The Off Season (4 page)

She unlocked the door, and he climbed in behind the wheel.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Far as I can tell,” he said. “There’s no sign of forced entry. Nobody inside, either. Well, other than one big dog—or a really scrawny horse.”

“That’s just Max.” A news story from last week popped into her mind, an incident where Newark cops had shot a family pet after kicking in the wrong door after midnight. “You didn’t hurt him, did you? He doesn’t even bark.”

“Wagging his tail at me and grinning the way he was? C’mon, Christina. Give a guy a little credit.” The corners of his mouth quirked upward, an unwanted reminder of the boyish charm that had lured her like a bluefish, heedless of the hook.

She blew out a breath, feeling both relieved and foolish. “Then this was all for nothing, dragging you out here at this hour.”

He turned to look straight ahead, his Adam’s apple working. “Least I can do . . .”

For a moment, she held her breath, certain he would bring it up. That he’d apologize or say something to make the moment even more difficult.

Instead, he shrugged it off. “It’s the job they gave me, after all.”

“The way I hear it, you’re a hero.” When she’d first heard the details of how he’d nearly lost his own life protecting others, she’d been blindsided by a rush of pride for the same boy she had spent so many years hating. In a way, she realized, it had felt like a vindication, the knowledge that the potential she’d seen in him had been more than a case of raging hormones—or naïveté.

He made a scoffing sound, still not looking at her. “Well, this
hero
needs to catch some burglars before somebody else gets hurt.”

“Somebody
else
?”

“You didn’t know? There was an older man three blocks from here.” He filled her in on the specifics.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “Why haven’t I heard about this? I mean, I work at the med center, right in the ER.” That was no guarantee, what with HIPAA laws protecting patient information. But in a community as small as Seaside Creek, news of a brutal assault in the neighborhood where she lived should have filtered back to her, even if the poor man had been brought in on one of her off days.

“They took him to Presbyterian, over in Woods Crossing,” he explained, referring to a private hospital about thirty minutes inland. “And, anyway, we haven’t publicized it.”

“Why on earth not?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t I have known if my daughter and I were in danger?”

At the anger in her tone, Lilly shifted with a whimper.

“Let’s say we talk about this inside,” Harris said, laying a hand on Christina’s arm, “where you’ll be more comfortable.”

She flinched away from his touch, and their gazes clashed as awareness arced between them, a reminder that she would never be comfortable as long as she remained in his still-too-handsome presence. That while two days ago she might have passed him on the street with no more than a cool nod, the words she’d heard these past two nights had left her too shaken for pretenses . . . the words still ringing in her memory, words that couldn’t be explained away by any glitch in a monitor.

I need you to come find me, Katie.

But where was she to look, when the investigator she’d hired two years before had turned up nothing? And what if she didn’t find the woman who had once dragged her to the dumpster and demanded that she stay there and take care of the baby?

What if the only thing Christina found was proof that she was no more fit to be a parent than her mother had been?

CHAPTER FOUR

It took longer than the five minutes Christina had promised Harris before she came back downstairs. Though Lilly settled with merciful speed once she was tucked into her own bed, Christina stood watch over her daughter for some time before leaving Max curled on the rug beside her—as if the big lug offered anything more in the way of security than a tripping hazard.

Leaving the door ajar, she stopped by the master bedroom to change into comfortable jeans and a thick blue cotton sweater. Two pairs of socks, too, along with her coziest lined slippers. But no matter how much clothing she piled on, she couldn’t escape the chill that had burrowed down inside her. Couldn’t stop shivering as her mind continually replayed the events of the past hour.

Steeling herself, she headed downstairs, only to pause midway when Harris’s voice echoed from the entry. He was instructing someone, presumably one of his officers, to check all possible points of entry, the phone line, and the detached two-car garage as well. In one sense, it was a relief to know he was taking her complaints seriously. Still, her hand tightened on the banister at the idea of the police creeping around the old Victorian, scrutinizing everything . . . including her sanity.

Face burning, she forced herself to swallow and descended a few more steps. Far enough to see that there were three of them inside the front door, Harris with his back to her and two uniformed officers intent on what he was saying.

“Stick together, both of you, and keep in mind we may be dealing with multiple suspects, possibly armed,” Harris told the mismatched pair.

“You can’t really think they’d still be hanging around.” The speaker was middle-aged and male, with drooping jowls and thinning hair in a shoe-polish black that couldn’t possibly be natural. The straining buttons of his dark-blue shirt brought to mind the cardiac patients that came into the ER all too regularly, especially considering the splotch of greasy yellow-orange—her bet would have been congealed cheese from a fast-food burger—on his collar. “What with two marked patrols cars and—”

“Three live cops,” Harris finished, with some heat. “And I mean to keep it that way. Always.”

The second officer, a woman nearly a head taller than Burger Cop, broke the loaded silence that followed by clicking her flashlight on and off with her thumb, as if the male posturing left her bored. With her dark-brown hair pinned back and her impressive height—she stood eye to eye with Harris, who easily topped six feet—she reminded Christina of a warrior princess from a bygone age.

“So let’s do this,” she said.

Once the two officers closed the door behind them, Harris turned at the creak of a stair. “I was about to check on you,” he told Christina. “Everything all right?”

She nodded. “Could I—it’s so cold out there. Would you like some coffee? I’ll make enough for the officers as well.”

“That’d be great, and I’m sure they’d love some once they’re finished.” A smile stretched one side of his mouth. “Well, if
you’re
the one who offers. If it was me, Fiorelli’d probably send it out for testing for heavy metals and rat poison.”

The knot in her stomach eased a little. “Really. I’m a doctor. You wouldn’t expect me to use anything that’d leave behind such obvious evidence.”

He speared her with a narrow-eyed look that left her wondering—was she out of her mind, joking about poisoning the police?—before letting her off the hook with a fuller smile. A smile so rakishly appealing, it put Christina instantly on guard.

“So what
would
you use?” he asked as he trailed her into the kitchen. “If you were of a criminal persuasion, that is?”

She shrugged before admitting she hadn’t given the idea much thought. “I’m too busy worrying about keeping people alive.”

He leaned against the counter while she took out fresh beans for the Coffeemaker of the Gods to grind and brew. “Well, then, there’s one thing you and I both have in common.”

She swallowed hard, trying not to think back to other things they had once shared. The way they’d laughed together so easily. Her startled gasp, and the sigh that followed, when he’d slipped up behind her to cup her breasts, the first time in her life that anyone had touched her like that.

“You—you like it strong?” She shivered despite the flush of heat that scorched her skin.

“That’d be great. Strong as you like.”

A whirring sound was followed by a series of satisfying hisses and burbles. Harris gestured toward the little breakfast table, an invitation that sent her heartbeat off-kilter and made her wish she’d never hit the panic button.

As a rich aroma wove its way into awareness, he took the seat across from hers, the golden-green of his eyes reminding her of flecks of sunshine filtered through the leafy canopy of a summer woodland. The thought sent her mind spinning to a state park she’d visited with a strong and healthy Doug last year, a happy memory steeped in pain . . . and now guilt as well.

“So let’s start from the beginning,” said Harris. “Can you tell me more about this voice that woke you? A woman’s voice, you said?”

Christina’s lungs scooped shallow breaths, and her cold hands ached to curl themselves around the comfort of a warm mug. She had to tell him something. “Yes, a stranger’s, and I swear, in that first moment, I thought she was in my room.”

“Did she sound young? Old?”

The words replayed in Christina’s brain:
I need you to come find me, Katie.

She shrugged. “Somewhere in between, I guess. The voice was kind of distorted, so it’s hard to say.”

“Caucasian, you think? From around here? As much as you can tell, I mean.”

If you don’t come, baby, you’ll both stay lost forever.

“No particular accent I picked up on,” she forced herself to say, “but I’d just been woken from a sound sleep.”

Snow, swirling past a dumpster.

“Are you okay, Christina?”

She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms through the thick sweater. “Yeah, I guess. Just thinking of a nightmare I was having when she woke me up.”

“Could she have been part of it?” He shrugged. “Sometimes I have bad dreams, and I’d swear I hear
him
talking. In real life, I mean.”

“Him?” She was remembering things she’d heard, way back in school, about Harris’s father. About the drinking and the rages, the wife who’d shown up to school functions with bruises on her face, though she could never be persuaded to speak a word against him.

“Yardley, the young MP from my own training class,” Harris said, his mouth twisting into a grimace and his gaze sliding away. “The one I didn’t stop in time.”

“But you did stop him.” Christina had heard reports about how many lives could have been lost had the twenty-year-old with the bomb strapped beneath his uniform jacket made it into the graduation ceremony before Harris noticed his erratic behavior.

“Tell that to the four he killed. And Private Yardley’s family.”

A sigh slipped free as she realized that the scars from that day ran far deeper than the few patches of grafted skin she’d spotted on Harris’s neck and his right hand.

He looked back, searching her face. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, I understand, what with your husband and the move and a new job.”

“It wasn’t just a bad dream.” The words came out sharp, defensive, but she couldn’t listen to him accusing her of hearing things. Not now. “I was wide awake the second time. Her voice was coming loud and clear through the monitor.”

Harris raised a palm. “Okay, okay. You really heard her. So what was it she said?”

“I—” She racked her brain for something she could tell him. Something to explain her panic without giving him reason to dig into her history. “I don’t recall, exactly.”

Suspicion flashed through his eyes, only to be tucked away so quickly that she wondered whether she’d imagined it.

“Then what was the gist of it?” he pressed.

Her hands were shaking so hard, she pulled them out of sight. Glancing toward the coffee machine, she said, “Let me check on that.”

“You’re very pale,” he told her. “I’ll get it.”

Pushing back his chair, he walked to the counter and gestured toward a row of sturdy white mugs hanging on cup hooks beneath a cabinet. “These okay to use?”

“Sure,” she answered, crystals of ice slowing her thoughts to a crawl. But the pressure was growing, and she had to come up with something, anything, to tell him.

He nodded toward the mug he’d just filled. “How d’you want this? Black all right?”

She would’ve preferred a little of the real cream she kept in the fridge, but it was all she could do to nod. “I think,” she heard herself saying, “she said something like,
I’m right here, waiting for you.
That’s when I jumped out of bed and ran into my daughter’s room.”

Though her mouth seemed to be functioning independently of her brain, she decided that, as lies went, this wasn’t such a bad one. Except that Harris finished filling the first mug and gave her an assessing look that had her blurting, “Look, maybe you were right before. It’s just some prankster who’s hacked into the house’s Wi-Fi for kicks.”

“Speaking of Wi-Fi, the one you’re using here—did the homeowners leave a password for you?”

She nodded. “They keep it printed on a card taped behind the pantry door over there—for the summer guests who rent this place.”

He went to check it out. “Great. See how the edges of this card are bent, and it’s yellowed? That’s telling me that anybody who’s had access to this place, from past visitors to whatever painter, maid, or pest-control guy who’s ever worked here, could have access, and not only to your monitor. Your cell, computer, anything you’ve used here.”

“I—I never thought to—”

“As long as it’s working, people take technology for granted,” he said. “But speaking of technology, you know anything about those security cameras? I saw one pointed at the front door and another in the back.”

“I—um—I’m not sure how they work or where they record to, but I can give you the homeowner’s number, or I have the number of the alarm-company people if you’d rather have that.”

“We have both on file at the station. I’ll make the calls when I get back there, see if we can get access to any footage shot tonight.”

To prove that I was dreaming? Is that what he’s really thinking?

Before she could voice the suspicion, there was a solid rap at the front door.

“Chief, you got a minute?” There was palpable tension in the female officer’s voice as she stuck her head inside.

“Right there,” he said, setting Christina’s mug in front of her on his way out of the room.

She wanted to follow him, to know what was going on. But her knees felt too loose to support her, so she picked up the steaming cup and blew across the coffee’s surface. As ripples expanded across the dark sea, part of the murmured conversation reached her ears.

“Fiorelli had it all wrong. Lady doc’s not just spooking at shadows,” the officer told Harris. “From the looks of the garage, there’s definitely been someone here. Someone I’d say she’s got good reason to be scared of.”

This much Harris knew before he zipped up his jacket and followed rookie officer Aleksandra Zarzycki back outside, where the soft hiss of ever-present waves carried in the stillness. Something tonight had left Christina badly shaken. Fear radiated from her like waves of cold lifting off a chunk of dry ice. But he was sure, too, she was holding back on him, afraid to trust him with the whole story.

Or, who knew? Maybe it was a story she was afraid to tell herself. Happened all the time—people struggling to keep some ugly truth at bay by refusing to speak of it. Denial was the life vest that kept a lot of souls afloat.

As Harris crunched through the frozen slush behind Zarzycki, he tried not to count the lies he’d told himself. Yet they lined up in formation, each one more transparent than the one before.
Decorated marine. Devoted husband. Good father.

Inside a well-lit garage that once might’ve been a carriage house, he found Fiorelli shaking his head at the condition of a late-model black Mercedes. A mile-long sedan, it all but screamed
money
, with its sleek, aerodynamic lines.

Except at the moment, Christina’s car was listing badly, sitting unevenly on flattened tires.

“Seems some asshole’s got a hard-on for rich folks,” Fiorelli announced as he gestured toward slashed sidewalls. “First, their fancy houses, and now the high-end cars.”

“Maybe,” Harris allowed, wondering, not for the first time, if the extensive vandalism they’d seen in the previous break-ins had been more the point than the burglaries. Though everybody knew Seaside Creek would be circling the drain without the wealthy homeowners and summer visitors fueling its economy, that didn’t stop a lot of homegrown have-nots from scorning those who, at best, ignored and excluded them. And, at worst, treated every local like the hired help.

“Or maybe this particular somebody has a beef with women,” Zarzycki added, scowling down at the driver’s-side door panel.

When Harris joined her, he winced to see her looking at the crude word someone had carved—the mother of all crude words for a female—into the glossy black paint. Though he’d worked with plenty of women MPs over the years and respected their professionalism, some latent reserve of chauvinism—or maybe it was chivalry—kicked in. “Sorry you had to see that.”