Reckless

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “No answer,” Jasper called to him.

  He didn’t know why he expected anything different. Just like he’d told Mia, unless the cops were calling the shots and directing the action, they wouldn’t welcome questions or “help” from outsiders. It had been worth a try.

  Without the database or the leads that only came in through the department, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. Crap, if it wasn’t for Karen slipping tidbits to him, he wouldn’t even have known Mia’s tail was legit.

  His phone vibrated and he looked to see a text from Karen.

  Crazy day today. Can’t break away. Want me to run by later?

  He texted back: Don’t worry about it. Just had some time on my hands.

  She responded: If ur sure…

  * * *

  Once he was back behind the wheel and headed toward Jess’s place, it occurred to him that he had begun to change his attitude about Dave. Even though every possible disgusting bit of evidence they uncovered only seemed to underscore the fact that the guy was seriously deficit—as a boyfriend, a friend and even a family member—Burton couldn’t help but realize he didn’t feel the same animosity that he had.

  Maybe he was seeing him through Mia’s eyes and maybe that was the problem.

  I need some distance and some perspective. It’s probably best for Mia to stay at her mother’s tonight. Tail gone or not, he thought, the best use of my time is to set up in a hidden vantage point and keep an eye on both of them. That way I can clear my head and keep them under surveillance at the same time.

  Satisfied with this plan, he swung into the drive-through of the nearest coffee shop to load up on coffee and sandwiches before heading back to Doraville.

  Talk about a gift from heaven! If anybody should be working this case with me, it’s Dave’s best friend. Plus he’ll be able to get us access to the police database and first-hand information—not rumor and gossip relayed via Burton’s gal pal.

  The wind had picked up as she walked down Peachtree Industrial—a four-lane highway that chugged north and south from the outer perimeter of Atlanta’s core to its hinterland suburbs. Because she hadn’t expected to be outside, Mia had left her jacket at Dave’s condo. She pulled her cotton cardigan around her, grateful at least that she was wearing jeans instead of a skirt.

  She was glad she hadn’t gone inside her mother’s house, because now Jess wouldn’t worry. As for Jack, well, the things he worried about weren’t her concern. If he’d spent more time respecting her opinions—her gifts—and less time trying to hold her back, she wouldn’t have to reach out to others.

  As soon as the convenience store came into sight, her phone rang. She glanced at the screen.

  “Hey, Heather,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself,” Heather said. “I’ve got about five calls from you on my voice mail. What’s up?”

  Relieved it wasn’t Keith calling to cancel, and now starting to feel the chill in the air, Mia hurried her pace to the store’s entrance. “Nothing really,” she said. “Just wanted to keep in touch. You fell off the grid there for a bit.”

  “Yeah, I must have had the flu or something.”

  Heather’s voice sounded slow and ponderous, as if she were very tired.

  “Sounds like you’re not quite over it.”

  “I don’t think I am. I’ve already missed two days of work.”

  “Well, I hope you feel better. You know you can call me if you just want to talk, right?”

  Heather’s voice seemed to perk up a bit. “Thanks, Mia,” she said. “I know Dave would like that.”

  After hanging up, Mia hurried into the warm interior of the convenience store. She only had a few dollars on her and hoped the Vietnamese owner wouldn’t give her too many dirty looks for loitering and not buying anything. Just when she was thinking that with luck, she wouldn’t have to wait too long, she saw Keith’s truck pull up in front of the store. She hurried out and climbed into the passenger’s seat.

  “Hi, beautiful,” he said as she buckled in. She couldn’t remember if he called all women that or just her, but she definitely didn’t care for the familiarity. Then she checked herself. She and Keith were more alike than she and Jack. They both had a dog in this fight.

  They both loved Dave.

  “Thanks again, Keith,” she said, turning in her seat to face him. He was big in the chest with muscles in his arms that she could see defined through his thin cotton tee shirt. She was surprised he wasn’t cold without a jacket on, but he kept the truck heater pretty high. Dave always said he thought Keith had Indian blood in him. He had high cheek bones and jet black hair but his eyes were ice blue. She was pretty sure Indians had dark eyes.

  “No problem-o,” he said, backing the truck out of the parking lot.

  Mia felt a thread of unease work its way into her spine. Her hand clutched the car handle. Instantly, she felt a vibration of fear that nearly shook her hand.

  What is this all about? Maybe Keith used his truck to carry prisoners?

  But there was something else too. There was something about him that wasn’t the same as the earnest, caring voice she had spoken with on the phone. It was almost as if he had somehow…switched gears.

  “I got you a drink,” he said, nodding at the cup holder in the console that held two soft drink cups.

  Mia stared at the drinks. Her mind worked hard to override what her gut was telling her: Stay calm. Don’t jump to conclusions. The words fell empty inside her as every other sense she had screamed that she had made a very big, very stupid mistake by getting into Keith’s truck. Her eyes flickered to the few houses whipping by as they passed. He was accelerating and heading north. Away from the city.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s really too cold for an iced drink. But thanks.”

  “Oh, wrong answer, little sis,” Keith said, rummaging in the console. “That would have made things so much easier.”

  Mia had her seatbelt off and her hand on the door handle by the time he stabbed her in her thigh through her jeans with the hypodermic needle. She got the door open and saw the road flying by beneath her.

  “Crazy bitch!” Keith screamed. He grabbed her by her ponytail and jerked her away from the door. “Close it! Close the door!” He slammed her head against the dashboard, still holding onto the steering wheel with one hand.

  Her mouth gushing blood from where one of her teeth had opened up her lip, Mia flailed blindly for the door, the agony of terror stitching up her arm like fire on a lit fuse as she touched the handle and pulled it shut.

  He released her and began talking in a normal voice, but she couldn’t understand him, she couldn’t make out the words and when she tried to orient herself by bracing her hands against the dashboard, the whole world inside the truck began to spin before it faded to black oblivion.

  15

  There was something calming about sitting in the drive-through line of a Starbucks, Jack thought. You can’t go anywhere. You’re not required to try to move things along—because you can’t. You might as well just sit back and let it take the time it takes. That was so different from how he normally lived his life that he actually found a perverse pleasure in being trapped in the line.

  Amidst the enforced serenity, Jack noticed that there was a thin pulse of unease throbbing in his shoulders. Like a lot of cops, he didn’t automatically dismiss hunches or gut feelings.

  They’ve panned out too many times to ignore.

  Whatever it was, this feeling that something wasn’t right was constantly, unobtrusively in the background. Like the omnipresent hum of an air conditioning unit.

  When he paid for his stake-out munchies he glanced at his wristwatch. He’d been gone a little more than two hours. Mia didn’t have to answer her phone—and he fully expected she was still mad at him and wouldn’t—but he’d at least tell her what he was doing.

  He pulled into an alcove in the parking lot but before he could text Mia an incoming phone call filled his screen.

  Diane Burton
calling.

  He sighed and pushed Accept. Why not? Today was clearly his day to have every woman he ever cared about hate his guts. Bring it.

  “Hey, Diane,” he said into the phone, eyeing his double shot latté next to him.

  “Jack, I’m in trouble.”

  His hand froze midair as he reached for his drink. She did not sound like herself.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I need you, Jack,” she said, her voice a bare whimper. “I just need you for one night…to talk. I swear to God if you don’t come, I’ll kill myself.” She broke down in sobs.

  “Diane, Diane,” Burton said. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’ll come. Are you home?”

  Crap. Was she serious? Should he call 911?

  “You’ll come? Oh, Jack, I need you so desperately, I don’t think I can handle it. I swear to God, I don’t…” And the tears again.

  “I’m on my way, Diane. Do not, I repeat, do not do anything stupid. Do you hear me?”

  A sniffle from the other end of the phone. “Yes, Jack,” she said meekly.

  “Stay on the phone with me until I get there, do you hear me?” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the opposite direction of Doraville.

  “I’m so sorry to be so much trouble…”

  “You’re not any trouble at all. I’m glad you called,” Burton said as he nicked the tail end of the yellow light and sped through the red to merge onto I-285. It was before rush hour but it was still packed and the flow of traffic was well over seventy miles an hour.

  Suited him just fine.

  “You still there, Diane? Stay with me, girl. Describe to me what you’re doing.”

  Had she ever struck him as the type who might do something like this? As long as he’d known her, had she ever even hinted at being suicidal?

  “I’m sitting here at the dining room table, the one you made for us when we were first married, and drinking wine. I’m drinking as much wine as I can drink.” She broke down into incoherent tears again.

  “All right, sweetie, well, save some of that wine for me, okay? I’ll be there in less than five minutes. Drink water until I get there. Better yet, don’t go into the kitchen at all. Just sit tight.”

  “I’m so sorry about what I did, Jack. So, so, so sorry.”

  “What did you do, Diane?”

  “With Tommy.”

  Tommy?

  “Tommy, our lawn boy. I have no idea what came over me. I was possessed is all I can say. He was so sweet and kind and I…and I…oh, I just want to die! I threw away my life. I threw it all away and now I just want to die!”

  “Stop talking like that, Diane. You hear me? It would break my heart and you don’t want to do that to me, do you? Do you?”

  “Would…would it really, Jack? Oh, my God, would you really care?”

  Was this all bull? Was she really suicidal or was he going to pull up and find her in a towel holding a martini glass?

  “I care enough to strangle you myself if you try to do something like that. I better not find any knives or crap like that when I get there. Just you and me, right, Diane?”

  “Oh, Jack, you don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

  He arrived five minutes later, slamming the car into park and bolting into her house—a twenty-year old traditional on a quiet Dunwoody street. Why she would choose to surround herself with tennis wives and families after they split up was a mystery to Jack. He was pretty sure, since he had to dodge four moms pushing strollers on the way here, that it probably had a hand in bringing about today’s hysterics.

  His assessment of her condition wasn’t exactly the towel and the martini glass, but neither did he think she was in any danger of killing herself. She met him at the front door and he opened his arms. She fell into them and when he closed his arms around her, she snaked her hands up to his face and neck in a lover’s embrace. He used the opportunity to break her grip by picking her up and carrying her into the house and putting her on the couch.

  “You sit,” he said. “I’ll make coffee.” When he spoke, his eyes fell on his Army Beretta M9 laying on the coffee table. He picked it up without a word and stuck it in the small of his back.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Jack,” Diane said. Her makeup was intact and while it’s true she wasn’t wearing sweat pants, in her jeans and wool pullover, neither did she look like she was expecting to seduce someone either.

  Once in the kitchen, he checked the gun. It was fully loaded with one in the chamber. Without emptying it, he returned it to his back belt and poured boiling water over instant coffee he’d scooped into two mugs. Glancing into the living room, he saw Diane was sitting quietly, waiting.

  He brought two coffee mugs back to the couch and sat down next to her. He handed her one.

  “We’re going to talk it out, Diane,” he said to her, wondering where in the hell he was channeling Oprah from. “And when you’re done. When you’ve said what you have to say, we’re going to be fine, you and me. Okay?”

  Diane held her coffee mug with both hands and sniffled. “But we’ll still be finished,” she said.

  He held her chin in his hand so she had to look at him. “We’re going to do this thing, Diane. Not so we can piece back together a broken, unhappy marriage but so we can both remember why we cared about each other.”

  “I love you, Jack.”

  “I love you, too, Diane. Okay? I always will.”

  She took a long sip of her coffee. “I’m sorry I called all hysterical and said I was going to kill myself.”

  “It’s my fault. We should have talked before now.”

  She looked at him with a faint hint of a smile on her lips. “You did kind of drive me to do it. And then blindsiding me at the coffee shop a couple of days ago...”

  “I know, I know. That was stupid and I’m sorry. Okay?” He patted her hand and put his coffee mug down. “But I have an important surveillance that I have to do tonight and if it was anything else I’d drop everything but there is a woman whose life is possibly in danger and now that I know that this woman’s life…” he touched her knee, “isn’t threatened, I can go attend to the other.”

  “So many people need you, Jack.”

  “I’m not blowing you off, Diane and I’m not leaving if I detect any hint that you’ll harm yourself if I go. But if you can handle it, I need to move this talk to another night when I can give it my all.”

  She nodded and wiped her tears from her face. “I’ll be okay, Jack,” she said. “Now that I know you’ll come back to me and we’ll talk it all out.”

  As he got up to leave, she grabbed his hand. “Jack, that thing I said to you when I was leaving the coffee shop.”

  “About you and Dave?”

  She nodded and looked at him and he realized she didn’t want to tell him but she also didn’t want any more lies between them. He hesitated and then took a long breath before he went to her and kissed her on top of her head. “It’s okay, Diane,” he said. “It’s over and done. Forget it. I have.”

  “He…he asked about you…when we were together.”

  The image of Dave came to mind and Burton worked hard to push it away. If he was going to forgive Diane, to get past what she did, he couldn’t do that remembering Dave, remembering why he hated him.

  Why did I hate him?

  As Diane stared up at him, her tears starting again, it suddenly occurred to Burton that sleeping with his wife aside—a crime Burton had been blissfully unaware of at the time—he still couldn’t put his finger on why he detested Kazmaroff.

  “What did he ask you about?”

  “Did I know why you hated him? He said he knew you did before he even opened his mouth so it wasn’t something he said or did…”

  I always hated him. That’s true. I hated him from the beginning. How could that be?

  Burton turned toward the door and when he did he spotted the framed photo on the mantel. A panoply of images came crashing through him as
visceral and real as his ex-wife sitting on the couch watching him. Images of his last stint in Iraq. With the guys. The guys who had been more like brothers to him than his own siblings. Ketchum, Davey, Marley, Fatso and Grub.

  And Beaner. The memory of the face of the young lieutenant from Boston came to Burton so swiftly that he felt his insides heave as if he were taking a ride too fast with too many sharp curves. He grabbed the back of the sofa to steady himself.

  “Jack? Are you okay?”

  Dear God how could he have erased that man from his memory? How is it possible to know someone for eighteen months, to live with them, laugh with them, care about them, love them—and then never call their faces or their names to mind for seven long years afterward?

  “Jack, you’re scaring me.”

  He turned and looked at Diane, the guilt and tears of her recent confession still wet on her face. Diane and Dave.

  Holy. Crap.

  His legs gave out and he sat down in the tub chair by the couch with a thump.

  Dave and Beaner. That was it. He stared at the photo. How could he not have realized the similarities before?

  Well, obviously on some level, he had.

  The two of them were peas in the same pod. Not in looks so much but definitely in manner and the way they carried themselves. Both were arrogant and cavalier, both blond, both too cocky for their own good.

  And in Beaner’s case—that would include every person in his platoon.

  “I have to go,” he rasped out to Diane. “I’m sorry.” He got to his feet and stumbled to the door. He could feel her right behind him.

  “Are you sure you’re alright to drive, Jack? Was it something I said? I don’t know why I had that old gun out. I wouldn’t have used it.”

  “I know, Diane. And I’m fine.” He turned to her in the doorway. “I meant everything I said. We’re going to come out the other side as friends. Okay?” He touched her arm and rubbed it lightly. “Go to bed.”

  She smiled sadly at him and nodded. “Same old Jack,” she said. “Always giving orders.”