she said. "I didn't notice."
"I don't think he wanted you to know. That's why he shut up the second he realized I was around."
Tati pulled into the driveway and parked off to one side. "I should've known," she mumbled.
"Known what?"
"That someone cute wouldn't want me."
"Don't talk like that. You just need to lose a little weight. And there are other men out there," Kalyna said. "What's the big deal with this one?"
"There's no big deal." Tati managed to pull herself together, but Kalyna was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes when she got out.
Because it was the Fourth of July weekend, Mother's Country Kitchen Cafe was even more packed than usual, but Ava didn't mind the bustle.
She, Skye and Sheridan had been meeting here for breakfast on the first Saturday of every month since she'd been promoted to full-fledged director.
She enjoyed getting away with them for a few hours. It gave them all a chance to go over their cases and make decisions for the organization without the interruptions that typically occurred at the office.
"So what do you think?" Skye asked as the waitress who'd fil ed their coffee cups walked away. "Should we hire Jane?"
Ava waited for Sheridan's response. She didn't have the seniority they did. She'd first met Skye when she showed up in response to an ad in the
Sacramento Bee.
Shortly after her mother had gone to prison, TLS had offered a free seminar for victims and their families. Little did Ava know when she attended that it would result in an entirely new vocation for her, but it had. Bored with her job as a bank teller, she'd started to volunteer at 134
TLS--and that was when she'd gone back to school three nights a week to get a masters in criminal justice.
She'd graduated last spring but was stil the new kid on the block and careful not to come across as too presumptuous or pushy.
"I guess it's okay, if that's what you want to do," Sheridan said.
Ava put down the spoon she'd been using to stir her coffee. She didn't want to be the sole dissenting voice. She knew what Jane Burke meant to Skye. But she had some concerns about bringing her on staff.
"I'm not sure it's our best move."
Skye glanced up at her. She sat next to Ava wearing a pair of khaki shorts, a simple white tank and little white loafers--nothing fancy and yet she looked as glamorous as any model. "Why not? Maybe Jane doesn't have a police background or a degree like yours, but she could work alongside me until she's trained." She took the last bite of the multigrain pancakes she'd ordered. "You had no experience with criminal investigations when you started, and look at you now."
"The only real prerequisite is a genuine desire to help," Sheridan concurred. "The rest can be learned."
"I'm not saying Jane needs a degree," Ava told them. "But she was married to a serial kil er who all but ruined her life
before
he attacked and nearly murdered her. That kind of experience could warp a person, make it difficult to remain objective, that's all."
Skye turned her orange juice glass around several times. "Oliver Burke nearly murdered me, too. Twice. Does that mean I'm too warped to do my job?"
Ava flushed. Sometimes she spoke her mind before considering all the implications. "What happened to you is different. You didn't live with him. You didn't trust him the way she did. She believed him while he was in prison and stil tried to make her marriage work when he got out. She's the mother of his child. Talk about betrayal! What Jane went through has to have left some deep scars, and they might make her prone to see only one side of a situation."
"You're afraid she won't be fair?" Skye clarified.
"It's more that I'm afraid her experiences wil affect her judgment."
Ava's thoughts reverted to her meeting with Luke Trussell and her decision 135
to drop the Harter case. She felt sure she was doing the right thing, but if he hadn't come forward and given her the chance to see what he was like, she might've stayed in Kalyna's corner simply because of her experience with Bella. "Not every situation is as it appears," she said. "Sometimes people lie."
Skye shoved the hair that'd fallen from her ponytail out of her eyes.
"The victims don't lie nearly as much as the offenders."
"But some victims aren't victims at all," Ava countered. "They're master manipulators."
Sheridan scowled. "That's got to be a very small percentage, Ava."
"Even one is too many. We don't want to punish the innocent. Ever."
"Where is this coming from?" Skye asked.
Ava smoothed the front of her sleeveless black dress. "A woman came into my office on Monday claiming she'd been raped a month ago.
She showed me pictures of herself bruised and battered, and she was accusing a man whose semen had been collected with a rape kit. At first, it seemed like a cut-and-dried case. As she sat in my office sobbing, I wanted to cry with her. I was indignant, fil ed with a righteous anger, eager to help her obtain justice."
"Probably
more
than eager because of what happened to Bella,"
Skye said.
Ava flinched. "Exactly. But when I had Jonathan do the research, I learned that the accused has more credibility than the accuser."
Sheridan slipped a credit card onto the table. "Even people with credibility commit crimes, Ava."
"I almost missed the truth because I was so busy trying to make up for...the situation with Bella. We're shaped by what we experience, that's al I'm saying."
Skye slid the syrup back into its place near the laminated menus. "I wasn't aware that you knew Jane."
"I don't but I talked to her when you brought her to the office."
"Last week?"
"Yes. I got the impression she wants to work at The Last Stand to vent the anger she feels toward her late husband and any other men she thinks are like him. She was telling me she's learned so much, that she 136
knows what to look for, how to read behavior others might not notice." Ava shook her head. "No one can tell the difference between a good person and an evil person, not every time. Especially someone like Jane, who has reason to doubt even the people closest to her. I think she would've missed something like this."
"We all have scars, Ava. They're what keep us motivated." Sheridan adjusted the strap on the blouse she was wearing with a loose, flowing skirt and sandals. "We can't be perfectly objective because we deal with every case from our own perspective. I don't see how we can avoid that."
"We can if we recognize our prejudices." The waitress stopped to pick up the check, and Skye gave her a polite smile before continuing. "I understand that you're rattled by the fact that you were almost taken in. It's disconcerting to realize how easily we can be duped--and that there are people out there who would try to take advantage of our good intentions.
But I highly doubt Jane would be any more susceptible to going after the wrong person than the rest of us. She's come a long way in the time I've known her. And--" she toyed with a plastic cream container, then tossed it back in the bowl that held the rest "--oh, shoot, I guess what I'm trying to say is that...she needs this. It's been almost four years since Oliver died, and she's stil struggling to get past it. And now the salon where she's been cutting hair is closing down..." Skye appealed to them with a frank expression. "She'l be without work."
So this wasn't really about doing what was best for the charity; it was about helping another victim. If Ava had known that, she wouldn't have bothered expressing her reservations. "You couldn't have led with that?"
Skye shrugged sheepishly. "I wanted you to agree without my having to ask it as a favor."
"She can learn, just as we have, that not every victim who walks through the door is someone we can support," Sheridan said.
Ava tried not to be irritated. She wanted to help as many people as possible, but they had to consider the practicality of each decision. "Can we afford another full-time employee?"
The waitress returned with the credit slip. "It'l be tough," Sheridan admitted as she signed the bil . "There's never enough money for everything we'd like to do, but we can use an extra set of hands. We've 137
been buried for months."
"Jane plans on pitching in with the fundraising, too," Skye said. "I've already prepped her for that."
Ava stil felt negative about it, but if she was the only one of the three, she was outvoted, anyway. "Okay, I'm wil ing to give it a try."
Skye squeezed her arm. "Thanks."
After saying goodbye, Ava sat in her car and watched her two partners drive out of the lot. She'd intended to head to the office, as usual.
She worked more Saturdays than she took off. But that suddenly seemed excessive. It was a holiday weekend. Why wasn't she celebrating Independence Day like everyone else?
Because she had no one to celebrate with. Her father had gone camping in Yosemite with Carly, his young wife. No matter how hard she tried to get closer to him, their relationship never improved because Carly stood between them. Her mother was in prison. Skye and Sheridan were hurrying home to their husbands. Jonathan hadn't mentioned his plans, but she was sure they included Zoe and her daughter. And Geoffrey was in the Bay Area seeing his two kids. Even the Myerses and Greenleys weren't back from their fishing excursion as planned. They'd left her a message saying they'd met up with another group and decided to stay an extra week.
The joys of being retired....
She sighed. The day stretched before her with absolutely nothing except work to fil it. But work was usually enough. What was wrong with her today? Why was she feeling so dissatisfied?
She found herself thinking of Luke Trussell again. She couldn't seem to put him out of her mind.
She was moaning and talking dirty to me, telling
me she'd never touched a man who was bigger and thicker than I am.
He'd been trying to exact a bit of revenge when he'd made that statement. So why was it the line that kept coming back to her?
It's obviously been too long since I've been with a man.
And Luke Trussell's blatant sexuality had affected her more deeply than she wanted to admit. She was only thirty-one. It was natural that her body would try to assert its needs, especially when she encountered a man as attractive as he was.
Part of her wished she could call Geoffrey and tell him she was ready 138
to be intimate again. Maybe if she started sleeping with him she'd be able to forget Trussell. But she hadn't found that kind of relationship satisfying before and doubted that would change. Besides, she knew it wasn't Geoffrey she'd be seeing when she was in bed with him--and that hardly seemed fair.
"Damn. I've only met him once," she grumbled. And that first meeting hadn't gone particularly well. She'd been bitchy and rude in her attempt to remain unaffected. And he'd retaliated.
Are you really that attracted to me?
Because I'm not having the same problem.
Yeah, she was really that attracted to him. Which meant she needed to keep her distance before she did something stupid, like become infatuated with him. But after last night's conversation with Kalyna, she was absolutely convinced he was innocent. And that obligated her to share what she'd discovered. She kept telling herself that those details wouldn't make a difference. As she'd explained to Kalyna, the case would probably never make it to court. But...what if it did? Or what if the information she possessed could put an end to it sooner--give Luke back his life?
McCreedy was a talented attorney, but he was paid by the hour and might not be in any hurry to end this. And just because he was good didn't mean he'd make all the right moves. Whether Kalyna's neighbor Maria was homosexual, bi or straight, she wasn't likely to repeat the fact that she and Kalyna had spoken of a three-way. The implications could ruin her career.
Ava had given her permission to keep her mouth shut, hadn't she? And no one but Ava knew about the conversation with Tatiana Harter or Kalyna's response on the phone last night--the panicked
Did my sister call you
back?
Ava drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She could wait until Monday and contact Luke's attorney, pass along a copy of his file. But she occasionally came up against McCreedy on other cases and didn't want him thinking he had an ally at The Last Stand just because she'd helped him with this one case. And the prosecutor refused to call her back. She'd tried to get in touch with Major Ogitani several times, to no avail. Just as she'd assumed, the military didn't want her involved and were doing their best to ignore the intrusion.
"Call Luke and get it over with already," she muttered.
139
After digging through her purse, she located her phone and ran through the notes attached to her calendar. Luke wasn't in her address book because she hadn't expected to call him again, but he was in her notes. She scrolled farther down, and found his number in a memo she'd recorded the day she'd tried to get in touch with him regarding Kalyna.
She held her breath as the phone rang....
But she'd screwed up her courage for nothing. He didn't answer.
You've reached Luke Trussell's mailbox. Leave me a message and
I'l call you back.
Squaring her shoulders, she waited for the beep. "Captain Trussell, this is Ava Bixby at The Last Stand." She knew he'd recognize her name without any mention of the charity, but she was determined to behave more professionally than she had at Starbucks. Last night, they'd somehow crossed boundaries she normally kept very rigid.
Are you asking to satisfy
your own curiosity or because you think this pertains to the case in some
way?
That was the second time he'd seen through her.
She was determined there wouldn't be a third.
"I have something I'd like to discuss with you," she said. "If you could give me a call at your convenience, I'd appreciate it." With that, she recited her number and hung up.
Like almost everyone else in America, he was probably busy with Fourth of July activities. Figuring she'd hear from him on Monday, she headed over to the office. But it was only a few hours later that he called her back.