What She Doesn't See (9 page)

The words
government, classified,
encrypted
kept whirling in her thoughts, getting all mixed up
with the idea that this tiny gadget had gotten her friend as well
as at least one other person killed.

And it was her fault.

If she hadn’t found it… if she’d just tossed
the damned eyeball.

But she hadn’t. She’d done her job and now
Hitch was dead. The worst part was that no one seemed to be aware
of how and why he’d really died. To say no one cared would be
wrong. Hitch had too many friends, including his partner. But no
one had ruled out the “accident” assumption and moved forward with
a real investigation.

She stared at the phone she’d been clutching
since she’d come into the bathroom. Doing nothing was wrong. She
had to do something. Holding her breath, she entered Patton’s
number. She knew it by heart after more than an hour of sitting
here trying to decide if she should call him or not.

Most likely he’d think she was crazy, but she
had to do this for Hitch. He deserved justice, by God.

Jimmy Patton answered after only the second
ring.

“This is Alex Jackson.”

She didn’t actually have to bother with her
full name, most of the detectives knew her, but she’d felt the need
to make this sound official.

“What’s up, Jackson? Oh damn. I was supposed
to call you about the memorial service. It’s been crazy all day.
I’m just now getting away from work. I’m headed to the hospital to
see my wife and baby girl.”

Alex heard the pride in his voice. He had a
family now. She swallowed, steadied her voice, and took the plunge.
“Anything new on Hitch’s accident?”

Silence.

Could he possibly already know foul play was
involved? Would he find her question suspicious? After all, she was
one of the last people to talk to Hitch last night.

“What was that?” he asked. “You cut out for a
sec.”

Wetting her lips, she tried her best not to
let her voice reverberate with the tension gripping her throat.
“Any news on Hitch’s accident?”

“So far, it looks like an accident. No reason
to suspect otherwise. We’re still waiting for the final report on
the car.” He hesitated. “What’s going on, Jackson? Why do you sound
so nervous?’

Damn. Alex cringed. “What’s the time and
location of that memorial service?” She hoped like hell the abrupt
question would derail his suspicion.

“Tomorrow, four-thirty. St. Mary’s over on
Second Avenue. The family’ll have a private funeral mass and burial
later, after the autopsy.”

What did she say now? “Thanks. I... I just
can’t believe he’s gone.”

Patton made a knowing sound in his throat.
“Had you and Hitch... you know... talked about getting back
together?” He chuckled good-naturedly. “It was no secret he still
had a thing for you.”

Would he tell her more if he thought she and
Hitch were involved again? She wasn’t about to lie like that about
a friend, especially a dead one.

“No, we were just friends,” she confessed. “I
guess I’m stunned that he’s gone. That’s all. He sounded fine to me
last night, and then I wake up this morning to learn he’s
dead.”

“Look, Jackson,” Patton said, his voice
somber. “We all look for some way to explain an unexpected death
like this. Hitch was a top-notch detective and a great friend.
He’ll be sorely missed. If there was anything at all besides Fate
that played a hand in his death, I’ll find it. You don’t need to
worry.”

She didn’t doubt his sincerity, but was
sincerity enough? Could she convince Patton of what she suspected
without Timothy O’Neill to back her up? If she did tell him
everything and passed this thing—she glared at the plastic bag—on
to him, would his life be in danger, as well?

What about his wife and child?

How could she knowingly endanger his family?
Look at what had just happened to Timothy O’Neill’s friend.

Could she just pretend the explosion and this
damned thing had nothing to do with Hitch’s murder? It had been
murder.
O’Neill had heard the whole thing. He’d seen the
bastard dragging Hitch to his car. Undoubtedly the same bastard
who’d blown up Timothy’s house.

Now or never. “Remember I told you there was
something funny about that guy Crane’s suicide scene? And that I’d
given Hitch a piece of evidence I thought might be relevant to his
death.”

“What was this evidence again? Something
about his eye?” Horns blared in the background. Patton muttered a
curse.

Alex bit her lip. Did she tell him
everything? Risk involving him despite what she knew could happen?
So far the people who’d touched this whatever the hell it was had
either been murdered or nearly so.

Except her.

And that might very well only be because
she’d just regained possession of the damned thing.

Okay. The decision was far too monumental to
make in the next twenty or so seconds. Maybe she should sleep on
it. She could talk to Patton after the memorial service
tomorrow.

“It was... it was...” She scrambled to think
of how to answer his question without telling him the truth. “Part
of an artificial eye.” She winced at how lame that sounded.

“Artificial eye?” The incredulity echoed in
his voice.

“Yeah. I guess it turned out to be
nothing.”

She hoped he’d let it go at that. Obviously
he hadn’t really been listening to her when she’d visited him at
the station, which might actually be a good thing. She needed to
think about this some more.

“Wait a minute. You said he called you. That
he was excited about this
eyeball
. What gives, Alex?
You’re sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me?”

Hell. He’d called her Alex. None of the guys
ever called her Alex unless they were suspicious or pissed. Doing
the right thing suddenly felt all wrong. She’d almost gone too far
to back out. Somehow she had to take a major step back… at least
for now.

“You know, Patton, I’d had a couple of beers
last night. Maybe I misunderstood. I guess I was just so shocked to
hear about his death that I got confused. I should let you go. Give
my best to your wife and daughter.”

She hit the off button before he could
argue.

She cursed herself for being so wishy-washy.
She should have told him, but then he might end up dead, too.

“Stick with your plan, Alex,” she muttered.
She would sleep on it tonight and make a decision in the morning.
The memory of the pile of rubble that used to be O’Neill’s home
zoomed into vivid focus.

Maybe she and Marg should go to Shannon’s
house tonight. And take the danger to her best friend?

Not a good idea.

At moments like this Alex really wished she
owned a gun. She was usually anti weapons. You couldn’t clean up
cranial fragments and massive amounts of blood, which were usually
the result of the use or misuse of firearms, and not be a little
gun-shy.

She laid the phone back on the sink. First
thing she had to do was hide the evidence.

If the guy who’d killed Hitch showed up at
her house he would likely know how to conduct a thorough search.
The idea that he might be from some government agency crossed her
mind again, but she refused to blame this on the good guys until
she knew more.

Wait… maybe he already had. She thought of
how her things had felt out of place last night. She’d blamed her
mother, but what if it had been whoever was looking for this
thing?

Alex shuddered. She needed a place most
people wouldn’t look.

She got down on her knees and dug around
inside the sink cabinet until she found a box of tampons.
Carefully, she pulled open one end and slid out the tampon. She
removed the lower portion of the insertion tube, and then gingerly
slipped the contact lens from its plastic bag. She held her breath
as she lightly squeezed the pliable contact lens into a u-shape and
tucked it into the larger section of the tube that had held the
tampon. She pushed the lower portion of the tube back into place
and returned the whole thing to its plastic sleeve. She then tucked
it, sealed end up, into the box, which she placed under the sink
once more.

She stood and, as she dusted her palms
together, got a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She didn’t like
the uncertainty she saw in her eyes. For about two seconds she
almost called Patton back and gave him the whole story.

All right, she was getting paranoid here.
Stay calm. Extra precautions were necessary, that was true, but
there was no need to panic just yet. In spite of her determination
to stay calm, trepidation fizzled along her nerve endings.

Bracing herself, she headed for the front
door. She needed to check on Marg. It was one thing for Alex to
decide to risk her own safety, another entirely to risk her
mother’s. Her mother had never been very good at taking care of
herself. Case in point, her taste in men. Marg had met Alex’s
father at a spring break binge. She’d sworn she was eighteen, and
the college-freshman-turned-dropout who’d become Alex’s father
hadn’t argued. The two had been bad for each other, plummeting into
a hell-raising place of no return. Despite fifteen years of trying
to survive together, he had ultimately chosen to leave not only his
little family, but the planet. Alex wasn’t sure she would ever
forgive him. If a girl couldn’t count on her own father, who could
she count on?

Speaking of which, her mother’s unexplained
absences today could mean trouble.

Alex locked the door behind her, something
she never did when her destination was just up a flight of stairs
to Marg’s apartment. The idea that whoever had killed Hitch might
be watching her was enough to have her taking a few
precautions.

Someone had definitely been watching her. She
scanned the street. No sign of the sporty car she’d noticed last
night. Maybe whoever it was had decided she didn’t know
anything.

Alex hustled up the steps to her mother’s
door and knocked. The evening news blared from the television so
she knocked again just in case the first one hadn’t been loud
enough.

The door opened and her mother looked
startled as if she hadn’t expected anyone to be at the door.
“Alex?”

The purse hanging from her mother’s shoulder
and the keys dangling from her hand told Alex that she was going
out for the evening. None of that surprised her, what did, however,
was the state of her dress. Sweatpants and a t-shirt. Marg Jackson
never wore sweatpants or a tee unless she was going to the gym,
which she had not done in ages.

“Were you on your way out?” Seemed like a
good starting place.

Marg blinked. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Well there was an informative answer. “Plans
with a new guy?” Impossible. The sweatpants alone negated that
possibility, but maybe the question would prompt an answer.

“No.” Marg scooted out the door, forcing Alex
to step aside. She locked up and turned to her daughter. “You know,
Alex, I never ask you about the men you date. I certainly don’t
attempt to keep tabs on your comings and goings. I believe I
deserve the same respect for my privacy.”

Alex opened her mouth to give her a load of
reasons why it wasn’t the same thing, but her mother held up a hand
to silence her.

“I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Marg
went on, “but I’m on my feet now. I can take care of myself. I
don’t need a babysitter.”

Alex took a breath. Decided not to start an
argument. “I worry, Mom, so shoot me.”

Her mother gave her a pointed look.

“Marg,” Alex amended. From the day she became
a widow at the ripe old age of thirty, her mother had insisted that
Alex was to call her Marg. Come to think of it that was about the
same time their roles had seemingly reversed.

Marg hitched the strap of her purse a little
higher on her shoulder. “We’re not that different, Alex. You just
don’t want to see it. If you look really close you’ll see just how
much alike we are.”

Too flabbergasted to speak, Alex watched her
mother descend the stairs and cross the street to where she’d left
her car at the curb. Today had been strange and unnerving in a lot
of ways, but outside of Hitch’s death nothing about it had rattled
her as badly as this.

If you look really close you’ll see just
how much alike we are.

They were nothing alike. Why couldn’t Marg
see that?

Alex stamped back down to her front door.

She had been working hard her entire adult
life to show just how different she and her mother were. Marg would
never even consider facing danger to prove a friend had been
murdered. She would run like hell.

Alex wasn’t running, by God.

Wyatt remained in the shadows as Alex Jackson
stormed back into her house. She and her mother had quite an
unusual relationship. He rarely paid attention to the personal
interactions of his targets unless it was somehow relevant to the
mission. The Jackson family dynamics reminded him far too much of
his own. His mother had died when he was an infant and his father
had spent most of the next eighteen years as a cross-country truck
driver—anything to avoid being a father. Wyatt had joined the
military the day he graduated high school. After that, the only
time he’d heard from his father was when he needed bailing out of
trouble. Ten years into his military career, Wyatt had been on a
Special Forces mission in a third world country when he received
word his father had died.

Funny thing was, he’d cried that night. Wyatt
had never understood how, at the age of twenty-eight, he’d felt
compelled to cry for someone he’d hardly known. His grandparents
had raised him and they were long gone now. Family wasn’t something
a man like him needed. He was forty-two and spent most of his time
on foreign soil serving his country.

He and Alex had more in common than he cared
to admit. Though she did have more friends than he did. He’d only
had one real friend and he was dead now. Didn’t matter. They had
lost touch years ago.