by Nicole Baart
“I’m going to be late for class,” she said, trying to be flippant, light. “See you around, Dylan.”
It was as good as good-bye.
11
LUCAS
“She did what?” Alex gave a long, low whistle that let Lucas know exactly what he thought of Angela’s masked flirtations. “You’re a stronger man than me.”
“Give me a break,” Lucas complained, trying to drive with his knee as he flicked on the blinker with his free hand. He swerved a little and reconsidered his stance on cell phones and driving. “You’re crazy about your wife,” he said, coming back to the conversation. “You’d never cheat on her.”
Alex’s laughter made Lucas pull the phone away from his ear. “You thought I was talking about cheating? I meant, I would have thrown her out of the house. Wearing my shirt like some B-movie seductress . . . Snuggling up to me when my wife is gone . . .”
Lucas recoiled at the exchange. Though no one knew about Angela’s kiss all those years ago, he felt like his momentary lapse was written across his forehead. “She’s . . . not well,” Lucas said quietly. He hated talking to Alex on the phone; it was impossible to know if his friend was joking or serious. “And I wouldn’t cheat either.”
“I know,” Alex assured him. “Wasn’t insinuating that.”
“You heading over to the house?”
“Yeah, Miss Sparks and I have a lot of catching up to do. One of the DCI guys is coming with me. I’d like an outsider’s perspective on our little Lolita.”
“She’s not so little anymore,” Lucas muttered.
Alex laughed. “All the same, I’m hoping to catch her a bit off guard.”
“It’s not like you to use intimidation techniques.”
“I’ve never investigated a homicide before.”
And there it was. The undeniable truth. The body in the barn wasn’t Angela Sparks. Lucas thought about his scrawled list, his carefully documented allegations against Jim. He mentally added one word: murderer. The only question now was, who? Who? Lucas’s heart banged an extra beat against his chest at the implications of Angela’s reappearance. He touched his palm to the outside of his pocket and felt the loop of the ring hiding there. Maybe it wasn’t Angela’s. Maybe it was hers. But he couldn’t think about that right now.
“Look, I gotta go. I’m sitting in the parking lot and if I don’t get moving I’m going to be late.”
“Don’t let Mandy catch you doing that now.”
“Nope.”
“Keep me updated.”
“Will do.”
Alex had never held with formal greetings or farewells, and Lucas clicked his phone shut without saying good-bye. He slid it into the leather case at his waist, wrestling with the wish that he had never called Alex at all. Instead of making him feel better, his friend had only compounded his confusion.
Once in the office, a quick glance at Mandy told Lucas that she was in one of her effervescent moods. More than that, she was poised to kid around, to rib him about walking in the door late again, even if it was only by a minute or two. Her smile was impish and dimpled on one side, and though it was a source of no-strings-attached joy in Lucas’s life, he didn’t hesitate this morning to wipe it off her face with a gruff hello that left no room for cheerful banter.
“Uh, hi, Dr. Hudson,” Mandy said, a blank look quickly replacing the lively sparkle that had greeted him. “Your first appointment is already here. Mrs. Van Egdom. I put her in room four.”
Lucas took the proffered file but didn’t even stop to glance at it. “More banana bread?” he quipped, feeling guilty for dampening her sunny humor. But instead of sounding lighthearted and funny, his comment came off just plain mean. Mandy seemed shocked, but Lucas was too weary to defend himself, so he slunk away to his office without another word.
Shrugging off his jacket, he tossed it over the back of his desk chair. His lab coat was hanging dejectedly from a hook on the back of his office door, and Lucas animated the crisp, white fabric by thrusting his arms into the sleeves. His stethoscope coiled around his neck like an aged pet settling into a beloved position close to his heart, and the digital watch in the pocket of his coat fit snug and perfect around his left wrist. The transformation was quick and complete. Suddenly Lucas felt ancient, as if he had been doing this for centuries instead of a mere decade.
The body in the barn wasn’t Angela.
The truth was a hot stone in the pit of Lucas’s stomach.
There were patients waiting for him, but Lucas didn’t care. He bent over his desk and flicked the computer mouse so that his monitor sprang to life. Clicking on the Internet icon, he quickly found a search engine and typed: missing women in Iowa. More than 43 million results. His chest seized. What had Alex said? The time range could be anywhere between five and ten years? Lucas created a custom range for his search, and the results dropped to about 900,000. The first hit was a forum. Melissa Anne. Crystal. Andrea. Regina Sue. Missy. Their names went on and on.
Woman reported missing. Described as white, 5 foot 3, 120 pounds, with brown eyes and light brown hair. Last seen wearing blue jeans, a white tank top, and leather sandals.
Missing woman. Blond hair, blue eyes. Approximately five and a half feet tall. Last seen exiting Dahl’s Foods on Ingersoll Avenue.
It has been one year since a Bettendorf, Iowa, woman went missing, and her family is still searching for answers about her disappearance.
Lucas pressed his fists against his closed eyes until fireworks sparked behind his eyelids. There were so many of them. So very many missing women. And if the woman buried beneath Jim’s body wasn’t Angela, who was she?
The morning dragged for Lucas, and though he longed for a reprieve, for a call from Jenna, Alex, anyone, to lighten the heaviness of his day, none came. People circled in and out of his office, and yet he descended into a loneliness that stretched as long and far and empty as a world without end. Even his moment with Jenna—her stolen kiss, and his—wasn’t enough to make him forget the long lists of women. The way their stories ended mid-sentence with nothing more than a smudge of ink and a hundred questions.
By the time lunch rolled around, Lucas was so agitated, he decided to make a meal out of leftovers from the refrigerator in the lab. He was too shaken up to tiptoe around conversation at Blackhawk’s only café, and too rattled to go home, in case Angela was still lounging on the couch looking all sexy and disheveled in his favorite shirt. Thankfully, behind a half-empty box of influenza immunizations, he unearthed an everything bagel and a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!. Better than nothing, even if the bagel was stale.
Mandy met him on the way back to his office. She was wearing a red, belted jacket that seemed incongruously stylish paired with her baby-blue scrubs and sturdy, white vinyl shoes. Fashionable or not, Lucas couldn’t help but love her, because her lips were upturned in a hesitant smirk that told him she had already forgiven his earlier snappishness. Though she didn’t say the words, everything about her demeanor asked, Are we okay? His smile in response was dim but unmistakable.
“Staying for lunch?” Mandy indicated the bagel with a tip of her head.
“I’ve got lots of paperwork,” he lied. “Just lock the door behind you.”
“Want me to pick something up?”
“When I have this delectable thing?” He tapped the edge of the bagel on the tub of margarine. It made a hollow, bopping sound that proved just how old it was.
“Yum.” Mandy arched her eyebrows. “Too bad there’s not two.”
“I’d share.”
“No thanks.”
“Your loss.”
“Mm-hmm.” Mandy slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and turned to go. “I’ll be quick.”
“You’ve got an hour; don’t rush.”
She laughed a little. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you want a little alone time, Dr. Hudson.”
He waved her out the door with a sweep of his hand and lumbered to his office
like the old man he was convinced he was. The front door bumped closed and then he heard the dull click of Mandy’s key turning the dead bolt. Silence. Peace. Solitude. Lucas sank into his chair and dropped his forehead against his desk. It was hard and cool. Somehow the clean line of the wood against his brow was soothing. But in the quiet, his mind began a frantic race in a dozen different directions.
Before he could sort out a single trail of thought and follow it, Lucas was startled by the sound of a key in the lock and the front door being opened. He sat up quickly, took a steadying breath and called, “Forget something?”
Mandy didn’t answer.
“In case you’ve changed your mind, I decided not to share my bagel,” he said a little louder.
The carpet in the reception room muffled the sound of footsteps, but Lucas could tell that Mandy was still on her way to his office. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and pushed back from his desk to meet her at the door. It had to be her car. Dead battery? Flat tire? He wasn’t in the mood to play mechanic, but the rules of chivalry required his compliance.
“FYI, I haven’t changed a tire since college,” Lucas threw over his shoulder, snatching his coat from the back of his chair.
“I don’t want your bagel, and if I’m supposed to be impressed by your lack of tire-changing skills, I’m not.” Angela materialized in his doorframe with all the audacity of a guest who knew she was unwanted but decided to come anyway.
All Lucas could do was stare.
“Nice office,” she commented, raking her eyes over the bare walls of his dungeonlike space. The insincerity in her tone was completely unmasked.
“What are you doing here?” Lucas demanded, finding his voice.
“Oh”—Angela fanned her fingers in the direction of the front door—“the nurse in the red coat let me in. She remembered me. Probably figured we have a lot of catching up to do.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
For the first time since she appeared outside his office, Angela looked directly at Lucas. “You don’t have to be so defensive. I brought you lunch.”
All at once he noticed the greasy paper bag in her hand and caught a whiff of what could only be kung pao chicken. It’s probably poisoned, he thought. But his mouth watered all the same.
Angela must have interpreted his silence as permission to enter, because she suddenly swept into the room, carrying with her an air of entitlement that mingled with the cloying scent of her perfume and the spicy tang of takeout Chinese. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, dropping the paper bag on his neat desk. “I’ll find myself a place to sit.”
Lucas felt a twinge of guilt as he watched her lift a stack of medical journals off the only other chair in the room. His own padded, ergonomically correct chair was a throne compared to the rusted, folding contraption that housed his extra junk, and he knew that he should offer it to her. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do. But he couldn’t move. Her startling presence in his office rooted him to the ground. What had Mandy been thinking? Why on earth had she let Angela in? Not even a word of warning . . . Angela could be very convincing, but Lucas made a mental note to have a serious talk with his reckless nurse.
The metallic screech of the folding chair brought Lucas back to the moment. Angela pulled up across from him and reached for the bag as if she intended to serve a fast-food picnic right there on his paper-littered desk. Lucas was too stunned to protest, and accepted a carton of something hot and aromatic when she offered it to him.
“I got kung pao chicken and moo goo gai pan,” she said. “I was going to let you pick, but I want the moo goo.”
“Moo goo? I thought you only ate healthy food.”
“It’s vegetarian.”
“It’s from the Golden Dragon.” His grimace betrayed the questionable reputation of the greasy dive.
Angela’s eyes flashed to his. “You’re not complaining, are you? Because I could always leave you with your bagel if you prefer.”
Lucas blinked at her. Then he shifted his attention to the bagel and scraped it into the garbage can with one fluid motion. He added the tub of margarine for good measure.
“A thank-you would be nice.”
He rolled his eyes. “Thank you.”
“I only want your gratitude if it’s sincere,” Angela told him icily. One eyebrow was arched in threat, and Lucas imagined she could loose arrows from her steely green gaze. It was a good thing she couldn’t; he would have been six feet under in seconds.
It couldn’t be helped. The laughter he tried to contain erupted in a sudden, unattractive snort. At first he tried to quell it, but when he saw the corner of Angela’s hard-set mouth tremble a little, he burst out laughing. Lucas watched as she covered her lips with a shapely, manicured hand, hiding the grin that she didn’t want him to see. But though she didn’t join in, her eyes danced above the white-tipped points of her square-cut nails.
“I’m sorry,” Lucas sighed when the strange fit passed. “This is just . . .”
“Weird?” Angela offered. “Awkward? Unexpected?”
“All of the above and more,” Lucas admitted. “And it’s completely unprecedented. I don’t know what to do with you, Angela Sparks.”
“I go by my mother’s maiden name now,” she said. “I’m Angela Webb.”
“That would explain why we never found you.”
She stared at him. “I didn’t realize you looked.”
It seemed like an innocent comment, but it inverted Lucas’s mood in an instant. He glared at her. “Are you kidding me? No letter, no call, no explanation? We thought you were dead.”
“As you can see, I wasn’t. I’m not.”
Lucas leveled a finger of accusation at her. “It nearly killed Jenna when you left. You were like a daughter to her.”
“She’s not old enough to be my mother,” Angela whispered into her lap.
“It doesn’t matter. She loved you like a daughter, and you just disappeared into thin air.”
“I’m sorry.”
The apology sounded sincere, but once it was voiced, Lucas knew that it was not enough. It would never be enough. He doubted that Angela could ever make up for the agony that she had caused. All the sleepless nights, misplaced blame, tormenting questions that always ended in what if? Lucas couldn’t begin to imagine how different his life would be if Angela had not run away and broken his wife’s heart.
“You should apologize to Jenna, not to me.”
He pushed a heavy breath between his teeth. It would be cathartic to skewer her here and now, without Jenna’s steadying presence to remind him that Angela was a scarred woman, fragile. She didn’t seem fragile, she rarely had, but as much as he wanted to accuse her of all the things that had gone wrong after she left, he wouldn’t let himself. He still had some self-control. So, instead of laying into Angela, Lucas laid his hand palm up on the desk. “Got a fork?” he asked, forcing himself to change the subject.
“Just chopsticks.” Angela produced a pair wrapped in white paper and attempted a crooked, placatory smirk. “You still know how to use chopsticks, right?”
Lucas couldn’t stop the sad smile that sprang to his lips. The truth was, he had taught her to use chopsticks, and the bittersweet reminder unearthed a vault of buried memories. Thankfully, it was a fond recollection, one of the only pure, unadulterated moments between the three of them. Before Angela grew up too quickly and began to use her God-given assets to manipulate, there had been times worth remembering. They had been like a family. An unconventional family, for sure. But weren’t they all?
Looking at her as she sat with her face downturned, Lucas had to remind himself that Angela was a victim. As much as he wanted to vilify her, he had to admit that her life overflowed with a sort of sorrow that he couldn’t begin to comprehend. The young woman who had giggled at his kitchen table as she struggled with a pair of cheap, unwieldy chopsticks that left miniature splinters in her soft hands was the same woman who was across from him now. Flaws, faul
ts, foibles, and all.
He steadied himself and reached for the chopsticks. “I think I still remember how to do it.”
But the last time Lucas and Jenna had made the trek to the Golden Dragon—the nearest Chinese restaurant to cloistered little Blackhawk—was a few months before Jenna decided they needed a separation. In the time since then, Lucas’s right hand had all but forgotten how to loosely hold the willowy sticks, and in the end he had to forage around the reception desk until he found a plastic spork to eat his kung pao chicken.
Angela, brandishing the chopsticks like a pro, was gracious enough not to say a word.
It was only after they’d eaten in silence for a few minutes that Lucas broke the stillness. “I have a few questions for you,” he began. Angela tensed visibly, but before she could argue, he continued, “I’m sorry, but you owe me that at least. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
She swallowed and reached for the bottle of water that she had taken out of her purse. Gulping half of the liquid, she was finally able to look him in the eye. “Three,” she said without explanation.
“Excuse me?”
“Like three wishes. I’ll grant you three questions. Freebies.”
Lucas smiled. “And then what? I have to pay?”
Angela lifted a shoulder in coy nonchalance.
“Okay, I can deal with that.” Lucas took another bite and chewed thoughtfully as he formulated his queries. If she was going to play games, he’d have to be careful what he asked. “I know why you left,” he mused. “Or at least, I think I do. So I guess my first question is, Where have you been?”
“California.”
When she didn’t elaborate, he tilted his head in annoyance.