A long shadow fell across Maggie’s knees and onto the patio. “She was…” Sullivan paused, looking down at hardworking Maggie, her knees bent into her chest Oh, Lizzie, who were you? Not my mistress, not my wife. No words for what you were to me, Lizzie. He scowled. “She was…”
He saw Alicia clump her hands together, saw the puzzled tilt of Maggie’s head as she waited. He wasn’t going to make it.
“She was…” Everything. My life. My soul. “My Lizzie,” he finished through a tight throat. “My Lizzie.”
Maggie’s question bridged the awkwardness. “Did she make enemies who would have tried to get at her through Barnett?”
“Mary Elizabeth? The bombing happened after…” Alicia raised her shoulders.
“I see.” Loaded with perception, Maggie’s drawl sent shivers down Sullivan’s spine.
“Anyway, nobody could hate her even if she ticked them off. Right?” Alicia took his hand and tugged him closer.
“She wasn’t a saint.” He turned to Maggie and lifted her notebook out of her hand, inspecting the neatly written notes in her private shorthand. “Very industrious, Detective.” He shoved it back into her unresisting fingers, her untypically patient acceptance of his rudeness fueling his confused irritation. “You want to take a look at the bombing site now, or have you solved the case?”
“Sullivan…” Alicia’s warning left him unmoved as he looked down at Maggie.
Everything was mixed up in his mind, and he wanted to go home, go to the beach house where he wouldn’t have to see Maggie Webster’s rosy face half in sunlight, half in his oppressive shadow.
“You coming or not?” He shifted his weight irritably. Maybe she wouldn’t come. Maybe she and Alicia would sit and talk the afternoon away. Yeah. That would be terrific, with Alicia haying decided Maggie had passed some female test incomprehensible to men.
“Give me a second.” Maggie rose in a fluid shift of muscles and held out her hand to Alicia. “Thanks for your help.” She nodded. “Oh, before I forget. Detective Kelly’s notes indicated that none of you here at the center heard or saw anything before the explosion? Anybody who didn’t belong in the neighborhood wandering around?”
“No. We were all back in the kitchen. Lala was showing us how to make brownies. You can’t hear back there with all the noise.”
Sullivan ignored the way Alicia glowered in his direction.
“You come by the Sunshine Center anytime you want to, Maggie,” she went on.
First names. Must have been a real cozy chat, he decided.
“Thanks. I enjoyed talking with you.”
“We can always use an extra pair of hands if you have some free time to volunteer,” Alicia added with a sly smile in Sullivan’s direction.
He could have strangled her. And she knew it. Alicia was way too smart not to realize he didn’t want Maggie anywhere around the center, even if he had messed up royally by dragging her here in the first place.
“You know, I might do that. Let me think about the idea,” Maggie said, her slow stuffing of the ever-present notepad into her purse evidence that she was seriously considering the possibility.
A momentary impulse on her part. She wouldn’t follow through. He hoped. Would have prayed if he’d been a praying man.
A cosmic joke on him if she pitched camp at the Sunshine Center.
“I’ll meet you out front. If it’s all right, I’d like to slip in and say goodbye to Katie.”
“Sure.” Alicia pointed to a side door. “Right through the kitchen.”
Maggie strolled off. Her enormous shoulder bag looked ridiculous in proportion to her slight figure. Stopping at the door, she raised her arms to the sky, her spine pulled tight and elegant as she stretched. She looked like a pagan woman offering herself to the sun.
He could see her with all her pale skin burnished gold by the sun, her hair streaming around her, coming to him out of the blue gulf, shining drops sliding over her, clinging to the indentation of her navel… With a stinging, barbed pleasure, desire rocketed through him. Sullivan turned his back and dropped his arm around Alicia’s shoulders.
Staying close to him as they walked to the front, she groused, “I like her, Sullivan. She’s good people. I want her to come back.”
“I don’t. You know that.” He scowled at her. “I know Lizzie left the center to you and that was the best decision she could have made. But Maggie here, in Lizzie’s—” He turned her to face him. “Alicia, I swear, I’m going ‘round the bend.” He squeezed her shoulders. “I don’t understand what I’m doing or why. I’m a son of a gun, I know that, always have been, but with her—” he gestured with his head toward the kitchen door and gripped Alicia even more tightly “—I’ve gone beyond mean. I can’t stand being inside my own skin anymore.” He hadn’t realized he felt that way until the words burst forth. He wouldn’t have confessed his mental chaos to anyone, hadn’t ever talked about his feelings with anyone except Lizzie, but Alicia’s disapproval of his behavior made him try to explain himself.
“Sullivan, you have to get past your grief. I loved Elizabeth, too. I miss her every day, still do, but she wouldn’t…” Alicia touched his cheek lightly.
He struggled to explain. “It’s more than grief. I could get on with my life if that’s all it was.”
Her thin eyebrows rose in puzzlement.
Sullivan made a fist against his chest. “There’s this hole. Nothing fills it up. It doesn’t get smaller, it doesn’t go away. It’s just always there, this ripped-out place inside me.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked at him, pity welling into her eyes.
He labored with his thoughts, thinking that if he could make it clear to Alicia, he could then understand himself, but he couldn’t untangle the snarled tangle of his malaise after all. Shrugging, he bent and picked up a fallen poinciana blossom as they passed the tree. “Have you ever loved someone, Leesha? Loved that person until you didn’t know where you began, where you ended? That’s how it was for me with Lizzie, and now—” He stopped, words deserting him. “Now there’s nothing inside me anymore.”
He saw the front door open. Waving to someone inside, Maggie propped the door ajar with her rear end. At her thighs, the crease of her jeans tightened, drawing the denim glove-taut across the round curve of her fanny, outlining the narrow line of her bikini panties.
“I’m sorry,” Alicia repeated, the hesitation in her step telling him she, too, was fumbling her way through the discussion. “I’ve never felt that way. I don’t think, personally, I’d want to be that consumed—”
“Neither did I. Life doesn’t always give you nice, clean choices, Leesha, so bolt the door to your heart. That’s my advice.” He shredded the blossom, four scarlet petals and one yellow-white-and-pink one with red spots falling behind him on the ground in a Hansel-and-Gretel trail.
Maggie slammed the door shut with her rear end. She was balancing a white box in her hands and trying to keep her purse on her shoulder.
“But—” Alicia forged ahead, choosing her words with the delicacy of a surgeon “—if I did care about someone that way, I’d think it would be a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. And I’d hope the joy was worth the pain.”
He tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move. “Smart lady, but you don’t have a clue, Leesha. I’d like to believe that joy and pain balance out. I try. And I remember all the good times—I can’t stop remembering them—but nothing fills up this Grand Canyon Lizzie left inside me.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded as Maggie hurried to them.
He’d given something away in his quick glance toward Maggie.
“You’re attracted to her.” She also looked Maggie’s way.
“Yeah.” He watched Maggie’s quick walk, the subtle hip sway. “Not surprising. Everything’s still in working order.”
Alicia chuckled. “There’s hope, then.”
He knew she truly didn’t get it. “No. Because there’s nothing working except testosterone. And that, afte
r all’s said and done, is nothing more than a cheap thrill.” He exhaled heavily, despair weighing on his chest. “Doesn’t fill the gnawing vacuum. If it could, I’d line up for the carnival ride.”
“Take care, my friend.” Alicia kissed him briefly on the cheek. “I wish I could help.”
“Me, too.”
Thrusting the box at Sullivan, Maggie dug inside her purse and pulled out a bright green-and-violet scarf before resettling her purse on her narrow shoulder. “Does Ms. Lala send everyone home with a box of cookies and peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches?” As Maggie talked, she twirled the scarf, reducing it to a narrow coil. Her fingers were quick and talented, moving smoothly over the material as she pulled her hair back and under the control of the scarf.
“No. This is a first.”
Leesha didn’t have to stare at him so pointedly. So Lala wasn’t usually friendly. So?
“Goodbye, Alicia.” He let his formality carry his message as he trudged to Maggie’s sedate dark blue chariot.
“See you soon?” Leesha wasn’t any more daunted than Maggie had been.
“Soon. Bye.” He slammed Maggie’s car door after putting the food offering on the back seat.
“See y’all around.” Cheerfully waggling her fingers Alicia hurried into the center.
Sullivan took Maggie’s arm to hurry her across the street. The sooner they were through, the sooner he could rid himself of her. He dropped the smooth knob of her elbow right after his fingers, with a life of their own, molded themselves to the delicate curve, his thumb on the tender inside of her arm, Chinese silk to his callused grip. “Sorry,” he muttered, scarcely knowing what he was apologizing for.
The fact that he’d taken her arm? His mulish self? The slip of his thumb against her skin?
“Where was your car?” She looked up and down the block, her gaze halting where the street intersected with a four-lane road. “Down there?”
“You’re standing where my car was parked. When it blew up.” He stepped upon the curb beside her. They both looked across at the Sunshine Center.
“Here?” She crouched to examine the old brick road. “I hadn’t realized…” Rubbing the scorched edge of a brick with her toe, she frowned and then looked back at the center. “So close,” she murmured, and leaned nearer to the bricks.
Sullivan no longer noticed the charred marks. Forced to look at them now with Maggie, he was surprised by the extent of the stain. A strand of Maggie’s glossy hair, freed from the scarf, caught on the rough red brick, its shine bright and alive against the scorched and worn roadway.
“Where were you?”
“At the curb.” He’d been about to open the car door. He’d turned to watch Katie swoop high on a swing in the playground. He’d taken a step toward her. Several. He’d been about to tell her to … to be careful. He’d forgotten that he’d turned to speak to Katie. Those steps had saved his life.
The bomb had been meant for him. Should have blasted him to kingdom come and back. He couldn’t thank little Katie for calling to him at the wrong minute.
“The bomb-and-arson guys indicated it was a remote-controlled device.”
“Yeah.” Someone had been too eager.
Maggie walked around the area, reaching into her purse for a metal measuring tape. “Hold this end, please.”
He did. The metal ribbon quivered between them, a tangible connection. “Kelly went over all of this.”
“I know,” she repeated patiently, caught up in her task. “I like to do my own work.”
“Excuse me. Of course you do.” He dropped the tape as she pushed the return button. The tape clattered against the bricks.
“Do you think someone was trying to warn you off the story you were working on, or do your instincts indicate that he was trying to kill you?”
Kelly hadn’t asked that question. Thinking of the snakeskin boots beside his head that night, Sullivan stalled. “He?”
“Or she. Whoever. Out of all the thousands who’d like to see you silenced.” Maggie’s cheeky grin packed so much magic it would have alchemized steel into gold.
“Either way, what difference does it make?”
Shoulders hunched up around her ears, she pushed her tape measure back into her purse and retrieved her notepad, clicking the pen. “Don’t know. None, probably. But it could tell us something about the person who set the explosive. Or ordered it set. Motive, opportunity. Personality. One type of personality delivers a warning, another goes for the kill. I’d like to know which we’re dealing with.”
“Someone stood there laughing, that’s about all I remember. In those double-damned snakeskin boots.”
“Boots?” She flipped her pages back and forth, searching, not finding the information. “Boots?” she repeated, her nose wrinkled in frustration. “Did I miss something?” She rummaged through her pages again.
“I don’t know.” But he did. He’d told Kelly about the boots. Kelly had nodded and scribbled on his notepad.
Reflecting, she clicked her pen several times, her intelligent face meditative as she sorted through her information. “There was nothing in the report I saw about anyone coming up to you after the explosion.”
“Someone did,” he said, letting her digest that information. Satisfaction curled in him. Either she was faking her bewilderment, or Kelly hadn’t included that fact in his report. Before she could ask, he volunteered, “And no, I didn’t recognize the boots. And no, I don’t know if anyone found boot prints and made casts. If no boots were mentioned in the report. I’d reckon the county sheriff’s department didn’t make any casts?”
She shook her head, rubbing her nose with the end of her notebook. “No. Nobody ordered ground casts. But they should have been taken anyway,” she acknowledged under her breath. “Kelly’s report indicated some residue and metal fragments were shipped off to the state crime lab, but the follow-up report only confirmed that it was a radio-controlled, not an ignition device.”
“Well. Doesn’t matter. A hundred and one ways to finagle bombing supplies. Black market, renegade ex-military missing the adrenaline of action.” He’d loved that part of being in the navy, the rush. But he was older now and he’d seen too much destruction. “Law-enforcement people.”
Over the notepad, Maggie’s gaze never faltered. She didn’t even blink. Loyal, ignorant or deviously crooked. He couldn’t make up his mind about big-eyed Maggie, with her soft mouth and on-the-edge vulnerability. Part of him wanted her to be as crooked as a corkscrew. She was too bright to be ignorant about the shenanigans going on around her.
But part of him stubbornly insisted on seeing her as foolishly loyal.
Sullivan rubbed his eyes. Her cool disregard of his last statement didn’t do anything to reassure him. Should he take her with him to meet his source? He didn’t want to drag her out to the river. He’d already miscalculated when he’d insisted she come with him to the center. The less time he spent around her, the better. For him. For her.
He couldn’t have foreseen the way she’d affect him. He understood that. Couldn’t have predicted that she and Alicia would become sisters under the skin. He rubbed his burning eyes again. “I don’t care.”
Her damned pen went clickety-clickety again. She had stopped and was staring at the center.
Contemplating the gate and playground, Maggie said, “You loved her very much.”
Sullivan stopped in the middle of the street, knowing he was staring at her as if he’d lost the power of speech and thought. She stepped up onto the curb near the driveway and faced him. Her face still below his was serious and reflective, the tough facade absent. Green-and-purple scarf ends lay against the side of her neck, silk against silk.
Or maybe acetate against silk. Or nylon. Sullivan concentrated on the fluttering fabric. He didn’t want to talk about Lizzie with Maggie Webster.
Reaching out, he drew the scarf between his fingers. Slippery smooth like her hair, her skin. Fixing his attention on the rolled edge of the fabric, he brus
hed the sliver of material across her ear. Her mouth softened.
But she was still speaking. And he could still hear her question.
“Mary Elizabeth O’Connell. Your Lizzie. You loved her.” Husky and warm and velvety. And relentless, that voice with honey running through it.
He let the ends of the scarf slip away. They lifted in the slight breeze for a moment and then lay in a long parenthesis against her neck once more.
“Yes. I love her.”
Her pen rattled against the curb.
“Love. Loved.” He released the syllables. While she solved her case, Maggie was going to carve her pound of flesh from him.
Picking up her pen and rolling it between her palms, she didn’t look at him as she said, “Past tense. It’s like crossing out someone’s name from your address file, isn’t it? Nothing changes until you erase the name.”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“None to me. It makes a difference to you, though. It’s why you don’t lock your beach house. It explains why you don’t care who set off the bomb in your car. Why you don’t give a damn about the letters someone’s sending you.”
“Bull.” He stalked to his motorcycle.
Her small, capable fist caught the edge of his T-shirt and wrapped itself in the fabric.
He pivoted, pebbles scattering like shot with his abrupt turn. “I don’t need your analysis, Detective, and I don’t want your ‘detecting.’ Now let go.”
Her face was flushed with fury. “You asked me last night how I’d felt when I was shot. You wanted to know if I felt anything when I flatlined? When I was clinically dead?”
He couldn’t move. The light pressure of her knuckles against his bare ribs wouldn’t have stayed him for a nanosecond, but her words, oh, they held him in his tracks.
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Barnett. Flatlining is nothing. That’s what it felt like. Nothing. I felt nothing. I knew nothing. I was shot, I collapsed to the floor. If I died—and my doctor told me I did—death is an ending, a beginning. I don’t know. Just … nothing.” She gripped his shirt tighter, rising up on her tiptoes.
“Stop,” Sullivan said, her words bringing torment he hadn’t expected.
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