Deeper Than Need (12 page)

“I don’t need to take him with me,” Trinity said sourly. She rubbed the heel of her hand over her chest.

“No, but I bet you want to. For a while.” Ali cocked her head. “I bet he’s going to want to be with you for a while, too. After what happened.”

Was she that easy to read?

Trinity focused on the window, watching the way the sun danced off the river. “Clinging to him isn’t going to make anything any easier on both of us. He needs to get back to preschool. I haven’t even started
looking
for one since we moved here. But he needs to be around other kids, not where I can watch him twenty-four-seven just so I can remind myself he wasn’t hurt.”

“It’s not just about that.”

She shifted her gaze to Ali.

Ali shrugged restlessly and looked away. “I’m … Look, I’m not trying to pry and you don’t need to feel like you have to tell me anything. But I heard him talking to Joey. Joey isn’t going to say anything, either. I already spoke with him.”

Trinity had to force the words out. “What are you talking about?”

Ali’s green eyes swung back around to meet her gaze. “We know about Micah’s dad, Trinity. He told Joey.”

*   *   *

“Is it her?”

Noah sat by the window in the hard ladder-back chair.

Jimmy sat in a broken-down, beat-up recliner. Noah had bought the chair at a church yard sale and brought it in for the older man years ago, and although he’d tried to replace it more than once, Jimmy wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted no chair would be quite as comfortable as the broken-down thing he now sat upon.

Out in the hall, they could hear the muted chaos of the mid-morning. A local day care was there visiting, doing story time, and the sound level was just below ear piercing, Noah decided.

But with the door closed, he and Jimmy were locked in their own little world.

A sad one.

Noah pondered just how to answer that question, hands linked together as he waited for the right words. People had always teased him about how he took his time before he said anything, but he liked to wait. Sometimes he knew exactly what to say, almost right from the get-go. Other times the words just came slowly to him.

More than a few teased him all that much harder because Noah did believe that when he had the right words those words came from a place outside of him. Pretty much, he believed God gave him the right words. People could mock it as much as they wanted. It didn’t matter to him. He knew what he knew, and he knew what he believed.

He’d left the ministry behind because it wasn’t the right place for him—he’d been good at it while he was in it, but he’d also done it for the wrong reasons. So he left. That didn’t mean he’d left behind his faith or his ability to find the right words.

Today, though, and for the past few days, the right words came slower and with a lot of struggle.

Finally, as moments ticked away and Jimmy waited patiently, Noah leaned back in the chair and finally spoke the truth. “I just don’t know.”

“Shit.”

Smiling a little, Noah dragged a hand down his face and nodded. “That sums up the situation pretty well, sir.”

“Don’t
sir
me, Noah. You’re not in high school anymore.”

“Yes, sir.” He kept his face solemn as Jimmy shot him a dark look.

“Such a smart-ass.” Jimmy shook his head and twisted around to reach for his coffee with his left hand. The right side of his body was all but immobilized, thanks to a series of strokes. His mind, though, was still as sharp as it had been twenty years ago. As was the burning edge of anger that had driven him for so long.

The grief. He took a drink of the coffee and put it down, leaning back in his chair and staring out the window, eyes far off and distant, ghosts dancing in their depths.

“How awful is it, Noah, that part of me wants it to be her? Just so I can die
knowing
?” he murmured. “That must make me an awful father … to wish my daughter dead.”

Noah didn’t have to search for the right words this time. He leaned forward and covered Jimmy’s gnarled hand with his. “That’s not what you’re doing, Jimmy. You spent almost fifteen years trying to find those answers on your own, even after the police gave up, even after I gave up. What you want is
peace
 … you’re not wishing her dead.” A knot swelled in his throat and his next words came out husky and raw. “You and I both just want answers. That doesn’t make us anything but human.”

Jimmy closed his eyes, a soft sigh escaping him. “They’ll move heaven and earth to find those answers if it’s a Sutter, you know.”

Something hard and cold shifted in Noah’s gut. He didn’t want to answer that, didn’t want to say anything.

But he didn’t have to. Jimmy’s lids lifted and the old man pinned Noah with a hard, direct stare. “You know it as well as I do, even if you can’t say … even if you won’t let yourself say it.”

Noah looked away.

“They put up a damn memorial for them in front of the First Church of Christ where Pete preached all those years. They held candlelight vigils for them on the anniversary of the day they disappeared
and
on their birthdays. People still come out for them. But half the town has forgotten about my girl.”

“We didn’t forget.”

“No.” Jimmy smiled, a little sad. “And you went and gave her your own memorial.”

Noah looked down. Jimmy was the only one who knew about the gazebo and why Noah had done it. He’d taken him there, the night he’d finished it; before anybody else in town saw it he’d let Jimmy see it, and he knew why.

“It’s still not enough.” The old man looked away, but not in time to hide the tears that glinted there. “She deserved better than that. She was…” His voice trailed off and he lapsed into silence.

“Lana was amazing,” Noah said quietly.

“Yes.”

They were quiet, memories from the past wrapping around both of them. Noah could remember that wild, wicked laugh of hers … and the courage.

Please. Don’t tell, Noah.

… love you …

Son, do you have any idea if Lana was going to be out there last night? Somebody said he thought he saw her walking up the road.…

“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

Lifting his lashes, he found Jimmy staring at him, his dark eyes watchful and sad. “Sir?”

“You all but put yourself in the grave when you were a kid,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. “You fixed that, but you never did let yourself come all the way back to life.”

“I’ve done all right,” Noah said mildly.

“No.” The censure was soft but there all the same. “You haven’t. You live your life on the sidelines, keeping everything and everybody else apart. Maybe it’s just easier for you, and I guess I can understand that—you can’t get hurt if you don’t let anybody in. But Noah, that’s not life. You deserve more than just a half-life. You’ll grow old and look back and all you’ll have to remember of your life are these little bits and echoes of times when you
almost
let yourself live.”

He held out a hand.

Noah placed his hand in Jimmy’s and the man squeezed, his grip surprisingly tight and steady. “Stop hiding away, son. Live your life. Have something to look back on, Noah.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Son, is there a reason you’re trying to make my job even harder?”

Noah wasn’t surprised to hear that voice. Didn’t mean he was happy about it, though.

Squinting against the bright light shining in around Jeb, Noah studied the man’s stance for a minute and then went back to hauling out materials. “Now, Jeb, why on earth would I want to make your job harder?”

“I had a call not long ago. Any idea who it was?”

“I imagine you’ve had a lot of calls.” Noah stacked more lumber in the back of his work truck. Since Teddy had left him high and dry and he wasn’t getting any answer from Caine’s crew, Noah had decided his best bet was to just plan on doing the basic repairs on Trinity’s floor on his own. He could do it. He’d worked on enough old houses that he knew how, and it would be a good teaching exercise for the teens he worked with. But it was a pain in the neck that he had to do it at all.

Assuming he could get in the house—he hadn’t thought that far ahead, and he should have. Sighing, he swiped the back of one gloved hand over his forehead and eyed Jeb. It was probably a bad time to ask about it, too.

As Noah turned back to his supply stock, Jeb moved in out of the sunlight. “Rossi called.”

“Did he?” Noah tossed Jeb a look over his shoulder. Lingering by the waist-high work desk, he checked the measurements again. This was going to be a fun talk. Temper knotted in his gut and he groped for something to calm it, but there wasn’t much that was helping. “Kind of surprising he didn’t call before now, if you ask me. Everybody in town is talking about it.”

“When did you tell him?”

Stopping in his tracks, Noah planted his hands on his hips and stared down at the floor. A flat-out question. Jeb knew Noah too well. He wasn’t going to lie about it, and a flat-out question wasn’t one he could dodge. Blowing out a breath, he stripped off the gloves he’d been wearing as he loaded up the lumber. “This morning. I called the nurses’ desk and asked if they could hold the newspaper until I got out there to talk with him.” Turning around, he met Jeb’s gaze levelly. “I figured it would be better if he heard it from somebody rather than reading about it and getting that sucker punch. I also figured nobody from the police department would think to go out there and warn him … appears I was right.”

“Did it occur to you to call me before you went out there to talk to him?” Jeb demanded.

“Did it occur to you that he’d read about it in the paper?” Noah pointed out.

Jeb glared at Noah, lip curled in a sneer. “Now there’s no reason to think the woman we found is—” He snapped his mouth shut.

But it was too late.

Noah’s hands fell away from his hips. One curled into a fist. Narrowing his eyes, he took one step closer to Jeb. Just one. The temper inside Noah went from a snarling beast to a caged dragon in just under a second. “The woman you found…” he echoed, his voice low, all but shaking with rage. “The
woman
you found. You already know the body was female?”

“Noah—”

“How long have you known she was female?”

Jeb’s lids flickered. “The ME confirmed it pretty quick.”

“What else do you know?”

Jeb lifted a brow. “Next to nothing. It will be a long while before
that
changes. We don’t have the resources here to work on a case like this, so we have to let the state step in and help out. The body will be transported to the state crime lab.”

“When will you know?”

Jeb sighed and turned away. Skimming a hand back over his hair, he stared outside. “Noah, you’re assuming we’ll know
anything.
”

“Yeah, I bet you would have rambled on like that about the body found in the car a few weeks back. But they identified Nichole Bell, didn’t they?”

“She had jewelry on her that could identify her and she was found in her damn car,” Jeb pointed out. “We aren’t looking at the same situation here, son, and it’s entirely likely we won’t find a damn thing. The body is so decomposed, getting a solid identification is going to be problematic. Even DNA gets tricky with a body like that. We can tell if somebody was a family member, but that’s it.”

With the rage and helplessness still pummeling him, Noah closed his eyes.

“You understand, this is a sensitive investigation. I need you to keep quiet on what I’ve told you,” Jeb said, his voice low.

A hoarse laugh escaped Noah and he spun away. Bracing his hands on the desk in front of him, he half bent forward. “Oh, don’t worry. Not like I was planning on taking out an ad in the paper.” He closed his eyes, tried to get a better grip on the burning temper. But it wasn’t happening. “You son of a bitch.”

Surprise, a bit of caution, colored Jeb’s words. “Come on, now, Noah. I’ve got a job to do—”

“Shove the job, Jeb!” Noah shouted, pushing off the work desk and whirling to face him. “You
knew.
Almost from the get-go, you knew … it could be her, and you come down here to pin my ears back because I had the decency to go warn that man—it might be his daughter and you’re mad at me because he’s giving you grief? He
ought
to be giving you grief! Not one of you ever gave her case the attention it deserved.”

“Now that’s not fair.” Jeb folded his arms over his chest. “I was a damn rookie that year. Wasn’t too long after that the chief of police died in that accident. We’ve had some rough times since then and there was little evidence to go on. What did you expect us to do? Perform a miracle?”

“You sure as hell tried with the Sutters.” Noah took another step closer to Jeb, fury drowning out any bit of common sense, totally shattering his control. Snaking out a hand, he caught the front of Jeb’s shirt and jerked the shorter man forward. “How about when I came to you a few years later? I came to you … and you all but laughed at me.
She was a wild kid, Noah. I know you loved her, but everybody saw how she was with other guys …
that was what you told me. Then you told me you’d look into it, but we had to face the facts. Lana and David probably killed his mama and took off. You
told
me that. Remember?”

“You want to let me go now.” Jeb’s face was florid, his eyes glittering.

“What I
want
to do is beat the crap out of you,” Noah said. Barely, just barely, he managed to keep from shaking the man. Slowly, Noah uncurled his fingers and let go. The urge to do violence, true violence, hadn’t ridden him this hard in … years.

Jeb smoothed the front of his shirt down, the echo of his own temper glinting in his eyes. “You realize I could arrest you.”

“Go ahead.” Noah curled his lip. “Be my guest. I’m going to be sure to let whatever judge I talk to know that this all started because you didn’t see fit to let an ailing man know that you might have just found his
daughter’s body
 … screw confidential.”

“You know, for a preacher, you have a foul mouth today. And a bad temper.” Jeb hooked his thumbs in his belt.