Fortunately, he got nothing except the sensation of a woman who needed some support.
That was good. Because right now, he just wanted to offer her that support. “You obviously got under somebody’s skin,” he said, trying to contain the anger building inside him as he eyed the carnage visited on her cute little car.
Whoever it had been, he’d been pretty thorough given the short time frame and the public location. Aidan’s tall SUV had been the only thing hiding the vandal from the view of anyone else heading toward their cars either during or after the game. He’d not only snipped the valve stems on the tires, he’d gouged long scratches down the side and had smashed in the windshield.
“Okay, so sometimes it’s not so great to be hated,” she said, her heavy sigh hinting that her reaction was more resigned than enraged.
“Insured?”
She nodded.
“So you’ll deal. But do it tomorrow. Let me take you home.”
He steered her toward the passenger’s side of his SUV, not wanting to stand there doing a postmortem of the night that had led to this vandalism. Both because she had enough to think about, and because they needed to go. It wasn’t smart to stand under the overhead lights in a deserted parking lot where somebody filled with rage toward Lexie could be watching them.
She couldn’t take her eyes off her car. “This sucks. I just paid the thing off.”
“I know. But I assume you aren’t in the mood to call the police back out here tonight.”
“If I have to see Dunston’s smirky face as he pretends to give a damn, I might throw up.”
“Yeah. That is if he even shows up after having arranged for it to be done himself.”
Not surprised by his words, as if she’d already considered the possibility, Lexie allowed him to open the door and help her into the seat she’d vacated a few hours earlier. Joining her inside, he glanced over, seeing the weary tilt of her head and the way she rubbed her slim neck. She’d been so strong all day. Now she didn’t look so much weak as simply exhausted.
“Where do you live?”
She gave him the address, and he punched it into his GPS, being totally unfamiliar with the area. Maybe he needed to get out a little more. He’d certainly been given reason to today.
“I can give you directions,” she insisted.
“It’s okay. Just relax. Close your eyes. Let it all go for a couple of minutes.”
She sank deeper into the leather seat. “Mm. You have a nice voice, Aidan. Do you have a hypnotist act on the side?”
Laughing softly, he started the car and pulled out of the lot. “Not a chance. I’ve met too many hypnotists to even consider it.”
“You mean in your line of work?”
“Not exactly.” He shifted, not thrilled with the direction of the conversation, but not hung up about it, either. “A few of them tried to cure me of my ‘delusions’ when I was a kid.”
He didn’t have to look over to know she’d opened her eyes and was staring at him. “Oh.”
“They came on the scene after the religious wing nuts who tried driving out whatever demons must have taken over my body.”
She jerked upright. “Good God!”
“Whatever,” he said with a shrug. “Some people hear about psychics and see fraud. Some see magic. My parents saw demonic spirits.”
“They really held exorcisms?” she asked, sounding shocked.
“ ‘That’s those crazy papists,’ ” he said, quoting his father. “Southern Baptists hold prayer circles.” His tone dry, he added, “It was that or call the
National Enquirer
and make a fortune touting me as the half-alien mind-reading boy. And they’re just not the type.”
“Thought you didn’t read minds, alien-boy,” she said with a deliberate snicker, as if knowing they were skirting the edges of a difficult subject.
“I don’t,” he replied, smiling as well. “So feel free to think whatever you want about the bastard who trashed your car.”
“Huh. I don’t have to hide those thoughts. I’d be happy to share them, as long as you have a dictionary full of four-letter words to refer back to.”
“I’ve got a pretty extensive vocabulary.”
He didn’t blame her. A few choice words had entered his mind when he’d seen the car, too. Not all four-letter ones, though. At the top of his list was coward. Only somebody who had no guts would take such petty revenge on a woman who was just doing her job.
Though maybe the vandalism was something to be thankful for. It beat somebody taking a pair of scissors or a sharp object to the car’s owner. His hands tightened on the steering wheel at the thought of it, his stomach churning and a faint red haze appearing before his eyes.
“So,” she said, getting back to the fun topic of his whacked-out family, “the folks don’t like having a psychic for a son, huh? I can sympathize—my mom hates that I’m a reporter.”
Deadpan, he asked, “Why would she feel that way about such an
admirable
profession?”
She swatted him lightly in the upper arm. He didn’t even stiffen at the contact. Progress.
“She wanted college and a career for my brother. House and babies for me. Now he’s a trucker and lives in her basement, and I never married, moved away, and will never go back.”
“To?”
“Chester, Indiana, population twelve hundred.”
One-upping her, he said, “Freemont, Arkansas, population twelve. All of them members of my father’s congregation.”
“What a couple of big- city big-shots we are to have ended up in this metropolis.” She gestured out the window as they drove downtown. Sounding a little less amused, she added, “Though, of course, you are a newcomer, most recently of Savannah, as I recall.”
He stiffened reflexively.
“I’m not going to pry.”
“You already have, I assume?”
“Only through the public record.”
“And that’s always so reliable.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me your side of the story someday.” As if knowing where his mind immediately went, she clarified, “Off the record. Just like everything else.”
He nodded slowly. “Maybe.” Then, knowing he owed her one, he added, “I’m sorry I was so abrupt with you yesterday.”
“Career hazard.”
Perhaps, but she didn’t seem like the rest of the people in her career. Maybe it was just because of this one case, this particular story, but Lexie seemed bigger-hearted than most of her brethren. “You’re not supposed to get so personally involved with something like this, are you?” he asked. “You need to remain detached to do your job.”
“Hello, pot, I’m kettle,” she said, sounding tart. She obviously had been reading about him, had seen the truth lurking in his own history—Aidan had almost always become too personally involved with the cases on which he worked.
“Touché. But I’ve learned my lesson.”
“I hope not,” she murmured, gazing out the windshield at the oncoming headlights. “I mean, I hope you haven’t stopped caring about the people you’re trying to save.”
“You can’t save them all, kettle.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if cold, though the evening was balmy. “Maybe that’s why I so desperately want to save this one.”
“Vonnie?”
She nodded. Falling silent, as if considering whether she wanted to say more, she finally continued. “There was this girl who lived in the next town over from where I grew up.”
Ahh. He’d half wondered whether she had a story, something that drove her on, pushed her to do more than another person might in this situation. “Someone you knew?”
Shaking her head, she continued. “A few years older than me, but still in elementary school. She disappeared while riding her bike home from the park one day.”
He knew this sad tale. Or at least dozens like it.
“It was all any of the adults were talking about. Neighborhood watches started up. We weren’t allowed to walk to friends’ houses alone or go to the playground by ourselves anymore. Everybody was in a panic. My parents included.”
She hadn’t mentioned her father before, just her mother. But he didn’t want to interrupt by asking for more details than she was already providing.
“Who wouldn’t be?” He didn’t really expect an answer, the question was rhetorical. He had plenty of experience with hysterical parents. Discovering your child was missing was something one never got over. Caroline Remington certainly hadn’t.
He buried that memory, focusing on the here and now, not to mention the road. They were turning into what he assumed was her neighborhood and would be at her door momentarily. Soon she’d exit the car and he’d go home and maybe tomorrow they’d go back to being a little more formal, a bit more aloof. He wouldn’t be putting his hand on her shoulder and she wouldn’t be baring her soul about a bad childhood memory.
Which, for some reason, made him lift his foot ever so slightly off the gas pedal as they cruised slowly down the block. “So how did you react? What were you thinking?”
“I was afraid. It was all anybody talked about. I remember being terrified for months, having nightmares. Probably like every other seven-year-old girl in the area.”
Seven. Jesus. “Did they ever find her?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice thick. “Her body was found in a neighbor’s shed, rolled up in an old rug. Guy was a convicted sex offender; he’d killed her a few hours after taking her.”
Aidan wasn’t at all surprised. If parents knew just how close monsters like that were to their nice, normal homes and neighborhoods, they’d probably never let their kids out the door.
“Hell, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.”
He listened for the softly spoken instructions from the smooth, computerized voice on the GPS, which told him to turn into the next driveway. No more delaying. They had arrived at her small, one-story house on a quiet street with dozens of other homes that looked just like it.
Pulling up in front, he moved the gearshift to park, and waited. Lexie didn’t hop out right away, nor did he move to go around and open the door for her. As if they both just wanted to sit here in the darkness and talk for a few more minutes.
“There was one thing that always stuck with me,” she finally said. “A conversation I overheard one night when my parents thought I was asleep.”
He turned to look at her, noting the way the dash lights brought reddish highlights to her blond hair, which had tumbled out of its ponytail at some point today and now fell around her shoulders in soft waves. He’d found her pretty before; now, seeing the strength of her profile, the softness of her cheeks, the fullness of her lips, he acknowledged that she was, in truth, a beautiful woman. Her passion and drive only made her more so.
“My mother said it would have been better if they’d never found her. That knowing how awful her final hours were was too much for a parent to bear, and it would have been kinder for them to go on believing she was still alive somewhere, hoping they’d see her again someday.”
He’d heard the theory before. Didn’t agree with it, but he’d heard it.
“My father, though, felt the opposite. He said knowing the truth, and knowing she couldn’t ever be hurt again, would be better than going to bed every night for the rest of your life wondering if your child had just endured another endless day of brutalization and torment. With nothing but more days just like them ahead of her.”
He swallowed hard, having met people whose minds filled with that very thought every single time their heads touched the pillow. “Your father sounds like a smart guy.”
“He was,” she murmured.
Filing that tidbit away—that she’d been especially close to her father and he’d died—he said, “That’s why this is so personal to you, why you have to find them. Find
her
.”
“Yes, that’s why.” She finally lifted her gaze from her own clenched hands. “And I’m not going to give up until I do, whether Vonnie Jackson is alive or dead.”
He let the words sink in, noting her will and her determination. Aidan understood so much about her now. He already knew her relationship with her boss had a lot to do with the loss of her father, and her recklessness had probably come about from rebelling against her mother.
He also knew that every single day she waged a battle against men in power who wanted to control her, or men without it who wanted to hurt her—or merely objectify her. Lexie’s life was a constant balancing act as she tried to follow her conscience and do her job, despite obstacles and enemies. Every day she kept on going, kept fighting.
Knowing her, even for such a brief time, was suddenly making him question every choice he’d made in the past year. Because
she
could have run; she could have quit, could have given up. But she hadn’t. So what did that say about him?
“Okay, Lex,” he finally said, “we do this together.”
He knew she understood everything he was trying to convey. That he was with her, that he wasn’t giving up, either. That she was no longer alone.
She glanced over, her eyes gleaming, moist. He sensed the woman didn’t cry often—didn’t
allow
herself to cry often. Seeing the way her lashes fluttered and her lips quivered, he couldn’t help reaching out, giving her a bit of the human connection she seemed to need.
Aidan touched her in the darkness, brushing his fingertips against her soft cheek. He didn’t think about what it might cost him, how her thoughts and memories might later invade his consciousness. He merely thought of the now. Of her need. Of the attraction he’d felt for her from the start, which had built every minute since.
She hesitated for the briefest of seconds, as if knowing a touch was something he never offered lightly. Then she curled her face into his hand, and her soft hair fell over his wrist. Her warm exhalations flowed across his skin, her breaths deep and steady.
They remained still, motionless for one long moment. But he had the feeling it was one of those moments when everything changed.
Neither of them spoke, nor did they move closer, try to change or deepen the connection. This was enough. At least for now.
“Thank you,” she finally murmured, her lips brushing ever so lightly against the fleshy part of his palm before she lifted her head and stared at him.
“You’re welcome. Good night, Lexie.”