Undercover in Copper Lake

by Marilyn Pappano - Undercover in Copper Lake

  He and Petrovski ran through the rain to the Charger illegally parked in front of the shop, hazard lights flashing. But then, for a cop, he supposed, there was no such thing as illegal parking.

  After a moment’s uncomfortable silence while Petrovski pulled away from the curb, the cop spoke. “Sophy’s doing a great job with the kids.”

  Sean grunted in agreement.

  “Our neighbor had them for a few days once before. They painted the bathroom walls with her makeup the first day, set a fire in the kitchen sink the second and on the third day, I had to climb onto the roof to untangle Dahlia from a tree branch. They’re...active.”

  Sean snorted. “They’re hooligans, and Daisy, at least, is very proud of it.”

  “Aw, they’re not bad kids,” Petrovski said as he pulled into the police department parking lot. “They just need stability and a little bit of civilizing.”

  Sean could give them stability, he acknowledged as he thanked Petrovski for the ride and headed to the jail door. If the courts let him take custody, he would always be there, never leave them, never let them down the way he had their mom. He understood priorities.

  And Sophy could do the civilizing. As Petrovski had pointed out, she’d done a great job so far. If she wanted to. If they could work out the logistics of it. If he could come back to Copper Lake or she could be persuaded to leave.

  Disney World and jobs as pirate and wench seemed more likely.

  Ty had called ahead to the jail, so Maggie was waiting when Sean walked into the visitors’ room. Sitting on a plastic stool, picking at her fingernails, she didn’t look particularly happy to see him.

  “What is it with you? I don’t see you for fourteen years and suddenly you’re coming here every day trying to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my own life? Where was all this brotherly responsibility when I needed it?”

  He didn’t look for words to soften the blow. “Davey’s dead.”

  For a moment her look remained the same—vacant, bored. Then the news registered, and her expression shifted to dismay and disappointment. “Well, shit. It’s just like the bastard to get himself killed when he could finally be some use to me.”

  Sean stared at her. She’d lived with the man, had sex with him, done drugs with him, made drugs with him. She’d put her kids at risk in part because of him, and all she could do upon hearing he was dead was complain? “Yeah, I’m sorry he was so inconsiderate of you in dying when he did.”

  Her glare came quick and sharp. “You’ve got no room to judge me, Johnny. You can’t even imagine how hard my life has been.”

  “I don’t care how hard your life has been,” he lied. “I care about Daisy’s and Dahlia’s lives, about them being safe and cared for and having a chance like every other kid in the world.”

  Her eyes, just like the ones he faced in the mirror every day, widened, then she laughed. “You care, huh? Since when? You weren’t around to care when I was pregnant or when they were babies crying all night long. You weren’t here to help take care of them or support them or—or—”

  God, she was such a lousy mother, she didn’t even know what mothers were supposed to do. His nieces were lucky to have survived the helpless baby years.

  She stood and shuffled toward the door, but he blocked her way. “Go away, Johnny. Go back to Norfolk and—”

  “You didn’t even ask how he died.”

  Her shrug was pathetically disinterested. “Overdose, I suppose.”

  “He drove through a bridge railing at an excessively high speed and ended up at the bottom of the Savannah River. That’s not an easy way to go, though I guess maybe it’s better than a bullet in your brain.”

  She plucked at the too-long sleeves of her sweat jacket, pushing them up to her elbows, immediately pulling them down again. “Why would someone put a bullet in his brain?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because he got arrested and knew way too much about his boss’s business. Maybe because he talked too much. You and Davey and your meth-making—that’s just pissant games compared to what his boss does. His operation crosses six states and brings in millions of dollars every year. How much tolerance do you think he’s gonna have for an idiot who gets himself thrown in jail on a meth charge? Or for the idiot who slept with him and thinks that gives her power now?”

  Out of that whole scornful speech, she focused on one word, her eyes gleaming, her greed practically a real, touchable thing. “Millions? Every year?”

  His eye was going to twitch its way right out of its socket, followed by his head exploding. He couldn’t take much more of this and trust himself to keep his hands off her.

  Carefully he walked around her, sat down at one of the tables and indicated the stool across from him. After a sullen moment, she plopped down across from him, arms folded over her chest. Waiting mutinously.

  “I’m going to ask for custody of the girls.”

  Again, the bored look filled her eyes for the time it took the words to sink in, and then she smirked. “You? You think you’re more fit to be a parent than me?”

  “I have a job, a stable home. I’m their closest relative. I’m the only relative who isn’t a career criminal. Yes, I can be a better parent than you. I can provide them with a better, safer home than you can.”

  Her head began shaking long before he stopped talking. “I’ll tell their social worker no. I’ll tell her you’re a perv, wanting two little girls you didn’t even know a week ago.”

  Sean pushed away the ache from the lie she threatened. “And being the fine, law-abiding, upstanding citizen you are, the social worker’s going to take your word over mine.”

  The truth of his words sank in more quickly, turning her scorn into a frown. “Bitch always did have it in for me.” One foot tapping on the floor, she started picking at her finger again, pulling off a strip of skin, swiping the drop of blood that welled onto her pants. “You can’t do that, Johnny. They’re my kids. I need them. The D.A. can stick a single woman off in some hellhole, but kids need someplace decent.”

  For just a moment, she had him—the emotion in her voice when she’d laid claim to the girls, the way she’d said she needed them. Then the moment passed, the hope that flared inside him died, and he was done. The little girl he’d comforted and cared for, who’d tagged after him every chance she got, who’d begged him to take her away with him—that Maggie was gone. The woman sitting across from him, willing to use her own little girls to bargain for a better life for herself, was a stranger. He didn’t know her. Didn’t want to know her.

  He played his last card. “I’ll pay you.”

  The gleam was back, bringing a flush to her cheeks. “When I asked you to bail me out, you said you didn’t have any money.”

  He didn’t deny it. He could have millions of his own, and he wouldn’t waste a dime of it on bail for any of his family.

  “How much?”

  Except for his car, he lived pretty cheaply. Not having a family, a steady girlfriend or a hobby outside of work made it pretty easy. He named a figure that instantly fueled Maggie’s distrust.

  “Where’d you get that much money?”

  “It’s called a job. You should try getting one sometime.”

  She scratched her chin, then stood to pace the room, stopping at the window. “So what would I have to do to get this money?”

  “Terminate your parental rights. Let the girls be adopted.”

  “And what if the court don’t let you adopt ’em?”

  That was a possibility. Though Sophy and Ty would speak on his behalf, and for what it was worth, he was family. “At least they’ll be out of this mess.” He tried to believe that was enough, that he wouldn’t wonder every day how they were, if they were loved, if they needed anything.

  That he wouldn’t miss them every single day.

  For a long time she stared outside. Imagining her life without Dahlia and Daisy? Hearing them call someone else Mama? Realizing that she’d be giving up the only decen
t part of her life?

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said abruptly, then pivoted on her heel and stalked to the door. She banged on it with her fist and swept out as soon as it opened.

  Sean left, too, much more slowly, hunching his shoulders as he stepped outside into the rain. It soaked his hair, his clothes, his shoes, dripped off his nose and caught on his eyelashes. The gray and dreariness matched the way he was feeling for giving up on Maggie, appealing to her weakness to buy his nieces’ freedom from her, realizing he might have set in motion events that would not only make the girls disappear from their mom but also from him.

  So much for a normal day. It couldn’t get much worse.

  But then he reached the shop, bypassed the double doors and climbed the stairs to the apartment. He let himself in with his key and found Sophy and Ty having coffee at the table, Dahlia and Daisy watching cartoons on TV, and Sophy looked up at him with a serene smile that eased the ache in his chest. The smile was enough to make anyone feel better, no matter what their troubles. Just that smile was enough to bolster his hope that somehow everyone was going to be all right. Daisy and Dahlia. Sophy. Hell, maybe even Maggie.

  And most definitely him.

  Chapter 11

  Sophy loved the middle of the night. The town was quiet, lights glistening on empty streets. Cars were rare on her street, pedestrians even rarer. The neighborhood dogs were settled in for a few hours’ sleep, while a light breeze rustled through the trees across the street, setting ghostly tendrils of Spanish moss swaying. Tonight the vista had the added benefit of being washed clean by the daylong rain, reflecting and scattering the light.

  Two o’clock and all’s well. Or as well as it could be, considering that she was alone in the bedroom, while Sean was stretched out uncomfortably on the couch. But that was okay. He wanted time; she had a lifetime of it to give.

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever dated a man who hadn’t wanted sex from the start. It was part of the getting-to-know-you, the fun, sweet, breathtaking and sometimes amazing part of it. It wasn’t a big step forward in a relationship; it didn’t signal commitment or even exclusivity, though she had wound up committed to and exclusive with most of the guys she’d had sex with.

  But to Sean, it was a commitment, a fact that she found incredibly sweet. The smoldering, intense, handsome-as-sin, sexy-as-the-devil big bad boy, possessor of a wicked reputation and a grin to match, wasn’t indulging in casual sex.

  Only fair, since there was nothing casual about her feelings for him. He could break her heart, and she didn’t care. She wanted him and everything that came with him. If that included sorrow, well, she would count herself lucky to have known him.

  A board creaked in the hallway behind her, but she didn’t shift from her position leaning against the window frame. It wasn’t either of the girls awakened for a bathroom trip. Their bedroom door squeaked ferociously when opened more than a few inches, a handy alert in the first few days when they’d had a tendency to be furtive in everything they did.

  How did he move so quietly? A whisper here, a shush there, and he was behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his bare chest. Wishing for enough light to cast a reflection in the window so she could see him, she smiled. “Did I wake you?”

  “No. Yes.” He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her back to lean against him, then secured her there with his other arm. Now the heat encircled her, like a blazing fire on a cold night, chasing away any chill the air-conditioning had brought and turning her skin warm and toasty and well on the way to feverish.

  “I used to be afraid of the dark,” she murmured, absorbing the feel of him: broad chest, flat abdomen, strong thighs and, cradled snugly against her bottom, the beginning of a promising erection. “It got worse after our mother got sicker and our father left, until one night Miri showed me the magic of the night. She took me outside, and we listened to the birds singing. We watched for shooting stars and left our footprints on the dew-soaked grass. We searched for the owl hooting somewhere in the side yard, and we snuggled together on the glider on the front porch and just concentrated on the—the peace of it. I was never afraid again.”

  “Sweet memory.”

  “It’s possible to have sweet memories even when it seems the rest of your life was hell.” She paused, her hands clasped over his, her fingertips rubbing the crooked joints on his left hand. “Tell me one of yours.”

  He was quiet a long time, not because good memories were hard to find, she was sure, but to find one that he trusted enough to share. She had no problem with sharing personal stuff, but she’d been raised to be open and forthcoming, to believe that people were trustworthy until they proved they weren’t, while he’d been taught not to talk—to cops, strangers or people in general.

  “One day Declan and Ian were supposed to be at school, which means they were anywhere besides there, and our old man was at work. Mom put Maggie and me in the car and drove us out to the lake for a picnic. Usually she was too tired or disappointed to talk much, but that day she talked a long time about how things were and how they should be and about taking care of a baby like Maggie and taking care of myself. She said school was important—you needed education to make something of yourself. She made me promise that I would finish school.” His chuckle was soft. “I hadn’t even started yet, and I was making solemn vows to graduate.”

  The humor faded slowly. “We ate our sandwiches, and she showed me how to give Maggie a bottle, how to change her diaper, and sometimes her eyes would get wet and she’d stop and close them for a while. When the afternoon was over, we went home, and the next morning she left. We never saw her again.”

  “She was telling you goodbye.” Trying to prepare him to become his baby sister’s responsible brother, crying when it got too hard for her. “Do you know where she went?”

  He shook his head, the beard on his chin catching fine strands of her hair.

  “Do you ever wonder if she’s alive and well out there, thinking about the babies she had to leave behind and aching to make the acquaintance of her granddaughters?”

  “Mostly I think Maggie had lousy parental role models. Was it any surprise she turned out to be so bad at it herself?”

  “There’s more to it than just role models. You’ll be very good at it.” Slowly she turned within the circle of his arms, resting her hands flat on his chest, using what little light made its way into the room to study him. With her hair and white nightgown, she practically gleamed in the dark room, casting even more shadows over him.

  Not even the blackest shadow could hide the fact that he was gorgeous or that his muscles rippled beneath her fingers or that his breath had hitched just a bit or that his pulse was throbbing a little more obviously.

  “You are so incredible,” she murmured. “God was surely having a fine day when He made you.”

  “In a few years, I’ll probably be cross-eyed and half-bald.”

  Laughing, she lifted her hand to his hair, silky, fine, different from the girls’ only in that his was short enough to have a tendency to curl. “I love crossed eyes, and who needs hair?”

  His smile lingered a long time while he toyed with the ribbons that served as straps for her gown. All he had to do was untie each one, and with a shimmy, a shake and a tug, she’d be naked. But the smile faded, and the bows were still tied when he drew back. “We need to talk.”

  “Oh-kay.” She’d heard those words before and said them herself a few times, never followed by anything good. But she didn’t get the vibe that he was giving up on the idea of something more intimate between them. He seemed troubled, but not about her, at least, not directly.

  Letting go of him, she sat on the bed; he pulled the wicker rocker from the corner closer and sat down where their knees bumped.

  It was hard for him to start—would have been hard for any man she knew—but he took a breath and haltingly began. “I know you want us to have sex, and I want that, too. But first...I need to tell you.
..”

  “You’re not married. You’re not in a long-term relationship back in Virginia. Your car is your baby. You really don’t want to be a pirate of the Caribbean. What am I missing?”

  Another breath. “The truth about why I’m here. The real reason I came.”

  Sophy hadn’t expected that.

  “I told you I wound up in Norfolk because that’s where the guy I hitched a ride with was going. His name is Craig Kolinski, and his father had a garage, run-down, on the verge of bankruptcy. We both went to work there, doing our best to get it cleaned up and profitable again. We slept on cots in the back room for the first year because neither of us could afford a place to live.

  “And things turned around. Craig knew cars in general, and thanks to Charlie, I knew restoration. When his dad died, Craig used his life-insurance money to hire new mechanics, buy new equipment and add more space, and we began focusing on the restorations. There was a lot of business, a lot of money coming in, and eventually Craig turned the garage over to me, and he concentrated on the business end.”

  So far, so good. Nothing more than she’d assumed. Still, Sophy couldn’t shake the tension curling through her like a wisp of smoke.

  Sean met her gaze. “Craig was a good guy. He didn’t care that I’d been in prison, he understood dysfunctional families, he had the same goals I did. For a lot of years, he was the best friend I’d ever had.”

  And then... A lead-in like that always had an and then.

  “I like what I do. I kind of live in my own world at work. That’s why it took me a long time to realize that Craig was spending a lot more money than he was bringing in. Then I found out shipments were coming into the garage overnight off the books and disappearing again the next morning. I asked Craig about it, and he finally admitted they were stolen parts he got from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and sent up to the New York area. I quit right then, but he convinced me to stay awhile longer, just till he found someone to replace me. He promised the stolen stuff would be kept separate from the rest of the business, that he wouldn’t do anything that could come back to bite me on the ass.”