One Good Man (6 page)

“And?” he prompted.

“Things took an unexpected turn before I ever got my act together,” she reminded him, getting back to her food before she confessed things he wouldn’t want to hear. He made her want to talk; she didn’t know why. But she was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to listen to her ramble on about lost dreams.

“What about now?” he asked. “From ten years away. If you could go back to school, what would you study?”

She’d thought many times what she’d give to go back to those days. Not once had she thought about her forgotten degree. “What would Jamie Danby study? Or what would Stephanie Monroe have ended up doing with her life?”

He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Do you not think of yourself as Stephanie?”

“I don’t really differentiate between—”

He stopped her from saying more with a knowing shake of his head. “You just did. When I asked about a field of study. You made the distinction between who you are now, and who you were then.”

This was something she didn’t think she could explain. She’d been Jamie for ten years, Stephanie for nineteen. Sometimes she felt more like one than the other. But always, always, she was both. “Are you the same person you were ten years ago?”

He chuckled. “I’m older, grayer, more stubborn, but mostly I’d have to say yes.”

“You’ve always wanted to be in law enforcement?”

“Since the first time I wore a white hat and straddled a stick horse.”

She laughed at that, quickly halted the sound because it rang so strange, then laughed again, unable to help it. She laughed with her mother, she laughed with Roni and Honoria, but this wasn’t either of those giggles or girly titters.

This came from the center of her chest. It was deep and heartfelt, and brought on by the picture of Kell as a child riding a broomstick stuck into a stuffed plush head. It felt good. It felt honest.

And she realized that Kell was right. These were Stephanie moments, not Jamie moments. Jamie had been scared, and lonely, for so long. She missed Stephanie’s laughter and heart. “I’m sorry. I’m really not laughing at you.”

“I’d say that’s exactly what you’re doing. Or at least doing so at my two-year-old self dressed in nothing but hat, boots and a diaper.”

She laughed harder this time, her chest aching, her eyes wet. She didn’t know why she found the visual so funny. “Do you have a picture?”

“Even better. I have the video on a DVD. I’ll show it to you tomorrow when we’re in Midland.”

A yanked rug or a thrown bucket of water couldn’t have sobered her any faster than the mention of tomorrow’s trip. She hadn’t wanted to bring the hypnosis to Weldon. This was her home, her sanctuary. She had to keep as much of her past out of her present as she could.

The fact that she was going to have to go back there at all was unsettling, but at least she’d have this place, her place to come back to. Until she didn’t anymore.

“Sure. That would be fun.” She started to expand her less-than-enthusiastic response, to move on, but Kell reached across the table and took hold of the hand holding her fork.

She looked at his fingers where they spanned from her knuckles to her wrist, felt his thumb where it pressed into the heel of her palm. He was so big, so strong. He could overpower her if he wanted, but all he did was wait for her to meet his probing gaze.

So green, his eyes. Like spring in the mountains. Like leaves unfurling. Like life returning from winter’s dead. She felt her throat closing around the words waiting there. This man. He scared her with the way he saw what she was thinking, with the way he made her remember what she’d lost of herself and wanted back.

“It’s going to be okay, Jamie. You have every right in the world to dread the unknown, to be frightened of what’s coming.” He stroked his thumb along her skin as he spoke, tightening his grip on her hand that was shaking. “What you’re doing takes enormous bravery.”

She blew a sharp snort, pulled her hand free and stabbed her fork into three stacked fries. She couldn’t deal with his kindness breaking her down. She needed her armor, Jamie’s armor, and she set about pulling it tight. “What about me makes you think I’m brave?”

Kell shrugged, and got back to eating as if nothing had passed between them. “You get up and go to work every day. You do so while looking over your shoulder. And you’ve done it now for ten years. What about that wouldn’t make me think you’re brave?”

“The first few years…” She shook her head, toyed with her salad, scooting the multicolored lettuce shreds around on her plate. “I didn’t get up every day. I didn’t work or go to school. I didn’t eat. I honestly don’t know how I came out of that darkness with anything left of my mind.”

Except she did know. Her mother—her voice, her hands, her heartbeat, her love—had been the only one able to penetrate the inky blackness that had swallowed Jamie whole, that had wrapped tentacles around her, into her, and pulled her away from the light.

“I’m sure Kate had a lot to do with that,” Kell said, reaching for his iced tea and staring at Jamie while he drank.

God. Again, he was there with the right words. Kind and perceptive and stealing her breath every time their gazes collided. Jamie nodded. “She had everything to do with it. She’s been my rock all these years.”

As if entertaining fond thoughts, his expression grew tender. “From what I saw of her earlier, she reminds me a lot of my mother.”

A topic of conversation that was safe. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Tell me about her.”

Having cleaned all but a strip of gristle and a bite or two of salad from his plate, Kell sat back. “My folks live in Austin. They retired early. My dad sold his dot-com start-up back when doing so still netted a mint. He golfs. My mom paints. It’s a nice life.”

“Very cool. Sounds like it would be, retiring when still young enough to enjoy it.”

“What about your mother? Would she enjoy an early retirement? Or does she love being a vet too much to hang up her, uh, whatever a vet would hang up?”

Smiling, Jamie reached for Kell’s plate, scraped his scraps into hers and carried both along with their flatware to the sink before she answered. “My mother will probably die surrounded by canine testicles and hair balls, a scalpel or laser in her hand.”

Obviously fine with Jamie doing cleanup, Kell rocked his chair back on two legs. “Yeah, my mind’s eye probably shouldn’t go there on a full stomach.”

“Sorry,” she said with a laugh, bending down for the squeeze bottle of dish detergent beneath the sink. “I forget not everyone grew up talking surgery over dinner.”

“Nope. The Hardings talked baseball, football, basketball, girls and food.”

“And which sport was yours? Besides the girls?” she asked, turning in time to catch Kell’s gaze on her ass. He looked up then, his eyes smoky hot, and she wondered how she was going to get through the night with him sleeping but one room away.

“Football. And baseball. Brennan played hoops and Terry came this close to winning the Heisman,” he said, returning his chair to the floor and holding his palms an inch apart.

She loved watching the Olympics every two years, but that was her only interest in sports. “No thoughts of going pro? The lure of the white hat and stick horse too strong? Dazzling dozens of damsels in distress with your big shiny star worth running into the occasional basket case?”

Kell got to his feet, carried the ketchup and salad dressing from the table to the fridge, but he didn’t speak until Jamie had filled the sink with soapy water and turned off the tap.

When she looked over her shoulder, she found herself backtracking over what she’d just said. She couldn’t find anything wrong…but the flare of temper in Kell’s eyes, and the pinch of displeasure around his mouth told a different story.

She could run, but she couldn’t hide—even in a sink of dirty dishes. “Make fun of yourself like that.”

She shrugged, a tense roll of one shoulder beneath her teddy-bear scrubs. “I always make fun of myself. It’s no big deal.”

“Not taking yourself too seriously is one thing. I’ve seen you do that more than once today. I’ve seen you get emotional over the situation you’re living in and make light of it.” He waited a minute to see if she would respond. She did so by turning on the hot rinse water full blast. “But putting yourself down is not the same thing.”

“Ten hours, and you know me so well.”

He reached around her to shut off the gushing splash of water. He hadn’t been ready for the silence, her stillness, her pain. The way she smelled like soap made of grapefruit and lemon zest. The sadness surrounding her.

He knew he should move, should give her space and time to work through what she was feeling, but he stayed close, noticing the fine hairs that curled into copper pennies at her nape. “I don’t know you. But I know crime. I know people. I know…victims.”

She bristled, tightened, lifted her chin to look out the window over the sink, but didn’t look at him. He moved to her side, leaning an elbow on the countertop to get a look at her face. “I know you don’t think of yourself that way, that you think of the people who died, of Kass Duren and Lacy Rogers and Julio Alvarez and Elena Santino as the victims. Of the Duren and Rogers and Alvarez and Santino families as the ones who suffered the most.”

“They did suffer the most,” she shouted, whipping her gaze toward him, her ponytail flying with the motion of her rage, her eyes angry, hurt.

He shook his head, softened. “They got the most sympathy. They were painted in the press as heartbroken. They lost loved ones. But your suffering has been just as great. You lost friends. You lost your innocence. You were accused of keeping things from the authorities. You had your life ripped away like a bandage off an open wound. I would say you’ve suffered just as much as anyone else.”

She hung her head, leaned forward on hands that were buried to her wrists in sudsy water. “I should have died. I played dead. He thought I was, and left me there. I should have died.”

Survivor’s guilt. Common. Not unexpected. And such a burden for her to have carried for ten years. Kell hoped he wasn’t about to make things worse. “I’ll bet your mother’s glad you didn’t.”

“She is,” Jamie said, choking back a sob.

“I’ll bet you’re glad, too.”

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as tears dripped to salt the dishwater and her skin.

“It’s okay to be glad, Jamie.” He straightened, took a step closer.

She shook her head, saying nothing. She didn’t have to. He knew from interviewing victims as part of his work with the UCIT the things going through her mind. Knew, too, many who had given up.

“I’m sorry that I opened the old wounds. Hurting you wasn’t my intent.”

“I know that,” she said, snuffling softly and hunching a shoulder to wipe her eyes and nose. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

He thought she would be, thought, too, that revisiting the past would enable her to get rid of it for good. That didn’t mean it was going to be a painless process. But he wasn’t going to push beyond what was needed. He wouldn’t. That much he swore.

He hesitated, but in the end couldn’t bear to see her crushed, so he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. She didn’t want to lean, shaking the soapy water from her hands and sniffing back tears. He handed her a dish towel and didn’t let her go.

They stood like that for several moments, looking through the window and past her driveway to her neighbor’s property beyond, Jamie finally relaxing, her breathing growing steady and deep. Kell remained where he was, letting her move away even though he could’ve stayed there a lot longer.

“Wow,” she finally said, brushing back her hair with one wrist and getting back to the dishes. “Sorry about the meltdown. You would think after all this time my armor would be completely without chinks.”

It said a lot that it wasn’t, and as he set about clearing the rest of the dishes and food from the stovetop and table, he had high hopes that her vulnerability would lead to success tomorrow—no matter how mercenary it sounded.

It was due even more to the woman asleep in the room next to his, and the things he was feeling about her, because of her, for her, even. Things that had nothing to do with her cold case, and yet had everything to do with who she was because of what had happened in the diner that night.

He’d studied the crime scene photos repeatedly, read through her statement so many times that, lying here now in his boxer briefs, covered to the waist by a sheet and cooled by the ceiling fan, the events of that night played in his mind as if he’d been there to see it unfold.

Jamie had been behind the counter running the day’s register tapes, and counting and bagging the money in the till to drop in the bank’s night deposit. The lights in the diner had still been burning, the neon sign above the front door spelling out Closed in a nostalgic red font.

Julio Alvarez and Elena Santino had been out front mopping the black-and-white-tiled floor and scrubbing down the white Formica tables and red Naughahyde booths.

Kass Duren and Lacy Rogers had been scouring the kitchen, storing food, gathering the trash to take to the Dumpster. The bags and cans, spattered with Kass’s and Lacy’s blood, had still been sitting by the back door when the authorities arrived.

Julio and Elena had crumpled one on top of each other, their blood pooling into a shared circle of death. Jamie had been spared from seeing her friends die, having dropped to the floor when the first shots were fired.

The bullet that had grazed her scalp and the one that had gouged her shoulder had bloodied her and the floor around her enough to fool the killer into thinking she was dead. But she hadn’t been dead. She’d been quite alive, drifting in and out of consciousness, hearing the screams, the pleading, the voices choking in terror, drowning as her friends died.

His chest and throat tight, Kell tossed off the sheet and sat up, reaching for the jeans he’d left on the floor. He pulled them on, needing fresh air, water, a long walk with only coyotes and javelinas and the moon to watch. What he didn’t need was to think about Jamie revisiting the scene he’d just imagined. And doing it because of him.

He headed for the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless, figuring he could grab a glass of water, take it outside, and pace her driveway for now. If that didn’t help, well, a sleepless night wouldn’t kill him. He had his laptop. He could go over his notes and files again and—

The kitchen should’ve been dark, but the back door stood wide open, allowing the light of the moon to spill through. His first thought was his gun, his second, Jamie. But a couple of silent steps into the room and he saw her sitting outside on the concrete stairs that rose to the back door, a bottle at her hip, a glass in her hand.

Uh-oh.

He made sure she heard his next steps. He even nudged a chair with his hip, scraping the legs on the floor and knocking it against the table. Jamie startled, but quickly settled, reaching for the bottle and hiding it between her feet. Tried to hide it, anyway.

Kell stood in the doorway behind her. “You planning to drink all of that yourself?”

“Grab a glass,” she told him, scooting forward and leaning over enough for him to get through the screen door without pushing her off the top step.

He found a bottle of water and a glass that he filled with ice, and joined her. The night was warm, clear, the stars overhead like tiny twinkling Christmas-tree lights. It was a good night to get drunk. Tomorrow’s agenda made it an even better one—except tomorrow’s agenda required sobriety, ergo, the water and ice.

“Can’t sleep?” A stupid question since here they both were, barefoot and half dressed, Jamie wearing a skinny-strapped tank top with pajama shorts that came nearly to her knees. He thought they were blue, but they might’ve been a soft green. He thought, too, that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She lifted her glass. “I will soon.”

He reached for the liquor bottle between her feet, poured just enough into his glass to balance the ice then added water, offering her the same. She gave a nod, and he diluted her drink to match his, keeping his mouth shut. This wasn’t the time to preach. Besides, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to take the edge off.

“The nights are my favorite part of living in West Texas,” she said after sipping her drink. “It’s so quiet. And so clear. Have you seen the stars from the observatory?”

The McDonald Observatory, on top of Mount Locke and Mount Fowlkes, was about seventeen miles away, and provided astronomers some of the darkest night skies in the forty-eight contiguous states. “I have. Amazing the things the human eye can see with nothing in the way. Satellites, the Hubble, the International Space Station.”

“And those are all man-made. Think how much farther away the constellations and even the Andromeda Galaxy are.” She sipped again, swirling the liquid in her glass. “It sounds stupid, but even if things hadn’t gone so wrong, I don’t think I’d have ever moved away from this part of the country. I love the nights too much.”

“Too bad the days are so miserable,” he said, though really, living in Texas meant living with the heat, and he was Lone Star born and bred.

“You grew up here, right? You should be used to it.”

He nodded, and swirled the ice in his glass. “I am, but weather always makes for easy conversation.”

For a moment, she was silent, then she sighed with a deep resignation. “Easier than asking why I can’t sleep?”

Or telling her what was keeping him awake. He nodded, sipped the Jim Beam and let it warm the parts of him left cold by the thoughts that had driven him from bed.

Jamie stretched out her legs, spread her toes, then bent to brush away something he couldn’t see. “I don’t lose a lot of sleep anymore over…everything. At first, I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again. I had a prescription that helped. Or it did once my doctor upped the dosage a couple of times.”

“Made for some fuzzy days I bet.” He sat forward, his wrists on his knees, looking away from the smooth skin of her legs toward her detached garage and the moon shining in the windows there.

“Time was a big blur for months. I couldn’t go back to school. I couldn’t work. I did good to eat and bathe myself, though it took a while to care enough to do even that.” She brought her glass to her mouth. “I honestly don’t think I would’ve come out of it if my mother hadn’t been with me.”

She’d been so young, a kid, really. A very young woman at most. Either way, she’d been a girl who’d needed her mother, and had been lucky to have one so devoted. “She sounds pretty amazing.”

“You have no idea.” Jamie sat straighter, stretching her back, left then right, popping her spine before she leaned back against the frame of the screen door. “She did all of it herself, the taking-care-of-me stuff. Making sure I got through.”

He’d known from her file that her father had split about that time, but didn’t know the why. The way she said it…“Was it too much for your dad…what happened to you?”

“Something like that. I guess.” She lifted her glass, and stared at the contents where the moonlight glinted off the amber liquid. “It’s always been weird the way he bailed.”

“How so?”

“He’d been a perfect dad my whole life, though somewhat taciturn, I guess. He helped with my science homework and showed me how to fix a flat on my bike. Oh, and how to run the lawn mower.”

“The lawn mower?”

“I was the son he never had, taking care of a lot of things around the house while he and the seasonal workers handled the ranch chores.”

Kell found himself chuckling. “Terry, my baby brother, got the same treatment. Except in reverse.”

“How so?”

“My mother was determined one of her children would cook. Terry was the youngest, left behind when Brennan and I were in school, so he had a lot of one-on-one time with Mom.” He stared down at the concrete step between his feet, his bare soles soaking up the stored heat from the day. “It seems to have stuck.”

“He’s a cook?”

“He owns a restaurant. A pub. In Houston. Not sure he still does much cooking, but he has. And he can.”

“Runs in the family then.”

“The steaks?” He shook his head. “That’s bachelor food. Steaks, burgers, eggs. Nothing but the basics.”

She was quiet for the next couple of minutes, not drinking, not moving, just sitting, letting the night wrap them in its cloak, letting the darkness keep them rooted, letting the heat of the drink lull them into a sense of easy comfort until the solitude finally loosened her tongue.

“Have you always been a bachelor?”

“I’ve never been married, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Why not?”

He guessed she was waiting for him to tell her he’d never found the right girl. Wasn’t that usually the reason? And while it was true, it wasn’t the whole story of why he was alone. “I haven’t had the time to invest in a relationship. Not that sort of time.”

“That sort of time? What do you mean, that sort of time?” She leaned across him to snag the bottle from where he’d set it on his side of the steps. Her unbound breasts, firm, full, brushed his knees. “You make it sound like a job, or a chore. Like work.”

What he was working on right now was keeping his hands wrapped around his glass of throat-searing whiskey and melting ice. He wanted so badly to touch her. “You don’t think relationships are work?”

“I wouldn’t want to go into one thinking that, no.” She sat forward again, gesturing with her glass. “I mean, I watched my mother work her ass off to salvage what she had with my father. She wheeled and dealed and begged, even agreed to let him do his man-alone-with-nature thing while she took care of me. He left anyway. Just loaded up his truck and his horse trailer and drove off into the sunset.”

Hmm. Was she basing her feelings about relationships on one couple? Her parents? She had to know that marriages rarely survived something so horrific as what had happened to their child. Or…wait. Was Jamie blaming herself for her father’s desertion?

Kell looked over at the strands of hair blowing into her face, catching on her lips and lashes. He reached for them, brushed them back over her shoulder, but then he let his hand linger there, let his fingers drift softly over the skin beneath her ear.

It was a big mistake, touching her, and even though he pulled away, he knew he’d done so too late. He’d crossed a line he shouldn’t have, and even if he’d wanted to he could never go back. “If your father didn’t work just as hard, then their marriage didn’t stand a chance. There are two people in a relationship, and if only one is working, it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t fail.”

Jamie sat shaking her head, before pushing to her feet and walking to the center of the driveway, as if she’d reached her limit on sitting still. She wobbled a bit, swayed a bit more, found her footing and stood in profile, her hair lifting on the warm night wind.

The moon bathed her; Kell could see the globes of her breasts, her nipples, the long line of her back to the gorgeous swell of her rump, the hint of her sex beneath the cotton of her pjs that was very very thin. Just like she wasn’t wearing a bra, she wasn’t wearing panties.

“The problem with my parents’ relationship is that it grew to be about a third person, not just the two my father signed on for. The third, me,” she said again, this time her voice cracking like glass, “was what ended up tearing them apart.”

Kell didn’t know the details, he had no right to assume or intrude. But Jamie’s state of mind was a crucial component in what he was hoping would be tomorrow’s success—though he knew what was going on here, tonight, between them had nothing to do with the case.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jamie—”

“Of course it was,” she shouted back, the sound like an explosive blast in the stillness.

If she’d had neighbors living close, he would’ve expected lights in windows to come on, curtains to sweep aside, concerned eyes to peer out and see if she needed help. But her closest neighbor on Lamplighter Lane was half a block away, and the house remained quiet and still.

Inside, Kell was anything but, his stomach and heart battling a surge of emotion, and he had to force his frustration into calm. “If your father left because of what happened to you, it was his problem, not yours. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all.”

“A wrong place he didn’t want me to be,” she said, and finished off her drink, heaving her glass toward the garage, where it shattered, the slivers and shards scattering on the pavement.

Kell didn’t move. He waited—though he would stop her if she even thought about cleaning up the glass. She was barefoot, a little bit drunk, and it was dark in the shadow of the garage.

She stayed where she was, however, dropping down and wrapping her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth, her back and shoulders arched like a turtle’s protective shell.

So her father hadn’t wanted her to work at the Sonora Nites Diner? Because of the late hours? Because of the easy access to the interstate? Because he’d wanted her to focus on her studies? Kell hadn’t met her father, had only read about Steven Monroe’s abandonment years after the fact. He had no way of knowing what the issue was between Jamie and her father.