Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1) (16 page)

“What if I tell you to F off?”

Nice he’d edited the obscenity. Seth cocked an eyebrow at him. “Now, why would you do that when we might like your answers, thank you and go away?”

Darrell snorted. “Fine. Ask.”

“Why don’t you step out here onto the porch.” Seth didn’t like the fact he couldn’t see Darrell’s right arm and hand, or anything he might be holding.

He stared at them for a minute, then backed almost out of sight before stepping out on the porch. “Might want to watch it,” he said without much interest. “You’re likely to fall right through.” He nodded toward a splintered hole a few feet away.

“You rent?”

One massive shoulder jerked. “It’s cheap.”

“I’m Detective Seth Chandler with the sheriff’s department. This is Detective Ben Kemper. We’re investigating the murder of Geoffrey Moore.”

“Don’t see what it has to do with me.”

Seth appreciated that Ben stood a little to one side, staying quiet but watchful. “Were you aware your sister had a relationship with Mr. Moore?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Had you ever met Mr. Moore?”

He sneered. “When would that be? When he invited me to a dinner party?”

“At your sister’s apartment, perhaps?”

“No. I saw him leaving a couple times.”

Because he was on his way to see her? Or because he was staking out her place?

“You called him a rat bastard,” Seth said. “May I ask why, if you weren’t personally acquainted?”

“He promised to marry Jordan, then got squirrelly. I told her he wouldn’t, but she thought he meant it.”

“I take it you and your sister have a close relationship?”

“No.” Just like that, he was brimming with hostility.

“I’m confused. Weren’t you on your way to see her when you saw Mr. Moore leaving her apartment?”

“What does it matter?”

“Your sister has reason to have been angry at Mr. Moore. Did she threaten retaliation in your hearing?”

He let loose an obscenity. “You know she’s not my sister, right?”

“I’m aware she’s your stepsister.”

“Dad never adopted her. She’s just this girl that was around.”

“And yet you’ve obviously stayed in touch.”

“In touch.” His laugh had a vicious undertone. “That’s a good one.”

Seth was getting the feeling his and Ben’s speculation might have some basis in truth.

“Have you had a romantic or sexual relationship with Jordan?” he asked bluntly.

Darrell Swan’s eyes burned into his. “You could say that. She’s hot.”

“Did she dump you when she attracted Mr. Moore’s interest?”

That was none of their f-ing business. “Now I’m done.” He started for the open doorway.

Seth blocked his way. “May we come in, Mr. Swann?”

“No. You just want to pin that shit on me. I got nothing to do with it. Now get out of my way.” He went from semicooperative to unpleasant in a heartbeat by thrusting out a shoulder and slamming into Seth, who stumbled back.

Then,
shit
, his foot broke through a porch board. Darrell plunged toward the doorway and had almost made it inside when Ben grabbed him from behind and slammed him up against the wall of the house instead.

“Not smart, Mr. Swann.” Hand planted in the middle of Darrell’s back, he reached behind him for his cuffs. “Assaulting a police officer...”

Seth was still wrenching his boot from the hole when Darrell exploded away from the wall. He slammed a fist into Ben’s face and lunged across the threshold. Instead of trying to slam the door, he was reaching for something to one side.

Seth’s Sig Sauer was in his hands before he made the conscious decision to draw. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Ben had drawn his weapon, too.

“Get your hands in sight!” Seth yelled.
“Now.”

Darrell’s face, turned in profile to him, was beet red with fury, but he froze. Seth eased forward, the barrel of his Sig never wavering. After a discernible pause, Darrell lifted first his visible right hand, then the one that had been out of sight, and straightened with his back to them.

“Hands behind your back. Do it now.”

Seth held his weapon steady while Ben holstered his and snapped on the cuffs. Then Ben pulled him not so gently backward, out of the doorway. Seth took the couple steps required to see the handgun lying on a small table right inside the door. A Smith & Wesson model M & P Pro, black.

“Well, well,” he said. “Would this be forty caliber by any chance, Mr. Swann?”

Not likely to be coincidence that the bullet removed from Mr. Moore during the autopsy was a .40 caliber.

Mr. Swann chose not to answer.

* * *

B
AILEY
’
S
PHONE
RANG
three times that day. First the Lawsons’ number, next the auto body shop number and finally Eve’s. She let all three calls go to voice mail.

When she heard Seth, she’d gotten up, showered and presented a perky exterior, going so far as to scramble some eggs for both of them while he made the toast. She pretended the kiss hadn’t happened. He went along with it. Their minimal conversation consisted of his questions about her itinerary for the day—undecided—and a reminder not to answer the door and, when behind the wheel of the car if she went out, to keep an eye on the rearview mirror. He added a few tips for shaking a pursuer.

She told him to have a good day. Totally Stepford.

As soon as the sound of his engine receded, she sagged against the kitchen counter and decided there was no rule saying she had to do anything at all today if she didn’t feel like it. And she didn’t.

She thought about going back to bed, but wasn’t sleepy. Since she had no intention of answering the door, though, she changed from jeans back into pajama bottoms topped with Seth’s sweatshirt, which she was seriously considering stealing. And maybe never washing. She loved his scent.

She didn’t feel like cleaning the kitchen, either, at least not yet.

It had to be the most unproductive day she’d spent in years. She watched daytime talk shows, explored his music selection, started a thriller she took from his bookshelf and ate all the junk food she could find in the kitchen.

She tried a couple of times to make herself examine why she was wasting an entire day, but all her effort succeeded in doing was driving her to dish up another bowl of Rocky Road ice cream and take out her laptop to watch an episode of
Game of Thrones
.

At near five o’clock, she had the guilty thought that the least she could do was cook dinner, even if she wasn’t exactly hungry. She found a package of tortillas and defrosted chicken breasts. After exploring the vegetable drawers in his refrigerator and his spice cupboard, she decided she could do fajitas, which wouldn’t take long if she marinated the chicken now. This way, she could wait until he walked in the door to start cooking.

When he parked in the driveway and let himself in at almost six, she was shocked at the sight of his face. He looked inexpressibly weary.

“What happened?” she blurted.

His eyes met hers. “Just a day.”

“You look as if it was more than that.”

“Give me a minute to change,” he said, and kept going toward the bedrooms, moving more heavily than usual.

Bailey hesitated, then decided to start cooking. If he wasn’t hungry—well, they could refrigerate it for tomorrow.

But when he appeared a few minutes later in well-worn jeans and another sweatshirt, the first thing he said was, “Thank God. I’m starved.”

“Fajitas,” she told him brightly. “I’ve already done the slicing and dicing. They won’t take long.” She added quick rice to the water that was already boiling, then the chicken to the hot oil in the skillet. She jumped when it sizzled at her.

Seth poured himself a glass of milk again and settled on one of the stools to watch her cook. “What did you do today?”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “You trying to get out of telling me what
you
did today?”

He started with obvious reluctance and was a little scanty with the details, but she got the picture. He’d come within a hairbreadth today of being shot—or having to shoot someone.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

“Might have been ugly if I’d been alone, but I wasn’t.” He shrugged.

“You’re telling me it wasn’t a close call,” she said fiercely.

He hesitated, then nodded toward the stove. “You’re cooking.”

A new kind of fear zinged her like an electric shock, leaving her skin feeling sensitized and her heart racing. She whirled and snatched up the spatula, stirring and flipping the strips of chicken.

When was the last time she’d been scared for someone else?

“I sometimes arrest violent criminals,” he said. “That’s part of the job. This time, it got close to being out of hand because I damn near crashed through the porch. Shit happens.”

Oh, that made her feel better.

She known him a grand total of—she had to count—eight days. Barely over a week. An intense week, but still. What was
wrong
with her?

She didn’t say a word, only lifted the now-browned chicken out of the pan, added some oil and, when it was bubbling, dumped in the sliced bell peppers and onions. As they sautéed, she heated tortillas in the microwave.

“Do you want to eat at the table?” she asked without looking at him.

She heard him slide to his feet. “What can I get?”

“Drinks. Sour cream. Silverware. Napkins. These can be messy.”

Chicken went back into the skillet along with a little of the marinade. Rice...looked done, so she turned off the burner under it and scraped it into a serving bowl. The spiced chicken and veggies went in another one, the tortillas on a plate. She’d thoroughly learned the contents of his kitchen cupboards today. In fact, she’d given her nosiness free rein except when it came to his home office and bedroom.

Apparently they were both going to drink milk. She didn’t often, but oh, well. It was good for bones and all that.

Seth constructed a hefty fajita and slathered sour cream atop it. Bailey, who wasn’t all that hungry after her day’s overindulgence, made a considerably smaller one.

Not until she was done did she ask, “So you arrested this guy?”

“For assaulting a police officer. The killing is still up in the air. We need to run ballistics tests. Even if they line up, he says he taught his stepsister to shoot. We found both their fingerprints on his handgun. She’s hysterical, says he must have killed Moore out of jealousy. He’s gotten smart enough to clam up.”

“What do you think?” She was calmer now. Maybe milk had a tranquilizing effect.

“I’m leaning toward him. When we knocked on his door, instead of assuming we were there to ask him about his stepsister, he started angry and ramped it up fast. Was sure we were going to ‘pin it on him.’ The guy has an ugly temper. That said—” he shrugged “—he’s been in trouble with the law plenty of times before and he doesn’t like cops. Add in that temper and a streak of paranoia, his less-than-friendly greeting makes sense even if he didn’t kill anyone. And the stepsister, she’s cold.”

He finished the last bite. “Damn, this is good.” Without taking a moment to let the first one settle in his stomach, he set about putting together a second, equally enormous fajita wrap.

“Lucky I didn’t decide a salad would do us for dinner.”

Seth chuckled. He picked up his fork, then looked at her. “Your turn. What did you do today?”

She was a microinch away from lying, but he might find out. Anyway, Bailey felt a weird disinclination to lie to him, of all people. He’d been really straight with her. He deserved the same.

“Nothing,” she admitted. She focused on her plate. “I was a sloth.”

“Yeah?” His voice was predictably kind. “No invitations you couldn’t turn down?”

“They all left messages. I haven’t listened to them.” She squished a blend of sautéed peppers and onions into a puree with her fork.

“And now you’re feeling guilty.”

“I should at least have returned calls.”

“Bailey, you’ve been hit by a lot. My guess is you needed to process.”

She stared at him. He really did understand her, but how?

“If processing happens subconsciously, I’m good,” she said. “Otherwise... I watched
Game of Thrones
—multiple episodes—I ate half a tub of ice cream, made a serious dent in your bag of potato chips, read, napped...”

Seth only grinned. “Of course processing is a subconscious activity. Everything important probably is. We’re lucky that’s true, given the attention span even smart people have.” He chewed, his expression becoming meditative. Swallowed. “Do you have bad dreams, Bailey?”

Something very like apprehension came close to shutting down her breathing. “You mean nightmares. About him.”

“Or about being left behind by him. Or even the years in foster care.”

She looked down. “Yes.”

“Are they bad?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t exactly remember, but wake up freaked or just feeling oppressed.” She lifted a shoulder. “You must see things that give you nightmares.”

“Occasionally. But gruesome isn’t the same as reliving something done to you personally.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” Those dark eyes were steady on her. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s okay. Remember those years of therapy I told you about,” she said, almost lightly. “Therapists are big on dreams.”

His mouth twitched. “I suppose so.” He appeared to be considering a third helping, but sighed instead and rubbed a hand on his stomach. “That was really good. Thank you. If you hadn’t been here, I’d have gone through some fast-food joint on the way home.”

Guilt kicked in again. “Seth, I hope when you really want me gone, you’ll say so. I won’t be insulted. I’m getting... I think I could deal with going to the Lawsons’.”

His eyes never left her face while she spoke. “Here’s the thing.” His voice had a deeper than usual timbre. “That won’t be happening. Me wanting you gone. I really like having you here. Knowing I have someone to come home to.”

Had there been a slight hesitation before he said “someone”? As if he’d been about to say “you”? Her heartbeat accelerated.