The Marriage Profile (8 page)

“Only I wasn't there to find her,” Luke said, his expression once again filled with self-reproach.

“From all accounts, your little girl was in very good hands with the Carsons,” Angela offered.

“I'm her father. I should have been there. Maybe if I had—”

“Don't,” Angela cautioned. She reached across the table, touched his hand. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “The night you met Lena's mother, you said that your actions were out of character for you.”

“That's right,” he replied, and removing his hand from her touch, he slipped the dark glasses back on. “I don't usually sleep with a woman I've just met.”

“Speaking as a woman, I have a feeling that the same
thing would hold true for your mystery woman. Most women aren't casual about sex, either.”

“What's your point?” Justin asked.

“That maybe Luke and this woman weren't strangers,” Angela told him, toying with the possibility that if the woman had been Haley Mercado and she'd changed her appearance somehow, Luke might not have recognized her, but she would have recognized him.

“He's already said he didn't know her,” Justin pointed out.

Luke spoke up. “Hang on a second. Maybe Angela's on to something. I mean, there was something familiar about her. She—she reminded me of someone I used to know, a girl I'd once been close to.”

“Could it have been the same woman?” Angela asked.

Luke's expression grew even more somber. He seemed to gaze off into the distance, his thoughts evidently locked somewhere in the past. Then he shook his head as though shaking off some memory. “No. No, that would be impossible. It couldn't have been her.”

“We've taken up enough of your time,” Justin said, and shot her a warning look. He stood. “Angela needs to get busy working up that profile, and I need to get back to the office.”

Following Justin's lead, Angela came to her feet, all the while aware of Justin monitoring her. “It was good seeing you again, Luke. I'm sorry it couldn't have been under happier circumstances.”

“Angela, thank you for coming to Mission Creek, for agreeing to help,” Luke told her, and extended his hand.

“You're welcome.”

“Obviously I'm of no use in any kind of search,” Luke told her, his voice filled with disgust at the reference to his blindness. “But if there is anything you need, anything
at all, you need only to tell me. All my resources—money, manpower, anything—they're at your disposal. Just find my baby for me. Please.”

“Justin and I will do everything we can to locate her,” she assured him.

“Thank you,” he said, and released her hand. “Both of you.”

“You hang in there. I'll be in touch,” Justin told him, and after shaking Luke's hand, he ushered her away.

 

“I know what you're thinking,” Justin told Angela, breaking the silence that had hung between them since leaving the Callaghan estate. Although she'd said nothing for several miles now, he could almost see the wheels turning in her head.

“Well, that's certainly a switch. Usually I'm the one who's accused of reading people's minds.”

Justin slanted a glance across the truck seat, noting the hint of a smile on her lips. “That's the first time I've ever heard you joke about it.”

“It?”

“You know, the psychic thing. Usually you just clam up,” he said cautiously. The way she had in his office only a few days ago.

Angela shrugged, and the trace of a smile died. “Reflex, I guess. I've spent so much of my life being afraid that if people knew I was different, they wouldn't accept me. I wanted to fit in, to belong. And I learned that the best way to do that was not to say anything, to just keep my thoughts and feelings to myself.”

“Is that why you used to shut me out?” he asked, the question tumbling past his lips before he could think better of it.

She stared at him with serious blue eyes. “You're a man
who deals in facts, Justin. For you, everything is black-and-white. The few times when I tried to tell you about my visions, you claimed it was my cop's instincts kicking in, remember?”

“I don't remember you denying it,” he said, feeling defensive because he remembered all too well that she'd spooked him on more than one occasion with her ability to know the phone was going to ring before it rang, knew who would be on the other side of the door before there was a knock, knew where to find the missing pieces on a puzzling case without any solid reasoning behind it.

“Because I knew it made you uncomfortable. You needed a logical explanation for things—not something as illogical as having your wife tell you that she had psychic visions.”

“You make me sound like some kind of close-minded jerk.”

“I don't mean to. You're a good man, Justin, an honorable one. I knew exactly who and what you were when I married you. The problem wasn't you. It was me. I was the one who was dishonest. I was afraid that if I ever let you see who I really was, what I really am, that I would lose you.”

“You think I don't know that? You think I didn't know that you always held a part of yourself back from me? That you didn't trust me?” he fired back, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone. “You were like some lost, scared kitten, Angela. And I loved you so much that I would have walked through fire for you, done anything for you. I thought if I was patient, that if I showed you how much I loved you, that you would learn to trust me, that you would love me the way I loved you. But you never did.”

“I did love you,” she told him.

“Well, I guess you just didn't love me enough to have a little faith in me. If you had, we might have been able to work things out. But I suppose that's one of those things we'll never know, isn't it?”

“I guess n— Justin, look out!”

Justin jerked his gaze back to the road, where a big slow-moving rig was blocking the road directly ahead of them. “Hang on,” he shouted as he hit the brakes and yanked the steering wheel to the right. His truck slid several feet, kicking up dust and gravel and with it the stench of burning rubber. When the truck finally came to a hard stop a few yards from where the semi was just lumbering by, his head snapped forward and back before his body slammed back against the seat. “Are you all right?” he asked, his gaze raking over her.

“Yes. I think so,” she said, her voice a little more than a whisper.

But her eyes were wide, her face pale. And without stopping to think, he unhooked his seat belt, reached across the seat and began running his hands down her torso, checking to assure himself she was okay. When his hand brushed the side of her breast, he went still. The adrenaline rush of the near crash somehow kick-started the sensual awareness that he'd spent all morning trying to keep leashed. Suddenly he realized how close her mouth was. All he had to do was lean forward an inch, maybe two, and he'd be kissing her as he'd wanted to do from the first moment he'd seen her the other night at the dedication.

As though reading his thoughts, she sucked in a breath. Justin lifted his gaze to hers, and the answering need he saw darkening her eyes sent heat firing through his veins like a blowtorch. He started to lower his mouth when the blare of a horn slapped him back to his senses. He yanked himself from the brink, released his hold on her and cursed
his own weakness where she was concerned. Frustrated, he punched the steering wheel and found some measure of satisfaction at the jolt of pain that shot up his arm.

After a long moment he said, “I'm sorry. I should have been paying closer attention to the road.” And he was also sorry for allowing himself to get worked up as he had and nearly getting them both killed. He was even sorrier for letting his guard slip and coming dangerously close to kissing her. It was a mistake that he didn't intend to make again. Feeling somewhat more in control, he allowed himself to look at her. “You sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said.

Only, he knew she was lying. Already he could sense her retreating into herself once more, shutting him out as she'd done so often during their marriage. Which was just as well, he told himself as he refastened his seat belt and started the truck up again. The last thing either of them needed was to go tiptoeing through the emotional mine-fields of what went wrong with their marriage. No, the sooner this case was closed and she was on her way back to San Antonio, the better off they'd both be, he told himself. He maneuvered his truck back onto the roadway and aimed it toward Angela's condo.

For the next twenty minutes neither of them said a word. Silence settled inside the truck like a dense fog. Feeling edgy and far too aware of Angela sitting quietly beside him, Justin was almost grateful to have Audrey Lou call him on his radio transmitter. “Wainwright,” he all but barked out in answer.

“Sheriff, we've got a fender bender with an overturned horse trailer on Pine Street. The trailer was empty, and the driver's only got a few scratches, but the trailer's blocking two streets and has traffic in a mess. Hank's on the scene,
but he's still taking statements. He could use a hand clearing the streets.”

“Tell Bobby to get over there and help him,” Justin instructed.

“Tried,” Audrey Lou said. “But the boy's not answering his radio. I sent him to clear up a scuffle between the Mitchell and Hawkins boys. He radioed in fifteen minutes ago, saying everything was under control and he was heading back here after he made a quick stop. But so far, there's no sign of him.”

Justin swore. “Keep trying until you get him,” he ordered. “I'm only a few minutes from Angela's now. As soon as I drop her off, I'll be heading back to the office. In the meantime, call Roy and ask him if he'll give Hank a hand.”

“Will do,” Audrey Lou replied.

“And, Audrey Lou?”

“Yeah, Sheriff?”

“You tell Bobby I want to see him when I get back,” he said before ending the call. He liked Bobby, thought the kid had potential. But he couldn't shake the feeling that his new deputy wasn't being straight with him. He'd been a lawman too long not to be able to get a sense when something was off. And something was off with his deputy. The kid was hiding something.

He'd been sorely in need of another deputy when Bobby had applied for the job. And although Audrey Lou said Bobby's references had checked out, it wouldn't hurt for him to take a closer look. He made a mental note to put a call in to a friend he had at the capitol in Austin and ask him to run Bobby's name through the system.

“Things sound pretty busy,” Angela said, breaking into his thoughts. “I should have taken my car and gone to see
the Carsons and Luke on my own instead of taking up your time like this.”

“I offered to take you, remember?”

“I know, but it's pretty obvious that you're needed back in town.”

“The town will survive without me for a while,” he told her, and flicked on his turn signal as he headed for the exit lane. “Besides, I didn't want you talking to the Carsons or Luke without me there.”

“Why not?” she asked, and he didn't miss the sharp note in her tone.

“Because I didn't want you saying anything to them about your pal Ricky Mercado's theory that little Lena is his sister's kid. And judging by your questions to Luke, I can see I was right to be worried. That is where you were heading with that line of questions about the woman he spent the night with, isn't it?”

“You heard Luke. He said the woman reminded him of someone he used to know.”

“Haley Mercado died in a boating accident four years ago,” Justin pointed out as he turned onto Angela's street.

“But from what I understand, the body that was found was so badly decomposed there was no way to make a positive ID. And there were no dental records or other means to prove it was Haley.”

“And you don't know that it wasn't Haley,” he argued.

“Are you going to sit there and tell me that you don't think it's even a possibility that the woman was Haley?”

“Yeah, I think it's a possibility that the woman was Haley. I also think it's a possibility that she wasn't. So until we know otherwise, we deal in facts. And the fact is that as far as either one of us knows, Haley Mercado is dead.”

“Since when did you become such a close-minded stuffed shirt, Wainwright?”

The accusation hit home. Justin swung the truck into her driveway and slammed the gearshift into Park. Then he turned to face her. “Maybe since I watched Luke's guilt over that accident nearly eat him alive. Or maybe it was when I saw him and Flynt and Spence Harrison and Tyler Murdoch go through that circus of a trial for Haley's murder. Or maybe it was after their acquittal when that psycho Frank Del Brio vowed to get his own justice for Haley's death.”

“But—”

Justin got in her face and dropped his voice as he said, “You're the one who's supposed to be the psychic, Mason. All I have to work with is my gut. And my gut tells me that if that little girl is Haley's, there's a real good chance that Del Brio's behind her kidnapping.”

“But if you think he's the one who has Lena, then we know where to look. All we need is a search warrant for his home, for his business.”

“We can't get a warrant without some evidence.”

“Well, I can get one,” she informed. “Let me make a call—”

He caught her wrist when she reached for her purse in search of her cell phone. “Listen up, Mason. You aren't going to call anyone. And you aren't going to say a word about any of this until I say so. Understand?”

She jerked her wrist free, tipped up her chin. “I don't take orders from you, Justin Wainwright.”

“On this you do,” he told her, and damned if he didn't think she looked beautiful with temper heating her cheeks and sparking in her eyes. “There's no way I'm going to let you put two people's lives at risk.”