After they were in her car so she could drive him back to the plaza to get his own vehicle, she turned to look at him.
“It might be a dumb idea, but I thought earlier, before I saw Stan and the others, that I’d drive by Stan’s house, just pretend I was sightseeing around the area if anyone spotted me. I’d like to do it now, with you along, if that’s okay.”
“Sure it is,” he said. “And it’s not a dumb idea. I’ve been by there, but you can give me more information about the location that I may be able to use. Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
The drive to, and through, the lovely residential neighborhood about two miles from downtown was familiar to Kelly.
Boy, was it.
She had lived nearby, too, in an area closer to the school where she—Shereen—had been a fourth-grade teacher. But she had visited Andi, her husband and her son often at their much more affluent home.
She had wanted, intended, to come by here from the moment she set foot back in town, but she had been afraid to.
She wasn’t afraid of Stan or of being seen here, but of what her emotions would do.
That was a major reason she had invited Alan to join her. He was an outsider to the situation as well as someone on her side, someone she could rely on.
A rock, when she was having a hard time controlling her emotions.
“So you lived in this neighborhood, too?” Alan peered out the windshield toward the nearest of the large homes. It had white stucco walls and multiple archways beneath its peaked roof, as did others along this street, although their exterior colors varied.
Andi’s, Stan’s and Eli’s—no, just Stan’s and Eli’s now—was an attractive beige, just one block away now, on Guilder Street.
“On its fringes,” she told Alan. “My salary as a teacher certainly beat what I’m getting now, but it didn’t compare with a city councilman and real estate agent combined.” She paused, then added, “Not to mention the additional income I’m fairly sure Stan receives from bribes and other under-the-table deals.”
She hadn’t visited the area of her former apartment, not even to drive by and check it out. She’d been nearly run over there—more than once.
She had no interest in seeing it again.
The roads here were fairly straight, wide enough for two-way traffic and for people to park at the curbs. The sidewalks were lined with trees, mostly pines.
Oh, yes, this area was delightful. Or at least that was the way she had once regarded it.
She reached the block where Stan and Eli still lived. She had checked a public records website, and fortunately the information was there. The trees still stood like tall sentries.
Kelly realized she was holding her breath. She was anticipating something that could never happen again.
She visualized Andi on the front porch, using her tablet to go over the latest real estate listings in the area.
Unless...no, if Andi were alive somewhere, she would have contacted Shereen long before now. She had always been a wonderful, thoughtful, kind big sister.
Kelly had been driving slowly but now reduced her speed even more. Many parking spaces on both sides of the street were filled, but at the moment they were the only car on the road. She saw gardeners at a couple of houses, but no one outside who appeared to be a resident.
Then there they were, right outside the Grodon home.
No one was on the porch, although the nice metal outdoor furniture she remembered was still there. No one was in the yard, either. Not Andi, and not even Eli.
Was her nephew inside? Maybe. It was, after all, a Sunday evening. If only she could reach out to him mentally, get him to dash out the front door and...
“Are you okay?” Alan’s voice drew her abruptly back to reality.
“More or less,” she said, hearing the catch in her tone. She sounded as if she was about to cry.
She felt like she was about to cry, too.
“Sounds like less to me. Keep on going, and I’ll take over the driving once we’re on another block out of sight of this place.” He didn’t ask her okay on that, but it sounded good to her. She could still concentrate on driving, but tears had started flowing slowly down her face, so she wasn’t sure how safe she’d be.
“Okay,” she rasped.
She continued driving for another couple of blocks, going just a bit faster than before. She pulled down a side street. After parking, she went around to the passenger seat, and in a minute, Alan was the one driving. But when they left the residential neighborhood he turned in the opposite direction from downtown.
“We need to take you to your car,” she said.
“Not now. In the morning. Right now, you’re coming home with me.”
She felt shocked—but at the same time, relieved. She wouldn’t be alone.
And yet, the last two nights they had been together, the closeness they had engaged in...it was amazing and delightful...well, she didn’t want to even think about that now. Or at least not much.
“I appreciate that,” she began, “but—”
“Don’t worry. I won’t touch you. I just think some company is in order tonight. We can play video games or watch movies if you want. But you’re staying with me.”
* * *
Alan pulled Kelly’s car into the driveway at the front of his triplex unit and parked. She exited and just stood there looking up at his place. She was wearing an attractive blue dress, and her curly brown hair framed her face that was as beautiful as always, despite its pallor this day.
“Very nice,” she said. He tried to view his home from her perspective, both in her past life as Shereen, and now as Kelly.
“Thanks,” he responded, realizing, after seeing where Shereen’s family lived, that this area was nice but impersonal, where people who were employed with good jobs rented without necessarily intending to stay very long. Then there was Kelly’s apartment in the part of town where people probably aspired to those kinds of jobs and relocation to a place like this.
He took her hand and led her to the front door, up a slight rise that held a drought-tolerant garden with pebbles as a base and a few cacti and similar plants. He unlocked the door and motioned for her to enter first.
He tried to see his entry hall from her perspective. It was somewhat elegant, with an antique mirror hung across from the door so he could watch himself—and anyone else—coming in. There were two doorways. One led into the moderate-sized living room on this floor. The other led to the hall from which the stairway to the top two stories rose, and also to the kitchen and a back door to the tiny, fenced backyard.
It worked for the person he had to be here in Blue Haven.
“Very nice,” Kelly said as, holding her hand once more, he led her into the living room. There, he sat down beside her on the beige sectional couch that faced the one thing he had bought here for his own use: a large, wall-mounted television. There was a low coffee table in front of the couch and not much else in this room.
He’d originally planned to try to divert Kelly’s attention from what she had seen, what she had remembered, on her sorrowful trip down memory lane in that other area of Blue Haven. Now, though, he looked into her sad brown eyes, which glimmered with unshed tears.
“Wait here and I’ll get you some wine,” he said.
“I’ll come with you. I’d like to see your kitchen, too.”
He wouldn’t argue with that. He led her down the other hallway, then observed how she looked out the window into what passed as his tiny backyard while he poured their wine into round-bottomed glasses without stems. He handed one to her. “Let’s go back to the living room, okay?”
“Sure.”
She was being much too pliant for the Kelly he had come to know. That worried him. Made him feel sad, too—enough that he knew he had to do something.
Watching the news or even some kind of sitcom on TV wouldn’t do it. Nor would a video game.
No, she needed some kind of catharsis, although it was un
doubtedly premature since they’d had no results so far.
But even though complete mental relief might not be achievable, he might be able to help her take a step in the right direction.
Once she was settled on one end of the couch, her wineglass clutched in her right hand and her eyes staring down at it, Alan said, “Tell me about her, Kelly. No, both of them. Tell me some of the good things you remember about your sister and Eli. And then we can talk some more about how to move forward.”
* * *
This was the last thing Kelly had anticipated.
Not that both of her dearest relatives weren’t always on her mind. But talk about them? About all she was missing?
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said softly, then added, “but I’ll try.”
She started way back, how she and Andi had been raised by their parents in Long Beach. “She was always a really nice big sister, protective of me if anyone started hassling me—even our parents.”
She said that both her mother and father had been schoolteachers, which was what inspired her career, although both taught middle grades, not elementary.
“They both had tempers, but apparently saved any temper tantrums to level at us when they got home.” Kelly smiled, despite the fact that it wasn’t her fondest memory of them.
Andi had been six years older than her and had left town to get her degree in business while Kelly remained at home. That was where she had met Stan, who was also studying business. “He seemed an okay guy then.” Kelly shook her head. “Unlike now.”
Then she had to describe the first time her life fell apart. “Our parents were killed in a car crash not long after Andi married Stan. I used my inheritance to get a teaching degree, and when I graduated I just couldn’t return to Long Beach, so I moved to Blue Haven to be with my sister, who welcomed me.”
That was around the time Stan’s interest in politics was born—and so was Eli.
Kelly had told these basics to Judge Treena’s identity team, but the only part she had gone into detail about was how things had started deteriorating after that.
“I loved Eli from the moment he was born.” Kelly choked on her words, or maybe it was the tears that had started falling down her cheeks. “I babysat him every moment I could, spent time in their house even though I’d rented my own apartment after landing my teaching job. Stan wasn’t particularly discreet about how he treated Andi, essentially taking an entirely outdated position that, since he was the man, he was in charge. Andi loved him, though, and sometimes laughed at his nastiness and gave him big kisses even when I was there, to get him to back down.” She paused, closing her eyes. “But her laughing it off stopped working after Stan won his first election to city council. Then he made it clear he really did consider himself the boss of the family. That was also when he apparently decided that he was above the law and could accept bribes or whatever he chose to do. That’s when their real arguments started. Their face-off about the real estate deal and Andi’s attempt to sell property to the same federal agency as one of Stan’s donors...”
Kelly choked up and couldn’t continue. Not then, even though Alan had moved so he now sat right beside her on the sofa, his arm around her. She lay her head on his shoulder, swallowing her sobs.
“Eli grew up in the middle of all this. He—he saw his parents fight, even more than our parents had. I took him out for dinner and to the park and everywhere I could to try to protect him. He was like my own child. Then—then his mother disappeared. And after that, I had to disappear on him, too, to stay alive.”
She couldn’t talk anymore, not then. Alan, who had remained silent but shot encouraging and sympathetic glances her way, now held her close as she cried her heart out.
“I’m very sorry, Shereen,” he said, using her real name, which was appropriate but made her cry all the more. “I can’t fix everything, but you can be sure I’ll do everything to make sure that Stan pays for what he did, and that you get to help Eli from now on.”
* * *
So many times during Kelly’s story, Alan had an urge to kiss her into silence. It was painful even to listen to her, and he regretted making her talk about it.
Would recalling everything help or hurt her? He hoped the former, but that remained to be seen.
He’d asked it of her because he thought it would ultimately help her to put the worst behind her. Now he felt her pain, as if it exited her skin and entered his body, just because he was holding her.
He cared for her. Too much, and not just because they were working together.
That meant he had to back off, physically as well as emotionally. She was still a colleague of sorts, one who failed to comply with the rules she had promised to follow. He understood it, but now fought his instinct not to buy into it.
He didn’t let her go, though. He buried his face in the softness of her hair, feeling its waves stroke his cheeks as she trembled while she cried. The scent was light and floral, and her nearness, the utter femininity of her body, made his own react—oh, so very inappropriately.
Maybe he should have just taken her to her apartment. That way he could have simply given her a final good-night hug and left.
Yeah, and feel even more like a heel.
“I’m sorry, Kelly,” he murmured against her head. “I thought this would help you, but instead—”
“It did,” she protested, pulling back a little until she was looking up into his eyes. Then she amended, “It will, at least. I’ve been trying not to think about it too much, but I always do. Now that you’ve been so kind to let me share it this way, I won’t feel nearly as bad about it. I hope.” She pulled back even farther, and those gorgeous brown eyes of hers suddenly appeared more fierce than sad. “We’re going to get him. We’re going to find Andi, learn what he did to her and put him away forever.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement, and it made him smile. Her return smile looked almost like a challenge, as if she dared him to contradict her.
Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. That was his job here, too.
It was also his goal because he wanted to do it, for Kelly’s sake. And because the miserable excuse for a man had also tried to kill her.
Without thinking, he bent his head to kiss that smile.
Kelly responded. Did she ever. Her kiss was as forceful as her expression had been. Her tongue reached out to engage his, as if they were dueling for who could exercise theirs most sensually.
He had an urge to touch her all over—using his tongue for some of it. But he had promised, when he said he would bring her here...
She was the one to start touching him as they remained on the couch. She rubbed his chest first, and then her hand traveled downward.
His erection was already thick and hard by then, and her grip outside his pants only enlarged it. He considered leading her upstairs, but why? His couch would be a perfectly good location for what he wanted to do to her. What he wanted them to do together.
He pulled away so he could stand up and draw her up in front of him. He hadn’t studied her dress from the perspective of getting it off before. Now he did, even as she started unbuttoning his shirt.
They were colleagues, collaborators, in this as much as anything else. Soon, they both were naked.
He looked at her lovely body even as he continued to stroke it. Fortunately, even though he had felt certain nothing like this would occur tonight, he had a condom in his wallet for emergencies—like this one. He bent to pull it out, and Kelly reached for it.
“Let me,” she rasped.
In moments, he was sheathed. And even hotter and more eager than he had been the last two nights they had been together.
“Please, Alan,” she breathed, and he soon was inside her—with the sole intention of pleasing her.
Chapter 18
Afterward, Kelly lay on the couch, Alan’s delightfully heavy weight on top of her.
She hadn’t intended this tonight. Well, she hadn’t started out int
ending to make love with him the other two nights, either, but this time she had wanted a respite.
Or so she’d believed.
“Am I squashing you?” he asked roughly into her ear.
“Probably, but it feels good.”
She liked the sound of his laugh. The feel of him on her. His company, and his sympathy.
Even so...
“Alan, this was wonderful. But...well, I still want to spend the rest of the night alone, at my place.”
She felt his whole body stiffen, and then he slid off her onto the floor. “I thought you wanted this, too. I certainly didn’t mean to—”
“I did want it. Or at least it felt really good, even though I hadn’t intended it. But I let myself spout all those emotions, then somehow must have thought I could wash them all away by shutting up and having sex with you. But everything is still there, inside me. As much as I enjoyed this, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I think I’d better just go home.”
As if she had a real home to go to. But she did have the apartment she rented here, where she could be alone.
And rehash everything she had talked about all over again...the idea felt horrible. But it was all there, no matter what she did. And if she stayed here, she might start talking once more—and she wouldn’t allow herself to discuss it any further.
Plus, as wonderful as the sexual encounter with Alan had been, if she stayed, they might do it again. And she just couldn’t right now, not if she wanted to remain sane. Or at least as sane as Kelly Ladd could possibly be.
“If that’s what you really want,” Alan said. She was about to insist when he continued. “But what I really want is to try to help you through this night, not by touching you again, or having more sex, but just by holding you. Being there for you. Could we give that a try? If it doesn’t feel right to you, you can tell me anytime and I will take you back to your place, work out the car situation in the morning, whatever you want.”
That sounded so heavenly. So perfect. She would have caring company with no strings attached. Someone who would be there for her this night in case her thoughts returned to the bad stuff and she began crying again.
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