With Every Breath (19 page)

Yeah, alive.

A waitress came to take their order. When she returned with a beer for him, a glass of wine for Maddie, a Coke for Josh, and finally three hamburgers, Joe settled back in his chair again. He felt pretty damned good, all things considered.

"So what position did you play?" Maddie asked, watching the screen, nibbling on her burger.

"Wide receiver." He motioned with his bottle. "See the guys in purple?"

"Mmmm."

"See the one standing down there at the end, a little apart from everyone else?"

"Right."

"That used to be me."

"You wore purple? That doesn’t sound very manly."

He shot her a look and realized she was playing with him. She was smiling softly. The look caught him by the throat and cut his air off.

"So what exactly does that guy down the end do?" she asked.

"Do you know anything about football?" He wondered just how much she was playing with him.

"No."

"Well—wait. Look. This is a pass play." He watched her focus on the screen, her blue-green eyes narrowing in concentration. She leaned slightly forward as he was doing, and her golden hair skimmed her shoulders.

"That guy taking the ball just now is the quarterback. He’s going to—there, see, he threw it. And the guy on the end, the wide receiver—if he’s any good, and this guy is—ought to catch it."

He did, Maddie noticed.

"There," Joe said, satisfied. "Now if he’s really good, he’ll avoid that red-white-and-blue guy there and—goddamnit it." The bar erupted in cheers. "They’re all Pats fans," he muttered as the guy in purple disappeared beneath a fair pile of guys wearing red, white, and blue.

"And you’re not," Maddie guessed.

"Not today."

"Is this how you hurt your leg?"

That jerked his attention back from the game. "My knee. Yeah."

"Were you any good?"

"Before I hurt my knee."

"Could you
have gotten away from that red-white-and-blue guy?"

"Damned straight," he said fiercely.

She raised a brow at him. "I think that’s the most vehemence I’ve ever heard from you, Joe. Must be a testosterone thing."

He fought a smile and failed.

"So tell me about it."

It occurred to him then that women chattering during a football game had always irritated the hell out of him. And he missed the next play without realizing it.

"I was weaned on U of M games. When I was a kid, I spent just about every Sunday in front of the tube, watching the Pats. And when I was old enough, I went out for the Candle Island City team." His eyes flicked from her to the screen, then back again. "I was one hell of a wide-out."

She grinned. "Modest, too."

"I have soft hands." He sounded indignant.

She looked at them pointedly.

"It doesn’t have anything to do with calluses and strength," he growled. "It’s the way you pluck a ball out of the air so gently no one even hears the smack of leather on skin." He clapped his hands together ... softly.

His eyes had changed, she realized. There was passion, that undercurrent she’d sensed in him from the start.

"So the Vikings signed you up," she said. She prompted him more from the fascination of watching the transformation in him than from any real interest in a game she’d never watched.

A comer of his mouth kicked up. "Eventually. By the time I reached ninth grade, the high school was still on the island. My coach got my father to send me to high school here on the mainland. The Candle High team hadn’t won a football game in seven years. I needed exposure, and a good quarterback to pass me the ball. So I went to a private school, with all its teams funded by private money."

"And that’s good?"

"Great opportunity. College scouts started coming after me. And it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do whatever I felt like doing, and I felt like playing ball forever." His face shadowed briefly. "I went to Penn State because they’re generally Orange Bowl caliber. They gave me a scholarship."

"I’m impressed."

He looked at her sharply to see if she was kidding again. "I played my ass off for them."

"Then
you went to the Vikings."

"Yeah. I was the third pick in the first round of the NFL draft. And my teammates awarded me the game ball in the First of the two playoff games the Vikes played that year. And it still
never occurred to me that I couldn’t be the best just because I decided I was going to be."

She thought about that. She wondered if he didn’t believe in himself so much anymore, and why.

She was starting to appreciate the full impact of what he’d done, too, of what he’d achieved. There would

have been a lot of money, she realized, and a lot of women. And he was back on Candle Island. She didn’t know if that seemed absurd, heartbreaking, or right.

"How long did you play?" she asked quietly.

"Three years. After I made All-Pro for the second time, a guy named Garth Ruffin—a cornerback for the Bills—plucked me out of the air, and let me tell you, his hands sure as hell weren’t soft. Big son of a bitch. He landed on top of me, my leg bent backward, and that was that."

Maddie winced.

"I went to minicamp the next spring, but I knew right away that things had gone . . . sour. I wasn’t the best anymore. My hands were just as good, but I wasn’t the fastest wide-out in the NFL anymore. So I grabbed my dignity, gave an awesome press conference, and retired and came home to Maine."

At least now Maddie understood Gina’s mink, but she was uncomfortable. It was sad, she thought, if only because it had all ended prematurely.

She wondered how she would deal with it if she knew that her pictures were never going to come back.

Joe put his bottle down suddenly and leaned forward, giving her a shoulder, looking at Josh. "Now you would make a hell of a quarterback," he said, taking his hand.

Maddie stiffened. So did Josh. He wasn’t much on being touched these days. But Josh didn’t pull his hand away.

"Good hands," Joe went on. "Big, with long fingers." He looked at Josh again. "Are you fast? I’ll just bet you could scramble your way out of a fishing net."

Josh’s eyes went wider.

"Tell you what, if we ever get a halfway decent day again while you’re here, we’ll take my ball down on the beach and throw it around some. What do you say? I

can’t run anymore, but maybe we could get your mom to be your receiver."

One comer of Josh’s mouth moved into a smile. Maddie felt as though someone had kicked her in the chest.

A one-two punch.

Complicated, strong, troubled, curt Joe Gallen, she thought wildly. Yet he was the one who had finally made Josh smile. And she knew, if only because of that, he was a man she would never forget.

Maddie straightened in her chair fast, panicking. "You didn’t call the island," she pointed out, and realized her voice was strained.

"What?" He looked back at her. "Oh. I’ll do it at the commercial."

They sat silently through another play and another. Joe didn’t try to explain any more about the game. When the station break came, he pushed his chair back.

The game resumed again before he returned. He grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. "Come on. We’re going."

Maddie stood up fast. "What did you find out?" "They’re holding some guy at the station for jaywalking."

Maddie’s jaw dropped, "
Jay
walking?"

"He’s a stranger. Nobody knows him. They’ll keep him until I can get you back there, and we find out if you know him."

"Oh." Maddie’s pulse thrummed. She found herself praying, hoping, that maybe it really was Rick, that maybe this would all be over with soon. Then she could concentrate on other things.

Like Joe Gallen, and what he was doing to her kid, to her heart, to her world.

She grabbed Josh’s hand and urged him to hurry. Joe

was already at the door. He waited and held it open for them in a rare burst of chivalry.

"What else?" she demanded. "There’s something else, isn’t there?"

"Yeah." Joe nodded, his stride lengthening down the sidewalk, hitching a little more than it had earlier. She still had to jog to keep up with him, and Josh had to run.

"They found partials all over that window," he said flatly, finally. "I need to get you printed, so we can eliminate yours."

Chapter 15

Joe took her to the interrogation room at the station. It was nothing more than a cubicle at the back of the building, tucked in beside a supply closet. It contained a single card table with a coffee machine squatting at the back of it and an old Coke machine that leaned tiredly against one wall.

The man who sat at the table was small, thin, the quintessential ninety-pound-weakling. He had a pasty, sallow complexion and wore thick, bottle-lensed glasses.

Maddie shook her head and backed out of the room again. "No," she said quietly. "I don’t know him."

Joe cursed without much passion. "That would have been too easy, I guess." He looked around the hallway and snapped at a woman who was passing them. "Hey, Sheila. Where’s Hector?"

"Bathroom," she answered, sailing by. "Where else?" "Wait here," he said to Maddie, and went down the hall. He stuck his head into the men’s room and yelled, "Don’t take all day with it, Hector! I need you!"

He came back to Maddie, put his hand on her back again, seemed to realize what he was doing this time, and snatched it away. "Come on, we’ll wait for him in my office."

An ink pad and several cardboard forms sat on his desk. "You have any problem with this?" he asked, sitting on the edge, motioning her to the single chair behind it.

"Should I?" she asked, sitting down.

"Depends. You robbed any liquor stores lately?"

"No, but they robbed me."

He looked at her, confused.

"Fourteen dollars for a bottle of cheap vodka," she complained. "They said there was an extra charge for having it brought in from the mainland."

He gave that quick, short laugh again. "They got you then."

He showed her what to do and seemed reluctant to touch her, motioning the way he wanted her to roll her thumb rather than guiding her hand more than once. By the time Hector came in, they had two neat sets of her prints on cardboard.

"Josh’s will be small enough that we should be able to pick them out on that basis alone," Joe said, studying the sheets.

"I hope he’s all right." They had dropped him off at Doe Carlson’s rather than put him through the trauma of the police station again. It had been the lesser of two evils. She hated letting him out of her sight, but after yesterday, she was pretty sure making him come inside the station would unglue him.

Hector cleared his throat. Joe’s gaze swung to the man.

"You can let that guy go," he said, coming off the desk. "But print him first."

"Print him? For jaywalking?" Hector asked dumbly.

"Oh, shit," Joe muttered, rubbing his hands across his eyes. "Okay, give him a glass of water. Or a cup of coffee in a real mug."

Hector continued to stare at him. "Water?"

"Glass,
Hector. Glass is the key word here. I need prints. You following me now?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure, Joe."

"But I told you I don’t know him," Maddie protested. "I’ve never seen that guy before in my life."

"And your cat died yesterday, and your phone line’s been cut, and he’s here today even though this isn’t tourist season. I’m thinking that maybe your Rick hired him."

She stiffened. "He hasn’t been my Rick for a long time." Then she took a breath and scowled. "I just can’t see it, Joe. The only money Rick ever had was mine."

He gave her a hard look. "Well, it’s not impossible. Graycie’s on the run. He wouldn’t want to be seen, might have somebody else do his dirty work for him. And God knows he could have robbed a bank or something. In for a penny, in for a pound." He went to the door and leaned out. "Hey, Sheila," he shouted again. "Bring me those partials from the window!"

The same woman they had seen in the hall came in and handed him a folder. Joe spread everything out on the desk. Maddie left the chair to let him sit down there and study them.

"Goddamnit," he muttered after a moment, pushing them away.

"What’s the matter?" she asked cautiously.

"The matter is that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing."

"Didn’t they teach you this stuff in cop school?"

He looked up, and a comer of his mouth quirked again. "I told you. I didn’t go to cop school. I went to Penn

State." Then he sobered. "I took law enforcement, and they skimmed this sort of thing, but hell, they have people in the cities who just do prints. Specialists. It’s a science. And Candle Island ain’t a city, and I’m no scientist."