Brent was quiet for a moment, trying to recall the case, the mood that had surrounded the trial. Only vague facts returned to him. He doubted even those would have returned if he and Callie hadn’t spent so much time going over his cases.
Walker was a two-bit junkie who had robbed a liquor store owner of the princely sum of sixty-three dollars while waving a realistic looking toy gun. It had been his second offense. Brent could remember no remorse being displayed. “No more than usual. He was angrier at his lawyer for not getting him off because he’d used a toy gun instead of the real thing than he was at me. I don’t think I really entered into the picture for him.”
Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe Rachel represented freedom rather than a child to the man. Brent took away his freedom, he was going to take away something precious from the judge.
“Still, I have to check it out.”
Brent nodded, eager to stop talking and start doing. “I want to come with you.”
“And I want you to come with me.” Too late, she realized how that must sound to him. Why had she worded it that way? she berated herself silently. “The kidnapper might call you back. I want to know the second he does. Best way I know to do that is to keep you around as much as possible.” She led the way to her car. It went without saying that they would use hers and return later for his. “Just as long as you remember to stay out of the way if anything goes down,” she warned. “The last thing either one of us needs is for you to get shot.”
He stopped at her vehicle. “But you getting shot is okay?”
The corner of her mouth curved upward. “Never okay. I’ve just had more training at covering my tail than you have.”
“No,” he agreed wryly, his eyes traveling to that portion of her anatomy almost against his will, “they never went over tail covering in judge school.”
She heard the note of cynicism in his voice. “I meant no disrespect.”
Brent sighed. He supposed no one ever knew how they would react under dire circumstances until they occurred. He really was going to have to get better control over himself than this. “Neither did I. It’s just that my nerves are stretched further than I ever thought was possible.”
Without thinking, she laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re doing fine.”
The soft note in Callie’s voice unlocked something within him. Brent looked at her hand, grateful for the comfort, wary that there was something more happening here than either one of them could allow at the moment. Something that, once this was brought to a successful end, perhaps could be examined more closely. But not here, not now.
Suddenly becoming aware of the contact, Callie dropped her hand. “We’d better go.”
With that, she rounded the hood of her car and got in on the driver’s side. If her heart was beating just a little harder than it should have been, she attributed it to the rush of adrenaline associated with chasing down a possible lead.
John Walker didn’t answer his door when she knocked. Laying her ear against the door, she heard no movement on the other side. There was no reason to believe that the man was there.
But, if he was their man, maybe he’d left behind a clue, something for them to go on.
“You stay here,” she told Brent in case the ex-con actually was inside and playing possum. “I’m going to get the motel manager. If Walker does happen to turn up, I want you to come get me. Nothing else, understand?”
It took no subtle reading of body language to know that the instruction annoyed the hell out of him. “I’m not a child, Callie.”
“You’re not bulletproof, either. I’ll be right back.”
She hurried away, hoping this wouldn’t take too long. The manager was in his small, crammed office. The smell of years of grime mingled with stale body odor the moment she opened the door.
Callie flashed her ID at him. The bald, mousy-looking man squinted at it as if he was trying to make out the letters.
“You have a John Walker staying in room 212. He’s not answering and I have reason to suspect he might be holding a child prisoner inside. I need you to open the door for me.”
With two hands on the counter, the manager seemed to hold the narrow separation as an obstacle between him and her. “I can’t do that. That’s a violation of his civil rights.”
It sounded as if a lawyer had been whispering in the man’s ear. Obviously, the motel had had more than one unsavory character staying here lately. “We’ll discuss civil rights on our way to the room.” Callie left no room for argument in her voice.
The manager complained and whined all the way to the second-floor door, then he stood stubbornly before the door, making no move to open it. Callie glanced at Brent, but the man shook his head. Walker hadn’t made an appearance one way or another.
“When did you last see Walker?” Callie asked the manager.
The man raised what little chin he had defiantly. “Dunno. A week, two. They pay, I don’t bother them.” He peered myopically at Callie. “Look, you sure this is legal? I don’t want to get in no trouble here. Already had lawyers coming at me and I don’t particularly like the experience.”
Brent moved in front of Callie. “I’m Judge Brenton Montgomery.”
The manager’s eyes widened as he looked at Callie. “You brought your judge?”
“I’ve issued a search warrant for the premises,” Brent told him. “This man could be involved in a kidnapping case. If you don’t want to be charged with obstructing justice, I suggest you open the door immediately.”
The manager couldn’t find the proper key quickly enough. Hands trembling, he inserted it into the lock.
“I didn’t know judges were allowed to lie,” Callie whispered to Brent under her breath.
Brent kept his eyes on the door as the manager struggled with the lock.
“I didn’t lie,” he whispered back. “I am a judge, and we already know that Walker could be involved in the case.”
It was nice to know Brent was human like the rest of them, she thought. “I was talking about the warrant.”
He moved the manager out of the way and took hold of the key, turning it. “Just getting a little ahead of myself.”
They both knew he could issue one on the spot if there was reason enough to suspect that Walker was somehow involved in Rachel’s abduction. He put his shoulder to the door and shoved it opened.
The smell that hit Callie the instant the door was opened was sadly familiar. She was grateful that she’d put some time between herself and the breakfast she’d had at her father’s house. Even so, she could feel it threatening to make a reappearance.
John Walker was lying sprawled out on the floor by the window. The right side of his head was bashed opened.
She wasn’t one of those people who could get accustomed or hardened to the sight of a murder victim, even though it was all part of her job. It didn’t matter that the man on the floor had probably been a man no one had ever cared about, much less loved. Who, according to his file, was an incorrigible criminal. No one deserved to die like this. No one deserved to rot in a room for several days, their disappearance from life unnoticed.
“Damn,” she heard Brent say.
“That would be the word for it,” she murmured.
Reaching into her pocket, Callie took out the gloves that were part and parcel of her job and slipped them on before she began examining the body.
Brent had to shove his hands into his pockets to keep from giving in to the urge to help with the search. “Is he— Is he—?”
“Dead?” Though she knew it was futile, she felt for a pulse in Walker’s neck. There was none. The man’s color was gone. He’d bled out. “Very much so.” She glanced up at the manager, who looked as if he was going to be sick right on the spot. “I hope he paid for the room in advance, because he’s sure as hell not going to be making any payments now.”
Taking care to keep out of her way, Brent squatted down beside Callie. “Do you think he was involved in Rachel’s kidnapping?”
Her very first case had involved a man who’d been dead a little more than a day. Walker was stiffer than that man had been.
“If he was, I’d say it was way before the actual fact.” Holding up Walker’s hand she tested its flexibility. There was none. “Judging from the rigor that’s set in, not to mention the smell, this man has been dead for about three or four days. He certainly wasn’t the one who just placed that call to you, or snatched up your daughter.” Her stomach inching its way into her throat, Callie rose to her feet and stepped back. She automatically dug out her cell phone as she turned from the body. “We’ll know more once the CSI team gets here.”
Brent looked down at her. The blood had drained from her face. “You all right?”
“I’m not at my best around dead people. Thanks for noticing.”
The words sounded sarcastic. The smile of thanks she offered was not.
It was another frustrating dead end.
Callie frowned, hating to have her back against the wall. Again. It had taken very little investigating to discover that this was just a drug score gone bad. The dealer had taken Walker’s money and left with the stash he had come to pedal. The whole thing was completely unrelated to Rachel Montgomery’s kidnapping case.
They weren’t getting anywhere with the other suspects on the list, either. So far, all had alibis that were holding up under investigation. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps this was a clumsy random snatch and someone was just using it to taunt the Judge.
She kept this latest theory to herself, not wanting to add to Brent’s agitation.
He’d been with her for the duration of the day, offering suggestions but mostly waiting. Waiting for a break. Waiting to get his life back in order. She felt as if she was failing him.
It was an odd feeling. No matter how caught up she got in a case, she’d never felt it as personally as she did this one. Having him with her didn’t help, she thought. But she would have felt inordinately cruel, asking him to stay home to carry out his vigil on his own.
They were back at the cemetery where they had originally gotten hooked up this morning. Her thought was to get him back to his car and call it a night, but now that she was here, she couldn’t quite make herself slip quietly into the darkness.
Pulling up the hand brake, she looked at Brent. If his square jaw was any more clenched, she was certain it was in danger of shattering.
“Look, it’s getting late, why don’t I follow you to your house? I could make you something to eat. You haven’t eaten anything all day.”
As if to agree with her, his stomach growled. He laughed shortly, but there was little humor evident in his eyes. “You haven’t eaten, either.”
“All right, I’ll make something for both of us. I figure you’re probably too tired to be very critical. I’m not my father.”
Desperate to have something to think about rather than dwell on the obvious, he picked up the thread of her conversation.
“Very few people can cook the way he can,” Brent agreed. “I’m surprised he never opened up a restaurant after he retired.”
“I think he likes being exclusive.” She tried to remember ever seeing Brent at their table and failed. It had to have been for one of those dinners she’d missed, she decided. But she was curious. “When did you have my father’s cooking?”
He shook his head as he looked around. The cemetery was peaceful. It only added to his sense of agitation. Where was she? “I haven’t. But I’ve heard Judge Morehead talking about attending one of your father’s cook-outs.”
She smiled. “Dad likes to keep abreast of what’s going on. Inviting all his old friends and their families does that for him. He usually winds up playing host to half the Aurora police force. He cooks, they talk, everyone ends up happy.”
Brent nodded, only half listening. What made a woman like her get into this line of work, he wondered. A line of work that involved unsolved cases and staring down at dead people. What did she do with her nights to cleanse herself? To get herself to sound this bright, this chipper? This hopeful.
He realized that she’d stopped talking, and he dug the conversation back from the borders of his mind. “Must get expensive.”
“Not so bad,” she contradicted. “Besides, that kind of thing is priceless for him.” She nodded toward his car. They should get going. She hadn’t believed in creatures that went bump in the night since she was a little girl, but that didn’t mean she liked standing around at the gates of a cemetery at night with a fog encroaching. “Why don’t you get into your car and I’ll follow you home?” she repeated. Her words played themselves back to her. She was being pushy, she realized. As usual. She gave him a way out. “Unless you want to be alone.”
Aiming his key ring at the car, Brent pressed down. Two short noises signaled that the alarm was disarmed, the car unlocked. Brent shook his head. “No, I don’t want to be alone.”
Callie didn’t realize she was smiling until she caught her own reflection in the side mirror as she got into her own vehicle.
The ground floor of Brent’s house was spacious, airy. If his wife had done any decorating here, there was precious little evidence of it now. The furnishings were decidedly masculine. Massive pieces chosen for comfort rather than for elegance.
She followed him to a kitchen her father would have approved of. It had a great deal of counter space and looked out onto a family room that was built around a giant projection screen. Her own apartment could have fit into one of the corners of the room.
“Make yourself at home.” Brent indicated the giant built-in refrigerator. “Use whatever you need, although I have to tell you, I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat. You have to keep up your strength.” My God, she sounded just like her father whenever she protested that she didn’t feel like eating. With a shake of her head, Callie opened the refrigerator. She was going to have to watch that.
Unlike her own, this refrigerator was almost fully stocked. Delia must have gone shopping just before she was killed, she thought. Callie decided on something simple. “How do you feel about an omelet?”
Brent had walked into the family room. Picking up the remote, he aimed it at the set.
“That’ll be fine.”
As had been his habit since he’d been in college, he turned on the television set to see what else had been going on in the world. Without looking, he moved his thumb from TV to cable mode and pressed a button. Instead of the all-news channel he expected, he heard the sound of childish laughter.
The screen flickered. The next moment, the image of his daughter appeared. She was at someone’s birthday party. He’d accidentally hit the VCR mode instead of the auxiliary cable.
His heart froze.
Callie’s head jerked up the moment she heard the laughter. She moved away from the stove as she heard a high voice cry out, “Watch me, Daddy, watch me!”
He hadn’t meant to play this, she realized. Most likely, the tape had been in the machine all this time. That first night Rachel had been kidnapped, had Brent stayed up looking at videotapes of his little girl?
Leaving the kitchen, she crossed to Brent. For a moment she stood beside him, watching the child on the screen. “She’s a beautiful little girl.”
He felt as if his throat was constricting again. His eyes stung, and this time he didn’t bother trying to blink back the tears. Would he ever see her again?
“Yes, she is,” he agreed quietly. His fingers tightened around the remote, but he made no move to stop the video. “I shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing. Thinking about eating. Thinking about—” His voice halted as guilt abruptly washed over his face.
“Thinking about what?” Callie half expected him to say something about killing the man who’d done this horrible thing.
She was caught completely by surprise when he quietly confessed, “You.”
Chapter 9
Brent wasn’t sure if he made the first move, or if Callie did.
It didn’t matter.
All he was aware of was the incredible need he had to make human contact, to find comfort and somehow lessen this pain he was feeling. Make it fade for just a moment.
There had been something humming between them all along. It had been there since that first moment at the fund-raiser when he’d seen her from across the room and asked for her name.
It urged him on now, playing upon this awful vulnerability he felt.
Cupping the back of her head, he turned her face up to his. Brought his lips down to hers.
The moment froze in time.
For a second Callie didn’t know what to think, how to react. And then her arms were around his neck and she was leaning into the kiss. Giving him comfort. Taking the same away for herself.
She’d been so alone since Kyle had been killed, alone in that secret place in her heart that he had brought to life. That place where love had existed. After Kyle was killed, it had felt like a barren waste-land. Until this moment.
Brent took her breath away and with it the thoughts that always lingered on the outskirts of her mind, haunting her. They all burned away in the heat of the kiss as it traveled up and down the length of her body, taking the shell of the woman she once was and recreating her.
Callie felt herself surrendering without a single shot being fired, before a single line of defense had the opportunity to be set up.
The kiss grew in intensity, in demand. She melted with it.
When he’d been in college and on the boxing team, there’d been a term for this. Sucker punched. He’d just been sucker punched, trying so hard to hold his line of defense in place, he’d never seen this coming.
And had taken it squarely on the chin. It sent him reeling.
His senses on fire, Brent slipped his arms down to her waist, and he drew her closer to him. Drew her warmth, her comfort, into him. He would have absorbed her completely if he could.
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