Always a Temp

by Jeannie Watt

  But she had a feeling that it was, indeed, at the bottom of everything.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NATE WOULD HAVE ENJOYED his stay in the city more if he’d been able to get Callie off his mind.

  Would she be there when he got back? Or was he going to have to hunt her down? Because he would this time.

  “What’s going on?” Suzanne finally asked over drinks on his last evening there. It was after ten on a weeknight, but the hotel bar was still busy. The meeting with Marcus had gone well, and Nate was fairly certain he’d be called back for an interview. He wanted the job. He also wanted to keep Callie.

  “Unfinished business,” he said.

  “I’m sure the paper will get along just fine without you.”

  Nate nodded, swirled the ice in his almost empty drink.

  “Another?” Suzanne nodded at the glass.

  He surveyed the assortment of liquor displayed on backlit glass shelves behind the sleek curve of the ebony bar—a far cry from the haphazardly arranged bottles on the homemade wooden shelves in Fuzzy’s Tavern—then shook his head.

  “I think I’m good.” Nathan preferred to do his thinking while sober, and right now he had some things to work out.

  “You’re a lot of fun on vacation.”

  He smiled then and she smiled back. They did well together, he and Suzanne. “I’d like to work for Marcus,” he said. “I’d like to move back to Seattle.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. I would.”

  “But…”

  “I think I’m in love.”

  “When will you know for sure?” Suzanne asked drily.

  “The thing is,” Nathan said, ignoring her last comment, “she has a problem.”

  Suzanne pantomimed lifting a bottle to her lips, and Nathan frowned. “Wouldn’t you feel stupid if that was the problem?”

  “Is it?” she asked, her eyes growing wide.

  “No. She’s afraid of commitment. Her father disappeared when she was young and I think that’s why she’s always on the move.”

  “I don’t get the connection,” Suzanne said. “If her father left, don’t you think that would make her more clingy?”

  “I think she’s validating his abandonment somehow in her head.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “No idea. I don’t even know if she’ll be there when I get back.”

  “Don’t waste your time on a flake.”

  “She’s not a flake.”

  Suzanne tilted her head. “Maybe you are in love. I’ve never seen you in love before.”

  Nathan made a face at her, then finished the last of his drink. Suzanne glanced at her watch.

  “Better get home to Julia,” he said, wishing he could go home to Callie right now instead of waiting for his flight the next day.

  “You could have stopped by the condo, you know. She doesn’t blame you anymore.”

  But she had at the time of the accident and Nate knew how ingrained a certain behavior could become. Being the good brother because it was the only role your father halfway understood. Or letting memories of a long-dead father control the way you lived.

  “Maybe next time.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Nathan grinned. “You do that.”

  THE DREAM CAME BACK full force that night, scaring the bejeezus out of Callie. It was the closest she’d come to remembering—and for one terrifying moment she thought she had. There was a flash of strong recognition, an overwhelming sense of “of course!” followed by the withdrawal, the terror.

  Callie jumped out of bed, pacing the floor, hugging herself.

  Oh, man. Oh, man.

  This had to stop. She had to get out of Wesley and away from Nate.

  But this time Nate hadn’t triggered the dream. She was certain of it. And the Hobarts probably weren’t guilty, either. The kids were cared for in the family’s own way.

  That left…questions. Lots of questions about the dream and, quite possibly, her father.

  So who did she ask?

  Who would know about her dad? No one in this town. They’d lived in Elko, sixty miles away, and before that Reno, and before that…who knew? Somewhere along the line her mother had died. Callie had been four at the time. The story was she’d drowned, but right now Callie didn’t believe anything anymore.

  Okay, when she came to live with Grace, CPS would have been involved, but it would have been the Elko CPS. Would they still have files that old? And law enforcement would have been called when her dad hadn’t returned from his trip.

  Twenty-two years ago, so most if not all of the deputies would be retired. Maybe she could find the case file in Elko?

  Or maybe she could ask the only person she knew who’d been involved in law enforcement at the time. And wouldn’t John Marcenek be thrilled to have a visit from her?

  John was not thrilled. He didn’t even try to fake it. He opened the door and, when Callie told him she had a few questions, he gruffly waved her into the house, as if she were interrupting high tea with the queen.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, easing his bulk down onto a sturdy captain’s chair.

  “I want information about my father.”

  “I didn’t know your father. He wasn’t from around here.”

  “Do you know of him?”

  John shook his head stubbornly.

  “Grace never had you look into his disappearance?”

  “She did.”

  “And…?” Callie prompted, growing impatient.

  “Nothing came of it.”

  Callie’s jaw tightened, but she’d questioned too many difficult people over the course of her career to let John Marcenek buffalo her.

  “But you helped Grace with some kind of foster care issue. I once heard her tell a friend about it.”

  “All I did was help the Elko authorities track Grace down,” he said dismissively.

  Callie stared at him. “Why would they have tracked Grace down?” She felt a numb premonitory chill spreading through her. His statement made no sense. “My father left me at her house.”

  “Your father left you in the Elko K-Mart.”

  Callie blinked, not comprehending. Surely she’d heard wrong. After all, blood was pounding in her ears to the point that she was starting to feel light-headed. She swallowed hard. “No. He left me with Grace.”

  “The night crew found you asleep under a clothing rack after the store had closed.” He glared at her impatiently. “You were six years old, for cripe’s sake. Don’t tell me you don’t remember?”

  Callie wanted very much to tell him she didn’t remember, but her voice didn’t seem to be working. Neither did her brain. She stared at him for a long, long moment before she managed to get control of her vocal cords. “Does Nate know?”

  John Marcenek gave her a disgusted, of-course-he-does look.

  Callie jumped to her feet then, knocking the chair back and walked blindly to the door.

  “Wait a minute!”

  Callie ignored him and headed out the door, down the path to her car. She didn’t know at what point she’d started running, or even how she got the car started. John was lumbering toward her when she squealed away from the curb.

  Stay or go? The question circled in Callie’s brain as she started to drive. Her suitcase was already in the car. Heck, everything she owned was in the car.

  Stay or go?

  THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG with the old man. When Nathan got home he went over to his dad’s house to see him before going to the office, since both Garrett and Seth were on shift. John was sitting in his chair at the table, a solitaire game laid out in front of him. But he had yet to turn a card.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Nathan asked.

  “How was the trip?”

  “Interesting.”

  “Are you going to leave?” he asked bluntly.

  “When the right job comes along.”

  “No idea when that might be? Or where?”<
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  Nate shook his head. “Could be a while. Could be tomorrow.”

  John stared off into space.

  “Come on, Dad. It isn’t as if I’m thirteen and running off to join the circus.”

  “I like having all of you here.”

  Well, that was a shocker. Nate tilted his head as he gave his dad a sidelong glance. Yep. It did appear to be his father sitting there, staring at the table.

  “Garrett, Seth and you,” the old man continued, as if there might be some confusion as to who he was referring to. “I like having you around.”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said. Had the old man had another episode?

  “Callie was here.”

  “She was?” Nathan asked cautiously, not liking his father’s odd tone.

  “Yeah. I, uh, told her something I don’t think she knew.”

  “How bad of a something?”

  John glanced down at the cards. He reached out and put a red ten on a black jack, then settled his hand back in his lap before looking up at his son. Nathan stared at him. What on earth? His heart wasn’t beating faster, but it was beating harder. It felt as if it was hitting his rib cage with each slow pulse.

  “What did you tell her, Dad?”

  “I told her that her father abandoned her in the Elko K-Mart.”

  For one long moment, Nathan simply stared at his father, not quite able to believe what he’d heard. John stared back in defiance.

  “I thought she knew, damn it. I thought she was putting on some stupid act to get information out of me.”

  “Her father left her in a store?” This was crazy.

  “They found her sleeping under a clothes rack after hours. She was six years old.” His father dropped his chin, slowly shook his head. “Hell, I remember stuff from when I was six years old and that was almost sixty years ago.”

  Nathan shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to stare blindly out the window. Her father had abandoned her in a store? Some things were falling into place. He muttered a curse.

  “You remember stuff when you were six, right?” John asked.

  “Yeah.” He remembered Callie when she came into Mrs. Milliken’s first grade class, with her long blond braids, and baggy tights over her skinny legs.

  “Then what the hell?”

  “Dad. You’re a cop. You know about traumatic memory loss.”

  “That happens in car wrecks, beatings. Not from falling asleep in a store.”

  “Who knows how terrifying it might have been to wake up in a store? To be surrounded by strangers. Especially for a kid who didn’t have the most stable existence.” He took a few paces to the door, then pulled his cell out of his pocket and hit her number. No answer. But he hadn’t expected one. “How did she look when she left?”

  “Upset,” John confessed.

  Nathan cursed and paced some more. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I told you what I was thinking. I was thinking she knew and was pumping me for information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I don’t know!” his father bellowed. John Marcenek was not accustomed to being wrong, and this time he’d screwed up and he knew it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why? Grace asked me to keep the facts quiet. She and I were the only ones who knew.”

  “Why the secrecy?”

  John gave him a withering look. “Grace thought it would be easier on Callie.”

  “Well, she was probably right,” Nathan admitted. People would have been all over a story like that. Instead of being involved with a mystery, Callie would have been the object of pity, and heaven only knew what kids would do with ammo like that if they hadn’t liked her. Kids were ruthless creatures.

  “You could have told me after she left town that first time. It wouldn’t have mattered then.”

  “Why should I have told you?”

  Nathan turned an incredulous gaze toward his dad. “Because it might have helped me understand why she left.”

  “So you could have gone after her? Tried to fix things?” John demanded.

  “Yeah. Maybe,” Nathan answered in the same tone. “It was my choice. I was eighteen.”

  “Oh, yeah. Eighteen-year-olds are known for brains.” John shoved the cards into a messy heap in front of him. “That girl had issues. There was no way I wanted you chasing after her.”

  “I loved her.”

  “You were better off without her,” his dad said bitterly.

  “How so?”

  “The writing and all that shit. You never wanted to do that until you hooked up with her. You were planning to go into forensics. It was the one thing you were interested in that I understood. And then along came Callie and all that was out the window.”

  “I always liked to write. Like Mom did. I just never said it out loud. Callie had nothing to do with it.”

  John snorted.

  Nathan didn’t give a flying you-know-what what his dad believed. He started for the door.

  “Where you going?” his father asked, even though he had to know the answer.

  “I’m going to find Callie. It’s what I should have done the last time.” Although neither of them would have been prepared to fight this battle back then. Now…now there was a chance.

  He hoped.

  NATHAN DROVE to Callie’s house. As he expected, the Neon was gone. He walked past the For Sale sign and went to the door to knock. Just to be sure. The Hobart kids were playing in their yard. He could hear them arguing over a ball, which soon came sailing over the thick honeysuckle bushes and rolled to a stop in the vacant lot. Nathan walked over to it just as the kids came out of the yard. They stopped when they saw him.

  “Have you seen the lady who lives here?”

  The children looked at each other, then simultaneously shrugged. They had been taught not to talk to strangers. They were also skinny and dusty, and he could understand how Callie, having seen them out after dark, when Grandma had fallen asleep, would have been concerned. Especially since she had a deeply ingrained reason to be sensitive to neglect.

  “If you’ve seen her today, nod your heads.”

  The girl nodded and the boy shook his head.

  “Great. Thanks.” Nathan went back to his car and hit Garrett’s number on speed dial. “I want to know the name and address of the owner of Callie’s Neon. And don’t tell me you have no way of knowing, because you ran the plate. If you didn’t, then you’re some kind of pod person impersonating my brother, the anal cop.”

  “I’ll drop the information by after shift.”

  “I want it now.”

  “I’m on patrol. I’ll be at your place in ninety minutes. If you can wait that long.”

  Nathan didn’t want to wait that long. He’d waited over a decade to straighten things out with Callie.

  THE NEON WAS PARKED in the driveway. His driveway. Nathan was barely aware of getting out of his truck and crossing to the kitchen door through the open garage. Callie was sitting at the table, her laptop in front of her, the lid down. For a moment they just stared at one another. Then Callie spoke.

  “Your father is such a jerk.”

  Nathan stopped, his hand on the back of the chair across the table from Callie’s. “I’m sorry he did what he did, Callie.”

  “He tried to make me think you knew about my dad and didn’t tell me. He doesn’t understand you at all.”

  Nathan tilted his head to one side. This was not what he expected. “But I think he likes me,” he said slowly, studying her. Finally.

  “Then I guess you’re better off than me,” she said.

  She stared down at the table. Nathan waited, but when she didn’t look up, he finally asked, “Why are you here? At my place?”

  She seemed shell-shocked as she raised her eyes and said, “I think I’m in the process of staying.”

  “Callie.” He opened his arms. She rose from the chair and walked around the table and straight into his embrace.

&nbs
p; “Oh, man, Nate.” She leaned into him and he tightened his embrace. “You had it nailed. I was doing what my dad did. I was abandoning before I got abandoned.”

  “I kind of figured that.”

  “I have this dream. I’ve had it forever, but I could never remember it. It would come when I was stressed or anxious, scare the heck out of me. I’ve been having it so often while I was here. I thought it was because of you.”

  “Same dream every time?”

  “I shouldn’t call it a dream, because it’s more like a flashback. A moment of recognition and terror. I had it before I went to stay with Grace, so I was certain it wasn’t related to what happened to my dad…”

  She rubbed her forehead. “I figured it out. I know what it is now. It’s a flash of waking up under all the shirts on the clothes rack when my dad left me in that store, and seeing hands coming at me. I had no idea what was happening, where I was. I didn’t know where my dad was. I was supposed to wait for him and they were taking me somewhere….” She stilled, staring sightlessly across the room. Finally she pulled in a deep breath and exhaled. “The first dream wasn’t a dream at all. It was real. And the other dreams were flashbacks I wouldn’t let myself remember.” She sighed against his shirt. “I guess I’m glad I went to talk to your dad, even if it was traumatic.”

  “He could have gone at it a little more tactfully.” Nate hesitated. “I figured after he did that, you’d be long gone by now.”

  “I started to leave,” Callie confessed. “I drove almost twenty miles. It felt wrong. I mean—” she lifted her head so she could look into his eyes “—really wrong. This was a problem I couldn’t outrun. This is a problem I’m going to have to face.” She bit her lip. “I’m going to break the McCarran cycle.”

  “I’ll help.”

  She leaned her cheek against his chest and he stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Nate.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You trusted me with your leg and even then I trusted you with…nothing.”

  “You had reasons.”

  “Which were a bunch of made-up crap.” She tilted her head back to look into his face.

  “Self-protective made-up crap.”