“Thanks.” He picked them up and leaned forward. “You and your little friend really should remember this is a small town. You never know who might be royally ticked off when you go around slandering people without reason. Think about it.”
Papers rolled into his fist, he nodded at Dale and strode out.
The edgy resentment stayed with him all the way to his truck and as he drove off the premises. At the traffic light where the plant’s long entryway joined the highway, he turned left instead of taking the right that would send him in the direction of home.
He needed to see Madeline. He didn’t question or fight the impulse. She was busy and distracted, he knew that, didn’t expect much, but damn it, he needed a few seconds in her presence to settle the jangling irritation.
The area around the courthouse square vibrated with construction crews and people doing business in the downtown area. He jockeyed the truck into a spot beyond the park and walked up the block to the sheriff’s department. He took the wide concrete steps at a jog, two at a time.
Dry, overheated air slammed into him in the tiny lobby. He nodded at the kid working the desk. “Hey, Roger. Ms. Holton around?”
Roger tilted his head toward the hallway behind him. “In the conference room with Investigator Calvert.”
“All right if I go back?”
Waving him on, Roger reached for the ringing telephone. Ash strode down the empty hallway to the squad room. Muted voices carried up the stairs from the radio room. The conference room door stood open.
“I think maybe you better start at the beginning.” Tension coated Tick’s voice.
Ash stopped in the doorway and rapped a knuckle on the frame. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Frustration gleamed in Tick’s dark gaze. Madeline didn’t look around. “What are you doing here?”
Ash studied the awful strain apparent in the hunched line of Madeline’s shoulders. “Came by to see Mad for a moment.”
She brushed her hair behind her ear but still didn’t turn. Tick closed his eyes briefly on a harsh exhale. “Ash, we’re busy. Can it wait?”
Protectiveness rose in him, and he lifted a couple of fingers. “Two minutes.”
For a moment, Tick stared him down before giving in. He pushed up from his chair. “Fine. I’ll be right back.”
Ash waited until Tick’s footsteps faded. “Madeline?”
She slumped back in her chair, fingers pressed to her brow. “Yes?”
He went down on his haunches next to her. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m fine.” She blew out a long breath and turned to look at him, her big hazel eyes sad and mournful. “Why are you here? I thought you had things to do.”
“Just left McGee’s. Needed to see you for a sec.” He trailed the back of one finger down her cheek. She didn’t smile, and sudden tears glittered in her eyes. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her into a loose embrace.
“Hey,” he whispered, “don’t do that. It can’t be that bad.”
To his surprise, she wrapped her arms around his neck, hard.
“I don’t want to be here,” she whispered into the curve of his shoulder. A palpable tremor moved through her slender body. “I don’t want to do this.”
He stroked her back. Whatever “this” was, as much as he wanted to shield her from pain, maybe, just maybe, facing it would act as a catharsis, free her from some of the old fear and hurt holding her back. Maybe it would be what she needed to get her beyond still being sick with shame over the past.
She deserved that. He turned his head, pressed a fierce kiss to her cheek. “I should go and let you get back to work.”
With a trembling sigh, she nodded and released him. He rocked back on his heels and smiled at her, caressing the curve of her jaw. Renewed anger at Stacy and Allison burned in him. The absolute gall infuriated him.
“What is it?” Her eyes narrowed on his face.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I was just thinking about all the good things you deserve—”
“Good things?” Her voice cracked on a harsh, ugly note. “You’re insane if you think—”
He stopped the words with a kiss. “Yes,” he murmured against her mouth. “Good ones, great ones even.”
“This is—”
“Very right.” He laid a finger across her lips. “Now, I’m going to get out of here before Tick tries to throw me out and I completely destroy his ego by showing him that it doesn’t matter he’s five years younger than I am. You are going to get through whatever ‘this’ is, and later you’re going to give me a call and let me know what you want to do tonight. All right?”
She eased her head back so his finger fell away. “I don’t get you, Ash.”
“Honey, you’ve already got me.” He smiled. “On the hook anyway.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I know what you meant.” He leaned forward and kissed her once more. “Call me. I mean it.”
He rose and exited before she could argue. In the hallway beyond the squad room, Tick leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest. Clearly unhappy at being kicked out, he straightened as Ash entered the hall.
Ash shook his head. “Don’t start.”
Tick lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender, and a grin quirked at Ash’s mouth. He shoved his hands in his pockets and cast a glance back at the conference room. “Tick, take it easy with her. She’s…vulnerable.”
“Yeah.” Tick shot a look in the same direction. “I noticed.”
“I have to get out of here.” Ash tagged his arm. “Chickens don’t feed themselves.”
“The houses are automated, Ash.”
“Yeah, but someone has to check the software.”
“Later.”
Ash headed out the side door. His day was looking better already.
Madeline stared at the door where Ash had disappeared moments before. How did having him show up for a couple of minutes make her feel so much more capable of dealing? She should be annoyed that he’d dropped in and interrupted her day, not filled with the warm and fuzzies because he’d wanted to see her, wanted to make sure she called him later.
Because he thought she deserved good things.
The man was downright dangerous.
“Brought you something to drink.” Tick held a canned soda aloft as he strolled through the door. He set it on the edge of the table, other hand curled around his coffee mug. Madeline stared at the green soda can. It had taken Jack four months to realize she didn’t drink coffee.
“Um, thanks.” She reached for the icy can, condensation already gathering on the sides. The whole world had gone Twilight Zone, with a really great guy looking at her the way Ash Hardison did, with Tick Calvert treating her like a human being… Well, whatever good karma she’d earned lately, she was definitely going to fuck it up. Soon. That was her MO. Just look at what had happened with Jack. That had been her fault, and nothing would ever zero out that karma.
Tick peered into the storage container, lifting layers with careful hands. “I don’t see a hairbrush or anything else we could use for a DNA match in here. Some letters and things, some posters, dried flowers, spirit ribbons, stuff like that.”
“What about the letters?” She moved closer, afraid to disturb the balance of things too much. The last thing she wanted was for him to go back to the whole start-at-the-beginning idea. “That was before self-stick stamps. If she licked them, licked the envelopes, there’s the chance that—”
“Nope.” He shook his head, flipping through the small stack of pastel envelopes. “They’re not from her. Looks like…they’re from you. Letters to her over a summer, maybe, from the postmarks.”
“The summer Autry and I spent with our aunt in Tampa.” The words hurt, the memories of that fear-filled summer hurting even more. Nate had gone to their grandmother’s, and her mama had spent the entire season at Greenleaf, after she’d… Madeline shook off the remembrance.
Tick laid the bundle aside and gave her an odd look. “I don’t see anything helpful in here.”
Madeline lifted her hair into a knot at her nape and rolled the can over her neck, trying to relieve the tension sitting there. “I’ll start trying to track down the dental records from Dr. Weeks’s office.”
He nodded, gazing at the articles they’d laid out earlier. “So why did she run away?”
Madeline didn’t look at him. The envelopes stared at her like so many accusations. Kelly had kept those, after everything? Her throat constricted, and she swallowed. “Because we broke her heart.”
“We?”
“Me and Allison.” She shrugged, an irritable motion, feeling like the room kept closing in on her. “Look, Calvert, do we have to get into this? What does it matter why she left, if we’re focused on whether or not she came back? I don’t want to talk about the whys.”
“I need you to be a damn cop, Madeline. That means putting the personal stuff aside. If she came back, if this body is her, we’re going to have to take her past apart, and I’ll find out anyway. Just tell me.”
“It’s ugly. Would you want to drag out the worst thing you’d ever done and dissect it?”
“Whatever you did and what happened with me…would you do it again?”
“No.” Horrified, she jerked her gaze to his. “God, no.”
“Okay, then you’re a different person. We’re all different people.”
He obviously hadn’t spent a lot of one-on-one time with her high school friends lately. Allison, Donna, Stacy…they didn’t seem to have moved past age eighteen, with all its pettiness and immaturity and selfishness.
“Holton.” Exasperation dripped from his voice. “Out with it.”
She stared, mute. She simply couldn’t open her mouth and force the words out.
“Fine.” He snagged his cell phone from the table. “I’ll call Allison and ask her.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” He flipped the phone open and pointed at it. “Got McGee’s programmed in my farm contacts, right here.”
“All right.” She lifted her hands before tugging a chair from the table. She rubbed her eyes. “Kelly was younger, a sophomore when we were all juniors and you were a senior.”
Nodding, he spun a chair and straddled it, folding his arms on the back and resting his chin upon them.
She feathered a hand through her hair. “God, it all sounds so stupid and childish now.”
“Because we were kids,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Kelly was so
into
you. It was almost scary. Allison too. Part of the reason they wanted me in their little group was because I had access to you, since our fathers were friends. After a while, the hero worship wasn’t enough for Kelly. She wanted you to notice her. You didn’t seem to really date any one girl.”
The corner of his mouth hitched up. “Because Daddy was smart and kept all of us in sports and church activities and kept us working on the farm in what spare time we had. He had four boys in high school; it was probably the only way he could survive.”
“Anyway, she wanted to be that one girl. The problem was, so did Allison Barnett, except Allison was smart enough not to talk about it.” Her stomach trembled with nerves, and she sucked in a breath to settle them. “Not to mention smart enough to sabotage Kelly.”
His brows canted downward. “Sabotage?”
“Oh, they both had a plan, Calvert.”
“You make it sound like a freakin’ battle engagement.”
She laughed, the harsh sound making her throat hurt. “You don’t know a lot about teenage girls and how they operate, do you?”
“Obviously not. Enlighten me.”
“Kelly was actually the one who figured out that the way to get close to you was through sports. Only Allison…twisted that. Convinced her that seeing other guys on the baseball team, having them talk about her, would make you notice her. She was just naïve enough, just desperate enough to believe that.”
Understanding dawned in his dark eyes. “She’s not the one who…in the dugout—”
“Yes.” She didn’t want to hear him voice that. She’d sat with Kelly in the aftermath, helped her clean up, dried her near-hysterical tears, not able to understand why Kelly had done what she’d done, any more than Kelly had ever been able to get why Madeline had skipped classes to blow Bobby Wentworth behind the athletic building. “She’s the one.”
He looked shaken, a pinched whiteness about his mouth. “Because of me.”
She wouldn’t lay that blame on him, wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “No. You might have been the motive, but the catalyst…that was Allison. The whole damn thing was her idea, right down to having Davy Terrell recruit the other boys.”
“Holy hell.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a breath. “She ran after that?”
“Yeah, later. After everyone at school made her life a living hell.”
“I can see why. That shit was all over—”
“I remember, Calvert, believe me.”
He dropped his hand and fixed her with an inquisitive stare. “You said ‘we’ broke her heart.”
“I’m the one who convinced Kelly to go out with Davy when he asked. I thought…I thought maybe if she found someone else, she’d get over that fixation with you. I knew Allison, should have known she was up to something, and I never saw it coming, didn’t do anything to stop it, and then it was too late.”
“Madeline.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t your fault. No way should you have blamed yourself for that all this time. You didn’t do anything.”