Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  “You couldn’t narrow it down?” he asked when I was done.

  There it was, that slightly disappointed tone of voice I’d come to know so well during the last few years of our marriage.

  “They were both doing stalkery things. It’s not like I caught anyone hiding in a bush with a camera while wearing a raincoat and nothing underneath.”

  He was quiet for a beat. So was I.

  “Sorry,” he finally said. “It’s been—”

  “—a rough day.” He hadn’t apologized to me for a long time. It actually made me feel worse for what I had to tell him next. “You ready for the bad news?”

  Another sigh. I could almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I ran into Melody at the gym,” I said. “To say she wasn’t happy to see me is an understatement.”

  “She saw you.” He bit off each word like it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I didn’t plan on it.”

  “Did you plan at all?”

  Did I...

  An angry retort popped into my head. Luckily for Ryan, the people in the car ahead of me in the drive through finally got their order, and it was my turn to pay for my iced tea.

  Dealing with the cashier gave me a minute to cool off.

  Ryan knew how to push my buttons. He’d learned well from my mother during our marriage. One of the favorite buttons he pushed, especially toward the end of our marriage, had to do with the one thing I’d tried to do as an investigator that I’d totally failed at: tracking down the hit-and-run driver who’d nearly killed Samantha.

  When he really wanted to hurt me, he questioned my competence. That button only worked because deep down I questioned it, too.

  But not this time around. It had only been bad timing that Melody had spotted me through that open door in the gym.

  Wait a minute.

  So what if Melody had spotted me? Reno’s still a small town. People run into other people they know all the time. Why had she assumed I was at the gym because of her?

  Ryan hadn’t told her he’d hired me to find her stalker. As far as she knew, I was there investigating Mr. Muscles. Did she just assume that Ryan would ask me to follow her around, or that I would even agree to do something like that? She didn’t know me well enough to figure out exactly how big of a sap I am. Most ex-wives would have told their ex-husbands to go take a flying leap.

  Unless Mr. Muscles did have something to do with Melody. Something she cared about. Something she didn’t want me to see.

  Which brought me back around to the question of whether Mr. Muscles was still an undercover drug cop.

  I’d apparently been quiet for too long. “Look, Abby,” Ryan said. “I didn’t mean...”

  He did, but I let it drop.

  “You need to know what happened,” I said. I gave him a quick, bullet-point summary of everything from the time I saw the SUV tail Melody from the cafe through the uncomfortable conversation in the gym. Everything except my phone call with Kyle, and the fact that Mr. Muscles had been snapping pictures of me.

  “Okay,” he said when I was done. “Send me what you’ve got.”

  I was already on the way back to my office, my iced tea safely ensconced in the cup holder and building up beads of sweat on the outside of the cardboard cup.

  No wonder I was melting. Heat plus humidity, a rarity in my neck of the woods. Desert dwellers don’t do humidity well.

  “Give me about a half hour,” I said. “I’ll make a quick stop at the office, and then I can get back out on the street and pick up the surveillance after Melody leaves the gym.”

  “No. With any luck, what you’ve got will be enough to convince her to get a protective order against these guys. Especially—what did you call him?—Mr. Muscles? Go ahead and put together a bill for your time.”

  I blinked. He’d just fired me. Nicely, but he’d still fired me.

  We’d gone from sharing our lives together to me invoicing him for services rendered.

  Well, wasn’t that just peachy. So much for being friends.

  “Will do,” I said. I ended the call before he could say anything else.

  It took me five minutes of grumbling before I cooled down enough to realize that maybe this was the final wakeup call I’d needed. Ryan had Melody in his life now, for better or worse. He didn’t need me anymore except in a professional capacity, and, as it turned out, he didn’t even want me there.

  Well, fine. He didn’t have to tell me twice.

  He could just go ahead and make a life with Melody and leave me out of it. If he had any more problems with Melody, he could leave me out of those as well.

  I still had concerns about whether Melody’s issues with an undercover drug cop might affect Samantha, but Ryan’s next weekend with Samantha wasn’t until Labor Day. By then I should know whether the guy driving the white SUV was Lewis Richards and if he was still working undercover.

  In the meantime, I’d keep an eye out for my daughter like I always did, concentrate on my own life, and tell my inner sap to take a flying leap the next time she reared her ugly head.

  Abby Maxon, woman of resolve.

  CHAPTER 10

  THAT NIGHT I HAD a quick conversation on the phone with Kyle while I made a fancy dinner salad for Samantha and I to share while we watched the latest Robert Downey, Jr., movie on Blu-ray. To say he was relieved that I wasn’t tailing the white SUV anymore was a vast understatement.

  Of course, I didn’t tell him that Ryan had fired me. I may not have much in the pride department, but I do have a little.

  “Richards still owns the SUV as far as I can tell,” Kyle said. “Getting information on what he’s working on is trickier. He’s still on the force, but any information on his current assignment is strictly need to know, and I don’t have an official need to know.”

  I gave Kyle the physical description of Mr. Muscles. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell me whether the guy had been Richards.

  “When I busted him, he was a skinny little prick, but that’s in line with an undercover stint as a druggie,” Kyle said. “If he’s beefed up now, he’s either moved up in the ranks of the organization he was trying to infiltrate, or he’s got a new assignment. I’d need a picture to be sure.”

  I’d downloaded all the pictures I’d taken of Mr. Muscles on my work computer and wiped them off my camera to free up space. I’d have to go to the office I shared downtown with a freelance writer. I didn’t want to do that tonight.

  For one thing, the writer worked nights and I worked days. The few times I’d shown up at night, I’d thought she was going to throw a box of cookies at me for interrupting her while she was writing.

  Plus, I really wanted to chat with Samantha about the whole Jonathan visiting overnight thing. Which she still hadn’t brought up on her own. Granted, it had only been one day, but my mommy radar was tingling. The kids had a plan up their sleeves, and I didn’t like being the last one in the know.

  “I can send you one tomorrow,” I said to Kyle.

  We chatted about a few other things, including where I might like to go on our Labor Day trip to San Francisco. Samantha would be staying with Ryan, and Kyle’s daughter Lauren would be with her mother. Labor Day weekend was the first time our respective visitation schedules had worked out so that we both were child-free for an entire weekend. Labor Day would also be our first out of town trip together since we’d been dating.

  I was excited about the trip, but I’d also felt odd about it. Up until today, it almost seemed like I was planning an illicit rendezvous that I shouldn’t talk about to anyone, especially Ryan.

  Now I didn’t care what Ryan thought.

  “You want to catch a ball game?” Kyle asked. He was a San Francisco Giants fan, and he’d mentioned before that the Giants would be in town that weekend.

  I knew enough about baseball from when I’d been married to Ryan, a former high school jock who played every sport under the sun, to know that I wasn’t that interested in baseb
all. I never went to a Reno Aces game, even though Norton Greenburger had offered me free tickets more than once, but a major league game might be different.

  Besides, I’d be spending time with Kyle doing something that he enjoyed.

  “You have tickets?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Well...” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I might have.”

  “Then we’d be silly not to go.”

  “I’ll buy you a hat,” he said.

  “I don’t wear hats.” At least not baseball hats.

  “You’d look cute in a hat.”

  Cute? “Are you trying to butter me up, officer?”

  “Detective,” he said. “I worked hard for that shield.”

  I had no doubt that he had. He worked hard at everything.

  In the background, I could hear the squawk of a saxophone.

  I winced. Kyle wasn’t the only one in his family who worked hard for what they wanted.

  “She’s practicing again?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I think I need to get a pair of those headphones you told me about.”

  We talked a few minutes more before we decided we better hang up, Kyle so he could convince his daughter to stop practicing long enough for a quick trip to the Best Buy store at Legends with a side trip to the frozen yogurt store for her, and me to finish the salad.

  Samantha bustled into the kitchen when I was just about to pour dressing over the top.

  “On the side!” she said, like I was drenching her food with poison.

  I arched an eyebrow. “When did you get so high maintenance?”

  She gave me The Look.

  The one I was becoming increasingly more familiar with, and that I saw on her friend Maddie’s face all the time.

  The look that said moms are the dumbest, most out-of-step creatures on the face of the earth.

  “Most of the calories in a salad are in the dressing,” Samantha said. “Everybody knows that.”

  I did, in fact, know that. I just didn’t care. I was a little concerned that Samantha did, although I supposed that sooner or later my now fashion-conscious daughter would also become my weight-conscious daughter.

  Weight-conscious was one thing. Obsessive was another thing.

  Samantha wasn’t overweight in the least little bit. Maddie, who’d never been overweight either, was well on her way to becoming emaciated, as far as I was concerned. She’d lost more weight than she needed to over the summer, and I didn’t like to think about how she’d done that. The last thing I wanted was for Samantha to follow in her friend’s footsteps.

  Not that I could say that. I’d learned from my relationship with my own mother that there was a fine line between comment and criticism from a kid’s perspective.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll put the dressing down and slowly back away from the salad.”

  I did just that, and I got the hoped-for response: Samantha giggled.

  “You’re just lucky I didn’t decide to serve cheeseburgers and chili-cheese fries,” I said.

  “Yuck.” Samantha plucked a small slice of lunch meat from the salad. Smoked turkey, thinly sliced. “You know that stuff’s not good for you.”

  This from the girl who’d shared a banana split with Jonathan a mere eight months ago.

  Samantha carried the salad into the living room and put it on the coffee table. I followed with a tall glass of iced tea for me and plain water for her. While I sat down on the couch, she popped in the movie.

  We ate our dressing-free salads in companionable silence while Robert Downey, Jr., and a bunch of other extremely fit and good-looking men, women, and demi-gods went about saving the planet.

  Samantha thought Robert Downey, Jr., was pretty good looking “for an older guy,” but I had dibs on the demi-god with the blond hair and big hammer, a weapon whose name I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.

  When the movie was over, Samantha took charge of the remote and searched through the Blu-ray’s special features.

  Now or never, I thought to myself. Might as well plunge right in.

  “So,” I said. “Jonathan’s mother tells me you’re thinking of inviting him to spend a night or two here instead of just a day visit.”

  Samantha froze for only a split second before she kept on scanning through the special features menu. “It seems silly to waste that much gas on such a short visit,” she said. “We were thinking that maybe over Labor Day weekend he could come here for a day or two.”

  Labor Day. Jonathan would be having a long weekend that weekend, too.

  “You’re supposed to be with your dad that weekend,” I said. “Have you run this by him?”

  Samantha didn’t say anything.

  “He might have other plans for you,” I said.

  He might also have something to say about housing a boy he hadn’t even met yet. Or heard about, except from me.

  Samantha looked down at the remote in her hand. “I was hoping I didn’t have to go. I’d rather stay here.”

  She knew that I had plans to go to San Francisco with Kyle.

  While I might have felt weird about mentioning the trip to Ryan, I’d kept my relationship with Kyle out in the open as far as my daughter was concerned. To a point. I wasn’t about to discuss my sex life with my teenaged daughter, but I figured she knew that part already, even if she didn’t want to think about it.

  “I’m not going to be home that weekend,” I said.

  She shot me a quick sideways glance. “I could always stay with Maddie. I’m sure her mom wouldn’t mind if Jonathan—”

  “Not gonna happen,” I said.

  “Mom!” She drew the word out like she used to when she was in her terrible toddler stage and we had frequent battles of will. “You don’t like any of my friends.”

  So much for having a logical conversation about this subject.

  “You know that’s not true,” I said. “We’ve talked about Maddie. I like Maddie. I still like Maddie. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried she’s involved in things I don’t want you involved in.”

  “So you don’t trust me to think for myself when I’m around her.”

  I gestured at the salad plates littered with the remains of dressing-free lettuce and bits of lunch meat. “You never worried about the calories in a tablespoon of dressing before this summer when Maddie lost all that weight. Or about fitting into designer jeans before she started wearing them.”

  Samantha turned away from me to glare at the television where the heroes of the movie were frozen on the screen.

  “Look, we can talk about Jonathan spending more than a couple of hours here,” I said. “Just not over Labor Day weekend. His mother seems open to the idea. I’m not opposed to it.”

  “Fine.”

  It wasn’t, not with her, not the way she said it, but I’d take it as a start.

  She carried the empty salad plates to the kitchen, declined my offer of popcorn for dessert, and said she was going to the den to work on a new piece.

  Loud piano music began to fill the house almost immediately.

  At least her anger seemed genuine, and she hadn’t put on an act about Labor Day just to get me to capitulate to the idea of Jonathan staying overnight at some point. Up until this summer, I wouldn’t have considered the possibility where Samantha was concerned, but it looked like my daughter was finally hitting the point in her life where she’d begin pulling away from me. I knew it had to happen one day, but I still wasn’t ready for it.

  I definitely wasn’t ready for the men who knocked on my door a half hour later.

  CHAPTER 11

  I’M NOT EXACTLY anti-social, but other than Kyle or one of Samantha’s friends, the only person who ever rings my doorbell after eight o’clock at night, even in the summer when the sun’s still up, is my neighbor Freddie March.

  After Ryan and I split up, Freddie took it upon himself to be my little helper, whether I needed it or not. He and his wife Bess had lived in the neighborhood long before Ryan
and I bought the house I still lived in.

  Freddie had made enough money in the early days of the tech industry to retire comfortably far sooner than I ever would. He worked in his yard and watched sports on television and was the first person in the neighborhood to put up holiday decorations.

  He was also a letch, but I cut him a little more slack these days since he’d helped me out last December. Freddie had called 9-1-1 when I really needed the cops but the killers who’d kidnapped me wouldn’t let me make the call myself.

  If I sound a little flip about what happened, I’m not.

  I’m very aware of the fact that I could have been killed in my own house. Stuff like that makes a person appreciate the little things, like the fact that your letch of a neighbor actually has a good heart.

  I still didn’t accept Freddie’s offers to mow the lawn for me or take out the trash—those offers would have had strings attached, I was sure, and besides, I liked Bess—but I no longer pretended I wasn’t home whenever he brought over some of Bess’s homemade cookies or a flyer for a neighborhood garage sale that I had no desire to participate in.

  When the doorbell rang fifteen minutes into Samantha’s latest loud classical music piano-fest, I expected to find Freddie on my doorstep asking me if I could get my daughter to tone it down just a bit because he was trying to watch the game.

  Instead, when I looked through the narrow little window on one side of the door, I saw two men in rumpled suits.

  No one wears suits in the middle of a Nevada summer to pay a visit to a stranger’s house unless they’re on official business. The fact that their suits were rumpled ruled out that these guys were lawyers or federal agents.

  The fact that there were two of them told me it was serious.

  After the mess at my house last December, I’d had a metal security door installed in front of my front door. To the casual observer it looked like a heavy-duty screen door, but the door had a deadbolt lock fitted into a metal doorframe attached to my house by some serious-looking hardware. Not impregnable by any means, but it made me feel better.