SpareDick (8 page)

Adam nodded, glancing at them. “Thank you both. If anything
comes to mind, any teacher Heather might have mentioned, someone she
particularly liked or admired, please give us a call.”

Since Adam’s hands were full, Kevin pulled a card from his
pocket and handed it to Mr. Stevens. “We appreciate you taking the time to talk
to us. We’re sorry we had to bring you the news about Heather’s death.”

Mrs. Stevens attempted a smile. “I think we’ve always known
Heather wouldn’t be coming back.” Her mouth trembled a bit. “If the same man
has this latest little girl…well, I hope Heather’s death can somehow help you
find him.”

Adam and Kevin were silent as they drove along the road. “So
what was with you in the Stevens girl’s room?” Adam asked.

Kevin huffed out a breath. “It struck me when I walked in
and saw the Justin Timberlake poster. Heather Stevens and Jill would be about
the same age. Hell, I think Jill even had that same poster in her room.” He
stared out the window. “Who keeps a woman for ten years before he kills her?”

“We don’t know he kept her.”

“No,” Kevin cut in, “but it’s where we’re headed. You and I
both know it. Whoever this asshole is…he’s not only sick, he’s sadistic. And
how the hell would you hide someone that long? Have you thought about it?”

Adam glanced over at him. “Yeah. I have. And I think it
narrows our field of suspects even more.”

Jill had thought Kevin would call. By now, she’d expected
it. In fact she’d expected him to call last night, but he hadn’t. For the first
time she could remember, she had slept the entire night in their bed alone.

“Ramsey!” one of the docs barked. “Someone’s out here to see
you.” She’d volunteered to work an extra shift, realizing work was better than
sitting at home thinking about her husband.

She shook her head and blinked. A glance at her watch told
her it was dinner time. Could it be Kevin? Her heart pounded. Even though she
knew she’d been in the right, she didn’t want this hanging between them. She
needed to find some way back to where they had been.

She should have talked to him. Several times during the
morning, she’d been tempted to call, but she’d forced herself to stop. He would
have to make the first move. He was the one in the wrong. Maybe he was here now
to do that.

When she entered the lobby, instead of Kevin, Adam waited
for her. Jill stiffened. His expression was somber. “Is there someplace we can
speak privately?”

“Outside’s about as private as it’s going to get,” Jill told
him. “I’m on duty.”

Adam nodded and stood aside for her to precede him. She
walked to a bench at the end of the portico, conscious of Adam’s catlike steps
behind her. Rather than sit, she stood with her hands jammed in her pockets,
fighting the urge to touch him and beg him to tell her that Kevin was okay,
that he was too.

“Why are you here, detective?”

She didn’t miss the flash of annoyance in his dark gaze.
“Don’t try to distance me. Things have gone much too far for that.”

“Maybe I need distance from the man who’s been fucking my
husband.” She pressed her lips together. Yelling at him wouldn’t solve
anything, but she was frightened of what had happened between the two of them,
frightened that she’d lose control.

His mouth thinned and he scowled, his eyes staring off into
the distance for a while before he brought his gaze back to her. There was such
sadness there for an instant before he masked it that Jill nearly took a step
forward to comfort him as she often comforted the families of patients.

“If you would just listen to him, Jill,” he said quietly and
quickly as though he feared she would cut him off or walk away. “He loves you.
Everything he did was out of love for you, yes, even his fear of having you
hook up with a stranger. It was so obvious to me—”

“Because you were already sucking his dick?” They had lied
to her. She needed to hang on to her anger because she wasn’t nearly ready to
explore her feelings from that night. So she struck out, wanting to hurt him as
he’d hurt her.

The annoyance she’d noticed earlier morphed into anger. Now
Jill was ready to take a step back.

“You know, if that’s what you truly believe, then you don’t
have a clue who Kevin Ramsey is.”

“And you do?”

His lips pressed in a thin line, but this time Jill read
pain rather than anger. “If he’d even hinted over the last month…but he never
did. Even when I offered to do this threesome, his concern—his sole focus—was
you. Everything was for you. He was afraid he might not be able to perform with
me there, but he wanted to try it for you.”

“It didn’t appear either of you suffered any extreme
torture.” Jill’s throat ached. She needed to know what Kevin thought. “Did he
ask you to talk to me?”

Adam’s eyes widened. “Hell no. He’d deck me if he knew I was
here, but he’s hurting, Jill—”

“He hurt me!” she was goaded into snapping. “You both did.
You set out to deceive me. And then last night, when it was just you and me.
Couldn’t you have told me, hinted? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be
taken advantage of?”

Adam’s jaw hardened and now his expression filled with
contempt. “As a matter of fact, I do. Sure, I volunteered for it, but the two
of you using me was what Saturday night was all about. I was just the extra
dick to fulfill your fantasy.”

And with that, he started to walk away, leaving her gaping
after him. That wasn’t it at all. And when they’d made love later—and yes, that’s
what it had been—she had felt so connected, exactly how she always felt with
Kevin. She had to say something. “Adam! Wait.”

He stopped, his back still to her, and said nothing. Jill
swallowed, trying to get something past the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry,”
she whispered at last. His words had hit entirely too close to home. She
had
thought of whoever they found for the third in their threesome as simply a
spare dick. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Neither did we.” And then he
did walk away.

His parting words kept going through her mind during the
rest of her shift. Had she ever considered Adam’s emotions? Adam’s or Kevin’s?
If she were fair, she would have to admit the one issue Kevin had balked about
to begin with was making arrangements to do a threesome with a stranger, but
Jill had pushed it and pushed it, saying she couldn’t possibly have sex with
anyone they already knew. The truth was there’d been no one they already knew
who she found attractive enough.

Would she have thought differently had she already met her
husband’s partner? He was obviously concerned about Kevin. She sucked in a deep
breath. And he’d been an amazing lover. She had felt almost as instantly
connected to him as she did to Kevin.

Fuck.

Jill gathered her purse and her keys and drove home. She
needed to think. She curled up on the couch in the family room with a cup of
tea and a sandwich, flipping through the channels until she found the late
local news.

“The discovery of a body early Sunday morning brings a
ten-year-old missing person case to a close.”

Jill looked up from the magazine she’d started flipping
through to see video of Adam and Kevin talking with an older man off to one
side while investigators worked around an overgrown area cordoned off with
yellow crime tape.

“Authorities have confirmed the body is that of Heather
Stevens, now twenty-eight, who disappeared on her way home from her part-time
job ten years ago. Investigators have not released the cause of death, saying
it is part of their ongoing investigation.”

Suddenly Kevin was there, close-up on the TV screen. He
looked pale and tired, his eyes red-rimmed. “Our investigation into the Stevens
case continues,” he said. “While the outcome is not what anyone would have
wanted, we have been able to bring some closure to her family.”

The newscaster came back on camera, adding Heather Stevens’
body had been found very near where Adelaide Brown disappeared a week earlier,
but police weren’t commenting on the possibility the two cases were connected.

Jill stared out the window. Kevin had mentioned Addy Brown,
how he was convinced something bad had happened to her, that she wasn’t just a
disgruntled teen who’d taken off. From years married to a cop, she knew Adam
and Kevin would have been the ones to tell the Stevens family about Heather.

No wonder Kevin had looked so pale. He’d always had a chink
in his tough-guy armor for cases involving kids, and then to have to tell a
mother and father their child would never be coming home? She wondered where he
was. She’d checked their joint account online. Other than a gasoline purchase,
there’d been no other charges, not even a cash advance.

Was he with Adam? As soon as the thought occurred to her,
another realization did too. That’s where she wanted him to be. Adam cared
about him. She’d much rather he was there than sitting by himself in a motel
room somewhere. And didn’t that blow a huge hole in her anger. How could she be
angry with them, but want Kevin to be at Adam’s?

* * * * *

“What the fuck do you mean you went to see her?” Kevin
exploded, barely restraining himself from putting a fist through Adam’s living
room wall, or better yet Adam’s nose.

“Come on, Ramsey! You’re not sleeping, you’re hardly eating
and since we left work this afternoon, you’ve been tossing back beer as if you
bought stock in Miller.”

“My business,” Kevin snarled. “Not yours.”

Adam snatched the bottle from Kevin’s hand and tossed it in
the sink. “You made it my business.”

“Why? Because you’ve had your dick in my ass and I liked
it?” Kevin spun away, pulling at his hair with both hands. “I fucking
liked
it and now my wife won’t even talk to me! I told you she needed time to cool
down. Why did you do it, Hell?”

When the silence continued, he turned to look at his
partner. Adam had leaned against the counter, arms across his chest and his jaw
set as he kept his gaze averted from him.

“Why, Adam?”

“It’s wrong, dude. You and Jill not being together. It’s
wrong.”

“Look at me, man.”

“No.”

“Why does it matter to you?” The muscles in his partner’s
jaw ticked. “Why, Adam?”

“Because I fucking care about you, all right, asshole?
Because I would give almost anything to be where you are, to have a woman such
as Jill love
me
, to have…” his voice trailed off into silence.

“A man such as you love me?” Kevin finished. He closed his
eyes. God, what a mess. “You know I still can’t go there without Jill. She has
to be part of the equation.”

Adam nodded, his face still averted.

“Will you look at me?”

“I can’t.” His voice was muffled.

Kevin took the two strides needed to bring him in front of
Hell and then his gut clenched. His partner’s dark eyes were awash with tears
he refused to let fall. Kevin closed his and sighed. “Christ, Adam, don’t.
Don’t waste your tears on me.”

“Fuck you.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands,
his mouth still drawn in a thin line. “I pissed her off.”

Kevin cupped either side of Adam’s head, forcing him to look
at him. “It couldn’t be that bad.”

“She told me I had no idea how used she felt.
Fuck.
I
stared right back at her and said yeah…I knew exactly. Damn it, Ramsey. I gave
her a
fuck you, bitch
and she got the message loud and clear. God. I’m
so sorry. I told her we didn’t mean to hurt her, but we did.”

Kevin stared at his partner. They had done this to him. It
didn’t matter that Adam had volunteered. Kevin realized now his partner had
done it because he cared—for both of them—and they had used him. He leaned his
forehead into Adam’s. “We’re the ones who should apologize to you.”

Hell jerked away. “You don’t get it. You gave me what I
didn’t have the guts to go after on my own. Shit. I’m done with this.”

Before he realized what was going on, Adam had left the
apartment. Kevin started to go after him and stopped. He’d never seen his
partner—calm, cold-as-ice Hell—so torn out of his frame. Maybe they both needed
a chance to decompress.

* * * * *

Adam parked his car in front of the house and simply stared.
He’d already tried talking to her at the hospital and that hadn’t gone well.
What the hell was he doing? Why couldn’t he simply leave it alone?

But he knew the answer to that. If he wanted to be entirely
honest with himself, he’d known the answer since the first time he saw Kevin
and Jill together. He wanted to be a part of that, but he just wasn’t sure
there was room for him, room to make their couple a trio.

One thing was for sure. They couldn’t continue this way. He
couldn’t and Kevin and Jill definitely couldn’t. Adam took a deep breath,
realizing that if there was no other way, he would bow out and simply let them
find their way back to being a couple. Right now, though, he had to give
talking to Jill one more try.

Adam unfastened his seatbelt and opened the door.

The doorbell startled her. Jill was curled up on the couch
in the family room flipping through a magazine, but her mind had been anywhere
but on its contents. She jumped to her feet, for one second thinking it might
be Kevin until common sense told her he would simply have used his key. She
looked through the peephole and found herself staring into Adam’s distorted
features.

Jill unbolted the door and pulled it open.

“May I come in?” His voice was husky, subdued. She nodded
and backed up, opening the door wider to admit him. He looked uneasy, or maybe
it was simply uncertain, his gaze skittering around the hallway, pausing on her
and skittering away again. “Nice place.”

“Come into the kitchen. Would you like some coffee or
something?” Jill felt awkward too. They were so much more than strangers, yet
he had never been inside their home.

“That would be nice.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. He dug his
hands in his pockets. “No, never mind. I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

Jill didn’t respond until she’d reached the kitchen. “It’s
no problem.”

“Maybe I should just get to the point.”

She raised her chin. “I thought we’d pretty much covered
everything earlier. I mean, you made yourself pretty clear.”

“I was out of line.”

Jill couldn’t hold his gaze. She glanced at her bare feet
and blew out a harsh breath. “No. You weren’t. You were right. Kevin and I used
you. It was wrong.”

Silence stretched. Finally, when she wasn’t sure she could
stand it anymore, she heard him murmur, “It didn’t feel wrong.”

She whipped her gaze back up to search his expression.

“For the most part it felt really, really right.” His dark
eyes met hers, his gaze intense.

“What about how used you felt?” She had to ask because his
words had haunted her. She was surprised when a faint flush stained his cheeks.

“I was guilty too. We all were. And I want you to know…I’m
sorry.”

“Sorry it happened?”

He raked a hand back through his hair and stared at the far
wall. “Not if we can find a way to all be okay with this. I would be sorry it
happened if it messed up things for you and Kevin.”