Jaded (30 page)

What about Cody, so clearly called to art and equally clearly stifled in that vocation?

“Thank you. That’s very helpful,” Alana said.

Pastor Theresa didn’t look like she believed that at all. “You’re welcome. Call anytime.”

She walked into her house and found Lucas prying up the countertops while Duke watched with interest from his spot by the door. What had happened with Cody was too raw for her to bring up, so she crouched by Duke and scratched the top of his head very gently. He grunted his appreciation.

Lucas spoke first. “For a while, the house sounded like it did when Gran was alive. She always had people over, planning something.”

“Mrs. Battle said the same thing,” Alana said. “I don’t understand this place,” she said finally. “Delaney seemed to genuinely care that Marissa and Adam were happy, even after everything that happened between her and Adam. Even though I stood up for Marissa, she wants to do the right thing for the town and the library.”

“Delaney’s a good person. A kind person. People saw her as wronged when Adam broke off their engagement. Loyalty matters in a community like this. In the end, all we have to depend on is each other. You saw Walkers Ford at its worst with Marissa. You’re seeing them at their best now. If you were staying, you could give it a few weeks and you would see them at their worst again.”

“Like the weather. Wait five minutes and it changes.” She sat down in a chair and put her head in her hands.

“You take Cody home?”

“I did.”

“Was it Colt’s stash in the car?”

Grateful her face was hidden from him, she said, “Please don’t ask me that.”

“I’m asking.”

“Lucas. Don’t do it. Don’t go search that trailer.”

He tossed the pry bar on the counter. “That’s my job. That’s what it’s like when you stick with one place long enough to learn each other’s secrets. You hurt people. They hurt you. You have to do hard things, like sending a twenty-year-old kid to jail because he’s hurting other people in the community, or take kids from their meth-addicted parents. You send some to jail and you bury some. That’s life, when you’re not avoiding every goddamn thing by skimming the surface.”

For the first time in Lucas’s presence, she felt the blood drain from her face.

“That’s not what I do. That is
not
what I do.”

He looked down, swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.

“It’s fine.”

“I don’t have probable cause to search the trailer,” he said finally. “Even if you tell me what I already know.”

She looked at Duke, dozing on the floor. She understood why men preferred dogs. Duke’s loyalty was unquestioningly to Lucas. He felt no qualms about searching out the drugs and giving Lucas the answers that could tear Cody’s family apart.

“I have some work to do,” she said finally. “I’ll be in the office, unless you need me to help with something.”

One hand on his hip, he looked like he was being ground between two stones. “Demo’s easy,” he said. “It’s the rebuilding where I need another set of hands.”

She went into the office and closed the door, then pulled up her e-mail and prioritized the work she needed to do in the next two weeks. The Senator’s party. Preliminary calls around Freddie’s wedding. Research for Freddie’s upcoming trip. Project management for the library renovation.

Find a way to say good-bye to Lucas that would show him exactly what he’d meant to her.

13

S
HE WAS ASLEEP
when he pushed open the bedroom door. The light from the kitchen illuminated the curve of her cheek, reassuringly flushed again.

Watching Alana Wentworth go white with shock slid an ice pick under his sternum. He’d apologized, and despite his brutal, uncalled-for words, she’d carried herself with considerable grace, offering to help him destroy the kitchen she was still using, then holding her head high as she walked down the hall to the bedroom she used as an office. She’d worked until after midnight, then asked him if he needed anything before taking herself to bed. He’d worked long past the point of exhaustion, going through the motions of stripping linoleum and plucking staples from the subfloor.

Eventually the noise got to Duke, and he walked past Lucas into the living room. But when his eyes began to sting from exhaustion and he went to claim his dog, Duke wasn’t asleep in front of the fireplace. Or the office.

The damn dog was asleep in a tight ball on the braided rag rug, nose tucked under his curled front paw, by Alana’s side of the bed. She was asleep, too, covers pulled up around her ears, blond hair gleaming in the moonlight.

His throat tightened. Add another emotion to the list of things he felt around Alana Wentworth. Regret for his harsh words. Shame for lashing out at a woman who’d made him no promises and done nothing but care about the people he was supposed to care about.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured again to the moonlight.

At the sound of his voice, Duke’s eyes opened. He studied Lucas without moving, waiting to see if he needed to get up or not before committing energy to the action. Alana didn’t move.

He crossed the walnut floor to stand at the foot of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said a third time.

No response. Duke closed his eyes, apparently deciding that neither he nor Lucas were going anywhere tonight. How did he know what Lucas didn’t know himself, that he wouldn’t be going home to his own bed once again? Was it some signal in his body language the dog picked up on before Lucas’s brain recognized the decision?

He was too tired to bother undressing, but the demo work had coated his clothes with a layer of dust and shards of debris, so he stripped off his shirt and shoved jeans and socks to the floor. Then he lifted the sheet, blanket, and chenille spread just enough to slide into the bed and curl up around Alana.

Her body was warm and soft from sleep, her hair as cool as the moonlight. She made a little noise when he tucked her into the curve of his body, and turned, nuzzling in search of his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She hummed, the uptick at the end asking a question.

“For what I said in the kitchen. For calling you shallow.”

A little smile curved her lips. “’S okay.” She rubbed his hip. “Go to sleep.”

He closed his eyes and dropped into the blackness, only to dream of dead-eyed teenage boys hanging off sheer cliff faces, then of Tanya, sprawled on the road. He was in his Denver PD uniform but on the county road leading to the cabin, and his cell phone was ringing. He fumbled at his hip until he woke up enough to realize the phone was actually ringing from his jeans pocket on the floor.

He lurched out of the bed. Duke pushed up on his front legs, ears alert. Alana struggled to one elbow.

The caller ID showed Matt Linden, one of his youngest officers and therefore stuck on the night shift.

“Ridgeway,” he said.

“Chief, sorry to wake you up, but I’ve got a situation with your cousin out on CR-46. I think you’d better come out here.”

The road to Tanya’s cabin. “On my way.”

“What’s going on?” Alana asked.

He thought about lying to her, about hiding whatever was coming with Tanya from her, but lying felt like an admission he’d rather not make. Lying insinuated that he had something to hide, that he felt one way or another about what happened in his life. “Something’s going on at Tanya’s place.”

She shoved the covers back and scrambled out of bed, nearly stepping on Duke in the process. “I’m coming with you.”

“This is police business, not a social call.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear and shot him a narrow-eyed look. “I heard CR-46. That’s the road to Cody’s home. His mother’s working. If anything’s going on with him, I’m coming along.”

He yanked his jeans over his ass and swiftly fastened zipper and belt. Duke stood at his calves, ears and tail perked expectantly, waiting for a hand signal to send him into action. “It’s not Cody.”

She stopped dressing. “Oh,” she said, clearly relieved.

“Go back to bed,” he said through his shirt.

Her eyes narrowed again. “It’s Tanya, isn’t it?”

If she’d phrased the question as a statement he could have ignored her long enough to get out the door, but ignoring the question answered it. “Yes,” he said, and gave Duke the signal to release him.

He had to give her credit. She dressed faster than any woman he’d ever known. Barefoot, wearing jeans under her nightie, carrying her sweater and shoes, she followed him through the kitchen.

“Ouch,” she muttered as she stepped on the staples he hadn’t pulled yet.

He stopped at the door so abruptly Duke crashed into the screen and Alana crashed into him. “If you come with me, Tanya and Matt will know we were together.”

She stepped back, but then her chin lifted. “I don’t care. Having another woman along might help.”

In his experience, introducing another woman into situations like these very rarely helped. Matt Linden didn’t say there was a car accident, or a traffic stop. He said
situation
, which meant it walked that fine, shifting line in the sand between official police business and family circumstances. “Fine, but you do exactly what I say, when I say. Got it?”

“Like the ride along. Got it.”

The trip out took fifteen minutes. He kept the lights and sirens off. No need to announce his breakneck trip out of town to every citizen of Walkers Ford. Matt had called his cell rather than use the radio, which meant none of this was on the scanner. The windows of Cody’s trailer were dark when they blew past, no car parked out front. Alana’s head turned to examine the scene.

“It’s a school night,” she said to no one in particular.

Cody had made sure the kids were fed, in bed, before doing his homework and going to bed himself. Taking on a father’s job before he was old enough not to need a father himself.

He didn’t take on other people’s problems anymore. He did his job, and yet here he was, worrying about Cody on his way to get Tanya out of whatever
situation
she’d stumbled into this time.

The road surface transitioned abruptly from blacktop to gravel. He let up on the gas until the balding tires caught in the dirt, then he braked when they crested the hill. Matt’s squad car, one of the newer, nimbler Dodges, was angled across the road in a textbook-perfect slant to prevent another car from taking off. He braked to a halt behind and to the right of Matt’s car and hurled himself out of the Blazer.

Tanya rambled in and out of the squad car’s headlights. She looked like hell, blond hair matted and hanging in snarls around her face. She wore a black men’s tank top with a flannel shirt over it and jeans that hung on her frame. Her face, starkly illuminated by the harsh headlamps, had the shrunken look of dehydration. She’d stop eating before she stopped drinking, which explained the skeletal look of her shoulder, bared when the flannel shirt slipped. She was barefoot again.

It was maybe fifty degrees out.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Sorry, Chief,” Matt said. “I was driving around when I saw her crossing the field.”

Lucas spun and looked in the direction Matt pointed, but didn’t see Tanya’s truck. “She was on foot.”

“On foot,” Matt confirmed. “She’s obviously under the influence, but she wasn’t driving. Since she’s your cousin and Chief Nelson’s daughter, I figured I better call you before I did anything else.”

“She try to run?”

Matt shook his head. “She’s just wandered around, muttering to herself.”

Lucas watched Tanya bite at her nails and roam in and out of the lights like a moth attracted to a light. She was agitated, shaking.

“Shut off your lights,” Lucas said quietly. “She’s high on painkillers. Normal activity makes them agitated. The flashing lights are worse.”

Matt reached into his open window and turned off the red-and-blue lights. “What do you think we should do?”

Lucas stepped forward, into the headlight’s beam. Tanya looked up, blinking rapidly. Her eyes were feral in her paper-white face, all humanity leached from her expression. She jerked her head back and her hair slipped enough to reveal a livid bruise on her cheekbone.

“Well, hey,” she drawled. “What brings you out this way?”

“You,” he said.

She laughed. “It’s always me, isn’t it? A thorn in your side. The black sheep. The prodigal daughter.”

If he remembered his Bible verses correctly, the prodigal son returned home, ashamed of his behavior, but he doubted Tanya would appreciate the correction. “Let’s get you home. It’s cold out here.”

“Not as cold as it is at home.”

Her sad tone twisted something deep in his gut. “We’ll start a fire,” he said and reached for her as she shambled past.

She twisted away. “You call him, Mattie? You call my cousin and tattle on me?”

“I was worried about you, Tanya,” Matt said.

“You didn’t used to worry.” She laughed, low and mean, her eyelids drooping in a parody of seduction. “No, sir. You didn’t used to worry at all.”

The tips of Matt’s ears reddened in the high beams. “I’m worried now,” he said evenly.

Lucas gave the kid credit for holding on to his temper, because Tanya was working his last nerve. “You worried about anyone lately, Tan? Anything other than yourself?”

She looked at him, blinking. Maybe it was the edge in his tone, maybe it was his position with the lights at his back, shadowing his face.

“Remember Duke? You were supposed to keep an eye on him for me. Instead I come home and he’s got no food, no water.”

“That was . . . I thought that was next . . .”

“Lucas.”

Alana’s voice. She stood by the driver’s door of Matt’s patrol car, in the darkness, but there was no mistaking that voice.

Matt’s gaze flicked from Tanya to Alana, then to Lucas in an expression of utter shock before it closed off again. He’d have to explain this away somehow, after this was all over. Alana had helped Tanya before, that was a good start, except it didn’t explain why Alana was with him that time, or this time.

Alana stepped forward. Tanya reeled on her feet, then an awful smile grew on her face. “Wow, Lucas. The town librarian? I didn’t know. Did anyone know? Are you having a secret affair with
the town librarian
? Because I can’t think of any good reason for you to bring her out here unless she was in bed with you when Mattie here called.”