by M. S. Parker
I turned on the radio as I made my way back down the driveway, needing something to keep my brain from taking off down some rabbit hole. I had too much to think about, and she was right. Shower, bed, food. After that, I could focus on the things bouncing around in my head.
My stomach growled, but I was too tired to even consider stopping somewhere. I was barely safe driving as it was. If I lost momentum, I’d probably fall asleep at the wheel. At the rate I was going, there was a possibility I’d even fall asleep in the shower, but that one was a risk I was willing to take.
I pulled into my parking space and gave a sigh of relief. Stairs, bathroom, shower, bedroom, bed. Maybe a stop in the kitchen. I’d see where my feet took me. First, I had stairs to contend with. Stairs and snow, I saw as I got out of the car. When had that started?
For the first time since Adare died, I thought that it might not be too bad to move into the apartment above the office. I was renting my place by the month without a contract, but I wanted to give at least a month’s notice. If I did it now, I could be in the other apartment by the first of the year and avoid having to use outside steps through the rest of winter. Some days, I wouldn’t even need to go outside at all.
The idea was appealing, but I wasn’t in any shape to give serious consideration to it. Stairs first.
I was almost to the top when I realized that someone was standing at my door. Judging by the way Jalen was glaring at me, he’d been out in the cold and wet for a while. I tried to muster up some sympathy, but I was too exhausted to feel much of anything.
“Morning,” I said as I stepped past him to unlock the door. I held it open as I walked inside, figuring he’d follow. Whatever he’d come here for, he could say it while I grabbed a semi-stale muffin.
“Morning? That’s all I get?”
He was in a pleasant mood.
“You stand me up last night, ignore my calls and texts so I’m freaking out that something’s happened to you. I call Rylan and have to hear from him that you’re out with Jenna. I’m glad the two of you are friends, but I think I should’ve at least gotten a text to let me know you weren’t coming.”
Shit.
We had plans last night, and I’d completely forgotten about them. I’d even kept my phone on during my conversation with Roberta so I wouldn’t miss any texts from her, and I hadn’t bothered to check out any other notifications.
“I’m sorry,” I said, throwing away the muffin wrapper. “I got caught up in what was going on and completely forgot.”
“What was so important that you’d blow me off and not have the decency to answer me?”
I frowned. This was my fault. I freely admitted that. But he was out of line coming at me like that after I’d apologized. I didn’t plan on giving him details because Jenna was a client and I did my best to keep client’s information private, even if I was talking to someone who knew them, but his attitude made it easier to be blunt about it.
“Where I was and what I was doing is between Jenna and myself.” I took a bottle of water from my fridge and drank half of it. I was still hungry, but I’d taken the edge off enough that I’d be able to sleep.
“That’s the way things are going to go between us then,” he said with a bark of a laugh. “I have to tell you everything, and you get to keep whatever you want from me. Go out to lunch with your ex, hang out with your friend. Expect me to sit around waiting until you decide to show up.”
I was not in the mood for this, but I figured I’d at least try.
“I apologized,” I countered. “Both for not telling you about my lunch with Clay, and for not calling you last night.”
“Only after I called you out on both of them.” He crossed his arms, a muscle in his jaw clenching.
Nope. I wasn’t going to do this. Not here. Not now. I’d admitted that I was wrong and apologized. Both times. If he couldn’t accept that, or even see that I wasn’t even close to being capable of having this conversation at the moment, then I was through being polite. I didn’t have the patience for it.
“Look, I’m exhausted,” I said, meeting his angry gaze and giving a level one in return. “I apologized. If you can’t accept that, it’s your problem, not mine.”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I think I deserve an explanation.”
I had a whole other idea about what he deserved, but I wasn’t taking the bait. “I’m not doing this. You need to go.”
His jaw dropped, and a flush flooded his face. “You can’t just kick me out before we talked things through.”
I’d had more than enough. “Fine. Stay. I don’t give a damn. I need a shower and bed. If you want to sit out here and sulk like a child, you’re welcome to do it as long as you do it quietly. Otherwise, get the hell out of my apartment, and we’ll finish this some other time.”
I didn’t wait to hear him argue or see if he stayed or went. I walked straight into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower. Whatever he decided, that was on him. Unless he tried to keep talking to me when I’d told him to be quiet or leave. If that happened, he and I were going to have an even bigger problem than we had already.
I showered quickly, and by the time I was done, the apartment was empty. I didn’t even bother dressing before falling into bed and wrapping myself up in my sheets and blanket. The insanity of the world would be here when I woke up in a few hours.
Sleep claimed me even as my head met my pillow.
Twenty-Five
One positive thing I could say for Jalen and me bickering, I wasn’t even tempted to put off any work I had to do. I’d slept through most of Saturday, then started working like crazy first thing Sunday morning, some on finding Jenna’s other siblings, some on a few other possible cases I’d come up with on my own.
Missing kids. Fort Collins, Loveland, the whole area. To start, anyway. The cops would have some of these cases, the ones where the parents had filed reports, but others would be the sorts of kids who didn’t have adults looking out for them, the kids who were on the streets here to escape from something worse elsewhere.
Some of the disappeared would be runaways. Some would be dead.
Some would have been taken like Meka, but without anyone looking for them, they would vanish.
I was going to do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen. When Jenna gave me leads to follow, I’d do it, but I didn’t plan on limiting my work to the specific assignments I was given. I had a feeling some of the people in my life would have something to say about that, but I didn’t care. I’d found something I could fight for.
All of that was why I was back at the county courthouse, hoping I wouldn’t be condemned to that same musty basement room where I’d spent too many hours already.
“Next.” A far too happy, sandy-haired man beamed at me. “How can I help you?”
“I need to see census records. Hard copies.”
He blinked. “From where and when?”
“Whatever ones you have here.”
His smile faltered, and he shifted in his seat. “Miss, we have copies of records from five counties, going back twenty years.”
I smiled and hoped he didn’t think I was laughing at how pale his face had gotten. “Then that’s what I want.”
As I followed the directions he’d given me, I thought back to the call I’d gotten from Jenna a few hours ago. Technically, what I was doing was checking out an idea that she’d had rather than something specific Agent Matthews had asked of her. The fact that it would help me with what I was doing was just icing on the cake.
Jenna had no problem accessing digital census records, but a few things she’d found made her wonder if those records were as accurate as they should have been. She hadn’t given me a reason why she suspected that, but I hadn’t needed her to. If she asked me to go look at the hard copies, then that was what I would do. I’d look for evidence of tampering on the hard copies and take pictures I’d later send to Jenna. It would take a long time to compare the digital
copies to the hard copies, so I wouldn’t do that here and now. If Jenna wanted me to help with the comparison, she’d ask.
I planned on keeping the census pictures for my project too. I could compare one year to the next and find the missing names, the kids no one reported missing. It wouldn’t help me with the street kids, but it was more information than I could find with just filed reports.
The room with the papers I wanted was much nicer than the previous one. This one had windows.
I started with the previous year’s findings and took a deep breath before wading in. This was going to be tedious, intensive work that I wouldn’t be able to finish today. Hours of poring over papers, with nothing but the same to look forward to for the rest of the week, at least. Normally, that would drive me crazy, but this sort of detail-oriented work was what I needed to keep myself from remembering that it’d been three days since Jalen had shown up at my place, and three days since I’d last heard from him.
But that wasn’t important. I had details to focus on.
When I saw the figure standing in front of my apartment door, my heart leaped. Then I realized that this figure, while still tall, was a few inches shy of Jalen’s height. The shoulders weren’t quite as broad.
Still, it was a figure I knew and cared about.
“Clay, I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
He grinned at me as he pushed off the railing. He rubbed his hands together, then blew on them. “Thanks for showing up before things started freezing off.”
I unlocked the door. “Come in. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for things freezing off.”
He laughed, and it brought my first real smile in days. I’d forgotten how good it felt to be with someone who made me laugh rather than someone who infuriated me. I still wanted Jalen, despite our argument, and I believed that he’d come to his senses soon. When that time came, we’d talk things out, but it was nice not to need to think at the moment.
I kicked off my shoes and Clay did the same. “Do you want something to eat? I’m starving.”
“Long day?” he asked as he followed me into the kitchen. “Does county-wide courthouse research always build up an appetite?”
I threw a sharp look over my shoulder as I rummaged in my freezer for my last frozen pizza. “Do I even want to know how you know that?”
“Probably not,” he admitted as he reached over to pre-heat the oven.
“But you’re going to tell me anyway,” I said. I opened the box and scowled. This thing was going to taste like cardboard.
“When someone comes along asking for something like every available census record for the past twenty years, it tends to get noticed.”
I slid the pizza into the oven and tried to decide if I was creeped out, annoyed, or indifferent to the fact that the FBI knew what I’d been doing today. “Did that overly-enthusiastic guy at the courthouse call you or something? Do you have them looking for me?”
I was going with annoyed, apparently.
Clay rolled his eyes. “Way too high for my pay grade. I can barely order coffee on my own. Besides the fact that I’d never do something like that to you, I don’t have even close to that sort of authority.”
I raised an eyebrow and folded my arms. “What about your partner? Does Agent Matthews have that sort of authority? Does he have Jenna and me doing his dirty work while he spies on us?”
Clay’s expression sobered. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jenna. Ray’s on the up-and-up. He looks at her like a little sister.”
“Then how did you know exactly what I was doing and where I was doing it?”
He sighed. “That’s an excellent question.” He walked over to the fridge and took out a beer. “Here’s what I know. I was sitting at my desk, finishing some paperwork when Special Agent Diaz came to my desk and told me that I needed to pay you a visit. He said he got a call that you were ‘ruffling some feathers’ and you needed to leave things alone.”
Someone in authority higher than a special agent in the FBI had eyes on Jenna and me.
I really hoped it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.
Twenty-Six
“Rona! Wake up! Rona!”
I groaned and rolled over. Who was pounding on my bedroom door? My sleep-addled brain couldn’t place the voice even though whoever he was, he knew my name.
Suddenly, my hands came in contact with a very firm, and very hot, surface. A surface that felt an awful lot like a muscular chest. A bare one.
And then something just as hot and firm brushed against my thigh, and I realized I was naked too.
My eyes flew open as a pair of strong arms wrapped around me, and I found myself staring into a pair of beautiful and familiar eyes. He smiled, and those eyes sparkled, little crinkles appearing at the corners.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
His sleep-roughened voice sent a wave of heat washing over my skin and pooling between my legs.
“Rona!” Another series of knocks, just as impatient as the voice sounded.
“Are you going to tell your brother you’re awake, or do you want me to?”
My heart gave an unsteady thump. “My brother?”
The wrongness of the situation hit me all at once. Where was I? Why was he in my bed? And why did he think I had a brother?
“I could tell Freddie that we decided it would be a good idea for me to sneak out of the guest room because you thought it’d be hot to have sex in your childhood bedroom, but I’d really like for your dad not to kill me.”
I gave him a sharp look, but the only humor on his face was good-natured. He was really joking about my father killing him.
What the hell was going on here?
I looked around. Yes, this did look like my old bedroom, but it also looked a little more…mature. More like the room of a teenager heading off to college rather than a girl on the brink of adolescence.
Even as I took in the details, the full impact of what he said hit me. “Wait, are you saying my dad’s here?” A bright flare of panic shot through me as I sat up, barely catching the sheet against my breasts.
“Of course he’s here.” He sat up too, a puzzled expression on his face. “Rona, are you okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t right. I live in Colorado. I don’t have any family. You shouldn’t be here. I’m with Jalen. Where’s Jalen?”
Clay’s expression was concerned as he put his hand on my shoulder, but he tried to make his tone light. “Should I be worried that you’re asking about another man hours before our wedding?”
“Our what?” The words came out as a whisper instead of the shout I’d intended.
Clay opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked like he thought he was talking but all I heard was muffled voices growing louder. Yelling. Pulling me toward them. Faster and faster until…
“You need to answer my question about what the fuck you’re doing here!”
“That’s none of your damn business.” Clay’s voice was lower, but still loud enough for me to hear what he was saying. “You need to leave before you wake her up.”
The bitter laugh that came next was enough to get me out of bed. I stepped into the living room just as Jalen started talking again.
“Weren’t you able to wear her out enough last night that she’ll sleep right through this?”
“What’s going on here?” I didn’t raise my voice, but both men turned toward me.
Clay wore a pair of jeans I assumed he’d gotten from the emergency travel pack he kept in his car, but he hadn’t put on a shirt or shoes. With a towel over his shoulder and a spatula in hand, he definitely looked comfortable in my apartment.
Jalen looked rumpled, as if he hadn’t slept well in a while. He was carrying a box of donuts and a bouquet of assorted flowers, both of which suggested he’d come here to talk about our argument the other night.
“I don’t think I’m the one who needs to offer an explanation,” Jalen said. “I wanted to
apologize for getting upset the other night, but instead of you answering the door, he does, dressed like that and telling me that you’re ‘still in bed.’”
I crossed my arms and tried not to feel self-conscious about the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra under the thin t-shirt I’d worn to bed last night. I was glad it was cool enough in here that I’d worn sweats rather than just underwear. Otherwise this would’ve been a lot worse.
“What is it you want to apologize about?” I asked.
Jalen’s fingers tightened around the base of the flowers. “I wanted to apologize because Jenna told me what happened the night you stood me up. That she was the client you were working for and that you were helping her find her sister who’d taken off.”
A flash of anger went through me, and I pushed it down as I asked, “Is that the only reason?”
He scowled at me. “What other reason do you want?”
My temper bubbled up again, and I wondered how I’d been able to keep it this long. “I don’t know. It might’ve been nice if you’d simply accepted my apology and waited until I wasn’t exhausted to talk instead of skulking off and ignoring me for days.”
“You could’ve called me,” he pointed out. “You know, instead of running to Clay like you always do.”
“You need to back off,” Clay said, somehow managing to look threatening while pointing a spatula at Jalen.
“Let me handle this,” I said to him. I took a step toward Jalen. “Okay, we both could’ve picked up the phone, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to come barging into my apartment, yelling and making accusations.”
“Accusations? Really?” Jalen sneered. “This is the second time I’ve shown up at your apartment early in the morning and found him half-dressed and you looking freshly fucked.”
Heat flooded my face, as much from anger as from embarrassment. “How dare you come in here and say that to me!”
“Oh, was it making love then?” He threw the box of donuts at the closest table. “Guess that makes me the pity fuck, right? You two get together and laugh about it? About how stupid I am for believing you the last time I caught you two like this, and you said nothing happened?”