Running on Empty

by Michelle Celmer

  And he had. Only he’d figured it out too late.

  And damn it, he missed her already.

  “Detective?”

  Mitch looked up to see Greene standing across the desk, dressed in his street clothes.

  “I just wanted to let you know, I checked out all the guys on the force who I know have kids. Nothing panned out.”

  “Well, it was a long shot. We may never figure out who did it.” He sighed and leaned back in the chair, feeling a kind of tired that settled in deep. “You off duty?”

  “Yeah.” Greene tugged a set of keys from the pocket of his jeans. “Gotta get home and rescue my wife. Kids are driving her nuts. The baby has a pretty nasty case of colic and my oldest is hell on wheels into his terrible twos.”

  It sounded like total chaos, and it sounded completely wonderful. Going home to a house full of kids, and a wife like Jane.

  No, not just someone like Jane. He wanted the genuine article. He wanted long nights of making love to her and waking with her still in his arms. He wanted her face to be the last thing he saw before he went to sleep at night and the first thing he saw every morning. He wanted it all—the mortgage, the minivan, the sleepless nights pacing the floor because the baby was teething.

  He wanted to make up for all the misery she’d been through, to show her that she couldn’t lose faith in people. That he was different.

  He wanted to make her happy.

  And he’d let it slip through his fingers, because like Jane had said, they stood on either side of the law. There was no gray area for him.

  “I’ll see you later, Detective.” Greene started to leave, then turned back. “By the way, someone called my house this afternoon. Talked to my wife. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  It was pretty clear to Mitch that Greene already knew he’d made the call. He probably had caller ID. Mitch hadn’t even thought about blocking the number.

  “It was me,” he told him. “I called.”

  “Because I have kids.”

  “It was nothing personal—”

  “You don’t have to explain. I know you were just doing your job. If I were in your position, I would have done the same thing.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t…” He was going to say “have a family,” but the words caught in his throat.

  “Why don’t you go home, Detective? You’re not doing anyone much good here.”

  Mitch managed a sheepish grin. “I look that bad, huh?”

  “Go home, take a day to think about it. Things will be clearer tomorrow.”

  “You know, that’s the best advice I’ve had all day.”

  He gave a halfhearted wave as Greene walked out, then grabbed his sport coat from the back of his chair and slung it over his shoulder. Maybe a little bit of time to himself would help him think things through—make some sense of this mess and figure out what he was going to do to fix it.

  He started out the door and made it halfway to his car before a short, plump woman with a careworn face intercepted him. He knew that face. He’d seen her in the station the other night, protesting her son’s innocence.

  “Detective Thompson,” she said. “I’m Lorraine Barrett, Robby’s mother.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Barrett, but I have nothing to say to you.” Mitch lengthened his stride, and she huffed along to keep up with him.

  “You arrested my son. You interrogated him. I just want to know if you truly believed him to be guilty. I need to hear it from you.”

  Mitch pulled out his keys and unlocked his car. “Your son was a known sex offender.”

  Mrs. Barrett slapped a hand against his door, holding it shut. The desperation in her eyes, the pain, left Mitch feeling like a heartless bastard.

  “I know my son was no angel, Detective. He had problems, but he was seeing a counselor. He was taking drugs to help control his urges. He wasn’t violent. He wasn’t capable of hurting those women.”

  As long as he didn’t look at her, Mitch could walk away from this without saying or doing something monumentally stupid and irresponsible.

  She seemed to sense that, because she got right in his face. “I believe you’re an honest man, Detective. You wouldn’t tell a grieving mother that her son was a monster unless you really believed it. So look me in the eye. Look me in the eye and tell me you think my son was guilty and I’ll accept it. And I’ll never bother you again.”

  Then Mitch did the stupidest thing he could have. He looked her in the eyes. They were the same dull brown as her son’s, and filled with as much fear and pain. And all he could think about was the way Robby had sworn he was innocent, how he’d bawled like a baby and begged for his mother. He hadn’t even had the sense, the intellectual capacity, to ask for a lawyer. And they’d taken advantage of that. They’d grilled him for hours.

  Could Mitch stand there, look this woman in the eyes and lie to her?

  “No,” he said, finally. “I don’t think Robby was guilty.”

  Her eyes filled with grateful tears, and for the first time that day Mitch felt as if he’d done the right thing.

  “I think he was framed, Mrs. Barrett. Now I have to figure out a way to prove it.”

  Chapter 16

  The best advice he’d had all day turned into Mitch’s worst nightmare. At home, he had nothing to do but think. Think about how he’d driven an innocent man to suicide while the real suspect still walked around a free man. How trying to prove it would be next to impossible, and probably enough to end his career. And when he wasn’t thinking about that, he was thinking of Jane. There wasn’t a place in his house that didn’t remind him of her. She’d only been there two days but her aura hung like a ghost, haunting him.

  Her scent clung to the sheets of his bed along with the faint impression of her body where she’d slept. Strands of her hair tangled in his hairbrush and the robe lay on the floor next to the couch, discarded there the first time they’d made love.

  Even after Kim, he hadn’t felt anything close to this. This relentless, gnawing ache.

  He grabbed his beer off the table and took a swig, realizing an instant before the warm brew hit his palate that he had accidentally grabbed the bottle from the day before. He nearly gagged at the bitter sting. He jumped up from the couch and dashed to the kitchen, spitting the foul fluid into the sink.

  That was one really bad beer. It had tasted a little skunky yesterday, but if it hadn’t spilled, he probably would have finished it. Now he was glad he hadn’t.

  He dumped out what was left of the bottle and was just about to turn the tap on to wash it down when he noticed something odd. He leaned over to get a closer look and saw white specks against the stainless steel, so tiny he could have easily overlooked it.

  Somewhere in the back of his brain, a warning bell sounded. He pressed his fingers to a few of the specks and rubbed them together. They smeared like paste, and the bell in his brain began to scream.

  “No way. Not in a million years.” He lifted his fingers to his mouth, touching them lightly to his tongue. Bitter. Bitter like someone had ground something up and slipped it into his drink.

  He leaned over the tap, filling his mouth with water, then spitting it out, repeating the process until the taste was gone. He probably hadn’t ingested enough to do any damage, but until he found out exactly what he was dealing with, he wasn’t taking any chances. What he really didn’t understand was how it got there in the first place. Besides himself and Jane, the only other person who’d been over—

  Reality socked him square in the chest.

  Darren had been there. Darren had given him the beer, cleaned up the mess when it spilled. Darren’s wife and kids were out of town….

  No, it couldn’t be him. Mitch would have known. Darren was his best friend. A brother.

  But he couldn’t deny the facts, either. Darren did have a similar physical build as the suspect. They were roughly the same height. And what had the victim of the second beating said? The guy smelle
d expensive. Darren always wore cologne.

  And most importantly, he’d had easy access to the case file.

  Mitch still didn’t want to believe it. He clung to the slim chance that it was all just some weird coincidence. But he had to get ahold of Jane. He had to warn her. According to the file, she lived about thirty minutes away, which meant they were probably almost there by now. But the file hadn’t had a phone number—he’d checked.

  Mitch grabbed the cordless off the counter and dialed Darren’s cell number. It rang several times, then he was switched to voice mail. Damn!

  He dialed the precinct instead. When the desk sergeant answered, Mitch asked him who had been on desk Friday night.

  “I was on until midnight.”

  “Someone came in to see me that night. A woman.”

  “The amnesia lady, yeah. She was in here. She came in a couple minutes after you left.”

  “This is extremely important. She said she left me a message. I need the phone number off that message.”

  “I don’t have it anymore. I gave it to Detective Waite.”

  Mitch’s heart froze in his chest. “Detective Waite? Why would you give it to him?”

  “He stopped by the desk right after her and asked what she wanted. When I told him, he said he’d give you the message himself. I asked him about it the next day and he told me it was a fake name and number.”

  Darren had never delivered any message. In the squad room the following morning, he’d acted as if he’d never seen Jane before, yet he knew her name, her phone number. He’d known her identity the whole time.

  The pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place and panic crept up, seizing his breath. Jane was with Darren now, and it might already be too late.

  Ellen sat in the front seat of Darren’s car, looking out the window at the landscape bordering I-75 North. A landscape so wonderfully familiar, it should have filled her with contentment. She was going home, back to her life, to her work. She should have been ecstatic, but all she felt was tired. Tired of hiding, tired of running, tired of pretending she was living her life when really she’d only been in limbo. But most of all, she was tired of being lonely. For the first time in three years she was thinking that maybe she’d found a man she could trust. A man she could let herself love. A man worth the risk.

  “He’ll get over it,” Darren said.

  She turned to him. He’d been quiet for most of the trip, which had suited her just fine. “Who will get over what?”

  “Mitch. He seems like he’s really hurting, but he’ll get over it. He always bounces back.”

  “Always? Are you implying that he goes through this sort of thing often?”

  “You look pretty broken up. I just want you to know that he’ll be okay when you’re gone.”

  “Well, thanks. That makes me feel so much better.” She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the sign for her exit appeared on the right. Maybe Darren was honestly trying to make her feel better. Maybe he didn’t realize how tactless and insensitive he sounded. Or maybe he was deliberately trying to make her feel awful.

  That being the case, it had worked.

  Either way, she was glad their time together was about to end. “This is my exit,” she said.

  When he didn’t switch lanes or even put on his turn signal, she thought maybe he hadn’t heard her and said it louder. “You want to get off here. This is my exit.”

  He stared ahead, like she hadn’t even spoken, and the exit whooshed past.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the apprehension in her voice.

  “No problem. We have time to kill.”

  A chill, like icy fingers, crawled up her spine. “Time for what?”

  “You know, if you had just let Petroski take you to that motel, it would have been so much easier. Now I’ve had to change all my plans.”

  Plans? What was he talking about?

  Something was very wrong with this picture. “I’d like to go home now.”

  “I hope you appreciate all of the trouble I’ve gone through for you.” He glanced over, regarding her like she was a naughty child. “You haven’t made this easy for me.”

  This time when she spoke, there was no doubt her voice was shaking. “And what trouble was that?”

  “Planning your family reunion…Jill.”

  Jill? She swallowed back the panic clawing its way up her throat and forced herself to speak. “You know my real name.”

  “I know everything about you. You’re Jillian Stone. Born and raised in northern California. Reported missing three years ago by your husband, David Stone.” He looked over at her and grinned. Her blood ran cold. Pure evil lurked behind his smile. An evil she was all too familiar with.

  “How?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

  “How did I figure it out? I found your secret hiding place, in the wall, behind the dryer. Took me half a day of searching. I give you points for creativity.”

  Oh, God.

  It had been Darren all along. He’d followed her into the store and attacked her. He’d stolen her purse and searched her house.

  “Once I knew where you were from, it wasn’t hard to find your family.”

  She tried to swallow, but her throat closed tight. “My husband, you didn’t—”

  “Call him? As a matter of fact, I did. He was so relieved to hear that you’re okay. Ironically, all this time, he’s been under suspicion for your disappearance. He hopped right on a plane to come get you so he can clear his name.”

  He would be beyond furious. And it would have been festering for three long years. There was no telling what he might do to her. Fear threatened to swallow her up. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “He’s part of the plan. The game is almost over.”

  Her first instinct was to run, but she was trapped. She glanced at the door. They were going way too fast. She would never survive the jump, but if she could get him to slow down, maybe she could get away. She could flag down a passing car—

  “I wouldn’t try it,” he said, and she glanced over at him, saw the glint of metal he held in his lap. He had a gun. And from the looks of it, not just any gun.

  “I found this in your house, too.” He shot her a disapproving look. “Shame on you, keeping an unregistered, loaded firearm in your house. You can get in trouble for that.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “Take me to the nearest police station and I’ll turn myself in.”

  Darren laughed. It was a vile sound that vibrated through her like a cold chill. “You’re tough. I like that about you. The tough ones are always the most fun to break.”

  “Mitch told me your wife is tough. Did you break her, too?”

  He pointed the gun at her, digging the barrel into her cheek. She went stock-still.

  “There will be no more disparaging comments about my wife.” The metal sank deeper into her skin, to the point of pain. “I love her. She just needed to learn her place.”

  She nodded and he lowered the gun to his lap. She let out the breath she’d been holding and said a silent prayer of thanks.

  She chose her next words carefully. “Why did she come to me for help?”

  “I can’t have her telling everyone what happened. I tried to explain, but she didn’t understand.”

  He spoke of her in the present tense, which could mean that his wife was still alive. Or it could mean that he was completely nuts. He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.

  Maybe that was the key to this. Running wasn’t an option and overpowering him would probably get them both killed. Maybe she could try to reason with him.

  “You’re a cop,” she said, hoping to appeal to his sense of duty. If crazy people could have a sense of duty. “Think of your career. Your little girls. You could get help. Counseling—”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” He rolled his eyes. “You act like this is my fault. You did this to yourself. If by some chance they find my wife’s body, you’ll rec
ognize her. You’ll put two and two together and where would I be then? No one can know.”

  His wife’s body? He thought…? “But, I’ve only talked to your wife on the phone. I’ve never met her. I have no idea what she looks like. I didn’t even know her name.”

  Darren looked over at her, let out a cackle of a laugh. “You’re serious. You really didn’t see her. Well, I guess this is your unlucky day. Killing you will just be a bonus.”

  “Mitch will figure it out. When I turn up dead—”

  “My plan is foolproof. No one will ever figure it out.”

  His arrogance ignited a spark of anger and she embraced it. Anything to drown out the helplessness, the panic threatening to paralyze her. There had to be a way to outsmart him. And if that didn’t work she would fight for her life. She would beat him, or she would die trying.

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she shot back. Her confidence, her anger, seemed to surprise him. “But no plan is foolproof. You’ll be caught. It may take a year. Even two. But they’ll catch you.”

  He looked over at her, studied her for so long she was sure he’d run them off the road. “I can see why Mitch fell in love with you. And you would have been good for each other. You would have been happy.”

  She knew he was only saying that to taunt her, but she knew without a doubt the words were true. She loved Mitch. If a person had a soul mate, an individual they were destined to be with above all others, Mitch was hers. And now she would probably never get the opportunity to tell him.

  If she could somehow get a second chance, another shot, she would do anything to make it work. Even if that meant giving up her job, facing her past. He was worth the sacrifice.

  “I think that’s the first logical thing you’ve said today,” she told Darren.

  “Yeah. Too bad it will never happen.”

  It will if I can help it, she thought, a sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through her blood. She’d had enough. Enough of the hiding, the fear. It was time she took control of her life. Real control, and not the false sense of security she’d been hiding behind. Damn it, she wanted her life back.