Tracking Tahlula (Police and Fire: Operation Alpha) (On Call Book 3)

by Freya Barker

  I delete Lena’s message and move on to the next.

  “Hi, it’s Lena again. I really need to talk to you. Call me. It’s urgent.”

  Crap. This one is dated five days ago.

  I quickly dial her direct line and end up in her voicemail, so I call the general number.

  “Griffion Media. Jaimie speaking.”

  I smile hearing the familiar voice. “Hey, Jaimie, it’s Tahlula. When did you get back?” Lena’s assistant had a baby six months ago and had been off on extended maternity leave.

  “Day before yesterday. I was supposed to be off until June, but this place has been a disaster, did you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Lena’s missing. Last anyone’s seen her was on Monday.”

  “What?” I’m sure I’ve misheard her. Lena is married to her work; she wouldn’t just take off. Not without Jaimie there. Griffion Media is only her and her assistant.

  “She’s gone. Her sister apparently went to check her apartment on Tuesday, after Lena missed their weekly lunch, and noticed her suitcase and toiletries are gone. Sue checked the office, finding it locked and empty, and that’s when she called me. We discovered the contract with the temp agency was cancelled last Friday. So I’ve been here ever since, trying to keep this place running while we try to figure out where she went. Did she say anything to you?”

  I wince at the stab of guilt for ignoring Lena’s calls, and feel a little unsettled at Jaimie’s story. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in getting the first draft for Mens Rea done. I did just pick up a couple of messages from her, which is actually why I’m calling. She said she had something urgent to discuss with me. Do you know what that might’ve been?”

  “Not a clue, but I haven’t really had a chance to go through everything. I did notice a change of address for you. In Durango now?”

  “Yes. Moved here a couple of months ago. Gorgeous area, nice and quiet, the way I like it. Say, did you guys contact the police yet?”

  “Sue did. She says they told her since Lena is over eighteen, and her suitcase is missing, the logical conclusion is she left on a trip or on vacation without letting anyone know.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” I state firmly.

  “I know, and so does Sue, but they say unless there is evidence of foul play of some sort, there’s not much they can do.”

  “This is weird.”

  “You’re telling me,” Jaimie acknowledges, concern in her voice.

  I sit back in my chair and look out the window to the valley below, barely noting the beautiful view that drew me to this house in the first place. My thoughts drift back to the messages Lena left on my phone. I now regret deleting after listening to them.

  “In her first message, she said something about me needing to check my emails from time to time. I don’t have Internet here, and I don’t have email set up on my phone.”

  “Didn’t you get a new iPhone? It’s easy to set up.”

  “For you, maybe. I’ve purposely not made the effort because Internet, email, it all spells distraction for me, and I’ve been focused on getting this manuscript ready.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get someone to help you set it up so we have a few ways to get in touch, until we know what’s going on.”

  She makes a good point. I can always have email disabled again once Lena shows up. “I have an appointment in town tomorrow morning, so I can stop somewhere for help on that. I’ll let you know as soon as I check my emails.”

  “Fair enough. I learn anything, I’ll give you a call right away.”

  “Please.”

  2

  Tahlula

  “Ms. Rae?”

  I look up to find Dr. Haebe’s assistant smiling from the door opening. I drop the magazine I was flipping through on the side table and get up.

  “The doctor will be right with you,” she says, when I follow her into the small sterile room.

  Taking a seat, I stare up at the large poster on the wall, the only thing to do in here while waiting. I already studied it closely on my first visit, when the emergency the doctor was called out on gave me plenty of time to memorize the details.

  I already know, for instance, my Little Pea is growing hair in there. Hair, nails, eyelashes. It’s mind-boggling how much is happening inside, when you can barely see my belly under my clothes.

  It made me a little nervous at first when, other than a little pouch, I wasn’t showing much. When I mentioned something to Dr. Haebe last time, she assured me everything was fine. That although most women start showing a little at three months, some don’t pop a real belly until month five or even six.

  Since that visit I’ve definitely noticed a difference, but the biggest change has been the movement. The first time it felt light as a soap bubble brushing my skin. It happened a few times more before I realized it was Little Pea moving around. That was surreal; the concept something you’re growing inside you is developing independently.

  I guess I’d deluded myself into thinking as long as a child is still inside your body; you’re the one in control. It’s probably a good lesson to learn early. The way I hear people talk about their children, I don’t think there’s much control to be had once they’re born.

  “Tahlula, how’ve you been?” the slightly older, East Indian woman asks when she walks through the door.

  I’m glad I found a female obstetrician to continue my care after leaving Denver. There are enough people who wouldn’t agree with the choice I made to have a child by myself, but I felt with a woman at least there might be some level of understanding. Dr. Haebe had been able to put my mind at rest.

  “Good. I can feel movement. A lot.”

  A grin spreads over her face. “Fun and games ahead. Your body is no longer your own,” she teases, gesturing for me to hop up on the examination table and lie back. “It doesn’t matter that you’re tired or it’s four o’clock in the morning; if Junior here decides he wants to dance an Irish jig, you’re not going to sleep. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed, the moment you lie down, he’s getting ready to party,” she jokes.

  “It’s a little late in the game to try and scare me, you know,” I point out as she exposes my belly and gently probes, chuckling in response.

  “Of course. I figured you were made of sterner stuff.”

  Apparently satisfied with my measurements, she pulls a small fetal Doppler from her pocket, my favorite part of these visits. It doesn’t take long before the steady thump of Little Pea’s heartbeat fills the room.

  “He sounds good,” she comments, wiping the gel from my stomach.

  I sit up and swing my legs over the side. “Is there a particular reason you keep calling it, he? I’m dying to know. The date of my next ultrasound is circled in red on the calendar, but I’ve read the heart rate might be an indicator of gender?”

  “Sorry to disappoint. It’s a habit for me to call all babies he,” she shares. “And studies have actually shown there’s no consistent difference between a baby boy or girl’s heart rate. Another old wives’ tale debunked. You’ll have to be patient a little longer.”

  I stop by the assistant’s desk on my way out to set up an appointment for two weeks from now. My age makes this a higher risk pregnancy, so Dr. Haebe wants to increase the frequency of my checkups.

  I notice an iPhone laying beside her computer’s keyboard. “You wouldn’t happen to know of an Apple store in Durango, would you?”

  “We don’t have one, but The Mac Ranch sells and repairs Apple computers and phones. It’s on the corner of Main and West 11th.”

  Thanking her, I walk out and catch the elevator going down to the hospital lobby. Instead of heading straight to the parking lot, a sudden craving for coffee has me turning right toward the cafeteria. A verified coffee addict before, it took me a while to get used to the far less effective decaf, but every now and then when I get a hankering it’ll take off the edge.

  There’s a decent lineup at the cash register
when I walk up. My eyes scan the line and get caught on a tall form four people ahead of me in line. Even without the words, Fire & Rescue, printed across a nice set of shoulders, the dark red, short-cropped hair would’ve been a dead giveaway.

  I get a glimpse of that fiery beard when he turns to pay the cashier, but I quickly duck behind the guy in front of me when Evan Biel’s eyes drift in my direction.

  Oh, yes, I remember his name. I could probably recite every detail of his visit yesterday. That doesn’t mean I want him to catch me checking him out. I’d much rather anonymously daydream about what might be, than have him ignore me and lose the fantasy all at once.

  When I sneak a peek at the front of the line, I can just see him stalking off without looking back.

  -

  “Where’ve you been?”

  My brother is leaning against his bike in my driveway when I pull up.

  “Hello to you too,” I complain, grabbing the few things I picked up on the way home from the car.

  It still surprises me to see him with the short graying goatee and bald head. My brother, whose skin is at least four shades darker than mine—courtesy of an anonymous black sperm donor instead of my white one—used to look like he could’ve walked off the pages of GQ in the sharp clothes and expensive suits he wore in Denver. T-shirts and old jeans have taken their place since moving to Durango, but I have to admit, he looks a lot more at home in them.

  The scowl on his face is familiar, though. His massive protective streak has not abated one bit from when our mother—and I use the term loosely—died of a heroin overdose when I was fifteen, and Trunk took on the role of parent. In all truth, even at eighteen, my brother had looked after me better than she ever did.

  He set a strong example, working any and every job he could find while pushing me to get good grades in high school. When I graduated with top honors, and was offered an academic scholarship at a local college, he had enough money saved up to pay for his own education. He picked psychology and I chose English. We shared the rent on a small, old, two-bedroom apartment and graduated the same year. When he chose to continue his education. I’d been eager to go out and find a job.

  My bachelor’s in English had been useless, bouncing from job to job, until I started playing around with this idea I had for a story. The initial three years since publishing my first novel, I’d still been working as a receptionist at a Lexus dealership. The guys I worked with relentlessly made fun of me after one of them caught me writing on my lunch break and snatched my notebook from the table. To the great hilarity of the entire break room, he proceeded to read out loud the love scene I’d just scribbled down. That’s the moment I decided I needed to get serious about my writing career.

  Armed with an agent and a small advance from a minor publisher for exclusive rights on a duet I’d started writing, but never finished, I was thrilled to turn in my resignation six months later.

  Last October I walked back into the dealership with The New York Times best-seller title to my name, a bank account that had never seen that many zeros at once, and bought my gorgeous Matador Red Lexus RX right off the lot. I couldn’t have handed out a better ‘fuck you’ than that. It felt great.

  “Your tires need air,” Trunk grumbles, when he joins me in the kitchen after giving my dog some attention.

  Luke is a rescue pittie I adopted from the Denver Animal Shelter two years ago. The original owner cited him as being ‘too mellow,’ whatever that means. It’s true, Luke isn’t particularly excitable, unless my brother comes to visit, or he perceives a threat to me. Other than that, he might as well be a Golden Retriever.

  “They’re fine. Besides, I have an appointment for an oil change and rotation next week anyway.”

  “Where are you taking it?” he wants to know, twisting a banana off the bunch I just put in the fruit bowl, and shoving half in his mouth. It’s like the moment he’s around me he forgets I can take care of myself.

  I roll my eyes. “The dealership in town.”

  “Too expensive,” he decrees. “I know a guy—”

  “No. It’s going to the dealership. I’m not going to risk my warranty to save a couple of bucks. I can afford it.”

  “It’s wasteful,” he growls, leaning his fists on the counter.

  “My money to waste,” I counter, mimicking his stance.

  The ensuing stare down ends abruptly when Luke starts to growl at the sound of a vehicle coming up the driveway. A glance out the front window shows the dark gray Ford pickup truck that was parked out there yesterday.

  “The fuck?” my brother grumbles, as he strides to the front door, my traitor dog on his heels.

  Shit. Men.

  Evan

  I have no idea what possesses me to drive back up this damn mountain.

  Probably the same thing that kept me awake. I should’ve been dead to the world after my twenty-four-hour shift ended much busier than it started. I squeezed in a quick visit to the hospital to check on the unconscious woman we’d had to pry out of a burning vehicle.

  It’s a habit I’ve gotten into over the years. A way for me to help process some of the horrific scenes we encounter in our line of work. Instead of being haunted by the often devastating injuries, it’s easier to visualize the victim bandaged up in a hospital bed.

  Closure, if you will. For me anyway. It’s not something my battalion chief or the department encourages, but as long as they don’t ask, I don’t tell.

  Jen, one of the nurses on the burn unit, didn’t hesitate to give me an update on the woman’s status. Her injuries are serious, but not life-threatening, which should have been enough to allow for more than a couple of hours of demon-free sleep. I caught twenty minutes, if that, before a car backfiring in the street below woke me. I thought about taking the CBD oil I sometimes use to battle my life-long insomnia. I only take it when I’m off, since unless I can sleep for eight hours straight after that, it leaves me groggy. Taking it in the middle of the morning would really mess with my already challenged circadian rhythm. With our twenty-four-hour shifts followed by forty-eight hours off, it’s important I at least try to stick to some kind of regular sleeping pattern. I’ll take some tonight.

  Forty minutes later, for reasons I can’t identify, I’m pulling up to the home of the woman who left me dumbstruck yesterday. I tell myself I’m here to ensure she’s making efforts to get her house fire safe, but it sounds dumb even to my own ears.

  How dumb, I realize the moment I get out of the truck just as a large black man steps onto the small porch, his arms crossed over his chest. It’s only when I round the SUV that was here yesterday I notice the motorcycle parked on the other side.

  “Yeah?” The low rumble of his voice is far from friendly—neither is the dog’s growl—and I kick myself for not considering the possibility the woman has a man.

  Like I said—dumb.

  I try to ignore her when she steps out from behind him and force myself to keep my eyes on him. I’m probably not all that successful, since one of his arms shoots out and drapes proprietary around her shoulders. Yes, buddy, the message is clear. The guy may not have much on me in height, but he’s probably twice as wide. Not someone to mess with.

  “I’m with Durango Fire and Rescue,” I direct at him. “I stopped by yesterday as part of our safety program for the upcoming wildfire season.” I risk a glance at her and notice she steps away from the guy so his arm drops to his side. “I noted some safety hazards around the house, and after getting back to the station, realized I should probably have mentioned some of us will volunteer to help clear the recommended five feet of noncombustible perimeter around your home.”

  It’s a load of bull. The only idiot to drive twenty minutes up a mountain to clean the gutters of some stranger would be me. Apparently they both think it’s bullshit too, given the hint of amusement on her face, and the blatant annoyance on his.

  “Don’t need your help,” the large man bites off. “I can take care of it.”

&nbs
p; I nod and am about to return to my truck—tail between the legs—for the second time in twenty-four hours, when she steps forward and places herself squarely in front of the man. “Evan, was it?” The impact of her rich voice is no less than it was yesterday. I nod, surprised she remembers. “I appreciate you coming by to offer.”

  “He coulda used a phone, Tahlula,” her husband, or boyfriend, mumbles.

  Tahlula. Her name is as exotic as her looks.

  “Don’t be an ass, Trunk,” she snaps, turning around. As she does, I notice her hand going back down to her stomach, where it comes to rest on a small but very distinct baby bump.

  Idiot is too mild a word.

  3

  Evan

  “Sweetheart, can you grab me two more pepper plants, please?”

  I look where Ma is pointing and grab two cell packs, lifting them for her approval. At her thumbs-up, I add them to the packed cart I’ve been lugging around the nursery.

  Every first Saturday in June, for as long as I can remember, my mother goes plant shopping at Durango Nursery and Supply. The past four years, since my father died quite suddenly from a stroke, I’ve taken her. If I’m supposed to be on shift, like today, I take a personal day.

  Since I bought my house, eight years ago, her plant hauls have doubled. I have no interest in gardening, but my mother does. For a seventy-two-year-old she’s still pretty spry and will not only take care of her own garden, but mine as well. Since my yard is bigger, has better exposure, and I don’t give the first fuck about flowers, she grows vegetables in mine. Not exactly a sacrifice since I reap the benefits of that in spades.

  Her own garden, both front and back, are House&Garden worthy. Since Pops died, she’s even taken up designing gardens for others. Mostly friends and members of her church community, but she’s making a nice bit of pocket money and loves doing it.

  As proud as I am of her and her talent, the only thing you’ll find me doing in a garden is on occasion watering it, and mowing the lawn—Ma’s and mine—once a week as it fits in my schedule.