by Sherry Lewis
He laughed and followed her back onto the path, and his admiration for her surged. She was a complex woman and more than a little fascinating. He could spend a lifetime exploring all the facets of her personality and never get bored.
It was just too bad he would never get that chance.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they pulled up in front of the Fitzgeralds’ run-down split-entry home and Lucy knew it was back to business. That interlude in the park had been idyllic, but she wondered if Jackson would feel the same way about her if she had taken advantage of his offer to talk about what was wrong.
Her appointment with Cecily had been predictable, but difficult. Talking about Tomas had nearly torn her in two, and Cecily had raised some tough questions about the future. Nothing Lucy hadn’t asked herself, but coming from someone else made her doubts seem more real somehow.
Doing her best to stop thinking about that morning, she walked with Jackson past the makeshift parking lot on the Fitzgeralds’ front lawn. Nothing had changed since their last visit. Boards were still missing from the fence, and someone had covered a broken panel of glass beside the door with a garbage bag held in place with duct tape. Weeds sprouted in places where even weeds shouldn’t live, and the entire place had an air of sad neglect about it.
Somewhere inside a television blared daytime programs, and the bitter scent of cigarette smoke drifted out through open windows to meet them. Obviously someone was home this time, and her adrenaline kicked in with a rush.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs sounded in response to her knock, and a large dark shadow on the glass warned her a split second before the door swung wide. A burly man in his early forties glared out at them. His dark hair stuck out from his head as if it hadn’t been brushed in a while, and at least two days’ growth shadowed his cheeks and chin.
“Yeah? Wha’d’ya want?” When he moved farther into the light, Lucy noticed dark patches of sweat staining his shirt.
Charming.
“Mr. Fitzgerald?”
He looked down his nose at her. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Detective Montalvo with HPD. This is Jackson Davis. We’re looking for your son. Is he around?”
He sniffed and skimmed a glance over Jackson. “Which son?”
“We’re looking for Wayne.”
With a grunt, Ed Fitzgerald pulled a soiled bandanna from a back pocket. “Whatever you want, you’re wastin’ your time. Wayne doesn’t live here no more.”
“Do you know where we can find him?”
The man’s eyes narrowed into wary slits. “What do you want him for?”
She could feel Jackson stirring behind her, and she willed him silently to remain patient. “We just have a few questions we need to ask him. Can you tell us where he is?”
“You here to harass him again?”
“No. We just want to ask him some questions. Can you tell us where to find him?”
A smirk curled the man’s foul lips. “I don’t remember.”
And Jackson wondered why things moved so slowly. “Is your wife at home?” Lucy asked, still trying to sound pleasant. “Maybe her memory’s a little better.”
Fitzgerald leaned against the door frame and regarded her insolently. “She’s working.”
“Is there anyone else here who might be able to tell us where Wayne is living? Or even where he works?”
Fitzgerald wagged his head slowly, but the challenge in his eyes grew hard and cold.
“All we want to do it talk to him,” Jackson interrupted. “So why don’t you do the lady a favor and just tell her where he is?”
Still snarling, Fitzgerald pulled a toothpick from a pocket and wedged it between his teeth. He spent several seconds situating it just so. “We ain’t seen Wayne in weeks,” he said at last. “Months, maybe.”
Irritated that he would answer Jackson and not her, Lucy shifted gears. She’d encountered chauvinistic attitudes before. Every female officer on the force did, and far too often. But men like Ed Fitzgerald never failed to grate on her nerves. “Was that before he went to jail,” she asked, “or after?”
Fitzgerald moved the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Before.”
“Then you haven’t seen him since his release?”
He folded his beefy arms across his chest. “No. So like I said, you’re wastin’ your time.”
“I think it’s you who’s wasting our time,” Jackson said, his voice low and almost threatening. “We’re trying to find a young girl who’s been missing for nearly a week. We’ve been told Wayne knows her.”
Fitzgerald’s eyes narrowed even farther. “Wayne don’t know that girl.”
“How would you know that?”
“I just know.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet you do.”
Afraid that Jackson would push too far, Lucy gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow and tried to regain control. “If Wayne doesn’t know her,” she said, “then I’m sure he won’t mind answering a few questions for us.” But both men seemed to have forgotten that she was even there.
Fitzgerald jerked his head toward Patrice’s house. “You talking about that little girl who lives up there?”
“That’s right.”
“You think Wayne took her?”
“We never said that,” Lucy said firmly. “We only want to ask him a few questions.”
Fitzgerald snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah. Just a few questions.” He mopped his neck and face with the bandanna and returned it to his pocket. “I know what you people are like. Don’t think I don’t. You decide somebody done something, and then you twist facts around to make it look real. Happens all the time around here.”
“It’s not going to happen this time,” Lucy insisted.
But Fitzgerald went on as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Wayne may be in trouble from time to time, but there’s no way he knows what happened to that little girl, and I ain’t going to let you make it look like he does.”
There had been whispers of corruption within HPD over the years, but Lucy had never taken them seriously. Even if some allegations were true, she resented having her integrity questioned by this oily piece of humanity. “Nobody’s trying to make your son look guilty of anything,” she said firmly. “We just want to know if Wayne has seen or talked to Angelina recently, and what she may have said to him if they did speak.”
“I told you before, Wayne don’t know that little girl. You want to find out where she is, try the mall. Ask some of those kids from down at the skating rink. Trouble’s always brewing down there, and some of those kids are real bad news.”
Lucy shot a glance at Jackson, but she couldn’t read his expression. “Which skating rink?”
“The one over on Sheldon.”
“And what makes you think they’d know anything about Angelina?”
“Because I see her there all the time when I go pick up my youngest boy.” He scratched at his chest and spent another few seconds finding a new location for his toothpick. “Saw her there just last weekend, as a matter of fact. She was hanging all over some kid.”
“Do you know who the boy was?”
He shrugged casually. “Those kids all look alike to me. Shaved heads and pants down around their ankles. All I know is it wasn’t my kid, so go hassle somebody else. I’ve got things to do.”
Before she could stop him, he slipped back into the house and slammed the door between them.
Jackson lunged for the doorknob, but she caught his wrist before he could turn it. “Leave it, Jackson. You can’t force your way into his house, and it’s pretty obvious he’s through talking—at least for now.”
“He knows where Wayne is,” Jackson argued. “You saw that as plainly as I did.”
“I think you’re probably right, but he’s not going to share that with us. He did give us a lead, though. One more place to look. We can be grateful for that.”
“He could be trying to throw us off the scent.”
“And he could be telling the truth.”
/>
“You really believe that?”
“It’s possible.”
“Come on, Lucy. You can’t really mean to walk away—”
“That’s exactly what I mean to do.”
“When you know damn well Fitzgerald is holding back information?”
“I don’t know that, and neither do you. I know you want it to be that easy, but it’s not, and I’m not going to stand around here while you take out your frustrations on someone who may be completely innocent. Get a grip on yourself, Jackson. You’re an intelligent, reasonable man. You know that pushing him isn’t going to accomplish anything except maybe help you release some tension. In the end, it will only make things worse, and I know that’s not what you want.”
“I want to find Angel.”
“Then let’s go about it the smart way. If we need to come back, we will, and we may even get more out of him next time. Maybe his wife will tell us what we need to know. But he’s not going to tell us anything right now.”
He remained ramrod stiff and she could almost see the argument he was having with himself playing out across his face. Drawing on all of her patience and experience, she waited silently for him to calm down. Little by little, she saw his shoulders relax, then the muscles in his face, and she knew the worst was over—at least for now.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He followed her down the sidewalk to the car, but she could see by the set of his jaw and the fire in his eyes that he still wasn’t far from the boiling point. They both needed a way to release tension before one of them erupted. After those kisses they’d shared in the park, one idea danced appealingly through Lucy’s mind, but she couldn’t let herself seriously consider that. Becoming even more involved with Jackson would only complicate everything. But maybe they could be friends.
Friends, and just a little bit more.
Chapter Nine
EVEN LUCY COULDN’T LIE to herself about this one. She’d crossed a line and there would be no going back. Propped against a wall, she pressed a cool bottle of water to her forehead and let her gaze drift across the gym toward the weight bench. Long, lean and looking incredibly handsome, Jackson lay back on the bench and pressed the weights above his head. His muscles strained from the effort, and Lucy felt her mouth go dry.
What had she been thinking? Between her appointment with Cecily and yesterday’s run-in with Ed Fitzgerald, Lucy had lost all sense of propriety. Yes, both she and Jackson needed something to help with the tension they felt, but this… Well, this was just a bad idea.
Maybe she was being ridiculous. She should just walk out there and go through the routine she knew almost as well as she knew her own name. But for some reason, she couldn’t get one foot to move in front of the other.
Those kisses in the park had opened the door on something she wasn’t ready to handle. After all, she’d known Jackson for less than a week. It had been an intense week for both of them, but that only meant that neither of them was thinking clearly. Her reaction to the sight of his almost-bare chest and solid legs was irrefutable proof that she wasn’t.
But she couldn’t stand in the corner all day. She’d just have to pull herself together and get her head on straight.
Clutching her bottle in one hand and a towel in the other, she made her way across the cavernous room toward the rows of treadmills. She tossed the towel over the bar, chose her program and focused on the way her muscles felt as they began to stretch. At least she tried to.
In spite of her stern internal warnings, Lucy couldn’t stop herself from admiring Jackson—the way he moved, the glow of his skin, the curve of his smile as he talked to people around him. And the flicker of interest in her belly, the tickle that ignited a slow flame when he saw her and started toward her, killed the last weak, silent protest that she wasn’t falling for him.
She forced herself to look straight ahead and concentrated on her run.
Climbing onto the machine beside hers, he said, “Much as I hate to say it, this was a good idea. Thanks.”
She laughed at the grudging apology and treated herself to another quick glance. “You’re welcome. I guess you probably don’t have to use machinery to work out when you’re home.”
“Not this kind, that’s for sure. Wiley would have a fit if he could see this.”
“Really? Why?”
“Why walk on a piece of metal when there are plenty of real places under God’s own sky you can walk?”
“Because not every place under God’s own sky is safe, is open at six o’clock in the morning or stays dry when it’s raining.”
Jackson laughed. “Yeah? But they probably all smell better.”
“I don’t know about that. You think a cow pasture smells better than this?”
“Wiley would.”
The program shifted and Lucy increased her pace. She fell into the rhythm after only a couple of steps and let her body move in time to the music playing over the loudspeaker. “I’m sure Wiley would,” she said. “But what do you think?”
Jackson looked at her. “As long as my muscles don’t atrophy, I’m fine with either choice.”
His careful answer made her think he was holding something back. She couldn’t fault him. She was holding back plenty herself. But she was still curious. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Shove yourself down inside somewhere and defer to Wiley?”
His machine picked up the pace, and Jackson started to run faster. “Is that what you think I do?”
“It sure seems like it. You’re working the job he wants you to work and you’re living the life he wants you to live. You don’t even have an opinion about where you exercise.”
“I have plenty of opinions,” he said with a sly smile. “I just don’t feel the need to voice them all the time.”
“You’re a closed book, is that it?”
“Something like that.”
She’d been accused of the same thing many times, so she had no business passing judgment on him. But she’d never really understood how frustrating her habit of keeping to herself must have been for friends and family. “And you’re content with that?”
“I have a good life,” he said with a shrug. “What’s not to be content about?”
Lucy felt an urgent need to know what went on behind those hazel eyes. She knew how he felt about Wiley, his father, Holden and Angelina. She even knew how he felt about the ranch. But she had no idea how he felt about himself.
“So you’re content, but are you happy?”
He lifted his shoulder again as if the answer didn’t matter. “I’m happy enough. What about you?”
“The truth? I don’t know.” The honesty of her answer surprised her as much as it seemed to surprise him. “You and I are opposites in one way, but we’re a lot the same, too. You’ve given up your dreams for everyone around you, and I’ve given up any other kind of life to have my dream. I’m not sure either solution is healthy.”
Jackson didn’t say anything for several minutes, and Lucy was afraid she’d gone too far. Then he asked, “So what would you do differently if you could?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I suppose if I knew, I’d already be doing it.”
He grinned and stepped off the treadmill and onto the sides of the machine as if he’d been using one all his life. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You might know something’s missing, but not what it is. It’s a little hard to plug the holes in your life if you don’t know where they are.”
“And would you if you knew? Or are you too set in your ways to stir things up?”
“I suppose that would depend on what I found.” He ran an appreciative glance along her body and the smile slipped from his face. “It would have to be something pretty special to be worth the trouble.”
A delicious shiver of anticipation traveled the same path his gaze had taken. Lucy tried to laugh it off, but it settled low in her belly and coiled outward in slow,
sensuous waves. It had been a long, long time since she’d felt this way, and her step faltered as she ran, forcing her to grab for the handrails to keep her balance.
Suddenly angry with herself, she stopped the treadmill and grabbed her towel. She was making a big mistake to let this attraction for Jackson take root. A big mistake.
But there was no denying that she felt more alive than she had in years.
THE WEST-SIDE TRUCK HAVEN was a series of connected buildings that housed a gas station, showers for road-weary truck drivers and a large diner. It sat on a huge parking lot dotted with cars, tractor-trailers and pickups. The scents of gasoline and diesel fuel overpowered everything else, and Lucy could see fumes rising in the heat as she parked her car.
After their conversation with Ed Fitzgerald, she was a little reluctant to send Jackson off on his own, but they still needed to check out the skating rink, and clues were already growing cold. She really didn’t have much choice. She just prayed that someone here would know something about Patrice.
“Which do you want,” she asked, “the gas station or the diner?”
Jackson watched a couple of truckers push out through a glass door, another who paused to tamp a new pack of cigarettes against a concrete post. “I’ll take the gas station.”
“Great. Just find out if anyone remembers Patrice, and if they’ve seen her or heard from her recently.” She opened her car door and started to climb out into the steamy heat. “Maybe somebody has remained friends with her, or knows where she’s working. Anything at all would be a help.”
With a brisk nod, he joined her outside. With so much at stake, she shouldn’t notice the way his shirt molded to his arms and shoulders. The way it tapered sharply as it disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. The way sunlight played in his tousled blond curls….
Turning away sharply, she slipped her fingers around the badge in her pocket to remind herself who she was and what she was doing here. “Meet back here when we’re finished.”
“What about the truck drivers? We’re talking to them, too, aren’t we?”
