Without even thinking, he moved forward, caught it. She frowned at him, but he already had it secured over his own shoulder. And the damn thing weighed a ton.
“What are you carrying in here, baby elephants?” he asked.
Slanting a look at him, she shrugged. “How did you guess? I breed them—my second job in case this cop thing doesn’t work out.”
“Cop thing.” He laughed softly. “Yeah. I can see that. Not really. You bleed blue, Jensen.”
A soft breath gusted out of her. “I know. I’ve bled blue since I was a kid. And that’s the problem. There was a child there, running in and out of that barn, Dean. Do you have any idea just how wrong this could have gone?”
She turned to look at him and he saw the knowledge there, written all over on her face. “He was twenty feet away when I first started eyeing that barn, driving by every now and then. Had to use my dad’s car, so he wouldn’t notice me, ya know? That kid played out by that barn, all the time. If that place had gone up--”
“It didn’t.” Instinct had him moving in, and the same instinct kept him from reaching for her, although that was all he wanted.
Everything he wanted.
Wariness was stamped all over her features and despite the fact that he wanted to tug her sunglasses away, despite the fact that the need to touch her was even stronger now than it had ever been, he kept his hands to himself as he said again, “It didn’t. You got the warrant, you shut him down. You protected that child. His mom did the smart thing—she’s leaving that idiot. If only they all turned out this well.”
“Yeah. If only.” Then she shook her head and held out a hand for her bag. “I need to go.”
Reluctant, he turned it over, wished he could think of some way to make her give him five more minutes.
But she had places to go, things to do. Things that didn’t involve him. It grated on him how much that bothered him.
“Take it easy, Dean,” she said softly, hiking the bag up onto her shoulder. Then she was moving down the sidewalk, never once looking back.
He stood there, watched as she climbed into her car.
He continued to stand there, even after he could no longer see her car.
Chapter Two
They had a table, tucked in the back.
Their younger sister, Chris, had somehow managed to hold it for them on a Friday night, a feat that was either miraculous or scary, Jensen hadn’t decided yet.
Brooding over a pint of Angry Orchard, she stared at the table and tried to figure out if she wanted to wait for her brother to show or just go home and fall asleep.
The sooner today ended, the sooner tomorrow could start … and end.
Then the next day, and the one after that.
She only had six more days to get through and then it was behind her, for another year.
That really wasn’t much time at all.
Six days could pass in a blink.
Or they could take forever.
She knew that for a fact. Days could crawl by endlessly, especially when you waited.
“Hey.”
She looked up and wasn’t terribly surprised to see Tate standing there with his arm around Ali. Surprised, no. But it did add to the ache inside.
“Ali.” She nodded at one of the empty seats. “You here to help us get our brood on?”
The brood-a-thons weren’t a planned thing, exactly.
But somehow they found themselves here. Each and every year, as the days drew closer and closer. It was like a countdown, one that passed easier when they weren’t alone.
Ali settled down in the seat between Tate and Jensen, a smile on her pretty, sweet face. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m just peachy.” She lifted her glass, tipped it toward them. “Six more days.”
Ali reached out, touched her shoulder.
The tears that she usually managed to keep in check tried to rise up, but she pushed them back.
Wood scraped again, and she turned her head, watched as Guy Miller settled into his customary spot. Although not technically part of the family, he might as well be. One of Tate’s best friends, he’d grown up not too far from them and their house had been more of a home to him than his own. He’d been there with them as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into years.
Now he waited with them, too.
“Do I need to catch up?” he asked, nodding to Jensen’s drink.
“Nope.” She lifted it to her lips. “I just got started. I have vague plans of getting plastered. Celebrating.”
His lip curled. “Yeah. You got a reason to celebrate. What did he get, two years?”
Ali looked confused. “Cop talk,” Tate said, brushing a thumb down her cheek.
Jensen slumped in the seat, staring upward. “Two fucking years. Don’t you just love the wheels of justice?”
“Here you go, Guy.” Chris Bell, the youngest of the family, appeared out of the crowd, putting two beers down in front of Tate and Guy, looking at Ali with a cocked brow. “I don’t know what you see in that man, Ali. Need a drink so you can stomach him all night?”
Ali laughed. “Sure. When do you get off?”
Chris checked her watch, a silver Tinker Bell one that should have looked out of place with the black tee she wore tied tightly at her back, revealing a tightly toned abdomen marked with tats. The tats were echoed on her arms, climbing to twine halfway up her neck, where the blooms of flowers and roses stopped. “Thirty minutes. Don’t drink yourselves under the table before I get back—you want your normal?”
Ali nodded and as Chris was swallowed by the crowd, they lapsed into silence.
A moment later, Tate broke it, leaning forward and raising his voice to be heard over the laughter of the table next to them. “I told Dad we’d be here. Asked him … well. Said he could join us.”
Jensen sighed. “Dad doesn’t go out. Barely leaves the house.”
She knew that—Chris knew that. Tate was just now mending a broken relationship so she wasn’t surprised he didn’t know.
He shrugged. “Yeah. I kinda figured. But it’s not good for him to sit around brooding all the time.”
“He doesn’t brood.” She traced the rim of her glass, looking away. “He’s just tired. Lonely. Leaving the house isn’t going to change that.”
She went to take a drink and then froze as a familiar figure appeared in the corner of her eye.
“Nine o’clock,” Guy said helpfully, tipping his bottle toward.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, her wish hadn’t come true. She hadn’t miraculously found herself at home. Alone. Where she wouldn’t have to see him. Son of a bitch.
“Hey.”
Sighing, she took a deep, long gulp of the cider in her glass and then tipped her head back and found herself staring up at the almost too sexy face of DA Dean West.
* * *
The sight of her sitting with Guy Miller, one of the deputies with county, had him wanting to chew nails. Dean kept an easy smile on his face as he nodded at everybody, noting that Guy sat next to Ali, leaving a vacant spot between him and Jensen.
Maybe they weren’t there together.
Didn’t keep him from wanting to do something stupid, like put his hand on her shoulder, beat his chest, anything to make it clear he had an interest here.
Not that it was returned.
Jensen’s eyes, caught between brown and green and glinting with a sharp edge in that moment, met his and she lifted a brow. “Hello, Dean.”
The chill in her eyes would have sent a smart man running. But Dean supposed if he was smart, he wouldn’t still be chasing after her, hoping against hope that something inside her would soften, that he’d get an opening—that the interest he’d seen spark in her eyes once or twice would flare. Just a chance. That was all he needed.
The slightest opening.
So instead of making small talk for a minute—easy for a lawyer to do with two cops—he nodded at one of the vacant chairs
and said, “Mind if I have a seat?”
There was an awkward, stilted silence. He had that moment again, asking himself just why he was doing this. It wasn’t Jensen that broke the silence, but the brunette sitting next to her brother.
“Go ahead,” she said, nodding at the seat open next to Jensen. “We’re waiting on one more, but she won’t be here for a while yet.”
Ali, he thought. Ran the pizza place—a den of sin if he’d ever come across one. One trip there had him spending an extra hour a week pounding the pavement. Sliding into the seat next to Jensen, he flashed Ali a smile. “They let you out of the restaurant? How do they manage that place without you?”
She smirked. “Badly. But they’ll get by.”
“I hear Pruitt sang like a birdy about some local connections.” Guy lifted his beer, studied Dean over the top of the bottle. “Two years, though. Not much. It was a decent bust. He should have gotten more.”
Dean sighed. Fuck, yeah. He should have taken his sorry ass home. “Two years is a decent stretch for a first-time drug offense. He’ll bring in the bigger fish. I want them, Miller. Those are the problems, the ones getting crystal meth into the hands of the kids at school. I want them.”
“You always get what you want, I bet.” Jensen’s voice, low and soft, just barely reached his ears.
Cutting his gaze over to her, he clenched his jaw. He really was just wasting his time. Completely and utterly wasting his time. “Sure, Jensen. Nothing but a charmed, blessed life. Something I guess you probably know all about. Sorry about taking the cherry off your sundae, but like I said, I had a bigger goal in mind. Have fun sulking about it.”
He shoved back and stood up.
Tate did the same, his eyes firing at him. “You stupid son of a bitch. You don’t have a fucking clue.”
“Yeah?” Dean skimmed a look around the table. “I’ll just take my clueless self on off. You folks have a nice night.”
“I don’t think so.” Tate slammed his bottle down.
“Tate.” Jensen passed a hand in front of her eyes. “Just let it go. He doesn’t—”
“Here we go.”
A black-haired young woman, her eyes strikingly similar to Jensen’s appeared, carried a bucket of beer. She placed it on the table with a thunk. “Make sure you save me one, Guy. I’m going to need it after…” She paused, her gaze landing on Dean. “Hello. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Chris.”
“Dean West. I’m leaving.”
Her eyes widened. “Oooh-kay. You’re welcome to—”
“No.” Tate cut in, his voice harsh. “He’s not. He’s got this idea in his head that Jensen is sitting here drinking and pissed over a case.”
Chris’s eyes chilled.
The friendliness on her face faded. “Well. Aren’t you the asshole.”
She turned on her heel and disappeared into the crowd.
Okay. Just what is—
“You were leaving,” Tate said.
He looked back, his gaze tripping on Jensen’s downcast head before catching the look in Tate’s eyes, the grim set of Guy’s.
“What am I missing here?”
“None of your fu—”
“Oh, shut up,” Jensen said tiredly, flicking her brother a look. She drained her glass, leaned forward, and snagged a bottle from the bucket, looking at it with acute dislike. Then she shifted her gaze to Dean. The look in them chilled his blood, turned it straight to ice. “Sit down, why don’t you, Dean? Let me tell you about my charmed, blessed life.”
* * *
The story didn’t want to come.
She started, stopped twice.
In the end, she decided to give it like a report.
“There was a domestic dispute,” she said, settling on that word. “Loud fighting, ugly words. Kids were in the house, but they moved to another room so they didn’t have to see it. The wife ended up leaving—it’s thought that she felt the fighting would stop if she wasn’t on the premises, but there’s no way of knowing.”
She glanced over at her brother. Tate had his hands fisted, head lowered. Every so often, a ragged breath would escape him, his shoulders stretching the faded material of his shirt. Ali rested a hand on the back of his neck, rubbed it in slow, soothing circles.
I’m glad he found you, she thought. So glad.
“Shortly after, the husband left. Police reports indicate he went to go looking for her. Without success. Come morning, she had yet to return. Her car is missing, but there is no indication that she left. No money is taken from the bank, she didn’t take any clothes. There is no activity from the bank accounts, and yes, the cops did watch. Days go by. Weeks.”
At that moment, Chris sank down next to Guy, her head resting against his arm, her gaze on the table.
“Eventually, suspicion settled on the father and he was duly investigated. Nothing came of it. But the children were taken into foster care for almost three years. Nobody wanted all three children, so the two girls went to one home, the boy to another. After a period of time, the state decided to return custody to the father. The son, at this time, wouldn’t go back. The girls did. And still, there’s no evidence of the mother.”
A ragged burst, almost a sob, but not quite, escaped Chris. Guy hooked his arm around her neck and turned his head, murmured against her temple. Chris reached up, closed one hand around his as tears started to fall.
Silence lapsed. For a long, long moment, nobody spoke. Then she reached for the bottle of Sam Adams on the table and tilted it back, hating the taste of it, but needing something to wet her throat. She wanted whiskey, wanted it bad. Turning her head, she found Dean was still watching her.
“She disappeared fifteen years ago this summer—almost fifteen years ago exactly.”
“Six days,” Tate said, lifting his head, staring across the table at her.
“Six days,” she echoed.
“And we’re still waiting.” Chris’s voice was thick, almost choking on the tears.
“Still waiting.” Some part of Jensen wanted to believe there would be an answer, something. Somewhere. But the cop knew better. After fifteen years, what sort of answer would they get?
None. That’s what.
She tipped her bottle to Dean and smiled. “So, as you can probably understand, counselor, as much as it burns my ass, and it does, to see a cockroach like Pruitt get a slap on the hand, I’ve got other things on my mind tonight.”
* * *
Unable to think of a single thing to say, Dean just sat there for what felt like hours.
In reality, he realized it was just minutes. Slowly, he pushed back from the table, taking a minute to look from one face to the next, lingering on the Bell siblings.
“I’m sorry.” He knew there was more he should say, more that he should do, but he’d intruded on what he realized wasn’t just a private thing, but a painful one.
And he’d done it with his own selfish motives in mind. Yeah, he had a thing for her, but maybe if he’d taken a minute, looked around, he might have seen it.
Silence met him and he just lingered, feeling awkward and uncertain of what to say or do. So he just nodded and turned, moving through the crowd and making his way to the bar.
The beer he’d grabbed on his way in was no longer going to touch it. He needed something stronger and he needed it now.
Wedging himself into a space at the bar, he caught the gaze of the bartender, Adam Brascum. Adam lifted a brow and nodded to the bottle, raising his voice over the music that was slowly gaining in volume as the night grew later. “Another?”
“No. Something stronger. What kind of whiskey you got?”
A faint grin lit the man’s face. “One of those nights, huh?”
Dean nodded. “Fuck, yeah, man.”
Without saying anything else, Adam turned and looked at the counter behind him. “Folks around here keep it simple—and local—for the whiskey. Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey for the most part. I have some Maker’s, too.”
“
Maker’s. Straight.”
He brooded while he waited for the drink and then as Adam pushed it in front of him, before he could disappear, he caught his eye one more time and jerked his head behind him. “Chris Bell—she work here?”
“Yep. Not at the minute, though. I let her kick off early.” Adam tossed a towel over his shoulder and leaned his hands on the bar. “There a problem?”
“No.” At least not on her part. Blowing out a breath, he said, “I…”
Adam looked up as somebody started calling out orders. He pulled a couple of beers, mixed up a cocktail, all without breaking stride. “When did you move here?” he asked. “Two years ago? Lexington, right?”
Dean wasn’t too surprised by the question. He might have lived in Lexington his whole life, but he knew how the small-town grapevine worked. His mother’s people came from places ever smaller than Madision. Bracing an elbow on the bar, he waited until Adam pushed the drinks toward the server and then started on the next set. “About that. Why?”
“I saw … well.” Adam shrugged. “I won’t lie and say not much gets Tate Bell stirred up. He’s got a temper. But you had Guy on edge, too. Takes a lot to get him steamed. Then there was Chris, storming back up here, half torn between crying and screaming. Only one thing will do that to her.” Adam paused, looked down. “There’s been trouble around here before. You didn’t know about Nichole, their mom. Jensen will understand, once she gets through the next few weeks.”
Dean opened his mouth to say it wasn’t just Jensen, but Adam was already gone.
And really, although he hated to give anybody unneeded grief, when he wasn’t able to sleep that night, it was Jensen’s face he’d see.
Lifting his glass, he stared down into it.
Yeah, he sure as hell should have just taken his ass on home.
* * *
Eyes gritty, Jensen stood on the sidewalk, watching as Guy all but carried Chris down the street.
Tate and Ali paced along next to her.
Break for Me Page 2