“I keep trying to figure out why Mary Lou would run.” Sam sounded tired, his Texas drawl more pronounced. “I keep trying to imagine that day. She comes home after picking up Haley from day care and goes inside, and there’s Janine with her head blown open, on the kitchen floor. It makes sense she would get out of the house right away—in case the shooter was still in there. But why not hop in the car and drive to the police station?”
“Maybe she knew the shooter,” Alyssa suggested, “and wanted to protect him or her.” She took a sip of her coffee, aware that Sam wasn’t the only one who was tired.
“Or maybe she came home and the shooter was still there,” Sam said grimly. “Maybe she got back into her car with Haley and the shooter. Maybe wherever she went, it was at gunpoint.” He paused. “In which case, by now, she and Haley are probably both dead.”
“We don’t know that,” Alyssa said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I don’t believe that they are. I don’t think . . .”
He fell silent then, for several minutes this time.
But he spoke again. “You know, when I opened that kitchen door and saw Janine on the floor—and thought it was Mary Lou . . .” He cleared his throat. “I was sure Haley was in there, too.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
He was silent again, and she couldn’t help but remembering the way he’d covered his eyes and desperately fought any kind of an emotional reaction when they’d gotten the news that it wasn’t Mary Lou’s body that he’d found. She remembered seeing him cry. On more than one occasion.
“I was sure she was dead,” he said now, “and all I could think about was how horrible that must have been for Haley. I mean, it would have been bad enough if she’d been shot and killed, but I kept thinking how really fucking awful it would have been if she hadn’t been. Can you imagine? A nineteen-month-old, locked in a house with her dead mother? Starving to death? Completely traumatized and terrified? Screaming her throat raw?” His voice shook. “Jesus.”
This time Alyssa held tightly to the steering wheel, not because she wanted to hit him, but because she wanted to reach for his hand. “That’s why you didn’t want to wait for Manny Conseco before you went back inside,” she realized.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice tight. “I had to know if she was in there or not.”
“Hiding in the closet,” Alyssa whispered.
“No, I was pretty sure that if she was there, she had to be dead.”
“I know,” Alyssa said. “I was talking about . . .”
She heard him shift in his seat, felt him watching her.
“Maybe Mary Lou dropped Haley in Waldo,” she said. “You know, with her mother.”
“Her mother’s a drunk,” Sam said. “Mary Lou would never leave Haley there. I mean, unless Darlene cleaned herself up. Which is possible, I guess. God, I hope . . .”
“If they’re not in Waldo, then tomorrow morning we can go over and talk to that car dealer in Gainesville, see if Mary Lou was with anyone when she sold her car, get a description of him or her. . . .”
And then what? Sam didn’t say the words aloud, but she knew he had to be wondering. If Mary Lou had continued on north from Gainesville—assuming that it was Mary Lou who’d gone to the car dealer—after three weeks she could be anywhere in the United States. By now she could even be in Canada or Mexico.
“We’ll get a sense of how far she could have gotten by how much cash she was paid for her car,” Alyssa told him. Of course, if Mary Lou had been with someone else, someone who was threatening her, all bets were off.
This stretch of the highway was lit with streetlights, and she glanced over to find Sam still watching her.
“Talk to me,” he said softly.
She’d had this very dream, this exact fantasy, too many nights to count. Sam Starrett, sitting there, looking at her, oozing sexuality from every gorgeous pore. And wanting to crawl around inside of her head, to explore who she really was, to listen when she spoke.
“I thought I was.”
He shook his head. “Who was in the closet, Lys?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Was it you?” Sam asked.
Come on, he wanted them to talk. Alyssa had said he didn’t know who she was. Well, hey, she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get to know, considering every time they exchanged more than a few sentences, she started fighting with him, tooth and claw.
Although, okay, it was true that she wasn’t always the one who started it.
She glanced over at him now, and he couldn’t for the life of him read the expression on her face.
He wondered if she knew how hard he was trying, how determined he was not to let this opportunity—all these hours spent in this car together tonight—pass him by.
Alyssa opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it. She glanced at him again, and then, with her eyes firmly affixed to the road, she said, “My mother died when I was pretty young.”
“When you were thirteen,” he said.
She looked at him in surprise. “I told you that?”
“Yeah. It was, uh, in that bar, actually. Back in D.C. Shortly before you, um, came back to my hotel room and, you know, handcuffed yourself to me. You didn’t go into details, but you did say you were thirteen when she died.”
She’d told him, and he’d remembered. It had been years since D.C. He watched her face as she came to that realization.
“I don’t remember telling you.” Alyssa glanced at him again. Her eyes were enormous, making her look fragile and vulnerable and even a little frightened. It was just an illusion—Sam knew she wasn’t afraid of anything.
“I don’t remember much about that night,” she admitted. “Much of what we said,” she quickly corrected herself. “That whole evening is kind of fragmented. I have, like, these shards of memory that are really sharp and clear but— Do you mind if we don’t talk about this?”
“No,” he said. “Sorry. I honestly wasn’t trying . . . The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”
She shot him another look. “And why don’t I believe that?”
“Because you don’t believe anything I say. I think we’ve already successfully established that.”
Alyssa laughed. Good. Laughter was good.
It was way better than gut-wrenching heartache.
Sam, for God’s sake, you eviscerated me!
He could still remember Alyssa’s face when he told her he was going to marry Mary Lou.
But then she’d told him, later, after he was married, when they ran into each other during a time-out for coffee while battling terrorists in Indonesia, that she’d never intended their relationship to be anything more than a good time. A short-term good time, as a matter of fact. A hot, brief fling. Hello, hello, hello, hello, good-bye. That, she’d said over a cup of mediocre mocha matari, was all she’d ever wanted from him. It was not a scenario that included any kind of evisceration.
“Were you lying?” he found himself asking. “In that hotel coffee shop, in Jakarta?”
She didn’t look at him as she signaled to get off at the next exit. “What does it matter?” she countered. “If I’m going to marry Max?”
Ouch. Evisceration usually started with a sharp stab like that. If she married Max . . .
“I think you should dump him,” he said point-blank, because, damn it, he’d spent too much time over the past few years not telling Alyssa what he thought, what he wanted, what he felt. “And we should start over. Start fresh.” He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Roger Starrett. Most of my friends call me Sam. It’s a nickname I got back when I first became a SEAL. See, people started calling me Houston, because of ‘Roger, Houston’—that’s what the folks in the space shuttle said over the radio while talking to the command center. But Houston’s still too much of a mouthful as a nickname, so someone started calling me Sam, because of Sam Houston.
“I also answer to Bob and you probably noticed that Noah calls me Ringo. Bob
because there’s a character in some book named Bob Starrett, and Ringo because my uncle Walt—Noah’s grandpa—started calling me that back in seventh grade when we first met. It was because he liked the Beatles.
“I’ve seen you shoot,” Sam continued, purposely not letting her get in a word edgewise. “You’re an amazing sharpshooter, I’m impressed as hell. I’ve been impressed by your work in the Bureau, too, these past years. You’re solid, Locke. I’d trust you to guard my six any time. And I’d like very much to get to know you better.”
Alyssa didn’t take his hand. She didn’t even turn her head in his direction. To his dismay, she just stayed silent as she pulled off the highway into the brightly lit lot of a twenty-four-hour gas station.
She pulled the car up to a pump and cut the engine. “Do you honestly think,” she finally said, only then turning to look at him, “that I’m going to be eager to jump back into whatever it was we had going while we’re in the process of searching for your wife and daughter?” The look in her eyes was glacial.
“Ex-wife,” he pointed out. As soon as the word left his lips, he knew it was a mistake. Alyssa had her sense of humor shut down to zero.
“I should have said no,” she told him. “No, I can’t take you to Waldo tonight, and no, you can’t leave Sarasota until we verify that you aren’t the chief suspect in a murder investigation.”
“But you know I didn’t—”
“Hush,” she ordered him sharply. “It’s my turn to talk. Hit on me again, Starrett, just one more time, and I will deliver you into the custody of the local police, who will transport you back to Sarasota.”
She was serious. He followed her out of the car and over to the gas pump, where she was running a credit card through the computer, her movements jerky with anger.
She accused him of . . . And now she was mad at him?
“I wasn’t hitting on you,” he protested. He knew the last thing he should do was let her piss him off—and let her know that she’d pissed him off—but he was too freaking tired to care. “If you thought that was me hitting on you . . . Shit. This is me hitting on you.”
He grabbed her and pulled her in, hard, so that her body was pressed against his. And it was heart attack time. Alyssa Locke, in his arms again. He faltered then, because she froze, too. If she’d slugged him, he would have known what to say, what to do. Instead, time stood still under the brightly lit overhang of the Sunoco as he stared down into her eyes.
“I’ve dreamed about you every single night, Lys,” he whispered. “I would sell my soul to the devil to win you back.”
He leaned down to kiss her, and for a moment he’d thought he’d won, because she moved closer to him, stepping between his legs. If he didn’t know her so well, he might’ve misinterpreted it as a surrender. But he did know her, and he twisted away in just enough time to hip check her little gift of a knee to his balls.
She pulled free from his arms. “You are such an asshole. You always have to prove that you’re right, don’t you? So that’s you hitting on me—thank you so much for the demonstration. Forgive me for my earlier confusion. God forbid you should ever be so subtle as to hit on a woman by only using words. As long as we’re clearing things up: Touch me again, and you’ll be wearing my shoe print on your ass.”
She thought . . . “That wasn’t . . .” Sam shook his head. “I mean, yeah, it started out—”
“If you want to go to Waldo, you’ll shut up right now!” Alyssa slammed open the gas tank door and yanked the hose over to the car to fill it up. “From here on in, you’re not even going to talk to me. In fact, you’re so wide awake, you’re driving. I’ll be in the backseat. Asleep.”
Aw, shit. He’d gone too far. Again.
“Jesus,” Sam said.
Alyssa rubbed her eyes and sat up in the back of the car. Jesus, indeed.
There were some lovely motor home parks in Florida, with well tended landscaping and flowering shrubbery and gleamingly clean double-wides in neat rows. The trailer park they had just pulled in to was not one of them.
It was like something out of a horror movie, where people with bad teeth who changed their clothes once every six years lived with their twenty-seven vicious pit bulls, most of which weren’t house trained.
Sam rolled to a stop, the headlights of the car illuminating a former recreational vehicle, a once white metal container vaguely shaped like a rust-streaked can of ham, with deflated tires. A light was visible through the ragged shades that covered its windows.
“Is this . . . ?”
“Number two, Happy Lane,” Sam told her grimly. “Mary Lou’s not here. Believe me. She wouldn’t let Haley spend twenty seconds in this shithole, let alone three weeks.”
“People do unusual things when they’re desperate.” Alyssa tried to get a glimpse of herself in the rearview as she smoothed down her hair.
He met her eyes in the mirror. “I thought you weren’t talking to me ever again.”
“I’m not,” she said. Being semiconscious for the past ninety minutes hadn’t really helped her feel any less exhausted. It had, however, kept the conversation at a minimum. “I’m talking to myself while you eavesdrop. I think I’ll go see who’s home.”
She reached for the handle on the car door, but Sam didn’t move.
“Fuck,” he swore. “I know it’s stupid, and I know I said I didn’t think Haley would be here, but I was hoping . . . no, I was counting on her being here.” He hit the steering wheel. “Fuck.”
What could she possibly say? Don’t worry, we’ll find her? But Alyssa wasn’t convinced they would. If Mary Lou and Haley had been held at gunpoint and taken to some out-of-the-way swamp or bog where they were murdered, their bodies might never be recovered.
Although there was a solid part of her that couldn’t believe that they could be dead. Life just wasn’t that easy. And wasn’t that a terrible thought? Shame on her.
“We may not find out anything helpful tonight,” Alyssa told him. “But we will tomorrow, when we talk to the car dealer in Gainesville.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I know. It’s just . . . tomorrow. Shit. Patience isn’t one of my strengths.”
No kidding.
He met her eyes in the mirror again, forcing a smile that faded quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . scared to death for her, you know?”
The last thing in the world she should do was touch him. Alyssa knew Sam Starrett far too well, knew that he would get the absolute wrong idea. Still, she reached out and touched his shoulder, trying her best to make it a brief, fairly impersonal squeeze.
He was warm and solid beneath the cotton of his T-shirt, and he reached up to cover her hand with his. But he didn’t try to hold on to her. He let her fingers slip out from beneath his as she pulled her hand away.
“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. She was sorry about so many things.
Sam took his hat from the dashboard. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“Let’s,” she said. “Maybe Mrs. Morrison— What’s her first name?”
“Darlene,” he told her.
“Maybe she knows where Mary Lou and Haley are.”
“Yeah.”
She knew he didn’t believe it for a second. As she watched, he took a deep breath and blew it out hard. He turned off the car, and together they climbed out.
“Jesus.” The place smelled like raw sewage—as if the septic system had broken down a long time ago.
There was a collection of trash in the front yard—if you could call it a yard. A twisted bicycle, the remains of what looked like an old swing set in a haphazard pile of candy-striped metal bars, a battered shopping cart, part of a rusting car.
Alyssa tested the rickety steps leading to the troll-sized entrance before she stepped onto them. She knocked, three loud raps on the door. Something mean-sounding started barking inside, quickly joined by something equally nasty, and Sam grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her back, stepping in front of her as the door opened.
“La
st call was two A.M.,” a woman said before she even saw who was standing there. “I keep bar hours.” Her speech was slurred, her voice a strange mix of the sugar of the deep south and the hacksaw baritone roughness of a three-pack-a-day smoker.
She was backlit by the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling of her trailer, her face and form in shadows. She looked to be wearing some kind of robe that hung open in the front.
“Darlene Morrison?” Sam asked.
“That’s one of my names, darlin’. And goodness, look at you. For you, hon, I’ll make an exception and open up shop,” she said to Sam. “Fifty bucks for the works, twenty or a bottle of scotch for the best hand job in the county—up front, and you provide the rubber.”
Oh, this was charming. Apparently Darlene had never met her daughter’s husband before. And apparently Sam hadn’t known his mother-in-law turned tricks for a living. He seemed something at a loss for words.
Alyssa stepped out from behind him. “Mrs. Morrison, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. We have some questions—”
“You cops need a warrant to come on my land!” Darlene shouted, as she slammed the door shut.
Alyssa looked at Sam in dismay. “I purposely didn’t say I was—”
“You have three seconds to get back into your car before I set these dogs loose!” Darlene’s harsh voice came from the trailer. “One!”
“Mrs. Morrison, we’re looking for your daughter,” Alyssa shouted back, but it was clear from the noise the woman was making that talking this out wasn’t an option.
“Two!”
Sam had gathered that, too. He was already grabbing for the metal bars of the former swing set. “Lys, catch!”
“Three!”
He tossed one of the pieces of metal to her as the door opened again and two snarling balls of fur and teeth burst out.
Sam threw himself at both of the dogs, batting one of them back with the metal bar he’d grabbed for himself, kicking at the other with his boot, never letting either of them come even remotely close to Alyssa. His hat fell off and his long hair flew as he spun around, seeming to know just where the dogs would go before they moved.
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