Midnight Crossing (3 page)

Beverly stood and walked around the table, stretching her hand out to shake his. Josie was relieved she didn’t go straight for the hug, or, worse yet, the kiss on both cheeks.

“I am so glad to finally meet you!” Her voice was a flirty singsong. “You happen to be the first mayor I have ever actually talked to in person. It is a
real
honor.”

Moss lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Josie told me all about you. I know she feels very lucky to work with you.”

Josie stared at her mom like she had lost her mind, and then felt the mayor’s eyes on her. She turned to the back of the room. “Anyone want coffee?”

“No, I’m fine, honey,” her mother called.

Honey? And why on earth had her mom told the mayor that Josie had talked about him? Her mom had no idea who she talked to or about, or the fact that Josie and the mayor had a contentious working relationship.

After another five minutes of interminable flirting between the two, Josie repeated, “What can I do for you, Mayor?”

He glanced back at Josie and cleared his throat. “I have intelligence that we need to discuss.”

Josie gritted her teeth. Her tolerance had evaporated.

“I got an anonymous phone call. There’s some bad customers taking up in town.”

Josie turned to her mom and said, “I’ll have to connect with you later.”

Beverly seemed shocked, like she couldn’t believe she was being dismissed. “So, I should just take my bags to your house? Is that what we decided?”

Josie glanced at the mayor and said, “I’ll be right back. Let me walk her out.”

The mayor extended his hand again and said what a pleasure it had been to meet such an outstanding woman. He turned to Josie. “You make sure and show your mama a good time while she’s here in Artemis. Bring her by my office one afternoon, and I’ll give her the big tour around town. You hear?”

“I sure will,” Josie said.

*   *   *

Moments later, standing in front of the police station, Josie pointed down the block. “You remember Manny’s Motel? Just remind him that you’re my mom. I’m sure he’ll give you a good rate. Do you need directions to my house for dinner?”

“Nope. I got you in my GPS.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at six, then.” Josie reached out and they hugged awkwardly. “It’s good to see you again.”

*   *   *

Back in the office, Moss had regained the stoic expression he usually wore when talking with her, one of a stern, disapproving superior. Josie wondered if he’d been so friendly with her mother just to irritate her, and she realized if that had been his intention it had worked.

Moss sat at the conference table texting on his cell phone. When Josie sat down he laid the phone on the table.

“I got an anonymous tip that something’s going down in Artemis.”

“What kind of tip? A phone call?”

“Somebody left it on the office voicemail. Helen heard it this morning when she got to work.”

“What exactly did it say?”

“There’s the problem. Helen isn’t too techno-literate. She erased the message. But she says a male, not too old, not too young, said there’s some bad business taking place in town and the police had better get a grip before it gets out of hand.”

“That’s all she remembers?”

“You want more?”

Josie laughed, incredulous. “More would be helpful. An anonymous man leaves a vague message about trouble in town. That’s not much to go on.”

“It’s not like we get anonymous tips left on the office answering machine on a daily basis. Obviously something’s up. Be vigilant. Inform the officers that there’s possible trouble. Do I need to do your job for you?”

“No, sir.”

They both stood and she watched him pick up his phone and slip it into his back pants pocket. Josie was five-foot-seven, and Moss was slightly shorter than her, although he made up for it in cowboy boots with a custom high heel. His body was shaped like an inverted triangle, with large muscular shoulders and biceps and a narrow waist. His build, coupled with a significant underbite, had gained him the nickname Bulldog with the local law enforcement.

Before he left, the mayor admonished her once again to be vigilant. Josie texted Otto,
Look out. Bulldog’s got a bone
.

TWO

Josie arrived home in time to change clothes and make it back into the kitchen before Nick pulled up in the driveway. She’d told her mom six because Nick was arriving at five-thirty, and she wanted time to warn him about their dinner guest before she arrived. Dinner was already made—vegetable soup in the Crock-Pot that she’d turned on when she woke up that morning. It was about as homemade as Josie could muster: frozen vegetables, chunked up potatoes and carrots, beef broth, and roast beef from a can. Nick claimed it was his favorite soup, either because he was a nice guy or because he had simple tastes. Either way, Josie was fine with it.

Josie met him at the front door, where he carried a loaf of French bread and a six-pack of Killian’s Red. She smiled at the sight of him. It had been two weeks since he’d been able to visit, and she’d missed him more than she had realized. He wore a pale yellow summer-weight button-down shirt and jeans with well-worn cowboy boots. His hair was black, military-cut, and he carried himself with the same confidence and purpose as a street cop. When he noticed her standing at the door he smiled back at her, and the floor tilted beneath her. She’d never felt such an intense physical attraction to anyone else, not even Dillon, whom she’d dated for so many years.

She pushed the door open and he walked inside, laid the bread and beer on the floor, and wrapped both arms around her in a tight hug. He put his mouth beside her ear and whispered her name. “I lay in bed every night for two weeks and imagined you lying beside me. I thought about you on stakeouts. I thought about you instead of my job.” He pulled his head back and looked into her eyes. “You are one dangerous lady.”

She grinned, feeling her body temperature spike as blood rushed to her cheeks. “I missed you too.”

He laughed at her simple response and kissed her hard. He ran his hands up under her shirt and pulled her tight against his body. She finally pulled away slightly and said, “I have something to tell you.”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on her hers. “That phrase never brings me good news.”

“It’s not necessarily good,” she said, “but it could be a lot worse.”

“Does this mean we’re not skipping supper and heading to bed?”

“You’re very intuitive.”

He dropped his arms and grabbed the beer and bread off the floor, heading into the kitchen. “Give it to me straight.”

“My mom’s here. In Artemis.”

He dropped the items on the kitchen counter and turned back to her, appearing as shocked at the news as she imagined she had.

“Is she here? In your house?”

“Not yet.”

He looked like he wasn’t sure what to think. “That’s good, right? You haven’t seen her in a long time.”

She smiled and turned on the oven to heat the bread. “It’s been a long time. Yes.”

“Did you know she was coming?”

“I got back from a call this afternoon and found her in the office at the PD, smoking a cigarette.”

He laughed and Josie finally smiled at the absurdity of it.

“Are you going to see her tonight?”

Josie glimpsed the clock on the stove. “She’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

At that moment they heard a car pull into the driveway and someone honked several times. Nick grinned. “That’s her, huh?”

“No doubt.”

“Do you want me to go so you can spend some time with her?”

“No. Stay. I need all the support I can get.”

Josie walked outside to greet her mom. She had on a different outfit but it was the same combo she’d worn earlier—a short skirt and tight T-shirt. She had pulled her hair up into a messy bun behind her head. She looked a decade younger than she was until you saw the wrinkles and dark age spots on her hands and face. Josie tried to imagine her own self in twenty years, and wondered if she might be facing the same upheaval as her mom. She mentally vowed to be patient and kind.

“It’s good to see you,” Josie said.

“You too, darlin’!” she cried. She held up a bottle of wine in each hand, and then noticed Nick walk outside. “And who’s this handsome man behind you?”

“This is Nick Santos. A good friend of mine,” Josie said.

“Well, Nick. If you’re a friend of Josie’s, you’re a friend of mine,” she said.

*   *   *

Nick put his beer in the fridge and poured them each a glass of Beverly’s wine while Josie served the soup and bread. Nick was not a wine drinker and Josie found the gesture sweet. As they sipped their wine Beverly sat at the table telling Nick about her solo drive cross-country, and about the various truck stops she’d slept in along the way.

“I came across every sort of trucker and lot lizard you can imagine,” she said. “Some fella even said he’d marry me if I’d keep him company on his haul up north to Canada. Told me when we were done I could divorce him and have half of everything he owns.”

“Were you tempted?” Nick asked.

“Not even. He was nice enough to look at, but I figured half a nothing won’t get me too far.”

By the time they finished dinner and moved onto the back porch to take in the sunset, it was clear Beverly had won Nick over. This wasn’t the same mother Josie had grown up with, nor the one she fought with during every visit and phone call she’d had since leaving home. Had she changed, or was she the same manipulative woman Josie had expected? And more importantly, would Josie have time to tell the difference before her mom won over her friends and staked her claim in the midst of Josie’s life?

*   *   *

It was after one in the morning before Beverly left. Josie closed the front door after her mom drove off and sat down on the couch next to Nick, worn out from the night.

Nick said, “I have to tell you. I don’t get your irritation toward your mom. She seems like a sweet lady. She’s just looking for family and friendship.”

Josie groaned. “Seriously, Nick. You spent one evening with her. She’s a manipulator. She shows you what she wants you to see.”

“I get that. She’s no angel. My dad was a son of a bitch while I was growing up. But he’s my dad, you know? Sometimes you forgive, just because it’s family, not because it’s right.”

Josie felt her face flush. She would have liked to have said,
Shut the hell up. You don’t know what you’re talking about
. Instead, she said, “At least he was a son of a bitch. My mother was nothing. When my dad died, that was it. I was eight years old and she shut down on me.”

“She couldn’t cope. I see it all the time. Some people don’t have that coping mechanism.”

She raised a hand to stop him. “I’m done, Nick. She’s here. I’ll deal with her. But I don’t want to talk about her parenting skills right now.”

They sat for a moment without talking. Josie wished the TV was on, but it wasn’t, and if she turned it on it would feel like she was silencing him. This was the part of relationships that she disliked. Always second-guessing herself, tensing up over her inability to do the right thing, or even knowing what the right thing was.

“Look. We’re no good at this. Right?” Nick asked.

She turned to look at him. “At what?”

“At this. At talking about”—he shrugged—“whatever this is.”

She sighed. “I think you’re right. We should probably quit talking before we say something that gets us into a fight.”

He grinned. “Exactly. We’re no good at whatever this is. So let’s skip it.”

“Skip it,” she repeated.

“That’s what I said. You’re getting mad. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. So we skip it and go to bed. You give me a back rub. I’ll give you a foot rub. And then we go to bed happy instead of mad.”

“You could be a marriage counselor.”

“Call me Dr. Nick.”

*   *   *

Once they finally made it to bed they skipped the back and foot rubs. Nick curled around Josie’s body and they both settled into an almost instant sleep. Until Josie awoke with the same jolt she’d experienced the previous two nights. She’d intended to tell Nick, but had forgotten with her mom’s visit.

As she lay in a tangled mess of sheets, trapped under Nick’s leg, Josie’s skin prickled and her body was suddenly covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She pulled her leg from under Nick’s and rolled over on her back to focus on the sound. Across the room the clock on the bureau read 2:13 a.m. She was certain it was the same person coming down the gravel road.

She laid her hand on Nick’s arm, which was stretched out beside her. “Nick,” she whispered.

She felt the instant flex of muscle in his forearm, an automatic response from too many years of working in law enforcement. “What’s the matter?” His voice was hoarse with sleep but already worried.

“Do you hear the car coming down the road?”

He propped himself up on an elbow, and they both lay completely still, listening through the open bedroom windows to the faraway engine.

“I hear it,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

“People don’t come down this road at two in the morning. It’s just Dell and me. This is the third night in a row I’ve heard it.”

Nick rolled out of bed, stepped into his jeans, and grabbed his pistol off the nightstand in one smooth motion. Josie slipped a T-shirt and shorts on, grabbed her Beretta, and shoved her bare feet into a pair of work boots beside the door. She quietly shut the bedroom door so that Chester wouldn’t follow them, and walked behind Nick down the hallway. In the living room she placed her hand on his back.

“Let’s go out the back door,” she whispered.

Nick put on his boots while she disengaged the alarm system and they stepped outside.

The night spread before her in black and gray shapes, making depth perception difficult. From where she was standing ten feet from Nick, his form was clear, but the features of his face were not. Without a word she took off walking around one side of the house and Nick took the other. She held her Beretta at the ready position, her right hand gripping the gun, her trigger finger extended along the side, and her left hand held underneath to support.