“It had nothing to do with the case. Hell, I was thinking Trish Lewis was good for the embezzlement right up until the very end when I realized—” When it had just suddenly become clear to him. The thefts led back to their department. He was right about that much. But not to Trish. To Miri, whom he’d started falling for the first time he met her.
Falling for. Was that a clueless-guy term for falling in love? Had he been so focused on his work that he hadn’t even recognized his own feelings? Had he been in love with Miri?
It would explain why he’d missed her so much. Why he hadn’t found much satisfaction in closing out the Smith case. Why he hadn’t had a serious date—or, more to the point, sex—since his last date with her. Why he’d been so eager to take Mr. Smith’s offer that would put him right back into contact with her.
“—think that?” Indignation shone on Miri’s face as she scowled up at him.
He shook his head, hoping to loosen a bit of those keen abilities that had kept him in business so long. “Sorry. I was thinking. What was that?”
“How could you possibly think Trish was stealing from her boss? She’s a nice, honest, decent woman.”
“How could I think you were doing it? You were nice, honest, decent, and I—I cared a lot about you. And yet you were stealing from your boss.” It wasn’t the right time or the place, but he touched her cheek. “Why, Miriam? He paid you well. You didn’t need the money. If you’ve spent it, it hasn’t been on yourself. You’re not the criminal type. I bet you’d never stolen anything else before or after. So why did you do it?”
For just a second, she pressed against his hand—or maybe he imagined it, because the next second, she was shifting uneasily and avoiding his gaze. He was generally good at reading people. Some part of her wanted to answer, and another part wanted to dismiss both him and his questions. Finally she shrugged, dislodging his hand in the process, and flippantly said, “Let’s just call it something I had to do. We should go. T-Bone’s had time to break out another jar of ’shine, and if he comes back, all I’m likely to get for Christmas is dead.”
She squeezed past him on the narrow trail, leaving Dean no choice but to follow.
He would get her talking again. Every piece of information she gave got him just a little closer to figuring her out, and once he’d done that, maybe he could persuade her to give back the money if she still had it. She could have the finder’s fee, not much of a consolation prize for giving up more than a million bucks, but it came with him. Based on what she’d said a few minutes ago, he was pretty sure he was worth something to her.
Just maybe not enough.
Chapter 5
For God’s sake, Miri.
He’d called her by her nickname. First time ever that he’d used it within her hearing, and it had sounded...nice. Maybe she would stick with Miri instead of going back to Ali, after all.
She sighed softly as she tried to find a more comfortable position. It had been a long day. She’d shared a room with Dean the night before, the pickup had run them off the road and some idiot had used her for celebratory target practice. The sun had never broken through the thick gray sky, the temperature had stayed steady in the too-damn-cold-for-the-South range and Dean had been unusually quiet since they’d driven away from Sunshine.
She wished he’d start talking again.
Like magic, her wish was granted. “We’re almost there. Any particular area you want to stay?”
“No. You choose.” Miri swallowed. As anxious as she’d been to get to Atlanta, the closer they got, the more her stomach tightened, and since they’d crossed the state line, she’d had to focus on something, anything else to keep the queasiness at bay. Once she was in the city, her goal would be such a short drive away. Whether she found a ride to Copper Lake or Sophy chose to meet her in Atlanta, she would soon know how her future was going to unfold, good, bad or ugly.
She wasn’t even sure what scared her most: Sophy rejecting her or accepting her back into her life.
Or saying a final goodbye to Dean.
I cared a lot about you. His words were the something else she’d been focusing on all afternoon. I wanted to get to know you. But mostly I just wanted. You.
She had believed that back then. Could she believe it now? He hadn’t tried to contact her after her arrest. The prison had telephones; the inmates were allowed both mail and visitors. He’d shown up yesterday because of the money. But could there have been a secondary reason? Could he still care? Still want her?
It was safer not to believe him. If she didn’t have hopes, then she couldn’t be disappointed.
She’d spent twelve years keeping herself safe from emotional entanglements, and what had it gotten her? She was afraid of trying to give nearly three hundred thousand dollars—child support plus interest—to her own sister who had once loved her dearly. She was terrified of not being wanted.
She’d wanted to be wanted since she was ten years old, when she’d found out the state was giving her sisters and brother to other parents, when she’d learned that while her mother loved her, she wasn’t enough to make up for the absence of the other three.
If what you’ve been doing isn’t working for you, then it’s time to try something new. Advice picked up from a counselor in prison. But she’d had her heart broken in one way or another by every member of her family and Dean. Could she trust him not to do it again? Could she trust any of them?
A half hour later, when he pulled into a motel parking lot, she still didn’t know the answer.
As luck would have it, he’d left the interstate in a less-than-welcoming neighborhood. The first four places, right off the highway, were full of Christmas travelers. At the fifth, a far-from-its-prime motel about a mile from I-20, Dean returned from the office with a key and a skeptical look. “Good thing I have my gun.”
Though she’d never touched a gun in her life, she might feel better if he’d brought an extra one for her. She would have to settle for the knife she’d taken from the glove box and slipped into her pocket. “At least they don’t rent by the hour.” Hopefully, she added, “Do they?”
“Nope. But I bet they double their rates when the nicer places fill up.” He looked toward a strip of fast-food places, tucked between neon-lit bars, along the street. “See anything you like, or do you want to go find someplace?”
“How about ordering in pizza?” She’d noticed the sign for her favorite pizza chain while they’d been looking for a room.
“Sounds good.”
He pulled around to park in front of a room in the center portion of the U-shaped building. The rooms on either side of theirs were dark, and she hoped it meant no one had rented them yet. Even from the parking lot, they heard TV shows from a few doors down in each direction. At least the place was only one story, so they wouldn’t have upstairs neighbors to contribute to the noise.
The room was about what she expected—used well, cared for not so much. But she’d lived in worse places, the white sheets on the bed had been bleached to within an inch of their fibers shredding, and the bathroom was clean. What more did they need?
Dean wasn’t quite so accepting. “Do you want to keep looking? There’s got to be something better somewhere.”
“This is fine. The heater works. The door locks.” She sat down on one bed and gave an experimental bounce. “The bed’s comfy. I’m tired. It’s fine.” If tired could also mean a coward.
He shrugged and set his bag on the other bed. He pulled the phone book from the shelf of the tiny night table, looked up the pizza place and started dialing. “Vegetarian, thin crust?”
“Yeah.” Funny, the things he remembered. “Meat lovers, thick crust with extra cheese?”
His features formed sort of a smile before returning to exhaustion. “Yeah. One of my rewards for running regularly. Pizza, steak, ice cream...�
��
He placed the pizza order, then returned to the car to get the bag of bottled water and snacks he’d bought that morning. Uncapping a bottle, he took a long drink to swallow a couple of tablets he must have gotten from the car before sitting on the bed again. All they could do was wait for the delivery guy.
Miri lasted about five minutes in the silence. “I owe you a bunch of money.”
Dean opened one eye. “Yeah. We’ll settle up later.”
“I’m good for it.”
“I know. About three thousand times over.” He stuffed a pillow behind him, then opened both eyes. “One computer genius to another, where’d you stash it? I got lost in all the transfers. Couldn’t track the final ones.”
“Someplace safe.” Everyone had thought the money was still in overseas bank accounts. No one had suspected that she’d converted it to cash and hidden it in four storage lockers in Texas and surrounding states. That way, if one locker had been connected to her, she would only have lost one fourth of the money. Her fourth. No matter what, Sophy, Oliver and Chloe would have gotten their shares.
“Where’d you learn your computer skills?”
“Hacker friends.”
“I didn’t know you had friends.”
The comment stung, though it was more true than he knew. Even before her mother’s death, she’d known computers were the ticket to finding the rest of her family. She’d hooked up with a group of kids, outcasts like her, misfits, except her misfits had serious computer know-how. They hadn’t really been friends—no one would have given her a second thought if she’d disappeared right in front of them—but they’d liked sharing their knowledge, and she’d soaked it in like a sponge.
“You want to go back to Dallas, I’ll give you a job.”
“A convicted felon?”
“Who’s better with computers than I’ll ever be. Use your powers for good.”
The thought intrigued her—not working for Dean, but just working. Having a normal life without an agenda, not keeping secrets, being just a regular person. She hadn’t given much thought to what she would do after she’d delivered the money to her sisters and brother. If they wanted her around, if they didn’t—too scary to contemplate for long.
She did have skills, though, and she would need a job. Two-hundred-seventy-five-thousand dollars wouldn’t support her forever. Besides, she didn’t really want her father’s money. Mostly she’d wanted him to not have it. It was a just debt that he’d refused to pay, so she’d given him no choice.
“Thanks, but I’m done with Texas. I’m not going back.”
His eyes darkened, his expression turning grim. “Where are you going? You have to live somewhere.”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.” Somewhere I’m welcome. Whether that would be near her family...she’d know tomorrow. December twenty-third. The day before the night before Christmas.
“How are you going to get wherever you’re going?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Maybe take a bus, though she wouldn’t hang out at the terminal this time, or if she did, she would stay close to the other passengers. Maybe she would hire a cab driver to take her all the way. For a tip double the fare, surely someone would be willing.
Or maybe you’ll call Sophy. Give her a chance to tell you on the phone that she doesn’t want to see you. She has her own family now, one who wanted her, one who chose her. No one chose you, Ali.
Miri tuned out the voice in her head, aided by the perfect timing of the delivery guy, rapping at the door, calling, “Pizza!” Dean paid him, then passed the smaller, steaming-hot box to her, along with a bottle of water, before sitting on the bed with his own medium pizza and water.
“You should rethink my offer,” Dean said after finishing the first slice. “Let me take you all the way.”
“No, thanks.” She was prepared to say goodbye to him tomorrow morning, to stand at the door and watch as he drove out of sight, on his way back to Dallas. Delaying that goodbye by even so much as two hours would make it harder. Besides, she was also prepared to face Sophy the way she faced everything: alone.
“What if something happens?” he challenged.
“Like what?”
He rolled his eyes. “Like some perv trying to kidnap you at the bus station. Some jerk running you off the road. Some drunk taking potshots at you from his car.”
“Coincidences. Bad luck. What are the odds of something bad happening again?”
“What are the odds of three bad things happening in less than twenty-four hours like that?”
She paused in the act of picking up another slice. “You think they weren’t coincidences?”
Lines creased his forehead as he held her gaze. After a moment, he grudgingly said, “I don’t know. T-Bone apparently has a history of shooting at things when he’s drunk, and the men at the bus station might make a habit of hassling women anywhere they find them alone.”
“And the men in the truck were just in a hurry to get where they were going.” And Dean had a stake in sticking close to her. He couldn’t recover the money if he didn’t. “So I’ve used up my share of bad luck for at least a few days. I’ll be fine. I don’t need you to protect me.”
She thought the subject was closed, but she was wrong. He was scowling so hard that she barely heard the words he muttered in response.
“Maybe you don’t. But I need to know you’re safe.”
How could she be safe continuing to travel with him when the biggest danger she faced at that moment was him?
* * *
Coincidences. Bad luck. The words hummed through Dean’s head while they ate, while Miri brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas, while he brushed his own teeth and stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed. He didn’t like coincidences or bad luck, but obviously both happened. Was it possible the three incidents had been more than that?
The attempted kidnapping at the bus station absolutely could have been Bud Garvin’s doing. He must have suspected, just like Dean, that Miri’s first act out of prison would be to get the hell out of Texas, and her best way to do that was public transportation. Rental car agencies would have been hard to cover, but she’d never had a credit card, which most of them required these days. So Garvin would have also had people watching for her at the airports and the train stations.
The men in the pickup that ran them off the road could have been Garvin’s people, too. He hadn’t seen their faces, but size-wise, they seemed a close match to the men at the terminal. He hadn’t noticed anyone following them to his place or on to the interstate, but with just about every other pickup on the road a white one, it was entirely possible.
T-Bone just didn’t fit in. Even if the guys in the truck had followed them, they couldn’t have known he and Miri would stop in that particular town for lunch. They couldn’t have breezed in and found a local stupid enough to shoot at her in the ninety minutes they’d been there. Hell, after that accident on the interstate, they should have lost complete track of him and Miri.
And what was the point of having someone shoot at her? The job was recovering the money she’d stolen. A dead woman couldn’t give that back. If they’d just wanted to scare her, why? Odds of her running back to Dallas to return the cash were somewhere between slim and none. A frightened woman would go into hiding—an easy thing to do on someone else’s dime.
He’d already had a headache when they stopped for the night, and thinking in circles wasn’t helping any. When he tried to stop, the next subject his mind went to was tomorrow morning and letting Miri go. No matter their agreement, could he really let her walk away from him? Could he return to Dallas without seeing her to her destination? Could he live not knowing where she was, if she was safe, if she needed him?
I don’t need you to protect me, she’d said, and he was pretty sure she’d
meant it. But he needed to know she was all right. He needed to be able to check on her. He needed to stay in touch with her so that if one day she might consider forgiving him, he could be there to help her along.
He had a lot of needs where she was concerned.
And the ten percent finder’s fee was nowhere on the list, he was surprised to realize.
“Are you awake?” Her voice was soft, sweet, sexy.
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his side to face her. Her hair gleamed golden in the thin light from the bathroom, but her face was nothing more than a pale oval, features indistinguishable.
She sat up, knees bent, arms resting on the covers over them. “If you had gone to your sister’s house, what would you be doing now?”
It was an easy question. No matter where the Montgomerys met for Christmas, they had the same traditions. “They like to go caroling in the neighborhood and drive around to look at the Christmas lights, and the kids always have rehearsals for their church Christmas program. All of my sisters are bakers. They do thousands of cookies in the week before Christmas, and the kids deliver them to the neighbors. And shopping. The whole family are master shoppers.”
She was quiet a long time. When she did speak, her tone was matter-of-fact, no emotion in it at all. “My last Christmas, we got new bikes, a trampoline, a basketball hoop and a lot of books. Mom thought kids should read to enrich their minds and play outside to exercise their bodies and their imaginations. Two weeks later, our father left, and five months after that, Social Services removed all four of us from our home. I persuaded the judge to let me go back after Mom completed ninety days of inpatient care, but they said the other kids were too young to return. When she got worse again, they tried to take me back, but we managed to avoid them. We moved a lot, made up new names and stories for ourselves. After a while, Social Services quit trying to find us, but we still mostly hid. Just to be safe.”
Christmas Confidential: Holiday Protector Page 8