Dead Right (23 page)

“Daddy?” Whitney cal ed.

Clay sat up straight. “What, baby?”

“Is Grandma
crying?
”

“No, honey. She’s just worried about—”

“The eye guy?” Whitney broke in.

“The eye guy?” he repeated to Al ie.

Al ie frowned. “P.
I.?
”

With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Whitney had heard about the discovery of the Cadil ac at school and had already asked him about the man the other kids were saying he “kil ed.” He’d convinced her it was al untrue. But if this got away from him, she might see her new stepfather go to jail….

“Grandma’s been hearing some of the rumors you were told at school, that’s al ,” he said.

“Oh. Don’t worry, Grandma,” she cal ed. “Daddy wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

Clay exchanged another look with Al ie, then lowered his voice even more. “You can’t come over here again when you’re this upset, okay?” he said to his mother. “If you need to talk, cal me.”

“No one’s wil ing to listen,” his mother said as tears fil ed her eyes.

“Pul yourself together!”

At the steel in his voice, his mother stood.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned. “Don’t do anything at al .”

“But I can’t take it anymore!” she burst out.

“You have to.” Clay took her by the shoulders and forced her to focus on him. “We don’t have any choice.”

Madeline sat on the visitor’s side of her own desk.

Hunter leaned against the wal closest to her. And Kirk stood at the window, staring moodily out at the street.

Pontiff had cal ed him as soon as Madeline said he’d told her to listen to her messages. The police chief wanted to know why Kirk had been so interested.

Madeline was pretty sure her ex-boyfriend had nothing to do with the message. Stil , it was difficult having Hunter and Kirk in the same room. And she couldn’t stomach the constant repetition of those grating words on her answering machine. Chief Pontiff was playing the sickening message over and over again in hopes of recognizing the voice or isolating some irregularity of speech that might give the cal er away.

“Maybe you should go home,” Hunter said to her, his manner gentle. “I’l deal with this and have Chief Pontiff drop me by your place later.”

“
You’ll
deal with this?” Kirk cried. “Who the hel do you think you are?”

Hunter shoved off from the wal to face him. “Can’t you see what this is doing to her?”

Madeline squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop it! I’m not going anywhere.” She felt weak and clammy, but she wanted to know who’d left that message. And she kept thinking that maybe, if she listened
one
more time, she’d be able to compensate for the voice distortion and come up with a name.

“So you have no idea who this is?” Pontiff final y stopped the recorder and pinned Kirk with a meaningful stare.

“Of course I don’t!” Kirk nearly shouted. “Toby, you know me. Why would I be behind something like this?”

“We’ve al heard about the break-up, Kirk. Maybe you’re angry and looking for a target.”

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said. “I’d never hurt her.”

“So why’d you tel her to listen to her messages?”

“
Not
because I knew about this.” He threw up an impatient hand. “Her mother had just cal ed me and said she hadn’t been able to reach Maddy al day. I saw the car parked out front, so I stopped by to let her know. That’s al .”

Madeline believed he’d also stopped by hoping they’d have a chance to talk after their confrontation that morning.

They’d been friends for years, so the animosity between them felt unnatural. But then he’d found Hunter about to kiss her….

“Why aren’t you asking
him
who it is?” Kirk asked, motioning to Hunter. “He’s the one who’s supposed to be solving the mystery, right?”

Hunter didn’t bother to respond. He merely folded his arms and regarded Kirk dispassionately.

“I don’t need him,” Pontiff said. “I can handle my own work.”

The chief didn’t seem to be handling it very wel .

According to what he’d said when he first arrived, he stil didn’t know whose panties had been found in the trunk, despite Madeline’s offer of a reward.

But
someone
had to know where they came from and how they got where they were….

“I’m taking this tape,” Pontiff announced, acting more self-important than he would have if Hunter hadn’t been in the room. “It’s worth keeping, just in case.”

“Just in case,” Madeline repeated, chuckling bitterly.

“What?” he said.

She didn’t respond. He wouldn’t like what she had to say. The answer—the resolution for which she hoped and prayed—never came to pass. Al she did was wait. She’d been waiting for almost twenty years.

Hunter, seeming to understand her frame of mind, interceded. “Give us a cal if you find anything,” he said, showing Pontiff to the door.

Once Toby had left, they were alone with Kirk. He eyed Hunter, then looked at her and made a startling announcement. “I’m taking that ski trip, Maddy.”

Madeline gaped at him. “By yourself?”

“Why not? It isn’t like you’re going to change your mind about going with me. And I’m not planning to stick around to watch what I saw earlier.”

She couldn’t deal with this. Not now. “I’m sorry, Kirk. I never meant to hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

She thought anger and jealousy might tempt him to contradict her or blame her but, after a moment, he seemed to become once again the man she’d always known. “Yeah.

It’s just…too bad it didn’t work out.”

It
was
too bad. Her life would’ve been so much simpler if she could’ve thrown her whole heart into their relationship.

But she’d always felt torn about Kirk and not completely committed. “You’ve been good to me,” she said sadly.

He jammed a hand through his hair. “Hearing you say that hurts worst of al .”

She frowned. “Why?”

He started toward the door. “Because that tel s me it’s real y over.” Pausing at the exit, he added, “But you’re a fool if you get involved with him.”

If?
Madeline was already involved with Hunter.

When she didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, Kirk walked out.

She sat perfectly stil , waiting for the customary panic to set in. She was real y letting him go. After five years, this was it. The end.

But she didn’t feel the urge to run after him. And that was scariest of al . Because there could be only one reason.

Hunter Solozano.

14

M
adeline sat with Hunter in a corner booth at Two Sisters, with her back to the door. Two Sisters did more breakfast and lunch business than dinner, but this was Friday and at six-thirty it was fairly crowded.

Madeline kept her face averted from the people sitting at the other booths and tables. They’d just finished a meal of meat loaf and mashed potatoes and were settling in for coffee and pie. But she didn’t want to see anyone she knew. She was stil reeling from the events of the day.

Stil water had always seemed so safe. And yet suddenly, everyone and everything looked different.

As a result, she felt jumpy, defensive, even a little lost.

Hunter was forcing her to question everything she’d once believed.

“You’re sure you want me to stay?” he asked.

Was she? She was caught in the middle of some dark mystery that seemed to have no solution. If he continued to search for the truth, she’d have to accept whatever he uncovered—good or bad. And she already knew what he thought might’ve happened.

But if he left, would she be able to pretend that nothing had changed?

“Are you going to answer me?”

She stil longed to feel his hands on her. What they’d shared earlier wasn’t nearly enough.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, running a finger back and forth over the smooth handle of her coffee cup.

Where was her confidence? Her faith in those she loved?

She remembered her father sitting her down at the kitchen table to tel her that her body was a temple, that she should never let anyone defile it.

Those were not the words of a pedophile.

“Do you trust me?” Hunter asked softly.

She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. “I don’t even know you.”

“Is that what you think?”

No. She hadn’t known him long and wasn’t familiar with the details of his personal life, but she trusted him instinctively. Or she wouldn’t have done what she’d done with him out in that field. Maybe it was because they’d skipped the usual smal talk of strangers and jumped right into subjects that affected them on the deepest levels.

Maybe that was why their relationship had progressed at such lightning speed. But she knew he was smart, he was a leader, he’d do a thorough job, and he wouldn’t hurt her if he could help it.

That was a reasonable start, wasn’t it?

“I’d like you to stay,” she said.

“Then I should move to the motel.”

“Because…”

He met her gaze, and it was almost as if she could watch every detail of their earlier encounter played out in the reflection of his eyes. “Because you know what’l happen if I don’t.”

She was fighting so many battles at once, part of her felt it wouldn’t be so bad to concede that one. What was one torrid affair in thirty-six years?

But the saner part of her knew she might not be capable of making the best decisions right now.

You’re a fool if you get involved with him…

What if her infatuation with Hunter grew? What if it turned into something more? Where would that leave her when he went home?

“Okay.”

The waitress came to refil their coffee. Madeline mustered a smile because she recognized the woman from church.

“So…after hearing that message a hundred times, do you think it was Mike?” Hunter asked.

“I don’t know. He couldn’t have gotten home and left that message before we reached the office. But he could’ve left it earlier, I suppose.”

“I’l drop by tomorrow, see what he has to say about it.”

She’d made the right choice, she decided. She needed Hunter here. But, God, it was terrifying to consider what he might find….

“We should cal Clay, too,” he said. “Tel him about the message.”

The old defensiveness instantly reared up again. “Clay would never do that to me.”

Hunter reached across the table to squeeze her elbow. “I was just thinking he might have some ideas about who did.

He certainly knows more than we do about what happened twenty years ago. Of course, whether or not he’l tel us is another story. But he might talk if it meant keeping you safe.”

Until today, Madeline had never felt personal y threatened. “Can we talk about something else for a while?”

she asked, using her fork to make little peaks in the whipped cream on her pie. She couldn’t think about her own situation anymore. If she didn’t figure it out soon, she’d be as depressed as her mother. And the mere thought of that terrified her. Never did she want to find herself so desperate.

Hunter stretched one arm across the back of the booth.

“Like what?”

She put down her fork and pushed the rest of her pie away. “Like you.”

He hesitated briefly, then shrugged. “What about me?”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Thirteen months.”

She’d guessed it had been recent. “So you were married for what, five or six years?”

He pul ed her pie toward him and started to finish it. His own was already gone. “Twelve.”

That was unexpectedly high. “You got married young.”

“I was nineteen.”

“I thought you surfed through col ege.”

He paused to take a sip of coffee, then laughed dryly.

“Only in my dreams.”

“Real y?”

“There was no time. Besides, I didn’t even have a board.”

“You were working?”

His cup clinked against the saucer. “At night. During the day I went to school. I was working toward a business degree until I had to drop out.”

“What went wrong?”

“I had to get a second job.”

She remembered teasing him about spending his days at the beach and felt like an idiot for making such a snap judgment. It didn’t sound as if his life had been as easy as she’d envisioned. “Is that when you became a cop?”

“No, that’s when I became a bartender. It was another two years before I decided to join the force.”

“Did you like police work?”

“I did. But this is better. In many ways, I do basical y the same work, but I set my own hours, pick my own clients and make more money.”

“Can’t beat that,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“Did you meet your wife in col ege, then?”

“Sort of. She wasn’t in school. I ran into her at an off-campus party.”

She added cream to her coffee. “If you were married nearly twelve years and you’ve been divorced for one, you must’ve been a sophomore?”

“A freshman.”

She whistled under her breath, feeling more like her old self. The change of subject seemed to make a difference.

“Was it love at first sight?”

He chuckled. “That depends on what you mean by love. It was definitely my first crush.”

“What attracted you to her?”

“She was the entertainment at the party. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was completely captivated.”

She stirred her coffee. “She was a dancer of some sort, then?”

He laughed again. “Of some sort. She was a stripper.”

She held her cup halfway to her mouth. “I take it your father didn’t have
Playboy
lying around the house.”

“Absolutely not. I come from a religious family with very strict parents who sent me to an al -boys’ school.”

She took a sip, then set her cup down again. “Did you mind?”

“Not real y. When I was in high school, I was more concerned with sports than girls.”

She liked that he was revealing more about himself. She suspected he was only doing it because he could see the distraction was helping her cope with her own problems, but she was interested al the same. “And?”

“And then I went away to col ege. Suddenly Dad wasn’t there to keep a bridle on me. It was my first brush with real freedom and I was off and running for broke.” He finished her pie and stacked the two plates on the edge of the table.