Shattered (35 page)

"Told you," he said, tossing his jacket into the backseat as she shook her hair down over the telltale mark, and she made a face at him.

She put on her seat belt and backed out of the space, glad to be in motion because it provided a modicum of a breeze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he was fastening his seat belt, too, and rolling up his sleeves.

As she pulled out of the parking lot, she closed the windows when the air conditioner finally started to kick out cold air, and turned right toward the light. There was some traffic but nothing too bad. Church and early restaurant-goers, mostly.

"I'll tell Rinko that I called you and picked you up on the way," she said.

"That 'll fool him."

"You know this is going to make things awkward for both of us, if it gets out."

"Thus my rule about not dating women who work for me."

"I hate to be the one to point this out, but you done broke that rule, pardner."

"I'm aware, believe me." He gestured toward the McDonald 's up ahead. "Want to grab some drive-thru coffee?"

"Good idea." Turning into the parking lot, she ordered--she knew he liked his coffee the same way she did, black--then paid with the five-dollar bill he handed over and passed him his cup, along with the change.

As they got under way again she looked at him with the slightest of frowns. "You know, we could just file last night away under the great one-night-stand category and move on. It would make things a lot easier at work."

He took a sip of his coffee. "I don't want to do that."

Her suggestion had been in the nature of an experiment, and she felt a tiny little frisson of relief at his response. Of course, she hadn't really expected him to agree. The attraction between them was too potent for either of them just to easily walk away. It had some burning out to do first.

"Then we need to be very discreet." Swallowing some of her own coffee, she cast a reproving look at him. "Which you coming with me out to the Garcia house on a Sunday morning does not fall under the heading of, by the way."

"
Discreet
's a relative thing. As long as you don't start jumping my bones at the office, we should be okay." At the indignant look she shot him he grinned, then changed the subject before she could reply. "What did Peyton want this morning?"

"Nosy, aren't you?" They were out of the city now. She discovered that she was really, really glad of his company after all as she turned down the first of several narrow country roads that led to their destination and traffic became nonexistent.

"Yeah. Are you going to tell me?"

"He wanted to take me to lunch today."

A beat passed. A sideways glance at his face revealed exactly nothing.

"You planning to keep seeing him?" There it was: The careful neutrality of his tone told her all she needed to know.

She shook her head. Making Scott jealous had turned out to be more fun than she ever would have imagined, but it wasn't a game she ordinarily played. Straightforward was more her style. And this thing between them--it was too new for her to even characterize it as a relationship, exactly--deserved better.

"Not as anything other than a friend." She cast him another sideways glance. "I never slept with him, you know. Not once."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good to know," he said, and smiled at her.

"What about you?"

"If you're asking me if I'm sleeping with anybody else, the a nswer's no."

"I heard you were seeing some woman who works in a bank."

He looked surprised, then shook his head. "The gossip network's out of date. That 's been over for a while."

Good
hovered on her lips, but she didn't say it. Instead she said, "We 're here," because they had just crested a rise that brought the Garcias' house into view.

He followed her gaze, studying the property with a slight frown as they drew close. Rinko's van was parked at the end of the long drive, Lisa saw as she pulled in. Everything else, from the For Sale sign to the overgrown grass to the fortresslike woods crowding the property on either side to the small brick ranch house itself, looked exactly the same as it had when she had been there before.

Lisa shivered.

Scott gulped the last of his coffee as she parked behind the van and put the empty cup back in the cup holder between them. Her own coffee was only about half finished, but she suddenly didn't want it anymore. Feeling more nervous than she cared to admit, she looked around, but Rinko was nowhere in sight.

"Stay close to me, hear?" Typical high-handed Scott, his tone made it a command rather than a question, but under the circumstances Lisa discovered she had no fault to find with the sentiment thus expressed. She nodded, and they got out of the car.

Elsewhere in the area, it was a typical sunny, blazing-hot July day. But here, in the shadow of the tall trees, it was measurably cooler, and darker, and quieter. An insistent cicada chorus was the only sound. The isolation was palpable. It did not, Lisa thought, give off the feeling of a happy place, and she was doubly grateful that Scott had insisted on coming with her. She would never in a million years have admitted it, but right about now, on her own, she would have been scared to death.

So maybe she
was
overimaginative.

She had already whipped out her phone and was dialing Rinko as Scott joined her on her side of the car.

"We're here," she told Rinko when he answered. Then, with a glance at Scott, who was frowning at the house as they walked toward it, she added in a quieter voice, "Um, I brought Buchanan with me."

Scott flicked her a derisive look.

"Shit." Rinko's consternation was obvious. "What'd you go and do that for? He's going to be pissed. He told me to leave this case alone."

"Sorry, I had no idea." She glanced at Scott. He didn't look pissed. Actually, he was looking pretty mellow. She had a shrewd idea why that was, and Rinko could thank her anytime. She spoke to Rinko again. "Where are you?"

But even as she asked the question it was answered. Three teens emerged from the woods on the far side of the house. Although she was initially surprised to see them, she realized that she shouldn't have been. Of course Rinko would have brought his proteges, and she was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that Jantzen was somewhere around, too. One of them, the blond girl, Ashley, waved at her. The other girl--Sarah--and the tall boy with the spiky black hair--Matt--just stood there looking her and Scott over with obvious interest. The girls wore shorts, the boy jeans.

"Never mind, I see the kids," she told Rinko, then waved back at Ashley and disconnected.

"Great." Scott had seen the teens, too.

"It 's the wayward lambs," Lisa reminded him.

"Yeah, I got that. This just keeps getting better and better. If they're here, my nephew is probably here, and he's been under the impression that you're my girlfriend since the night Grayson Springs burned. He also thinks you're a babe, by the way."

"You and your nephew talked about me?" The idea of Scott exchanging confidences with a fifteen-year-old was mildly mind-boggling. They were heading across the yard toward the kids now, and Lisa stole uneasy glances at the house. It was suddenly impossible to forget that someone hiding inside had attacked her last time she'd been here. Her skin crawled. Lisa had to remind herself not to walk too close to Scott, or take hold of his arm, or slip her hand into his.
Professional
was going to be her byword, she was determined, even if she was feeling decidedly spooked.

"He's the one who told me you got knocked unconscious last time you were here, remember? The rest were just comments made in passing."

"Did you correct him? I
wasn't
your girlfriend." Lisa noticed she used the past tense only after the words left her mouth.

"No, you weren't," he agreed.

It didn't escape her notice that he used the past tense, too, and her heart gave a funny little flutter at the thought that now, maybe, she was. But at the moment she had other, more pressing, concerns, and so she pushed the whole rather charming concept to the back of her mind to be examined more carefully later.

"Just so you know, you've got Rinko worried. He says you told him to leave this case alone."

"I did."

His tone had gone surprisingly grim, which boded ill for Rinko.

"Why?"

"I don't want to get all kinds of other people involved until I've got a better idea of what we're dealing with here."

"What do you think we're dealing with?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. So far, all I've come up with is a lot of coincidences. But they're funny coincidences, and I don't mean the ha-ha kind. I mean the kind that makes me think I need to look into them further."

"
You
need to look into them? I thought you'd passed the grunt work off to somebody."

"I decided to do it myself, just in case whatever turned up ends up being about you."

That touched her so much that she stopped walking. When he turned to look at her, she smiled at him. "That's really sweet," she said.

He looked mildly revolted. "Just for the record, Princess, I don't do sweet."

Despite that "Princess," what she wanted to do was walk into his arms, wrap her arms around his neck, and kiss him until they were both breathless. Because they had an audience, she made a face at him instead and resumed walking.

"Yes, you do. Sometimes. Be nice to Rinko. He's a good guy. And he's only trying to help."

Falling in beside her, Scott grunted.

The kids were already fading back into the woods when they reached it, with Ashley beckoning excitedly at them to follow. There was a path, Lisa saw, as she and Scott ducked into the woods after them, a narrow path that ran between rough-barked trees crowded in so closely together that no matter which way you looked, more trees were all you could see. Branches wove a canopy overhead that almost completely blocked out the sun, with only a few stray beams of light managing to pierce the foliage. It was gloomy and cool, and quiet except for the cicadas. The carpet of fallen leaves underfoot deadened their footsteps. Vines climbed tree trunks, and scrub bushes and brambles tangled together on the ground. The air smelled of earth and was so still that not even a leaf moved.

Scott stayed so close behind her that he practically stepped on the heels of her Keds.

"You're not going to believe this." Ashley was waiting for them at the edge of a clearing about the size of a small bedroom. She pointed toward where Rinko stood by a knee-high leaf pile that had obviously been raked up by Chase--obviously because he was leaning on a rake. Beside Chase, Noah held what it took Lisa a second to determine was a vacuum cleaner-sized silver metal detector. Austin, dirty gardening trowel in hand, stood beside Rinko. Sarah and Matt stood next to them. Jantzen, who held a digital camera, appeared to have been taking pictures. They were grouped around what appeared to be a shallow hole, freshly dug, no doubt by Austin and his trowel.

All eyes turned toward Lisa and Scott as they headed toward the assemblage.

"We've been going over this whole property with a metal detector, inch by tedious inch," Rinko told them as they reached the group. "Just to see if anything interesting turned up. Look what did."

Eyes glowing with pride, he handed something to Scott, who frowned as he looked down at the object in his hand. Lisa looked at it and frowned, too.

It was the approximate size and shape of a coaster, dark gray now though, from a few specks of color remaining around the raised edge, it had once been gold. A frayed and dirty bit of blue ribbon was still attached to one end.

Lisa realized that what she was seeing was a medal of the type sometimes awarded in athletic competitions that was meant to be worn around the neck.

"See, it's got a book engraved on the front." Rinko was clearly too eager to show off his find to let any nervousness about Scott's presence deter him. "And look on the back." He flipped the medal over in Scotts hand, and pointed. "It says,
Marisa Garcia.
What do you think about that?"

27

"Hello? Hell-o-o?
Where is everybody?" A hearty male voice calling from the direction of the Garcias' house cut through the sudden silence. "Owners of the van and the Jaguar? Hello?"

Having glanced in the direction of the voice like everyone else, Lisa returned her attention to Scott as he ignored the distraction to say to the others, "I suppose everybody's had their hands on this?"

Rinko immediately looked self-conscious.

"We dug it up and passed it around before the Rink and Emily caught up with us," Chase said. It was clear to Lisa from his slightly truculent tone that he thought he was standing up for Rinko.

"I guess I should've told 'em if they found anything not to touch it, but I didn't think about it." Rinko was now slightly shamefaced. Lisa felt a spurt of sympathy for him. Admitting to a screwup with Scott's eyes on him, and Jantzen and the kids watching, couldn't be easy. "My bad, huh?"

Scott's lips twisted. Lisa was glad when he didn't reply.

"If it hadn't been for you, it wouldn't have been found." Jantzen's chin was up, she was shooting Scott a challenging look, and she moved loyally closer to Rinko, who gave her a quick, grateful smile. Unlike the other guys, who all wore jeans, Rinko was wearing rumpled khaki shorts and a madras shirt, and his hair was curling wildly in the heat, and his glasses were slipping down his nose. Beside him, Jantzen, with her hair in braids and wearing a pink sundress, looked cool and pretty. They made an unlikely couple, but Lisa considered Jantzen's presence in the buggy, steamy woods on a Sunday morning, to say nothing of the alacrity with which she came to Rinko's defense, to be a good sign. "The metal detector was your idea. You get the credit."

"Or the blame," Noah said under his breath, his eyes on Scott 's face.

Ashley frowned at Scott. "That thing we found is important, right? I mean, it belonged to one of the missing people."