Code Name: Willow

by Paula Graves

  She nodded. "We don't have the staff or resources for any kind of artificial hierarchy. And I love helping kids get their lives under control and start thinking about a real future. There's so much hopelessness out there. It eats kids alive." She shifted, her knee brushing against his thigh and settling there with light, warm pressure.

  He cleared his throat. "When did Remy witness the murder that set all of this off?"

  "Late February. On his way home from the center. He said he saw a cop knock a guy down and shoot him in the head."

  Jack frowned. "How does Remy know it was a policeman?"

  "He'd seen him around the neighborhood before. A narcotics detective named Mark Blevins. Blevins denies shooting anyone. And nobody's found a body matching Remy's description."

  "Could Remy be mistaken about what he saw?"

  "I considered that," Maggie admitted. "But Remy has no reason to make up such a story. I know two policemen harassing him—I witnessed that myself. They were browbeating him, trying to make him admit he was lying, scaring him to death."

  "That's not an uncommon interrogation procedure."

  "He's just a kid."

  "A kid with a rap sheet. Right?"

  She looked down at her hands. "His records are sealed, but yeah, I'm pretty sure he has a record." She looked up at Jack again. "He's a good kid, Jack. Really, he is. He just needs someone to believe in him."

  "And that's you?" He couldn't hide a hint of disbelief.

  She lifted her chin. "Yeah. That's me."

  Jack looked out the window at the rain, letting everything she'd told him sink in. "Earlier, you said you talked to the D.A. What did Remy tell him?"

  Her eyes narrowed. "He told him exactly what he saw."

  "Which was?"

  "Mark Blevins shooting another man, execution style."

  She sounded like a TV cop, he thought. Spouting out the words from a script with no idea what they really meant. "Execution style?"

  Her lips pressed to a tight line. "He shot the man in the back of the head. Isn't that execution style?"

  "So they say," he murmured. "How did the D.A.'s react?"

  She bristled visibly. "Much like you did, actually. Disbelief. Irritation at being bothered."

  He ignored the accusing tone in her voice. "Did the D.A. say he'd look into the allegation?"

  "Yes. But he never got back to us."

  "Did you follow up?"

  "More than once. In fact, I called his office three days ago to see if he'd provide Remy some protection, but his assistant practically laughed in my face. She said everyone's already stretched thin since Milton Berry's murder."

  No doubt; the unsolved murder of a controversial mayoral candidate in the middle of an election campaign had a way of putting a city on edge. The Milton Berry murder had prompted more than one call to Jack's business from local politicians wanting to beef up their own security. "What happened when the D.A. refused to provide protection?"

  "The Bakers couldn't come up with enough money to pay for private security, so Remy just tried to stay low."

  "The Bakers are Remy's foster family?"

  "Yes."

  "How long has Remy been with them?" Jack asked.

  "Almost a year. They were good people. They planned to push for long-term status. Foster homes are generally temporary placements for children, but Remy's family situation shows no signs of improving, and the Bakers knew that. Adoption's out of the question, at least for now, but they were willing to provide a home for Remy at least until his eighteenth birthday." Maggie shifted again, her knee digging into his thigh. The pressure against his leg felt good.

  Too good. Too dangerous.

  He shifted away from her, unnerved by how easily she was getting under his skin without really trying. "Remy said that the Bakers were killed this afternoon?"

  Maggie's fingers played with the hem of her t-shirt. "I think it's likely."

  "You think."

  She opened her mouth to reply, but before she uttered a word, a high-pitched wail erupted from the back of the house. Maggie's body jerked and she pushed to her feet. "Remy!"

  Jack followed, his heart racing.

  Chapter 3

  Maggie followed the sound of Remy's cry, her heart pounding. She found him tangled in the bedclothes of a fold-out sofa, eyes shut and body twitching. "No! Get away from them!"

  She sat and touched his shoulder. "Remy, wake up."

  His twitching became thrashing. One arm whipped out to connect solidly with her mouth, knocking her off balance. Stifling a cry of pain, she fell off the side of the bed.

  "Maggie!" Jack crouched beside her.

  "I'm okay." Her mouth hurt like hell, but she couldn't let Remy know. She let Jack help her up and started to move toward Remy, but Jack put himself between her and the boy.

  "You're bleeding." Jack touched her lip, making her wince. His fingers brushed slowly over her jaw and down the side of her neck, leaving a trail of fire behind.

  "I'm fine." She tamped down her reaction and went to Remy.

  The boy was awake now, eyes wide with fear. "Doc?"

  "It's okay. Just a bad dream." She reached out to soothe him, but he ducked from her touch. Jack squeezed her shoulder, a nod of his head telling her to move and let him try.

  She traded places with Jack and he sat, his body angled away from Remy. Maintaining a manly distance, she noted with amusement. "Worst nightmare I ever had was after a double pepperoni pizza," he told Remy with a grin. "Dreamed librarians armed with machetes were chasing me through a maze."

  "Librarians?" Maggie asked.

  Jack's eyes crinkled at the corners. "I had overdue books."

  Remy chuckled. "Man, I could see Mrs. Carpelli with a machete—she don't put up with no sh—"

  "Remy," Maggie warned.

  "—stuff," he compromised with a grin.

  "What did you dream about?" Maggie asked.

  The boy's grin faded. "I don't remember."

  "Was it about the Bakers?" Jack asked.

  Remy looked stricken. "I don't know. Maybe." His mouth pinched into a tight line to hide his trembling lower lip.

  "You're safe here, Remy." Jack's voice was. "Only Maggie and I know where you are, and we're not telling."

  Remy looked at Maggie. His eyes widened in horror. "Oh, God, Doc—you're bleedin'! Did I do that?"

  She blotted her lip. "No harm, Remy. Just an accident."

  He reached down to straighten the tangled sheets. "I'm okay now," he huffed. "Y'all don't have to baby-sit me."

  "Okay. Get some sleep." Jack cupped Maggie's elbow, drawing her with him out of the room to the bathroom down the hall. "Let's take a look at that lip." Jack patted the sink counter, indicating that Maggie should sit there. Maggie pulled herself up onto the counter, letting her bare feet dangle down.

  Like a kid, she thought.

  Jack's lips curved as he wrung out a wet washcloth. "This reminds me of that time one of the Kennedy cousins dumped you."

  She flushed with consternation. "You remember that?"

  "You puked all over me in the car." His nose wrinkled.

  "I did eight tequila shooters." Humiliation niggled at her.

  "Twelve. And a chaser of mescal. You ate the worm."

  Her stomach rolled at the memory.

  "Then you fell out of the car and smashed the hell out of your mouth. I was afraid you'd loosened a tooth."

  And he'd scooped her up, taken her inside and tended to her wounds. It was one of her few clear memories of that night—Jack, shirt sleeves rolled up, cleaning her mouth as she cried.

  That, and her drunken attempt to lure him into her bed.

  He'd declined, more gently than she'd deserved.

  Jack tipped her chin with two fingers to get a better look at her lip. "This will be nice and puffy in the morning."

  Maggie's heart rate doubled at the touch. This is crazy, she thought, fighting the tremors rattling up her spine. She was a grown woman with a whole lot of liv
ing between her and the love-smitten little fool who'd fallen for Jack Bennett.

  Anxiety rolling through her, she lifted her fingers to her throat, feeling for her necklace. Her fingers found the shape of the ring beneath her shirt and some of her tension eased.

  But not the hot curl of desire building low in her belly.

  "I see some things haven't changed," he murmured.

  His words startled her, a flush of mortification spreading over her neck and cheeks as she imagined for a moment that he'd read her thoughts. Then he covered her hand with his, tracing the outline of the ring with his fingertip.

  She released a shaky breath and dropped her hand away from the ring. In his eyes she saw the same question she'd seen ten years ago when he first caught her fiddling with the ring.

  He'd never asked then. He didn't ask now, instead dabbing at her lip with the washcloth. "Does he have nightmares often?"

  "I don't know," she admitted, glad for the distraction. "We've never discussed it in his sessions, and his foster parents never mentioned it."

  "Nightmares might mean post-traumatic stress disorder."

  "You think he's having flashbacks of something while he's awake and just thought he saw something that didn't really happen?" She quirked her eyebrows. "He knows what he saw. I don't think he be that sure if it were a flashback."

  Cupping her jaw in his palm, Jack touched the wet rag to her lip again. She winced, eliciting a grimace of sympathy from him. "Sorry." He dabbed away the rest of the blood, applied a cool salve to the wound and stepped back.

  "Thanks." She slid from the counter and slipped past him into the hallway. "I should go back to bed—"

  "Wait." He caught her hand, moving so close his warmth enveloped her. She barely resisted the urge to lean into the shelter of his body. "Before Remy's nightmare, we were talking about the Bakers." Jack kept his voice low. "Why does Remy think they're dead? Did you find their bodies?"

  She pulled her hand from his. "No, nothing like that." She glanced down the hall toward the room where Remy was sleeping, worried that he might overhear. She nodded toward the living room. "Let's talk in there."

  In the living room, she went to the window, staring out at rain slick streets made shiny by the glow of streetlamps. To her relief, Jack dropped onto the love seat rather than joining her at the window. She kept her back to him, feeling more in control when she wasn't looking at him. "Remy had sneaked into the house through his bedroom window because he was late and wanted to avoid a confrontation," she began.

  Hearing noises downstairs, he'd sneaked down to find three men, including one he recognized as a policeman, crouched beside the rolled-up living room rug, cleaning up what looked like blood on the floor. He'd sneaked back out his bedroom window and ran all the way to the youth center. "He wanted me to go back with him to the house, because he was sure someone had killed the Bakers." No need to tell Jack what a ruckus Remy had caused. It would only complicate matters. "But when I arrived, I didn't see any blood. The place was spotless."

  "And the Bakers?" Jack asked.

  She stared through the window at the street beyond. At one a.m., the neighborhood slept. It would be easy to believe she, Jack and Remy were the only people left on earth.

  Right now, she almost wished they were.

  "They weren't there," she answered. "Neither was the living room rug. The floor was bare. No sign of blood, everything in place." She shuddered. "That's when I knew Remy was telling the truth. Mrs. Baker is a wonderful woman, but she's no neat freak. I've never been to her house when it didn't look lived in—until this afternoon."

  "Why didn't you call the police at that point?" he asked.

  "We heard noises outside. When we looked out the back window, we saw men in the back yard. Policemen. I recognized one of them from an incident with Remy a few days ago."

  "Did they see you?"

  "Remy and I didn't wait to find out. I drove him back to the center. I was going to call the D.A. and ask for help. But when we got to the center, the police were already there."

  "Why?"

  "Remy had raised a fuss when he got there. Someone called them. When I saw the police, I panicked. All I could think about was that perfectly clean house." She shuddered. "I think Remy's right. I think cops murdered the Bakers."

  Jack fell silent. Maggie glanced up and found him standing a few feet away, his expression unreadable. "Have you called the Bakers to see if they're home now?" he asked.

  "I called on one of the stops we made on our way out of Louisiana." Maggie closed her eyes, bone weary. "I got a recording telling me the phone was temporarily

  disconnected."

  Jack's warmth enveloped her. "You should be in bed."

  She managed a nod. "You, too."

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and the air between them grew instantly charged again. He stepped back, snapping the tension. She tried not to feel disappointed.

  "Things will make more sense in the morning," he said.

  But he was wrong, Maggie thought. Morning would bring more questions than answers.

  The sound of a door closing stirred Maggie from a light doze. Opening her eyes, she found herself on the ancient green shantung sofa in the living room of the Bakers' house in New Orleans. The hardwood floor at her feet was bare of rugs, just as it had been the day Remy came to her for help.

  As Maggie gazed at the oak floor, a rivulet of deep red trickled from beneath the sofa and spread into a shallow pool.

  Blood.

  "Behind—" Remy's voice came from her left, low and choked. She tore her gaze from the seeping blood and found him standing a few feet away, his face ashen.

  Maggie scrambled up, careful not to step in the blood. Remy was already tugging at the arm of the sofa, trying to pull it away from the wall. Maggie lent her strength, and the sofa slid a couple of feet forward.

  Pressed behind the wall, tangled in an obscene embrace, lay the bloody bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Baker.

  Heart pounding, Maggie knelt and pressed her fingers against Mrs. Baker's neck, looking for a pulse. Blood soaked through Maggie's jeans, warm and sticky on her skin.

  Suddenly, the woman's eyes opened. Her pupils were tiny black pinpricks in her bright blue irises. One bloody hand grabbed Maggie's forearm, fingers tight and crushing.

  "Take care," Mrs. Baker said.

  Maggie cried out, flinging herself backwards. Her head banged against the wall behind her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, tears of pain and fear spilling down her cheeks. Her heart pounded a terrified cadence against her breast.

  When she opened her eyes, watery sunlight greeted her, trickling through the narrow space between the window curtains. She peered around the shadowed room, her mind struggling to catch up with her body.

  Definitely not the Bakers' living room. And nothing like her small, bright loft apartment in the French Quarter. Hunter green drapes hung straight and workmanlike over the casement windows. A green thermal blanket covered the crisp white bed sheets wrapped around her lower body. The bureau by the bed matched the simple walnut bed frame—basic square headboard and footboard, no posts, no detailing, a far cry from her antique iron bed at home with the original white paint sandblasted away to display a gunmetal gray sheen.

  Memory clicked in. She'd spent the night in Jack Bennett's spare bedroom.

  She relieved her full bladder in the adjacent bathroom and headed to the den to see if Remy was awake yet. She found the sofa bed neatly folded up, the bedclothes out of sight. From the kitchen came the muted clatter of bowls and cutlery; Jack must have already roused the boy for breakfast.

  Maggie's stomach rumbled, but she ignored it, tempted by the treadmill next to the window. She'd run track in school; long distance, sprints—she'd loved them all, loved the feel of wind in her face, the metronomic cadence of one foot in front of the other, echoed by the hammer blows of her heart pumping. She never felt more alive than when she was running.

  Running helped her find her center, her focus,
to face the day. And right now, she needed that feeling more than she needed her next breath.

  She hopped on the treadmill, fiddling with the controls until she found a speed that felt right. She set a quick pace, closing her eyes as she visualized her daily jog through the narrow streets near her loft, imagining the sights and sounds and smells of New Orleans coming awake. Tension ebbed from her, flowed out through her racing feet and pumping lungs. Everything around her faded into nothing but muscle and bone and blood coursing through her body.

  "Still running, I see."

  Jack's voice jarred her out of rhythm, and she had to grab the rails of the treadmill to keep from falling off. She turned the key and shut down the machine, turning to glare at him. "Give a girl a little warning, will you?"

  He stood in the doorway, a newspaper in one hand, his expression hard to read. His gaze moved over her, unhurried, as tangible as a touch. "I called your name. Twice."

  Unnerved by his scrutiny, Maggie plucked at the t-shirt now clinging to her sweat-dampened breasts and moved in place, cooling down. "You know how I am about my morning run."

  He didn't comment, and Maggie knew at once that something was wrong. Jack was in "guard" mode—hands at his side, eyes alert, muscles bunched and coiled as if ready to move at the slightest provocation.

  "What's happened?" she asked.

  He handed her the newspaper.

  A grainy black and white photograph of her own face stared back at her from the front page, a candid from a fundraiser a couple of years earlier. Next to her photo was a blurry school portrait of Remy. The banner headline splashed across the top read, "Juvenile abducts daughter of former president."

  Damn.

  Of course the story had made the wire services. Presidents were America's royalty; stories about them and their families sold papers. She'd been foolish to hope otherwise.

  She scanned the first couple of paragraphs. The lead sentence was enough to make her stomach turn. "A knife-wielding New Orleans teenager abducted the daughter of former President James Cole Friday afternoon after a violent outburst at a local youth center."