“I am. Are you?”
“I am, too. I’d go after him, but that age thing is a problem. He’s just way too old for my taste.” Punctuating the words with a sly wink, Esther moved on with the pot to the next table.
Silence fell over the table, not uncomfortable but not comfortable either. Liz stirred sweetener into her refilled cup, the spoon clanking against the porcelain, casting about for something to say. The sight of an elderly man coming through the door with the assistance of a younger man, clearly his son, provided it. “How are your parents?”
“Considering that they had to leave the home they’d lived in for thirty-some years and move someplace where they knew no one, and they haven’t seen their son in more than two years, not bad.”
Once the Mulroneys had learned of Josh’s family’s existence-had found other targets for their warnings-the U.S. Attorney’s office had deemed it safer for Joe and his parents to leave town and keep a low profile in their new homes. Joe had chosen the security of small-town life, while the elder Saldanas had opted for the anonymity of the city a short distance away. They’d been willing to give up a lot, but not the conveniences they’d taken for granted all their lives.
She had no desire to defend Josh’s actions, but it seemed the sort of thing a girlfriend should do. “He didn’t know how to contact them.”
Not surprisingly, the argument didn’t sit well with Joe. His gaze darkened and his lips thinned. “If he hadn’t screwed up so damn bad, they would have stayed in that house forever, like they’d planned, and he’d have always known where to find them.”
“He was sorry about that.” Truthfully, in a few moments of remorse, Josh had expressed regret for what he’d put his family through. Those moments had been rare, though. More often, he’d blamed the Mulroneys, the marshals service and/or the U.S. Attorney’s office. Sometimes he’d insisted that his parents had merely used Joe’s shooting as an excuse to move to a warmer climate, a smaller city, a more retirement-friendly area-not that they’d ever expressed any dissatisfaction with Chicago.
Maybe, Liz had thought, he just couldn’t face responsibility for the upheaval he’d caused.
Or he was just a self-centered, whiny brat.
Joe gave a sharp laugh. What it lacked in humor, it more than made up for with bitterness. “He’s never been sorry for a damn thing in his life.”
“He was sorry when you got shot. I saw him.” That had been one of the rare occasions. Standing beside Joe’s bed in ICU, not knowing whether he would survive, Josh had been humbled by regret and fear.
Liz had been afraid, too. Afraid that one more good guy would be lost, that once more the bad guys would win. Afraid that the Saldanas would never recover from such a loss. Afraid that she would always wonder what might have been if things had been different.
She had wondered. Nearly two years in different cities and states had added up to a lot of solitary nights. It had been safe to wonder then, because she’d thought she would never see Joe again. Once the Mulroneys went to trial and Josh had testified, she would take on new cases in new places. She would meet other men and probably, eventually, hopefully, fall in love with one of them.
Instead, here she was, sitting across from Joe, trying really hard not to wonder anymore.
She expected another denial from him, but it didn’t come. He stared out the window for a moment, as if the increasing traffic held his interest, before finally dragging his gaze back to her. “Did he know? Did he know they wanted him dead?” he pressed on. “Did he let me go on with life as usual knowing that people wanted to kill him, that they could easily mistake me for him?”
Her fingers tightened around the mug. Were these the first questions he would ask his brother if given the chance? Would a no provide any comfort? Would yes destroy their relationship for all time?
Up to the day Joe was shot, the Mulroneys’ crimes had been nonviolent. Their business had been just that: a routine job moving a product-money-from one place to another, laundering it along the way. They’d been involved in their communities; they’d gone to church with their families; they’d handled disputes diplomatically. Their hit on Josh had been the first and, so far, only sign of violence in their fifteen-year career. It was even possible that someone else Josh had pissed off was behind it instead.
“You know Josh.” Liz’s shrug was awkward. She’d never gotten over the guilt because she had known Josh, too. She should have expected violence. She should have known Joe was in danger. She should have protected him, too. “Nothing he ever does has consequences.”
Yeah, Joe thought grimly. He knew Josh. “When we were five, he sneaked Mom’s keys out and took the car for a drive. He made it two blocks before he ran into two other cars. He wasn’t hurt, but it did a lot of damage to all three vehicles. Mom spanked him. Dad grounded him, gave him extra chores, took his allowance, and three weeks later, Mom caught him behind the wheel again with the keys in the ignition. When we were eight, he tried to fly from our tree house to the ground. He spent the next six weeks with his left arm in a cast, spanked, grounded, extra chores, the whole bit again, and the day the cast came off, he tried again, breaking his right arm. And when we were twelve…” Breaking off, he shook his head. Too bad he couldn’t banish the memory so easily.
“And you were always the good son.”
He raised one hand in the Boy Scout salute. “I made good grades, stayed out of trouble and never gave Mom and Dad a reason to worry.”
“I was the good child, too,” Liz said.
The simple statement stuck him as odd. He’d seen her as only two things: his brother’s girlfriend and therefore the last woman on earth he should be-but was-attracted to. He’d never thought of her as a person: a daughter, a sister, someone with a life, hopes and plans outside of Josh.
Hell, he’d tried his best not to think of her at all.
“Of course, it wasn’t difficult. I was the youngest of four and the only girl, so my parents were predisposed to think of me as the good kid whether I was or not.”
Where were those brothers when she’d gotten involved with Josh? While Josh liked a challenge, he also liked not getting his ass kicked for messing around with the wrong girl. He would have kissed her goodbye…and then Joe, with his regular job, arrest-free record and all-around good-guyness, might have had a chance.
“Did your brothers approve of Josh?”
“They didn’t meet him, but no, they wouldn’t have approved.”
Which had probably been part of Josh’s appeal. Always being the good girl had grown tedious, and what better way for a good girl to rebel than with a bad boy?
Had she had enough of him now? Was she willing to admit he was a lost cause?
She was in Georgia looking for him after he’d dumped her and run. That seemed a pretty loud No.
“Do they live in Chicago?”
She picked up the mug, glanced at the dregs inside, then set it down again before meeting his gaze. Joe had the clear blue eyes that people paid money to get with contact lenses, but he’d always been a sucker for brown eyes, especially big, deep brown ones that, even after a couple of tough years, still managed a hint of innocence.
“No. D.C., Miami, L.A.” After another pause, she added, “I guess we all wanted out of Kansas.”
A good girl looking to escape the Kansas farmland and run a little wild. How easy it must have been for Josh to wrap her around his finger.
“I never would have pegged you for a farm girl.”
She blinked, then laughed, an easy, natural sound that reminded him again of innocence. “I’ve never set foot on a farm in my life. Well, no, wait, there was the time in third grade that my parents took us to the pumpkin patch for Halloween. That might have been a farm. Then again, it might have been a church parking lot in Wichita.” Her voice turned chiding. “There’s more to Kansas than farms.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever head out there. Do you go back often?”
“At least twice a ye
ar to see my parents.” As Esther approached with the coffee carafe again, Liz shook her head with a faint smile. “Do you get to see much of your parents?”
He shrugged. They’d settled in Savannah, only a few hours away, and he drove down at least once a month. He didn’t tell her that, though. How could he be sure that Josh hadn’t sent her here with a made-up story about looking for him just so he could find their folks? Mom and Dad might miss him like hell, but they were better off without him. Who knew what kind of trouble Josh would bring to their door if he could find it?
Because his thoughts had already taken a grim turn, he remarked, “Miss Abigail says you signed a month’s lease.” Twenty-nine more nights like last night, his gaze straying constantly to the windows, watching shadows as she moved from room to room. Twenty-nine more nights of getting to know her schedule, of catching unexpected glimpses of her, of seeing her both at home in casual clothes-those snug denim cutoffs from last night still made him sweat-and out and dressed up.
Twenty-nine more nights. God help him.
“Actually, my lease is for one month, with a month-by-month extension. I could be here one, two, four months. As long as it takes.” She made the announcement with an entirely too-sunny attitude. It turned his mouth down as if he’d just taken a hearty swallow of the used-up coffee grounds he provided Miss Abigail for her garden.
“If you’re really looking for Josh, Copper Lake isn’t the place to do it.”
“It’s the only place I have.” The airiness disappeared and something else crossed her face, flattening her voice. Panic? Despair? He’d taken something of value from her, she’d said. Sentimental value, like her grandmother’s opal ring she’d once worn? It was missing from her finger now.
Or financial value? Liz must have worked during the months they were together; someone had to support them, preferably in a way that didn’t bring them to the attention of the local cops. Had Josh wiped out her savings before he ran? Joe didn’t know what kind of work she did-Josh’s tastes usually ran toward waitresses-but it didn’t seem likely she could have saved an amount substantial enough to make her track him down.
What else could make a reasonably intelligent woman chase after a man she was well rid of? Love, he supposed, though he’d rather not think of Liz in love with his brother.
A knock on the plate glass window drew his gaze outside, and he waved. Anamaria Calloway, dressed in red with a bright Caribbean print shawl wrapped around her shoulders, was pushing the stroller that held young Will. The baby was sucking a pacifier and surveying the world around him with a lazy certainty that he was the center of its existence. He got both laziness and certainty, along with blue eyes, from his daddy and everything else, they hoped, from his ma-
He jerked his gaze back to Liz. “You aren’t-You didn’t-”
She looked from him to the baby, then back to him with nothing less than horror on her face. “Have a baby? With Josh? Dear God, no.”
Joe didn’t want to examine just how relieved he was by the answer. Knowing Josh had a kid would be tough enough. Knowing that he had a kid with Liz…Of all the things his brother had done in the last thirty years, that one would be the deal breaker. No more contact. Ever.
“I would never be so careless,” Liz said, her tone gone from shock to huffiness.
“People forget. They have accidents.”
“Not me. Never.”
“You never get so carried away that you don’t remember, or you don’t think it’ll be all right just this one time?”
“Never.”
Joe wasn’t smiling because he liked the emphatic nature of her answer. It wasn’t really a smile at all. He was just letting some of the tension ease from his muscles. “Do you ever wonder if maybe you’ve been sleeping with the wrong guys?”
Again, she blinked, but this time there was no tinkling laugh to follow it. “I think we got off track.”
“From the day we met,” he muttered. He couldn’t tell whether she’d heard. Her cheeks were flushed and she was looking just a bit disconcerted. Good. Making her lose her emotional balance might help him keep his.
“We were talking about the odds of my finding Josh here.”
“We hadn’t gotten to odds yet, but I’d guess they’re about a million to one against you. You familiar with the phrase ‘gone to ground’? Because Josh is. He’s had regular hideouts since he was three, and ‘with me’ has never been one of them, so you might as well move on.”
“You haven’t seen him.”
“Not since the day I got shot.”
“You haven’t talked to him.”
He shook his head.
“No e-mail. No contact with him at all.”
He held her gaze but didn’t speak. If she took his silence for a negative, if he’d deliberately misled her, well, that Thou shalt not lie stuff was between him and God. Certainly not him and Josh’s ex-maybe-wannabe-again-girlfriend. Besides, an unsolicited envelope in the mail with no return address didn’t count.
“See those two guys over there?” He gestured to the table closest to the door. “That’s Detective Tommy Maricci and Lieutenant A. J. Decker of the Copper Lake Police Department. If Josh showed up here, they’d be the first people I’d call. And he knows that. I’m fresh out of excuses, sympathy and family ties. He’d have to be beyond desperate to come to me because I’m not risking my ass for him ever again. So…” He shoved his chair back with a scrape. “You’re wasting your time hanging out here.”
“Well, it’s my time to be wasted, isn’t it?”
He couldn’t argue that point with her, so instead he picked up her cup and spoon and headed for the counter.
It was her time, Liz reflected as she stood up. And though she was there for the job, it left her an awful lot of nothing to do. Watching Joe chat with the two police officers he’d pointed out, she strolled across the café, then outside. The morning air was cool and damp and tinged with the promise of later heat. She could walk around the square and familiarize herself with the area. She could meet Joe’s business neighbors and see what they had to say about him. Most people, she’d found, told strangers way too much about others. Usually there was no malicious intent; they just forgot that they couldn’t trust strangers anymore.
How long had it been since she’d been so naive? She’d had a wonderful upbringing; there was no doubt about that. She’d loved her parents and her brothers, and they’d loved her. But discussions at the family dinner table had revolved around law and order, crime and punishment. She’d thought all little girls’ daddies wore suits, guns and badges to work; that all little girls’ mommies put bad people in prison; that all kids, even the good ones, borrowed Dad’s handcuffs for show-and-tell at least once and chained the prissiest girl in class to the teacher’s desk.
Your family’s weird, her best friend had told her in third grade, and Liz had put her in a wrist lock, forced her to her knees and made her apologize.
It had taken some time for her to realize they were different. With a grandfather and a father who were deputy U.S. Marshals, two uncles with the FBI, an aunt in the DEA and a mother who was a criminal court judge, they hadn’t been the typical Midwest family. Her grandfather was retired, and her father was close to it, but now her brothers were working with NCIS, ATF and the U.S. Attorney General’s office.
She walked to the end of the block, passing neatly kept storefronts, a flower shop that smelled heavenly through the open door and Ellie’s Deli, with enticing scents drifting through her open door, too. The cold lo mein she’d had for breakfast seemed a long time ago, so Liz climbed the old-fashioned porch and stepped inside.
The place was charming: old to its very bones, with fresh paint and reproduction fabrics and a few good antiques. Even though a fair number of tables were occupied, the bulk of the deli’s morning rush centered on the takeout counter, a wavy-glassed cabinet that looked as if it might have displayed pies and pastries once upon a time.
“Table or takeout?” a waitress as
ked on her way to the kitchen with an armload of plates.
“Table, please.” Right in the middle of the gossips, if you don’t mind.
Instead of leading her toward the dozen old men sharing a country-fried breakfast and their opinions on everything, the waitress turned toward the back of the building. The broad hall opened into a smaller, quieter dining room. Only two tables were occupied there: one by the pretty black woman with the baby stroller and a man Liz assumed, by their matching gold bands, was her husband and the one person in town, after Joe, who most interested Liz.
Natalia Porter’s attention was riveted outside, where the two puppies, restrained by leashes attached to the fence, were digging furiously in the dirt. The tan one created a hole deep enough to plunge her entire head into it, withdrawing only to snap at the fuzzy one when he tried to join her. Chastened, he went back to his own digging, shifting position just enough that the dirt his paws sent flying landed on the sleek puppy’s back.
Natalia laughed out loud before abruptly realizing that Liz was standing at the next table. For an instant, sullenness crossed her face, then her expression went blank.
“They’re adorable,” Liz remarked. She pulled a chair from the table so both Natalia and the puppies were in easy view. “Do they have names yet?”
“No. Joe has to name them.”
“So they’re well and truly his.”
Surprise darkened the girl’s eyes-today, sapphire blue at the outer rims, radiating in to pale gray-then she nodded. “Naming things helps form attachments.”
Natalia certainly had an attraction to Joe, even though he’d obviously not been part of her naming. Liz would like to know what that attachment was, how deep it ran and whether it was one-sided.
For business reasons, of course. Everything she knew about a subject added to her investigation. She wasn’t allowed to have a personal interest. That had never been a problem for her before. But now…
The waitress came for her order. After glancing at Natalia’s plate-ham, biscuits and gravy, hash browns with cheese, and hotcakes-and her stick-slender body, then thinking about her own curves that could so easily become dangerous, Liz asked for a fruit plate and unsweetened tea. Natalia remained silent, looking away from the dogs only to take a bite of food.
Criminal Deception Page 3