Stumbling on the Sand

by Jenna Rae

  Del wondered about Phan’s tendency to frame every crime against a woman around how his daughter would feel if she were the victim. While it made him a more sympathetic listener and more responsive investigator, what was the personal cost to him? How did it shape his relationship with his daughter?

  “I’ve been thinking.” Del rubbed her forehead. “Men are taught from infancy that women exist for their stimulation. Their sexual satisfaction. Their ego gratification. How does a guy know when he’s won? When he gets to sleep with whatever women he wants. Sex is just a way of keeping score. You win a war, you get the women as prizes. You claim the land by raping the women and making them have your kids. The more money you have, the easier it is to get a beautiful young wife. If you’re an athlete, supermodels will sleep with you. Women are booty for the most successful pirates. Then we act surprised when men treat women like things instead of people.” Del eyed her partner. “I always wonder what it is that makes a guy like you.”

  She watched Phan stifle a defensive impulse. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Del inclined her head. “You seem to think I’m a person. Your daughter’s a person. Alana. Lola. You even think your ex-wife is a person. So tell me, how did you come out all right?”

  “Seriously?” Phan stopped and eyed Del. “How come I’m a man but not a sociopath? Is it that hard to figure? Have you met so few guys that aren’t assholes?”

  “It’s not that.” Del hesitated. Clearly she’d put a foot wrong, but she wasn’t sure how.

  “I’m fucking with you.” Phan grinned, tossing back his shaggy hair. “Most guys are assholes for a good three or four decades, maybe longer. That’s why I’m teaching Kaylee how to shoot.”

  Del rolled her eyes. “She’d be better off learning how to fight hand-to-hand.”

  “Oh, she’s learning that too.” Phan’s smile widened. “Trust me.”

  “I do.” Del held Phan’s gaze.

  “You’re a good partner,” Phan said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a better one, and I’ve been at this even longer than you have.”

  Del grinned. “You are pretty old.”

  “Fifty.” Phan took a deep breath and made a face. “God, I never imagined myself surviving this long. Of course, I never pictured myself as a cop when I was young. You?”

  “Oh, I’ll never make it to fifty.” Del grinned at Phan’s impatient huff. “Yeah. I think I wanted to be a cop from the time I was a teenager. I always wanted to be one of the good guys, you know? Help the little guy, stand on the side of the angels, all of it. I still feel that way.”

  “I bet you were a giant pain in the ass when you were a rookie.”

  Del laughed. “I’m still a pain in the ass.”

  Phan smiled and then sobered. “He is escalating.”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head. “We’ve got six women, including Sofia, coming in tomorrow to work on a sketch. A lot more interviews with pervs. The media is even sorta helping us. There can’t be a woman in the area who doesn’t know to close her drapes, lock her doors, watch out for strangers. I don’t know what else to do now.”

  “I do.” Phan stood. “We go home.”

  “We didn’t do shit tonight but take an interview and find out we dropped the ball.”

  “We’re done. I’m sorry, but it’s midnight and I’m done.”

  Del knew he was right. Still she stayed a while after Phan left, trying to think of another way to find something, anything, but they’d already covered the basics. Too tired to do more than go over the same old ground, she finally gave in and went home.

  A couple of hours later, heading to her bedroom, Del thought about the latest victim, Sofia, coming home tired and frustrated, just like Del, and having to deal with the peeper. Del fantasized for a moment that the guy was in her yard, looking in her window. She would catch him and make sure he got locked up. Or was that arrogance? She hadn’t been able to get away from one tiny ex-girlfriend, so how could she think she’d be able to get the peeper? Del had to remind herself that she’d apprehended plenty of bad guys and hadn’t ever had a problem doing her job as well as any other cop. Janet had gotten the drop on her, and it could have happened to anyone, Del huffed to herself.

  She saw a lump on the bed then and stiffened. How had she not sensed there was someone here? Her hand went to her weapon and her breathing went fast.

  Then her hand dropped. The figure on the bed was Lola. What was she doing? They hadn’t been lovers in months. Lola didn’t even live in this house anymore. She’d left without notice and moved across the street to the house that had once scared her. She certainly hadn’t spent the night in Del’s bed since then. Del’s stomach hurt. She’d been devastated by Lola’s decampment and still didn’t understand it. She blinked away sudden tears, wishing she knew how to connect with this beautiful woman she still loved.

  Lola whimpered then, in the grip of yet another nightmare. Del eased onto the mattress and held her, calmed her for the duration of the dream. She hadn’t held Lola like this since her haircut and rubbed her lips gently against the soft, short strands. It was like baby hair, and it smelled like Lola—lavender and vanilla and something else. For months Del had sat across the table or across the room from Lola and craved the scent and the feel of her. Their brief hugs and kisses had only made Del feel lonelier. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting the grief and frustration of the last months to spoil this little bit of intimacy.

  It was absurd—could she really only feel close to Lola when she was asleep? She drew back and looked at Lola, who was finally relaxed. The moonlight painted her a silvery blue, and Del was flooded with tenderness. She wished she could change things, make Lola’s bad memories go away and make her own bad memories go away too. She wanted to wash them both clean and start all over again with no hurt, no guilt, no disappointment, no regrets, no scars. If she could, she would keep Janet from showing up to wreck everything, stop Sterling from killing all those women and trying to kill Lola. She would stop Sterling from shooting her and stop herself from taking it out on Lola. She would, as long as she was at it, keep Christopher James from terrorizing Lola. She would also keep Orrin Beckett from marrying teenage Lola and abusing her. She would make Lola’s parents keep her and take care of her, and she would make her own parents keep themselves together enough to treat her right. In the magical world where she was all-powerful and had a time machine, Del would make everything perfect for both of them. If she could do that, would they be together now? Would she sleep next to Lola every night? Would she be able to give Lola what she needed if nothing else got in the way?

  Del flexed her shoulders, feeling the pull that she knew came from not doing the physical therapy exercises for nearly a week. Scars don’t go away, she told herself. Damage doesn’t get undone. Lola had once said something about that, hadn’t she? Del wished she’d paid more attention.

  When dawn came a few hours later, she stood over Lola’s sleeping form and chastised herself for being a chicken. What she should do was wake the woman, kiss her and apologize. She should tell Lola she loved her. She should bring her a cup of coffee and some toast and suggest they start over. She should kiss Lola a hundred times and apologize until Lola begged her to stop. She should reassure Lola that she didn’t love Janet anymore and that she’d never let anyone get between them again. She should swear that Lola would be safe, both physically and emotionally, if she would just take Del back into her heart. But was that too simple? She was the one who’d done it all wrong, and she was the one who had to do the work to fix it. Why was she trying to push it all off onto Lola? Was she trying to let herself off the hook?

  How do I apologize for being in love with my ex? Letting her come in and wreck our life together? How do I apologize for not only letting myself get kidnapped but also letting another psychopath kidnap you and try to kill you?

  Del backed carefully away from the bed and escaped to work.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re too close to
this,” Phan said, leaning across his desk and pointing at Del. They’d both followed up with every contact Mikey might have had and found nothing. No one remembered Mikey, no one had anything to say about him. One group home employee remembered him as polite and quiet, and one guard at the juvenile detention center thought he might have been into Japanese comic books or something. That was about it. “You shouldn’t be investigating Mikey’s murder.”

  “It’s not like I had a personal relationship with the kid,” Del argued. “I met him one time, had a ten-minute interview with him and never saw him again until he was dead. Besides, there isn’t anyone else to do it. You and I are it, partner.”

  “If you say so.”

  Del offered a curt nod and glanced at her watch: nearly noon. Mikey had been dead for nearly sixty hours.

  She knew she’d identified too much with Mikey five years back. He’d been bright and battle-scarred and brave, just a kid and trying to act like an adult. He was only eleven when he shot the man who attacked his mother. How old was that, school-wise? Fourth grade? It seemed like a million years ago, her own fourth grade year. She’d tried to act like an adult at that age too.

  Del’s fourth grade teacher gave her a book about sea turtles. Del read the book over and over, entranced by the little creatures, struck by how perilous their early lives were, how they had to scramble across the sand past countless predators to the safety of the water. They were clumsy and slow on the sand, but in the water they could glide away from those who would eat them.

  All I have to do, she thought day after day in the trailer park of her early years, is make it across the sand. All I have to do is survive until I’m old enough, and then I can glide through the water and be free. Her shell grew tougher and tougher as she endured the neglect and abuse her parents dished out. She didn’t cry out when punched in the stomach. She didn’t ask for food when she was hungry. She locked the tender, vulnerable parts of herself away for later. Mikey Ocampo had thought he was locked up tight, but Del had known the boy hadn’t yet developed the tough shell needed to survive.

  Unlike Mikey, Del had. However imperfectly, she had managed to not only survive but also to help some people along the way. She’d poked her head out once or twice, however briefly, with Elise and with Janet and again with Lola. Yeah, she’d retreated into that comfortable old shell more than she liked, but it had kept her alive. Lola’s face flashed into Del’s mind. Lola had her own little turtle shell, didn’t she? And their shells were bumping a lot these days.

  “We’re getting nowhere right now. We need more information,” Phan complained, pulling Del out of her thoughts. “Listen, back to the peeper, where does this behavior even come from?”

  “Come on,” she stated, “the world is saturated with misogyny. A real man dominates women, uses them, controls them, makes them property. Women are virginal children or oversexed whores. Bitches. Cunts. Conniving, fickle, selfish, inherently sinful and worthless.”

  “Sick.” Phan shook his head. “How are you supposed to raise your daughter to be strong and independent and whole? Kaylee wants to wear makeup, she wants to get a push-up bra and high heels. She’s barely a teenager, and she’s already sure she’s not good enough. We tried so hard, Tina and I made a lousy couple, but she’s a good mom. We’ve both tried really hard to raise Kaylee to be confident and happy and independent, but it seems like the whole world is against us. What are we supposed to do?”

  “I can only imagine. But come on,” Del put in. “Kaylee’s smart, focused, a good kid. She can’t wait to get to Caltech so she can take over the world.”

  “Is that where she wants to go? I thought she was all jazzed about Stanford.”

  “That was months ago,” Del said. “By now she could be looking at Harvard.”

  Phan shook his head. “Maybe you could keep me in the loop with my kid, huh?”

  “Why would she talk to you? You’re just her dad.” Del rolled her eyes, knowing it would make him smile. Phan’s daughter really was a nice kid, and Del kept in her back pocket the hope that of all the nice kids out there Kaylee would be one who got to live the perfect life everyone wanted.

  They spent the rest of the day interviewing the other peeping victims again and learning nothing new. By the time they left for the day at nearly nine, Del was as discouraged as Phan looked. The victims all seemed changed by what was, on the surface, a relatively minor crime. And hours of work to identify the peeper were proving nothing but how hard it would be to catch him. Del offered Phan a desultory wave as they trudged out to their respective trucks.

  At home she found herself wondering how Lola saw herself, and how she saw their relationship. Del had imagined she could protect herself and anyone who needed help, but she’d failed, hadn’t she? From the beginning she’d been unable to protect Lola. Images from James’s surveillance cameras, which he’d placed strategically and secretly all over Lola’s house, haunted Del: James placing an unconscious Lola on the bed, James touching and fondling her, James tying her to a chair and—Del shut her eyes against the images. Sometimes Del couldn’t touch Lola at all without thinking of James. It would make sense if Lola was thinking of her ordeal too.

  And what about the terrible night between Del and Lola, when Del was such a monster and treated Lola like nothing? She remembered how she’d looked at Lola and wished it was Janet who lay naked in her bed. She remembered telling Lola she was nothing but the pieces left behind by her ex-husband and by Christopher James. Del knew she wasn’t the same as Orrin Beckett or Christopher James, not really, but she didn’t exactly feel like she was on the side of the angels either.

  Del rose suddenly and started pacing around the room. She felt itchy and restless and worn out, all at the same time. She was on Lola’s doorstep a minute later and hesitated only briefly before letting herself in and lightfooting it up to Lola’s bedroom. She let out a short bark of a laugh and stifled it at once. After everything, she was sneaking into Lola’s? Sure, Lola had snuck into her place, but somehow it felt different. Del snorted quietly then started to slip away, but it was too late. Lola rose sleepily onto one arm.

  “You all right?” Her voice was quiet and sweet, her face soft and round in the moonlight. Del crossed over to her and sank onto the floor next to the bed. She laid her head on the mattress, holding on to Lola’s arm, crying.

  “Shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay,” Lola soothed her.

  She climbed into bed next to Lola, who cradled her into her chest. Del let herself be babied and petted, and she cried bitter tears into Lola’s soft neck. Lola didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t say anything, only made soothing sounds, and Del felt herself cry it all out and then drop into exhausted sleep.

  She woke early, still curled tight against Lola’s soft warmth, and the doubts and fears of the night before assailed her immediately. Her mouth was sour and dry. Her whole body ached. She felt Lola waking up and hauled herself out of bed. She tried to escape, but Lola grabbed her hand and held it.

  “What’s going on?”

  Del shrugged. She couldn’t begin to explain it. Lola got up and stood in front of Del, pulling her down for a kiss.

  “Morning breath,” Del muttered, resisting.

  “Yeah. Me too,” Lola whispered, still pulling at Del.

  She gave in, then, leaning down to kiss Lola as gently as possible. Her soft lips yielded, her satiny hair tickled Del’s cheeks, and Del let Lola guide her back to bed.

  “Talk to me.” Lola’s bright eyes burned into Del’s. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Del said, her voice too loud for the early hour. “I took you for granted. I didn’t mean to, I never meant to. You deserved so much better than you got from me. You still do. I’ve been selfish, I’ve been such an ingrate, and I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

  “I think we’ve both been doing the best we could.” Lola scrunched up her nose. “We both have a lot to learn about relationships. I think we both made mistakes.”

  �
�You always let me off the hook. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, Lola.”

  Lola seemed hurt by this. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe you’re right,” she finally said. “I don’t know.”

  Del lay next to Lola, eyeing the ceiling too. She reached out to hold Lola’s cool, soft hand in hers and tried not to squeeze it. “I’d do everything differently if I could get a do-over.”

  “Everything?”

  “Well, I’d make a cleaner break with Janet,” Del started. “I’d—”

  “Let’s not get into all that.”

  Del bit her lip. She felt cold. Did Lola mean she was giving up on their relationship? Was that why she didn’t want to talk about things? But then Lola rolled over and perched on Del, her face only an inch away from Del’s, her body’s weight on Del’s a welcome burden.

  “I want you,” Lola whispered, her eyes dark and hungry.

  Her heart raced as Lola’s mouth searched hers. She didn’t resist when Lola tenderly kissed her cheek, neck, shoulder, breast. Lola was so gentle, so soft and careful, that Del felt like a fragile thing being nursed to health by whisper-soft kisses. She felt something uncoiling in her. Her skin tingled in anticipation of Lola’s lips, and she was breathless.

  Lola stroked her curls with loving hands, and Del felt herself relaxing more and more. She could almost forget the world. Lola kissed her mouth again, over and over, so lightly that it felt like a dream. She felt the stirrings of desire again, then her breath caught, and her eyes opened. She didn’t deserve to feel this pleasure. She didn’t deserve Lola.

  “Stop,” she said. “Don’t.”

  “Okay,” Lola whispered. Her eyes searched Del’s. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” Lola smiled and didn’t wait for an answer. “I couldn’t stop looking at you. It’s funny. All the things you hate about yourself are what make you wonderful to me.”