by Anne Woodard
He couldn’t help himself. He let go of the steering wheel, then shifted just enough so he could reach across the truck’s bench seat and pull her close enough to kiss.
It was awkward, and if anyone was watching it probably looked silly as hell for two adults to sit at opposite sides of a truck’s seat while trying to kiss.
Awkward and silly be damned. It felt good. It felt right and real.
Maggie was sweet to the taste and warm to the touch. All he could reach was her shoulder, which he closed his left hand around so she couldn’t get away. And her neck, which he slid his right hand behind in order to draw her closer. And her mouth, which he covered with his.
That first meeting was just a brush, his lips against hers. He could feel the urgency in him like an engine revving up, starting to race, starting to roar, but, as much as he wanted to, he knew he couldn’t let it loose.
He shouldn’t even kiss her.
Some small, still-rational part of his brain kept shouting that he should keep things clean and businesslike and simple and definitely not kiss her.
The rest of him said to hell with rationality and went back for more.
The second time their lips touched, her mouth opened, welcoming him. He took the welcome and let his tongue slide in to taste her.
She tasted…fine. Even if his head weren’t whirling—and it was—he wouldn’t have been able to describe exactly what she tasted of, explain how good and right it felt to join with her like this. But then, he didn’t need words because his body was doing all right without them. His pulse was pounding, his head felt light and his skin had turned hot.
One thing he was sure of: He wanted more. Lots more. He wanted…everything.
Instead, head spinning, he drew back. But he didn’t let her go. He couldn’t. And she was so close…
Only inches from his, her eyes widened, the pupils expanding until the green had almost been swallowed up by the black. Her breathing was as quick and unsteady as his—he could feel the slight rise and fall of her shoulder with every breath she took.
His own breathing was none too steady, but he had just enough sense left to let her go before he couldn’t let her go at all.
Stiffly, reluctantly, he straightened back in his seat. She straightened, too, putting even more distance between them. To his relief, she didn’t try to edge farther away. She didn’t look angry, either. Just…dazed. And a little surprised. And maybe, just maybe, a little sorry that the kiss they’d shared had ended so soon.
Rick dragged his hand across his mouth, then drew a steadying breath.
“Thanks,” he said a little shakily.
She drew in a deep, steadying breath of her own. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.”
“So have I.”
That caught him by surprise.
“But it’s not going to happen again. In my line of work, distractions like that can cost a life. Which is why I don’t let myself get distracted.”
She looked at him as if daring him to protest, then looked away and wrenched her seat belt across her lap. The click of the buckle as it closed sounded unusually loud in the silence of the cab.
Rick couldn’t help noticing that her fingers were trembling as she dragged them through those tempting, unruly brown curls.
“We’d best get going,” she said.
“Right,” he said. He fumbled for his own seat belt, then shoved the gearshift into Reverse.
He was half a mile down the road before he thought to ask Maggie where it was they were going.
When Bursey’s call came through on her cell phone, Maggie could have kissed the man. Anything was better than the electric silence that hung in the air between her and Rick. Even talking to the irascible chief of police.
“We’ve got a sketch for you, Manion,” Bursey said, as brusque as always.
“That’s fast. Thanks. We’ll swing by and pick it up.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Rick watching her. Her heart rate climbed a notch.
“It’d be more useful if we had a name to go with the face,” Bursey grumbled.
“Yeah, it would. I’ll let you know as soon as we get one.” Focus Maggie told herself. Think about the job, not the man sitting only three feet from you.
After a kiss like that, it was impossible to think about anything else.
“What about the house?” she added. Her palms were beginning to sweat, making it difficult to maintain her grip on the phone.
“Your people find out anything about it?”
“A little. Seems it belongs to some rich German businessman who uses it for an occasional getaway vacation.”
“You found that out by checking the tax records?” Maggie asked, startled back to attention.
“Yeah. And calling the German company that was listed as owning it,” he added sarcastically.
“German. Then how did Tina and this guy we followed, whoever he is, end up there?”
“Who knows? Maybe they indulged in a little breaking and entering. There’s a lot of that going around these days.”
Maggie ignored the jibe.
As she told Rick what she’d learned, she was wishing she could ignore him as easily. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d ever manage, though. Whenever he spoke, she found herself watching his lips move and remembering what it had felt like to kiss him.
Rick had never offered violence to a woman in his life, but right now he had a strong urge to grab the idiot lounging on the sagging overstuffed chair in front of him and shake her. Hard.
Just as she had been the first time he’d met her, Grace Navarre, Tina’s unhelpful roommate, was more interested in the pot she was smoking than in Tina’s whereabouts.
He and Maggie had picked up several copies of the artist’s sketch. They’d dropped off copies with Jerelski’s secretary, Sam from the woodshop by Jerelski’s business and the manager of the Good Times bar, who’d said he’d show it around, but didn’t promise anything.
And then they had hit Tina’s apartment in the hope they would find Grace home. She’d been home, but she was hostile and not inclined to be helpful.
“You’re sure you don’t know this guy?” Rick insisted, waving the sketch under her nose once more.
“I told you,” she said, clearly irritated. “I don’t know who he is. I only saw him that one time. I haven’t heard from her. I don’t know where she is or why she’s staying away so long. I can’t tell you anything else, okay? I don’t know anything else!”
“But you’re sure this is the man Tina was with when you saw her last?” Rick insisted. He was convinced she was lying, but he didn’t know what part she might be lying about, or how to drag the truth out of her if she was.
Grace shrugged. A tangle of uncombed hair obscured her face, making it hard to tell what she was thinking.
“Yeah. Pretty sure, I guess. It was two weeks ago, you know what I mean? I’ve seen lots of guys since then.”
“But you haven’t seen Tina?” Maggie was perched on the arm of the sofa. She looked casual, relaxed, but Rick could sense the underlying tension in her, even from here.
Grace took another drag from the joint, holding the smoke deep in her lungs until she couldn’t hold it any longer, then slowly, reluctantly, let it out.
“How many times do I have to tell you, no?” she demanded resentfully. Her voice had an odd little squeak to it because of the pot.
She slumped lower in the chair, then tilted her head back and stared dreamily up at the ceiling.
“I’ll tell you one thing.” She rolled her head on the chair arm so that she was looking up at him. Her too-thin mouth curved in a sly, taunting smile. “If I’d met the guy, I’d have gone off with him, too.”
“For two weeks? Without a word to anyone?”
Again that damned, dismissive shrug. She delicately waved the joint under her nose, savoring the fumes, then shifted back to staring at the ceiling.
�
�Sure. Wouldn’t be anybody’s business but mine, would it?”
Grace had made an art of pretending she didn’t care. What Rick couldn’t tell was if she was simply defensive, or if she’d pretended for so long that she really didn’t care anymore.
“Tina would have worried about you.”
Grace’s thin shoulders tensed. He could feel her hostility and resentment. But was it directed against him? Or Tina?
“Tina worried about everything.” Grace sneered. “Little Miss Perfect. Drove me nuts, listening to her.”
The marijuana’s effects took some of the sting out of her venom, but not all of it.
Rather than say something he would regret, Rick crossed to the window and stared blindly out at the tree-lined street, struggling for calm. How in hell had gentle, serious Tina ever ended up sharing an apartment with someone like Grace?
“How’d you and Tina end up being roommates if she annoys you so much?” Maggie asked, eerily echoing his thoughts. She made the question sound casual, as if she were asking for the heck of it, to keep the conversation going.
Grace didn’t answer immediately. Rick turned away from the window to find her watching him from beneath that thatch of unkempt hair. He’d seen deer look like that an instant before they fled the wolves that were hunting them.
Underneath that angry, hostile bravado, Grace Navarre was seriously scared of something…or someone. But what? Or who?
“Were you classmates?” Maggie pressed. “Friends?”
“Nah,” Grace said at last, reluctantly. “Her roommate got sick or something, so Tina was looking for someone to share the rent. Just ’til the end of the semester, she said. Which was fine with me. I don’t plan on hanging around this dump of a town one minute longer than I have to.”
“How’d you find out she was looking for someone? Did you read a notice she posted? Or maybe an ad?”
Grace shook her head. “Nah. She asked me to share.”
Rick’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t imagine his sister ever inviting someone like Grace to share her apartment, no matter how much she needed to cut down on the rent.
Maggie looked as startled by the information as he was. “She asked you? Why?”
“Friend of mine told her to.”
“Told her to?”
“All right, asked her to.”
“What friend?”
A wary light suddenly sparked in Grace’s eyes. Then she shrugged and turned her gaze back to the ceiling.
“Just a…friend.”
“Anybody we know?” Maggie persisted. “Maybe they could help us figure out where Tina’s gone.”
Grace was too engrossed in taking a drag to respond. When it was clear she wasn’t going to say any more, Maggie tried another tack.
“Mind if we look through Tina’s room?”
“You won’t find anything,” Grace said. “I already looked,” she added nastily.
“I’ll just bet she did,” Maggie muttered as she led the way down the short hall.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which room was Tina’s—it was tidy, organized and lined with books. Across the hall, Grace’s looked like a hurricane had roared through, leaving dirty clothes and full ashtrays lying haphazardly about in its wake. They could smell the stale odor of pot, cigarettes and sweat that hung in the air from five feet away.
With a grimace of distaste, Maggie pulled the door closed, then slipped past him into Tina’s room.
Rick remained in the doorway, suddenly reluctant to go farther. There was so much he wanted to know about his sister, but the idea of digging through her personal belongings seemed too…well, personal.
Maggie showed no similar reservations. She circled the room slowly, looking but not touching. And then she circled it again, only this time she opened drawers and dug into their contents, checked behind books, went through the small closet and peered under the bed.
When she came to the desk, which was half-buried under a pile of papers and books and professional journals, she drew out the chair and sat down. Quickly, careful to keep everything in order, she flipped through the material in each stack, then checked the drawers, one by one.
Rick propped one shoulder against the doorjamb and watched her without saying a word. He stiffened a little when Maggie pulled out Tina’s checkbook and what looked like a folder of bank statements, but still kept silent. Tina’s right to privacy didn’t seem very important when weighed against the need to find her and make sure she was safe.
Maggie quickly scanned the check register. “Rent. Groceries. Books. Books. Groceries. Books. Electric bill. Phone bill. Books. Rent. Looks like the only regular deposits are from her student assistantship with Jerelski. And she has a balance of a little over three thousand dollars. Not much, but not bad for a college student.”
She tossed the checkbook aside, then started flipping through the collection of bank statements. The farther she got, the higher her eyebrows rose. “Incredible!”
Rick jerked upright, startled. “What?”
“Her accounts always balance. Every single month, right down to the last penny.” She shook her head in amazement, then grinned at him. “Now that’s not normal.”
“You scared the hell out me,” he growled, settling back against the doorjamb.
She laughed, then put the checkbook and statements back where she’d found them and kept on digging, methodically working her way through the contents of the remaining drawers. She wasn’t laughing when she finally sat back, defeated.
“Nothing. Nothing useful, anyway.” She rocked back in the chair, frowning thoughtfully. “Your sister seems to have been a very organized young lady, and not just with her checkbook. Her drawers are incredibly tidy, and her files are all neatly labeled and color coded. The books on those shelves seem to be arranged by subject, then shelved alphabetically by author.”
She gestured to the untidy stacks of paper covering the desk. “I suspect our friend Grace is responsible for this jumble, because even these piles of stuff are surprisingly well organized. That stack’s for general art history,” she added, pointing. “This one’s for stuff about Indian art—India Indian, I mean. That’s for information on art galleries and museums, and that one seems to be notes and handouts from some sort of international art symposium she attended.”
Maggie sat back up straight. “I have a librarian friend with a passion for organizing things. She’d adore Tina.”
Rick sighed. “When I asked Tina what she’d like for her birthday last spring, she told me she’d like a couple of good quality file cabinets.” He slumped down on the edge of the bed, suddenly weary. “I thought she was joking.”
“So what’d you give her?”
“Diamond stud earrings.”
Maggie gave him a sympathetic smile, then leaned across and patted his knee. “I’ll bet she loved them.”
The warmth that shot through him at her touch wasn’t enough to counteract the gloom her words had conjured. Even when Tina had tried to tell him about herself and what she wanted, he hadn’t really paid attention. That didn’t say much for him as a loving brother who claimed to want to know her better.
What had she thought when she found he’d sent her earrings, not file cabinets? he wondered.
“When we find her, I swear I’m going to buy her all the file cabinets she wants, no questions asked. I’ll even rent her an office to put ’em in, if she wants.”
He stood abruptly, suddenly too restless to sit still. He should be out looking for his sister, not worrying about whether or not he’d bought her the right birthday present six months ago.
“Didn’t you find anything useful?” he demanded.
Maggie frowned. “Not that I can see. What interests me, though, is what I didn’t find—her planner or scheduling calendar or whatever she used to keep track of things. Someone as organized as Tina is bound to have some kind of a planner.”
“She did.” He scratched his cheek, trying to drag an image out of his memory. He hadn’t pa
id much attention to those sorts of details, either.
“If I recall right, it was one of those expensive leather-bound things with everything divided up by colored tabs and stuff. Now I think about it, I seem to remember that she carried it with her everywhere she went.” He frowned. “I can’t imagine her hauling it to a place like the Good Times bar, though.”
“That might depend on why she went there, and who she was planning to meet.”
“We know she came back here and got a bag of her things before she disappeared,” Rick objected.
“Do we? Or are we just counting on Grace for that information?”
The implications of that hit Rick like a blow.
Maggie stood, then shoved the chair back under the desk, taking care to square it with the edge of the desk as Tina would have done.
“Let’s see what else is missing, shall we?” she said.
His head reeling, Rick followed her to the small master bath. Evidently Grace hadn’t been interested in the bathroom because everything in sight was neat as a pin. So far as he could see, the two weeks’ accumulation of dust on the vanity showed no trace of ever having been disturbed.
Rick watched silently from the doorway as Maggie conducted a rapid check of the medicine chest and cabinets. She even looked behind the floral shower curtain drawn across the tub.
“No toothbrush, and the only tube of toothpaste is still in its box, unopened. Ditto the thing of deodorant. No shampoo or conditioner in the shower.
No tampons or pads in sight.”
Maggie’s shoulders lowered slightly as if at the easing of some invisible tension. “Tina wasn’t just snatched off the street. Wherever she went, she went willingly, and she packed before she left. I wouldn’t trust Grace if I were staring her right in the eyes, but she wasn’t lying about that.”
Her gaze locked with his. “There’s something else I didn’t find.”
“What?”
“Drugs. I found absolutely nothing that would indicate your sister was using or dealing drugs.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he said. But he didn’t look at her when he said it—he was afraid she’d see the relief rushing through him if he did.
He also didn’t object when she retrieved a small ring of keys from the back of the middle desk drawer, then pocketed them.