“I’m not sure how I would explain it to her.” Joe tried to send Bull a look to make him understand what Joe was getting at without saying it in front of the SLU.
“You work for Mickey’s security firm, right? As your day job.”
Heads started nodding as they began to see where Bull was going.
“So you’ll tell her that your firm was hired to do some undercover work for the police,” Casey said. “Do you think she could pretend not to know you and help us out?”
“They’ve only known each other for three months,” Mickey said. “Can’t be that hard to pretend they don’t know each other.”
Joe gave Mickey a disgruntled look. He didn’t argue though.
“Do you think you can do it?” Art asked Joe. “Just because we don’t have any leads doesn’t mean the wrong word in the right ear couldn’t destroy something we could’ve found.”
Joe thought about what he did know about his wife. She was stronger than she looked. She had grit. And he absolutely trusted her. He began to nod. “I think we can do it. Let me talk to her tonight. If she doesn’t want to get involved, I’ll get her to change her assignment. Either way, set me up to start working there tomorrow.”
The memory of their first meeting flashed in Joe’s head. He was dressed as Zorro at Halloween, patrolling the neighborhood, and found Tori after she’d just been mugged. The first time he’d heard that voice in his head insisting he protect her.
But also the first time he had the sensation that his powers were even stronger when she was around. She made him feel like he could do anything.
He nodded to himself. Bull probably had it right. He and Tori could make a good team.
CHAPTER 8
TORI blew on her second cup of hot chocolate of the evening. She wasn’t thinking about calories; she was thinking that Lexie’s always tasted better. Tori was just too lazy to warm up milk and wash an extra pan. She let her thoughts drift to what she’d been trying so hard not to think about.
Kane Curtis.
Hugh Jackman hadn’t been able to get Kane out of her head. Dean Koontz couldn’t exorcise him. So Tori sat on the couch with a cup of cocoa waiting for Lexie to get home.
She picked a marshmallow from her mug and sucked on it until it dissolved on her tongue. The marshmallows made a big difference, too. She should buy some for Joe’s house, that is, for home.
Tori heard the front door open. Moment of truth. She got up from the couch and met her sister by the door. “Hey, how was class?”
Lexie hung up her coat and scarf. “Great.” She smiled. “I think I definitely want to start my own business. It’s hard, but I think I’ll like it. Now I just have to figure out something to do.” She giggled.
Grr. Lexie didn’t giggle that much. Tori didn’t want to ruin the moment. Maybe she’d tell her about Kane’s visit later. “Want some hot chocolate? I just made myself some.”
“Sure, thanks.”
Tori went in the kitchen while Lexie checked on Ben. She focused on being calm, relaxed, happy. She didn’t want Lexie to pick up on anything negative in Tori’s emotions. Calm. Happy. Calm.
She met Lexie in the living room and gave her a mug.
“So what’s up?” Lexie asked as she blew on her drink.
“Nothing, just watching a movie.” Calm. Happy.
“You wanted to tell me something.” Lexie tilted her head expectantly.
Oh, blast it. She had to learn to manage herself better around Lexie. She might as well tell her since she was such a terrible liar. She wondered if maybe she should get a tiny bit better at that, too.
Tori looked toward Ben’s room and lowered her voice. The three-year-old was asleep and couldn’t hear her. He probably couldn’t grasp what she was talking about anyway, but she didn’t want him to know.
“I had a visitor tonight,” she said, watching Lexie.
Lexie paused in her sipping and raised one eyebrow.
The man couldn’t have been lying about being their father. Tori could see some of his features in Lexie’s face and hands. She’d seen enough in the bathroom mirror to believe him after he’d left.
“It was our father, Mom’s first husband.”
The mug started to slip in her sister’s hand, then was moved with unnecessary force to the coffee table. “And?” Lexie demanded.
“He wants to meet you and Ben.” Tori rather wished she and her sister beat around the bush a little more. Things like this wouldn’t come as such a shock if they meandered a bit before getting to the point.
“Well, that’s too bad.” Lexie folded her arms over her chest and leaned back in the couch. She stared into space, her expression hardening.
The look on her face reminded Tori of what Lexie used to be like, angry and cussing and defensive about everything. She’d been the family wild child as long as Tori could remember. Even though she was two years younger, Tori always felt like she had to take care of Lexie, protect her, constantly beg God to keep her sister out of jail and alive. But over time, Lexie calmed down. She fell in love with a pretty decent guy – no needle marks, appeared to have a real job, and he didn’t stare at Tori’s breasts when Lexie wasn’t looking. All pluses.
But apparently Mr. Wonderful wanted to do the deed without paying the consequences. By the time Lexie was four months pregnant, he’d moved out and Tori had moved in. Mom and Dad hadn’t believed that not everything that happened in Lexie’s life was Lexie’s fault. Especially because she was going through a second pregnancy at age twenty-four with no husband in sight.
So Tori continued her self-appointed job of taking care of Lexie. Until Ben was born. The moment she held him in her arms, something changed in Lexie. Tori had seen it in her face. She just decided that she would be an excellent mom, and she went at it with gusto.
In a weird way, it was the perfect situation. Men couldn’t be trusted. Their parents, wonderful as they could be, couldn’t be trusted in the hard times. So Tori and her sister began creating their own safe environment. For the first time, both women began to blossom.
Lexie stopped swearing, stopped drinking, joined Tori in a decision to give up men. She cleaned up her body, her apartment, her life, one step at a time. She got a job bagging groceries, finished her GED, learned to cook. She’d been so focused on improving herself, had in fact done such an excellent job, Tori had started to feel a little envious.
Tori had worked two jobs those first two years just to keep Ben in diapers and baby food. She wanted to do more with her life, but Ben’s needs were her priority. That meant supporting Lexie in whatever way she could to become the kind of mother Ben needed and deserved.
Tonight, Tori didn’t want to be responsible for Lexie taking a step back. She couldn’t tell what Lexie was thinking. Strangely, she couldn’t really tell what her sister was feeling either. She’d expected waves of fury and righteous indignation rolling over them both. Instead, there was nothing but icy cold calm.
“That’s all you have to say?” Tori looked at her older sister expectantly. She didn’t even have to think about it, when she felt Lexie needed to be protected from something – she instinctively played the leader. Lexie did the same with her. But now, Tori wasn’t sure which of them should push the other. Was getting involved in their father’s life a good thing or a bad thing?
Lexie picked up her mug again and downed half of it. Tori wondered if she wished it was spiked.
“There’s nothing else to say.”
“But what about–”
“Tori, we made a pact. We don’t belong to him. He has no right to us. He gave that up when Dad adopted us. Forever.” Lexie leaned toward her. “You don’t remember, but I do. There is something wrong with him. I could feel it even as a child. That man,” she spat the words, “never even showed up at the courthouse to say goodbye. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist.”
“You waited for him?” Tori asked.
“Of course I did. I was six years old. That’s what children do.
They expect their parents to show them undying love and devotion. And Dad does. The end.” Lexie focused on drinking her cocoa. When she finished it off, she held out her hand.
“I’m not done.”
Lexie stomped off to the kitchen. Tori heard dishes rattling in the sink, chairs moving around, cupboards opening and closing. Maybe she’d just give her a moment.
Lexie came back in, looked at Ben’s snack bowl and a water glass on the table, reached for them and stopped, then sank down on the couch. Tori knew that her sister was far more rattled than she wanted to let on.
“What do you want me to tell him?”
Lexie sat quietly for a moment. Then she let her head fall against the back of the couch and closed her eyes.
God, help us make a good decision, Tori prayed. Please make Lexie agree to meet him.
A minute or two passed in silence. Then Lexie looked up, resolve firmly etched in her face again. “Tell him no. If he contacts you. Otherwise, just let it go. Don’t get involved with him, Tori. No good can come of this.”
A wave of disappointment washed through Tori, knocking her back into the cushions. “But he’s our father. Don’t you want to know his side?”
“No.”
Tori thought about the relatives she’d heard about tonight. “What about the rest of the family? Our grandmother just died. I don’t want everyone to die without ever knowing each other.”
“They’ve all had plenty of time, Tor. If they’d wanted to, they could’ve called.”
The more reasonably Lexie spoke, the more plaintive Tori felt. “We don’t know if they contacted us. They might’ve called Mom and she told them to kiss off.”
Lexie shook her head. “We decided what we were going to do a long time ago. It’s done.”
“But we were children then. What about Ben? What if we need to know about allergies or his medical history?” Tori felt herself getting wound up. She couldn’t figure out what was getting her so bothered. Until tonight she’d been perfectly happy with her family situation. Or at least accepting of it. “What if he needs a transplant some day?”
Her sister just sat there, watching her, not saying anything more. That was Lexie. Once she’d said her piece, she was done. She simply waited for you to catch up.
Tori stopped. She rubbed her forehead, leaning her elbow against her knee. Finally she said, “I know. I know. I just…” She shook her head. “He sounded so…alone. Listening to him talk about his mother dying, it made me want to give it a try.” She looked up. “I don’t want to die with any more regrets than necessary.”
“Then don’t see him again,” Lexie said.
Tori closed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair. Lexie was right. She knew it. Very simply, seeing Kane again would not be a healthy choice for any of them.
She wondered how she was going to tell Kane that when they had dinner together tomorrow.
JOE was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get Tori’s help on his new assignment. She’d been upset when she came home from babysitting Ben, but she didn’t want to talk about it. So he’d launched into his prepared speech on how the security agency he worked for had been hired to investigate her boss’s death. Undercover.
Her eyes had lit up right away. “Can I help?”
He’d made her promise to act like she hadn’t met him before. And when she started smiling that lovely smile, he told her she couldn’t do that either.
She laughed and said, “I think it would be fun to pretend not to like you.” Then she ran her hands down his chest. “But starting tomorrow.”
Now at work, Joe tried not to think about the fun they’d had in the bedroom right after that. He had to focus on the task at hand, and on pretending not to know his wife. “Any questions, Lori?” Joe asked her.
He’d introduced himself around the office this morning as Evan’s temporary replacement and noted the reactions of each employee. Could any of them be the killer? Might they know something that they hadn’t told the police?
Tori sat quietly at a desk she’d said was not the one where Evan was found. She sat up straight and looked him in the eye. Her rather conservative business attire neither made her stand out nor look like a killer. Basically, she looked like all the other women in the office. But since the police had very little to go on, right now everyone was a suspect to Joe. Not because he believed any of them was the killer, but because he had no reason to believe they weren’t.
“Uh, it’s Tori. No questions. I understand.” She smiled a bit from her perch on the edge of her chair. She looked like a bird about to take flight, a beautiful bird with lovely hazel eyes.
Joe mentally shook his head. He’d made Tori promise to act like a stranger, and here he was the one with the problem.
“Okay, let me email you the file,” he said. “Sit tight and I’ll be back.” He rubbed his eyes as he walked away. Focus. He had to concentrate on Evan, on learning what Evan was investigating, what he had uncovered. Tori’s former cubicle had been sealed up with plywood and police tape, but Evan’s office remained open so that Joe could work there. That’s where he would spend most of his time this week, looking through, behind, and under everything he could find. Of course, he also had to do some work for the station in order to keep his cover.
In Evan’s office, Joe backed up an Excel spreadsheet he’d been working on. Joe’s dad, a retired superhero himself, teased Joe that his aptitude with numbers was another one of his abilities. For Joe and Mickey, Joe’s talent had been just another way to get him through a door in an investigation. Joe emailed the spreadsheet to Tori along with a document explaining what needed to be done with the file.
He’d spoken to Evan’s boss earlier. Richard had been informed that Joe was working undercover, and he’d given him access to all the files Evan had been working on. As far as the station knew, Evan’s death was linked to something work-related. Maybe. But Joe still thought Evan had hit a nerve with The Nine somehow.
He walked back to the cubicle outside his office. “Okay, the email program is…” Joe stopped. Tori already had the email open and the directions printed out. She saved the file to her desktop as he watched, then started reading the directions he’d sent.
“Yes?” She turned around when he stopped talking.
Joe paused, then shook his head. Richard’s assistant told him the temp was all but useless. Chuck must’ve been thinking of someone else. Joe didn’t know much about what his wife was good at, but she seemed pretty competent so far. “We need a cost analysis of each development deal over one, five, and ten years,” he said. “For those who haven’t been with us ten years, we need a future projection based on history.”
“Okay,” she said.
Joe waited for her questions. None. Well, if she was as good as she acted, he’d have time to go through some of Evan’s papers. “All right, then,” he said to her. “I’ll be in Evan’s office if you need me.”
She nodded, thanked him, and went back to reading his directions. Acting for all the world like she hadn’t met him before today. She was good.
Joe closed Evan’s door and sat down behind his desk. He’d searched through the computer files quickly this morning. Whatever Evan knew, if he was keeping it on his work computer, he’d named the file something that sounded like work. The company used desktop computers for anyone under a certain level of responsibility, including Evan. The higher-ups all had laptops and docking stations so they could take their work home. If Evan hadn’t saved files relating to his search on this computer, he must’ve saved them on his home computer. If that was the case, Art would have to follow up. Meanwhile, Joe would go through every single computer file Evan had access to.
Up until yesterday, neither Mickey nor the detectives had been sure Evan knew anything at all. His murder to the contrary. Joe’s orders had been to not only look for anything regarding the missing children, but also any financial red flags. It was possible that Evan had been embezzling money, or found out someone else was. B
oth reasonable motives.
Joe pulled files from the stacks on the desk and skimmed through them. Then he opened the drawers and began going through the files there. Work-related, work, work, work. All work-related. Maybe it was embezzlement and Joe would have to start crunching numbers to find what he was looking for.
He opened the last drawer, bottom on the left. Kleenex box, cough drops, miscellaneous office supplies. A file folder hidden under everything else.
Joe pulled it out and opened it, praying he’d finally found something. The chubby cheeks and laughing eyes of a happy little boy, probably five or six years old, smiled back at him. Jason. The boy Evan and his wife were going to adopt. Until the boy suddenly disappeared.
Joe prayed the boy was alive and well. Jason reminded him too much of his nephew, Zack, not to be moved by his disappearance. He decided to risk taking the file to the copy room. Maybe Mickey could find something in the background that would help. Jason wasn’t the only missing child. There were three public facilities for children in Double Bay, and all three had “lost” children in the last two years. Unexplained disappearances. And that didn’t count the children reported missing by families.
Both the police and the superhero squads knew about the problem, and everyone was on alert, but no one could find a way to stop it. There wasn’t any evidence that the missing children were even linked. Evan had been searching for the boy who would be his son since he’d disappeared four months ago. Joe heard that Evan had stopped cooperating with the police when they regretfully informed him that they had no new leads a few weeks back. Joe believed Evan had stumbled onto something on his own, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what.
TORI opened the card that came with the pot of violets. Had Joe sent her flowers at work? Sneaky, tricky little – Meet me at The Captain’s Table at 7:30 p.m. I hope you enjoy shopping. – Kane
A gift card holder from Nordstrom was taped to the side. Opening it, she gasped – one thousand dollars! I guess he wants me to buy a new dress. Tori’s emotions tumbled between the excitement of going shopping and buying anything she wanted, and the disappointment that her father thought he had to buy her favor. Or that he didn’t think she owned a nice enough dress.
Unexpected Superhero (Adventures of Lewis and Clarke Book 1) Page 12