Paper Bullets (2 page)

“I asked,” Ryan said. “She wouldn’t tell me. Said it was just a few flowers and I was making a big deal out of nothing.”

He sat for a minute without saying anything. A frown had creased his brows, and I realized something I’d never noticed before. Ryan wasn’t the one with the power in his relationship with Melody.

He’d had it in ours, partly because I’d never understood why a guy like Ryan—handsome, athletic, popular—would like a girl like me. I was the one who gave in whenever Ryan wanted something. The situation was reversed in his relationship with Melody, and it made me look at him differently. Not with pity, but with something like kinship.

I’d told myself that someday I’d be able to be friends again with my ex without the hurt getting in the way. Maybe today was that day.

I took a sip of my latte and waited. It was finally cool enough to drink without scalding my tongue. Ryan had added a sprinkle of cinnamon on the top, just like I used to do myself. I hadn’t had cinnamon on my lattes since he left. When I had coffee with Kyle, I had the barista add a shot of vanilla. I’d forgotten how much I liked the taste of cinnamon.

An older couple was sitting at one of the other little tables near the back. He was working on a crossword puzzle and she had her nose in a tablet reader. At first I thought they were ignoring each other until I noticed that their sandal-clad feet were rubbing up against each other beneath the table.

I missed that kind of companionship. Kyle and I weren’t there yet. We might never get there, not if his daughter didn’t warm up to me. His daughter was as important to him as Samantha was to me.

My mother wouldn’t have approved about the way I made Samantha the center of my life, especially after Ryan left. Kyle had done the same thing after he and his wife split.

“It’s hard to be married to a cop,” he’d told me on our second date. “The hours are lousy, my moods are lousy when a case is going badly, and I can’t always shake work by the time I get home, and then there’s always the fear that when I leave for work, I won’t be coming home.”

I’d asked him if he was trying to scare me off.

“Just want you to know what you’re getting yourself in for,” he’d said.

Ryan tapped my foot with his beneath the table, startling me. When was the last time he’d done that?

“You were always good at that,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Spacing out?”

“Waiting me out. It’s one of the things that makes you a good listener. You don’t need to fill the silence.”

It made me a good investigator, too. It was one of the things I’d learned. Given a chance, people would tell me their stories as long as I gave them the opportunity to talk.

Ryan seemed to be stalling, though, and that wasn’t like him. The other thing I’d learned was that sometimes people needed a push.

“You wouldn’t have asked for my help if it was just flowers,” I said.

He nodded. “You’re right. It started with flowers. Then came the phone calls to the condo. If I answered, he’d hang up, but not before I could hear him breathing. One call a night at first, then two, then five or six. We had the phone number changed—it’s unlisted now—but it only took him a couple of days before the calls started again. We have caller ID, but the number was blocked. I was about ready to call in a couple of favors and put a tap and trace on the line when the calls stopped. I figured that was the end of it until she got the first picture in the mail.”

He rubbed his upper lip. It was an old habit he’d picked up during the years he’d decided to try wearing a mustache and a little goatee. At the time he’d thought it made him look older, and he was under the impression juries took older attorneys more seriously. He didn’t want to look like he’d just graduated law school.

The only problem was that he was constantly touching the thing. He’d rub the mustache or stroke the goatee, and that made him look more than a little like Snidely Whiplash.

When he figured out his winning record had gone downhill, he’d shaved the thing off. He’d been clean shaven ever since, but he still rubbed at his upper lip whenever he was near his emotional limits.

“Pictures of Melody, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath, his gaze somewhere over my right shoulder, but I knew he was remembering the photographs. “Melody leaving work. Melody out shopping with a friend. Melody behind the wheel, waiting for a red light and talking on her cell phone. He’d printed ‘bad girl, breaking the law’ on that back of that picture.”

Kyle had told me once that the police department had a handwriting expert they used on occasion. It was a long shot, but maybe Melody’s stalker was in the system. He could have even left prints on the photographs.

“Do you still have the pictures? I’ve got a friend in the police department. Maybe I could—”

“She threw them out. It was another thing we fought about—destroying the evidence. Something I could have taken to the cops myself, but with no evidence...”

There was nothing the cops could do, especially if she didn’t file a police report.

That’s why he’d come to me.

“How’s she going to feel about your ex-wife shadowing her?” I asked. “Isn’t that going to make things tense for you at home?”

Not to mention tense for me.

When he looked me in the eye this time, I saw something in his gaze I hadn’t seen since we thought Samantha might die: fear.

“She doesn’t realize how sick some of those bastards can be. I have friends who left left criminal law because they couldn’t stand dealing with the clients.”

I’d come face to face with two killers myself not that long ago, and they’d both been sick bastards.

“You do realize you’re asking me to find someone you’re afraid could be dangerous.”

“You’re smart, Abby. You know how to handle yourself. Melody?” He shook his head. “She always gotten attention from men. She thinks if she ignores this guy, he’ll go away. I know better, but I can’t convince her.”

It was the first time he’d ever compared me favorably to his fiancé. Or at least that’s how I decided to take it, since an argument could also be made that he was saying I was more expendable than the new woman in his life. Look at me, trying not to be bitchy.

“All I want is a picture of the guy, a license plate number if he’s driving a car,” Ryan said. “Something that will help me identify him.”

“How about a name? An address?”

Ryan shook his head. “A name would be great, but I don’t want you tailing this guy back to wherever he lives. If he’s got a car, I can track him down through DMV.”

I could do that too, but I didn’t mention it. If I spotted the guy driving a car, I figured I’d just use my own resources to get a name and address. Thanks to the work I was doing Norton Greenburger, one of Reno’s best criminal defense attorneys, I’d gotten pretty good at surveillance. The guy would never know I was around.

“Melody’s got a morning shift at the gym tomorrow,” Ryan said. “You can pick her up there.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Can’t tomorrow morning. Jonathan and his mom are driving over from Nevada City so he can spend the day with Samantha.”

A look of confusion passed over Ryan’s face. “Jonathan?”

I realized Samantha had never told Ryan about her long-distance boyfriend. Ouch.

“A friend of hers,” I said. “We’ve been to Nevada City to visit a few times. This is the second time they’ve been here.”

“Jonathan,” he said again, like he was trying the name on for size. “Is it serious?”

“She’s sixteen. Everything’s serious.”

He nodded. “Think I should meet this kid?”

Jonathan was shy and kind of a nerd. I could just see how well that meeting would turn out. “She’s more focused on getting ready for school than on this boy,” I said. “If you want to meet him, I’ll set it up, but I don’t think you need to. Not right now. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

He finished off his coffee, and this time when he spoke, he didn’t look at me. “I haven’t been a very good dad, have I?”

What could I say to something like that? Good was a relative term. Ryan was getting married again—and not to me—which made him the worst dad in the world according to Samantha. But he still saw her two weekends a month, called her every so often just to talk, and never missed a birthday or holiday. That made him a better dad than a lot of dads out there.

“I’ll start on Monday,” I said instead. “Text me the address of Melody’s gym and her schedule. I’ll clear my calendar.”

I’d actually said “text me.” Samantha would be proud. I’d said “clear my calendar,” too. I didn’t know who’d be proud of me for that one. Even my mother hadn’t spoken corporate.

“Thank you,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

He stood up, so I did, too. He tossed his empty coffee container in the trash. I held onto mine. I still had half my latte left. I wasn’t about to throw it out.

Ryan gave me a quick smile—good old frugal Abby—but I’d had a lot of practice lately trying to make ends meet. He held the door open for me as we left, both to our separate cars. I won’t lie. I still felt a twinge of regret at that. We’d been married a long time.

As I left, I caught one last glimpse of the old couple sitting at the little table near the back. He was still working the crossword puzzle and she was still reading something on her tablet. I couldn’t see whether they were still playing footsie, but I wanted to think they were.

Some silences between people who’d been together a long time were thick with unspoken tension and buried resentment. My own parents hadn’t been that bad, but I could tell when they’d had one of their near-fights over my mother’s constant criticism.

Even if I hadn’t caught the foot nudge earlier, I wanted to think this couple was different. They looked like old marrieds who’d been together for fifty years and couldn’t wait to get started on the next half century. I hoped they had a huge family that spent the holidays together. I imagined them going to faraway places on vacation just so they could say they’d been there.

Most of all, I hoped that tragedy had never shadowed their lives, and that the sick bastards of the world never darkened their door.

CHAPTER 2

“IT’S GONNA FEEL like I’m in jail, Mom.”

I nodded, trying to keep my sympathetic expression in place. Not an easy task considering I’d been hearing the same complaint from Samantha throughout the summer. A very short summer from my daughter’s perspective. Mine, too.

For whatever reason, the school board had decided to start school the third week in August, which seemed ridiculous to me. Nevada’s a desert state, and August is the hottest month of the summer in the north.

I should know.

I got married in a church in Reno in August. The church had no air conditioning, and I could still remember standing at the altar in front of a room full of people, only about half of whom I knew, sweating up a storm in my bridal gown.

Of course, I got divorced in a cold courtroom with only the judge, my attorney, and a resident witness in attendance. I wasn’t sure what was worse.

But the biggest change at school was the one Samantha was currently complaining about.

Over the summer, a chain link fence had been constructed around her high school campus. The gates would be locked during the school day, with no one allowed in or out without authorization. Especially not anyone in my daughter’s sophomore class.

Samantha was taking the whole closed-campus thing personally. Not that she’d ever left campus to go across the street to the grocery store or any of the nearby fast food places for lunch. Last year the high school cafeteria had been too new and exciting for my fresh-faced high school freshman. Apparently sophomores didn’t want to eat lunch at school. It Just. Wasn’t. Done.

Except now it would be, since they had no choice.

I had no idea what the juniors and seniors thought about being locked in, but the more my own high school sophomore complained about the new policy, the more I couldn’t wait for school to actually start.

I blew out a breath and counted to five before I replied to Samantha’s latest complaint. I was still distracted by my meeting with Ryan, and we’d just given the living room a quick once-over with the vacuum and a dust rag that used to be a dish towel in a prior life. I was still hot and sweaty, I still needed a shower, and the remains of my latte were long gone.

“What time did Jonathan say they were getting here tomorrow?” I asked Samantha in a blatant attempt to change the subject.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Around eleven. Same as when you asked last time.”

This was only the second time Jonathan and his mother had driven from Nevada City so the kids could visit.

I’d blown Ryan off when he asked me if their relationships was serious, but sometimes I had to wonder. They’d become friends in an Internet chat room—not the safest of venues, which I’d discovered last December thanks to a case that had nearly cost me my life—but Jonathan seemed like a nice kid, and I liked his mother. I’d always heard that long-distance relationships were hard to sustain, but so far my daughter and her boyfriend seemed to be doing fine.

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure.” I grinned. “You know. In case I forgot from the zillion other times you told me.”

“Please don’t go senile on me, Mom. You’re the only adult I can talk to.”

Good thing Ryan didn’t hear that. Samantha wasn’t ready to forgive him for replacing me with Melody. I figured she’d get there in her own time.

“Good to know,” I said, and I meant it.

I’d never been able to talk to my own mother without getting criticism in response. The last thing I wanted to do was turn into my mother where my own daughter was concerned. I just didn’t know how to be a good single mother at the same time I was learning how to be an independent woman who dated.

I guess it was a good thing Kyle and I were taking it slow.

Our cat chose that moment to yell for food.

Other cats meow. Ours yelps. It’s one of the reasons we keep her dish full, but we’d been busy and must have ignored her for too long.