“I didn’t ruin your career. You’re still working. You’re still a detective. You were headed in the wrong direction, and I didn’t want to see you go there.”
“
There
where, Gage? There where you are? Because that’s what drew us together—we’ve both already been there. The dark side. And once you go there, you don’t come back without some nasty little parasites clinging on just for fun.” Gage took a breath to interrupt, but Sam put up her hand. “I’m not a girlie girl. I need to be able to handle the dark side, so I can stop bad people. I’m just like the kindergarten kid who tells you, ‘I wanna be a cop when I grow up, so I can kill the bad guys.’ I don’t necessarily want to kill them, but I will if I have to.”
“I know that,” Gage said, moving back toward her. “I know you have a gun. I’ve been worried more than once that you’ve wanted to use it on me.”
She half-smiled as she considered his words.
“I’ve fucked up enough in my life for both of us, Sam. So this is advice from someone who’s already been there. Don’t let your demons get ahead of you and trip you up.”
He stood close enough that Sam could smell his musky male scent, and need pulsed through her body. She wanted more than anything to just grab his hands, let him pull her in, and collapse into his embrace. After all, what was stopping her? Stubborn pride? Morals? One step and she would be in his arms. One step and they could breathe as one, and he could touch her in places that she wanted to be touched, and …
She shivered and fought off the desire. One step was too much. She wasn’t ready to forgive him for altering her whole life. She wasn’t sure she ever would be.
“What did you do? How did you fuck up?”
Gage backed away and turned from her as soon as she asked the question.
“Long story, long time ago,” he said tersely, staring at a picture on his wall. A picture of one of the Arches in southern Utah. The desert. A place to look that was anywhere but at her.
You aren’t the only one with issues, Sammy.
Sam looked at him and saw genuine regret and hurt on his face. They stared into each other’s eyes, neither one speaking for a minute.
“That day? The day in the lieutenant’s office? I know you want me to take it back, and say I was wrong, but I won’t. I can’t. Because the truth is, if I hadn’t pulled you off the case, you would have died. You would have been dead, along with Mary Ann. And that’s not something I could live with.”
* * *
Sam remembered standing in front of the lieutenant’s desk, Gage casually lounging in a chair to her right. She’d been offered a seat but refused it.
“So what do you think, Detective Flint?” the lieutenant had asked, his furry eyebrows down low over his eyes as he pondered her fate.
Gage paused and looked over at her, pretending not to see the angry simmer in her eyes. She wanted to yell out, to scream, but she knew that would only work against her. The best defense was to stay cool. Then he looked back at his senior officer.
“I think she has gotten a little too close to this girl, and this other guy is way too interested in her,” Gage said. “I feel like her involvement, at this point, would be detrimental to the case. I don’t think it’s helping, and I think we can close it without anyone inside.”
“Bullshit,” Sam said, the word bursting out of her mouth like an angry bee. She couldn’t contain it and immediately regretted it, but she had to speak up or she would be gone and not able to bring justice to Mary Ann and all the women like her.
“If I disappear now, they’re going to be suspicious. They’re expecting me. Owen is planning something for me. I know it makes you uncomfortable, and it makes my skin crawl. But I have to do this. Pulling me now is the dumbest thing you can do.”
“Well, Detective Flint seems to think you’re too close.”
“What’s ‘too close’? You have to be close to get the answers. That’s what undercover is all about. Yes, I’m close, but not too close to get hurt or make a mistake.”
“But I understand you did make a mistake.”
“You say it was a mistake. I say it was the right thing.”
“It jeopardized the investigation.”
“This is a real girl, a human being. She needs to get out of that environment, and she doesn’t want to marry her uncle. My God, would any of you want such a thing for any of your daughters? I just contacted Tapestry Against Polygamy so she could have a chance to live a normal life.”
“But as an undercover operative you weren’t authorized to do that. You didn’t even check with Detective Flint.”
“He would have said no. He wants this case won. Hands down. Regardless of the human cost.”
“You directly disobeyed orders and put an entire investigation, and the millions of dollars involved, in jeopardy.”
“I was trying to save a young girl who was being enslaved into—”
“That’s enough, Montgomery. I think we’ve heard what we need to. Detective Flint, do you have anything to add?”
“No, I think this says it all.”
* * *
Sam shook off the memory and looked at Gage, who stood watching her with an odd expression on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“You look a million miles away—sort of like a lost little girl.” He stepped in closer to her, and she felt the need to push him away, at least emotionally.
“Well, I’m not a little girl. And I don’t need rescuing. Is that your thing, Gage? Rescuing lost little girls? They say all cops have a thing, a reason they do the work.”
“I’m fucking good at it. That’s why I do it,” he said harshly, his eyebrows knitted closely together. The furrows on his face made him look older than his thirty-some years. He was close enough Sam could smell him. She didn’t want to, because it would stay with her the rest of the night. “I know what people willingly do to each other. I might as well be the one who does the tough stuff, because I’m already dirty. My hands are already covered in blood.”
“Should I call you Rambo?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Well, Rambo, I’ve got my own bloody hands.”
“It’s not the same, Sam. War changes you. It’s like nothing you’ve ever dealt with. Once you’ve looked a kid in the eye and shot him, you’re different. It doesn’t matter that the kid was half a second away from blowing you to fucking hell. It doesn’t matter that he would tear you from limb to limb if he got close enough. The only thing you can think of is ‘he’s just a kid.’ And when he’s lying there on the ground, eyes staring but sightless, you want to pray for forgiveness because this was someone’s
fucking kid.
And he won’t be going home to dinner tonight. He won’t be listening to tunes and playing video games.”
Sam watched Gage without speaking. She wanted to cry for him but knew that wasn’t what he wanted. And she considered how little she really knew about this man. The fact that he had just shared something intensely personal with her scared her. She needed to get out now, before—
Before what? You’re a coward, Sam.
“Well, I’ve been fighting a war since the day my sister hung herself from a tree in our backyard. It might be a different kind of war, but it really sucks to not know the enemy. How do you fight a war—and win—against your past?”
“You let it go.”
“Well, isn’t that an easy answer,” Sam said, her stomach roiling. He made it sound so simple, and she felt incredibly stupid. Embarrassment flooded her body. He’d been in a true war zone, and she’d been in sweet, charming little Kanesville. He’d fought against teenagers who were not even old enough to know about guns, let alone use them. As far as she knew, the teenagers in Kanesville only viewed her as a deterrent to their fun. How could they compare?
“I think I need to go,” she said abruptly, and threw off the blanket, leaving it where it fell on the floor. She walked to the front door, picked up her soggy shoes, and walked out into the night without another word.
And he let her.
Once outside, Sam stood there, cursing the fact that she had called him. Now she was here in Farmington, and while she really enjoyed running, it wasn’t all that pleasant in wet shoes and oversized socks. No car. Why could she never make a great exit? All the really cool girls could do it. Certainly, all the best actresses in movies managed to do it. Julia Roberts, Greta Garbo, Kathleen Turner.
She was the Lucille Ball of leavers. She walked out the door without options.
Without usable
shoes,
for hell’s sake.
The front door opened. “So,” Gage said from the doorway, his athletic profile silhouetted in the light behind him. “Would you like a ride home?”
“Dammit, Gage!”
“It never pays to swear at your ride.”
THIRTY-TWO
Bethany Evans had beautiful long black hair and deep brown eyes, which were large, with long lashes. Her lips had that plump look that Hollywood starlets paid major money for. She was extremely petite and had an elegance that most teenage girls wouldn’t find until their twenties. She also had a “no trespass” look on her face that Sam had seen before, usually in kids who had no real tether in life. Moving from base to base with her Air Force mother undoubtedly resulted in the distancing tactic Bethany used to keep people at bay.
Sam was used to trespassing on personal space and a sixteen-year-old girl might have scared her off twenty years before—or at least brought out the fighting desire in her—but not today.
Bethany’s mother had been on her way out the door, headed to a function up on Hill Air Force Base, so she left her daughter to talk with Sam with little complaint. It was a very telling insight into their relationship. A distant, busy mother, a lonely teenage girl who was tired of having to fit in every time they moved. A parent could step in and stop a police officer from talking to a minor, but Bethany’s mother seemed to have no such concerns, even when Sam quizzed her.
“Oh, Beth will be fine. She’s mature. She can stand up for herself.”
Bethany just stood and stared at her mother, and Sam recognized the look of want and need on her face—the need to have someone care, support her, step in, and be a parent.
No doubt, Bethany had been an adult since she was very, very young.
“So Bethany, I have some questions for you.”
“Aren’t you Whitney Marcusen’s aunt?”
Sam arched her eyebrows. “Well, yes, I am, but how did you know that?”
“Because she told me that she was going to get me in trouble with the cops, and that they would believe her over me, because her aunt was a bigwig on the force. That’s how. I didn’t even do anything. It wasn’t my fault Jeremiah asked me out.”
“Get you in trouble how?”
“Oh, she had all kinds of ideas. She wanted to make me look like a creeper, just ’cause she was jealous. I didn’t even do anything with Jeremiah. I didn’t even like him. But the fact he liked me was enough to turn Whit and the others against me. But I guess they got theirs, huh?”
Bethany raised her chin and blinked hard, trying to look tough. But the tears sparkling in her eyes told Sam she was terrified. And not really all that happy that her tormentors were dead.
“That kind of talk could get you in trouble, Bethany. It could make people wonder if maybe you had something to do with the deaths of these girls and Jeremiah.”
“Oh, please. Look at me. I weigh ninety-five pounds and I’m only five feet tall. Like I could hang any of them. I think they just realized what creeps they all were and so they killed themselves. Good riddance.”
“There are such a thing as accomplices, Bethany,” Sam said, her voice low and steady. “Teenage boys have been known to do just about anything for pretty teenage girls. Even kill.”
Then the tears spilled over. “I didn’t kill anybody. I hated them, because they made my life miserable at that school. I had to transfer to a private school. Did you know that? I had to go to the same place all the geeks and nerds go who can’t get along in regular school, all because your niece was jealous. My mom can’t even afford it. She had to call my dad and beg him for the money, and since he doesn’t give a crap about me, he sent it to her, just to shut her up. And I never even did anything. Jeremiah came after me. He asked
me
out. Next thing I knew they were calling me slut and whore. Writing things on my Facebook page. Spreading rumors I’d already had sex and had an abortion.”
Bethany was looking everywhere but at Sam while she said this, avoiding eye contact. Sam reached out a hand and touched her wrist, and the tiny girl startled, finally looking straight at her. The tears had smudged Bethany’s makeup.
She stilled for a moment, and they looked at each other, and Sam saw a little bit of herself in the hollows under Bethany’s eyes. High school was ruthless, teenagers were brutal, and fitting in or finding a niche was often downright impossible.
“That must have been hard. Kids can be so mean. Believe it or not, I know how you feel. And I appreciate you talking with me like this. I’m just trying to find out what happened. I’m sorry I have to ask all these questions, but it’s my job to find the facts.”
“Well, I can tell you one thing right now. I know they aren’t suicides. All three of those girls are too vain and selfish to ever kill themselves. They think they are God’s gift to earth. And they all thought they were better than me, too, even though they were all screwing around with guys.” She hesitated, swallowed hard, and then corrected herself. “Were too vain, I mean. And Jeremiah did, too. He thought he was so hot and irresistible. He’s just a stupid small-town Utah Mormon boy. And Whitney was just a slutty Utah girl.”
Bethany’s chin went up again, and only a few tears remained.
Sam kept her voice soft, unthreatening. “You realize that one of the reasons I’m here is because you are a person who had motivation to want them gone, right?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Okay, well, can you tell me where you were Saturday morning?”
“Here. In bed. It’s my only day to sleep in, and Mom always stays at her boyfriend’s place on Friday nights, so if you’re going to ask me for an alibi, you aren’t going to get anyone to back me up. I don’t even have a cat. Are you going to arrest me?”