Break for Me (6 page)

“Not here.” She turned her head and stared at him. “You…” She closed her eyes and
turned away for a minute, needing to look at something else. Soon, she was going to
have to call her brother, her sister … her father. Whether it was Mom’s car or not,
she’d have to call them, but she needed to know, first. Was it her?

She took a steadying breath.

Dean touched her shoulder gently and she looked up at him. It was easier, she thought,
if she looked into his eyes. Like that deep, endless brown gave her an anchor. “But
it could be her,” she said, as the numbness started to spread through her.

“It could be,” he said, sliding his hand around to cup her neck.

She sighed as the warmth of his hand spread through her.

“Fuck.” She wanted to turn into him, hide against him. “What if it is?”

“Then you can start looking for answers.”

So simple. And so exactly the words she needed to hear. She didn’t want empty sympathy
and she didn’t want to hear that bullshit about
closure.
For her,
closure
would come when she knew what the hell happened.

He reached out and ran a hand up her back, settled it high on her spine. “You are
going to get through this,” he said.

Turning her head, she looked at him. She felt like she was going to shatter into a
million pieces. For the longest time, she’d felt fragile and unsure of herself, even
as she tried to put up a strong, tough front to everybody around her.

It had taken her years to find her footing again, but she’d done it.

Now …

As tears started to choke her, she went to look away but he shifted and caught her
chin in his hand. “You’ll get through this,” he said again, angling his head, his
body so that she was between him and the fence, his body a barrier to anybody who
might be looking.

A fist closed around her heart.

Slowly, she lifted a hand and curled it around the lapel of his suit jacket. “I feel
like I’m going to break,” she said quietly. “And I can’t do that here, so don’t be
nice right now. Don’t be … supportive, or gentle or kind.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you to man up and stop being a crybaby. Will that help?” He covered
her hand, squeezed lightly.

A watery laugh escaped her. “Yeah. Try to do an impression of Sims or something. He
always makes me want to bust his balls.”

Dean grimaced. “I don’t know if I want you thinking
that
around me.” He brushed her hair back. “You’re going to need to break at some point,
Jensen. If you need a shoulder, I’m here. For whatever you need me for.”

Then he turned and as one, they looked out over the water.

“They’ll have it out soon.”

Her breath came in reedy little pants as she curled her hands around the railing.
It felt hot under her hands, too hot. And her heart was racing. Blood roared in her
head and her knees went watery as she stared at the car, so close to the shore now.

“Oh, fuck,” she whispered.

The back end of the car, now cleared of the water, seared itself on her memory.

The license plate—

“Dean…”

His hands were there.

“Jensen—”

“It’s her,” she whispered, staring at the little red stethoscope, just barely visible
through the mud.

“Jensen, what are you—”

“The license plate.” She swallowed and turned her head, searching for the chief, and
the men from the sheriff’s department, several of whom had handled her mother’s disappearance.
She felt slow, sluggish, like she was moving through water, but finally, she managed
to find the two men she was looking for.

“You can’t see the numbers yet,” Dean said, his voice tinny, like he was speaking
through a tunnel.

Mud still caked much of the bumper but as she looked back at the tail end of the car,
it started to slide off and one fat clump dripped off, revealing another part of the
plate. The first three numbers, along with the stethoscope were clear now. The rest
of the mud continued to cling, but she could see enough.

“Mom was a nurse. She had a nursing plate.” Jensen recited the number, still staring
at the car, horrified fascination rising in her.

She wanted to squeeze her eyes closed, block it out. She wanted to
run
. To hide from all of this, just a little longer. If she didn’t see it happen, she
could pretend just a little longer.

But she’d been waiting for fifteen years.

*   *   *

“I need to go down there.” The words were soft, but steel threaded under them.

As much as it hurt his heart, Dean wasn’t surprised to hear those words from her.
It didn’t matter that she was pale, didn’t matter that her eyes were so dark, they
were all but black in her face. It didn’t even matter that he could see that she was
shaking, a thin film of sweat on her upper lip—all of that combined to worry him,
because he suspected she was veering closer and closer to shock.

But yeah, of course she had to go down there. She was going to see that fucking car
and she was going to watch for as long as she could, even though this was ripping
her heart out.

And his.

He wanted to take her away from all of this.

He was in over his head here. In over his head with
her,
and he had been for a while and realizing just how much pain she’d hidden under that
layer of steel wasn’t making it easier for him to pull back. No, it made him want
to draw her close and protect her, even though he knew she’d kick his teeth in and
damned if
that
didn’t twist him up even more.

Catching her shoulders in his hands, he held her a moment as they watched the car.
“We need to give them a few more minutes,” he said softly. He’d been on hand a few
times when cars had been removed from bodies of water. It was almost clear, but that
didn’t mean jack until it was completely out of the river. “Make sure they give us
the all-clear first.”

She tugged against him for a second and then blew out a sigh. “Yeah. I … fuck. Yeah.
I have to call my family, though. It’s her car. That’s her plate. I’d know it in my
sleep.”

“I can call them. You can take a minute.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll do it.”

She just shook her head and pulled away from him, her hand already on her phone.

“You don’t do easy, do you?”

“There is no
easy
here.” She shook her head, focusing on the mud-caked paint of the car down on the
banks.

“No. I don’t guess there is.” There was no guessing. He knew the pain she had chewing
her up inside and he could understand why she wanted to just push through it, even
if all he wanted to do was push it all
away
from her.

Her eyes were dry, and somehow clearer as she made the call, first to her father,
then her sister.

The one to her brother, Tate, was the hardest, because she kept having to smack him
down. “No, Tate. They aren’t going to let you see the car. It’s just now out—”

She stopped, sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. Dean could hear Tate’s voice
coming through the line.

She held the phone away from her ear for a second and then put it back, started to
talk, apparently ignoring everything he said. “I don’t have any information for you,
but it looks like it’s her car. It’s been under the water for a damn long time from
what I tell, but that’s all I know. I won’t know anything else for a long time and
the longer you keep me on the phone, the longer it will be before I have answers.
They
will
not
let you near it and that’s just the breaks. Deal with it. I’ll call once I have any
news.”

She hung up and pushed the phone into her pocket.

“He took it well, I see.”

With a wan smile, she shrugged. “Yeah. Tate is solid, steady as a rock.”

“Jensen.”

They looked over as Lieutenant Burt Loughland said her name from the far end of the
sidewalk. He was a veteran with the county sheriff’s department and while the kids
had called the city police, this was going to fall within the county’s jurisdiction.
Just as her mother’s disappearance had fallen within the county.

As the county cop came their way, his worn face unreadable, Jensen went still.

They both knew, the woman and the man, Dean thought.

It was a cop thing, that weird little burn in the gut, a click in the back of the
brain. Something that made a cop a cop, really.

They’d both known, even before they’d seen the plates, whom they’d found.

“You okay, Jensen?” Burt said as she reached him.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Her voice was steady, level. Steel, Dean thought again.

“You did a hell of a job on that Pruitt case last week.”

Her mouth twisted. “Yeah, well. I was hoping to see that fucker in court, but hey.
We’ve already got a few more sons of bitches we’ll be locking up, sounds like.”

Loughland nodded, then looked over at Dean. “West.”

Dean nodded.

“I called my family,” she said softly. “Tate … well. Don’t be surprised if your guys
have to deal with him. He’s already chomping at the bit. But I couldn’t not tell him,
either.”

“Can’t see as how you could avoid it.” Burt nodded. He opened his mouth to say something
else, but before he could, one of the men closest to the car called out, “Looks like
a key is still in the ignition.”

A soft sound escaped Jensen’s throat.

Dean felt his heart break, jagged little pieces.
Baby …

As much as he wanted to reach for her, he knew that was the last thing she wanted
or needed just then.

Chapter Five

It was oddly silent as the techs went over the car.

Jensen’s phone had rang three times and on the fourth, she’d pulled it from her pocket,
muted it, and then put it on the nearby table. Now she stood, staring at the car with
her arms wrapped around her midsection and her gaze locked almost blindly on the mud-caked
vehicle.

She barely moved.

She barely seemed to breathe.

Her skin was pale and her knuckles all but bloodless as she gripped her elbows, like
she had to have something to hold onto, otherwise, she’d fly apart.

One of the techs dropped a whisk brush and the sound of it clattered through the surreal
silence. Jensen jumped, the sound of her gasp striking him in the heart.

From two feet away, he couldn’t reach out and touch her the way he wanted to, the
way he needed to. He tried to catch her eyes, but she couldn’t seem to look at anything
but the car.

Dean wasn’t really surprised. But he hated the silence, the almost oppressive atmosphere
that had fallen across the area. He suspected Burt had spoken with the team. Little
wonder they were showing respect for Jensen and the work itself was grim, even though
there was little more than mud and a lot of debris in the car.

A whole hell of a lot of water. Damn. It was still leaking from the car, even now.
From inside the car, from the trunk, under the hood. Everywhere, puddling all over
the floor. It was a mess he was glad he wouldn’t have to clean up.

The crime scene techs were careful and thorough, he couldn’t fault them on anything
and he was watching, watching them damn close.

Jensen’s gaze kept traveling over the car and he knew she wanted to be the one searching
over it, even though she had to realize the same thing he already knew.

The chances of finding much of anything were slim to none.

That car had been in the river a good long time. It had disappeared the same night
her mother had and if the car had gone into the river the night she went missing …

Hell.

“It’s time to open the trunk,” Burt said, his voice echoing, too loudly, in the strained,
silent air.

Burt cut Jensen a look, almost like he was asking permission.

Dean knew that wasn’t the case.

He was asking if she was ready.

She stood there, her slim fingers going up to toy with the necklace she always wore.
The charm that hung from it was silver, a slim little bar, set with a ruby in the
center.

Her index finger rubbed over the ruby, again and again and after almost thirty seconds
had passed, she finally dragged her gaze away from the car and looked at Burt.

A single nod and then she went back to staring at the car.

Fuck this,
he thought, closing the distance between them. Her left hand hung in a fist at her
side now and he reached down, caught it in his.

The second he did, her hand clamped around his in a vise, her grip tight and desperate.

“Breathe,” he whispered, keeping his voice low.

“I am.”

Just barely.

But she sucked in a deeper breath and focused her gaze on the trunk, staring past
the crime scene cameras, the techs, and Burt. From where they stood, they could see
as Burt fought with the trunk. It didn’t want to open at first, but finally, it yielded.
Water and mud gave way with a hideous sucking sound.

It might have been better if they couldn’t see at all.

The trunk, like much of the car, was flooded with mud and water and it continued to
leak out.

But there was no mistaking the secrets the trunk had held inside it all these years.

Still half-buried in the mud there was a skeleton, eye sockets empty … staring.

Waiting.

*   *   *

“Is it Mom?”

She’d lost track of the time. Judging by how gritty her eyes were, she’d been awake
going on nearly twenty-four hours. Judging by the looks on her family’s faces, they’d
been awake through the night, waiting for answers. Waiting for her.

Seated in her father’s living room, Jensen stared at Chris, tried to find the words
to answer that question. Tate leaned against the mantel, his face buried in his arms,
hiding away from the world. And their dad stood at the window.

She couldn’t recall how many times she’d seen him standing just there.

Waiting.

And now it was time to acknowledge the truth.