Bad to the Bone

by Debra Dixon

  “You’re not a cop,” she told him as she stepped past him. “You’re judge and jury, Sully. You like good and evil neatly labeled so you can hate the one and admire the other. Sad fact is, most people are both. You’ve got to take the bad with the good. Or you’ll end up with nothing at all.”

  Sully turned on his heel to stare after her. “How many fortune cookies did you have to go through to come up with that pithy little philosophy?”

  “Just a lot of bad years and one smart cookie—Madame Evangeline. The kid’s spooky with a deck of tarot cards. She nailed me. She sure as hell nailed you.” Jessie dragged open the screen door and got in one parting shot before she left him standing on the porch. “Of course, no one bats a thousand. Iris was a little vague about exactly what went wrong between you and your father. Night, Sully.”

  He blamed the cool night air for the gooseflesh and the prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck.

  At the scream Jessica’s eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright in bed, trying to orient herself. For a moment she thought the nightmare had awakened her. The night was gone, but the room was still dim. It wasn’t Utopia, she realized; it was Jericho. This was Sully’s room.

  As she sucked in air to settle her pulse, the sound came again. It was an eerie muffled half cry, half wail. Not the nightmare scream at all, but disturbing—

  Iris.

  Flinging the covers off, Jessica hit the door at a run. The living room was empty. The spare room door was closed, and Jessica held her breath as she opened it. Dammit! Iris wasn’t in the bed.

  Surely they didn’t find us already. Surely they wouldn’t take a little girl just to get some leverage. Would they? Of course they would.

  Heart in her throat, Jessica sprinted toward the screen door. “Iris!”

  “Whoa!” Sully grabbed her as he rounded the corner of the kitchen and hauled her back by her arm. “What’s the rush?”

  “Sully! Something’s wrong.” She tried to drag her elbow away from his grasp. “I heard someone crying, and now I can’t find Iris.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Settle down. She’s on the beach.” He held a mug dripping sloshed coffee away from him. “I just came back in for a refill. You probably heard the gull.”

  “A gull?” All the air whooshed out of Jessica, deflating her terror.

  “I’ve got a crazy one nesting underneath the house.” Sully let her arm go. “She’s got a real nasty cry if you aren’t used to it.”

  “It was a bird? My stomach is in a knot, my heart is in my throat, and it was a bird?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  She took the cup of coffee out of Sully’s hand and downed half of it before she’d made it out the door. The caffeine began to calm the shakes which came from trying to operate on four hours of sleep. The normal sounds of non-crazy gulls and terns blew away the last of the fear and cobwebs. Still, her heart constricted when a small figure walking in the surf turned to wave at her.

  If anything had happened to Iris.…

  Sully watched Jessie’s knees give out, and she sat down abruptly on the porch steps. Last night’s break-in had obviously scared her more than she let show. Layers and layers, Sully reminded himself.

  Her shirt and bra had been gone last night when he went back in the house. But this morning she still had on his shirt; she hadn’t changed except to add the leggings. Sully was swamped by a feeling of intimacy. Jessie had invaded his life without trying. She occupied his dreams, slept in his bed. Now, she sat on his porch, drinking his coffee from his mug and wearing his shirt.

  Had it been any other woman, he would have been itching to pack her into a car and wave good-bye.

  The part of himself he’d been trying to deny since he made love to Jessie admitted that he wanted her here. He wanted simple intimacies like the scent of Jessie on his sheets and the smile she hardly ever gave to anyone. He wanted that smile to belong to him. He wanted Jessie to belong to him.

  She already does.

  Only her body, Sully reminded himself, the memory still fresh and sharp in his mind. He actually had to close his eyes against the wave of desire that swept through him. Great sex wasn’t enough. They both knew that. There were still secrets between them—his, hers. The longer Jessie stayed, the harder it would be to give her up.

  Coming to sit beside her, Sully clasped his hands between his knees and stared out at Iris. Jessie had scooted over to give him more room, but her eyes never wavered from Iris, as if she were a nervous mother hen watching out for her baby chick.

  Jessie, girl, it’s all about Iris for you, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. Whatever you’re doing is because of her. Why can’t you tell me? Why is this kid’s trouble like a mission for you? You almost got killed over her.

  “That’s an easy kid to get attached to,” he noted as Iris stopped combing the beach and tried a few back bends.

  “I guess she is.” Jessie looked away from the girl and studied her coffee. “If you’re the type to get attached.”

  “You’re the type all right. You killed a man for her,” Sully reminded her quietly.

  Her hands tightened on the mug, and she pressed her lips together. He hadn’t meant to bring that subject up so bluntly, but now that he had, it was just as well. Pretending didn’t make the facts go away.

  “Jessie, the two of you have to go down and sign formal statements today. You think she’s up to it?”

  She shook her head as Iris started up the sandy slope to the house. “I think she’s been through all the hell a kid can stand in the last forty-eight hours. Can we do it tomorrow?”

  “Probably. But I’ll still have to go in and talk to the chief. I have to tell him about Munro and the CIA taking over in Houston and hope he doesn’t fire me when I ask for some time off.” And then there’s the call I need to make to Utopia. “I need to be gone a couple of hours.”

  Jessica turned and really looked at Sully for the first time that morning. He hadn’t shaved, but he’d put on a T-shirt so wrinkled, it must have been in his dryer for days. Shadows of doubt shrouded his blue eyes, turning them gray and cloudy. Sully didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. Fair enough. She didn’t deserve his trust at the moment.

  Holding his gaze, she said, “And you want to know if we’ll be here when you get back.”

  “Yeah. Make me a promise.”

  “You pay attention,” Jessica whispered.

  “To everything you have ever said. Or done. Make me a promise, Jessie.” He lifted the coffee mug out of her hand. “You said you didn’t break promises. I want you here when I get back.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered heavily, angrily, as if unwilling to examine the future. “Deflowering virgins and bending the law are new experiences for me. So excuse me, darlin’, if I don’t have a copy of the playbook.”

  “Which of the two do you hate more?” Jessie asked before she could stop herself. She knew the answer, but something inside her wanted to hear him admit that last night shook him as much as it did her.

  “I hate that you picked the wrong man.” He downed the last of the coffee. “Make me a promise, Jessie, or the two of you go with me.”

  “We’ll stay tonight, Sully, but Iris needs to check the phone messages. You and I know her dad won’t have called, but I’m not telling her that. And I need to get my rental car. I don’t want to leave it there,” she lied to cover the fact that she had to have transportation that night. “My insurance’ll go through the roof if anything happens to it.”

  Sully laughed in disbelief. “With everything else going on, you’re worried about insurance premiums? Lord, Jessie, no wonder you have that streak of white in your hair. It’s from all that constant worrying.”

  Iris wandered up in time to hear his comments. “Virgos are natural worriers.”

  “I never told you my birthday. How’d you know my sign?” Jessica asked, startled.

  “Oh, I’m good at astrology. It’
s a gift.” Iris was smiling a little. “I can always tell someone’s zodiac sign. Sully’s a Leo. His roar is worse than his bite.”

  “The only gift you have, Goldilocks,” Sully told her as he got up, “is curiosity, which leads to poking around in other people’s business and reading refrigerator magnets.”

  The tricky part for Sully hadn’t been handling the chief or getting the time off. Munro carried a big stick in Jericho. His money had paid for any number of improvement projects. So sticking close to Iris was easy to sell from a public relations standpoint. If and when Munro was found, the chief was certain he’d be grateful for all the courtesies extended his only daughter.

  Calling Utopia and convincing their police chief that probable cause existed to search Jessica Daniels’s residence was the tricky part. Sully mentioned Munro’s disappearance, implying that Jessie was one of a number of potential suspects they were attempting to weed through. Of course he could get a warrant, Sully offered, but they weren’t looking for specific physical evidence, just background information—a place to start their investigations. The lady wasn’t talking. She was hiding something, and it made her look mighty guilty.

  Since yesterday John Fields, the Utopia chief, had already managed to find out she’d paid cash for the land and had no visible source of income. He’d met Jessie once or twice and liked her. She was quiet. Her local bank account showed a sizable direct deposit each month from some New York bank account. He couldn’t imagine her being involved in anything like this. Sure, John agreed, he’d check the residence and phone back.

  So, now Sully waited. His “couple of hours” stretched to three before the call came.

  “What’d you find, John?” Sully asked as he closed the door of the small office he shared with the other Jericho detective.

  “Well, you were right. Ms. Daniels is hiding something all right, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the mess you got over there in Jericho. Her last name’s not Daniels.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “This will. We found some old high school yearbooks, and a family scrapbook. She’s Jessica Dannemora. Guess she couldn’t bear to part with everything. Couldn’t bear to be who she was either, so she changed her name.”

  Jessica Dannemora. Sully tried to make some kind of connection to the name and couldn’t. “That’s all? She’s living under an assumed name?”

  “Hell, you’re probably not old enough!” John exclaimed. “Lord, I guess it’s been fifteen years ago, maybe more. It was one of the biggest manhunts we ever had in Texas. Every county was beating the bushes when those little girls were kidnapped.”

  Sully closed his eyes as dread rumbled through his gut. He could feel the rage already coiling within him. He didn’t want to hear this. But he didn’t have a choice. He had opened Pandora’s box.

  Jessie, girl, this is what you don’t want anyone to know, isn’t it? Her comment about it being sixteen years too late for a guardian angel came back to him.

  What happened sixteen years ago?

  Puberty.

  Such a snappy answer. Such a horrible reality.

  “How old was she?” Sully asked.

  “Just short of their thirteenth birthday if I recall.”

  Iris’s age. No wonder Jessie came out of retirement.

  “You said, ‘girls.’ Sisters? Friends?” Sully wondered, eyes still shut as he leaned his forehead into the palm of his hand.

  “Twins. Identical twins. Jessie and Jenny. From up around Dallas-Fort Worth. Their bastard of a father wouldn’t agree to negotiate the ransom. He had more money than Midas, and he wouldn’t even pretend to pay so the FBI could set up a sting. Made us all sick. He insisted the bureau and local police do their jobs and find those girls. Like we weren’t trying. Can you imagine?”

  “No.” Sully thought he might be ill.

  “The kidnappers got a little pissed off.” John intentionally understated the situation. “According to Jessie, there were two of them. They killed Jenny, thought it might soften Dannemora up some. Of course, Jessie didn’t wait on her daddy to save her.”

  Go to bell, Sully. I don’t need knights or anyone else to rescue me. I take care of myself. I always have.

  “What happened?” Sully opened his eyes and braced himself.

  “She killed one of them. Stabbed him and got away. That kid had to have some kind of courage.” John exhaled a breath of admiration. “They kept the girls together for almost two weeks in a dark basement. Windows were bricked in. The place was isolated. Jessie was in there another couple of weeks after they killed her twin.”

  I’m not very fond of the dark.

  The image of Jessie, alone and terrified, haunted him. He remembered leaving her in the driveway that night he’d wanted to turn around. Remembered leaving her after they made love. Never once did she ask him to stay. Jessie wouldn’t. Jessie didn’t expect anyone to come for her or to stay with her. She expected to be alone in the dark.

  A tingle crawled up Sully’s spine. She wouldn’t want or need his help in finding Phil Munro. She expected to do everything alone. He remembered the odd phone call from Texacon. The wheels were already in motion; he could feel it. And he’d been stupid enough to let her out of his sight this morning.

  That wouldn’t happen again.

  Sully had one more question. “What happened to the other kidnapper?”

  Sully didn’t take another easy breath until he saw the midnight-blue sedan parked in front of his house. The weight on his chest lifted as he realized she’d at least kept her promise. Until he noted that the car was parked on the street. Jessie was either a considerate house guest or she didn’t want her car blocked in. He grimly guessed the latter.

  What do you need your wheels for, Jessie? He had a guess about that too.

  The moment Sully got out of the car, an unexpected shriek of laughter caught his attention. Instead of going up the wooden steps in the front of his house, he traced the sound around to the beach. Stunned, he discovered the normally quiet Iris screaming with laughter and tearing back toward the waves, pursued by three kids, who had to be siblings.

  “Doesn’t look much like Iris, does it?” Jessie’s soft voice drifted down from the porch above.

  Her vigil didn’t surprise him. He assumed she’d be watching the girl like a hawk. In Jessie’s mind twelve-year-old girls needed protection. They got abducted and abandoned. Who could fault her logic?

  Sully loosened his tie and turned around, staggered as always by his physical reaction to her. Jessie was about as far from maternal as a woman could get. She had on a skimpy little sundress that floated around her body, barely covering the essentials. The late-afternoon sun slanted across her, revealing that she had next to nothing on beneath that dress.

  Clearing his throat, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s not the somber kid I left with you this morning. What happened?”

  “Kids on a beach. Doesn’t take long to make friends. Especially when you’re scared to death and desperately need to be normal for a while.”

  Yesterday he wouldn’t have noticed the empathy that underlay her casual explanation, or the hint of sadness in her eyes. Yesterday he didn’t know Jessie’s secret. Today it made all the difference in the world. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.” Jessie leaned against the post and carelessly slung her arms around it like it was an old lover. “The other kids saw her on the porch. Their mom came over. I liked her, and we agreed to take turns watching them.”

  “I don’t mean that.” Sully climbed the steps, waiting until he got to the top one before tugging the tie all the way off. Waiting until he was eye level with her before he asked, “What did you do when you needed to be normal for a while? How did you forget that you were Jessie Dannemora?”

  THIRTEEN

  Jessica recoiled as if he’d slapped her. The sting was hot and sharp and deeply felt. One by one Sully had managed to uncover her secrets, dragging them out like trophies. He
’d had to dig deep for this one. She should have realized a thorough cop like him with connections would figure out a way to get impossible information.

  Unless—Involuntarily she cut her eyes toward the beach and Iris. Sully spent time alone with her this morning.

  “Iris didn’t say anything,” he assured her, anticipating the unspoken question. “But I take it that she knows?”

  “The name. That’s all, I think. It was in that damned file.” Slowly recovering her composure, Jessica added, “I didn’t change my name to Daniels until after I started working for Phil. Dannemora was too recognizable.”

  “You sure that was the only reason you changed it?” His voice was so soft, so understanding that she wanted to scream.

  God, she couldn’t stand the sympathy in Sully’s eyes. She liked the anger better. She didn’t want pity, didn’t deserve pity. She was alive; Jenny was dead.

  “Sully, it’s the past. I’m not that little girl anymore. Let it go. It doesn’t concern us.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s the past, all right. That’s why you put your butt on a plane the minute Iris phoned you. It’s so much in the past that you still can’t stand the dark. You could have taken your name back when you retired, Jessie. But you didn’t. What happened to you is not safely tucked away in the past. Not by a long shot!”

  “What difference does it make? So, you know my real name? What does that change? How does that make things different? How?” She flung the questions at him like rapid-fire challenges, without giving him time to answer.

  Part of her wanted to believe that she was more than a quarry to him, but the practical part of her believed Iris. Sully was a hunter seeking prey. Pursuing the truth was what he did; he couldn’t help himself. Sully didn’t care. He wouldn’t let himself care. God forbid there should be a chink in his armor.

  “Hey, Sully! Look!” Iris called, snapping the tension in the air. “I’ve got friends! I told them you were a cop. They didn’t know that. They didn’t even know you lived here. Don’t you ever go out on the beach?”

  They came pelting up—three redheads and Iris, all wearing the official beach uniform of an oversize T-shirt on top of a bathing suit. The new kids’ eyes widened respectfully at the sight of Sully. They started at the toes of his cowboy boots and worked their way up in awe. The fact that he was standing above them only added to the impression that he was a mountain.