Starks' Reality (6 page)

“At the trial, Boudreaux said Coop had assaulted Tran, and that they’d had to wrestle him to the ground. They didn’t know who broke his ribs. Then I showed up and offered sexual favors in exchange for my father’s release.”

“What did your father say?”

“He had been too drunk to remember anything.”

“Didn’t Tran testify?
Or his son?”

“No.” She turned to look him squarely in the eye. “No one testifies against the cops in Port Boyer.”

“So, they found Coop guilty?”

“
He got one year of probation because Boudreaux was
nice enough
to ask for leniency. After all, Coop’s a war hero.” She cringed at the biting sarcasm in her own voice.

He nodded slowly. “Thanks for telling me.”

Silence settled between them for a while, accompanied by the steady rhythm of waves gurgling over sand.

“Where do you go to school?”

“UT. In Austin.”

He stretched out, resting his weight on his elbows, and crossed his feet. “What are you studying?”

“Engineering.”

“Yeah? Hmm.”

She pursed her lips against a smirk. People didn’t expect her to be interested in engineering. At the beginning of every semester, the professors gave her that another-one-hunting-for-a-husband look. But with one semester left, she still carried a 3.95.

“It must be tough as an attractive woman in engine
ering.”

Her defenses ros
e at first, but when she met Starks’ gaze, she realized he’d meant the comment only as an observation. She tried to ignore the heat running up her neck, knowing he thought she was attractive.

“Sometimes,” she said.

“Yeah. People look at you without seeing who you are. Once they find out I’m a cop, they never treat me like a human being again. I’m just a badge, someone who’s out to catch them doing something wrong. Sometimes it sucks.”

“B
ut you don’t have to be a cop. I can’t change the fact that I’m female.”

“You can change your major to art history.”

“I hate art history.”

He smiled at her. “And I’ll never be anything but a cop.”

The man had an incredible smile.

Heather leaned back on her hands and stretched her legs out in the sand.

She felt better than she had when she’d left the bar, although the sudden connection with Starks wasn’t exactly relaxing. In fact, sitting beside him on the beach was a little too exciting. And the more she tried to convince herself that he was just a guy like any other guy she’d known, the more she knew it wasn’t true. There was something special about him that she couldn’t quite define.

“How long hav
e you been in school?”

She sighed. “A while.
I haven’t been able to go straight through, with Coop and all.”

He nodded. “I figured as much. You’re file says you’re twenty-
eight.”

T
he idea that he knew so much about her made her uncomfortable. What else had they recorded in her
file
?

“How long have you been a cop?” she asked.

“Sixteen years with the Dallas PD.”

“Why are you here? Is this like a promotion or something?”

He hesitated a few seconds. “I needed a change.”

The hard note in his voice tightened her chest.

Jake Starks was running away from something. Whatever it was must be terrible. He didn’t seem like the type to run from simple adversity.

~~**~~**~~

Kenny pulled into Jake’s driveway close to seven-thirty that evening, still in uniform, and still amazingly unwrinkled.

Jake
leaned against the squad car. “Have you been on duty all day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Isn’t it about time for you to go home?”

“Ye
s, sir, I’m headed that way now.” Kenny stood in the open driver’s door. “I just wanted to let you know we had two more people sick.”

“That brings the total to ten.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any of them serious?”

“I don’t think so. The doctor I talked to at the hospital said Mr. Taylor is so sick because he already had problems.” Kenny shrugged. “He’s been drinking like a fish for at least sixty years.”

“T
hat’ll do it.” Jake crossed one foot over the other. “Anything else exciting going on?”

“No, sir. We
had a report of a stolen dog, but it turned out Mrs. Wilton had left the gate open. The dog came home a few hours later.”

Jake bit back the
urge to laugh. The thought of the daily police log including an escaped hound was nearly too much to handle.

“If anything
serious comes up, just call, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

After watching the patrolman pull out and head toward town, Jake wandered back inside. He’d eaten dinner—a frozen something-or-other—and cleaned the kitchen. Without cable, the TV was useless. It only got two stations, and both of them looked like the arctic in winter. He thought about going out for a drive, but had to admit he was more than a bit tired. In the three months since the night he’d found the bodies, he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep before arriving in Port Boyer. If it hadn’t been for the siren, he might have slept until noon.

After getting ready for bed, he pulled a paperback out of one of the unpacked boxes, settled into the armchair with his feet on the coffee table, and started reading. He got to page ten before he realized he wasn’t paying attention.

He was thinking about Heather again.

Jake tossed the book aside, leaned back in the chair, and closed his eyes.

Besides the sexy lips and beautiful eyes, she had killer legs. He’d tried not to notice, but he was only human. Sitting with her on the beach, they’d found common ground. She was as lonely as he was sometimes, whether she admitted it or not.

That
really wasn’t good. It would be easy to get involved with her, to spend his time concocting ways to seduce her. But then she’d want in, and he knew better. The price was too damn high.

Besides, Heather wasn’t part of his world. How would she react
if he introduced her to it? Would she put on her tough act, or would she run away?

A soft voice called out, “Jake.”

He looked around, and then jumped to his feet when he spotted the woman standing in the middle of the room.

“Serena?” He hadn’t seen his ex-wife in nine years, but she hadn’t changed a bit. “What the hell are you doing here?”

His heart sped up when he noticed tears streaming down her face.

“How could you…
do it?” she asked, choking on sobs.

“Do what?”

She looked down.

Jake step
ped slowly around the sofa to see what she was looking at, one small step at a time. Blood flowed toward him in a wave. He continued until he saw a hand—a small, white hand. His breath caught and his heartbeat thundered in his ears. The hand was attached to a tiny, bare arm. A girl’s arm. A girl’s body. And beside her, another, older girl. Both lay on their backs with arms and legs flung wide. Gaping holes in the girls’ chests oozed gore and blood onto their cotton dresses and out to the floor. His entire body shook as he stepped closer.

He knew the
m instantly, in spite of the years. He recognized the oval face and long, brown curls of the oldest, and the pudgy cheeks and blond hair of the youngest.

“Becky,” he whispered. “
Karen.”

Jake dropped to his knees in front of his daughters.

“How could you do it?”

He looked up at Serena. “What do you mean?”

She pointed one finger at his face in accusation. The finger moved slowly to his shoulder and then his arm, and then his hand.

Jake raised his hand and stared at the .357. The end of the barrel smoked and the smell of
burnt gunpowder bit into the back of his throat.

He fell back and shook the gun loose from his hand. It skidded across the floor.

“Noooo!”

His own voice echoed back, “No!”

Jake sat in the chair, gripping the arms, staring at the window. He jumped up and spun around.

The room was empty.

Gasping, his heart pounding, he searched the living room and kitchen, but found no one.

He was alone.

He turned slowly and dropped into the chair. Leaning forward, he held his head in his hands. “Son of a bitch.”

Why did the nightmares have to come back? Hadn’t he paid
enough by now?

~~**~~**~~

Instead of two hundred customers on Saturday night, they’d had less than two dozen. Word was out.

“Don’t worry, Deuce,” Coop said, squeezing her arm as he walked by. “Everything will be back to normal in a few weeks. People forget.”

“We’ll have a tough time making it through a few weeks,” Heather said.

Her father didn’t stop, but pulled a beer from the cooler and continued out the backdoor.

Heather placed the cash drawer in the floor safe and laid the rug back over the top. After checking the front door again, she walked out the back and locked the door behind her. Then she locked the storage room and followed the path her father had taken.

As she started down the stairs, she glanced to her right. Starks’ house was dark. Like most people, he was probably asleep at one in the morning.

She couldn’t stop thinking about their encounter earlier in the day. His humanity and insight had caught her completely off guard.

Okay, she’
d admit it, but only to herself; the man was sexy. When he’d stretched out beside her, the outer shirt he wore had fallen open, revealing the tight gray T-shirt underneath. Cotton had hugged his chest and stomach.

He was muscular. Unless she missed her guess, there were a few washboard abs under that
T-shirt. She wondered what he looked like without clothes.

“Oh, come on,” she whispered into the darkness. “Don’t be an imbecile.”

He’d been a cop in Dallas. He’d seen things she’d never see, knew things she’d never know. Things about life and death.

A
nd sex.

Probably t
hings her boyfriends, even Matt, hadn’t known.

As absurd as the whole line of thought was, it sent a heated shiver up her spine.

Heather opened the kitchen door and walked in. Listening to Coop move around in his bedroom, she turned off the light and made her way down the dark hall.

Maybe she’d read for a while before trying to go to sleep. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was dream about Jake Starks.

CHAPTER 4

D
amn, they were
flying
.

The hull of the boat barely
touched the water as they skimmed the bay. Jake grinned at the adrenalin rush—exactly what he’d needed.

When the boat suddenly slowed and dropped into the water, he glanced at the driver.

“We’re not alone today,” Tucker said, pointing at the intruder off to their right.

Jake picked up binoculars and studied the other boat. “Parks and Wildlife.”

The man driving the boat was Hispanic, in uniform, and wore a holstered handgun. A woman leaned over the side and pulled something out of the bay.

“They must be
sampling,” Tucker said. “Let’s go say hello.” He eased the boat forward until they were alongside, bow to stern.

Tucker raised a hand to the driver. “Hey, Hernandez, what are you doing out here on a Sunday?”

“It sure ain’t by choice, my friend,” the young man answered.

“Ace, this is Antonio Hernandez, law enforcement for Parks and Wildlife. This is Jake
Starks, the new chief of police and a close friend.”

Jake stood behind Tucker’s seat and leaned over the side to shake hands.

Hernandez motioned with his head toward the woman who was filling a glass bottle from a plastic container. “This is Cindy Bell with State Health Services. They sent us out to check on the oyster beds and test the water.”

Jake nodded at the woman, in her forties and deeply tan
ned, who glanced up and smiled. “I’m glad to see you out here so quickly,” he said to the officer.

Hernandez gave half a shrug. “Oysters are serious business.”

“So I hear.”

“Besides,” the officer added, “they’re paying us overtime.”

“Well, then, we don’t want to keep you,” Tucker said. “If you need anything, just yell. We’ve got the radio on.”

“Thanks.”

They waved as Tucker eased the boat away. When he reached a safe distance, he pushed the throttle forward and pointed the bow toward the mouth of the bay.

“We need more speed,” he said.

The engine whined. The boat lifted into the air and took off.

As they passed into the Gulf, waves bounced the front end of the boat into the air. Jake gripped the dash and leaned forward. At one point, the boat seemed to balance on its end and he was sure they were going over, but they fell forward again and c
ontinued on. Tucker let out a “Yee-haw!”

When the waves calmed to swells, Tucker turned the boat to the left and paralleled the barrier islands. Sandy beaches defined the bottom and low trees the top of a gash in the otherwise flat-line horizon.

The boat slowed again and Tucker pointed. He cut the engine.

Four brown pelicans flew past, veering only slightly from their course. I
n the sudden quiet, distant waves breaking on the shore beat out a regular tempo to which gulls screamed interruptions. The world seemed at peace as they rocked up and down on the sheltered swells.

“
What’s wrong, Ace?”

Jake looked at Tucker. “Nothing.”

“Hey, this is me, your old partner. I know you better than most people. You look like shit, like you were up all night. Why?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“You wish.”

Jake gazed out at the islands in front of them. “
Nightmares.”

“About the victims?”

“Yeah. Only, they always turn into Becky and Karen, and I’ve shot them.”

“Shit. You talk to anyone?”

“No. I thought they’d stopped, but I guess they haven’t.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“The hell it wasn’t.”

They were both quiet for a while.

“Have you seen the girls?” Tucker asked.

Jake shook his head. “Not since I signed over custody. That was nine years ago.”

“Time sure has flown. Damn, I bet they’re quite the young ladies now.”

“Yeah.”

“Funny how things work out,” Tucker said. “I never figured you’d stay single so long. You always had chicks crawling all over you like flies on a fresh turd.”

Jake laughed. “That was your imagination.”

“Yeah? Pretty vivid imagination. I’d have sworn those two girls in the back seat were real when you made me drive you around for an hour that first evening we went out after work. Remember?”

Jesus
, he’d done some stupid things in those days.

“You were a regular Don Juan,” Tucker said. “All you had to do was wink at them and they’d start working on your belt buckle. Damn, man, you were my idol.”

“You didn’t do so badly, as I recall.”

Tucker didn’t respond, and
a knife of guilt stabbed Jake through the middle of his chest. He’d never had the guts to ask his former partner how far up the paralysis went. It was bad enough to be the cause of a man losing the use of his legs. He didn’t want to know that he’d ended Tucker’s sex life, too.

A picture from the past formed suddenly and vividly in Jake’s mind. It was the night he
’d sat on the sofa in his apartment, eight years earlier, staring at the wrong end of his three-fifty-seven. He’d hit bottom, and was too tired to fight it anymore. When Tucker had shown up at the precinct that morning in his wheelchair, all smiles and handshakes, Jake had seen through the act. He’d seen the despair in his best friend’s eyes, and he’d known that he’d put it there. Why hadn’t accusation accompanied the despair?

Sitting on that black vinyl sofa, he
’d smelled gun oil and heard music from a downstairs apartment. He’d been marveling at how much larger the bore looked when you stared into it when someone knocked on his door. The unanswered knock had turned into pounding and continued until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Weapon in hand, Jake had yanked open the door to find Tucker sitting there. The man had nearly knocked him over getting in.

If Tucker hadn’t shown up that night, nothing would have stopped Jake from eating a bullet.

“We’ve been through some shit together, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, we have.” Tucker turned and grinned at him. “I’m sure glad you’re here.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, “me, too.”

Tucker turned the key and cranked the engine. “Time for more low-level flying.”

Jake nodded as he grabbed the dash and the arm of the seat.

~~**~~**~~

Heather sat at the kitchen table, ledger open, calculator to her right, adding numbers for the fourth time. The answer didn’t change.

She couldn’t see any way around it; she’d have to dip into her savings by Friday if business didn’t pick up, even if the kitchen opened again.

Coop walked in, beer in hand, and sat in a chair across from her. “How’s it going?”

She glanced at the beer. “Aren’t you starting a little early?”

He shrugged. “It’s after noon.”

She checked the clock. It was three minutes after
twelve.

“Oh, then
I guess it’s all right to get plastered.” How could he take everything so lightly?

“Now, that’s no way to treat your old man, is it?”

Heather returned to the calculations.

“Money problems?” Coop asked.

“Yes, money problems. As in, we don’t have enough to pay the bills.”

She glanced up to find him seriously studying her.

“Isn’t there some place to cut back?” he asked.

Heather couldn’t contain her frustration. “No, Coop, there’s no place left to cut back. We’ve done away with every luxury. I haven’t bought a new pair of pants in six months, and you don’t have any shirts without holes in them.”

“That’s all right, I don’t mind—”

“
I
mind. I want to be able to go out to a movie once every couple of years, you know?”

He stared, mouth closed.

“Maybe you don’t know. Maybe you just don’t understand. Is that why my mother left?”

He flinched and frowned at her,
and then slowly rose and walked outside.

Heather dropped her head to the table. Why did she
say things to hurt him? He was only trying to help.

She stood, closed the ledger, and walked to the door. “Coop?”

From the top of the steps, she didn’t see him anywhere.

“Coop? Coop!”

She found him sitting on the back steps of the bar, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the horizon.

“Coop, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

He looked up at her and smiled sadly. “It’s no big deal.”

She sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Yes, it is. I don’t know why I say those things when I get mad. It’s not your fault we’re having problems.”

“You’re right,” he said, “she left because she couldn’t count on me. I think the flashbacks were as bad for her as they were for me. Maybe worse.” He studied Heather for several moments. Then he sighed and slid his gaze to the horizon. “I used to wake up in the middle of the night and I’d be back in the jungle, waiting, listening. I’d be crouched next to Sammy Blair, waiting for Charlie to pop his head up somewhere.”

Heather watched her father’s face, understanding the importance of the moment.
He’d never before spoken to her of the war.

“It’s always the same night, when I’m back there. We hear gunfire, but only a few rounds, like snipers. So Sammy and I go out together. We’re going to find the bastards and light ‘em up. We’re being real quiet, because they can hide standing right in front of you.

“Then there’s a flash, like the whole world has exploded. I don’t hear anything, just see this white light, and I’m flying through the air. I hit something, a tree maybe, and I jump up. I’m pissed because my shoulder hurts and my leg’s on fire. I listen for Sammy, expecting him to shoot. But there’s nothing, no answer, no nothing.

“It’s dark. It’s so goddamn dark, I can’t tell if my eyes are open or not. I’m crawling forward on my hands and knees, feeling around for my weapon.

“Then I find a boot. It has to be Sammy. I figure he’s unconscious, that’s why he isn’t shooting. I pull on his foot so I can work my way up his body to wake him up. There’s almost no resistance. His boot slides along the ground. I know why, but my mind just won’t take it in, so I run my hand up the outside of his pants to his knee, and there’s nothing else there—it’s just part of his leg. God, I wish I hadn’t found that boot.”

Tears started down her face as she held him tighter. His shoulders shook as if he were sitting in a freezer.

“Coop, it’s okay now. You’re with me.”

He nodded and took a long drag on the cigarette before flicking it away. “I loved your mother, Deuce. It wasn’t her fault she left. I should never have asked her to live in my hell. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“I know,” she said. “You didn’t choose to go to war.”

Tears filled his eyes, but he smiled
at her. “I thank my lucky stars every day that I have you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”

Heather kissed her father’s wh
iskered cheek and rested her head on his shoulder, swallowing hard to hide her emotion. She hadn’t felt as close to her father in years as she did at that moment.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said. “I’m just afraid I won’t have enough money to finish school.”

“I’m worried about that, too,” he said. “I’ll sell the bar if I need to.”

She didn’t mention that selling the bar would barely pay off the bills.

“You know,” she said, “we probably won’t have enough business today to justify staying open.”

“No?”

She shook her head against his shoulder.

“Then, why don’t we do something together?”

“Okay.” She raised her head. “Let’s go fishing.”

He looked at her, eyes wide. “Really?”

Heather nodded.

Coop smiled and kissed her forehead.

~~**~~**~~

By the time they worked their way back to Boyer Bay, they were running on the reserve tank. Several small boats and two wind surfers had replaced Parks and Wildlife.

Tucker slowed the engine and the boat settled back down, rolling forward on the wake. Jake picked up the binoculars and checked the other
vessels, curious to see who spent time on the water.

Two older men fished from an ancient ski boat. Another boat held four teenagers who appeared to be sunbathing in
little to nothing. The third, a small bass boat with an outboard, carried a man and a woman. Jake sharpened the focus on the glasses.

“Why
don’t you ease over to that one,” he said, pointing to the third boat.

Coop raised a beer can as they ap
proached. “Hey, Chief!”

“Having any luck?” Jake asked.

Coop shrugged. “Caught a few fish and killed a few beers. I guess that’s about as good as it gets. You want one?” He reached into the ice chest.