He caught the faint smile on her face as he looked up from his squatting position, his leanly muscled body folded in on itself, ready for action. “Smells good, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Get three plates ready. I’m feeling generous.”
Abby obeyed without comment, taking paper plates and disposable cutlery from a plastic bin in the back of the truck. She had a couple of bottles of water in her hand when Latimer spoke up.
“Bring me a beer, too, please.”
Abby swallowed down her suddenly queasy stomach. Did
everything
have to conjure up Marsh? She visualized her brother-in-law sullenly cracking a can of beer, but in the cooler were only green bottles of lager, and she felt her clenching muscles relax, stupidly relieved to discover it wasn’t Marsh’s preferred brew. And Latimer had said
please,
a word that had vanished early from Marsh’s vocabulary once he had her firmly in his grasp.
“Split the tomatoes and green beans three ways, Abigail.”
“Three?”
“You don’t think I’m the kind of man who’d deprive my buddy there of this fine meal, do you?” His head tilt indicated Mort, still quiet, tongue lolling, under the tailgate. Abby didn’t think the shepherd had taken his eyes off her for the past hour, and was not fooled, despite the doggy smile on his face. “Get a plate over here.” Latimer had the fork and knife ready, and lifted the slab of meat onto the plate she held out, with two hands under it to support the weight of the hefty T-bone. He rose, followed her to the table and deftly excised the bone and the fatty edge from the steak, putting them on a second plate with a bit of tomato and green beans. She watched his hands while he carved the meat into two generous portions. There was grace in his handling of the hunting knife.
“I...uh, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the orange juice, and the potato chips, out of...” She looked back toward the pickup.
His eyes shuttered briefly, and Abby saw his calculations, no doubt running through what was in the front seat, potential weapons, perhaps. Then he nodded. She walked to the cab, still keeping an eye on the dog, and reached inside for the juice and chips, bringing them back to the table. As she returned, Mort rose from his place beneath the truck and paced alongside her. Her heart thumped, but the dog merely went to the end of the table nearest to Latimer and sat down again, alert and waiting.
“Sit, Abigail. Eat.”
“It’s...Abby. Abigail...” She trailed off, settling with the juice and pulling open the bag of chips, pushing them to the center of the table where they might be shared.
“Kinda makes you feel like you might be in some trouble, eh?” His eyes held more than a glint of humor.
“Yeah,” she agreed, looking down at the meat on her plate. It was huge, but she was starving, and it smelled delicious. They sat across from each other, Abby and the man whose truck she had stolen, and shared a meal in the slow, blue twilight.
* * *
The mosquitoes came out at dusk, just as Cade finished his last bites of steak and beans and chased them with a couple of potato chips and a swig of beer. Mort lay at his feet, working with diligent relish at the T-bone between his paws. Abby hadn’t managed all her steak, but she pushed the plate away from herself, one slim hand lying on her belly, and a slightly sleepy look on her face. It was the most relaxed he’d seen her.
Now was the time to get the rest of her story out of her.
“You gonna eat that?” Cade asked, indicating the remaining steak on her plate.
“It was delicious, but I couldn’t possibly. Thank you so much. I know I don’t deserve your courtesy.”
Cade spoke over her. He didn’t want to hear her voice turn soft and anxiously pleading now that their casual meal was over. He wasn’t her abuser; he didn’t want to hear her talking to him as if he were. He’d enjoyed the small talk about camp cooking and the best wood for smoking meat, and whether or not barbecue sauce counted as a food group. “There’s this guy I knew, back when I was working a joint task force—drugs—in Ocala.” For a moment, he remembered those months, working with the DEA and the local police forces in Ocala. It was his success with the task force that had put him in the limelight and shifted him to undercover work in Gainesville, still with the task force. Undercover work brought a fresh thrill to a job that had begun to seem, if not mundane, at least less of a challenge. Finding and chasing down drug dealers was a matter of patience, diligence and documentation of proof. Undercover work added the spice of risk, the possibility of being discovered and the danger that would bring. The fish were much, much bigger. His sense of fulfillment in a job well done had increased with each successful penetration of an illicit organization.
But then he’d been scarred, and the task force leaders said, “Sorry. No place for a man with a face like that. Wish it had turned out differently.” Just like that, his life was over. Understanding the task force’s reasons, even agreeing with them, didn’t change the way he felt. It was as if he’d wrecked his car into a ditch and would never drive it again.
Once Cade was out of the hospital and back on desk duty, the Marion County Sheriff’s Department had offered him an option: take K-9 training to replace a retiring deputy.
Cade jumped. Anything was better than the desk and going home at night to a six-pack of beer and the television.
Working with Mort was more than the consolation prize it had seemed at first. He loved the dog. They made a great team, and Cade didn’t have to spend his days with a partner disinclined to work with a man who looked like something out of a Dick Tracy cartoon strip. Cade’s work was fulfilling in a different way, but the corner of his soul that craved something more went unsatisfied. He no longer felt as if he was creating, solving, building. He was just taking out the trash, day after day, with a happy four-legged partner. Mort’s zest for every task made the critical difference for Cade, enabling him to stay with a job he—mostly—still loved.
Abby’s gray eyes, darkening with the approach of night, flicked to his and pulled him out of the mire of his thoughts. Her thin face drew tight. He could almost hear the click in her brain as she registered
cop,
followed by her immediate return to wariness. He drew the plate toward him, using his hunting knife to cut the strip into four large bites, which he fed to Mort one by one while she watched.
Cade saw her throat move as she swallowed. The air wasn’t cooling down with the approach of night. It was still disgustingly humid, but at least the last low rays of the sun lacked their former scorching glare.
“You started to tell me something, Mr. Latimer,” she said softly.
“Might as well call me Cade.”
There was a long pause, then, “Okay, Cade.” As good, as obedient a woman as a man could wish for, even though he plainly heard the undercurrent of renewed suspicion and fear in her voice. His stomach tightened a little. Someone had done a thorough job on her, and he was going to find out why—and who—if it took all night.
“His name was Roy Lewis.”
She flinched, but it wasn’t at the name. It was at the mosquito that had found the tender cord of her neck. Her slapping hand left a smear of blood, but her lips flexed in satisfaction at having killed the biting insect.
“Come on around this side. The smoke will keep them away.” Cade rose to put their plates on the low-burning coals and added a stick or two of broken scrub oak wood, as well as some fallen brown magnolia leaves. The leaves gave an acrid stink to the smoke. Abby coughed, but moved to his side of the table, sitting to face him on the bench. Her feet were still bare, and she drew them up in front of her, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“So, Roy,” Cade continued, settling on the bench again, leaning his back against the table, “he wasn’t a bad guy—in fact, he was kinda funny, in that big-dumb-ox way. He got in with the wrong crowd, though. It happens.”
She just watched him, listening with her chin on her knees, her hands clenched tight on the arms ringing her legs. She looked prettier by firelight, without the glare of the sun to point out the lines of tension in her face and body. Her thick lashes masked her eyes, but she never took her gaze from him. Cade felt a trace of the old excitement, the frisson playing a role brought. He could make this work.
“We’d been working on this bust for a couple of months. That night, we made our move. And good ol’ Roy, wrong place, wrong time. He thought he was picking up his brother-in-law at work because the man’s car had broken down, and instead he was picking up a couple keys of coke along with his brother-in-law. Picked up a tail from the Ocala police and the DEA, too.” Cade put a few more sticks on the fire, lighting her thin, pretty face in the gathering dark. The glow highlighted her straight nose and ordinary but eminently kissable mouth. She cleared her throat as smoke puffed past her, but at least the problem of the mosquitoes was temporarily solved.
Cade wet his throat with another swig of beer. “We got to chasing those boys, and eventually Roy wised up and pulled over. But his brother-in-law ditched, sprinted away like a track star, leaving those two keys in the car where Roy was waiting. My partner went after the runner, and Roy and me had us a good long talk.” Cade remembered the last time he’d seen Roy Lewis, edging free from that bust because Roy’d sworn on his life and his mother’s and everyone else’s he knew that he was turning things around. Technically Cade had enough to take Roy to jail, but he’d known the man was trying to get clean and maybe needed just one break, and Cade had given it to him...with a string or two.
Cade let the silence stretch. He looked away, watching the fire. Eventually Abby bit, as most suspects did, unable to tolerate the silence. “What did you talk about?”
“We talked about those two keys of coke in his car. And his pregnant girlfriend at home. How his record was pretty much clean except for some crap he’d done when he was a few years younger and a whole lot more stupid.”
More silence, and Cade knew Abby was wondering what Cade had done about the drugs. Was he a dirty cop? What would she, Abby, do with this knowledge?
In the end, she whispered pitifully, “I don’t have anything except a little cash.”
Cade had her where he wanted her, though it roiled his guts to have manipulated her so blatantly. “You’ve got a story, just like Roy had a story. That’s what I want, Abby.”
She turned slowly to look away from him to the campfire. She waved a little smoke out of her face. Her brows drew together above the bridge of her nose. “You...want me to tell you why I stole your truck.”
“Yep.” He finished off the beer and walked to the truck for a second bottle. “You want a beer?”
“No, thank you.”
“Might make it easier.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What happened to Roy?”
“What do you think happened to Roy?” He walked back slowly, twisting the cap of the beer off. He tilted the bottle toward her as he sat down, but she shook her head, chin still on her knees.
“That amount of drugs in his car...it’s hard to believe he could be lucky enough to walk away.”
“Tell me your story, Abigail, and if I like it, I’ll tell you what happened to Roy.” He knew he was practically giving away the farm, but if she was as smart as he thought she was, she’d figure it out and take the bait anyway. “Why don’t you start with his name, get that out of the way.”
Her mouth loosened, shook, as her lashes fluttered and firelight flickered on the fresh tears he saw there. Cade stretched out his legs, propping one boot on the edge of the fire ring, and sipped slowly at the beer. Condensation beaded the bottle’s sides and softened the paper label. He’d need to buy more ice somewhere tomorrow, top off the cooler again. Pick up more fresh stuff, another steak. Find a place to buy a shower, maybe do a little laundry. Truck stop? Hotel for a night?
There was tonight to get through, too. He didn’t yet know how it might play out. Abby didn’t show signs of trying to talk him into anything particular, not yet. For now he would settle for prying the details out of her, give him the information he needed to plan, to make a decision between, say, jail or the bus station in Ocala or Gainesville.
It was a good five minutes before she said, “Marsh.” She cleared her throat and stopped.
Cade could hear her swallow, and see the flick of her fingers at her eyes, banishing tears. She wasn’t even going to try the typical female felon’s trick of crying for sympathy while telling her story? Good for her. The action pointed to an unbowed core of strength and self-respect he wanted to encourage.
“His name is Marsh. He’s Gary’s brother.”
Cade hid his grim smile behind the mouth of the beer bottle and his fist at its neck.
Marsh McMurray. Marshall, probably. A man with a name like that can be found.
It would be easy. A telephone call to the sheriff’s department in Abby’s county, a little courtesy to Deputy Latimer from Marion County, and Marshall McMurray would have a whole passel of trouble in his lap.
Cade thought for a moment about the sequence of events that had led to this moment. If he were still working undercover, he probably wouldn’t be on vacation this particular week, depending on what was going on with whatever case he was working. He wouldn’t have been at the quickie mart in Wildwood. He and Abby would never have crossed paths. He’d never have met her or felt the impulse to insert himself into her life. Fate, and its convoluted workings, was a hell of a thing.
* * *
Marsh moved the Honda twice during the three hours he sat on Drew and Judy’s street watching their house. He didn’t want to attract too much attention. Each time he moved the car, he drove around the nearby streets for a few minutes before returning and parking in a different spot.
Drew came outside only once, to move a sprinkler to a new place on the thick lawn, and observe its pattern of spray for a few minutes. Judy stood on the front steps, leaning against the door frame with her arms folded beneath her breasts, and watched him. A yappy little dog panted at her bare feet.
There was no sign of Abigail. No curtain twitched at a window, a light didn’t go on or off while Drew and Judy were outside.