by Beverly Long
“I’m trying to help you.”
“I appreciate that. But what happens when Mary is part of that evidence? What happens if I have to arrest her, too? I can’t let you and how you feel about Mary keep me from doing my job.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, not understanding why he couldn’t see that. She’d never put him in that position.
“You wouldn’t have to,” he said, his voice soft.
* * *
IF POSSIBLE, LIZ THOUGHT the temperature had shot even higher than the day before. By ten o’clock, after just a couple hours in the car, they both looked a little wilted. They’d already been to four smaller campgrounds. One hadn’t even had an office, so they’d had to be content with just driving through the camping area, looking at the various campsites. At the other three, the response had been virtually the same.
“Nope. They don’t look familiar. But then again, we get a lot of people passing through. It would be pretty hard to remember everybody. Sure, you can check back. We’re here from sunup to sundown most days.”
Good old-fashioned Wisconsin charm. Liz wondered why she felt compelled to wring the next person’s neck. Between the heat outside, the worry about Mary and the sexual tension radiating off Sawyer, she thought murder looked like a fairly good alternative.
He hadn’t touched her again. Hadn’t really said more than ten words to her. But each time she got out of the car and walked into one of the campground offices or when she walked back, she knew, just knew, that he watched her every step of the way. And while it seemed a little crazy, she thought she saw a hunger in his eyes. But then she’d get in the car and he’d be all business, all silent business, and she decided she had a case of wishful thinking and wicked thoughts.
She wanted Sawyer. She wanted to kiss him. After all, the man had the kind of lips that you could kiss for about three straight weeks without coming up for air. And then she wanted him naked.
She’d only ever slept with one man. But now all she could think about was getting it on with a man she’d known for less than a week.
It made her feel disloyal to Mary. Mary had to be the priority. And Liz knew what happened when priorities got mixed up. She couldn’t bear for that to happen again. Mary deserved more. Liz respected Sawyer’s ability to stay on task. She felt slimy that her focus had slipped momentarily. It had been jarred by the incredible warmth of his body pressed up against hers.
But thankfully, Sawyer had pulled back in time. He’d done the right thing. So, she needed to stop being mad at him.
“How much farther north?” she asked.
Sawyer risked a quick look at her. He’d told himself he might get through the day if he just didn’t have to look at her. Didn’t have to see her pretty green eyes with the dark eyelashes that had literally fluttered down across her cheeks when he’d kissed her. Or her pink lips, the bottom one fuller than the top, that literally trembled when he’d brushed his hands across her breast.
She’d gathered her long hair up, twisted it in that way that only women knew how to do and clipped it on top of her head. In deference to the heat, she had on a white sleeveless one-piece cotton dress, the kind of shapeless thing that seemed so popular these days.
Not that the dress did him much good. He could still remember what every one of her curves felt like. Hell, the woman even had curvy feet. She had white sandals on that showed off her red-painted toes and the delicate arch of her small foot.
He put his eyes back on the road. Safer by a long shot. “I thought we’d go about thirty miles. Then we’ll need to cross over and come down the other side. If we don’t get it all done today, we’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Then what?”
“Tomorrow we’ll go west toward Route 39. That’s one of the main roads. Lots of tourists head up this way. There’re a couple large lodges and camping areas.”
“This is kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn’t it? I guess I didn’t fully appreciate how difficult it might be.”
“You want to turn back? You could be in your apartment by midafternoon.”
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not giving up.”
He hadn’t expected any different. Liz seemed almost driven to help Mary.
“You must care a great deal about Mary,” he said.
“I know it may be hard to understand. She’s not all that easy to be around. She’s at the stage of her life where she’s very inner focused. Her needs, her wants, her pleasures take priority.”
“Sounds like most teenagers.”
“True.” Liz smiled and he felt better. Lord, she was sunshine, all wrapped up into a nice portable package.
“Thankfully, most people grow out of it,” she said. “Some never do. Some can’t ever love another more than they love themselves.”
It was the opening he’d waited for. He just didn’t know if he had the courage to ask the question. “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience?”
“Years of study.”
Right. Be bold or go home. That was what the bumper sticker said that Robert had tacked up on his computer a couple years ago. “How’s Howard feel about your leaving town with me?”
“Howard?” She looked genuinely puzzled. “How would he know?”
“He doesn’t know you’re with me? I thought that’s why he called.”
“He called about an adoption that he’s working on.”
“I figured that was just a pretense. I thought Jamison probably called him, and Fraypish decided it might be in his best interests to remind you not to forget him. I’m surprised he didn’t demand that you come home. I know if you were dating me, you wouldn’t be spending the night in a cabin with another man.”
“Dating you?”
Now she looked a little green. Clearly the idea didn’t have a lot of appeal. “Never mind,” Sawyer mumbled. He sucked at bold.
“I’m not dating Howard.”
“You two looked pretty friendly at the dance.”
“We were dancing. It’s hard to look like strangers when you’re doing that. Howard wanted to take a date. I didn’t have one. So, when he asked, I said yes. We met there. He didn’t even pick me up.”
“Hard to believe that you wouldn’t have a date.” Lame. Lame. He was so lame.
She chuckled. “There are worse things.”
“Agreed. Still, seems like you’d have them lined up outside your door.” He kept his eyes on the road, too scared to look at her and say the words.
She didn’t say anything for a minute. He wondered if he’d offended her. He risked a quick look over.
“I almost got married a few years back,” she said so matter-of-factly that he almost missed it. A hundred pounds, like barbells falling from a rack, seemed to land square on his lungs, making it hard to breathe.
“Married?” He managed to spit the word out.
“Someone that I used to work with,” she said. “He’s a nice enough guy. We just didn’t want the same things.”
He could imagine what the guy wanted from her. What every man, including him, would want. “What did you want?”
“Marriage. I suppose children.”
She should have that. “Sounds reasonable,” he managed to say. Not for him, but then again, they weren’t talking about him.
“Have you ever been married, Sawyer?”
“No.”
“Come close?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
He wanted to tell her. Wanted to tell her about the whole stupid mess. But then she’d know he was a failure. That he hadn’t been able to protect his son. That he hadn’t been smart enough or brave enough. And then he’d see the pity in her eyes, the same pity he’d seen in the nurses’ eyes, the doctors’ eyes, the hospital chap
lain’s eyes. He couldn’t stand that.
“We were both young,” he said. “It probably wouldn’t have worked out.”
“Do you ever see her? Run into her at class reunions?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He meant that. He’d hated her. Hated her for what she’d done to his son. But even so, when he’d heard that she’d died of a drug overdose, just a couple years later, he’d mourned her loss. Another tragedy caused by drugs. And by the people like Mirandez who bankrolled the drugs into the country and then built a distribution system, mostly of kids, that rivaled those found at blue-chip companies.
“You must have loved her very much,” Liz said.
He knew what she was thinking. She thought he was still in love with his dead girlfriend. He really wished it was as simple as that. “Sure,” he said, choosing to let her continue down that path.
“Don’t you think she’d have wanted you to go on?”
No. She hadn’t really cared if he’d lived or died. All she’d cared about was where she was going to get her next hit of heroin. “It doesn’t matter. I know what’s best for me.”
“I guess we’d all like to think we do,” she said.
“If we don’t, who does?”
“Sometimes it’s difficult for us to see ourselves as clearly as others can see us.”
She was probably right. But he didn’t want her looking too closely at him. Otherwise, she’d see that he had a hole, a big, dark hole, all the way down to his soul. “Is that Liz or Liz the psychologist talking?”
She looked a little offended. His goading tone had done what he’d intended. “I’m not sure I can separate Liz from Liz the psychologist. It’s who I am.”
For the hundredth time, he was glad he’d managed to put on the brakes at the cabin. She deserved better. Better than some guy who was so afraid of losing what he loved that he wouldn’t love at all. He didn’t need a damn psychologist to explain it to him. “Well, I’m hot and hungry. Let’s keep going.”
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, Liz woke up with the birds. They were singing outside her window, welcoming the new day with their high-pitched tune of joy. She turned over, reached out her hand and with one finger separated the blinds. The bright sun made her squint her eyes.
Darn it. She’d overslept. They should have been on the road two hours ago. Why hadn’t Sawyer woken her up? Was it possible that he’d overslept, too? Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she grabbed a pair of shorts from her suitcase and slipped into them, stuck her feet into her sandals and left the room.
Sawyer’s bed was empty. The bathroom door stood half-open, telling her that he’d left the cabin. She made a quick trip to the small room and felt immeasurably better after having brushed her teeth and washed her face. She walked out of the cabin, saw her car and wondered where Sawyer might be.
Maybe he’d gone to the office for coffee today. Oh, she wished she had a gun. She’d love to just shock the heck out of him. He’d open the door, and maybe she’d shoot at his feet just to give him a taste of his own medicine. And then she’d kiss the heck out of him again.
As delightful as that sounded, with nothing more threatening than a nail file, Liz tossed that option. Still, the coffee sounded good. She walked across the parking lot to the office and helped herself to a large black coffee. She passed on the sweets. A few more days of pecan rolls and she’d be one big roll.
On her way back, she discovered Sawyer almost hidden behind the cabin. He was doing push-ups. She didn’t know how many he’d done before she started watching, but she saw him do thirty. Then he flipped over onto his back and started in on the sit-ups.
Her throat went dry. The man had on a pair of loose cotton shorts but no shirt. Sweat clung to his skin, and the sun glinted off his broad chest. With each sit-up, the muscles in his stomach rippled. A hundred sit-ups later, he collapsed on his back, his legs spread.
She felt a bit like a voyeur.
When Sawyer sprang up from the ground in one fluid motion, she realized she must have sighed.
“Liz?”
“Good morning,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Or stop you.
“No problem. I needed to stretch out a bit.”
“We have spent a lot of time in a car lately.”
“Yeah.”
Okay. If he could pretend that she hadn’t been staring at him, she could, too. “I’m sorry I slept so late.”
“You must have needed it.”
“Right. Do you want to shower first or should I?”
“You go ahead. I’m going to run for a little while. Just around the parking lot. The cabin won’t be out of my sight.”
She wondered if she stood on her tiptoes if she could catch a glimpse out the bathroom window. Sawyer was being vigilant in protecting her. She was just being greedy. “Well, I’ll see you in a few minutes, then.”
He nodded.
By the time she’d showered and dressed and Sawyer had done the same, she felt almost calm. Not at all like a woman who had almost thrown herself on a sweaty, half-naked man in a hotel parking lot.
They drove into town and grabbed a quick breakfast at one of the local eateries. Back in the car, Liz spread the map across her lap. She looked at it then folded it.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I figure you know where you’re going.”
“I do. South. Then we’ll work our way back up on the other side.”
It sounded an awful lot like yesterday and the day before. A day of stops and starts and disappointments. Liz resisted the urge to pound her head against the window.
As if Sawyer had read her mind, he asked, “You up for this? We can always go back to the city.”
Giving up wasn’t an option. Being late had grave consequences. These were the lessons she’d learned. “No, let’s go. The sooner we get started, the sooner we find them.”
To his credit, Sawyer didn’t even respond. He just started driving.
By the middle of the afternoon, Liz felt horrible. She’d worn her most lightweight shirt and shorts, but still the material clung to her skin. It had to be ninety-five degrees in the shade. They’d already stopped at seven campgrounds, two parks and four small motels that crowded the river.
“Next stop is Twin Oaks Lodge,” Liz said, holding the map a couple inches off her legs. If she let it rest, it would probably stick to her.
“Yeah, that sounds right. I actually tried to get a cabin there, but they were full. Said they book up by the beginning of April for the whole summer.”
“Not a bad position to be in,” Liz said.
“It’s not all gravy. They have long, cold winters up here,” Sawyer reminded her.
“So? We have long, cold winters in Chicago.”
With that, he turned the wheel, pulling the car into the large parking lot of Twin Oaks Lodge.
As usual, he pulled off to the side, out of view of the office windows. His cell phone buzzed just as Liz opened her door. He scanned the text message.
“Is it work? Is it Mary?” Liz asked.
“It’s work, and I don’t know if it’s Mary.”
“If it’s Mary...”
“Then I’ll tell you what I can. I just have to respect the privacy and the security of the person who’s calling me. Even having you listen in on one side of the conversation could jeopardize that. I won’t do that to this person.”
“This person? I can’t even know if it’s a man or a woman?”
“No. Better for you and better for the person.”
She nodded, apparently realizing he wasn’t going to budge. There was a lot he probably should apologize for, but this wasn’t one of the things.
“Fine. I’m going to go into this office, ask my questions and pretend to look at the brochures. If I—” she paused for effect “—would happen to get us both a cold drink, will you promise not to shoot me when I come back?”
It took him a minute to realize that she was kidding, that she was in some way trying to smooth things out between the two of them. He shrugged. “It depends. Make sure it’s a diet.”
“It’s always the details that get a person into trouble, isn’t it?” Liz opened the car door and walked across the parking lot. He watched her until she got inside.
He dialed Rafael Fluentes. The man had infiltrated the organization deeper than any other undercover cop had been able to. His calls rarely meant good news.
“It’s me,” Sawyer said when Fluentes answered.
“I hear you’re working the river. How’s the fishing?”
“Nobody is biting.”
“Sucks everywhere. There’s talk of a rumble,” Fluentes said.
Damn. It was an unusual night when there wasn’t an intergang slaying. Turf battles waged fierce and frequent. Fluentes wouldn’t have called about that. This must be a big-time, bring-out-your-big-guns war call. “When?” Sawyer asked.
“Soon.”
Sawyer regretted being two hundred miles away. Robert would keep him informed, but it wasn’t the same as being there. “Hope the fish bite better there.”
“Yeah, me, too. I don’t care if the small ones slip through our nets, but I’d like to hook a few of the big ones. By the way, I’ve got a little info on the sister fish. Mirandez is the only child of Maria and Ramon Mirandez. However, Maria had a child ten years before she married Ramon. We’re not even sure Ramon knew about the kid. In any event, Mirandez has a much older half sister out there somewhere.”
Maybe that made some sense. She’d come to Mirandez’s father’s funeral. If Ramon Mirandez hadn’t known about the child, Maria Mirandez would have finally been free to have both her children with her to comfort her in her time of need.
“What’s her name?”
“Angel.”
“Angel what?”
