Taylor wasn’t sure what they were talking about.
Miss Kate’s chin stuck out the way Aunt Meg’s did sometimes, and she looked Taylor straight in the eyes. “When I was a little girl, my father used to hit me.”
Taylor caught her breath. Okay, that was bad.
“I’m not talking about spanking,” Miss Kate said. “He hit me. Hard. That’s how I got this scar on my cheek. My mother used to say it wasn’t my father’s fault. It was because he was drinking or he was upset or . . . Well, the reasons don’t matter now. Maybe they never did. The thing is . . .” Miss Kate swallowed, and Taylor realized this stuff was hard for her to talk about, too. “Because my mother said the hitting wasn’t his fault, I grew up thinking it must be mine. That there was something I could do to stop it. That if only I were quieter or cleaner or nicer or prettier, he would stop hitting me.
“But he didn’t. Because his hitting wasn’t about me. It was never my fault. Just like what your Uncle Kevin did to you was never your fault. Okay?”
“He still did it,” Taylor whispered. “And now I feel . . .” Dirty. Helpless.
“Look at me,” Miss Kate commanded. “Do I look like a victim to you?”
Taylor shook her head. Miss Kate was strong. And she was smart. Maybe as smart as Aunt Meg. Anyway, Mom always said Miss Kate was the smartest person she knew.
“Having bad things happen to you doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t change who you are. You are a wonderful kid. You are a warrior. You are a survivor. Like your daddy.” Kate looked at Taylor’s dad. “And me.”
Taylor sighed. That sounded pretty good. “Kindred spirits.” Like in that book Kate had given her.
Kate’s eyes were really bright, like she might cry, but she smiled instead. “And bosom friends.”
Taylor smiled in satisfaction. That was in the book, too.
Dad looked confused. “Right.”
He kissed her head again and then he kissed Kate. Right on the mouth. And it wasn’t so embarrassing. It felt right. Like they were all in this together, like they were a team. His girls.
“I’ll be home before dinner,” he said.
Twenty
“NICE PLACE YOU’VE got here,” Luke said to Jack Rossi.
“Thanks,” the chief said dryly.
Luke stuck his hands in his pockets, surveying his surroundings. There were obvious differences between the Dare Island Police Department and the one in Twisted Creek. It was next to the fire department, for one thing, instead of the town hall. The walls had been painted sometime in the last decade, the acoustic tile was clean, and the chief’s office didn’t smell like somebody had taken a piss in the wastebasket. Obviously there was more tax revenue in tourism than textiles these days.
But certain features came standard. Same file cabinets, same wanted posters, same industrial carpet.
“Of course, I’ve been living in a hooch, so my requirements aren’t that high,” Luke said.
A gleam of humor lit Jack’s dark eyes. “Let me know if you want a tour of the cells. You didn’t come here to talk about the accommodations. What can I do for you?”
I don’t want to talk about it, Taylor had cried. I don’t want to think about it. I want it to be like it never happened.
Luke’s jaw clenched. Right there with you, kid.
But Kevin Simpson had bargained on Taylor’s silence. Had preyed on her in silence. The only way to defeat the son of a bitch was to speak up.
Jack Rossi listened, grim faced, sniper cold. Occasionally he nodded or made notes. “You should notify the school that you don’t want Simpson to have contact with your daughter,” he said when Luke was done. “If he does, if he calls the house, comes by, threatens her in any way, I want to hear about it. Unfortunately, without a protective order, there’s not a whole lot I can do.”
Luke wouldn’t let himself feel disappointment. He’d pretty much expected that response. “Right. Thanks for your time.”
Jack typed on his computer. “Of course, if I see a vehicle with his plates drive onto the island, there’s no reason I can’t . . . Oh, yeah. There he is. Kevin Simpson. Bunch of minor drug charges, all dismissed. That might affect sentencing, if you get that far. Possession, possession of paraphernalia, possession with intent to distribute . . .” Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you said he lived in Twisted Creek.”
Luke nodded. “That’s right. With his parents.”
“Not according to this. His address is listed just outside of town.”
“What difference does that make?”
“None, in terms of a case. That’s county jurisdiction, but the alleged abuse still took place in the grandparents’ home. It means we can pay him a visit without upsetting the grandparents, though.”
Luke had told Matt he didn’t need backup. The same went for a witness. “‘We’?”
Jack stood from behind his desk. “I’m riding along. I can’t do a lot for you officially. But maybe seeing the uniform will tell Simpson we mean business.”
Luke’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He meant business. He didn’t know if the chief intended to back him up or get in his way.
Don’t do anything that could get you arrested, Kate had said.
“I take it there’s not a lot of heavy crime on the island this time of year.”
Jack smiled thinly. “I think Hank can handle traffic stops without me for a while.”
They got in Luke’s Jeep.
“You must miss the adrenaline,” Luke said as they pulled out of the lot.
“No.” One word, flat, uncompromising.
Luke stole a glance at the chief’s profile. He didn’t look like a fish out of water. More like a hawk in a flock of gulls.
A sniper. What was he doing on Dare Island?
“How long were you in the Corps?” Luke asked.
“Two tours. I joined up after 9/11.”
“How’d you know it was time to get out?”
“I come from a family of cops. My dad was a cop, my uncles are cops. One brother’s a cop, one’s State Bureau of Investigation.” Jack shrugged. “And I was thinking of getting married.”
Luke blew out his breath. “Yeah. Me too.”
The admission came without conscious thought. But it sounded right. Felt right.
“Kate Dolan,” Jack said.
“That obvious, huh?”
The chief smiled slightly. “When the two of you came downstairs? Yeah.”
“I’ve got another six months left in my enlistment,” Luke said abruptly. “After that . . . I don’t know.”
He’d always been a Marine. And now he was a daddy, and his daughter needed a father full-time.
You could have told me, he’d said to his daughter last night.
And she’d looked at him. You weren’t here.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel. If you didn’t reexamine your priorities after that, there was something wrong with you.
“Well, you’ve got a nice place to come home to,” Jack said. “Your family’s here. And the hometown hero angle works for you, too.”
“I’m no hero.” It was a point of pride in the Corps: other branches got medals; Marines got the job done.
“You are to the folks around here,” Jack said. “I saw you Christmas Eve. Everybody wanted to shake your hand.”
Luke remembered. It felt good to be welcomed home—not just as Tom and Tess’s son, as Matt and Meg’s brother, but for himself, in recognition of what he’d done. “At least nobody threw rocks.”
“I guess you got a lot of that in Afghanistan.”
“Some.” The memory tightened his gut. “I spent the last couple months on patrol, providing training and support for the ANP.”
The flat winter fields rolled by.
“You know, I could use somebody in the department who knows the island,” Jack said.
Luke had never thought that far ahead. Never considered a future on the island that didn’t involve working at his parents�
� inn, his brother’s boat. The idea was unexpectedly appealing. “Too bad I don’t have any training.”
“You’re a Marine. You can shoot, keep a cool head, and command respect. Everything else is paperwork.”
Luke turned his head to look at the chief. He was serious. “You making a job offer?”
“I’m making a suggestion,” Jack said. “Think about it.”
Luke found it hard to do anything else. The possibility of doing meaningful work on Dare Island, available to his daughter, near to his family, close to Kate . . . How could he not think about it?
He’d always wanted to be like his dad. A career Marine. Moving around with a wife and three kids, deployment after deployment . . .
Okay, maybe that wasn’t going to work. Taylor needed stability. Kate had a house and a law practice in Beaufort.
Luke stared out the windshield. “This girl—the one you left the Corps for—what happened with her?”
“We got married. And divorced. Turn here,” Jack said. “Cotton Hill Lane.”
Luke turned down a rutted gravel road off the highway.
Kevin Simpson lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by stubbled farm fields, migrant workers’ trailers, ditches full of turtles and seeding cattails.
Nice enough if you liked scenery. Or you didn’t like neighbors.
Kevin’s single-wide was set back between a windbreak of trees and some fallen-down outbuildings. If Dawn had moved up in the world from her parents’ place, Kevin had definitely slid down. The windows were boarded or bare, the yard littered with junk.
Luke parked the Jeep in the weeds by the road, twenty yards from the house.
“Those are his plates,” Jack said. “That’s his car in the driveway. Guess he’s not visiting his parents today. And . . . Well, well. Look at that.”
“What?”
“See those big yellow circles of dead grass? Your creepy Uncle Kevin is a meth cook. He’s been dumping chemicals.”
“The ammonia smell,” Luke said.
“Oh, yeah. Oh, this is good.” Jack reached for his phone.
Shit. “Last time I visited Jolene, I thought she’d been cleaning.”
“Maybe she was. Or, if the son comes around, he could have cooked a batch right there without his parents knowing. The thing about meth is it’s portable. With the right ingredients, you can mix it up in a two-liter soda bottle.”
“Convenient.”
Jack looked up from his phone. “Unless it explodes. Meth is highly toxic, highly volatile. Knew a trooper did a stop on a guy mixing up a batch in his car. Blew out the windshield, killed the guy, trooper wound up in the hospital.” He turned his head, spoke into the phone. “Hi, Eddie. This is Jack Rossi, Dare Island police. Got a present for you guys out on Cotton Hill Lane.”
Luke listened as Jack did a SITREP over the phone.
“Now what?” he asked when Jack ended the call.
“Now we wait for the sheriff’s department to show up with a warrant.”
Adrenaline demanded Luke storm over the burned-out grass, kick in the door, and eliminate the target. He inhaled slowly. Released it. “What about Kevin?”
“He’s out of luck. See, indecent liberties with a child, even if he’s convicted, he serves maybe ten months, tops. But manufacture of methamphetamine, plus possession, plus whatever other charges the DA can cook up—possession of meth precursor, drug paraphernalia, probably weapons—well, with his priors, he could be locked up for years.”
Years for Taylor to grow up free from fear.
Luke released his breath. She wouldn’t have to testify. It was a best-case scenario.
But the idea of doing nothing, sitting with his thumb up his ass, waiting for some overweight sheriff’s deputy to ride in and save the day, made him itch.
Minutes ticked by. The December sun beat down on the Jeep. With the windows rolled to keep out the smell, the inside heated like a microwave.
Luke looked at Jack, so cool he apparently controlled his own sweat. “Waiting for a warrant, you said.”
“That’s right. We’re out of our jurisdiction, we’re not wearing vests or hazmat suits, and we don’t know how many people are in there. Meth heads tend to be twitchy. And paranoid. And armed.” A corner of Jack’s mouth curled up in a smile. “Didn’t you ever watch Breaking Bad?”
“I’ve been out of the country,” Luke said tersely. His fingers drummed the steering wheel. “We should contain him. There’s got to be another point of entry in the back.”
Jack sighed. “I’m not leaving the vehicle. I won’t risk Kevin Simpson seeing the uniform and getting spooked. But you don’t report to me. If you want to circle around back and make sure he doesn’t go running across the fields after the sheriff’s deputies show up, I won’t stop you.”
• • •
LUKE POSITIONED HIMSELF with a view of the door in the cover of the falling-down shed, next to a rusting boat trailer with a tarp and no boat. Snakes below and spiders above, he bet. There was some kind of gray chemical slag pile that looked like Mordor, and an aluminum pot with the bottom burned out.
The smell was much worse back here.
He fished the bandanna from his pocket. He was tying the cloth over his nose and mouth when he heard the first vehicles approach. No sirens, thank God, but he saw rotating blue lights and flashing orange ones and then a long red ladder truck, its chrome gleaming in the sun.
Jesus. Must have been a slow day for law enforcement. They might as well have announced their arrival with a brass band.
Car doors slammed.
The back door burst open and Kevin Simpson bolted down the trailer steps holding a green two-liter soda bottle.
Luke stepped out of concealment, sweat under his arms and in the small of his back. Highly toxic, Jack had warned. Highly volatile.
Kevin skidded to a stop. The bottle slid from his hands. Hit the hard-packed ground. And exploded like an IED.
Flash. Boom.
Fuck. A ball of heat, a burst of flame.
Luke dropped. Debris rained down. Scalding toxic fumes rolled over the yard. He could hear Kevin screaming.
Voices shouted. Luke staggered to his feet, eyes swollen and streaming, and ripped the tarp from the trailer. The familiar, sickening stench of roasting flesh and singeing hair joined the putrid chemical stew. He heard sirens now, or maybe that was the ringing in his ears. His mouth tasted like metal.
On the ground, Kevin was burning, jerking, shrieking.
Luke ran toward the son of a bitch and threw the tarp over him, smothering the flames.
Twenty-one
SHE WAS WAITING for her man to come home.
Another first, Kate figured. She looked out the cottage window, where the sun was going down in a great orange ball, and felt an answering warmth radiate in her chest.
She’d never been willing to wait before. Growing up, she’d never known whether to anticipate her father’s homecomings with relief or dread. As an adult, she spent enough time at the mercy of the court. She didn’t need to sacrifice her personal time to someone else’s schedule or convenience.
It made a difference, she found, when you weren’t waiting alone.
Her lips curved into a smile. And when the man you were waiting for was Luke.
“Go faster, go faster!” Taylor yelled from in front of the Wii, now hooked up to the cottage TV.
The screen beeped, bleeped, revved and sparkled.
Josh groaned. “What’s with the banana?”
The two of them were playing Mario Kart. Kate had been playing Mario Kart, too, until she crashed off track for the billionth time. She was better at the dance game, where she understood the rules, where she wasn’t racing blindly into the unknown. But none of that mattered. She was part of the action. Not detached. Not merely an observer. She would rather be here than answering email, checking voice mail, writing court briefs in her empty apartment.
“What? Wait! No, no, no!”
“Shells to you, budd
y!”
Kate’s smile broadened as she listened to the kids’ trash talk. Evidence, she thought, that Taylor would be all right. A survivor. She would need counseling, of course. But supported by the Fletchers’ unconditional acceptance, she was already moving beyond her trauma, eager to embrace happiness, to accept love.
Could Kate do any less?
“Kindred spirits,” she murmured.
I’ll be home before dinner, Luke had said.
Maybe tonight they’d go to the Fish House. Or better still, she could have dinner waiting. She would cook. At least, she thought ruefully, she cooked better than she played Mario Kart. Maybe steak and a salad?
She opened the refrigerator. Eggs, milk, bread. No meat. No lettuce. She closed the door. “How do you guys feel about pizza?”
“Pizza? Yay!”
“Cool.”
Kate sighed in relief. See? She could do this.
Headlights arced across the glass.
Taylor scrambled from the floor. JD leaped up with a joyous bark. “Dad’s home!”
Kate’s heart beat faster. The door opened.
“Luke?” she whispered.
He looked . . . My God, he looked awful. Was he actually wearing scrubs? Baggy green pants and a too-tight top that exposed a V of dark blond hair. His beautiful blue eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.
Her pleased anticipation vanished in concern. “What happened to you?”
“Hey, babe.” He strode forward swiftly to give her a hard, brief kiss. “Sorry I’m late. I had to drop off Jack.”
She wanted to grab him and hold him, to reassure herself he was here, he was really all right. To inhale him, to breathe in the secret scent of his skin and hair. He smelled different, antiseptic and unfamiliar. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Her eyes narrowed. “‘They haven’t amputated yet’?”
His swift grin acknowledged her gibe.
“What happened to your clothes?” she asked.
“There was an accident. They gave me these at the hospital. But everything’s fine. Everything’s great.” He opened his arms to Taylor. She ran to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and he lifted her off the ground.
Carolina Man (A Dare Island Novel) Page 25
