Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte) (13 page)

She nodded.

“This guy figured an aide car must already be on the way.”

“Can’t he guess at what make of car it was?”

“The best he could do was good-size. Some kind of luxury model. Maybe a Lexus, he said first, then downgraded to a Camry or an Accord or... The man? Well, no, he didn’t see a face or even hair color. More just the gesture waving him on. He didn’t see a kid, but knows the man closed the trunk once he was by. Trouble is, he really wasn’t paying attention. Even in the rearview mirror, it was the damaged vehicle and the unconscious person that held his attention.”

“Oh, no.” Jane looked sick. “He put Bree in the trunk.”

Any other woman, he might have tried to reassure. Reminded her they couldn’t be sure of anything. But he couldn’t believe Jane would want him to soft-soap the harsh reality. She wasn’t like other women he’d known.

“If this guy grabbed Brianna, it’s unlikely he helped her into the backseat and fastened her belt for her.”

Jane’s eyes were fixed desperately on him. “She wouldn’t have gone.”

“Actually, it’s possible she would have.” Clay had given this a lot of thought. “She’s only seven. If the guy seemed to be trying to help, it might have seemed safer to get in his car than stand beside the road or stay in a vehicle that was tilting toward the creek. Seeing her mother unconscious was probably scary. And what if she knew the man who’d stopped?”

“Knew him?” she breathed in what he could tell was horror.

“This is harking back to my theory that what happened wasn’t really an accident. That there was a reason your sister was out on 253rd, maybe to see someone. Doing something she didn’t want to tell her husband. Brianna might not have understood what was going on, if, say, her mom suddenly stepped on the gas because she had a bad feeling about whatever she’d intended to do.”

“Lissa let herself get distracted calling Drew.” He’d been right about Jane; despite her distress, she jumped off from his speculation into some of her own. “She might not have noticed whatever it was until too late.” Then she focused sharply on him. “But you’re satisfied that the money thing didn’t lead anywhere.”

Clay shook his head. “I wouldn’t go that far. Stillwell’s explanation sounded logical enough to have me thinking, okay, maybe. But, damn, it was a lot of money to risk loaning to an employee who would never be able to pay it back out of her own salary. I asked if he’d made her sign a promissory note, but he said it was more informal than that.”

“It wouldn’t break him if he didn’t get the money back.”

“No, but this is a guy who has built a fantastically successful company from the ground up. You can’t tell me he did it by casually loaning money even to trusted employees with no proof they were supposed to pay it back.”

She processed that, blinking a couple of times. “No. You’re right.”

“And then,” he continued, feeling cruel, “there’s the question of why she didn’t tell Drew about the money. Unless...” He stopped, wishing he’d stopped while he was ahead. He had a bad feeling she wouldn’t react well to what he was thinking, and right now he didn’t want to tangle with her over the faith and affection she felt for the man whose house she was currently staying in.

But Jane said slowly, “Unless Drew did know. That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? If all that shock and dismay was an act.”

“It crossed my mind.” He took a quick bite, in case she tossed him out on his ear.

Of course she was shaking her head. “I don’t believe it.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Clay muttered.

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

A smart man would say something tactful, like, “You know I have to consider all possibilities. This isn’t personal.” Turned out, where she was concerned he wasn’t smart. What came out of his mouth was, “Drew’s too nice to lie, right? And of course he’s such a good guy, he’d never hurt a fly.”

Her mouth formed an O of astonishment that transmuted into anger. She shoved her chair back from the table. “What is your problem?” she snapped. “You’ve had it in for Drew from the beginning. There’s nothing you’d like better than to book him, is there?”

“That’s not true.”

“It is! You don’t listen to me at all. I
know
this man.”

“How well, Jane?” His fork clattered to his plate and he leaned forward, feeling his lips draw back in something like a snarl. “Because what I’m hearing is a whole lot more
knowing
than you should have for a guy married to your sister.”

Dark color mounted her cheeks. “You actually think I’d—?” She was almost incoherent, but kept her voice to more like a hiss than a yell. Apparently she hadn’t forgotten her sleeping niece. “You’re disgusting.” She looked at him like he was a cockroach she was about to stomp. “I can’t believe I offered you dinner.”

Belatedly, he tried for cop neutral. “Jane, I can’t rule your brother-in-law out because you insist he’s nice.”

She looked at him with dislike. “But you could try trusting me as a character witness.”

Well, shit. He clenched and unclenched his teeth a couple of times while he tried to decide whether honesty would pay—or not. “I admit your relationship with him rubs me the wrong way,” he finally admitted.

“So you’ve decided he tried to knock off his wife.”

“I never said that—”

“Really?” Jane said, scathing.

“I have to wonder.” Frustration twisted in his belly. “It’s my goddamn job to wonder!”

“Lower your voice!” she snapped. “And wondering is one thing, a vendetta is another.”

“There’s no vendetta.” He had a moment of desperation.
Please let me be telling the truth.
“I’m trying my damnedest to be fair.”

She had sunk back into her chair, but that was the only sign she was relenting. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Why do you have to ‘try’? What do you have
against
Drew?”

Did she really not get it?
he wondered incredulously. He hadn’t been subtle. “You, what else?” he said.

She simply stared at him.

His throat felt tight, and he wasn’t sure he could say anything else. Clay pushed back his chair and stood, going around the table. He held out his hand. “Jane.”

She blinked at him.

“Come here,” he said huskily.

After a suspended moment, she rose to her feet. Her gaze was wary, but she let him envelop her hand in his and tug her forward.

“I keep thinking about this.” He bent and gently bumped his forehead to hers. “I want to put my hands on you. I want to kiss you.”

He suited action to words, capturing her mouth with his, kissing her more aggressively than he probably should have. Trying to convey without words what he was afraid to say right out. Either in acquiescence or surprise, her lips parted, letting his tongue plunge deep. Instantly aroused, he pulled her tight against him, gripping the fullness of her hip with one hand while the other slid under the fall of her ponytail and angled her head so he could devour her mouth. His blood roared in his ears. He wanted to think she was kissing him back but couldn’t be sure. Damn, how he needed her.

But even though sheer need had almost drowned his voice of reason, he started listening to it. What was he going to do, lay her on the vinyl floor and start stripping off her clothes? If that candlelit dinner was out, sex would be yet a bigger mistake, even assuming she went along with it.

Although it hurt to do, he began to ease back, gentling the kiss and relaxing his hold on her until finally he rubbed his cheek against hers, wincing at the rasp that told him he’d probably scraped her softer skin.

Somehow, Clay discovered when he lifted his head and looked down at her dazed face, the tightness in his throat hadn’t eased at all.

“I don’t like knowing you’re living here with him,” he told her gruffly. “You’d never sleep with your sister’s husband. I know that. But...there’s something there with you two. You can’t tell me there isn’t.”

She jerked away from him and turned her back. He could tell she was breathing hard. Standing so close, he was struck by her fragility: her shoulders so much narrower and finer boned than his and the slenderness of her neck, especially vulnerable from behind. Then there was the very feminine curve of waist and hips. The Jane he knew was tough and determined, but he had trouble reconciling those qualities with her sweet face and womanly body. Knowing that women did the job and did it well—that Jane was one of those women—bumped up against everything he’d grown up believing. That feminine and tough didn’t go together. That women should be protected, not trusted in the line of fire.

In turmoil, he knew she’d never stand for this primitive need he had to claim her as
his.
But how was he supposed to get past it, even if she’d give him a second chance?

He was feeling helpless when she turned to face him again, her chin held unnaturally high.

“You haven’t eaten much.”

He glanced back at his plate. “You’re not kicking me out?”

“Not yet.”

Clay nodded and went back to his place.

“I have to go check on Alexis.” She wasn’t gone long. She sat back down, watching as he ate. Clay told himself he was lucky.

“We used to date.”

His head came up. “What?”

“Drew and I.” Her eyes were defiant. “He and I were seeing each other before— No.” She gave a twisted smile. “When.
When
I introduced him to my sister.”

“He ditched you?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“And you continue to think he’s a nice guy?” Clay said in disbelief.

Her chin still jutted at him. She was clinging to her pride. “He is a nice guy. One who couldn’t help falling in love with Lissa. She’s beautiful, you know. Vibrant. Plus, most men have trouble with what I do for a living.”
And you’re one of them,
her eyes reminded him.

Clay grappled with this history, trying to read the emotions she didn’t want to share. “Weren’t you hurt? Mad?”

“Yes to both, but—” she hesitated “—not as much as if I’d really been in love, or anything like that. The truth is, I liked Drew. I enjoyed spending an evening out with him. But we were more like friends than anything. We didn’t have a lot of chemistry.”

“He’s looking at you lately as though he’s changed his mind.” Clay couldn’t seem to help the way his voice hardened.

Jane shook her head. “I don’t see that.” But he’d seen the flicker of something in her eyes. She wasn’t being completely truthful. “He’s relying on me right now, that’s all. He knows how much I love the girls.”

He stayed silent and resumed eating.

“We’re friends, that’s all,” she insisted.

“Okay.” He knew damn well how irrational he was being. Of course she was allying herself with Drew. Right now, her brother-in-law needed her. Unless he was behind his wife’s accident and his daughter’s disappearance, he had to be scared to death. Grieving, and not in any shape to give a five-year-old girl what she needed. Admitting all that to himself made Clay feel ashamed. He’d been an idiot. He did know Jane would never start something with her sister’s husband. His jealousy was another primitive response, illogical, not reasoned out. Jane Vahalik seemed to bring out those qualities in him, ones he hadn’t even known he possessed. Old-fashioned views about men and women were one thing, but irrational emotions that seized control were something else again.

“I’m sorry.” He got it out, although
he
wasn’t being totally truthful now, either. He wasn’t going to like it any better the next time he saw Jane with her arms around Drew Wilson and his around her.

She scrutinized him so carefully, he had a bad feeling she was seeing more than he wanted her to. “He’s been acting a little weird,” she said unexpectedly. “I’ve been uncomfortable a couple of times. It’s not like he’s come on to me or anything. Just...as if he’s wondering. I think he’s really scared for Lissa right now, but angry at her, too. He can’t even ask her why she lied to him.”

Clay nodded. He understood the anger just fine. Nothing he’d learned so far about Melissa Wilson suggested she was likable. He’d begun to speculate on how she and Jane could have grown up to be so different from each other. In particular, they had different ways of relating to men. Had to be something to do with their father. That relationship had left Jane having trouble trusting, if Clay was reading her right, but her sister seemed instead to feel some contempt for the male half of the species.

Or only for her husband?

What Clay couldn’t decide was what any of this had to do with the current problem: her maybe/maybe not accident and the disappearance of seven-year-old Brianna. No—he knew. If the accident was just that, and Brianna had been abducted by a random predator, Melissa’s character was irrelevant. It was a case of shit happening. He felt sure Jane’s sister would be as fierce in defense of her child as Jane would have been, whatever other differences they had. Only if Melissa had gotten herself into a fix that had gone tragically wrong did her character become relevant to the investigation.

Separating what was relevant from what wasn’t had become hard for him because he wanted to know everything about Jane, and that included her family dynamics.

Clay thought again about the phone call with his father that had triggered his call to her in turn. Could he tell her about it without getting her back up? He wished he had any idea what she was thinking right now.

“This is the best meal I’ve had in weeks,” he said.

She smiled a little. “I’m glad.”

“Especially these past days. I eat nothing but crap when I’m head down in an investigation.”

“I know what you mean.”

“When you’re not married, there’s nothing to pull you home, no one to remind you that you have a life outside the job.”

“Was your father the same? Or did having a family make a difference with him?”

So she was curious about him, too. Some of Clay’s edginess subsided.

“He’s never been a detective. He stayed on the patrol side. He claims that’s ‘real’ police work. Protecting people on a day-to-day basis. Being a first responder.”

Jane nodded. “I can see that, but I like puzzles.”