by Dana Mentink
She blew out a breath. “Fine. I’m not very skilled at shaking off tails, as they say in the movies, so I just thought I’d tell you right up front I’m not going home just yet. I’m going to the Pick and Pack.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Urgent need for groceries?”
“No,” she said, her voice hummed with a fierce current of determination.
The silence lengthened between them until she sighed. “I’m thinking you’re going to know if I lie. I’m a terrible liar. My mother always knew when I was lying. She said my eyes turned silver. Are they silver now?”
He allowed a smile. “No, but maybe that’s because you haven’t started in on the lying part yet.”
She sighed. “I can’t be with June until Tucker is in jail.”
He waited.
She stared him full in the face. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
“Never had much to say.”
“Okay, well, I am going to find him and make sure he is arrested. No one is going to take away my child, do you understand that?”
Mick found he was holding his breath at the sheer ludicrous magnificence of what he’d just heard. It tickled something inside him, whirling around like a feather. “Yes, I do.”
“Good. Please don’t tell me I’m silly or crazy for trying it and most of all, don’t tell me to leave it to the police.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, I am going to the Pick and Pack to find out who that person was who bought the bag full of snack cakes because it seems like that might be a lead.”
“You figure they’ll tell you?”
“I have a source.”
Her chin was up, mouth in a determined line that made her look all of about eighteen. He hid a smile. “Fair enough. I’ll try not to cramp your style by following too close.”
“You’re not going to try to talk me out of it, or order me to go home?”
“No, ma’am. Not my place, and you told me bossing wasn’t polite.”
“Well, it isn’t.” She sighed, brushing a speck of something off the dashboard. “Look. I’m sort of a direct type, so I’m just going to say it. I know you feel guilty about my sister’s murder. You blame yourself. I did, too, for a while, and maybe part of me still does judging by the way I blasted you at Aunt Viv’s, but Tucker is the one who killed her. You don’t need to trail around as my personal bodyguard. This isn’t your responsibility anymore.”
He shifted a fraction on the seat. “I appreciate that.”
“And I’d really rather that you didn’t. I’ve got police all over the place, and they don’t seem to like you or Mr. Donaldson very much.” She took a breath. “You make things harder for me.”
“Can’t leave.”
She cocked her head, a strand of hair falling across her cheek. “Why not?”
Mick looked away at the ribbons of cloud floating across the moon. “I used to have this sense, back in Iraq, a sort of twinge that started up in my gut. Sometimes it was as if I could feel the bad guys coming.” He slid his gaze back to her. “Got that feeling now. Can’t walk away.”
“I don’t want to be cruel, but your sixth sense didn’t kick in about Tucker.”
He wondered if she knew that it was a knife he had twisted deep in his own gut many times over. A breeze toyed with the collar of her jacket.
“You’re going to follow me anyway, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“Fine. I’m to going to get some bags of flour while I’m at the Pick and Pack,” she said over her shoulder as she got out of the car. “They’ve got a sale, and I think best when I bake bread, and if I’m going to find Tucker before he finds me, I’m going to need to do a lot of thinking.”
Her small silhouette looked slight against the darkness. In a moment, she’d revved the motor and taken off. As he followed, he tried to understand Keeley Stevens. Could the woman think she would be able to find Tucker and have him arrested all by herself with no skills, no training, nothing but a passion to succeed? He smiled in the darkness and thought of his mother. She approached every situation with confidence, never imagining that failure was an option. His father still had the crooked pots from her ceramics phase.
He recalled the day the dog had torn apart Cowboy Pete, his favorite toy. His mother had gamely rounded up a sewing kit, and though she’d never put thread to needle, she reconstructed Cowboy Pete’s body. His missing eye was another matter, solved when she’d found a bead from one of her necklaces and glued it in the hapless cowboy’s empty socket. Cowboy Pete had never quite looked the same. Funny how Mick counted that raggedy mess of a toy as one of the finest possessions he’d ever owned.
He wondered if Mr. Moo Moo’s eye was still safe in Keeley’s pocket.
The drive to the Pick and Pack was easy, and they made the trip in less than fifteen minutes due to Keeley’s blistering pace. A sprinkling of rain began to fall. The parking lot was fairly empty, only a few cars and a lone attendant rounding up shopping carts. No sign of a motorcycle, but he didn’t fool himself. Tucker had managed to find out where Keeley lived and tracked her into the woods, then lured her to a rooftop. He could be anywhere. He jogged from his truck to catch up to her as they entered the grocery store.
Keeley seemed to have a plan. She marched straight up to the long-haired teen at the register. The kid gave her a frightened double take. “What do you want?”
“What do people usually want at a grocery store, Stephano?” she said, sweetly. “I’m here for groceries, flour, to be specific, but you’re going to give me a piece of information, too, because you’re a helpful kind of guy.”
He chewed his lip. “What kind of information?”
“Somebody came in last night, just before midnight. That’s your shift, isn’t it?”
He grunted, which Mick could not identify as affirmative or negative. Would it kill this generation to say “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am”?
“So during your shift, somebody came in and bought a whole bag of nothing but snack cakes. You know the kind with the yellow cake and white creamy stuff inside?”
He lifted a careless shoulder. “I don’t remember.”
“I think you do, and what’s more,” she said as she pointed to the security camera, “I think you could let me see a peek at that security tape, couldn’t you?”
“No way. I’d get fired,” he said, sending a quick look around the store, probably to be sure his supervisor wasn’t watching.
Keeley leaned in, looking like a falcon going for the rabbit. “You’d get in worse trouble if I told your parents that you spray painted my shed.” She held up a palm. “You can deny it if you want to, but I’ve got a sweet camera with a zoom lens and boy, did I get a great shot of you two at work.”
The kid turned a greenish tint. He scanned the store again. “My boss is taking a nap in the back. You can go in the security room quick. No more than five minutes, hear me?”
Keeley nodded and sauntered away.
Mick gave the kid a grin. “Good man knows when he’s beaten, son. I’d give up the spray painting if I were you.”
He heard Stephano swearing softly. Chuckling, Mick joined Keeley, who had already plucked the tape from the day before from the shelf and stuck it in the machine, pressing the fast-forward button with an impatient finger.
“That was impressive back there,” Mick said. “Why didn’t you show his parents the photo earlier?”
She laughed. “I was a stinker of a teen once, too. I was grounded for an entire summer my sophomore year.”
“What did you do?”
“You don’t have a high-enough security clearance to know that.”
He smiled.
She pointed to the time unspooling under the black-and-white video. “We’re coming up on it now.”
He leaned close, her hair tickling his chin, the strands softer than the down of a baby bird. A lady appeared on the screen, tall with long dark hair loose around her shoulders, maybe in her late twenties. Her mouth was th
in lipped, eyes dark and she wore a T-shirt a couple of sizes too big. She said something to Stephano and he answered back, which caused the woman to smile while he rang up her purchase, a dozen snack cakes and two bottles of water. Keeley paused the video and Mick used his cell phone to take a picture of the screen.
Mick heard the sound of heavy feet approaching. “Company.” He quickly ejected the tape and returned it to the shelf. They made it through the door just as a man appeared around the corner.
The whip-thin manager in a rumpled white shirt and tie jerked in alarm. “What are you doing back here?”
Mick propelled Keeley around him out the door. “Wrong turn.”
Stephano appeared, weight shifting from foot to foot. “I told you, the bathroom’s on that side of the store.” He jerked a thumb, swallowing so hard Mick could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
The manager frowned and started to speak when a plaintive voice called from the checkout line. “Can someone help me? I need to buy these diapers, and…”
There was a crash. “Oh, sorry,” the voice called.
Stephano groaned. “I think her kid just knocked over the soup-can display. Took me an hour to set that thing up.” He turned back to the register, and his supervisor followed.
Mick puffed out a breath. “Soup-can kid has impeccable timing.”
“Sure does. We had just enough time to get a picture. I’m going to press Stephano and see if he can tell me what they talked about.”
He took her elbow. “I think the next time we show up at the checkout line, we’d better have a bag of flour.”
*
Biting back impatience, Keeley led the way to the baking aisle and selected the flour. She held two bags of flour and, though she did not ask him to, Mick grabbed the other two.
“That’s a lot of flour,” he said.
“I bake a lot of bread.” She also grabbed a box of raisins that was marked down. It felt odd to have a man escorting her through the checkout, strangely domestic, as if they were some normal couple out running an errand. No one would suspect the fear that swirled around her and the guilt that enveloped him. Still, it made her feel the tiniest bit better to know that she wasn’t alone, at least momentarily, in this crazy escapade that made her stomach tie itself in knots. Undoubtedly she would be better off without Mick around, but that couldn’t be helped at the moment.
It’s all for Junie, she told herself. You can do anything for Junie.
They waited patiently for their turn at the register. The manager flicked them suspicious glances as he restacked the cans of soup.
“You talked with the snack-cake woman,” Keeley said through a smile. “What did you say?”
“Can’t remember,” Stephano grunted, shoving the bags of flour into paper sacks.
Mick spoke softly. “If you can’t remember for us, I’m sure you could recall it for the cops. My guess is they already know your name, don’t they, Stephano?”
“Okay, okay,” he whispered. “She was pretty, a little bit flirty so I asked her name.”
“And?” Keeley said.
“Ginny,” he whispered. “That’s all I know. Then she left and I never saw her again.”
Ginny. They had a name and a face. It wasn’t enough, not even close, but it was a start, and Keeley felt some small triumph in it.
As he gathered up the grocery sacks, Mick leaned forward and spoke to Stephano. “Pull up your pants, son, and buy a belt, for crying out loud.”
Keeley managed to repress a giggle.
At her house he carried the bags of flour inside and deposited them on the kitchen table. She lugged out her ancient bread machine and set to work mixing flour, yeast, water and salt. The familiar movements soothed her, the soft clicks and whirrs of the blade mixing the ingredients after she plugged it in. It still amazed her that with only a few ingredients and the help of her machine, Keeley Stevens, worst cook in America, could produce a passable loaf of bread.
Mick watched, thumbs hooked in his pockets, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He eyed the corner of the machine, which she had repaired with duct tape after it wobbled its way off the kitchen counter a week before.
“I didn’t know how else to fix it,” she said in answer to his unasked question.
“No criticism here. I fixed a leak in our rowboat with some duct tape one time.”
She closed the lid and put the machine in the sink. “So it doesn’t walk off the counter. In another three hours, we’ll have bread.”
“We? I, uh, I thought maybe you wanted me to go.”
She brushed off her hands and sat at the kitchen table. “It occurred to me on the drive over that I don’t know how to proceed.”
“We’re not talking about bread anymore, right?” he said.
“The investigation. Now that I’ve got a name and photo, what should I do next?”
“My first pass would be to call Reggie and see what he can find out.”
“I thought you were angry with him.”
“He did a bonehead thing, but he’s still my partner in all of this.”
She gestured to the chair opposite. He sat and made the call, putting it on speakerphone.
“That’s it? That’s all you got?” Reggie said.
“That’s it,” Mick confirmed. “Ginny’s her name, and I just texted you the photo.”
“Not much to go on. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Do what you can. I’ll do the same.”
Reggie paused. “I think we’re getting off track here. Tucker’s the bad guy. Even if he found a little friend to share snack cakes with, he’s still the target.”
Mick drummed fingers on the table. “Other angle we can take is the rooftop diagram.”
“Where will we get with that?”
“Dunno, but Tucker had some reason for being interested in it.”
“Do whatever you want, but I think you’re spinning your wheels,” Reggie said.
Keeley could hear exhaustion in his voice.
“I’m going to monitor the police radio,” he said. “They might stop him at a roadblock. In the meantime, I’ve got feelers out with some of my buddies, ears to the ground, that sort of thing. When he pops up, I’ll get him.”
Keeley wasn’t so sure. He’d eluded police for months already.
“Hey, uh,” Reggie started. “Listen. Um, Keeley, I apologize for putting you at risk today. I saw Tucker there and I forgot about anything but taking him out. It was wrong and it won’t happen again.”
“Your motives were good,” Keeley said. “No harm done.”
“Aww, my motives are rarely good,” he said with a laugh. “Just ask Mick.” Reggie yawned. “I’ve got to get some sleep. Talk to you mañana.”
“Good night, Reg,” Mick said.
“Not until Tucker’s caught.” He disconnected.
“He doesn’t sound like he’s going to follow the Ginny lead,” Keeley said. “Are you sure he’s on our side?”
“He’s on his side, which happens to be our side because we both want Tucker captured, only…”
“Only what?”
“Reggie would be fine if Tucker wasn’t taken alive.”
She felt a chill at hearing it spoken aloud. “He wants Tucker dead.”
“Don’t you?”
The notion surprised her. “I never thought of it. I always wanted him in prison, far away from Junie, and I wanted him to pay for the rest of his life for taking LeeAnn’s, but I don’t wish him dead.”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?”
Why not? Why shouldn’t she want the man to die who’d taken her sister’s life? The grief and anger pooled inside as she thought about LeeAnn and how much she’d lost. Life was unfair—tragically, hopelessly unfair. “Because I don’t want my heart so filled with hate there’s no room for anything else.”
Mick examined her face as if he was reading the pages of a book. His brown eyes were soft and searching, tender pools in a mountain of a man.
“Your sister would have been proud of you, I think.”
She was dismayed to find that his words triggered tears that she quickly blinked away, and went for her camera. “I have to go take pictures.”
“Now?”
“I didn’t get the shot of the great horned owl, remember? I’m actually getting paid for delivering pictures of raptors in action, and if you don’t meet your deadline, well, they don’t call back, you know?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stood. “Let’s go.”
“I can…”
“Go yourself and you don’t want me mucking up your shot, yes, I know.”
“But you’re coming anyway?”
He answered with a shrug.
“Seriously,” she said. “If you’re going to follow me everywhere, can you at least string some sentences together and stop calling me ma’am?”
He considered. “I’m familiar with bird photography. If you ever want some amazing bald eagle pictures, our Hudson Raptor Sanctuary is the place to go.”
“Wow. Two full sentences. That must have taken a lot out of you.” She admired the note of pride that had crept into his voice. “Can you stay out of my way tonight?”
He nodded, and she frowned. “Sorry. I meant to answer with ‘I will endeavor to do that, ma’am.’” He gave her a mock salute.
“I’ll get my jacket.” She went to the back bedroom. Though she wanted to tell him no, to have him depart and leave her raw emotions to heal, she wasn’t eager to go prowling around in the dark, and the aggravating, silent man was the only way she would get her pictures tonight. The feel of Tucker’s knife at her throat made her shiver. I want what’s mine. “For Junie, just until we catch him,” she told herself.
Her little bedroom was cold, always prone to drafts that required several tatty blankets to offset and still left her needing to wear woolly socks at night. Funny how when Junie stayed over, they snuggled together and the chill didn’t seem to bother them. With a sigh, she moved to close the heavy curtains that muffled the cold. It took her a moment to realize the shadow looming in the glass was not from her own approach. Keeley screamed. The gleam of light from a pair of eyes shone in the darkness.
