by Terese Ramin
“Well, he… Oh, don’t,” she moaned when a particularly electric sensation whipped through her. “You don’t have any more time—we don’t have time. You have to get back to work. So do I. Come home tonight for this.”
He slid a hand beneath her uniform and up her bare hip. “Hard to concentrate while you’re not wearin’ anything under here.”
“You have a one-track mind.” She slapped his hand away, yanked herself out from under his arm, and he laughed.
“You’re the one who said communicate.”
She snorted, unlocked the office door and headed downstairs toward the group of minilockers where the employees stored personal belongings. “My mistake.”
“Where’re you going?” Russ followed her.
“Clearly, if you’re going to hear what I have to tell you, I’d better put my panties on. They’re in my purse.”
“Hmm. Interesting. I’ll have to remember that for future traffic stops. So what kind are they? Silk thong? Crotchless? Lace? Something I should inspect before you wear it to work?”
Poised in front of her locker, Janina stared over her shoulder at him, mouth agape. “What? Are you out of your mind? Thongs are like dental floss for regular wear as far as I’m concerned. And crotchless? I don’t even want to know where that’s comin’ from. Go back to not communicating, would you please.” She turned and gave him a full-force hands-on-hips glare. “And FYI? For work I wear industrial-grade cotton, nothing sexy.”
“There’s nothing you could possibly put on that I wouldn’t want to strip off of you,” Russ assured her wickedly.
With a wink.
Torn between laughter and disbelief, Janina fish-mouthed him for an instant. “What has gotten into you?”
“You.” He reconsidered that. “Well, no, actually, that would be the other way around, wouldn’t it?”
Mirth sputtered out, refusing to be contained. “That’s it,” she said. “You’re outta here. Go sit with Jonah and behave. He can tell youBuddy. So can Maddie. Meantime, I’m going to clean up—alone. Without help from you. And then I’ll bring food. Maybe that’ll fix your brain.”
“Probably won’t,” Russ said tragically. “Might sidetrack it momentarily, but not much gonna fix it now I’ve gotten a taste of you.”
Glowing inside, Janina shoved him toward the front of the restaurant. “You are so full of it.”
He gave her soulful, pathetic. Hang dog. “It’s true.”
She held her course, but her heart fell for it hook, line and sinker. “Out.”
“Can I at least stay and watch you put on your panties?”
He was impossible. She had to laugh. “No. Now go. Out!”
Swinging doors finally between her and him, she sagged against the wall, exhausted. “Geez Louise.” And started a second later when his face appeared in the small window in the nearest door. He grinned at her, waggled his eyebrows and left.
And he was the serious one of the brothers. The one who’d been unable to even speak to her two and a half weeks ago.
She put a hand to her head and shuddered. Even when she had the upper ground—for half a second—he was a handful. His mother must have spent their formative years wanting to kill him and his brothers one and all.
Especially him.
Good God, what had she gotten herself into?
Clearly more than she’d bargained on.
Ah well. She grinned slowly to herself. At least it wasn’t more than she was willing to learn to handle.
So far.
Humming the melody to Uwe Fahrenkrog Petersen’s “Insanity Is Relative,” Janina went to sort herself out, touch herself up—and fix her husband the first meal she’d be able to personally prepare for him since they’d married.
In complex times, it was the simple moments that got you through.
“Wha’d’you mean, Buddy Carmichael might have some sense of where Charlie’s buried himself and Jess?” Russ snapped at Jonah not ten minutes later. Roller coaster didn’t begin to describe the ride his insides were taking at the moment. When his brother rolled his eyes left and didn’t respond immediately to his question, he snarled, “Maddie,” and straight-armed himself out of the booth. Two long strides put him in the way of her delivering an order to a tableful of Janina’s customers. She looked into his face and nearly dropped the plates she juggled. He caught the most endangered ones.
“These go here?” he asked evenly, motioning his head at the table nearest them without taking his eyes off her.
She worked her jaw around something that resembled a wordless affirmative.
“Good.” He put the plates down, relieved her of the remainder, set those down, too, said, “Eat hearty, folks, enjoy your food,” and grabbed her upper arm to propel heronah’s booth.
“I didn’t know then for sure, Russ, I would’ve said,” she protested weakly. “For your own sake, keep your voice down.”
“I don’t think so.” He swung her to face him, amazed and terrified to find himself shaking. She was afraid, he got that, but he had too much to lose now. And whether he wanted to protect her or not. She had to put herself on the line to help him do it. He sure as hell wouldn’t put Janie there, not for history, not for Maddie, not for anyone.
“Don’t lie to me this time, Maddie. I can’t do that with you anymore. This is my wife in it now. Buddy’s her ex. His contacts run deep, but he’s wrong. And if he’s been mixed up with Charlie, ever, he’s more wrong than I knew. So if there’s anything, anything between him and Charlie or you, and you know it or remember it, tell me now. And you tell me exactly what Charlie said to you during that phone call. And I mean exactly. No quibbles, you got me?”
“Russ.” Jonah left the booth. “Soften it.”
Russ’s attention shifted half a click and settled.
“No,” Maddie said quickly, grabbing Jonah’s wrist, sliding into the booth and dragging him in behind her before Russ could get to whatever it was that was running through his head. “He’s right, Jones. Buddy’s got more to do with Charlie. More than I said. More…” She swallowed, eyed Russ. Shivered. “More.”
He sat heavily. “How much did you girl-talk to Janie?”
“Some.” Small voice. Her body shrank toward the window, away from Jonah, away from what she didn’t want to say. To admit.
To own.
“I couldn’t tell her what I didn’t tell you, could I?” she whispered. “You’re my best friend. But I gave her more than I did you, maybe.” She ducked a frightened, apologetic look at him. “Girls, you know, getting to know each other? My best friend’s new wife? She’s good people, Russ. But because of you, she didn’t like me. Means I gotta get to know her, have her like me, right? Let me in?”
She swallowed, hugged herself together. “But I couldn’t tell her what I was afraid to tell you. Couldn’t do that to her. Didn’t seem right. Fair. And I couldn’t tell her what I haven’t told Jess either.”
She folded into herself. “And not what I wanted to hide from myself.”
Smoke soiled the air with a thick, ash-filled haze, making it hard to breathe.
Wired to the gills, Charlie Thorn finished soaking down their shelter with the last of the ready water and sent a glance west toward the crackle of approaching wind and fire. They’d have to move soon, and he didn’t know where. He’d expected contact by now, expected to hear somethin’, but either that boy was stupider than he thought or Maddie hadn’t done what he’d told her to, not even for her friend.
Between the migraines, the dry mouth and the tinnitus, things were gett’ real bad again, and his prescriptions were running low. He’d been tryin’ to stretch ’em best he could, ’specially the headache pills, but he’d have to fill his other meds if he didn’t want to run the risk of psychosis. Doc had made sure he understood that. Made him read the little pamphlet on it and everything. And he understood, least he did for now. Turn a man outside himself he didn’t stay on his pills.
Turn him back worse’n what he was befor
e he went on ’em. Pretty damn foolish, but there it was.
He turned at the clink of chain and a dry-voiced croak from the entry of the shelter.
“Mr. Thorn?”
Maddie’s friend. Jess. He’d finally gotten that much out of her. She looked thin, hollow-eyed, bruised. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t. Some women just got to looking that way when they didn’t sleep and wouldn’t—or couldn’t—eat under stress. Did things to their skin. She was apparently one of them.
He nodded at her to indicate he’d heard. His mouth was too dry from taking in smoke and floating ash to allow him to speak without stuttering incomprehensibly.
“We can—can’t—” She stopped and cast a frightened but fleeting look at the swaying treetops, swallowed painfully and tried again, obviously more terrified of the rising wind and what it carried toward them than of him. “We can’t s-stay here. The f-fire…I—I don’t…I c-can’t… Please. No one’s coming and I’m afraid of fire. Please.”
He took a step toward her, held out his hands, palms down but fingers spread wide in an attempt to calm her. Inside his gut he understood this fire, this wind. The air was thick, but they were all right here a bit longer.
Long enough, he hoped. But he had to give them— Maddie—more time. He understood if she was scared, but she’d come to it, work it out. It was taking time, that was all. And when Maddie figured it out, she had to be able to figure out where to find them.
The way his tattered mind saw it, redemption had to be earned where hell had first been meted out.
Still unable to word what he had to say, he took another step toward Jess, and another. A fourth and a fifth.
The sixth step was the mistake.
He was in range by the fifth, but she faltered and waited out the extra beat to make sure, gathering courage with the chain she’d finally managed to unscrew from the floor. When she swung, she threw the force of surprise and all her weight behind it, hurled at him her passion to keep Maddie safe and her own desire to escape, the time she’d spent hating him for the havoc he’d wreaked on his own daughter and for the trust it was clear Maddie still hadn’t given over because of him.
And she did it finally with the patience and skill born of the years of training in self-defense that had deserted her in her claustrophobic panic the night he’d been able to pick her up and render her comatose too easily.
When he was bruised, bleeding and unconscious on the ground, she didn’t stop to see if she had time to get rid of the chain. She picked up her feet and ran.
Chapter 11
Russ dragged a heavy chair moaning and squeaking out from the interrogation-room table and dropped down beside Janina, opposite Maddie. “Spill it, Madelyn,” he said flatly.
He’d packed her up before she could say another word at the Fat Cat. Packed up a shocked and initially somewhat ticked Janina, too, leaving the Fat Cat short on waitresses—and Jonah to explain what he could to Tobi—and hied them off to the comparative quiet and privacy of the department for the details.
“What’s Buddy got to do with it? And where’s Charlie got Jess? If you know, tell me. We go get her, bring her back. Keep it simple.”
God, all he wanted to do was settle down with Janina, put his—their, damn it—house together, figure it out from there. But it all kept coming back to here. Then. The things that time would not let go of.
How could you possibly move forward if somebody else’s history insisted on shoving you back?
Your history, too, memory whispered. You were there. Janina was there. Your history, too.
In truth, it was where he and Janina had begun. And long before that, by the look on Maddie’s face.
“Russ.” Janina touched his arm, drawing his attention. “I still don’t quite follow,” she said quietly when he finally turned to her. Looking at her made it difficult to concentrate on everything else he was supposed to focus on. She was the center of his universe and that’s what he wanted to let her be. And right now he couldn’t.
Damn it.
“Maddie remembered Buddy. And his father. I remembered, too, when we talked about it. Oh, not Buddy, or I’d never have…” She swallowed, looked away embarrassed. If she’d ever noticed Buddy stopping over at the Thorns’ she’d have run the other direction, fast.
“Janie.” Russ caught her chin. “Look at me. Listen to me. It doesn’t matter. It. Doesn’t. Matter. Buddy’s nothin’. We start counting the stupid things I’ve done? We’d need a Dumpster to file ’em.”
“This is true,” Maddie chimed in tiredly but determinedly, reaching across the table to pat Janina’s hand. “And we could start with how long it took him to get to you.”
“Not finished with you,” Russ snapped, “so butt out.”
“Better,” Maddie returned with asperity, “why don’t I leave, you can do this in private, call me back when you’re through.”
“Your timing always did suck,” Russ said pointedly.
“No more than yours—”
“Children!” Janina slapped the table and pushed herself erect, no longer a fragile piece of her past but a present force, a fury to be reckoned with. “No more squabbling.” She swung on her husband, p with a look. “If you can’t stay on target due to circumstances you’re too close to, get somebody in here who can. Jess’s getting farther away from you, Charlie’s not getting any closer, and I’m wearing your ring but sleeping alone at night.” She leaned into his face, made sure he got the message. “Which is not fun, since I know what you’re capable of. So alone, dreaming about you? Not even close.”
She swung around, out of his face, breathing hard. “And you!” Maddie’s turn for the skewer. “Suck it up, put some courage behind it and tell the man—your best friend, as you keep telling everybody, damn it—what he should be and needs to be trusted with—what the hell he needs to know to get his job done to find the person you say lights the sun for you, so I can have my husband to myself and get this marriage on the road, because we haven’t even actually had a first date. As in him asking me out or vice versa, and the things we don’t know about each other would fill—” she hunted for an adequate analogy “—months or even years of daily soap opera episodes focused mainly on us. And I am tired of the not knowing. Especially him. Because there’s stuff he thinks is gonna happen that—” her voice broke “—won’t, and can’t and he needs to know that.”
She turned away to collect herself.
Worried…confused…completely befuddled, Russ started to reach for her, but she slapped him away.
Cleared her throat.
Came back strong.
“So all things considered? The two of you? Get. Finished. With. It.”
And with that she gathered up her dignity with her purse, sent her chair skidding recklessly and noisily away from the table and slammed out of the room.
Leaving Russ and Maddie to first stare after her, stupefied, and then, somewhat self-consciously, at each other. Russ winced, shoved out of his chair.
“Damn. I need to…I should…”
Maddie grimaced, shook her head. “Not yet. Experience says wait, I promise.”
He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to do this. He wanted to be out there, chasing Janina, doing whatever it took to make it good.
Even if that meant fighting with her. He could do that.
He swallowed and headed for the door anyway. Wrong way, right way or some way down the middle and bullin’ through like the proverbial beast in the china shop, he was going after Janina.
“Damn it,” Maddie interrupted painfully. “Russ, we need to do this, like Janie said, all right?”
He stopped. Turned around. Studied her.
Gave the door a last long look, sighed and cursed. She was right. He had to stay and do this. Like it or not, his job, the responsibility he still felt toward Maddie, and therefore by proxy to Jess that consequently couldn’t be handed over to a third party for wrap up, took priority over everything else at the moment.
; Everything.“She’s waited this long,” Maddie said softly, wisely—deliberately. “She’ll give you a few days longer.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her then, really looked, without letting himself offer up the automatic excuses his psyche always seemed hell-bent on finding for her. And it all crystallized in front of him in that moment.
Who she was. Who he was. Who they were. Victim and rescuer. Sparring partners.
And, occasionally, addict and enabler.
But who was which in that last was oftentimes more than a little bit up for grabs: him as the control freak-sometime-adrenaline junkie and her as the one who handed him the rush and the reins, or her as the lost soul-psychic-pain devotee and him as the one who wouldn’t let her go, kept scraping her up, patching her together, preventing her from finding her whole self on her own.
She’d been injured yes, horribly. Scarred visibly and in some places invisibly beyond repair. She’d fought back, made a life—created a life—for herself, one whose finding he’d aided and abetted.
She’d also found love, discovered happiness, but it hadn’t kept her from seeking his protection the instant things went wrong.
Or prevented him from offering it. Because he liked taking care of things, people—women. Making sure they were safe, well, happy.
Liked being needed.
Liked being the only one capable of handling situations for certain people, especially—as Jonah put it—his women.
Maddie.
Janina.
There were undoubtedly other women he took care of, too. Elderly or older women alone in town or around it, abused women of all ages, and all those other female creatures-in-jeopardy he’d somehow communed with and understood then rescued throughout his life. He was big. He had a gift.
He could beat things into submission. Make things go away and leave the women—and children, couldn’t forget them!—alone.
Some things anyway. And maybe even most things, or at least the bad things, the things that needed to be sent packing.