He stopped, hands shoved in his jacket pockets. “Did you interview her already?”
“I asked her about other contact with Kelly, if she knew of anyone else who’d heard from her.”
He waited and finally spread his hands. “And?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
A grimace twisted his strong features. “Damn, this case will be a bitch even if it does turn out to be her.”
Anger flashed through her. “Well hey, you can file it in your cold-case file and quit worrying about it, huh?”
An answering ire flared in his dark eyes. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one complaining about it being too hard, Calvert.”
“I’m not the one with a history of cutting out when the going gets tough, now am I, Holton?”
“Why do I even bother trying with you?” With a look that should have left him dead on the spot, she sidestepped him and stalked to the car. She didn’t look at him as he sank into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Gaze on the rearview mirror, she backed up enough to let her turn around and head out the thin, rutted track. His thumb bounced off his knee again.
He lifted a hand between them but didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry, all right? I had no intention of getting into this crap with you today.”
She shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “You think we might be able to agree just to focus on what we have to do?”
“I’d like to think so. My wife doesn’t agree.”
Her foot hit the brake too hard at the stop sign. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“She thinks I have ‘unresolved issues’ where you’re concerned.” He made air quotes with his fingers.
She turned right onto Stagecoach. “So what do you think?”
The expression he slid sideways at her simmered with pure irritation. “Oh, she’s right.”
And he hated it. An irresistible smile curled Madeline’s mouth. “Can’t stand it, can you?”
He exhaled a breath that was half-huff, half-laugh. “You have no idea.”
Rolling her shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension sitting there, she flexed her hands on the wheel. “We should probably stop dancing around the whole damn thing and just deal with it.”
“Yeah.” Another long exhale. “Probably.”
Silence descended between them, rural scenery flashing by as the patrol unit ate the miles back to Coney. The smothering quiet itched over Madeline’s skin, setting her nerves on edge. The town opened around them—auto-parts store, Pizza Hut, the peanut plant. The jingle of a Gary Allan song split the uncomfortable stillness as she pulled into the parking lot at the sheriff’s department.
Tick tugged his phone from his belt. “Calvert. Hey. Actually, yeah, she’s right here.” He darted a look at Madeline and extended his cell, a sardonic twist to his lips. “It’s for you.”
Frowning, she accepted it. He swung out of the car, opening the trunk, ostensibly to retrieve the plastic container holding Kelly’s belongings. Madeline lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe.” Ash’s voice, and pleasure shimmered through her entire body. She tamped it down.
“Hardison, ‘babe’ is worse than baby,” she parried. “You can’t call me that either.”
“You know, you’re a hard woman to please.” Good humor saturated his words, and she melted a little against the car seat. Simply talking to him shouldn’t be this satisfying, not since she’d seen him, kissed him, only the night before. Memories of that good-night kiss flowed through her, bringing back each shivering, delightful sensation. She’d been hard put to go home to her own bed.
The trunk slammed, shuddering the vehicle and thumping her back to reality. “Why are you calling? And why on Tick’s phone?”
“Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice.” His tone dropped with the words, sending another frisson of awareness over her. My God, the man’s voice was sexy. “I had to track you down best I could, since you haven’t given me your cell number yet. Figured if I found him, you wouldn’t be far away.”
“Well, you found me.” She winced at the inane words, but she’d never been very good at flirtatious small talk. Outright sex? No problem. Carrying on a conversation? Not in her repertoire.
“Yeah, you sound awful enthused about that.” His amusement reverberated over the connection. “Listen, I have a load of stuff to do today, but I thought I’d see if you wanted to do something tonight.”
Do something? The possibilities shimmered before her, memories of that night in his bed, the taste and feel of him, the way he seemed to burn her alive.
“…I can cook or we can go out. There’s always the movie thing, although I’m not sure what’s playing in Albany.” He was talking, and shit damn fuck, she’d missed most of it, probably, fantasizing about making love with him again…
Wait one holy-frikkin-second. Making love? Uh-uh. Sex. That was all. “Making love” indicated a level of emotion, a type of commitment that she simply didn’t—
“Madeline?”
Oh Lord. She frantically tried to recall what he’d said and drew a blank. “Um, yeah?”
His sigh hung between them. “You missed all of that, didn’t you?”
Should she lie? She slumped. “Yes, I did.”
Another wry chuckle. “All right, it’s obvious you’re focused on work. Call me later and let me know what you want to do, okay?”
Focused on work? If he only knew. She swallowed. “Sure. Bye.”
“Later, honey.” The phone beeped with the dropped connection, and she closed it slowly. She rubbed the silver rectangle on her jeans, wiping her fingerprints from the shiny surface, and stared at the sheriff’s department. Tick had taken the storage box inside, and she knew what waited for her there once she climbed those steps.
The past with all its ugliness.
Facing those unresolved issues.
Great. So she had one man she didn’t know what to do with and another she didn’t want to deal with. Avoiding the hard stuff had never gotten her anywhere in the past except alone and unhappy. Yanking the keys from the ignition, she shoved open the car door.
Maybe it was time to start taking things on the chin.
Chapter Eleven
Madeline found Tick in the shabby little conference area off the squad room. The bright plastic box stood in the middle of the table; he slumped in a chair and stared at it, a frown on his face, thumb bumping off his knee again.
She slid his phone across the table. “Why didn’t you open it?”
“Thought you’d want to do it.” He shrugged. “She was your friend.”
“Thanks.” She approached the long scarred table and ran her hand around the edge of the container, much as Lorraine had caressed it earlier. As badly as she wanted to know, at the same time, she didn’t. Didn’t want to open this box, didn’t want those bones to turn out to be all that was left of Kelly. She wanted to go on believing Kelly was someplace else, living somewhere sunny and sandy, happy and free.
“Why’d you do it?”
The abrupt inquiry, the way his dark gaze sharpened on her face, set her back, stealing her breath and ability to speak. Ignoring the way her chest hurt, the way her fingers trembled, she reached for the lid. “Calvert, you—”
“You said it, Holton.” His voice went hard. “Time to stop dancing and just deal with it.”
“I think finding out if those remains are Kelly’s might be more important—”
“Madeline, damn it, quit running from what you did and tell me why.”
“For her, okay?” Her vision blurring, ears buzzing with a rapid rise in blood pressure, she smacked her palm on the box lid. “I did it for her.”
“What?” Confusion twisted his features and he shook his head. “You’re not making sense, Holton.”
“I can’t…I can’t explain this to you.” A blend of nerves and nausea roiled in her belly, burning her chest, pushing into her throat. “You’ll nev
er understand.”
He leaned forward, gaze focused on hers. “Try me.”
She turned, pushing her hair away from her face. “It’s over, okay? I screwed up, I did it, but it’s in the past. It happened and I can’t change that. Why are we digging this up? It doesn’t fix anything.”
“Holy hell,” he breathed. “You are so like her it’s freakin’ scary.”
“What are you talking about?” She snapped the words out and spun when he didn’t answer. He remained seated, staring at her with a stunned expression. If she hadn’t been on the verge of throwing up from mingled anger and tension, the poleaxed look on his face might have been funny.
With a harsh laugh, he slumped back in his chair and rubbed his hands down his face. “Damn, it makes sense now, in a sick sort of way.”
“Calvert, what the fuck are you rambling about? What do you mean, ‘like her’?”
“Cait.” He lowered his hands to meet her eyes. “Don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
She hitched one eyebrow at him. “You’re comparing me to your wife?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, that makes sense since she and I have so much in common. She actually likes you.” Ignoring the fact that Ash had made the same association, glad that Tick seemed to have let go of the past for a moment, she popped the box’s latches free. She was like Caitlin Falconetti? Hardly.
“Maybe you don’t have much in common with her now.” Eyes narrowed, he rested his elbows on the table, his attention on her face. She shifted under his scrutiny but didn’t look up. “But a few years ago? Oh, yeah. I see it now.”
She glared. “See what?”
“Avoidance. Fronting. Hiding. Holding people off as a form of self-protection. Want me to keep going?”
“I want you to shut the hell up and let me get to work.”
He pushed up and came around to stand across the table from her. He lifted the lid free and laid it aside. “You said you did it for her.”
Oh God, he was never going to let it go now. Madeline blinked away a blur of tears as the scents of old paper and old memories wafted from the container. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look into the box to save her life. “I also said it didn’t matter.”
He rested a hand at either end of the carton. “Cait seems to think it wasn’t about me at all. She thinks you were out to get back at Allison.”
Madeline closed her eyes. She wanted to leave, wanted out, but where was there to go? She pulled on the bitchiness like a cloak, forced free a scornful laugh.
“Listen to you. ‘Cait thinks.’ Can’t you think for yourself, Calvert?”
She could feel his steady regard. “We make a good team. I respect what she has to say, and usually, she’s right when we’re talking about people.”
Madeline lifted her lashes. With her head bent, she didn’t have to meet his gaze. Instead, lime green plastic framed what was left of Kelly’s life, bracketed by his hands.
“Madeline, keeping secrets…that’s never a good thing. The person it hurts most is the one keeping them.”
“Thanks for the concern, Calvert.” She lifted her eyes then, narrowed in her best fuck-you expression. The sudden sadness in his expression shook her. She injected mockery into her voice. “Where did that inestimable wisdom come from? Your mama?”
“No.” He didn’t react, merely continued to watch her, an old sorrow glinting in the dark depths of his serious gaze. “From helping Cait put our lives back together after she’d destroyed what we had by doing the same damn thing you are. Avoiding, fronting, hiding, holding people at a distance. Keeping secrets. She was wrong, and so are you.”
“You are so—”
“What purpose is it serving, not telling me? We don’t get along anyway. You hate my ass, so it’s not like I can react in a way that will make you dislike me more, right? Hell, maybe putting it out there will make you feel better.”
“Oh, sure. Confession being good for the soul and all that bullshit.” She lifted the first layer of paper out of the box—sheets of notebook paper so old it had yellowed slightly, the ink fading. “We’re talking about crap that happened almost two decades ago. Do you see my life suffering because of it?”
He laid a long-fingered hand atop the yearbook she’d been ready to lift. “Yes.”
“Fuck you, Tick.” She shoved his hand aside.
“You’re not going to tell me that what happened that night didn’t lead to you running off, to not talking to your father for years, Madeline. What about your relationship with your mama, with your sister? Your daddy died, for God’s sake, and you hadn’t spoken to him in what? Sixteen years?”
She froze with the yearbook halfway out of the box. “Don’t you dare mention my father. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare.”
“Why not?” He leaned in, intent on her face. “It’s not like he meant anything to you, at least not the way you acted—”
She swung at him and found her wrist caught in a firm grip, their gazes locked in intense battle.
“No,” he gritted and shook his head. “We’re not going there, not now, not ever. Do you understand?”
Horrified, she swallowed. She’d never lost control enough to strike out physically—not at a suspect, not at her father, not at Allison or…not at anyone.
Oh, God, and Ash thought she was worth something. Only because he didn’t know her, didn’t see the real her—
“Madeline.” Tick gave her a gentle shake. Stunned, she stared at him, thoughts bumping through her head in a wild chase. “It stops now. We’re moving on. You’re telling me. Everything.”
“She loved you.” The words were out, spilling free before she could think, before she could call them back.
“What?” Surprise flared in his eyes. “Who? Allison?”
“Kelly.” With a twist, she extricated her wrist from his grasp.
His brows lowered. “What do you… I didn’t know her, Madeline.”
“You didn’t have to.” She rubbed at her arm, a chill running over her. “You just had to be you, that was enough for her.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down, still frowning. “I don’t think I understand.”
With the weary movements of an old lady, Madeline did the same. She folded her hands on the tabletop and focused on the surface of her skin, rather than look at him. “I don’t mean she loved you the way your wife does. She loved you the way a teenage girl worships the boy she can’t have.”
She reached into the box for the smaller shoebox she’d glimpsed earlier. With infinite care, she unfolded the thin news clippings and laid them out on the table. “See?”
“It’s our football season my senior year.” He sifted through them. “And baseball, graduation notices.”
“Not our season,” Madeline corrected, tapping a finger against his name, circled in one article. “Your season. Your graduation notice.”
He flipped through the snippets, the skin around his mouth paling.
Tired, Madeline brushed her hair behind her ears and sighed. “She lived in a trailer park. Her daddy abandoned them when she was a baby. There was never enough money, she never felt like she was enough. She struggled with school, stayed on the fringes a lot. And you were…you. Smart, athletic, good-looking, from a good family. She loved the idea of you, of what being the girl who walked through those halls with you would be like.”
“A crush.” He speared his fingers through his hair. “I don’t get how that leads to what happened with us.”
“The crush didn’t lead to what happened, Tick.” Madeline smiled, a sardonic twist of her lips. “Allison did.”
“I think maybe you better start at the beginning.”
“God, she is such a bitch.”
Ash lifted his eyebrows at Dale Jenkins as the virulent whisper floated to them across the processing desk at McGee’s. The other farmer shook his head, a half-grimace, half-smile curving his mouth. Stacy Cheek had a mouth like a Teamster and a filthy little temper on her; it was
n’t the first time the two men had been privy to her insights on other women, her ex-husband and life in general.
Dale leaned a hip against the chest-high counter and grinned. “So how ’bout those Braves?”
Ash chuckled. He’d missed the preseason game in which his beloved Astros had been completely routed by Atlanta. Instead, he’d been wrapped up in having cider and cheesecake with the woman who seemed destined to tie him in the biggest knots he’d ever seen. “We’ll get you next time.”
“Not if that boy keeps pitching like he does.”
“Did you hear her?” Stacy’s tone lifted above a whisper, real anger swirling through the words. “Miss High and Mighty.”
“She always was.” The second female voice was oddly familiar, and Ash raised his chin, tilting his head to get a better look. Yep, that was Tick’s Miss High School Sweetheart. Entering data into the computer, she stabbed at the keys, her expression sour. “Don’t you remember? Total snob, thinks she’s better than everyone else.”
Ash shook his head. What the hell had Tick seen in this woman, even as a teenager? It had to have been the sex. Ten to one, she’d been his first. Those were the ones a guy always lost his perspective over.
Stacy laid a sheaf of papers aside with a smack and grabbed the next stack. His, Ash realized with a wave of relief. Thank God. He’d be out of here fairly quickly and wouldn’t have to listen to much more of this bullshit.
“She’s working over at the sheriff’s department,” Stacy said, long nails clicking on the keyboard. “Donna said she’s been in a car with Tick Calvert the last couple of days. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall there?”
Fuck. They were bashing Madeline, while he’d been standing there. Anger washed over him, his neck burning.
“Like he has the time of day for her.” Allison flicked her shiny hair over one shoulder. A hint of possessiveness lingered in her tone. “Like he ever did.”
“Ladies.” His voice came out louder than he intended. Holy God, for a second he sounded like his father, booming in the Texas State Senate. Ol’ Clayton would have been proud. Two pairs of eyes swung to him, surprise in Stacy’s, shocked recognition in Allison’s. He leaned forward. “You think you could save your completely inappropriate bitchiness for another place and time and get my goddamn paperwork done?”
Uncovered: A Hearts of the South story Page 15