Has she just gotten lucky?
“Hang tight for a minute?” she asks the driver.
“Sure thing.”
Juliet marches up the steep driveway, onto the covered porch, and rings the bell.
Nothing. Silence.
Damn.
She tries again, though she knows it’s futile. Despite the car in the drive, the house feels empty.
She shifts her bag to the other shoulder, pulls out her cell phone and notebook. She waves to the driver—one finger up in a hold on gesture—and dials the number she wrote down.
The phone starts to ring, but as it does, she sees a tall, dark-haired man jogging up the street. He has a fawn-colored dog with a black face on a lead by his side. He takes in the car, and the woman in his driveway, and pulls up short. The dog looks interested.
The resemblance in person is much stronger than in the photos. It takes Juliet’s breath away. She clicks off her phone just as Zack Armstrong reaches for the carry bag around his waist.
“Mr. Armstrong?” she calls.
He keeps his hand on his belt and mutters something to the dog, who goes from a happy trot to alert. Slowly, they move to the base of the drive.
“Can I help you?” he asks, planted there, not moving. She doesn’t move, either. She now knows this man’s background. He was a serious operator in his day, though the day is long past.
“Dr. Juliet Ryder. I’m with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.” She flips open her credentials and holds them out so he can see. It feels important to her to be someone for this man, not just the sister of a grief-stricken woman and aunt to a stolen child. She needs him to take her seriously, immediately.
She doesn’t understand the look that passes over his face. But some of the tension goes out of his shoulders, and the dog grins at her, and the two of them come up the drive.
Juliet nods to the driver, who’s been watching, and with a little wave, the girl zooms away to get her next fare, leaving Juliet alone on Zack Armstrong’s doorstep.
40
Zack lets them into the house and gives Kat a fresh bowl of water, which she laps up noisily. They did a full circuit this morning, and he took his time getting them home, stopping for a long lunch break on the way. It is a beautiful late-winter day in Nashville, crisp, cool but not cold, the edges of spring thinking about fighting their way in. Just the kind of day he likes to spend outside, and Kat does, too.
He offers the CBI agent a cold bottle of water, which she accepts. He drinks one down himself, then fills it again from the tap and sits down at the counter.
There is so much tension coming off the woman he doesn’t know if she is going to last another moment without talking. She looks tired, and excited, and scared. Not the usual persona he is used to from law enforcement. And after the visit from Parks and his pet detective yesterday, Zack is paying even more attention.
“Well? What brings the CBI to Nashville?”
She breathes deeply and squares her shoulders. “This is going to come as a bit of a shock. I have a line on your daughter.”
Zack stands so quickly he knocks over the water, and Kat starts to bark, low booms coming from her chest. He is at the woman’s side in a heartbeat, a hand gripped like a vise around her bicep.
“What did you just say?”
“Let go of me, right now.”
He realizes he has a death grip on her, lets loose his hand and steps away. “Shush,” he says to Kat, who whines and sits on her haunches.
“I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise.” Every word is enunciated, carefully, slowly, so there is no misunderstanding. “You think you have a line on my daughter?”
She starts for her pocket, and Zack can’t help himself, he moves into a defensive position.
“Whoa,” she says. “I’m getting out my phone. Calm down.”
“Sorry,” he repeats, simply, but keeps his hand on his waist. He has a Walther PPK in a custom-made holster tucked into his running pants, and he’s kept up with his weapons practice. Old habits die hard.
Zack stands deathly still while she unlocks her phone and pulls up a photograph. When he sees it, Zack thinks his heart might burst.
“My God. She looks like Vivian. My Violet,” he says, the blood rushing to his head. He feels the faint coming as it happens, goes down before a second thought comes.
* * *
Zack wakes with his head pillowed in Juliet Ryder’s lap, Kat licking his face, whining and pawing at his arm.
“You fall gracefully for such a big guy,” she says, a note of humor in her tone, and he realizes she has very pretty eyes, golden brown, which is hard to miss, considering how close they are to his.
He starts to sit up, and Juliet helps him. Kat is ecstatic at the change in latitudes and gives him smelly bone-breath kisses until he puts an arm around her neck and pulls her close. “Stop, you goose. I’m fine.”
“You good to get up all the way?” Ryder asks.
“Yeah. Let me up.”
She stands and brushes off her jeans, then holds out a hand. Zack takes it and gets up cautiously. He hasn’t fainted since his first summer in the Army, after a ten-mile run through a thick, steamy South Carolina jungle forest in full gear and one-hundred-plus temperatures. He felt foolish then, but not now. Now, fainting dead away seems like the only appropriate thing to do, considering. He steels himself, filled with dread and joy, emotions he hasn’t felt in a very long time. He hasn’t felt anything for so very long.
“Let me see her again.”
Juliet hands over her phone. “You can just swipe around. There’s a bunch of them.”
He sits on the couch, staring, memorizing every image. The photos aren’t in any order. Child Violet, teenage Violet, young child Violet, Violet skiing, messy Violet eating carrots with a spoon, Violet with a book, lifting weights, in a perfect backbend against a mountain sunset, laughing into the camera so hard and happy he can see her perfect molars.
Tears run freely down his cheeks. He looks at all the photos twice in utter silence, then sniffs hard, wipes his face with his sleeve. The idea that this is his daughter, his Violet, is both wrong and somehow exactly right. She doesn’t look how he’s always imagined; now he can’t imagine her any other way. He knows her; his body reaches out to hers. His soul recognizes his baby girl.
The CBI agent is watching him with undisguised interest. It takes a few minutes before he feels able to put words together.
“Talk. Please.”
“She’s my niece.”
“And you work for the CBI?”
“I’m a DNA analyst. I manage the lab.”
“You found a match so soon? My God, they just swabbed me yesterday.”
The pretty brows furrow. “What? Who swabbed you?”
“Nashville Homicide. They came yesterday, said they were considering reopening the case.”
Ryder frowns deeper. He notices she’s contemplatively petting Kat, who is practically floating on air with happiness at the female attention. Kat loves women. He can barely cross campus with her, she’s in every girl’s path, showing off, hoping for some flirting and rubbing from the fairer sex. Watching her with Ryder, he realizes maybe Kat’s been trying to tell him something.
Ryder finally focuses back on him. “What are the odds? No, a colleague and I ran the DNA and found the match to your wife’s case. We just found out about Mindy anyway, and blood doesn’t lie, but when I learned about your case and saw the photographs, saw you...she looks so much like your—”
“Wife. Vivian. Yes.”
“But you, too. She’s a mix of you both, though she has your eyes. And of course, there’s the blood.”
Zack hands the phone back carefully as if it might explode when he releases it. “I think you need to start explaining what’s going on, Agent Ryder.”
“Juliet
. Call me Juliet. And I will explain everything. I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. My sister, Lauren, adopted Mindy—your Violet—when she was very young. Days old. A doctor in Colorado put them together. The doctor was doing it all off-book, as we’ve found out, but my sister had no idea anything was wrong. She agreed to a closed adoption, paid a large sum of money to the doctor, and no one, not even me, knew Mindy wasn’t hers. It’s only just come to light for us in the past few days.”
She stops and shakes her head slightly.
“Listen. None of this matters right now. We can figure all of it out later. What we have to talk about is Mindy. She’s sick. Very, very ill. She needs a stem cell transplant, right away, to help her battle an aggressive form of leukemia that she’s been fighting.”
“Leukemia?”
“Yes. Mr. Armstrong, I know this is all quite a shock, and it sounds terrible, but I need you to give me a blood sample so I can test you against Mindy’s DNA, just as a confirmation point that you’re her father...”
“I am her father. You said the blood—”
“I have a mitochondrial match to her mother. I still need to run you. I mean, yes, we all know it, but there’s still a protocol to follow, on the off chance Vivian had an affair... I’m sorry, but we need the tests. If you are a match, then we turn it over to Mindy’s doctors to test as well. If you’ll work for the stem cell—”
“A blood sample.” Stop repeating her words, you idiot. Wrap your head around all of this, and now. He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath, the possibilities dancing so fast and hard he can’t even focus.
Violet.
“Dr.... Juliet. Anything you need, you can have. But can I just go to Colorado and see her? I mean, I understand someone else has been raising her, and there are a lot of questions, and she might not for sure be mine and her parents... Jesus, I’m probably the last person they want to see. But if there’s a chance, and I can help, you said there’s no time to waste, right?”
Ryder’s smile is almost blinding.
“Yes. We can fly back tonight if you can swing it. And my sister and brother-in-law will be thrilled. We all know what’s at stake. Personal issues aside, Mindy is our priority. All of us.”
“That’s good to hear. Of course, I can go tonight. Right now. Though we should probably let the Nashville cops know what’s going on. If they come knocking and I’m not here...”
“I can take care of all that. Why don’t you pack, and I’ll book us a flight back to Colorado. We’ll talk to the police from the road.”
Zack takes three steps and turns back. “How sick is she? Honestly?”
Juliet’s brows touch again briefly, and she looks young and scared again. “Very. The transplant is the only chance Mindy has now. We only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago. She wrecked in the trials and broke her leg. It was a fluke. A lucky fluke.”
“The trials?”
Juliet smiles, and her face shifts, at once warm and genuine, no longer scared. “Mindy is a world-class downhill skier. We’re talking World Cup, Olympic level. She has a spot on the US ski team if she can beat this.”
“You’re sure she’s ours? Neither Vivian nor I were terribly athletic. Healthy, but not competitive.”
“Pretty sure,” she says, with a small laugh. “Go pack.”
41
Zack moves as if underwater, in a dream state. Underwear folded—She’s alive. Toothbrush in his toiletries kit—She might die, hurry, hurry. Leather jacket, where the hell are my gloves—Oh, Vivian, we might have found her at last.
He makes a quick call to his friend Blake Malone, Kat’s vet, who promises to come by in a couple of hours and take Kat to his house for a few days, then sets out her food and bones on the kitchen counter. He kisses her goodbye, promises he’ll see her in a few days, then nods at Ryder.
“I’m ready.”
She takes in the rucksack on his shoulder. “A man after my own heart.” She shoulders her own small pack. “I travel light myself. Dog’s not coming?”
“She’s staying. A friend will come get her.”
“Too bad you don’t have one of those service dog jackets for her. She could come on the plane no questions asked.”
“She does have one.”
Ryder doesn’t miss a beat. “Then why leave her behind?”
Kat is looking at him as if she is wondering the same thing.
“I...” Why is he? Kat serves a number of purposes for him, companionship aside. He is about to step into an emotionally fraught situation with a bunch of strangers. She is good with weapons and with words. And as he’s been told over and over again, she makes him strong, not weak. Lord knows he doesn’t like parading into the unknown without backup.
“Mindy loves dogs,” Juliet says, scratching Kat’s ears.
Zack needs no more persuading. He packages up some bones and food, and ten minutes later, they are in the back of an Uber, heading to the airport, Kat’s head out the window, tongue lolling.
Zack calls his friend again and cancels the dog sitting, and then calls the airline and warns them he will be bringing an emotional support dog on the plane, and yes, he has all the paperwork.
And then he calls Parks.
“I was about to give you a shout, Mr. Armstrong. Any chance I can drop by and have another quick chat?”
“Actually, no. I’m heading to the airport. I’m going to put you on Speaker. I’m in the car with a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent named Juliet Ryder.”
“What?” Parks says, but Juliet jumps right in.
“I’m Dr. Ryder, Sergeant. Not an agent. I run the forensics lab. Sorry to be stealing your guy, but we have a lead on his daughter, and we’re acting quickly because of a personal situation.”
The confusion is evident in Parks’s tone. “You’re CBI? What’s your role in this investigation?”
“Not official yet, sir, though my next call is to my boss, and I know he’ll be jumping on this immediately. Mindy Wright is my niece.”
“The skier Mindy Wright?”
“Yes, that’s her. You’re familiar with her name?”
“Um... Dr. Ryder, what time does your flight take off?”
Ryder looks at him, permission seeking, and Zack shrugs. He has nothing to hide from the detectives. “We’re on the 5:45 p.m. direct to Denver. Southwest.”
“I’ll meet you at the gate. Don’t fly off before we have a chance to talk, you hear?”
“Loud and clear.”
Zack clicks off the phone and buries a hand in Kat’s thick fur. “What the heck was that all about?”
“It sounded to me like your sergeant wasn’t surprised by our phone call.”
42
Parks pulls Starr from the meeting with a gruff wave.
In the hall, she pulls on her jacket.
“Thank you for saving me. The community alliance task force meetings are possibly the slowest, longest meetings on the planet.”
“They’re a ten-minute briefing.”
“They used to be. Now it’s an hour of lectures about how Homicide is slacking off and not doing our part.”
“What’s our role in the community alliance exactly?”
“That’s an excellent question. Last I heard, we are responsible for exactly squat outside of our monthly weekend in uniform, yet somehow, we have the most people on the ground in this.” She waves a hand. “Politics and posturing. You know how it is.”
“I’ll talk to the Lieutenant. See if she can’t put in a word. I don’t need my detectives having their time wasted.”
They were in the garage now, alone, shoes echoing off the concrete.
“What’s up?”
“New lead on the Armstrong case. We’re heading to the airport to talk to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA tech, and Zack Armstrong.�
�
Starr waits until they are in the car to speak again.
“What kind of lead, exactly?”
“You ever heard of a skier named Mindy Wright?”
“Nope.”
“I spent some time last night researching her. She’s the new kid on the block. Seventeen years old, total wunderkind. Instinctual downhill skier, could be one of the greats. Unfortunately, she broke her leg at an event last month, which might hurt her chances for the Olympic team. She has a spot, but if she doesn’t recover...”
“That sucks.”
“Did you know Gorman was a skier?”
“I did, actually. He talked about it all the time. He was excited about the trip to Colorado. Such a shame.”
“He met Mindy Wright while he was out there. And then died suddenly, in a tragic accident.”
“I’m not following. What does a teenage skier have to do with the Armstrong...wait, you think this is the lost kid?”
“I think she might be. She looks a lot like Vivian Armstrong. Gorman was, by all accounts, researching her heavily. And this morning, Mindy Wright’s aunt showed up at Armstrong’s house.”
Starr puts on a pair of Ray-Bans. “This would be the fastest cold case close in Metro history. No chance we’ve gotten this lucky.”
“I like you, Starr. You’re such an optimist.”
* * *
At Nashville International, they badge the Southwest counter agents and get a gate pass. TSA doesn’t put up too much of a fuss, but they do a pat-down of them both, to make sure the Nashville cops are well and truly aware who holds the power in this relationship. The manager on duty escorts them to C15, where the Denver flight is getting ready to board.
Zack Armstrong sits in a chair by the window, currents of energy coming off him like a strobe light, the elegant dog at his feet, her head up, watching, a small black badge attached to her harness that reads Service Dog in red stitching. Simple, straightforward. If this doesn’t discourage a casual approach, the very large man sitting next to the dog who is supposed to be an English professor but instead looks like a trained operative will deter even the most curious people.
Tear Me Apart Page 20
