuck cocked his head. “You okay?”
“Not even close.”
The deputy dropped hi
s feet back to the floor. “If your stomach is rightside up now, how about we go out and get something stronger than soda? I’m buying.”
The last thing Ty wanted was to be around a lot of noise and people. He shook his head. “I gotta go.”
“Yeah, that empty apartment of yours really needs you. Better hurry.”
Ty smiled a little at that. “I appreciate the offer, Chuck, but I need some time.”
At least a few centuries, he thought as he walked out of the sheriff’s office.
Maybe longer.
After Ty left, Chuck Campbell started in on his paperwork. Reports for this, reports for that. Reports explaining why his other reports were late. Damned if some days he didn’t feel more like a secretary than a cop. He hadn’t even made a dent in the stack of forms in his inbox when a shadow loomed over his desk.
“Deputy.” The gloomy figure looming over him greeted him sourly.
“Mr. Serrat. I thought you’d left. Is there a problem with your niece’s transfer?” Probably someone didn’t do the right paperwork, he thought sardonically.
“No. She’s been sedated and the orderlies will accompany her to the hospital. I need to speak to you about another matter, if I may.”
Chuck set down his pen. “Sure.”
Ten minutes later, he pulled a pack of spearmint gum from his breast pocket, unwrapped a piece and popped it in his mouth. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Karl Serrat stiffened on the other side of Chuck’s desk. The deputy offered the man a piece of gum, but Karl declined.
Chuck tapped the missing person’s report the doc had just finished filling out on his sister, Nana. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that two people from the same family have gone mysteriously missing in less than a week, and a third is reporting multiple murder attempts on her person?”
Chuck hadn’t thought it possible, but Karl’s back straightened even further. “You think that Nana’s disappearance and Todd’s are related?”
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