by Terri Reed
“Never mind about the car. I’ll just rent one,” Kris decided. “Can you give us a ride to the rental place?”
“I have a ride coming,” Gabe interjected. “Angie’s on her way.”
“Oh, well, good then.” Why did she feel this burst of jealousy? Angie was his partner, not his girlfriend. At least Kris didn’t think she was. She remembered the assessing way Angie had studied her. At the time she’d thought the scrutiny had been a cop thing, but maybe it was a woman thing.
Didn’t matter. Not her concern.
Right, an inner voice mocked.
Gabe had intervened on her behalf with her parents by saying they had plans for next Saturday. What was up with that? Did it mean anything to him?
She had to find out because the gesture meant more than it should for her.
“Of course, you can borrow a car. No need to rent one. I’m glad to see you are being responsible. Car maintenance is very important,” her father said, rare approval in his tone. “You’ll find the keys in the cabinet by the garage door. Take the Volvo.”
Pleased by her father’s offer, she went to give him a hug. “Thanks, Dad.”
She gave her mother a hug, as well. As she pulled back, she said, “And, Mom, we are not attending the fundraiser.”
Her mother sniffed in disapproval.
Kris moved to stand beside Gabe. “Walk me to the garage?”
“Of course,” he said and extended his good arm. “Mr. and Mrs. Worthington.” He acknowledged each with a nod.
Since she didn’t want to embarrass herself any more than she already had in front of Gabe, Kris chose to ignore her mother’s frown and the pensive expression on her father’s face as she led Gabe from the room.
Taking the key from the cabinet, she pushed open the door leading to the garage and preceded Gabe out. She hit the automatic door opener and moved past her father’s red Jaguar coupe and the big black Mercedes, to unlock the metallic gold Volvo. She opened the door but didn’t climb in. Leaning on the car door, Kris searched Gabe’s face and asked, “So what did you mean about Saturday night?”
His eyebrows twitched downward as if caught off guard. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to open my mouth like that. It just sort of popped out.”
Disappointment spiraled all the way to her toes. “Oh. Okay. I understand.”
His frown descended into confusion. “You do? What do you understand?”
“That you only said what you did to get my parents off my back. I appreciate it.” But she still didn’t like having her hopes raised only to be dashed.
“I don’t make a habit of lying and I’m not going to start now. If you’re not busy, we’ll do something that night.”
“Really?” Anticipation and excitement bubbled, making her feel a bit giddy. “I’m not busy. I’d like that. A lot.”
A horn beeped. Angie’s brown sedan sat idling at the end of the driveway. Gabe waved to her.
A dart of jealousy made Kris tighten her grip, the sharp edges on the keys digging into her palm. Get over yourself, she silently chided. He wouldn’t be taking you out on Saturday if he and his detective partner were involved. At least she hoped he wasn’t the type to date more than one woman at a time.
She eased her grip and turned her focus back to the threat hanging over them. “So what now? How do we find Denise?”
Gabe arched an eyebrow. “We don’t. I do. I’ll let you know if anything develops.” His worried gaze shifted to the keys in her hand. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you privately. I really think you need to stay here at your parents’.”
Indignation burst through her. “Excuse me?”
He held up his hands, palms out. “I know, not the ideal situation. You don’t want to be back under your parents’ control and I get that. I really do. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t take you home with me, so this is the safest place for you.”
Kris couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “You’d like to take me home with you? To your place?”
He flushed, red creeping up his neck. “To keep you safe. Someone obviously is going to great lengths to scare us off the trail of the missing residents. I don’t know how far they’ll go. Your parents have a high-tech security system. You’ll be safe and I can concentrate on finding the bad guys.”
She understood his point. Even agreed with it. She wasn’t a martyr. “I can’t tell them what’s happening. How do I explain my sudden need to stay the night?”
“You can tell them part of the truth. Your apartment was vandalized.”
She let out a short scoff. “Right. Like they wouldn’t hire movers within ten seconds of the words leaving my mouth. That would just give them the impetus to put me under their thumb. I’m thirty years old. I don’t want my parents’ interference.”
He conceded her point by inclining his head. “Okay, then tell them you wanted to spend some time with them. That since your car is in the shop and it’s already so late in the day, you want to spend the night.”
She turned the keys in her hands as his words turned over in her mind. The explanation sounded reasonable, though she knew they’d be suspicious because it didn’t sound like her. But the thought of being alone in her apartment, in the dark, while someone out there wanted her dead scared her silly. And since most of her closet space in her apartment was taken up with photography paraphernalia, she did keep some clothes here.
She shut the car door. “Okay. For tonight at least.”
“In the morning I’ll have a patrol car meet you at your apartment. You don’t go in until he has secured the premises.”
Her mouth lifted on one side. “So I have to check in with you in the morning?”
“Yes. Unless you want to decide now on a time you’ll be home.”
She thought for a moment. It had been a long time since she’d had Camilla’s eggs Benedict. The Worthingtons’ cook was a rare find. “I’ll be at my place by nine.”
His relieved expression softened the hard lines around his eyes. “Thank you. And stay out of my investigation.”
She gave him a droll look.
His gaze narrowed. “I mean it, Kris. No more snooping around, following people, asking questions. That’s my job.”
Considering the day’s events, she really should agree, but passivity rankled her. “I’ll try.”
He shook his head. “That’s as close to a promise as I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t believe in making promises I’m not sure I can keep.”
“That’s an admirable trait,” he stated with approval in his green eyes.
She preened slightly under his praise. “Thanks.”
“I gotta go.” He backed away.
Before he could take more than a few steps, she said, “I do have one question though.”
“Yes?”
She stepped close to him, close enough to see the way his pulse beat at the base of his throat, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as he regarded her a bit warily. “Why did you really say we were going out on Saturday night?”
“I—” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Because—”
“Yes?”
His gaze dropped to her lips. Her breath hitched as he suddenly lowered his head and kissed her. A breath-stealing, mind-blowing kiss that left her reeling when he broke contact.
“Call if you need anything,” he stammered and then hurried down the driveway to join Angie in the sedan.
She stood there for several minutes after the car rolled away, letting the late afternoon chill seep through her coat. But she wasn’t cold. Touching her fingers to her lips, she couldn’t stop the smile or the welling of joy bubbling to the surface, warming her from the inside out.
He’d kissed her.
And now she couldn’t wait until Saturday night.
Providing the bad guys didn’t get to her first.
EIGHT
Gabe fastened his seat belt and glanced at his partner. She eyed the sling a
nd thick bandage on his upper bicep. “You okay?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You’re a mess.”
He nodded. In more ways than one.
She sighed and focused straight ahead as she drove, her black leather gloved hands at ten and two. She didn’t say anything more though she must have seen him kissing Kris. He was glad for Angie’s silence. He couldn’t have explained the kiss anyway. To her, or himself.
So much for unemotional.
But Kris had stood so close, staring up at him with those big blue trusting eyes, asking him to explain about their supposed date. His actions defied reason.
Kissing her had been the wrong move. There was no future there, so why had he?
Because even after all this time, he wasn’t as over her as he’d thought.
Too bad.
His feelings for Kris were immaterial. Kris wanted love, something he didn’t believe in, couldn’t believe in. Love wasn’t real. And what he was feeling for Kris was just attraction, anyway, nothing more. He couldn’t allow it to be more. He scrubbed a hand over his face. He had to stay focused. Concentrate on the job at hand. He’d been grazed by a bullet today, for crying out loud.
Someone wanted them to stop digging into the disappearances at Miller’s Rest, going so far as to make an attempt on their lives. That made him mad.
Anger could be a productive catalyst to solving this mystery.
“I need to go to the station and run all the retirement center’s staff as well as the residents,” he said, his mind going over the events of the past few days as he pulled out his notebook.
First, two people go missing. Carl Remming and Lena Street. Whereabouts unknown. Director’s explanation; supposedly on vacation, unconfirmed. Then Frank, the janitor, was seen handing over pharmaceuticals on the street. Unable to substantiate a crime. No charges pressed.
A threatening note was written on Kris’s apartment door. Then Denise Jamesen disappeared. Kris’s tires were slashed. Someone shot at him and Kris on the way to verify the woman’s supposed location. Not at relative’s as the center’s director claimed.
Was the director doing something with the missing people? And if so, what and why?
“I especially want to dig into Ms. Faust. Something is not right there,” he guessed.
“Way ahead of you,” Angie stated as she deftly drove through late afternoon traffic toward the station house. “I already have the paperwork in the pipeline for a warrant to subpoena the personnel and residents’ files. They should be in the house by tomorrow morning.”
“Good. You’re the best,” he noted, grateful for her thoroughness.
“Right. The best,” she muttered.
He chose to ignore the twinge of…he wasn’t sure what he heard. Disappointment, cynicism?
Angie’s cell phone rang.
“Carlucci.”
She listened for a moment. “On our way.”
She hit the siren and stepped on the gas.
Gabe settled back, half listening as Angie filled him in on a homicide at Fenway Park.
His mind kept going back to that kiss.
What had he been thinking?
The next morning Kris awoke from a restless night’s sleep. She kept reliving Gabe kissing her. Kept seeing the expression of yearning in Gabe’s eyes as his head dipped and his lips touched hers. Then only sensation. Warm, wonderful and full of tender hope.
Why had he kissed her?
Why had he promised to take her out on Saturday, even after she’d let him off the hook? To renew their relationship, go beyond a professional one?
She couldn’t guess and was afraid to wish. Getting hurt wasn’t something she wanted to repeat.
Before climbing out of bed in the room she’d grown up in, she reached for her old Bible, which Sadie had given her for her twelfth birthday. The tattered leather binding and soft pages filled her with nostalgia. The age at which reason and logic began to meld in a child’s mind. When her faith took root.
She’d cherished the book and the words, especially after Sadie had convinced her parents to let her attend a youth group instead of attending the formal service in her parents’ big monolithic church in downtown Boston.
Though as an adult, Kris didn’t mind occasionally attending her parents’ church. The architecture alone inspired awe and the pastor’s messages were sound, but she felt most connected to God when she and Sadie attended the small rural church outside the city limits.
As was her custom since leaving home to live on her own, every morning she prayed for God to speak to her through His word. She had recently started reading Ephesians. She turned to the third chapter and scanned the verses until she came to where she’d stopped reading in the Bible by her bedside table in her apartment.
She began to read from verse fourteen through twenty-one. Her breath held as the words reverberated deep inside her soul. The passage talked of the power of the Holy Spirit and the desire the author, Paul, had for everyone to comprehend the vast greatness of God’s love.
An ache gripped her chest as words spilled out.
“Please, Father, this is exactly my prayer for Gabe. That he would see how much You love him, that You haven’t turned Your back on him. Please, soften his heart toward You. Let him cry out to You and show him that You care.”
She bit her lip, then confessed, “And, Lord, I really like him. Even more than I did before.”
Gabe was different than he’d been years earlier, and yet, not. Even then she’d known he was kind, courageous and intelligent. Now there was a compassion in him that hadn’t been there before. Probably from years on the job. He exuded strength and reliability. A man of honor and integrity.
A man she could count on.
Who’d kissed her. But still the same man who had walked away from her eight years ago.
Give me strength, Lord, to leave the past behind once and for all.
Would her wound ever heal?
Like the wound inflicted on Gabe by a bullet meant for her?
A shiver of terror jetted down her spine.
When I’m afraid I will trust in the Lord. The words became a mantra to chase away the fear.
Feeling spiritually equipped, she set the Bible aside and readied herself for the day. She dressed in a pair of soft straight-leg jeans and a comfy cream-colored, cable-knit sweater. After a wonderfully prepared breakfast and a surprisingly amenable hour with her parents that didn’t include any recriminations for not giving in to her mother’s demand that she attend the upcoming fundraiser, Kris pulled the Volvo out of the garage and headed toward her apartment.
As she tuned the radio to a contemporary Christian station, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Her breath caught. A white van followed closely behind. The driver wore a baseball cap pulled down over dark sunglasses. It couldn’t be the same van she’d seen at the retirement center three nights ago, could it?
Traffic forced her attention to the road.
She turned down her street. There was no police cruiser waiting to meet her. She glanced in the rearview mirror again. The van made the turn and continued to follow.
Stepping on the gas, Kris zoomed past her apartment. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, she used the other to fumble through her purse for her cell phone. Seeing a side street, which would take her back the way she’d come, she yanked hard on the wheel and took the turn with a faint squeal of tires.
Nearly frantic, she shot another glance in the rearview mirror. The van was no longer behind her. Tension eased in her tight shoulders. She released her hold on the cell. She was just being paranoid.
Deciding she was safe, she rounded the corner to return to the street she lived on and parked in front of her building.
The van may not have been following her at all. The guy could have been just going in the same direction.
But they had been shot at just the day before. The memory slammed through her mind, causing a ripple of fresh anxiety. She grabbed her cell and called Gabe. It
went directly to voice mail. She hesitated a moment before simply asking him to call her when he had a second.
When I’m afraid I will trust in the Lord, she repeated silently.
She refused to live her life in fear. Fear did not come from God.
Just as she stepped out of her car, a white and blue Boston Police car pulled up behind her. She blew out a relieved breath. God was good and He provided for those in need.
An officer climbed out of the car, introduced himself as Officer Barrett, and then led the way inside. Kris stood in the hallway outside her apartment as Barrett disappeared inside to check for hiding bad guys. When he returned, he declared all was clear.
“Detective Burke told me to tell you not to leave until you hear from him,” Barrett said before exiting the apartment.
Smothering the irritation the officer’s words evoked, Kris reminded herself she had to trust Gabe. He was concerned for her safety.
Grateful to have work to do while she waited for word on the investigation, she got busy. Her clients wouldn’t be thrilled to know she’d let her personal life interfere with their projects.
In her studio, she spent the next couple of hours sorting through hundreds of photos and arranging them in a flowing scheme. The client, a landscape artist, had hired her to take pictures of his work from various job sites over the past three months for his brochures and Web site. Now all she had to do was mark the photos and send them off for the client’s perusal.
Though she sent the photos in a file via the Internet, she also ran off hard copies. As she sealed the large envelope, her phone rang. She sprang out of her chair to grab the receiver. Hopefully it was Gabe. She longed to hear his voice. She had to repeatedly force herself not to call to check on the progress of his investigation. She was trying to let him do his job. She just wished he’d hurry up already.
She checked the caller ID. Sadie.
“Hello?”
“Krissy?”
Something in Sadie’s tone made Kris’s stomach clench with apprehension. Please, God. She didn’t finish the prayer because she knew He knew her heart. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, dear. Just very tired today. I was hoping you could come visit. It’s been too long since I last saw you. I get so lonely here sometimes.”
