He held up a strong hand, stopping her with a gesture. “I don’t want to hear about any of the others. Stick with Vonnie Jackson.”
Swallowing, not allowing herself to be intimidated, she did as he asked. “She’s an incredibly smart girl. Ivy League smart. She transferred to GHS this year because she’d already gone through every advanced class she could get down at Hoover.”
He lifted a curious brow.
“Hoover is the other local high school, filled mostly with kids from the Boro. The principal apparently hasn’t noticed his student body has been shrinking.” Still seeing his confusion, she realized he hadn’t spent much of the past year getting to know the place in which he now lived. “The Boro is what they call the area just south of Woodsboro Avenue. Granville’s wrong side of the tracks. That’s where all the girls . . .” She cleared her throat. “That’s where Vonnie lives.”
“I see.”
“From what I hear, the cops haven’t been over to GHS to talk to anyone, so they could be trying to sweep this one under the rug, too. Or they might be keeping their heads buried in the sand.”
“Something the police are often very good at,” he muttered.
Remembering some of the comments made about him by a few of Savannah’s finest, she understood his dislike. She also suspected it was extremely mutual.
“But it’s not going to be as easy this time.” She ticked off a few pertinent facts, which had convinced her this girl was no wanderer, no vagrant, as the chief had made the others out to be. “Vonnie is well liked and highly thought of. She was sixty points shy of a perfect SAT score, and already has a bunch of scholarship offers. She’s not somebody they can write off as just another no- good runaway like the other victims.”
“Just. Vonnie. Jackson,” he said tightly, as if slicing off the words from between clenched teeth.
Yeesh. The man obviously did not want to be having this conversation. Which meant she was going to have to interest him a little more in what was going on in his new hometown. But despite having been accused of sometimes having the tact of a double-barrel shotgun, she did know how to work a story, build it to the high point.
“Okay, Vonnie. She’s an only child, not a bad word said about her by anyone. Definitely one of those kids who overcame a rough childhood—the mother has a record of drug abuse and prostitution and lost custody for a year when Vonnie was in elementary school.”
“Where’d she end up?”
“Foster home.”
“Father?”
“Whoever he is, he has never been a part of her life.”
He didn’t appear particularly surprised. Nor did he ask more questions, as if knowing she wouldn’t stay quiet for long.
Lexie pulled a pad of paper out of her backpack, glancing at the notes she’d taken while doing research on the missing teenager all day. “She doesn’t party, rarely dates, hasn’t had a serious boyfriend since last year.”
“The ex-boyfriend . . .”
She cut him off, knowing where he was headed. “According to one of her friends, that breakup was mutual and pretty friendly, as far as teenage romances go.”
His frown deepened. “Continue.”
“Her records don’t show a single disciplinary mark at any school. In the short time she’s been at Granville High, she’s already become active in the drama program and in the debate team.” She flipped the page and continued. “She worked at a restaurant downtown. A place called—”
“Ranger Joe’s Wings and Things,” he murmured. Surprised, she felt her jaw fall open, wondering how on earth he could have known that. The information certainly hadn’t been on the flyer she’d left.
For the first time, McConnell’s stern mouth softened with what might have been amusement, although it had a long way to go before it could actually be called a smile. “No, Ms. Nolan, I didn’t read your mind.”
“Lexie,” she automatically murmured.
“Lexie?” He swept an assessing stare at her, top to bottom, with those piercing, knowing eyes. “I don’t like it. That’s a little girl’s name; it doesn’t suit you.”
“Gee, thanks. Why don’t you go ahead and read my mind this time and see how appreciative I am that you pointed that out?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he crossed his arms, leaning one hip against the over-laden desk that looked like it could double as a two-person life raft. “You misunderstood.”
Didn’t seem like there was much to misunderstand about his saying her name was stupid.
“I don’t
read
minds at all.”
She should have known he wasn’t apologizing for the name crack.
“Now, as I was saying, Ms. Nolan, I know Vonnie Jackson worked at Ranger Joe’s because she waited on me when I ate there with some friends a few weeks ago.”
Huh. The abrasive, snarly guy, who’d just insulted her nickname—which her father had bestowed on her when she had been, okay, a little girl—actually went out in public on occasion. With other people. Guess anything was possible.
“Yes, even shut-ins get out to a restaurant once in a while,” he said dryly, again as if he could look into her head and see her thoughts.
She shrugged, then, always blunt, couldn’t help adding, “Frankly, I was thinking how strange it is that you actually have friends.”
His dreamy, mesmerizing eyes widened; then a bark of laughter emerged from those tightly compressed lips. His face softened, a year of resentment and mistrust disappearing in an instant. This was the Aidan McConnell whose picture she’d seen in a couple of old online articles—the one who hadn’t yet been lynched in print. Suddenly, instead of a handsome, stern, forbidding man, she saw a very sexy, mysterious young one. A goodhumored guy who didn’t mind being the butt of a snarky joke.
The change was pretty remarkable. Not to mention distracting. It made her wish, for a moment, that she’d met Aidan McConnell before last year.
“Do you have a filter, Ms. Nolan?” he asked, shaking his head and staring at her in surprise. “Any kind of off switch between brain and mouth?”
“Do you have an
on
switch?” she countered. “Any button that allows you to drop the tough, reclusive, mystery man act and become human?”
“I think you might have just pushed it,” he admitted with one more amused chuckle.
“I push your buttons, huh?”
“Guess that’s in your job description.”
The last remnants of laughter quickly faded, as did the smile. That was good. She didn’t need distractions, especially not sexy male ones. Not now when she might again have a crack at the biggest story this town had ever heard. Not when there was still a chance for Vonnie.
Suddenly realizing the implication of what he’d said, she prodded, “So you already know Vonnie. That’s why you invited me back in here.”
“I don’t actually know her,” he clarified. “She simply brought food and drinks to the table at which I was sitting.” He breathed in deeply, then slowly exhaled. “Her fingers brushed against mine when she handed me a beer.”
That apparently meant something to the man, though Lexie didn’t understand why he seemed so bothered by it.
He turned his back to her, walking over to the expensive-looking leather couch and sat down. Tapping the smooth top of a coffee table—obviously a refurbished antique, like most of the other furniture she’d spied since entering—he said, “The flyer, please?”
She glanced around for the sheet she’d given him, didn’t see it, then dropped the one she was holding onto the table in front of him. “That’s her senior picture,” she murmured.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied the paper. “Her birthday’s tomorrow,” he said, obviously focusing in on the details, including the date of birth, listed below the photo. “Eighteen.”
“Yes. Hell of a way to spend your eighteenth birthday.”
He ignored her, apparently having been talking to himself. “I don’t suppose they make their own desserts in that restaurant where she works.”
“At Ranger Joe’s? Yeah, right. Only if unwrapping a Ring Ding or a Twinkie and dumping it on a chipped plate counts as
making
them.”
He muttered something under his breath, something about bread.
“I somehow doubt they bake their own bread, either.”
“I was talking about gingerbread,” he muttered, though he didn’t explain.
“Unless Sara Lee makes it and the Piggly Wiggly sells it, I’d say that’s a definite no.”
Falling silent again, he continued to study Yvonne Jackson’s grainy photograph. The man went still, though his posture wasn’t stiff and angry. It was strange, the intensity of his pose. He didn’t glow, his eyes didn’t roll back in his head, nor did he start speaking in tongues. This was no psychic trance, just the focused concentration of someone able to lose all sense of time and place and disappear deep into his own thoughts.
At least, she didn’t think he was doing his seeing-visions thing. She’d read a lot about the cases he’d worked on, but none of the interviews or articles she’d read talked about exactly
how
he did what he did. She somehow suspected his shtick had to involve touch—mainly because he hadn’t touched that sheet of paper, nor had he extended his hand to her in greeting. She got the feeling reaching out and shaking hands wasn’t something that came naturally to him. Plus, he was sitting on the far end of the couch, as if making sure they would not be too close should he ever get courteous enough to invite her to sit down.
Touch
. He’d mentioned his fingers and Vonnie’s had touched.
Lexie sucked in a breath, understanding his worry. He’d touched her, and suspected he might be able to help find the missing girl. He just didn’t know that he was willing to.
Well, she didn’t have time to watch him decide what to do. Thinking about the case was all well and good, but the clock was ticking. She wanted to have a few answers—or at least some better questions—by the time she saw Walter again tomorrow.
Besides, long, introspective silences weren’t exactly her thing.
To hell with it
. Without invitation, she sat down beside him, though she did maintain his personal bubble by a good ten inches, at least. That was probably for her own sake, as well as his. Aidan McConnell was too mysterious, too interesting—too attractive—for her own good. She didn’t need to get any closer; that would only tempt her to accidentally-on-purpose brush against him, just to see what happened, what made him tick. And, she had to admit, to see if her skin tingled in utter electric excitement when it touched his. Not because of what he did, but because of the sheer sexiness of the man.
He didn’t glare her away or growl in frustration that she’d interrupted him, so Lexie pointed to the home address printed beneath Vonnie’s photograph. “That’s a particularly bad block she comes from. I went over there today, trying to track down her mother, but a neighbor said she’s been hitting the bars all week, day and night, and hasn’t been home much.”
“Drowning her sorrows, drinking away her grief and worry, I presume,” he said, a hint of dry sarcasm in that deep voice.
“Guess so,” she said, noting that he’d already formed the same impression she had. “From the sound of it, when the woman finally figured out her daughter hadn’t made it home, and went to the school to look for her, she seemed more interested in threatening lawsuits than finding her child.”
“Mother of the year.”
“Exactly. I suppose it’s no wonder Vonnie worked so hard to do well in school. She was willing to brave the sneers from the neighborhood, the potential rejection from her new classmates, even the disdain of her own mother in order to get a better education. She knew she had one ticket out and she wasn’t letting anybody stop her.”
“How eloquent,” he said, though the mildly mocking tone meant he wasn’t offering her a compliment. She immediately realized he thought she was exaggerating, playacting about how concerned she was for the missing teenager.
Given his track record with the media, she supposed he had reason to doubt her motives. But he was wrong. In truth, the girl’s story broke Lexie’s heart. She had never even heard of Vonnie before that morning, but she already felt almost protective of the girl.
She’d cared about all the others, but with Vonnie, there was a little bit more. Lexie admired her spirit, her determination, her bravery. It was unjust for somebody’s dreams and hard work to come to this. Unjust, unfair, untenable.
“Look, I don’t know what happened to this young woman,” she said, hearing the way her voice shook with emotion, “but no one will convince me Yvonne Jackson sabotaged her entire future, threw away all she has worked for her entire life, and ran away. Not when she was so close to achieving everything she wanted. She just wouldn’t do that.”
He didn’t tear his gaze off Vonnie’s senior picture, and she wondered if he saw that same spark of brilliance and boundless energy in the girl’s dark eyes. It was as if she’d looked into the lens of the camera and seen the path to her own perfect, successful life laid out in front of her, waiting for her to take that first step. How wrong that a single footstep off the path had put her in the hands of a monster.
“Teenagers do run away,” he said, though the words lacked real conviction.
“This one, though? Come on. Are you buying it? That she took the time to go across town to her school at night, sat through a dull meeting for new students in the National Honor Society,
then
ran away? What kind of sense does that make?”
“Not much,” he said, rubbing at his strong jaw. He didn’t like admitting it, but at least he was thinking along the same lines.
“I know the chances aren’t good that she’s still alive after three days,” Lexie said, hating to voice the thought out loud.
“Most kidnapping victims don’t make it past twenty-four hours.”
“I’m aware of the statistics. Still, if there’s any chance of saving this one girl, I intend to take it.”
McConnell straightened, leaning against the back of the couch, staring toward the center of the room. She could almost see the thoughts churning away in his head, but they weren’t as deep and intense as before, when he seemed to be so focused on figuring out some great puzzle. Now the tension in him told her he was arguing with himself. Knowing how little he wanted to be involved in this, she could only think he was trying to find a way to convince himself Lexie was wrong, or that this wasn’t his problem.