Crash Into Me

by Jill Sorenson

  The cop gave up on the drug angle. In Torrey Pines, smoking weed was more of a revered local pastime than a crime. “Tell me what she said or did last. Her attitude before she left. Anything that might help us find her.”

  “I don’t remember anything but falling asleep,” Carly said, twirling a lock of hair around her slender finger. “We were, like, totally stoned, you know?”

  “Mr. Fortune, did it ever occur to you to notify Lisette’s parents that she left early?”

  “No.” He glanced at his daughter. “Carly didn’t mention that she was missing.”

  Carly tossed her hair back with dramatic flourish. “I didn’t know she was, like, missing missing. I thought she was just out having a good time. Maybe trying to dodge getting put on restriction.”

  She was laying on the Valley Girl routine a little too thick, but the cop only nodded, as if he also suspected Lisette Bruebaker would turn up on her own. Before he left, he focused his attention on Sonny, surprising her. “By the way, ma’am, can I ask how you got that busted lip?”

  Behind his back, Carly’s eyes widened with panic, and she shook her head pleadingly.

  Sonny pasted a smile on her face, hoping it wouldn’t crack under the strain. There was no time to consider her decision, so she just went with it, up-ping the total of liars in the room from two to three. “Carly did it. Kitchen cabinet.” She made a motion with her hand, like a door hitting her in the mouth. “An accident.”

  He tapped his pen against the notebook in his hands. “Well, thank you for your time.”

  After the door closed behind him, the three of them stared at one another. Ben broke the silence. “I should call Lisette’s mom. See if she needs anything.”

  As he left the room, Sonny crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for Carly to do some serious explaining.

  “Thanks for not mentioning James.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  Carly didn’t meet her eyes. “Not that I know of. But he’s kind of weird about us, won’t tell his dad and stuff. If the cops showed up at his house, his dad might freak out on him.”

  Sonny nodded, flexing her hands. She had a plan now, and it didn’t include a morning jog. Although a physical release, in lieu of beating Ben senseless, might be in order. “You still want to run?”

  Carly nodded. “Yeah. But I think I’ll go on my own, if you don’t mind. Sometimes I just need to get out, go fast, be free. You know?”

  She knew.

  In the kitchen, Ben hung up the phone quietly, his back to her. Carly could be seen from the west-facing window, already halfway down the beach, her hair flying out behind her like a wild Arabian’s.

  “They’re organizing a search party,” he said. “Some of the other parents are meeting over there at noon.”

  His expression was severe, the perfect portrait of a concerned father with his own teenaged daughter to worry about. Underneath all of that was guilt. Even if Sonny could pretend nothing was amiss for the sake of the investigation, it wouldn’t ring true to her character. Summer Moore may not be a hard-eyed cynic like Sonora Vasquez, but she was nobody’s fool. “What did you do?”

  He smoothed his hand over the black granite countertop, looking down at it, instead of at her. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” She moved closer, forcing him to face her. “Please don’t lie.”

  He met her eyes. “What are you asking me?”

  Sonny considered that question carefully. “If you slept with her.”

  He started to speak, then appeared to think better of it, and remained silent.

  It hurt, so much more than she thought it would. So much more than she should have allowed it to. Because she’d known the instant he’d gone along with Carly’s story that the lie had been one of omission. He’d caught Lisette and Carly smoking pot two Saturdays ago, not last Friday.

  So what had actually happened when Lisette spent the night? She gave herself three guesses, and the first two didn’t count.

  “I’m going surfing,” he said, walking outside. He may as well have added, “Fuck you.”

  Shaking with fury, Sonny followed him to the poolroom. It was as posh as the rest of the house, with its designer shower stalls, custom surfing gear, and built-in sauna. When she came through the open door, he was tugging on his state-of-the-art, titanium-lined wetsuit. It fit him like a second skin.

  She had to take a moment to calm down before she was able to speak. “You told me you hadn’t been with anyone since Olivia.”

  He pulled a surfboard down from the rack, his movements swift with anger. “Don’t ever”-his eyes were intense, his tone vehement-“talk about my wife.”

  Sonny didn’t bother to heed that warning, although it cut through her deeper than the phantom blade from her nightmare. “What did she do when you cheated on her, Ben? Look the other way?”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Don’t compare yourself to her. Do you think I owe you my loyalty because I’ve tried to fuck you a few times?”

  She felt the color drain from her face. “You owe me an explanation.”

  “I don’t owe you a fucking thing.” He brushed by her, crossing the patio and making his way down the winding steps to the beach.

  She wanted to shout obscenities at him, to push him down the stairs and pummel him with her fists, to scream and yell and smash his handsome, arrogant face.

  Instead, she turned her back on him.

  In his tumultuous emotional state, Ben hadn’t bothered to lock his door or engage the security system, and she was going to take full advantage of it. Don’t get mad, she reminded herself. Get evidence.

  Hands trembling, imagination running overdrive, Sonny returned to the kitchen and threw open drawers until she found what she needed. Ziploc bags. Hopefully his bed would have the same sheets from Friday, the night Lisette stayed over.

  Sprinting up the steps, taking two at a time, she entered Ben’s room, bypassing the bed and going straight to the master bath. The trash can was empty. Neat freak, she cursed silently. Storming out, she raided the nightstand by the bed, looking for condoms. There was one box, brand new, unopened.

  “Thought you were going to get lucky with me, didn’t you? Arrogant bastard.”

  Moving quickly, she looked through every drawer, rifling through silk ties and cotton boxer shorts, running her fingertips over stacks of T-shirts and neatly folded jeans. She slid her hands underneath the mattress, got down on her hands and knees to look under furniture, stood on tiptoe in his walk-in closet.

  There was nothing. Not even a speck of dust.

  She picked up the remote for the plasma screen TV and did a quick channel search. Nothing more titillating than HBO. Sonny wasn’t a tech whiz, but she knew how to find out if he’d ordered any pay-per-view movies or kept DVDs on file.

  There was only one title; the date, September 17th. She played it.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She suffered through the wedding video only long enough to acknowledge that Olivia had been her polar opposite. Tall, dark-haired, and gorgeous, she was lushly feminine, a more womanly version of Carly. The only thing more painful to witness was the look on Ben’s face as she walked down the aisle.

  Perhaps he was a pathetic cliché, the sainted widower who watched his wife instead of porn.

  Then again, lonely people often acted in desperation.

  Sonny flipped off the TV with a twist of her wrist, wanting to throw the remote through the damned screen. Returning to the bathroom, she searched the medicine cabinet for tweezers. Finding a new pair, she ripped it out of the package, then stripped the blanket and top sheet off the bed.

  There were no stains, but the expensive white cotton appeared wrinkled, comfortable, slept in. Apparently, he wasn’t so fastidious that he changed sheets more than once a week. Or even after entertaining a female guest.

  There was one long, curly hair, obviously a woman’s, probably Lisette’s. The sight of it made her heart sink.


  He wasn’t a saint after all, was he?

  “You fucked up, Ben,” she said under her breath, collecting the hair meticulously before she began to go over every inch of the sheets for more trace.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ben wasted a perfectly good session, too distracted to keep his mind on waves. The sport required a Zen-like concentration, and he didn’t have it. He was pissed off at Summer, pissed off at himself, and extremely pissed off at the decent-looking break that kept crumbling to mush every time he got into position.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as he resurfaced, startling a couple of regulars who were communing with the surf gods in companionable silence.

  Ben gave up. Flipping his wet hair off his forehead, he waded out of the ocean, shoving his surfboard under one arm and storming across the beach.

  He couldn’t believe Summer thought he’d slept with Lisette. The girl was young enough to be his daughter, for Christ’s sake. The very idea turned his stomach.

  Her interrogation wasn’t just insulting, it also brought back a lot of unpleasant memories for him. Olivia had constantly bombarded him with accusations. Usually, her suspicions were correct, and she had every right to be jealous. While she’d stayed home taking care of Carly, he’d been traveling from one beach to the next, hopping from party to party and bed to bed.

  Olivia hadn’t put up with his antics for long. She broke off their relationship just before Carly’s second birthday, issuing the ultimatum that he give up drugs, alcohol, and other women. It took him five years to honor her request.

  He regretted every one of them.

  After he got clean, he hadn’t so much as looked at another woman, but Olivia had never really trusted him because he’d lied to her so many times in the past.

  Ben didn’t need Summer giving him the third degree, thinking the worst of him, reminding him of his myriad failures as a husband and a man.

  He did a good enough job of that on his own.

  Scowling, he ascended the wooden steps leading to his back patio, assuring himself he was only sorry he hadn’t been able to get her into bed. He knew he was lying, and that he’d handled things badly with her this morning, but damned if he would apologize to her, when she was the one who’d accused him of statutory rape!

  Muttering a string of curses, he showered off in the poolroom and pulled on some clothes before he headed inside the house. Carly was sitting at the kitchen table with a pensive expression on her face and dark sunglasses covering her eyes.

  Ben cleared his throat. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  He drove them to the Bruebaker residence in silence. As he parked inside the gated entrance, he noted that the media was out in full force. Although he would have used his notoriety to draw attention to Lisette’s disappearance, her parents hadn’t asked him to, and for that he was grateful.

  After Olivia’s murder, the press had hounded him mercilessly. The police had treated him like a criminal. While he’d been in shock, unable to process what was happening, they’d ripped his reputation to shreds and thrown it to the sharks.

  The furor died down eventually, but in that first month, the media hadn’t had the decency to leave him, or Carly, alone. They’d made a circus of Olivia’s funeral.

  Two weeks ago they started calling again, clamoring for his response to Darrius O’Shea’s death. He had no comment. Countless times, over the past three years, he’d dreamt of tearing the man apart with his bare hands.

  Now that O’Shea was dead, Ben felt nothing. Not even relief.

  If the media saw him here, they would probably rehash every detail of his wife’s murder, turning his devastation into a tasty news bite once again.

  Ben found a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.

  “You look like the Unabomber,” Carly said.

  He gave her similar perusal, seeing solemn eyes behind dark lenses. “Why did you lie to that police officer?”

  Her mouth made a thin line. Instead of answering, she glanced away.

  The aftermath of Olivia’s death had scarred his daughter in ways he could only imagine. At a time when they needed each other more than anything else, the police had kept them apart, questioning them separately, trying to pit Carly against him. Trying to break them down.

  He despised them for putting her through that.

  Carly might have lied to the police just to be uncooperative. Or maybe she was hiding something. Maybe she knew Lisette had been in his room that night.

  His gut clenched at the thought. “Do you know where Lisette is?”

  She gave him a disgusted look. “No.”

  He decided she was telling the truth, and hoped he wasn’t fooling himself, believing what he wanted to believe. “How are you doing…with the cutting?”

  “Fine,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “You haven’t-”

  “No.”

  Floundering, he careened from one difficult topic to the next. “Are you still seeing James?”

  Her sleek brows drew together. “Yes. Why?”

  “He seems kind of volatile.”

  “You attacked him, Dad.”

  He sighed, leaning his head back against the seat. “I guess that was uncalled for.”

  “You think?” She drummed her fingertips against the sleeve of her sweatshirt, glancing out at the media vans with trepidation.

  The movement drew his attention to a ring on her finger. “Where’d you get that?” he asked, catching her hand to study the antique silver band.

  “James gave it to me.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday,” she said, pulling her hand away quickly. “It’s nothing.”

  Ben’s vision narrowed. He knew damned well she hadn’t been wearing that ring on her finger last night. “Have you been sneaking out again?”

  “No, I-”

  “Don’t you know what happens to girls who wander around by themselves at night?” he interrupted, stress coursing through him. “They get raped and murdered! You, of all people, should know that!”

  She recoiled. “Do you think that’s what happened to Lisette?”

  His throat went dry. Lisette was probably up to no good, on drugs or in trouble, but dead? “No,” he said softly, praying it was true.

  Getting past the reporters unnoticed wasn’t as hard as he’d thought. There were dozens of teenagers milling about, and the crowd was focused on Tom and Sheila Bruebaker, who were poised to make a statement.

  Feeling a little ridiculous, Ben removed his hood but kept on his sunglasses. As he stood next to Carly, near the front entrance of the house, there was only one person who appeared to recognize him: Tom Bruebaker.

  He was standing beside his wife, his hand at the small of her back. In a pin-striped shirt and dark slacks, a diamond-encrusted watch at his thick wrist, and the morning sun glinting off his silver hair, Tom cut a striking figure. His jaw clenched when their eyes met, and the older man looked away. At Tom’s side, Sheila appeared fragile and elegant in a Chanel suit. She was holding on to his shoulder, as if she wasn’t quite steady on her feet. Her fingers sparkled with jewelry and her eyes glittered with unshed tears.

  The press conference lasted only a short time. Tom did most of the talking, asking for anyone with information about his daughter to come forward, and offering a considerable reward. Too overwhelmed to speak, Sheila wept prettily into a lace handkerchief.

  Ben had known the Bruebakers for ages. He used to be able to call Tom a friend. Now the man was the closest thing to an enemy Ben had.

  After the Bruebakers spoke with the press, everyone was ushered inside by a female officer who was in charge of organizing the search. Watching her reminded Ben that Summer worked with law enforcement. The way she’d looked at him this morning, her blue eyes cold as ice, was disturbing on many different levels.

  Torturing himself, he replayed their conversation in his mind. He had to admit that by
allowing his daughter to lie to the police, he’d given her reason to be suspicious. And when Summer had confronted him about sleeping with Lisette, he’d been too proud to deny it.

  Then he’d insulted her by suggesting she meant nothing to him, and wasn’t worthy of speaking his wife’s name.

  Ben stifled a groan, rubbing a hand over his face. How ironic that he’d gotten himself tangled up with a woman who challenged him at least as much as Olivia had.

  Sonny adjusted the fit of the Harbor Police uniform before she stepped out of the women’s locker room. The black polyester pants were too snug and the white shirt molded over her breasts, so it was perfect. A navy cap and dark sunglasses completed the disguise. She didn’t want to call too much attention to her face.

  Lamont Rousseau, a real member of the Coast Guard, and her counterpart for the afternoon, was ready and waiting for her at America’s Cup Harbor.

  They worked the docks for more than an hour, trolling for sailors known to frequent the restricted waters of the La Jolla Underwater Park and Ecological Reserve, where Lisette’s body had allegedly been sighted. Most of San Diego’s small vessel fishermen were second- or third-generation Portuguese or Italian, with salt water flowing through their veins and flippers for feet. They were a tight-lipped crew, protective of their own, but one name in particular kept cropping up, a man with no family ties in the area. Unpopular with sellers and buyers alike, he was rumored to employ several questionable tactics, including using nonregulation nets, scouting the reserve, and weighting his catch with filler.

  His name was Arlen Matthews.

  Sonny didn’t recognize the name, having never heard it from James, so she was surprised to see Carly’s boyfriend aboard a beat-up old boat named Destiny, with a young man who looked too much like James to be anything but his brother. As Sonny and Lamont approached, the boys’ father emerged from the galley, wearing dirty blue jeans and a green trucker cap.

  Sonny put a hand on Lamont’s arm. “I know him. The youngest.”

  “Do you want me to go alone?”