Full Contact (14 page)

“Eventually.”

“Were you at the trial?”

“Every day. The day the guy was sentenced to death he blurted out in the courtroom that he wasn't sorry for what he'd done. He turned to face us, the families of his victims, and said that he'd told the women that he wasn't going to hurt them, that he only needed a safe place to hang out for a couple of hours then he'd be gone. He let each of them hold something that was meaningful to them to give them comfort.

“While they were holding their most precious item, he raped them, slit their throats, then stole their prized possession as a memento.”

“Did you get the handkerchief back?”

“Yeah. Those mementos—found in a box in the trunk of his car—were what finally convicted him. There were others, there, too, indicating that the four women we know about weren't the fiend's only victims.”

There were other families, other kids who had grown
into adults maybe, who were still as lost as he'd been all those years without answers.

Jay felt for them.

His mother's handkerchief, the small square of white linen, stained with his mother's blood, was in his wallet. It went everywhere with Jay. Every single day of his life.

T
HERE WERE OTHER MEMENTOES
.
Other women, victims of similar crimes. Victims of a serial rapist who had ravaged the West thirty years before.

Glancing toward the top of the mountain, certain that Joe was watching out for her, Ellen couldn't quell the nervous tension racing through her.

Just as Tammy Walton's friend had found her raped and dead, just as the other women had been raped and murdered, left for dead, in their own homes, Joe had come home to find his wife raped and dead.

By her best guess, Joe's wife had been murdered a year or two before Jay's mother had suffered the same fate.

Her mind leaped to possibilities, with her heart completely keeping up. What if the same man had killed both women? What if Jay had found the man who had killed Joe's wife? What if a memento of Joe's wife was missing? Would he know? Or had he left town before going through her things?

And if Jay had found Joe's wife's killer? Would closure help the man? Give him some sense of peace? Of justice? Just enough to get him off that mountain and into life?

“What about the other mementoes? Were any of the other victims found?”

“Yes. The FBI followed up, based on cold case files, and I was given some cases to investigate, as well. All in all we found a total of nine victims.”

“Did you find them all?”

“No. There were fourteen mementos.”

Five victims unaccounted for. Could one of them be Joe's wife? Her stomach churned, but Ellen said nothing.

“Were all the victims from the West?”

“All who were found. The national missing persons database was searched but no cases from the East or Midwest matched the evidence we had.”

Joe's wife wouldn't have been listed as a missing person. And with Joe gone, there might not have been anyone pushing the Tucson police to solve her murder. What if her case had been left…unnoticed?

And what if, by stirring up the past, she sent Joe even further into his self-imposed isolation?

Ellen was being assaulted by the confusing and dichotomous signals from her heart, all of them somehow wrapped up with the man sitting beside her.

She couldn't get involved with him. She didn't want to get involved with him.

Yet her heart had leaped when he'd told her he was attracted to her.

She was afraid of the power he had to stir her. Yet filled with a need to make things better for him.

Ellen was a nurturer. And Jay needed nurturing more than anyone she'd ever met.

Whether he knew it or not.

“Is that why you work with victims of domestic abuse? Because of what happened to your mom?”

A few strands of hair had come loose from his
pony tail on the ride out. “It's why I feel so compelled to help you.”

“So the lines that are…blurring… You're confusing me with your mother?”

That would make things safer. A whole lot easier. It wasn't easy waiting for his answer. “No.”

Her heart rate sped up.

“It only makes this more convoluted. I can't walk away from you because of her. Ever since you told me what happened to you I knew I had to help you—like I knew I had to find my mother's killer.

“But the way I'm feeling, the attraction, has nothing to do with my mother. And everything to do with you.”

Ellen had absolutely no idea what to do next. What to say. His words excited her.

And that shamed her.

What in the hell was the matter with her? Because while the idea of Jay wanting her was, well, maybe a little exhilarating, she wanted no part of a physical relationship with him. Or anyone—yet.

What kind of woman did that make her? That she wanted a man to want her with no intention whatsoever of giving him what he wanted?

“Where do we go from here?” she finally asked to escape her thoughts.

“That's up to you. I'm a professional. I do not, ever, cross the line between the therapy and personal while I'm working. You have my word on that. But I'll understand if you decide that you can no longer trust me to treat you.”

Silence fell and Ellen closed her eyes, tuning in to
the warmth of the rock beneath her. The quiet of the desert. Searching for peace.

And finding the heat of the man sitting beside her. Her stomach churned.

Oh, God.

How could she trust a man to touch her nonsexually after he'd told her that he was sexually attracted to her?

Actually, no, he'd merely said he was attracted to her. He liked her. Maybe the way he liked his bike. Or a good steak for dinner. Maybe the lines that were blurring were between friendship and professionalism.

The desert's peace found her.

She was helping him find his father. It was reasonable to expect that he would rely on her a bit. To experience a sense of indebtedness. Or gratitude. To think of her as a friend.

“This man part of you, the part where the lines are blurring, you just…like me, right?”

“Define
like
.”

“You appreciate that I want to help you find your father. My personality resonates with you in some way.” Ellen flushed with embarrassment. Or Arizona's afternoon heat. She sounded like a textbook even to herself.

“I get turned on when I think of you for any length of time. And sometimes when I have a flash of a thought. If our situation was different, if I wasn't your massage therapist, if I'd met you in a nonprofessional setting, my current goal would be to get you into bed with me.”

Okay. No room for misinterpretation on that one. He wasn't giving her an easy out. No pretending allowed.

“So how do I know that when I'm lying on your
table and you've got your hands on me that you aren't fantasizing about me?”

“Because I give you my word that I'm not.”

“You're a man, Jay. I assume you have normal male sexual instincts and drives. How do you expect me to believe that you can simply turn those off because you walk into a little room with a table in it?”

“It's not the room. It's the mind-set,” Jay said with out hesitation. And with conviction. “You're a counselor. You know that sexual drive, while a product of hormones, is also largely a product of thought process. Controlled by thought process. When I'm working, I'm not seeing male or female. Sexual parts don't exist on my table. I am fully focused on muscle placement, tightness, obstruction. On ligament and skeletal alignment, tension and elasticity, tissue depth. I communicate with my client the entire time, listening to what the client's body tells my hands so that I can best serve the body's muscular needs. I've never yet met an adult with completely healthy muscles. We all carry tension and toxins within us. My job is to find them and attempt to release them. Damaged muscles are not a turn-on.”

“Then why is massage recommended to couples in sexual counseling?”

“Like I said, it's all in the focus. When you are lying naked with someone who is also naked, your mind tends to focus on the ultimate goal of sexual intimacy. Even if you aren't naked, but you know you're touching them for mutual pleasure, you tend to focus on the ultimate goal of mutual physical pleasure.”

She was not only a certified counselor, she'd been through marital counseling with Aaron. And enough of
her own counseling to write a textbook. What Jay said fit everything she'd been taught. It made logical sense.

There was nothing logical about Ellen's issues.

Sometimes the simplest touch was an invasion to her. A threat. A hug from her son felt as though she was being tied up. Bound. Robbed against her will.

To submit to touch from a man who admittedly wanted something from her body for his own gain—something that could be invasive and painful…

She'd be stupid to continue treatment with Jay. Setting herself up for failure.

Disappointment welled within her. She hadn't realized, until that moment, how much she'd been hoping Jay had been right in his assertion that he could help her heal. She'd actually been considering, in random passing thoughts, that she might be capable of enjoying sexual encounters someday.

Marry. Have a full family of her own. And become a normal part of Shelter Valley society, rather than the girl who stood out.

She couldn't stand to be that girl anymore. To face an incomplete life.

So what if she failed with Jay? Would she be any worse off than she was now?

And if he really was a miracle worker…

Minutes passed while Ellen contemplated, debated, and tied herself up in knots.

Jay didn't push. Didn't defend his case. Or try to talk her into anything.

“It's different.” Her words cracked the silence loudly.

“What is?”

“Being around you. You don't seem to need me to see your position. My family, the town, it's as though
if I don't do what they think is best, it will be bad for me. They need me to see things like they do. To agree with them.”

“That's not normal. You know that, right?”

“They care, Jay. You didn't see me five years ago. They did. They know how fragile I was.”

“You were injured, Ellen, not fragile. You recovered.”

For the most part he was right.

“It goes deeper than that, though.” She struggled to verbalize something she'd never expressed before. “I think guilt prompts a lot of my mom's actions. She feels like she let me down, that she wasn't a good enough parent, a good enough protector and that if she had done better, I wouldn't have been raped. She knows that I didn't call her for help because she was so overworked, trying to do the job of two parents. Any other time I would have called. And if I had—”

“Your mother didn't ask her husband to leave her for another woman. She was one person, doing the best she could.”

“I know that. I don't blame her. But I think she blames herself. I think she promised herself that she won't let me down again. She won't miss one little thing that she might do or say that could keep me safe.”

“You're an adult. It's no longer her job to keep you safe.”

“I know. But it is my job to watch out for her. She's my mother and I care about her struggles. I want to be there for her. Which means that I have to understand when she gets too forceful with me. I just have to be careful not to give in to what she wants unless I believe it's the right thing to do. Which means that I'm always on alert when someone is asking me to make
life-changing decisions. I appreciate that you give me the space to think things through on my own.”

“I believe that each person is put on this earth to have his or her own experiences. His or her own learning curves. We have to make our own decisions if we are to get the most out of our lives. Only you know what's best for you. Because only you have your own perspective. Only you have to live with the ultimate consequences.”

Consequences.
It always came to that—and they were something no one knew for sure going in. The full consequences were clear only in hindsight, when it was too late to call an overworked mom for a ride.

“I don't fully trust myself to make the best decisions for me.” She'd known this for a while.

Counseling had helped her to realize what was going on inside of her so she could control it rather than have it control her. But Ellen knew that, sometimes, knowing still didn't give you control.

“I don't think anyone does. How could we? If we knew ahead of time how things would turn out, there would be no decisions to make, would there? We'd simply move through life choosing our consequences. Let's see, I'll take this job that I might not like as well because I see right here in the consequences list that in two years there's going to be a product developed that will net me enough money to retire the next day.”

Jay's tone suggested facetiousness, and Ellen grinned. But the truth of his words resonated deeply within her.

“You do what you think is best at the time,” she said.

“Yep. And sometimes things turn out even better than you hoped. And sometimes they don't turn out the way you wanted. But in every case, you learn
some thing and hopefully the lesson leads you on to a better outcome next time.”

“I often think that if I ponder hard and long enough, I'll see the consequences before I make the decision.”

“And if you don't, then what?”

“I keep pondering.”

“And spend your whole life stuck in one place while opportunities pass you by?”

“Occasionally the answers are clear.” Although not this time. And if she pondered indefinitely, she would most definitely lose this opportunity.

“But not this time.”

“Nope, not this time.”

He didn't say anything to that, didn't try to convince her one way or the other.

“I like you, Jay.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“I'm not sure it isn't. It would be very bad if I developed some kind of reliance on you. You're here and then gone.”

“A good deterrent from becoming dependent on your therapist. If I were a counselor, I'd agree, you know. It's a good thing I'm not going to stick around long. That relationship is very different. But my job is to gain your trust only long enough to prepare you to trust others enough to accept physical attention from them.”

“You're very different from anyone I've ever known.”

“I know.”

If she wanted others to trust her to be able to take care of herself, she had to trust herself to do it. Based on her own instincts. Her own thoughts.

“I want to continue therapy.” The words weren't so hard to say. They were much more difficult to hear.
Striking fear deep within her, and yet, resounding with good judgment, too.

“Good.” He met her gaze and it was as though he was absorbing her into him. They could talk all they wanted. They could say they were going to keep things on a professional level. But the words didn't break the invisible thread pulling them together.