A MAN TO TRUST Read online

  Her gaze shot to Cruz's face. "He's one of those?"

  "A bigot to the bone," he said. "And a sexist, and a few other not very nice things."

  "Including a coward?" Kelsey asked, remember what he'd said about Lacey witnessing something that gave her a hold on the man.

  "Including," Cruz agreed tightly. "More than once he's gotten some good men hurt. So far no one's died, but it's only been luck and their own guts and skill that have prevented it."

  "My God," Kelsey breathed. "Then why is he still a cop?"

  He looked at her then, at last releasing her wrist, letting her breathe normally again.

  "I kind of got the idea you thought most cops were … that bad."

  "I don't," she protested quickly. "I know it's an ugly job, and it has to be done, and all that. It's just that sometimes it seems like … the fact that people are hurting gets forgotten."

  "Sometimes it does," Cruz admitted. "Sometimes you numb yourself so much that you forget what it's like to feel, so you don't think about what other people are feeling. It's an occupational hazard."

  "Have you ever…?"

  For a long moment, he didn't answer. He made the turn and drove on until she didn't think he was going to answer at all. Then, at last, he did.

  "Once," he said, rather flatly. "Once I was so disconnected that I was just going through the motions. I didn't even realize it. It didn't show, nobody saw it. Except Yeager."

  "Yeager?"

  "Clay Yeager. He's … kind of a legend at Trinity West. The quintessential cop. Won three medals of valor. He was the one we all looked up to, the one we all wanted to be like. He was tough, never lost a fight … but he could handle a scared kid or a rape victim with a gentleness that would make you cry."

  "Was?" she asked softly, dreading the answer.

  Cruz's mouth tightened. "He … quit, a few years back. Some … awful things happened. All the help he gave everybody else, and he couldn't help himself. And none of us could, either. We could only stand by and watch his life fall apart."

  There was such remembered pain in his voice that Kelsey couldn't bear to probe that wound any longer. So, instead of pursuing the mystery of Clay Yeager and what had happened to him, she asked, "He … helped you?"

  Cruz nodded. "He recognized the signs. He took me aside, told me I had to deal with it or I was going to end up like Robards, not feeling anything for anyone but myself, and then I'd really be lost. He kept after me, wouldn't let it drop, until I got help."

  "Deal with … what?" she ventured, wondering if it had been the loss of his wife.

  "I… It was back when I was in the patrol division. I'd only been on the department a couple of years. I went out on a 415 family. A domestic fight. I'd been out there before. They were both alcoholics, drunk most of the time, and they used to get in real knock-down-drag-out fights. We'd separate 'em, send one of them away for the night, and that'd be the end of it. Neither of them would ever press charges, and this was before the law was passed that said a report has to be made on any domestic violence incident, so the state can prosecute even if the victim won't."

  "But … this time was different?"

  "Not the call. Except this time, we got another call the next morning. A neighbor had found their little boy. In the backyard, lying in a bunch of broken glass and a pool of blood. He'd been thrown through a plate-glass window. And bled to death."

  Kelsey sucked in a harsh breath, and a tiny sound of pained protest escaped her. Cruz went on, sounding dogged, as if he had to get through this, now that he'd begun.

  "We never knew which of them did it. They'd both passed out and couldn't remember a thing. We thought it was him, for the strength it would have taken, but her clothes had blood on them. Crime lab found evidence on the child that could have come from either of them."

  He was sounding like a man on a torture rack. "Cruz—"

  "He was only five years old. Never had a chance to live. And I could have saved him. I was right there. In the house, and he was still alive."

  Kelsey shuddered. She wished he would stop, this was too much, too painful to hear, too much like stories she'd heard, like the story she'd lived. But he kept on.

  "Yeager told me it wasn't my fault. He made me see the department shrink. She told me, too. We never even knew they had a child. I'd been there at least three times before, and there'd been no sign, no toys around, no pictures, nothing."

  "If you didn't know, then what could you have done?"

  "That's what they all said. But…"

  He trailed off, that one final word saying volumes about the pain this man carried over that one long-ago incident.

  It felt odd, defending a cop in that situation, but she could see that it was tearing him up, even after all this time. And she wondered, for the first time in her life, if the cops who had taken her back home had ever felt like this, had perhaps known they were sending her back into hell, but had been unable to do anything else. Had one of them gone home to his own family and hugged them tighter because of her? Were they still dealing with it, all these years later, maybe wondering what had ever become of that frightened little girl?

  Was one of them haunted by her, as Cruz was haunted by a little boy who had died so horribly?

  "Cruz," she said, suddenly, not sure why. And as she said it, she reached out and laid her hand atop his on the steering wheel, the first time she had ever dared to touch him of her own accord.

  He tensed, and she started to pull her hand back, regretting that she'd done it. But before she could, he turned his own hand, capturing hers. He didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the road, as if the traffic were twice as heavy as it really was, he didn't speak, but he held on, as if…

  As if he wanted the contact. As if he liked the contact.

  The thought made her shiver slightly. But she didn't pull away. Neither did Cruz. And she wished she was less of a fool, so that she wouldn't be reading more into it than there was. Because she was sure she must be, sure that he only needed some kind of human contact to help him fight off the ugly memories.

  It wasn't because he … wanted anything more. Not from her. And thinking he might was as bad as any of the wishful thinking she'd done as a child, when she dreamed that if she just wished hard enough, if she was just good enough, her life would magically change.

  She'd given up on miracles long ago. And she wasn't about to start believing in them again now.

  * * *

  Gage had been right, Cruz thought as he watched Kelsey talk to the two girls who'd been standing outside the coffee/latte store. They'd been wary at first, but once they realized who she was, they had, while casting wary glances at him, talked to her. He'd agreed to stay back, out of her way, and it hadn't taken him long to see the wisdom of that course of action.

  It also hadn't taken him long to see that she knew exactly where to look. This place was two doors away from a bus station. Before this, they'd been at the video arcade—not, she said, because she thought this was Melissa's kind of place, but because somebody might have seen or heard something. Before that, they'd been to three houses near the beach, two of which Cruz already knew were frequent runaway crash pads. One he hadn't known, but he'd made a note to tell Gage about it. And before that, the Trinity West district's new shopping mall, where Cruz was a little startled at the number of kids who seemed to do nothing but hang out in small groups for hours on end.

  They searched all day, and long into the night, in every likely place, up and down every likely street he or she could think of, until they couldn't find anyone moving who they hadn't already talked to. Cruz finally called a halt. Kelsey protested, but he insisted.

  "It's nearly 1:00 a.m. We'll start again tomorrow."

  "You don't want to … quit?" she said in some surprise.

  "Yes, I want to. But I know you won't. So we'll start again tomorrow."

  She gave a weary sigh as she sagged in the front seat of the four-wheel-drive. "I know it's probably hopeless, but I'm s
cared for her. If she wasn't pregnant, maybe … maybe I could just walk away from it. She lied to me, after all."

  "I was wondering if you'd forgotten that part," Cruz said mildly as he turned the truck toward home. It was an automatic thing. He hadn't asked her if she would stay again—in fact, hadn't even thought much about it. Probably because he didn't dare think about having her under his roof again without Sam there to chaperone.

  "No, I haven't," she said, apparently too tired to even rise to the bait. "But I also realize she thought she had reason."

  "Don't they all?"

  She sat up sharply. "If that's the way you feel, then why are you bothering?"

  "Good question," Cruz said softly. "Why don't you think about it and see if you can come up with an answer?"

  She stared at him for a long moment, then gave a little shake of her head, as if she were discarding an answer she'd come up with as impossible.

  "Kelsey," he began softly.

  "I can't give up," she said, turning away from both him and the subject. "It's not just Melissa, there's a baby involved. And now that … awful boyfriend of hers. I don't know what she might do if she got scared enough."

  "Then we keep looking," he said, feeling a bit cowardly for being inwardly glad to dodge the subject she'd avoided.

  But an hour later, when, after a quick meal of salad and a couple of steaks he'd thrown on the grill, Kelsey curled up on the sofa and promptly went to sleep, Cruz was left with little to think about but that subject.

  For a long time, he sat there, watching her sleep. She was curled up, her hands tucked beneath her cheek, her knees drawn up almost to her elbows. It could have been because she was on the sofa, but Cruz had a feeling she slept that way normally, curled in on herself. Not, as Sam did, for warmth, but for protection.

  He wasn't sure what made him think that, but he instinctively knew he was right.

  What he didn't know was why it was making him feel so … odd. He felt a twinge of the same protectiveness he felt for Sam, wondering what Kelsey felt she needed refuge from, and why. At the same time, he found himself wondering what it would take to get her to uncurl, to allow herself to be vulnerable. Would she do it for a man's touch? His touch?

  He clenched his jaw against a sudden, hot burst of need. This was crazy, he thought. He wanted to protect her, but at the same time he wanted to caress her until she blossomed for him, until she opened like a flower blooming beneath his touch, beneath him, period.

  "You're losing it, Gregerson," he muttered to himself.

  The last part, at least, he understood; he'd known for a while now that he wanted Kelsey, wanted her fiercely. True, it had been a long time since he reacted that way to any woman, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten how it felt. Or that he could stop himself from envisioning her soft, curved body welcoming his. But flowers? Blossoms? He'd never been one to think in poetic terms. Ellie had once told him that his drawings were as close to poetry as he ever got.

  She stirred, her lips parting slightly. He fought down another wave of heat as he thought about them parting for another reason, for the deep, hot kiss he'd been aching to give her for days. Since that day by the pond, when he watched her dabbling her toes in the water and then followed the long, curved line of her bare legs upward with greedy eyes.

  He stifled a groan; he was working himself into a lather here, with no chance for relief in sight. Kelsey didn't trust him any more now than she had before, he was sure. Certainly not enough to let him close enough to do what he was thinking about. Not enough to even let him start.

  He got up, painfully aware of his state of rigid arousal. For an instant, he wished he was the kind of man who could blithely try to seduce a woman simply because he was horny. But Elena and Frank Gregerson, if nothing else, had managed to raise a gentleman of sorts, he thought wryly.

  He gently covered Kelsey with an afghan his mother had made, then forced himself to walk away.

  It was going to be a very long night.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  « ^ »

  She checked all the places a cop would have checked, given the time to devote to one single runaway, Cruz thought. And she came up with others that he most likely wouldn't have thought of: libraries, not because Melissa liked to read, but because they were a cool place for a pregnant girl to rest and get away from the summer heat; then, of all places, the local marinas, because, she said, they had showers and even washers and dryers you could use if you could con somebody out of a key. In those places, he was able to help, getting more cooperation with his badge than she might have gotten. But it was still fruitless; the only thing he'd gained was a growing certainty about Kelsey herself.

  It was an old saw that if you wanted to catch a thief, you used a thief, or, failing that, at least made yourself think like one. Kelsey was thinking like a runaway. And he was becoming more sure than ever that this was the reason she was doing what she was at the inn: she'd been there herself. She'd been a runaway, at some point in her life.

  And he had the sinking feeling that the reason she had been a runaway was that some cop had taken her back to an intolerable situation, and that was the basis of her distrust.

  He probably hadn't known how bad it was, that cop, Cruz thought. Just as he himself hadn't known there was a child who would pay the price for his parents' drunken rages.

  Funny how neither excuse washed.

  By late afternoon, when every last, desperate idea had been pursued, Kelsey was beginning to flag, discouragement showing in the slump of her normally straight shoulders, in the drawn expression on her face.

  When they got back into the truck after checking the last marina with no results, no one who had seen anyone even faintly resembling Melissa, he looked at her.

  "Where to?" he asked, reaching for the ignition.

  "I don't know," she said wearily.

  He let his hand drop and leaned back in the driver's seat. He said nothing more. She stared at her knees. Then out the window at the row upon row of expensive boats of all kinds, the towering masts of the sailboats looking like a denuded hydroponic forest of some kind. At last she looked up at him.

  "Thank you, Cruz." Her voice was low, but vibrant with a tone he couldn't have named.

  "You're welcome. But for what?"

  She waved vaguely toward the water. "Everything. You didn't have to do this at all. Let alone for two whole days. And you certainly didn't have to be so patient. And so … tenacious."

  He chuckled. "There are those who would call it stubborn."

  "Sometimes stubborn is all that gets you through."

  His chuckle died away. "Sometimes," he agreed quietly.

  It was a moment of silent communication that could not be denied. Each of them had been in places where it would have been easier to give up than to go on, and they both knew it. Cruz felt it as surely as he'd ever felt anything. And he saw in her eyes that she knew it, too. Had they found common ground at last? Could she set aside her preconceptions and see him as a man, not just as a cop?

  Did she even want to? Or had he imagined those moments when he thought he'd caught her watching him, much as he watched her, with all the curiosity of a man looking at the first woman to interest him in a long time, with all the hunger of a man who'd almost forgotten what it was like to need like this?

  "Kelsey," he said softly, leaning toward her without even realizing what he was doing. She lifted her head to look at him. He could guess at what was showing in his face by the way her eyes widened. Then her lips parted, as if she needed more air. The memory of last night, when he'd sat watching her sleep, shot through him like a magnum round, tumbling, searing, expanding.

  He couldn't stop himself from kissing her any more than he could have called back that round once it was fired.

  Her lips were as soft and warm as he'd known they would be.

  They sparked a heat in him that was unlike anything he'd ever known. A heat that blasted through him, a heat that sent what rem
nants of caution he'd tried to hang on to skittering before it, a heat that surged and grew rather than ebbed. His body tightened with a speed that would have shocked him if he was thinking clearly.

  With an effort, remembering her wariness, he stopped himself from plundering the depths of her mouth. He traced her lips with the tip of his tongue, gently coaxing, trying to keep the heat at bay. Trying to rein in the urges that were boiling up in him, telling himself this was neither the time nor the place.

  He managed. Until she parted her lips for him, just as he'd fantasized. One tiny sign of willingness, and the heat became an inferno that was out of control of caution or any other restraint. He probed forward, tasting the sweetness, tracing the even ridge of her teeth. When he felt the faint, tentative brush of her tongue over his, his body responded fiercely, swiftly, and he hardened in a rush of pouring heat that made him groan.

  He grasped her shoulders and pulled her closer, suppressing the shudder that went through him when he felt her arms go around his neck, felt her fingers tangle in the hair at his nape. She had moved from willingness to participation, and the realization rocked him. He deepened the kiss, and she let him, until his tongue was tasting the deepest honeyed warmth of her mouth, until his nerves were humming, until he forgot how to breathe. Until he felt like he was underwater.

  In over his head.

  Panic kicked through him. He wrenched his mouth away, expecting to feel relieved, instead feeling only cold and alone and bereft. He fought through the haze of arousal that had swamped him to see her staring at him, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth looking softer and warmer and more tempting than ever.

  Slowly her hand stole upward, and she touched her lips. Tentatively, hesitantly, as if she were no longer certain they were her own. And Cruz knew in that instant that if he made one wrong move, if he said one wrong thing, she would bolt like a startled deer. And he wasn't at all sure that he didn't want to do exactly the same thing.