Not a flicker of movement revealed his thoughts, his reactions.
Frustrated, she took a breath, making one final effort to make him see what was happening. “Are you trying to make me say, ‘Yeah, life sucks. It’s awful’? Is that why you keep insisting that I’m a fool, I’m blind, I’m wrong to see life and people the way I do?” She waited in the afternoon silence for him to answer.
He shrugged.
“Fine. Don’t answer. Because the bottom line is, you aren’t going to persuade me of your point of view. I’m not going to change yours. We’re at a standoff. So retreat into your impassive cop mode.” She wanted to thump on his hard chest, shake him up, do something to get a reaction from him that wasn’t calculated and programmed. “By the way, as the TV doc says, ‘How’s that working for you?’”
He was as silent as the tree he leaned against.
“I hope it is. Because the truth is, I don’t care. Really. I don’t.”
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I like my life exactly as it is, thank you very much.” His chin jutted forward.
“Then I’m happy for you. I don’t believe you, but if you want to believe it’s fine, terrific.”
The other truth, the one she couldn’t admit to him, was that she didn’t want to care. She couldn’t afford to care about this man whose torment plucked at her heart.
When they’d first met, she’d been immediately drawn to his stillness and gravitas, so different from herself. But, since she’d first known him, those qualities had changed. He’d gone to some darker place in this last year. Going up country, the Vietnam vets had called their physical venture. It seemed to her that in an odd way the Judah she’d first met had made a similar trip, vanishing into some unknowable and killing landscape. While she didn’t begin to understand what had made Judah the way he was, her instincts told her that more than his partner’s death was involved. He was more complicated than the old cliché about still waters running deep.
And, like some guerrilla of the emotions, he kept slipping under her guard. She doubted he realized how easily he held her feelings hostage.
There was no future for them. She understood that. Maybe there never had been. All the qualities she thought she’d sensed in him—the kindness, the passion for his job—all those seemed changed now in the wreckage of what he saw as her involvement in his partner’s death.
Even so, she wished she had the power to go back a year.
Maybe things would have been different if they’d had more time. Maybe Judah could have trusted her then. If they’d had that time.
But they hadn’t.
All this bristly bumpitty-bump-bump of words had its roots in the past, but in the here and now, there was still the pull of this something between them. She hoped it was only chemistry. Because caring, like talking, was a one-way ticket to nowhere.
When the silence and tension between them at last became unbearable, she gave up and went down the road he’d laid out. “So why are you here, Judah? What’s going on?”
“I figured you’d want to know the follow-up.”
“What?” Without thinking, she laid her hand on his arm.
“We identified your beating victim. Le Duc Nhu, a Vietnamese woman. We did a neighborhood sweep. Found the crime scene. Not far from where she was discovered.”
“She’d left her house?” Angel, Sophie thought. Angel.
“Yeah. But we don’t know the chronology. She had a child. A baby. We didn’t find it. The place was trashed. Graffiti on every wall. You know. The kind of thing we’ve been seeing around town.”
“Bad?”
“Lousy.”
“Oh, Judah. I’m so sorry.” She felt an enormous weight of sorrow for the poor woman she’d treated. This suffering, deep and soul-killing, was what she’d seen in Judah’s eyes, was the reason for the darkness around him. The urge to comfort was so strong, she reached up and touched his cheek even as a strange dread coiled inside her. “Tell me about it?”
He shook his head.
“It would help.”
“It wouldn’t.”
She didn’t know why she’d bothered asking.
He shifted his weight, a whole paragraph of body language saying don’t push.
She didn’t. But she left her hand cupping his face. She could speak body language, too.
“Anyway, I figured you’d want to know. And since Tyree and I had to come to the hospital to tie up loose ends—”
“Killing two birds with one stone? Very efficient, Judah.” She smoothed the lines at the edges of his eyes. She didn’t want to comfort him, didn’t want to get pulled into the no-win situation that was Judah Finnegan. A really, really smart woman wouldn’t. But he was too thin, too tired, too strung out. And maybe she really was a fool and not as smart as she thought because she found herself asking, “When did you eat last, Judah?”
He shook his head. “I ate. I’m not hungry.”
For food. Unspoken, the words were there in the burn of his eyes, the flush along his cheekbones every time he looked at her. Seductive. Dangerous. There was always that between them, even if they couldn’t manage to find the right words to bridge an abyss as wide as the universe.
She laid the back of her hand against his face again. The skin was dry, the circles under his eyes dark. Dehydration. She should have caught those signs earlier, but he’d pushed her hot button so fast, and she’d gone off like a rocket. “You look like something the cat dragged in. Am I finally getting the lingo right?”
“Sure. Or you could tell me I look like I been rode hard and put away wet.” Even in his exhaustion, he raised an eyebrow slyly.
She rolled her eyes. “You look like hell, that’s what, and like you’re incubating a category-5 headache.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a headache.”
“You’re an idiot, Finnegan.”
“So say they all.”
“You need food, you dope.” As if he were one of the patients coming into the ER who might go down in a heap, she put her arm around his waist to support him. “And I’d bet a monkey’s uncle you’ve been drinking during the last twenty-four hours.”
“But only really, really good Scotch.”
“That makes a difference?”
“Oh, yeah, Dr. Sugar. Trust me on that.”
She made a face. Men. “Come on, let’s go to the cafeteria and feed you. And how much sleep have you had since you played undercover Santa at the charity kettles and got knifed in the process? Not much in the last forty-eight hours, right?”
His hand on her shoulder stopped her, spun her around. “I’m not your patient, Sophie. Don’t make that mistake.”
“I won’t.” Her breast softened against the hard muscles along his ribs. Oh, she knew exactly what he was. Six feet of trouble and heartache she couldn’t deal with. “But I’m not letting you leave here until I’ve gotten some food and liquid—and I’m not talking about expensive whisky—into you. You may not be my patient, but I wouldn’t let my worst enemy leave here in the shape you’re in.” She skated forward.
“Am I your worst enemy, Sophie?”
She shrugged, took a stroke away from him. “No.”
“I see. Must be your sentimental nature.”
“Probably.” She skated forward.
His long strides kept up with her, his palm open against the bare skin of her back. Right at the dip of her spine into the waistband of her shorts, his fingers teased the sweat-soaked edge.
She wanted him to stop.
She would have paid him a hundred dollars to let those restless fingers stray just a bit lower.
She glared at him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Quit doing that stuff.”
“What stuff?” A five-year-old with his hand caught in the cookie jar couldn’t have looked more blandly innocent than Judah Finnegan as he paced beside her, his hip bumping hers companionably, his hand moving in easy, lazy strokes on her back.
“You know.
That stuff.”
“You could skate faster,” he offered helpfully. “And then I couldn’t do…stuff. If you wanted to.”
“I could.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“Maybe I feel sorry for you.”
“Or maybe you like this stuff.” He traced a slow, tantalizing arc that finished under her ribs, a hand’s span from her belly button.
“Nope. Don’t seem to.”
“Liar.” His thumb brushed under the edge of her waistband. “But notice that we’re talking, Sophie.”
“Talking? You think this is talking?” She skewed around to face him, dislodging his hand and throwing up hers. “You make me crazy, is what you make me!”
“I make myself crazy. If that’s any consolation.”
She flung both hands up again. “I give up.” She started to skate off.
Judah tugged at the back of her shirt. “Slow down a sec, firecracker. I should let Tyree know where I’m going to be. He’s in the hospital morgue with the neighbor woman who knew your patient. They have one more stop to make.”
Exasperated with him, with herself, she plunked her hands on her hips. “All right. You said you were tying up loose ends. What other loose end is there?”
He rubbed the silky material of her shirt, tethering her to him. “I told you your woman had an infant child. Tyree’s taking the neighbor to see the baby we found at the church last night.”
In front of them the Poinciana River curved wide and lazily to the west, toward the gulf. One lone sailboat tacked silently across the purple-and-pink blueness.
Sophie knew what was coming. She’d tried to keep the door closed, but here came reality. Her heart started a slow, sick tumble. “Angel.”
“What?”
“The baby you and your partner found last night. I’ve been calling her Angel. You’re pretty sure Angel is the child of my beating victim, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “We’re hoping the neighbor can give a positive ID of the baby as well as the woman.”
“What about the woman’s family? The baby’s father?”
“I don’t know all the details. Hoang Lan Thoa said Le Duc Nhu no longer had relatives in America. She’d had a sister in Texas who died. I didn’t hear anything mentioned about the baby’s father. He could be in Texas, too. Anyway, Tyree, the woman and the interpreter are sorting all that out. If the baby is hers, we’ll know soon, and we’ll take it from there until we find out where the baby belongs.”
Sophie gazed into the distance as Finnegan made his call. Of course Angel would be Le Duc Nhu’s. Nothing else made sense. She’d expected that from the beginning. This was good news. Angel wouldn’t be thrown into the maw of foster and state care. Somewhere she probably had a father, a family. They would be sick with worry about her. Of course Judah’s information was the best news possible.
This sense of emptiness was nothing more than—than what?
And how silly of her to feel that anything had been lost. How selfish.
But she remembered the tight grip of Angel’s hand on hers and something broke loose inside her, an almost physical tearing apart. Clenching her grandmother’s cross, she closed her eyes against unanticipated and wholly self-centered pain.
Her plan had been only a dream, nothing more.
An impulse of the moment.
Angel was going to be with her family. That was what was important, she kept reminding herself.
The wrenching pain would vanish.
Pain always did.
And if the loss of her scarcely articulated dream left a forever phantom pain, the way a lost limb did?
She clutched the necklace tightly.
“Done. Tyree’s going to catch up with me in the cafeteria.” Frowning, Judah looked at her for a minute.
She was terrified that he’d start hammering her with questions.
She could have wept with relief when he didn’t. This rawness was too humiliating. Too self-indulgent. But she felt as if the entire protective layer of her skin had been peeled away.
Even a strong woman needed a dream.
Silently, side by side, his hand resting on her hip, they made their way back into the hospital.
There was an odd comfort in the touch of Judah’s hand against her. No future in that touch, but sometimes a woman could be forgiven for seizing the moment.
Chapter 9
Judah couldn’t take his eyes off Sophie’s narrow shoulders and tidy butt as she waited in the cafeteria food line. She’d told him to save seats and skated off to snatch a tray and get in line. He’d watched her every move, from the quick efficiency of her moves through the crowd to the way her wrist bent as she pulled at the material of her shorts. Crazy, this inability to ignore her. He could tell himself it was merely professional observation of his surroundings. Except for the fact that the only surroundings he seemed to study were Sophie’s.
A man in the grip of a sexual compulsion ought to be locked up until he got his sense back, he thought sourly as he noticed her conversation with the sallow-faced, ponytailed man in his twenties. Judah frowned, trying to recollect where he’d seen the man before. He knew he had. He just needed a context to put the memory in. And then he had it. Mr. Ponytail was the face that had kept hovering in the background of the ER last night. Satisfied, Judah let his gaze drift around the noisy room.
There, he could concentrate on something other than Sophie’s long legs and the glimpse of curved buttock as she leaned over the counter.
Footsteps snapped his attention away from her. Tyree. But without the interpreter and the neighbor. Grateful for the diversion, Judah leapt to his feet before Tyree arrived at the table. From the corner of his eye, Judah caught a glimpse of a blue-shirted back and a stringy ponytail disappearing through the swinging doors leading to the service area of the cafeteria.
Sophie met them both in the aisle.
“Mrs. Thoa and Mr. Dai, the interpreter, are headed home as soon as I go back upstairs and get them. I came down to give you a quick update. Mrs. Thoa identified the woman. And the baby,” Tyree added in acknowledgment of Judah’s lifted eyebrow. “She recognized the baby blanket, too. She showed us the corner where she’d embroidered the Vietnamese word for good fortune for Le Duc Nhu’s baby.”
A tiny sound came from Sophie.
Judah sent a swift glance in her direction. She’d recovered her game face so fast that he didn’t think anyone else had seen the stricken look in her eyes. But he had.
Before Tyree could say anything, Judah asked, “Did she have any kin? Anybody we need to get hold of?”
“Nah. Mrs. Thoa clarified through the interpreter that she’d checked and found an old telephone number for the sister she’d mentioned in Texas. According to what Mrs. Thoa was told, Le Duc Nhu, her younger sister, and an uncle and aunt came here in the seventies. Le Duc Nhu was around eight or nine at that time, so she must have been around thirty when she was murdered. Mrs. Thoa also explained that Le Duc Nhu’s husband had been killed in a fishing-boat accident before the baby was born. He’d hired on as part-time labor over in Cortez. That’s it on the information front. Judah, I’ll be back to collect you as soon as they’re ready. Mrs. Thoa wanted to spend some time with the baby. She used to babysit for her while the mother worked, I guess.” Tyree shrugged and left, slapping his way through the cafeteria doors.
Behind him, Judah heard the slide of Sophie’s skates, the clatter of the tray on the table, the rustle of her shorts against the plastic chair. Breathed in the light scent that was pure Sophie.
Silently he turned and joined her.
She plunked the tray down and folded herself into a chair. “There. Eat.”
“You do like to give orders, don’t you?”
“I’m a doctor. It’s what I do.”
Judah picked up the overcooked hamburger Sophie sent sailing down the cafeteria table. He took a bite, chewed. “This is going to cure what ails me?”
“Sure. Grease and white bread. Souther
n haute cuisine, right?” Her smile was a pale reflection of its earlier sparkle and sass.
“But we have our standards, especially for our finer things. He swallowed a dry chunk of burger. “Sorry, Doctor Sugar, but the Coast Herald won’t give this five forks.”
“Tell it to the hospital board. They’re on an economy kick.” She rested her forehead on her folded hands. “It’s better than letting your glucose whack out.”
Taking another bite, he chewed steadily as he studied her and thought about that tiny sound she’d made at Tyree’s news. “I’ve had worse hamburgers, I reckon.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“Yeah, but you’re not eating. Playing it safe, I reckon?” But he couldn’t get her to react.
Out in the parking lot she’d glowed with exercise, with that inner light that fascinated him. Then, suddenly, the light had switched off, and everybody left the building, so to speak. This quiet Sophie disturbed him. He missed that Sophie glow.
“Med-school food sucks, huh?” He took a swig of Dr. Pepper and managed to wash down the wad of bread and meat. Studying her over the rim of the paper cup, he waited to see how she’d react to his choice of ‘sucks,’ her earlier word. He didn’t have to wait long.
Her head whipped toward him so fast it was a wonder she didn’t give herself whiplash.
He almost grinned.
A bit of color washed over her face as she squinted in his direction. “I’m beginning to get your pattern, Finnegan. I’ll bet when you were a kid and went to the zoo, you couldn’t resist rattling the grizzly’s cage just to see what it would do.”
“You’d bet actual money?” He swatted a clot of ketchup onto the meat patty. Ketchup ought to make the godawful burger slide down his throat without choking him.
“Yep.” Her smile wavered, but it was back. “A hundred dollars at least.”
“Whoa. Quite the high roller, aren’t you, cookie? You’d win. I was a difficult kid.” He offered her a French fry dripping with ketchup.
Dead Calm Page 12
