All a Man Can Do

by Virginia Kantra

  He let himself breathe her in as he brushed by her, drawing in the faint warmth of her body, the scent of her hair. He was careful not to touch her. "Sorry I'm late."

  She shook her head. Her golden eyes searched his face. "Was it—bad?"

  She wanted the truth. He wasn't sure she could bear it. Even with all the ugly, brutal, bloody things he'd seen, this crime had left him shaken. "Yes."

  Her brows twitched together. He thought she might challenge him there and then, but she only asked, "Coffee? I made some fresh."

  Gratitude eased the knot at the back of his neck. "Yeah. Thanks."

  He followed her down the narrow hallway to his kitchen. But he wouldn't let her wait on him. He hitched his own mug down from the shelves and poured his coffee. Black.

  Tess's voice rang in his memory. Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.

  He took an unwary sip and scalded his tongue. Damn, damn, damn.

  "What?" she asked from behind him. "What happened?"

  He turned slowly to face her. "Another woman was pulled over in her car on Old Bay Road last night. And this time the rapist killed her."

  Tess sucked in a breath. "Oh, God. I'm sorry."

  He set down his mug. "So am I."

  "At least you have homicide experience. That has to be a help. In finding her killer, I mean."

  "Maybe. Tess—"

  She hurried on, as if she didn't want to hear what he had to say. He wished to God he didn't have to say it.

  "If you're worried about Allie, she's fine. We got along fine." Tess smiled, inviting his participation. "I did her nails."

  Jarek felt even worse. "Sorry I had to leave her with you."

  "Well, it's too bad you got called away on her first weekend here, but I'm sure if you explained to her—"

  "Tess." He made his voice as gentle as he could. "This isn't about Allie. It's about Mark."

  Her face closed, instantly and absolutely. "No."

  "The victim was seen with him at the church last night."

  Tess hugged her arms against her. "So what? I was there, too. You were there. Four hundred other people must have been at that church last night. Including Father Joe."

  "Only none of them is dead." Frustration and pity churned in Jarek's gut. But he couldn't give expression to them, any more than he could vent the anger that rose in a slow, hot tide. Anger with her brother for getting into this mess. Anger with Tess for her blind, stubborn loyalty. Anger with himself for doing his job.

  In a voice picked clean of emotion, he said, "The woman who was raped last night—the woman who was killed— was Judy Scott."

  Tess's face went as white as the dead woman's. "My brother wouldn't rape anybody. He certainly didn't need to rape Judy Scott."

  Jarek was inclined to believe her. Which made it even more critical that he stick to the facts. Hang on to his objectivity. "He admits he had sex with her last night."

  "Which only goes to prove— Wait a minute." Tess's head snapped back as if he'd slapped her. "He admits? You talked to him?"

  "I had to. He was the last person we know of to see Judy Scott alive."

  "Except her killer," Tess said.

  "Her killer would have been the last," Jarek agreed carefully.

  "But Mark didn't have any reason to kill her!"

  Jarek hoped Tess was right.

  Freer was really implying that my attraction to you might cloud my judgment.

  He made himself say, "Unless Mark didn't know who was in the car until he pulled her over. Unless she recognized him."

  "He wouldn't do that. He didn't do it."

  "Then he doesn't have anything to worry about."

  "Excuse me, are you asking me to have some great faith in our justice system now?"

  "No, I'm asking you to trust—" Me, he thought. Trust me. "—my department to do its job. Judy Scott fought her attacker. We recovered blood from under her fingernails."

  Tess glared. "Not Mark's blood."

  "You could help us prove that," Jarek suggested coolly, while his gut burned and churned.

  "How?" She shot the word at him.

  "It'll take several days to get the lab results from DCI. If the blood type is consistent with your brother's, then any judge would give us a warrant to obtain a blood sample from him. We probably have sufficient cause to get one anyway. But the whole thing would be resolved a lot quicker if Mark volunteers a sample now."

  "You want me to talk my brother into letting you stick him so that you can compare his blood to the blood under Judy's fingernails."

  "To rule him out as a murder suspect. Yes."

  "You go to hell," Tess said, and marched out of his house.

  He went to church instead.

  Waiting in the shelter of the arched double doors for mass to let out, for his daughter to come out, Jarek wondered if God would forgive him for the way he'd just tried to manipulate Tess. God knew she never would. But here, in the shadow of God's house, he let himself hope that maybe Mark DeLucca hadn't raped and killed Judy Scott.

  He prayed, as he hadn't prayed since he was an altar boy at St. Wenceslaus, for Tess, with her quick, hard loyalties and soft heart, and for her mother. Even for her brother.

  Mercy for the living, Jarek thought.

  And justice for the dead.

  Chapter 13

  "Fine," Mark said bitterly. He tossed his first responder's jump kit into the back of the Jeep and slammed the door. "I know I'm innocent. But if you want me to prove it to you, I will."

  Tess winced. She'd known Mark wouldn't miss his Monday night trauma care class. She'd figured she'd catch him afterwards in the hospital parking garage, away from an audience and before he reported to work at the Blue Moon. But despite her correct guess, she'd obviously caught him at a bad time.

  Right. Like there was a good time to tell your brother you wanted him to donate blood to eliminate himself as a murder suspect.

  "You don't have to prove anything to me," she protested. "If I thought you were guilty, I'd never suggest you give a blood sample. But since you're not, it would make things a whole lot easier—"

  Mark's lip curled. The overhead garage lights threw his face into dramatic light and shadow, making him look more like a fallen angel than ever. "Easier for who? For Denko?"

  Hot blood surged up her face and neck. She would not feel guilty. She didn't have any reason to feel guilty, damn it. She was looking out for her family, the way she always had. The way she always would. The thought was vaguely depressing.

  "Easier for you. He'll get a warrant to force you to give a sample anyway, Mark. By going in voluntarily, you can get this whole thing over with sooner."

  Mark crossed his arms and leaned against the side of the Jeep. "Why bother? Why should I help the police chief do his job?"

  "Do you really want half the people in this town thinking you killed Judy Scott?"

  Mark's face was hard and expressionless. "I can live with it."

  "I don't want to."

  "It's a little late to start worrying about the DeLucca family name, big sister."

  "It's not that." Frustration sharpened her voice. "I'm worried about you. I'm afraid you'll get hurt. Mark, I went into the Gazette office today, and it was scary. Everybody's talking. Everybody's too terrified to stop and think."

  Some of the frightening blankness left Mark's eyes. "I can take care of myself, you know."

  "Not if you get jumped on a dark road by a gang of vigilantes. Mark, the people I heard talking are looking for someone, anyone, to blame. Why make yourself a target?"

  The silence stretched out in the deserted garage, measured by the slamming of Tess's pulse in her throat. In the distance, the elevator dinged.

  "All right," Mark said at last. "I'll think about it."

  "Thank you." She hugged him.

  After a moment his arms came around her. He patted her back awkwardly. "Poor Tess. You always did want the family we never had."

  Filled wit
h relief, she pressed her cheek to her brother's lean, hard chest. "You're all the family I need," she said.

  But she didn't believe it anymore. If she could choose… But when had she ever had a choice?

  Mark gripped her upper arms and gave her a little shake. "Uh-huh. Is that why you're playing house with the chief now?"

  "I am not— Who told you that?"

  "Grapevine goes both ways, Tess. I heard you spent Saturday night at his house."

  Driven on the defensive, she said, "I was baby-sitting his daughter."

  "While he investigated your brother for murder. How cozy. Not to mention convenient."

  His words forced her to confront her own fear that Jarek was using her. Had been using her all along. "I didn't know— I don't think Jarek even knew the victim's name at that point. He only asked me to come over because Allie hasn't met that many people in Eden yet."

  "And you said yes out of the goodness of your heart."

  "Yes."

  "Kind of like you agreed to talk me into getting a blood test."

  "No. Don't be a jerk, Mark. Just give the damn sample."

  He studied her a moment with dark, unreadable eyes. And then he smiled. "Okay. DeLuccas forever. I'll let your boyfriend draw my blood."

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow soon enough for you? Because I've got work now."

  "Tomorrow will be fine." She wasn't in that big a hurry to give Jarek Denko his victory.

  And in a couple of days, when the test results came back from whatever lab the police sent them to and Mark was completely cleared, she would wave the proof around and thumb her nose in Jarek's face.

  Tess drove out of the parking garage feeling as good as any woman could who had half-lost her heart to the Ice Man. Worse, to a man who saw her as a roadblock. Who wanted to use her as a shortcut.

  In her rearview mirror, she could see Mark's Jeep following her compact. Another car lurched down the ramp behind them and then a third glided out of the shadows. Funny. The level Mark had parked on had been almost empty. She hadn't expected this much traffic leaving the garage.

  The caravan proceeded on the wooded road toward town. Tess expected Mark to pass, but his Jeep maintained an even speed behind her. Well, the rapist was still out there somewhere. Mark probably thought he was protecting her. She smiled at his headlights in the mirror, remembering Jarek's dark blue Crown Victoria tailing her from Chicago.

  Her heart squeezed. Her smile died. There was nothing personal about Jarek's protection. He'd just been doing his job then. He was only doing his job now.

  The road edged the brightly lit Gas-N-Go and plunged into the woods again. One of the other cars sped up and pulled even with Mark's Jeep. Tess frowned as it cut in front of him and then slowed abruptly. Jackass driver. It was too dark to play bump cars. She eased up on the gas to negotiate a bend in the road by the old ranger tower and checked in her rearview mirror.

  No headlights.

  No Mark.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove on, dividing her attention between the road ahead and the road behind. Mark was a reliable driver. He knew this road like the lineup of bottles behind the bar. He wasn't sixteen anymore, out testing his new license and her patience on a Friday night. He never talked about his time in the Marines, but she knew vaguely he'd been a squad leader in Afghanistan. He could take care of himself.

  But as another mile crept by, marked by the flash of the broken yellow line, the prickle of unease at the back of her neck would not go away. Suppose he'd had an accident? Or car trouble? She could turn around right now and he would… Well, laugh at her probably. Tess pulled a face at the windshield. Or get ticked off. She'd already made him late.

  She turned around anyway, with an instinct for trouble honed by years of late-night phone calls and trips to the jail to post bond.

  She drove back a mile or more to the zigzag around the old fire tower. Her headlights caught Mark's Jeep—off the road and at an angle.

  Her heart pumped. Her first thought was that he'd had an accident.

  And then she saw five or six other vehicles pulled onto the shoulder and parked in the graveled strip at the tower's base. Relief weakened her. One car—an SUV—had its engine running and its headlights on. So help had already arrived. She saw a knot of men standing in the glare of the lights, their backs to the road. How many? How serious was it?

  She didn't see Mark. Was he hurt?

  Mark's Jeep half-blocked the entrance to the weedy strip. She looked frantically for a spot. There. Behind that truck. She pulled in. The car bounced as the tires bumped from the pavement and sunk in the mud. The night air rolled through her open back window, the heady scent of a Great Lakes spring cut through with car exhaust.

  Her gaze scanned the group under the tower. She thought she recognized her brother's sharp profile between several other dark figures. His head hung down. They appeared to be holding him up. Two men on each side.

  And then a fifth man crowded close to Mark and punched him hard in the stomach.

  Her breath stuck in her chest. Oh, God.

  They weren't supporting Mark.

  They were beating him up.

  She fumbled for her purse on the passenger seat, dumped out the contents to grab her cell phone. What were you supposed to dial in an emergency? Star? 911?

  She punched in 911, thanking God when the dispatcher's bored voice came over the hissing air waves.

  "Help," Tess said. Her hands shook. Her voice shook. "I'm on Old Bay Road, about a mile south of the Gas-N-Go by the ranger tower. They're beating my—" No. What would get Jarek here fast, no questions asked? "Someone's being attacked. Hurry."

  "Your name?" the dispatcher asked, wide-awake now and urgent.

  But Tess had already thrown the phone down on the seat and backed her car onto the road.

  This was crazy. She knew it was. But she could no more hold back from helping Mark now than she'd been able to hold back from the playground bullies twenty years ago.

  Jamming the heel of her hand on the horn, she steered her compact one-handed through the trees and straight at the men holding Mark.

  Her car jolted through a rut and crashed through a screen of bushes. Heads turned. Her brother's startled white face flashed in her headlights. Blood ran in a dark line from his nose. His attackers' faces were black and blank as figures in a nightmare. Ski masks?

  She expected them to jump. She expected them to scatter. They didn't. They turned, dragging Mark like a shield into the path of her oncoming car.

  She had no time. No choice. She stomped on the brake and skidded to a stop.

  "For God's sake." Her brother's voice was thick and hoarse. "Get out of here!"

  She groped for the stick shift. Reverse. Reverse. But bodies pressed around the car. Something—someone?— thudded against her hood. A man's hand thrust through her back window and scrabbled for her door lock. Tess clutched her door handle. It tore from her grasp, burning her palm, as the door jerked open.

  She flung herself away, across the seat, but a man's hand grabbed her thigh. She screamed. He hung on, seizing her knee, dragging her from the car. The vinyl seat scraped her stomach. She hugged the seat, clung to the steering wheel. A weight pressed her thighs, her back, and then her fingers were peeled from the steering wheel and she was hauled from the car.

  She was surrounded by bodies, overwhelmed by the scents of stale beer and wet wool and male excitement.

  This was it. Fear tasted flat in her mouth and churned in her stomach. She was going to be gang raped. She was going to be killed, just like Judy Scott. Mark was going to be killed, and she couldn't do a damn thing to stop it.

  Her breath rasped. Unless Jarek got here. Please, God, let Jarek get here in time.

  She kicked desperately behind her, and heard the man holding her swear.

  "Aw, hell," he said. "It's his sister."

  Another man cursed. "Tess?"

  Someone growled an obscene suggestion that sparked
and ran through the circle of men like flame through a line of gun powder. Ugly laughter hissed. The threat of violence billowed and built like smoke leading to an explosion. Fear rose sour in the back of Tess's throat. She gagged on it.

  Mark lunged and strained against the four men holding him. Someone slugged him in the kidney. His body jerked, then slumped. Tess struggled and cried out.

  "Hey." This voice was younger, less certain. "This isn't what we're here for. She didn't do anything."

  "We can't let her go."

  Tess swallowed terror. She knew that voice. Didn't she?

  "Not till we're done with him."

  "Then get her out of here." The young voice grew more confident. Tess was sure she'd heard it before, too. These were locals. Neighbors.

  Her brother's careless assurance played back in her mind: I can take care of myself you know.

  And her own warning: Not if you get jumped on a dark road by a gang of vigilantes.

  Outrage burned in her gut and spilled like tears from her eyes.

  "I'm not missing my chance to teach the jarhead a lesson," the man holding her objected.

  "Give her to me, then."

  Someone sniggered. "Better hope Connie doesn't find out you're snuggling up with Tess DeLucca."

  "Shut up," the man said, his voice savage with embarrassment.

  Connie. Larsen. Tess's brain ticked over. The young speaker was Officer Paul Larsen, and the other man was Carl Taylor. She was almost sure of it.

  If she identified them, would it put Mark in even more danger? She was afraid it would.

  But she could appeal to Paul, she thought frantically. Couldn't she? He knew Mark, they had played together in the park as kids, he couldn't stand by and watch while a bunch of thugs beat her brother to a bloody pulp…

  Maybe he could.

  Rough hands shoved her. Hard hands clutched her arms above the elbows and spun her around. She scratched at them with her nails. Paul Larsen swore and wrapped his arms around her to grab her wrists. He half marched, half dragged her away from the tower, toward the trees.

  "No," she said. "Wait! Please."

  He held her tighter. "I can't stop them."

  She heard a muffled impact—a punch, a grunt—behind her and sobbed. "They'll kill him!"