by Gayle Wilson
Men, she amended, as the door opened and Mickey Yates stepped out onto the veranda. He watched them come up the walk. Rob was thoughtfully carrying her suitcase, and he cupped his right hand under her elbow as they began to mount the stairs.
Abby’s knees were trembling, so she didn’t resent his old-school approach. She had never resented good manners, and Rob was an old-fashioned Southern gentleman. He was always slightly courtly toward the women in the department. Despite that, there wasn’t a sexist bone in his body. That was one reason, she admitted, that she enjoyed working for him.
“Abby Sterling,” Mickey said, putting out his hand. “As I live and breathe.”
She could tell Mickey was surprised she was the one who had been selected to replace him as Deandro’s bodyguard Normally, she might have questioned that, sensitive to being the only woman to reach the level she had attained within this very male-dominated department. And that had been a struggle. Through the years she had learned to bite her tongue and overlook comments about what women could and couldn’t do in police work.
Just like Deandro’s opening remark at their first meeting. She had heard the same thing said a hundred times and had ignored it as meaningless, but for some reason hearing it from him had set off the spark of animosity that had flared between them.
It hadn’t been directed at her. It had been made in response to someone’s comment about his consumption of most of the beignets Rob provided for the first O.C Unit meeting where Nick had been introduced. If he were ever injured in a shoot-out, Nick had joked, patting his flat belly, he hoped it wasn’t up to some female partner to have to drag him out of harm’s way. Abby had uncharacteristically taken the laughing rejoinder personally and as anti-female.
She didn’t react the same way today, however, to Mickey’s obvious surprise. Maybe because she had always liked Yates. Maybe because in this case she thought he might have a point, even beyond the obvious contrast between his bearlike body and her slight build. Considering the fact that she was also six months pregnant.
“I hear you’re glad to see me,” she said easily, slipping her hand into his. It was swallowed up by the exlinebacker’s meaty fist. “Our friend been giving you a hard time?” she asked.
Mickey’s eyes cut to Rob, but they came quickly back. “Giving himself a hard time,” he corrected.
Abby nodded, feeling petty. Her animosity to a well and whole Nick Deandro was one thing, but in the present circumstances it seemed only cruel.
“I think that came out wrong,” Abby said. “I’m just having a hard time imagining Deandro as anything but…” She hesitated, searching for a one-word description of how the confident FBI agent had struck her on his arrival down here.
“Yeah, I know,” Mickey said softly. “So did I.”
No one said anything for a moment, but even their lack of comment about Abby’s attempted apology was awkward.
“Anything I need to know before we go inside?” Abby asked.
Mickey made a face, sucking in his round cheeks as he thought. Finally he shrugged. “You bring your flak jacket?” he asked, but at least his eyes were smiling again.
Apparently he was willing to cut her some slack. Mickey had been around some of the times her temper had gotten the better of her and he certainly understood her past relationship with Deandro.
“That bad, huh?” she asked, smiling at his attempt at humor.
“I don’t guess you can blame the guy. It must be pretty hard accepting something like this. Especially when all along everybody’s told you…” He shrugged, leaving the rest of it unsaid, but they all completed the sentence in their heads.
Especially when all along everybody’s told you that it’s temporary. The amnesia. The blindness. Especially when you, and everyone else, were now coming to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t.
“How about the routine around here?” Abby asked. She was pleased that none of the emotions she felt were in her voice
“I just go with the flow. Whatever he wants to do. Maggie cooks, makes the beds. I read. Watch TV. There’s not much else to do out here, Abby. Even less for him, I guess.”
“Okay,” Abby said, fighting her reactions to hearing about Nick’s situation with a determined nonchalance. She wondered if either one of them was buying the act. “You off?”
“I can stay a day or two if you want.”
He would if she asked, Abby knew, but the need to get home was in his eyes. Mickey had four kids and a wife, and he’d been away for months, except maybe for the occasional weekend.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Does he know I’m coming?”
“I told him there was going to be a changing of the guard. I couldn’t tell him who, of course, because I didn’t know. Rob said it would be better to let you introduce yourself.”
She glanced at Andrews, who met her eyes without flinching. This was part of his plan. Deandro had been given no warning that she was coming, in hopes that something—her voice or her name, maybe—would trigger a reaction. A memory. An emotion.
She nodded, turning back to smile at Mickey.
“You doing okay?” he asked, his eyes examining her waistline, unembarrassingly assessing its added girth From experience, she supposed. Four-time-father experience.
“I’m fine Looking forward to the peace and quiet.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of that You have any trouble of any kind, you just call Sheriff Blanchard. The alarms go off at his office, too. But they haven’t since we’ve been out here.”
“That’s reassuring,” she said.
“Quiet as a tomb,” Mickey asserted and then grinned a little sheepishly. “Not such a good comparison.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not superstitious. Not unless we have the resident ghost all these old places seem to claim.”
“If we do, I haven’t seen him. Or her.”
“Hopefully, we can keep it that way,” she said.
“You’ll be fine,” Mickey said. “Don’t let him get to you.”
“I won’t,” she promised. Not if I can possibly help it.
“You got to feel sorry for the guy,” Rob said.
Abby supposed that was directed at her. A warning, maybe, to temper her usual acidity with Deandro, but Mickey responded.
“Yeah?” he said. “Well, if you do, don’t do it so he’s aware of it My best advice, Abby. Learned from experience. I’ll wait in the car, Rob.”
“Thanks,” Abby said. “Kiss the kids for me.”
Mickey stepped down the steps of the porch, lifting a beefy hand in response. Abby and Andrews watched his departure for a moment. Mickey was eager to get home, but neither of them, it seemed, was eager to walk into this house. Not at all eager, Abby thought.
“You ready?” Rob asked.
She pulled her eyes away from Yates’s ambling figure. “As ready as I’ll ever be. And I still think this is a bad idea.”
“Piece of cake,” Rob assured her. “If it works, it works. If not, you put your feet up and relax for a couple of months.”
She laughed, the sound soft and unamused. “Always the optimist, Rob. Except you’re not the one who’s going to be stuck out here with a blind guy who’s mad at the world and looking for someone to blame for what happened to him,” she said.
“I’m not looking for someone to blame,” a voice assured her from just inside the darkened doorway. “I know damn well who was to blame.”
At the first word, the timbre and accent of it unmistakable, the bottom fell out of Abby’s stomach, just as it always did when the roller coaster reached the top and started to fly downward. Just as it had the last time she had listened to Nick Deandro’s deep voice coming at her from out of the darkness.
Chapter Two
“But there is a small matter of being able to prove it in court,” Nick added more softly. There was an undertone of bitterness in his voice, but whatever had been there before, anger Abby believed, seemed to have disappeared.
“It’ll h
appen,” Rob said reassuringly. “Just give yourself some more time”
Despite the kindness of the words, Abby read Andrews’s tone as the same one he’d used when he first broached this idea to her. Adult to child. It had made her bristle then. It still did. She wondered what effect a meaningless platitude offered in that patronizing tone would have on someone like Nick Deandro.
Andrews went on, not waiting for a response to his assurance. “You remember Abby.” It wasn’t a question. It was framed in the familiar format of introduction, and that, too, seemed wrong, maybe even cruel in this instance.
“We’ve met before?” Nick questioned.
He had finally stepped forward into the filtered light, standing now in the open doorway where they could see him. He was barefoot, wearing worn Levi’s and a pale blue cotton shirt, so faded as to be almost colorless. In spite his injuries and the long recuperation, the muscles revealed under the stretch of thin, aged fabric seemed as firm as they had always been.
He had lost a little weight, Abby decided, evaluating the familiarity of his big body without really being conscious of doing it. Despite what had happened to him, Nick didn’t look all that different. Not as she had expected—maybe even had hoped—he might. Nick Deandro didn’t look nearly different enough to prevent the jolt of reaction deep inside her body.
His hair was longer than it had been the last time she had seen him. There was even a trace of curl now in the gleaming blue-blackness. That tendency had obviously been ruthlessly and deliberately controlled by the close-cut style he’d worn before.
Now it was as if he didn’t care. Or maybe he simply hadn’t noticed it, she acknowledged, her heart squeezing painfully in her chest at that realization. Because that was the other thing that was drastically different about Nick Deandro’s appearance. The thing she’d been trying to avoid having to look at since he’d confronted them—the mirrored, opaque glasses that hid his eyes
“I’m with PID,” Abby said softly, fighting emotion. “Part of the Organized Crime Special Unit.”
Control, she thought. She had demanded that of herself through these endless months, and she was determined not to give in now, just because she was finally faced with the reality of what had happened to Nick.
“Then you’re saying we have met?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It seemed a simple enough question,” Nick said, his words clipped, the tone caustic. “I like straight answers. The first time I ask a question.”
“I guess we all do,” Abby said evenly. If he thought he was going to intimidate her, he could damn well think again.
“How’d you get stuck?”
For a moment Abby wasn’t sure he was still talking to her. The dark lenses weren’t directed her way. Of course, neither were they focused on Rob. And she found that enormously disconcerting, as was not being able to read his eyes.
All of this was proving to be far more difficult than she could ever have imagined it would be, even in her worst nightmares, and she hadn’t made it inside the house yet. She eased in a breath before she answered him, keeping the inhalation soft enough, she hoped, that he wouldn’t be able to hear it.
“It’s an assignment,” she said.
“Did Yates ask to be relieved?”
Directed to her or to Rob? Again she wasn’t sure, but thankfully, her boss fielded the question before she had to decide how to answer it.
“He’s been away from his kids too long. I just thought it was time to assign someone else.”
“Yeah?” Nick said. The single inquiring word was indicative of his disbelief. “He warn you I can be a bastard?”
The question was meant for her, Abby knew, despite the fact that the glasses were still focused at a point somewhere between the two of them. “He asked if I’d worn my flak jacket,” she said. Straight answer. Just like he’d asked for.
“Did you?” There was a trace of something else in his voice now. Something besides bitterness. Maybe amusement.
“I can send for it,” she said. “But you’ll find my skin’s pretty thick.”
“Good,” Deandro said. “It’ll need to be.”
He turned and disappeared as silently into the darkness behind him as he had appeared out of it. Abby took another breath, aware only now that she had missed a few. She waited, wanting to be sure that Nick was out of earshot before she spoke.
“Not exactly an auspicious beginning. And he doesn’t remember me,” she said. “It looks like all your maneuvering has been for nothing.”
“I don’t know,” Rob said. “There was something there.”
“Something called bad temper,” Abby said. She bent and picked up the suitcase Andrews had put down as they stood talking and took a couple of steps toward the door.
“You let me carry that, Abby You’re supposed to be here to rest, remember. Nothing strenuous.”
“There’s nothing strenuous about carrying a suitcase. As much as I appreciate your concern, Rob, I can manage my own bag.”
By that time, however, his hand had closed around the handle and was trying to manhandle it out of hers. She could either try to wrench it back or let it go. And what the hell does it matter? she wondered, finally releasing her hold. She wasn’t going to fight Rob over a suitcase.
So she didn’t bother to protest again, but simply continued past him into the dark interior. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, and for the first time she was able to distinguish some of the features of the house she would be living in for the next couple of months.
The cypress-floored entry hall was wide and spacious but dim, the outside light blocked by the overhang of the front gallery and the trees. On one side, more than halfway down the hall, a set of uncarpeted stairs led up to the second floor. A long parlor centered by a fireplace and a gilt mirror that dominated the room lay on the left. On the other side was a dining room with a table that could easily seat a dozen people.
The kitchen, which would have been added after the house was built, would be in the back, she knew, and the bedrooms upstairs. She wondered if the woman who cooked and cleaned lived in the main house. She couldn’t remember Rob’s exact words, but now that she thought about it, her impression was that wasn’t the case. Which meant, she realized suddenly, that she and Deandro would be the only ones sleeping in the house at night.
“I want to show you the alarms before I leave,” Rob said, interrupting that uncomfortable realization. “Don’t be fooled by the age of the house. The security’s pretty sophisticated.”
She nodded, following him toward the back. The kitchen he took her to was modern and included most of the appliances she was accustomed to, all the conveniences. There wasn’t a dish out of place. And no sign of lunch being prepared either. No sign of the woman who was supposed to be working here.
Abby followed her boss across the beige tile to the security-system control station on the wall. She strained to keep her mind on his explanation of how it worked, although she had seen systems like this before. She was aware of a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. As if someone were watching them.
That was something she’d have to get over pretty quickly, she decided. She couldn’t afford to let this old house and its isolation spook her. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for giving in to some primitive, intuitive feeling that might make her react in a way the department’s good old boys would delight in characterizing as “just like a woman.”
“And that’s pretty much it,” Rob said finally. “Got it?”
She nodded. “Where’s the lady who cooks and cleans? Maggie? Isn’t that what Mickey said?”
“Maggie Thibodeaux. She lives out in the old servants’ quarters. This may be her day to go in for supplies. At our request, she drives to a little town more than thirty miles away to do the shopping. We don’t want anybody to question why a woman who lives alone buys enough to feed three people.”
“I assume she’s been checked out?” Abby asked.
“She c
ame with the property. She’s kind of the caretaker out here when the house isn’t in use. But she’s had a thorough background check. The previous owners verified both her honesty and her ability to keep her mouth shut. That’s part of the deal we made with her to allow her to keep living here.”
“Seems like you’re taking a chance, all the same.”
“Maggie’s got no interest in any of this. She doesn’t care who uses the house as long as she gets to stay where she is. She’s lived here all her life. She wanted to stay And she’s proven to be trustworthy on operations like this in the past.”
“On ones that were this important?” Abby prodded. She didn’t much like Rob’s casual dismissal of her question.
“She doesn’t have a clue who any of you are. You’re just tenants, as far as she’s concerned. Don’t worry about Maggie. As a matter of fact, don’t worry about anything at all. Deandro’s been out here for months already, and nothing’s happened. There’s not been any sign anyone’s still interested in him. No reason to believe they’ll start being interested now.”
The department’s attitude toward that possibility seemed to her to be almost too casual, as if they had given up hope. And the arrangements they’d made to protect Deandro seemed pretty loose, too. Even given the location of this house and its security devices, for a witness as important as Nick Deandro might be, for a witness someone had already tried to kill, the Public Integrity Division seemed to be taking the dangers very lightly.
“Either they think he’s dead or…maybe they know,” Rob suggested softly
“Know what?” Abby asked.
“That’s he’s not any danger to them. At least, not until—or unless, I guess I should say—he starts to remember.”
ROB HAD INSISTED on carrying her bag upstairs. He walked down the hall beside her, peering into each of the bedrooms in turn. It was obvious which one was occupied, both by the set of freestanding weights and by Deandro’s personal belongings on the dresser top, so neat as to be almost militarily organized.