Authors: Alexa Grace
"Is your niece named Mandy Morris?"
"Yeah, so what?" She slid out a cigarette out a pack of Camels and pulled a matchbook from her pocket and. She lit the end of the cigarette and took a drag.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"Then spit it out. Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Mandy Morris was found dead yesterday."
"No kidding. That's what she gets for going to college when she should’ve stayed here to support her aunt. She needed to get a damn job to help pay for things around here. But no. Her mother filled her with all these ideas that she could be anything she wanted. And she sure didn't want to turn out like her dear Aunt Nelle."
Lane just stared at her. He'd just told her that her nineteen year old niece had lost her life and this is her response? She was most definitely one of those women devoid of maternal instincts. He clenched his jaw and asked, "When was the last time you saw Mandy?"
"A couple of summers ago. Just before she got that scholarship and left for college." She slurred the word "college" like it was a dirty word.
"And you haven't heard from her since?"
"Nope and I didn't expect to hear from that ingrate. After all I'd done for her too. Who else would have taken her in after that car accident killed her parents?" She took a last drag on her cigarette then threw it into the yard.
"Do you know anyone who would want to hurt Mandy?"
"Nope. If you're done with your questions, I'm busy," she said as she pulled the pack of cigarettes out of her dress pocket again. She then stumbled back a couple of steps and slammed the door in his face.
Lane folded his notebook and crammed it into his pocket. With clenched fists he stalked back to his car. Mandy Morris was only nineteen years old. She'd been so young with her life ahead of her. Her mother had been right. She could have been anyone she wanted to be. That her young life was cut so short and her only living relative didn't give a damn sickened and saddened him at the same time.
His cell vibrated in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and checked the display. "Hi, Mom."
"Hi, sweetie. How's my handsome boy? Just calling to see if you can come for supper tonight. Your dad caught some catfish yesterday and we're having a fish fry."
"Not tonight. I'm in Bloomington on a case. I may be here for a couple of days."
"Lane, there's another reason I called. You remember Nancy? I work with her at Dispatch. Well, Nancy has a pretty daughter and I thought..."
"Don't go there again, Mom. You're not fixing me up. I thought we had that settled. I don't need your help in that department." How many times in the past had she tried to fix him up? How many times did he have to say no?
"Honey, I respectfully disagree. You should've made me a grandmother years ago."
"Seriously, Mom? This is why you called me? Because I'm at work and I have a lot to do today."
"I love you, Lane."
"Love you too, Mom. Good-bye."
Lane smiled. Love was never in short supply among the Hansen family. What his mother didn't know was the only woman he wanted haunted his dreams. The one he'd probably never have again. Not that he'd stop trying. Seeing Frankie at the wedding had only deepened his resolve. Now he just needed a plan to make her forgive him and let him back in her bed.
He'd turned the ignition to start his car when the cell buzzed again. "Hansen," he answered.
"This is Dr. Meade. After you left the autopsy, I discovered something that may help in your investigation."
"What's that?"
"Mandy Morris had given birth within weeks of her death."
Lane disconnected the call and leaned back in his seat and felt anger wash over him. He had two immediate thoughts. The first was how could anyone have killed this girl? The second was this sick bastard is going down.
Like most cops, he knew
the leading cause of death for young women is homicide at the hands of the husband or lover. So f
inding the baby-daddy jumped to first on his to-do list.
Lane checked into the Comfort Inn, ate pizza and spent the rest of his evening hunched over his laptop making interview plans and appointments for the next day. He wanted to talk to Mandy's dorm roommate as well as visit area hospitals to find out where she'd given birth. He vowed the name of the baby-daddy would be his by the end of the next day.
He pulled out the information he'd gotten from the college earlier in the day. He learned that Mandy Morris was a good student who was on a scholarship that paid all her expenses as long as she stayed enrolled in college, taking classes and maintained at least a B average. Student records revealed perfect attendance had diminished. She had missed numerous classes this term, which fit precisely with a pregnancy timetable.
He turned on his laptop to view her bank records. There were direct deposits of $500 to her checking account every two weeks from F.H.A.A. Since she was not working and had a scholarship, these deposits made him curious. Mandy made debit transactions to a grocery store, a pharmacy and small amounts for cash from the ATM. No payments were made to a physician, which he found odd since she was pregnant. In addition, there were no payments for rent. Something that popped out was a direct deposit of $10,000 from F.H.A.A. that had been made six weeks prior to her death. Who the hell was F.H.A.A. and why were they paying her this much money?
Her phone records revealed she'd made multiple calls to F.H.A.A. The last call was made the day before her murder. Other than that, the only calls she made the month before she died was to a pharmacy, a Pizza King, and a Chinese restaurant. It seemed odd to him that someone her age didn’t call or text any friends.
It was close to midnight when he closed his laptop and turned on the television. Exhausted, he fell asleep watching a
Seinfeld
rerun.
He awoke on fire, panting and aroused. Damn it. Not again. He glanced at the time on his phone — 4:00 a.m. The dreams had started again. Not that they'd ever stopped. This one was in erotic Technicolor and started with the back of a blue dress Frankie was wearing. He pulled on her stuck zipper, his knuckles rubbing against her satiny skin, the sexual electricity sharp between them. He plucked a tiny piece of fabric from the zipper teeth and the zipper flowed down easily.
Lane slid his hands inside her dress and around her waist, pulling her closer to him until he could feel her heat. He pushed the dress to the floor to reveal her perfect, naked body. Turning her around, he possessed her mouth in a deep kiss that sent fire shooting through his body down to his toes. Beads of sweat formed at his temples, the heat becoming unbearable as he pushed her onto the bed, her soft body beneath his hard one.
The dreams were his punishment for leaving her like he did. One night with her and he experienced a sexual explosion like no other. He'd had sex with a lot of women but none who made him feel like he had died and gone to heaven. He always had the control, but with Frankie, he didn't give a damn who took charge as long as he was having mind-shattering sex with her.
Lying next to her that night, the realization had branded him that she was the one he might not be able to leave behind and it terrified him. So he'd held her while she slept. At dawn he slipped out of her bed and out of her life.
When had he become such a bastard? Why in the hell did he do that to her? That was a stupid question with a puzzling answer. She scared the crap out of him. With the SWAT team, he'd crashed through a well-known and armed drug dealer hideout and had not blinked; but this gorgeous, spunky woman and her effect on him made him shake in his boots.
Now he'd lost her. He knew he had. It was his own damned fault. He cursed and threw a pillow across the room. He then got out of bed and headed for the shower — a cold one.
Chapter Two
It was the first time Lane had been in the Indiana University Memorial Union, but the Starbucks was easy to find. He simply followed the mass of students who were cursed with 8:00 a.m. classes to the coffee shop. He ordered a double espresso, sat down at a table and waited for Mandy Morris's roommate who promised to meet him. He scanned the crowd for a young woman wearing a red I.U. t-shirt with white letters and jeans. Christie Allen described herself as being 5'5" tall, blue eyes, with long brown hair she liked to wear in a ponytail. Unfortunately, he'd seen at least a dozen girls matching that description within the last five minutes.
A girl, he assumed to be Christie Allen, plopped down in the chair across from him. "You didn't say you were a hottie over the phone." She let her gaze travel over the length of his body in a sexually explicit way.
Shooting her a glare, he said, "I'm a detective, not a hottie. I want to talk to you about your roommate, Mandy Morris."
"I'm not sure how much I can tell you. Are you buying me a latte?"
"That depends on how valuable your information is."
"Mandy's been my roommate since the spring semester of last year."
"Are you friends?"
She rolled her eyes. "With that homely dork? No. She was my roommate, if you can call her that. She spent most of her time in the library so she wasn't around much, which was fine with me. It gave me more alone time with my boyfriend."
"Did Mandy have a boyfriend?"
"I thought so, but I never saw him. She started staying out all night starting last April. I thought maybe she was out with a boyfriend."
"What's his name?"
"I don't know," she answered with a huff. "We didn't exactly run around in the same circles, if you know what I mean."
Lane shot her another glare. The more he learned about Mandy Morris, the angrier he became about how badly people had treated her.
"Was she friends with anyone in your dorm?"
"I don't think so. She kept to herself."
"You're not much help."
"Does that mean you aren't buying me a latte?"
Lane gulped down the rest of his espresso and rose to leave. "That's right. Your information is not all that valuable."
He walked away and wondered how someone could be so self-involved as to not even wonder why a detective was asking questions about her roommate. Did Mandy Morris have anyone in her life who cared about her?