Clark nodded. They moved around a few minutes, figuring out how the crime went down. After taking notes, Clark asked, “Any news on the Ellen Wise chick?”
“She’s going to make it,” Tony said.
“You talk to her yet?” Rick asked.
“Doctors won’t let us in until tomorrow.”
“But it looks like I’m in the money, right?”
Tony looked up, confused. “Huh?”
“You know, the bet we took on the scene. If the suspect was guilty or not. Your brother put twenty on Blondie being guilty.”
“He bet on her being guilty?” Tony asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” Rick said, and chuckled. “That was before she puked on him.”
Tony recalled his own initial reaction to Nikki Hunt and Dallas’s accusation that he was like their old man and being judgmental. “You didn’t think she was guilty?” Tony asked.
“I thought she was guilty as sin, but you make more if you take the long shot. I’m in the money, right?”
“I wouldn’t count your money, but yeah, there’s reasonable doubt.” Tony recalled how Dallas had already grown attached to Nikki Hunt. For his brother’s sake, Tony hoped reasonable doubt was enough. This was one bet that he figured his brother wouldn’t mind losing.
“I’ll stay if you need me,” Nikki told Mrs. Wise a couple of hours later, after one of the nurses had informed them that Ellen was doing great.
“You’ve been good to stay as long as you have. And with everything that happened, too. Please. Go get some rest. Ellen’s father is going to relieve me in a couple of hours.” She gave Nikki a hug. “My baby is going to be just fine.”
Nikki pulled away, and when she saw tears of joy in Mrs. Wise’s eyes, she got a little weepy, too. “I’ll call in the morning.”
“You do that,” Mrs. Wise said.
Nikki went back to her seat for her purse. Dallas followed her out of the waiting room. Several times she’d told him he could leave. He shrugged and said he didn’t have anything better to do and continued to read magazines.
As Nikki stepped through door, she opened her purse to look for her keys. She hadn’t even gotten her hand past her wallet when she remembered.
Remembered she hadn’t driven to the hospital.
Remembered why she hadn’t driven to the hospital—because Jack had been found dead in her trunk.
Jack was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Oh, and her car had been confiscated.
As had her clothes, down to her underwear.
Glancing downward, past the girls that hung freer than normal, she wiggled her toes in the rubber-footed hospital-quality socks and tried to keep the image of a dead Jack in her trunk from flashing in her head.
It didn’t work.
The picture of him curled up, eyes open, staring at nothing, filled her head. She swallowed and slammed her eyes shut.
Go away. Go away.
“You okay?”
Drawing in a pound of oxygen, she opened her eyes and raised her head. She half-expected Dallas to be smirking because he probably knew she’d forgotten she didn’t have a car and had been looking for keys. Half-expected him to have a touch of sarcasm in his blue eyes because, face it, she had told him to go home several times.
She blinked. No smirk. No sarcasm.
He had that look again, the knight-in-shining-armor look.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“I’ll be happy to drive you home.” His deep baritone filled her head and chased away the flashes of a dead Jack in her trunk.
She would have turned him down. Seriously, she would have in a second. But considering she didn’t have a dime to her name, and considering she wasn’t even sure taxis worked this late in her small town—and if they did come, would they accept overdrawn debit cards as payment? Considering all this, she bit down on her lip and did what she had to do.
“I’d appreciate a ride,” she forced herself to say.
CHAPTER NINE
AT MIDNIGHT, AFTER her twelve-hour shift was over, LeAnn walked into the four-bedroom, single-story, white brick residence she used to call a home. Now it was just a two-thousand-square-foot structure. A place she slept, a place she drank coffee by the potful and nuked frozen dinners, a place for her to hide out.
Oddly enough, tonight was the first time she hadn’t longed to run here and hide. The first time in forever that LeAnn hadn’t wanted to leave work.
It wasn’t about a sudden interest in her career, either. It was about Tony. She’d driven around the hospital’s parking lot for ten minutes, searching for his car. She hadn’t seen it. Why did she want to see him? Didn’t it hurt too much? If one was on a diet, you didn’t go hang out at a candy store, did you?
Nevertheless, she’d gone to check on Nikki Hunt before she’d left. The ER nurse had told her Nikki and her posse had moved up to intensive care where Nikki’s friend was still listed as critical, but was now expected to pull through.
LeAnn was happy that Nikki’s friend was okay. LeAnn knew too well how it felt to lose a loved one. She found herself hoping everything went okay with the whole murder charge. Surely, Tony would uncover the truth, and the suspicions about Nikki would go away.
Closing the door and hanging her keys on the hook, she was struck by a surprise realization. Today was the first time she felt almost normal. Even with the pain of seeing Tony, reminded of all she’d lost, she’d managed to think about something and someone besides her own loss and grief. Was she finally on the road to recovery?
Dropping her purse, she walked past the living room, moved into the hall and stood in front of the door she hadn’t been able to walk into for over nine months now. She reached for the knob but couldn’t do it. Instead, she darted into the master suite.
Unfortunately, Tony’s presence must have followed her home. She could see him stretched out on the king-size bed, looking all too sexy. In the snapshot appearing in her mind, he was shirtless and the bedcovers came low to his waist. Then the image shifted, and in this image he was still shirtless, but on his chest was their precious six-week-old daughter, Emily.
Tears filled LeAnn’s eyes. She backed up against the bedroom wall and slid down onto the carpet, where she curled up in a ball and let herself weep.
She might be on the road to recovery, but she obviously still had a long way to go.
Dallas could tell Nikki was exhausted—mostly because she didn’t say a word when they left the hospital—and he debated whether or not to broach the subject of Jack and Ellen Wise. But that was his job.
The night temperature, still running in the high eighties, made the walk to his car seem longer. Dallas opened the passenger door of his previously owned but new to him, red 2008 Ford Mustang GT. It had been the one luxury he allowed himself after he’d gotten out of prison. At the time, he’d been pretty sure he’d given up women and decided he needed something sexy in his life. Turned out, celibacy behind prison walls was a lot easier than outside them.
“Oh, just a second.” He tossed a week’s worth of fast-food bags into the backseat.
“Nice ride,” she said when he stepped back.
“You into Mustangs?” he asked, not seeing her as a woman who would be. But a guy could always dream.
She made a cute face. “Sorry. I wouldn’t know one if it followed me home and wanted to be fed. I just know it looks sporty and it’s red. So I assume it’s nice.”
He grinned. “Is that your way of saying don’t bore you about what I got under this baby’s hood?”
“Bore away. Just don’t expect me to respond intelligently.” She yawned and, even in the dark, he could see the exhaustion in her face. The rings under her eyes were darker. “My mechanic is down to using terms like ‘doohickey’ and ‘thingy’ just so I’ll understand.”
She slipped past him and sank into the leather seat. Dallas stared down at her. There was something about the late hour, the fact they were really alone for the first time that made him even more physically aware of her
. All he could think about was how pretty she looked sitting in his sexy Mustang. Not the kind of beauty one saw in magazines. But damn it if it wasn’t a hell of lot more than girl-next-door pretty. She had that fresh, wholesome—he remembered how her ass had felt when he’d picked her up—hot, sex-kitten look that had a guy getting hard in seconds.
He shut the door before she noticed the growing wood behind his zipper. Jeezus, what was wrong with him? The girl was off limits.
Walking around his Mustang, he got behind the wheel and glanced over at her. Leaning back on the headrest, she gazed up at the roof of the car. The silence hummed.
“I doubt anything you would say would come off as anything less than intelligent,” he said
She turned her head toward him. “You’re forgetting I’m an artist. We’re known to be ditzy.”
“And you’re blond, too,” he teased. Then he reached around her and grabbed the seat belt. This close, only a few inches from her face, he caught a light fruity scent, and he found himself looking at her lips. His blood hummed with awareness. Pulling back, he handed her the buckle.
She took the buckle and secured it. “I gave you carte blanche with the artist angle.” Belted in, she looked back at him. “But not on the blonde jokes.” A slight smile touched her eyes, yet she appeared too tired to carry through with the gesture. She relaxed in the seat and her eyes fluttered closed.
He started the car and got some air going. The engine’s purr reminded him of his sex-kitten thought. His gaze shifted back to her and his whole off-limit frame of mind flew out the window. Her eyes were still closed, so he let himself enjoy the view. He took in her profile. The way her lips fell slightly open made him think of all the things she could do with that mouth. He took in the way her breasts filled out the top of the scrubs, and that made him think of things he could do with his own mouth.
He tightened his hands on the steering wheel and fought the urge to tug at his pant legs. “I know you’re tired, but I have a couple of questions.”
She opened her eyes. “Sure.”
Before he got caught up in noticing things again, he pitched out the question. “Why were you meeting Jack at the restaurant?”
Her eyes shifted away so fast, he could tell she didn’t like the question.
“Were you two getting back together?” He bluntly put it out there.
She stared at her lap. “Nana loves the cooking shows. After all she’s done for me, that’s the only thing she’s ever let me do for her. The thought of letting her down, I…”
Dallas waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “I’m not following.”
She looked up. “I’m not her blood. When Nana agreed to take me in, he brought the DNA papers over to show her that I wasn’t his. So I wasn’t even her real grandchild. He told Nana that if she kept me, she’d lose him.”
Dallas watched her nip at her bottom lip. “Who told her that?”
“My dad. Or I thought he was until that night.”
“So why didn’t you just go live with your mom?” he asked, almost afraid he’d pushed too far.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “He didn’t want to divorce my mom. He just didn’t want me. He said he didn’t want to have to look at me anymore.” Her voice shook and then she seemed to hold her breath. “Nana told him I was six and he was twenty-six, and he had a better chance of making it than I did.”
Dallas got a vision of her as a little girl, all big blue eyes and with her angel face, and having to hear the man she thought of as her dad say those things. His gut tightened. What kind of person did that?
“Nana gave up her own son for me.” Nikki tightened her hands in her lap. “All she’d ever let me do was pay for the stupid cable.” Nikki sighed. “So the answer is yes.” She met his eyes. “I went there planning to say yes.”
He was lost again, still thinking about her being six. “Oh, you mean to the restaurant.”
She nodded. “Or I should say, I went there hoping I could say yes.”
“Yes to what?”
“He wanted us to get back together. But, then I saw him and…”
“And what?” he asked.
She looked out the window. “I thought I would still feel… something. I wasn’t expecting it to be like before, but I thought it would be enough. Then Nana would have her cable. I could pay Ellen. Life would be good.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t feel anything,” she continued. “Not love, anyway. And now…”
She brushed her fingertips over her face. His gut tightened when he saw a tear slip down one cheek. Considering what she’d been through, she had a right to shed a few tears.
Just don’t let her start sobbing. He couldn’t handle that.
“Now he’s dead and on top of feeling bad about letting Nana down, I feel terrible because I was the last person he shared a meal with and all I felt was anger and resentment. I mean, if I had known he was about to die, I—”
“It’s not your fault.” The car’s engine hummed and the AC blew out cool air as they sat in the unmoving car.
“I know that up here.” She touched her head then placed a hand on her chest. “But not in my heart. I mean, if I’d known, I would have been nicer. I wouldn’t have ordered the beer. I didn’t even want the beer.”
He mentally chewed on what she said and then had to ask, “What’s wrong with ordering a beer?”
She didn’t answer, just continued, “I could have waited for a bread plate. And God, I stuck my fingers in his gumbo just to make him mad.”
Dallas could hear the guilt in her voice. “Didn’t you tell me you caught him helping himself to your hired help in your office?”
She nodded.
“Well, I think that’s a little worse than sticking your fingers in his gumbo. The guy got off fucking easy.”
She stared at him, eyes wide, and bit down on her lip. “I didn’t mean to…” She inhaled. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Leaning closer, he brushed a curtain of her blond hair from her cheek and left his hand against her face. He was amazed again at how soft she felt. He ran the pad of his thumb down to her chin.
“You didn’t ask about… I normally don’t… babble. Well, just to myself. Which is a bad habit I’m working on.”
She caught his wrist and moved his hand, letting him know his touch was unwelcome. Which was fine, he told himself. He shouldn’t have crossed that line. She’d just looked as if she needed…
No excuses, he told himself. She’s off limits.
He passed a palm over his face. “Are you always this hard on yourself?”
“Not always. Today’s been a little tougher than most.” She smiled, just a slight one. Their eyes met and held. The light humor seemed to change into something different, as if they were connecting on some other level. She blinked and looked straight ahead.
He listened to his engine and the silence thickened again. “You want to tell me where you live?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry I’m just so tired and…”
“And you’ve had a hell of a day,” he finished for her.
“No shit.”
For some reason it sounded funny coming from her and he smiled.
“I live in the Knoll Apartments, 1350 Park Knoll. Just take—”
“I know where they are.” They were down the street from the cemetery where his mother was buried. The cemetery his father visited way too often, but that Dallas hadn’t been to since he watched them lower her casket into the ground as he stood beside a deputy U.S. marshal. In handcuffs.
She leaned her head back as he pulled out of the parking space. The other question he needed to ask rested on the tip of his tongue.
“What’s going to happen next?” she asked.
He looked over at her. “I’m sure my brother will want to see you tomorrow to ask you some more questions.”
“When… when will I get my car back?”
She said the words as if they pained h
er, and he knew why. She’d probably never forget seeing her ex’s body in her trunk. He’d seen things as a cop that he’d never forget, too. Not that her ex would keep him awake. The ones that nagged at him involved either women or kids. Stories like her and her father. Or worse. Some of the tales he’d heard in prison still haunted him. Hell, just being behind those bars haunted him.
“It won’t take too long, will it?”
“Depends on how quickly CSU can go over it. I’ll check with Tony tomorrow and see if he can’t rush it.”
They went back to silence and in less than ten minutes he pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex. When he glanced at her, he expected her to be asleep. She wasn’t. She sat rigid as if some demon chewed on her sanity. Damn if he didn’t know about demons.
“Where are you in here?” he asked.
“Last apartment building on the left.” She reached at her feet for her purse.
He drove to the building, pulled into a parking spot and cut off the engine. “One more question before you go.”
She looked at him.
He debated how to say it, but as the silent awkwardness grew, he spit it out. “Did Ellen know Jack?”
“She knew about him, but didn’t know him. Why?”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Nikki tilted her head to the side and studied him. “Why?”
If he didn’t tell her, Tony would. And as Tony had said, any news coming from Dallas would probably be easier to take. “Maybe Jack came by the gallery while you weren’t there.”
“If he had, Ellen would have told me. And she’d probably have gone after him with a two-by-four or…” She bit down on her lip. “Not that I’m saying Ellen did anything. She was at the gallery when it happened. So don’t even think about accusing her.”
“I’m not,” he said.
Nikki continued to stare at him. “Then why are you asking this?”
He gripped the wheel tighter. “Tony’s men checked Jack’s cell phone. He received two phone calls from a cell phone listed to Ellen Wise.”
She shook her head. “They must be mistaken.”
“It’s no mistake, Nikki.”
She sat there as if trying to understand. “You think… Ellen and Jack were seeing each other?”
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