Fortunately, Brian’s cell phone started ringing, and she was momentarily saved from making any remark at all.
“Hey, sis.” Brian’s voice altered upward an octave, and if it were possible, he sounded even more cheery than usual.
Oh, no, Sabrina thought. Was Colleen the only sister?
“I can’t talk now…okay, really quick.” He gave Sabrina and Murphy a sheepish look.
“He does? He is? Yeah, that’s great Colleen. Sure, I wouldn’t miss it. Jake’s bringing a girl to the house for dinner is tantamount to a proposal of marriage for him,” Brian said with a hearty laugh.
Murphy also started laughing and had to look away as Sabrina’s head fell forward, embarrassment certainly coloring her face.
Guess who’s coming to dinner, Brian?
“What was that?” Brian’s voice registered shock. “Her name is…?” He slowly turned his head and watched Sabrina’s focused study of the floor directly in front of her feet.
“Really? I gotta go, Colleen. Bye. Love you, too.” His wide-eyed, speculative gaze at Sabrina said he wondered if the grape bubble bath scent clinging to her was courtesy of Jake. The moment was interrupted when Captain Hennessey opened the door.
Thank God. Sabrina had never in her life been so glad to see her boss.
“Glad everyone is finally here. Brian, you’re with me in the next room while I question Mrs. Forrester. She has her husband and brother-in-law with her. They insisted on staying.”
“Yeah, okay. Great.” Brian beat a hasty retreat, giving Sabrina a faint smile over his shoulder as he exited.
“Sabrina, Murphy, I want you to watch from here. I have my receiver on. You know the drill. Watch her as we go through the routine. Ask any questions you think of as we go along.” They both nodded. Sabrina shifted her game face into place. Hennessey took a deep breath and asked, “Jesus, did someone blow up a grape candy factory in here?” before closing the door on Murphy’s unconcealed laughter.
* * * *
Sabrina watched Suzanne Forrester intently as Hennessy and Brian entered the room. She looked nervous but not in a guilty way. She was flanked on either side by her husband and the brother-in-law, Officer Forrester, from precinct thirty-six. He was still in uniform.
Sabrina watched as Hennessey settled across from the three of them. She couldn’t help thinking about her mother.
She’s not your mother, so stop being gushy.
“What is the meaning of this crap, Hennessey?” Officer Forrester asked heatedly, “Suzanne wouldn’t hurt a fly. I only told you I knew her because I thought someone was stalking her.”
“Calm down. I have just a couple questions to ask.”
Suzanne leaned forward and put her hand on her brother-in-law’s forearm. She smiled at him. “It’s okay, Bruce. I don’t have anything to hide. They can ask me whatever they want.”
“Why were you at the scene of the former city hall building explosion down town?” Hennessey asked as he laid down a picture of her taken at the scene showing her with a horrified expression on her face. She looked at it with interest but remained silent. “And also later at the Old Town Hotel explosion.” Hennessey laid down the other picture of her. Same dress. Same horrified expression.
“I was looking for someone.” She stared at the photos intently.
“Who were you looking for?” Hennessey asked.
Suzanne’s eyes snapped up to his. “My mother.”
Sabrina’s stomach clenched for no good reason.
“I don’t understand. Why were you looking for your mother at an empty building site and then later at a less-than-stellar hotel?”
Suzanne sighed and spoke in an even voice, “I was adopted as a baby by wonderful loving parents, but when I turned twenty-one I got…curious. I was about to be married, and I guess I wanted a history for myself. I wanted to know why my biological parents couldn’t keep me.”
“So how did that put you at the two bomb sites?” Hennessey prodded. He hated long-winded stories. He was a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of guy.
“I put my name down in a registry, so that if my biological mother were looking for me, I could be contacted, but I never heard anything. I was about to give up hope after two years, so I…” Her gaze cut to Officer Forrester.
“I helped her, okay!” The words came out as though he knew he’d done something wrong but hated to admit it. “She knew the date of her birth and that she’d been adopted as a one-week-old infant. I looked into some files to see if I could help point her in the right direction.”
“You used your position as an officer of the law to look into confidential adoption files?” Hennessey asked, his voice raising.
That was big.
“No,” Suzanne spoke up quickly. “I’d read an account in an old newspaper of an explosion on the day I was born near the hospital my adoptive parents picked me up from. I thought maybe my parents had died in the explosion. The paper didn’t list the victims’ names, so Bruce helped me.”
“I looked up the police file to get the names and addresses of those people who died that day. Suzie could have found it herself, but I knew I could get it for her faster, so I did.”
“I see.” Hennessey remarked, but Sabrina could hear in his voice that he didn’t see at all. He wanted the reader’s digest version versus the long-winded explanation.
Sabrina sucked in a breath as a horrifying thought occurred to her. Maybe Suzanne Forrester’s parents had died in the same explosion as Sabrina’s. Fifteen people were killed at the family restaurant where her parents had died. Thirty or so more wounded. It was possible—if the date was the same.
“Ask her the date of the explosion,” Sabrina said.
Hennessey clicked a pen and made as if to take notes now. “What was the date of the explosion you read about?”
“May 15th, twenty-three years ago.”
Hennessey cleared his throat because he knew that date, too. He wrote it down on his pad of paper as Sabrina swayed on her feet behind the glass.
Bless his heart; Murphy reached out an arm to steady her and left his hand on her shoulder.
Suzanne Forrester had given the same, exact date that Sabrina’s parents died.
Chapter Seven
Sabrina felt an immediate kinship to Suzanne Forrester. They’d both lost their parents to the same unidentified bomber who had never been caught!
Suzanne spoke urgently in defense of her brother-in-law, the officer who had helped her. “Bruce gave me a list of names and old addresses of all the victims in the bombing. The second address I visited was an apartment building. There were seven people from that apartment that had been killed. The restaurant was nearby. The apartment manager was a sweet old lady who’d lived there for thirty years and said I looked like one of the women who’d died. She had saved a box in the basement for each of the victims. Only two had been claimed. Can you believe it? In one of them was a diary of this young woman.
“It was severely water damaged. I couldn’t read much of what was there because the pages were fused together, but I found a picture of her stuck in the back. Her name was Margaret Elliot. In the few passages I could read was an account of Margaret meeting the love of her life and where they’d been married and subsequently the place they had honeymooned. I just went to see the sites where my mother and the love of her life had been. I hope it was my father.” Tears welled up in her eyes. Sabrina’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, too.
“How did you know it was your mother?” Hennessey, generally uncomfortable around emotional women, cleared his throat.
“The picture of her looks exactly like me.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“No, but I can get it. I could bring it to you. I put it at a photography place specializing in restoration of old photos. I’ll call them and get it back.”
“Great. In the mean time, why don’t you bring us the diary to look over? Could you bring it in tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. Am I free to
go?” she asked, surprised.
Hennessey turned to Brian. “Do you have any additional questions?” Brian shook his head. This was Murphy and Sabrina’s question as well, but Sabrina found she couldn’t speak. She turned and gave Murphy her best meaningful look, even though she was full of distress. She was proud of herself for not breaking down in tearful anguish. Murphy nodded in seeming understanding of her pending emotional response and answered for them, “Not at this time, boss. Maybe later on.”
“We’ll keep in touch. Will you be available in the next couple of weeks if we have additional questions?” Hennessey finally asked.
“Yes. Of course. Whatever I can do?”
Sabrina’s mind raced with the painful memories of her parents’ death. She had buried them for so long, the only thing that rose to the top was the emotional torment and loneliness of a lifetime of loss. Now she knew she wasn’t the only one. She heard Hennessey continue questioning Suzanne but turned inward for a moment, thinking about long-buried thoughts.
Suzanne had been adopted into a loving home after her parents were killed. At the same time, Sabrina had been raised in an overcrowded social services system where older children were relegated to orphanages.
Sabrina forced herself to calm down. She had an unusual urge to run and wanted to escape to a safe place. Where was safe? Jake. She wanted Jake. She trembled with the effort of trying to hide it, but she needed to suck it up right now. Just hold it together long enough to get to Jake, and everything will be okay. The thought of being wrapped around Jake calmed her. She took a deep cleansing breath, wiped at her eyes, and turned to face Hennessy and Brian as they returned with what she hoped was a clear non-tearful expression.
“Interesting turn of events,” Hennessey remarked.
“Yes.” She was amazed at the calm tone in her voice as the single word exited her lips despite the panic vibrating through her core at the memory of her orphaned past.
Hennessey watched her face carefully. “We’ll have to dig up the police files and all other records available on the explosion from twenty-three years ago, you understand?”
“Yes.” She managed to nod. Hold it together. Hold it together. Think of Jake. Calm descended. “It’ll be fine. Are we working tonight?”
“No. We’ll start fresh tomorrow morning. I’ll put in a hot request to have the files waiting for us. I’ll see everyone at eight sharp.” They nodded and no more words were spoken as they separated.
Sabrina escaped. She made it all the way to her car before breaking down. Sobbing uncontrollably, she drove straight to Jake’s without calling and fell into his arms when he answered her pounding knock.
“Sabrina,” he said almost reverently as he swept her up in his arms and closed the door. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and buried her face in his throat and couldn’t stop from crying her eyes out.
The deep sadness of her past reared up and engulfed her. She cried into Jake’s shoulder at painful memories of her life growing up in the orphanage. As a child growing up, she spent much of her time wishing for a life she never got. Sabrina thought about her parents who were long dead, the people she never got to know, but who had saved her life. Tomorrow morning she would rehash all the things in her past which made her uncomfortable in order to do her job. She heard Jake murmur sweet placations and after a few minutes she allowed his voice to calm her down.
“You must think I’m a crazy emotional wreck of a female, but I swear to you, I’ve never cried so much in my life as I have in the last two days.”
“Maybe it was about time then,” he said mildly. “Not a good idea to keep everything bottled up, babe.” He stroked a hand down her back. “What’s made you so upset? There wasn’t another explosion tonight, was there?”
“Not exactly.”
Jake carried her into his living room and sat down on his loveseat with her still attached to his hip. Sabrina clung to him like a frightened child and told him everything about her evening. Suzanne, the reason she was looking at the sites, and the resurrection of the explosion twenty-three years ago that killed her parents.
The final blow was that she would have to read reports detailing her parents’ deaths tomorrow. The autopsy reports would be in the file along with grisly color pictures detailing their broken bodies in final repose. Details she’d never wanted to learn too much about since she had so few memories of her mother and father, the dreams she experienced periodically in the form of nightmares her only vague memory of the event. Tomorrow she’d learn more than she had ever wanted to know regarding that day twenty-three years ago. Jake held her close as she spilled all. The speech was cathartic for her and she felt completely wrung out as she finished speaking.
“Thanks, Jake. I needed to unload.”
“No problem. I’m glad you came to me.”
“Except that now you know what an emotional sex slave you have.”
“A bonus, as I see it.” He kissed her face and took a breath. “You smell like a grape lollipop. Makes me want to lick you all over.”
Sabrina sighed thinking of Murphy and Brian, “Oh yeah, one other thing that I don’t have any more tears for.” She told him about the conversation between his brother and sister. Jake actually laughed out loud.
“It’s not funny.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said, and brushed a tendril of hair away of her eyes, tucking it behind one ear.
“How can I face them at dinner tomorrow?”
“With a smile. No one will say a word. I promise.”
“You promise a lot.”
“I deliver a lot.”
She laughed for the first time since entering his apartment. “Well, I can’t argue with that. Let’s go tuck you in, big boy. I’m done getting your shirt wet and I need to get home for some sleep.”
“Stay with me tonight.” His fingers pressed into her lower back in a slow massage as if to help convince her.
“I have to go in early and face my demons.” She sobered for a moment.
“Stay with me anyway, I insist. I’ll set an alarm and protect you from all your demons through the night.”
Sabrina sighed and decided that bravely facing her fears alone was overrated. “Okay,” she whispered, and rested her head on his shoulder. Jake stood up, holding her close, and carried her to his bed. He gently and tenderly removed all her clothes first and then his own. He placed her in the center of his bed and spooned up behind her, cocooning her in his arms under the covers. “Go to sleep,” he whispered the soft command in her ear.
Sabrina drifted off safely wrapped in Jake’s arms, hoping she was too tired to have bad dreams. It wasn’t the case. The nightmare unfolded exactly as it always did, but this time Sabrina sensed that she was more aware of her surroundings. On some level, she knew Jake was right beside her and it comforted her, so this time she paid more attention to the setting of the dream. She noted everything that flew by her synapses, but when she got to the end of the repeated sequences, something changed. A sharp forgotten memory surged up to the surface of her consciousness as the nightmare proceeded to its grim, predestined finale. Just before the blast, she remembered hearing the voice of someone who loved her. He yelled, “Maggie!” in a panicked voice right before the big loud noise.
Sabrina woke up screaming, “no!” and grabbing for Jake’s soothing arms as they slid around her. He held her and whispered soothing words to calm her mind still racing with the traces of the bad dream that was already fading away.
Sabrina twisted to face Jake, leaned up and kissed his mouth. He returned the kiss, running his hand down the length of her nude body. She brushed her hand over his softened sex and felt him begin to grow in her hand.
“Go back to sleep.” His breath whispered over her lips as he broke the kiss.
“Let’s try that slow seduction method you mentioned. Unless you’re too sleepy to perform,” she baited him.
“Not me. I can perform just fine without sleep. It’s part of my job.”
Those were the last coherent words he spoke before her next bout of screaming started, but this time it was in pleasure and not in terror.
Sabrina woke early, before the alarm sounded. She was draped over Jake like a blanket, but extracted herself carefully and stumbled into his bathroom. He awoke only briefly to check on her as she lifted off of him, but at her smile, he relaxed, rolled over, and closed his eyes again.
As Sabrina showered, she noticed the tub had the faint aroma of grape bubble bath from the night before. The memory of the previous evening relaxed her as the warm spray of the shower did wonders to wake her up, but it didn’t soothe her as she’d hoped.
Sabrina hadn’t slept well after her dream the night before. She felt overly tired and her muscles ached. It was due in part to the slow and time-consuming sexual acrobatics with Jake last night, but also to the tense emotional stress of watching Hennessey question Suzanne Forrester.
Sabrina wondered why her nightmare, the fuzzy vision of which had already faded in her mind, had changed. She couldn’t remember all of it, but attributed the change to the information about Suzanne’s mother. Now, she supposed, her mind was blending the two components into one story.
Sabrina shoved the information back in her mind. She had to buzz home before heading to work. She leaned over Jake’s prone form and whispered that she was leaving. She thought he still slept, but he grabbed her and pinned her to the bed. She squeaked out a perfect girly noise as he kissed her good bye and told her he’d pick her up at seven for dinner at his folks’ house. Another hurdle she did not look forward to getting over today.
* * * *
Sabrina entered the sheriff’s office early ready to tackle the sure-to-be-difficult day ahead. Securing her mental armor, she prepared herself to face the task of reading her parents’ file. She’d never wanted to know too much and found her attitude hadn’t changed. The slim possibility of bringing the person responsible to justice all these years later seemed an inadequate reason to delve into and rehash the painful memories facing her.
Blonde Bomb Tech Page 11
