“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Madeline’s soft touch drifted over his cheek, and Ash opened his eyes to a wash of early-morning sunlight. She smiled down at him, her eyes soft and clear.
His mouth felt weird, tasted worse, and he swallowed, muffled pain arching along his nerves with the action. “Hey.”
“Should I even ask how you feel?”
“Sore all over.” The agony lay beneath the drugs, just out of reach. Each muscle felt like pulled taffy, wound back around his body too tight. He let his eyes trail over her—tousled hair, wrinkled T-shirt. “Did you stay here all night?”
“I did.” She stroked his jaw, avoiding the stitches below his lips. “Tick and I worked in the waiting area for a while last night, then I slept in the foldout chair.”
Did she realize what that implied? He held her eyes. “Thank you.”
The corners of her mouth hitched higher. “I told you I wouldn’t leave.”
A wave of almost-pain swept up his leg from his knee. He closed his eyes. Thank God for meds. “Rob here?”
“I haven’t seen him yet.” She stroked his hair, as if she realized he hurt and wanted to take it away. “But it’s early.”
He nodded and exhaled, the throbbing receding some.
“I am going to bail on you for a little while today.” Her fingers continued their soothing rhythm. “We have a couple of leads to follow up.”
Another nod as the nausea of pain settled deep in his gut, taking his breath for a moment. Man, he would be glad when this was all over. Hurting and being laid up had never been his idea of a good time.
“Um, Ash?” Her touch paused at his forehead. He looked up in time to see uncertainty flash over her face. “Do you mind if I go out to your place to shower and change? My things are there, and I kind of had it out with Mama yesterday. I don’t think I want to go back home for a while.”
The implications of her preferring his home to her own were staggering. He moved his hand, caught hers, and smiled. “Yeah, babe, that’s good.”
“There you go, thinking I’ll let you call me babe just because you’re laid up…”
He squeezed her fingers. “Go on. Do what you need to do. I’ll see you later.”
Leaning over, she whispered her lips across his. “Be good. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
Moments later the door clicked shut behind her. He stared at the ceiling. The empty hours of the day without her stretched before him.
Damn it, Tick was right. His ass was whipped already.
Tick slammed the door on his truck and jogged toward the steps. He’d forgotten his gloves, and his hands tingled in the icy breeze. Damn, he’d be ready when spring got here.
“Tick!”
The familiar voice brought him up short and sent a different type of ice down his spine in a weird frisson, a lot like the elemental shudder of running across a moccasin while trekking through the woods by the river. He tensed and turned. Couldn’t avoid her forever. Tugging his cap lower over his eyes, he waited for Allison to join him. She smiled, arms wrapped around her, hands cupping her elbows.
“I’m glad I caught you,” she breathed, still smiling. Something about that smile made his skin crawl. “I tried to call you yesterday.”
“My day off.” He couldn’t quite keep the coldness out of his voice, and her smile faded. Like he gave a crap. Madeline’s revelations, about Kelly, about Allison’s machinations where he was concerned, kept beating in his head. “Did you want something?”
“I was hoping I could get back in the house.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll have a deputy meet you there while you get what you need. We should be able to release the house to you in a couple of days.”
“Oh, I was hoping you’d go with me.” With a little pout of disappointment that did absolutely nothing for him, she laid her hand on his wrist. “And we’d have another chance to catch up.”
Disgust moved over him. He lifted her hand from his arm. “No thanks.”
“What is wrong with you?” The question came off playful, but something dark lurked beneath her words.
“Allison, I’m not interested in ‘catching up’ with you, now or ever.”
Shock moved across her delicate features, but an ugliness twisted her mouth. “This is not like you. I can’t believe you’re talking to me this way.”
“I’ll leave the keys at the front desk. Ask Lydia to get you a deputy to meet you at the house.”
“That’s it?” She grabbed his arm, nails digging in despite the thickness of his jacket, and spun him back to face her. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Yeah.”
Her entire face was twisted now. Had that ugliness been there when they’d been kids? Had he been infatuated enough to miss it back then?
“It’s that bitch Madeline Holton, isn’t it? God only knows what she’s been telling you.”
“What makes you think Madeline had anything to tell me?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Better yet, what are you afraid she’d tell me?”
That set her back and she blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure. Not worried at all she’d tell me you lied about being on the pill? Or how you set up Kelly Coker—”
“Kelly didn’t get anything she didn’t want.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Un-freakin’-believable. “See Mrs. Lydia.”
“Do you think that’s it, Tick?” The ugliness invaded her voice now. “That you’re just going to walk away from me like this?”
He snatched the front door open, irritation slithering over him. “Yeah, Allison, that’s it.”
“This isn’t over.”
She was delusional. He ignored her and continued inside. At the desk, he paused long enough to leave directions for someone to meet Allison to get her things. Edginess ran under his skin, blending with a simmering anger.
It wasn’t over? The idea that she might be threatening him made the anger worse. Where did she get off?
She clearly didn’t know who she was dealing with.
Madeline swung out of her car, head bent against the wind.
“You bitch!”
Allison Barnett stood before her on the sidewalk, her face red, entire body trembling with fury and hatred. Madeline stared at her a moment, expecting the deep-rooted shame and resentment to flood through her.
Nothing.
Somehow, it was all gone—all the old acid, just gone, swallowed up somehow. Because of Ash maybe? Because of his simple belief? Or maybe because she’d finally lanced the old wounds, let all the poison drain away in that slow confession to Tick.
For whatever reason, Allison held no power over her anymore.
“Bitch, huh?” Madeline smiled. “Yep, that would be me.”
“I suppose you’re satisfied with yourself now. I’m going to make you sorry you were ever born, Madeline Holton.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Allison, but I don’t have time for this.” Madeline brushed by her. “I don’t have time for you.”
She bounded up the department steps, feeling lighter than she had in…well, forever. That easily. She’d confronted and exorcised that ghost.
That demon.
Maybe there was hope. Maybe Ash was right. Just maybe, she did deserve good things in her life. Maybe she deserved him.
“Hey, Mrs. Lydia.” She greeted the woman working the desk, who’d taught her Sunday School once upon a time. “Is Tick in yet?”
“His office.”
“Thanks.” Almost feeling like whistling, she stopped at Tick’s door and knocked. At his quiet “it’s open”, she pushed the slab inward.
He glanced up, wearing irritation like a cloak. “Hey. Glad you’re here. How’s Ash?”
“Sore.”
“I’ll bet.” Jaw tight, he dropped his gaze to the computer printout on his desk. “You plan on going back to the hospital today?”
“Later. I told him we had leads to follow up. What’s up?”
“I just ran Kelly’s Social Security number. She worked in a hot dog stand down in PC for about a year. Tried to call them, but they’re obviously not open yet. I’m hoping we might be able to track down someone who knew her or who could give us an idea of where she went after she left there.”
“Give me the number.” Madeline held out her hand. “I’ll keep trying. You have paperwork, right?”
He grimaced. “Yeah.”
Taking the slip from him, she wandered to the squad room and spent some time doodling notes and thoughts in her notebook. She kept circling around to the idea of who Kelly would have come back to see. Her, maybe? And someone had hurt her before she made it that far.
Allison. Had Allison hurt her?
The memory of the hatred burning in Allison’s eyes earlier flared. Maybe Allison was capable of murder.
An hour later, notes from her phone call in hand, Madeline returned to Tick’s office. “How do you feel about a little trip to the beach?”
He looked up from the report he was reviewing, eyes gleaming, earlier annoyance gone. “Did you find something?”
She dropped into the chair before his desk and leaned forward, excitement bubbling in her. “The daughter of the original owners runs the place now. Not only does she remember Kelly, but they were friends. Kelly had a room in their house. The daughter kept some of the things Kelly left behind. Plus, she’s going back through their employee records. Her dad is a major packrat, and she thinks she might be able to pinpoint pretty closely when Kelly left Florida.”
He was on his feet, shrugging into his jacket. “Let’s go.”
Outside, she fell in beside him on the way to his truck. “If we can get—”
“Holy hell.” His shocked intake of breath stopped her own voice. “Damn it!”
“What?” She followed the direction of his gaze and stared. The white paint on his hood had been gouged all the way to the metal.
His mouth tight, he ran a finger over the long gouges and smacked his palm on the hood, hard. “Son of a bitch.”
“Who did you piss off, Calvert?”
He unlocked the truck and jerked the driver’s door open. “Your friend Allison.”
“She’s no friend of mine.”
He slammed the vehicle into reverse. “All right, Holton. Let’s put this case together.”
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Susan Blakely ushered them into the small, crowded office of Salty Sea Dogs.
“We’re fine,” Madeline said. Now that they were here, the anticipation began to wane. In its place was a melancholy sensation—this was one of the last places Kelly had been alive.
Susan sank into the chair behind the big metal desk and indicated the chairs on the far wall. “You’re absolutely sure it’s Kelly?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Tick replied. He balanced a small notebook on his knee, pen poised in hand.
Susan blinked hard, tears lending her eyes a wet shine. “I was afraid of something like this, when she didn’t come back. I told myself, oh, she just decided to stay once she was back home.”
Madeline met Tick’s gaze, intrigue flaring between them. She pinned on her best interview smile. “Anything you tell us could prove important.”
“I don’t know where to start.” Susan reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “Ridiculous, isn’t it, being so upset over a girl I only knew a year, who I haven’t seen in almost twenty years?”
“No,” Madeline said. “Not ridiculous at all.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” A gentle note filtered through Tick’s voice.
Susan nodded and wiped her eyes once more. “She came in to eat one afternoon. I’d just gotten in from school. She was counting out change to pay for her food, and Daddy refused to take her money. He was like that, my dad. He sat her down and started talking to her. He figured out pretty quickly she wasn’t as old as she said she was and that she didn’t have any place to go. He put her to work on the register, set her up in the little apartment over the garage.”
“How long did she stay?” Tick’s pen scratched over his notebook.
“That was September and…let’s see, I graduated the following May. She left sometime the next fall. I looked for the payroll records, but Daddy must have discarded them.”
“That’s okay.” Tick looked up, a smile flashing over his face. “Your timeline gives us a starting point.”
September to the next fall. A year. Madeline looked up to meet Susan’s wet gaze. “Do you know why she came home? I mean, it had been over a year since she’d left. Why go back?”
“Because of me.” Susan glanced toward the ceiling in the classic if-I-do-this-I-won’t-cry move. “Because I convinced her she should.”
“What do you mean?”
Susan ran a fingertip along her lashes. “We used to talk in the afternoons, after the early rush and before dinner. We talked about a lot of things—what she wanted to do with her life, what I was going to major in, what she’d major in if she went to community college here. Friends, boys. Eventually, she confided in me about why she ran away.
“There’d been…at first she told me she’d made this huge mistake over a boy.” Anger tightened Susan’s expression. Tick flicked a look in her direction, then focused on his shoes. Tension tightened his entire body; Madeline could feel it rolling off of him in waves.
Guilt.
God, did she recognize that emotion.
“But the more she told me,” Susan continued, “the more I saw that it wasn’t her mistake at all. There was this boy, one she wanted to impress, and one of her ‘friends’ convinced her she could do that by…by…”
“Participating in group sex.” Madeline swallowed against a rise of bile.
“That’s what Kelly called it, but it was obvious she hadn’t wanted to do it. She felt coerced. It sounded more like rape to me.”
A muscle flickered in Tick’s taut jaw line.
“Kelly was filled with guilt over the incident. It took me months to convince her she should get some help, see a counselor. My aunt was a nurse; she set her up with the local women’s shelter for some appointments with a counselor. Slowly Kelly started letting go of the guilt, began to see that what had happened hadn’t been her fault.”
“That she was a victim,” Tick said softly.
Susan nodded. “Exactly.”
“That still doesn’t explain why she returned to Georgia.”
“Her counselor suggested she begin taking control of her life by confronting the ‘friend’ who’d set her up in that situation…this…this…”
“Allison.” The name left a bad taste in Madeline’s mouth.
“That’s right.” Susan’s gaze shifted, turned misty as if she were seeing the past once more. “I helped talk Kelly into it. Going to confront that girl, I mean.”
Madeline’s stomach knotted. The whole confronting-the-past seemed like a great idea, unless the past in question involved Allison. Had that single action gotten Kelly killed?
Susan tunneled her hand through her hair. “After I talked with her, Kelly decided to do it. She was going back to see this girl, to show her that despite what she’d done, Kelly was okay and was making something of her life. Then she left…and she never came back. Now you’re telling me she’s dead. She’s dead, and it’s all my fault.”
Her voice broke on her final words.
“No.” Tick lifted his head. “Nothing about this was your fault.”
Something about the way he said it gave Madeline the feeling he addressed her as well.
After talking to Susan Blakely, they spent a few minutes going through the items Kelly had left behind. To Madeline’s disappointment, doing so revealed nothing helpful for their investigation. Again, however, she found herself seized by bittersweet emotions as she touched Kelly’s things.
Once back in the truck on the return trip, Madeline gazed out at the passing scenery after she’d called the hospital and peppered the nurses’ station with questions on Ash’s condition, only to be told he was sleeping. She ignored Tick’s knowing grin and watched as the coastal view slowly gave way to the hills and pine trees of north Florida.
After miles of silence, she looked sideways at Tick. He drove, tapping his thumb on the wheel.
“What are you thinking about?”
He gave her a quick look as he steered into the left-hand turn onto Highway 91.
“That we need to find a way to put Allison and Kelly together during the days after she left Florida. Just knowing she planned to see Allison isn’t enough. Too circumstantial.”
“And one more thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Even if she went to see Allison, how the hell did she end up under that house? Allison wasn’t living there then, and come on, Tick, if she knew what had happened to Kelly, if she knew that body was Kelly, do you really think she’d call the police? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah.” His mouth tightened. “I know.”
“So what’s next?”
“We start looking for the link between Allison and that house.”
To her surprise the soft swish of tires on the highway and the crooning of Kenny Chesney from the radio lulled her to a doze despite the questions and possibilities tumbling through her head. Only minutes later it seemed, Tick’s hand on her knee shook her to alertness. “Holton, we’re back.”
“What?” She blinked at him, the feeling of walking through mud back in full force. “Oh, okay.”
He pulled the keys from the ignition. “Tell you what—let me check in with Lydia and then we’ll grab some lunch and go by the hospital to see—”
The opening notes of a Gary Allan song cut him short. He lifted his cell phone and squinted at the display. “That’s weird.”
Did he think she was psychic? “What?”
“It’s your mama’s number.” He flipped the phone opened and lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”
Unease shivered over Madeline. Her mama, calling Tick? God only knew why.
“Yes, ma’am, she’s right here.” He twisted in the seat, eyebrows lifted at her. “Have you been on the Internet this morning?”
Considering she’d gone straight from Ash’s side to his place to shower then here to be accosted by Tick’s crazy ex-girlfriend? “No.”
He lifted the phone again. “Mama, how bad is it? All right, I think…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll come over there. Yes, ma’am, leave it off the hook. Until I get there. In about ten minutes.”
His mama, calling from her mother’s. Oh God. That couldn’t be good. Visions danced through her head—alcohol poisoning, another of her mama’s depressive “spells”.
The suicide attempt that summer she and Autry had gone to Tampa.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he returned the cell to his belt. She winced at the cool note in her voice. He fired the engine and she frowned. “Why did you want to know if I’d been on the Internet?”
“You’re getting calls at your mama’s house.”
“Calls.” Something about his words filtered through, and she stared at him, horrified, as he steered them into the light traffic. “What kind of calls for me are coming into my mother’s house?”
He braked for the red light but didn’t look at her, his thumb bouncing on the steering wheel. “Obscene ones.”