Operation Alpha Page 18

  “The date of that report.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t even notice. When was it?”

  “Two weeks after Melissa Oakley fell to her death.”

  Ria stared at him. Felt a sudden chill. “You think...they’re connected?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you suspect.”

  “Obviously she had an affair.” Ria nodded, thinking she now understood why her suggestion of grief counseling had failed—he hadn’t been grieving. No wonder he was angry when Dylan asked where Kevin was. He must hate the child for being daily evidence of his wife’s unfaithfulness.

  “If he found out,” Liam continued, “let’s just say I don’t believe in that much coincidence.”

  “‘A trout in the milk,’” she murmured.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Thoreau,” she explained. “He once said, ‘Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.’”

  “Sorry, teach, that one goes over my head.”

  “It comes from the days when dairy farmers used to water down the milk they sold.”

  He got there quickly. “With water from the nearest trout stream?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That timing is a pretty big trout. That alone would never hold up in court, but...”

  She frowned as something else occurred to her. “Wait...did he only have Kevin tested?”

  “No, both of them.” Liam mouth twisted. “Although with Dylan, the relationship’s pretty clear.”

  “He does look like his father,” she agreed. “But that he had both of them tested... That could be evidence either way, couldn’t it? I mean, couldn’t that mean it was innocent, just an ancestry-check kind of thing?”

  “Exactly what Brett said. Maybe you should be a detective.” His mouth twisted upward at one corner. “He probably would have gotten the Thoreau quote right off the bat. He reads a lot.”

  “You don’t?” The automatic question was out before she could stop it. Reading was so intrinsic to her life she couldn’t help it.

  “I do. Just not usually Thoreau.” He gave her a look then that disconcerted her even more than the fact that this discussion seemed out of place in the midst of her concern for the Oakley boys. “Thinking you should have found that out before last night?”

  Her breath stopped and her brain seemed to seize up. Was he implying that a “no” would have been a deal breaker for her? That she wouldn’t have slept with him if that had been the answer? Or did he mean something else? She’d misjudged Chad so badly she had little faith in her ability to correctly interpret the workings of the male mind. Hence her reaction earlier.

  And yet...

  Memories of last night, of the incredible sweetness they’d found together, flooded her. Memories of his strong, lean body moving over hers, his hands touching, caressing, and his mouth...

  Heat flooded her at the memory of what that mouth had done to her. The images made her blush. And the thought of what she’d done to him, how eagerly, and the way he’d responded, only added to the heat.

  “Well, now,” he drawled, “didn’t that question just send your clever mind racing.”

  It could have been a dig; she might have taken it that way if she hadn’t been looking at him when he said it. But she was, and she saw an echoing heat in his gaze, as if the same series of images had just played back in his head.

  “I was just thinking,” she said steadily enough, “that no matter what you want to do—or not do—now, last night was worth it just to learn that feeling like that is possible.”

  She heard him make a sound, something low and sharp as if his throat had locked up. Then he swore under his breath.

  “Nothing like getting your guts ripped out by a compliment,” he muttered.

  Her heart skipped a beat and then raced to catch up. He might not want to admit it—yet—but he’d been as affected by their night together as she had. He stared at her. She thought he looked a little pale.

  “And by the way,” she added gently, “nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  She saw the narrowing of his gaze. And a trace of that fear again. But it wasn’t as strong as it had been, and she hoped that simply talking about it had eased it a little.

  She left him there, staring after her.

  As she drove, Ria contemplated the kind of man who would blame himself so deeply, three times over, for things he’d had little control over. So deeply that years later, he still carried it.

  By the time she reached the turn for her condo, she was wondering if what Quinn had seen in the young hacker he’d taken on was an ingrained need to make things right. That—from what she’d seen—would make him a perfect fit for Foxworth.

  She sat at the stop sign where the narrow road met the state route, watching the cross traffic. It was building as the hour for many to go to work neared. But she had plenty of time to get home and get ready to head to school. She needed to bring in the first exams for her first-period class and the notes she’d made for the upcoming track for the first years.

  The last car to pass going east was a state patrol vehicle. It made her remember Dylan’s house was not far from here, in that direction. Her pulse kicked, until she remembered the detective Liam had called was with the sheriff’s office. The state trooper seemed in no particular hurry and he turned south, heading away from Dylan’s house.

  She told herself not to be silly; it was going to take a little time for Liam’s friend to organize things, and it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet.

  She saw a break in the cross traffic coming. Got ready.

  But when she turned, it wasn’t toward home. At the last second, driven by a gut-level impulse, she turned the opposite direction. Toward Dylan’s house.

  She wouldn’t stop, she told herself. She would just drive by, make sure everything was all right. Maybe give Dylan a ride, if he’d let her. They could talk, maybe she could find out more to tell Liam’s detective, to hurry things along and get Kevin at least out of there.

  And she wondered if she was as driven as Liam by the need to make things right.

  Chapter 27

  For a split second when he heard the tires on gravel, Liam thought she might have come back. The way his stomach knotted and his heart kicked up his pulse told him the painful truth about what he’d done last night. He’d gotten himself in way too deep. He was in trouble.

  Big trouble.

  At the same time his body was remembering last night, the most amazing experience of his life, and clamoring for more. Surely that impossible sweetness, that breathless soaring, was worth any price?

  Except you won’t be the one to pay it.

  The grim words echoed in his head as Cutter abandoned their game of fetch and loped off toward the drive. His ears and tail were up in the way that signaled someone familiar. The minute he rounded the back of the building, Liam saw Teague’s car slowing to park. He let out a breath of relief. Half an hour ago and he really would have walked in on them. Ten minutes ago and he would have caught Liam changing the sheets on the bed. When he’d been doing it, he’d figured if Teague arrived he’d just tell him he crashed here after a late night; it wouldn’t be the first time for any of them. But every time he tried to phrase it in his mind, he heard instead Ria’s quiet question.

  So we’re a secret?

  An unmistakable trace of hurt had colored her words, and it had stabbed at him. He’d thought of saying he just hadn’t wanted to face the teasing he would inevitably get, but that seemed a damned weak reason to have put that sound in her voice.

  But the real reason, the gut-level fear, was even worse. Fear that she, like every other woman outside of family who’d ever cared about him, would end up paying far too high a price for that caring. And sayi
ng it out loud, saying that they were that “we” she’d spoken of, would somehow make it real. Too real. Crazy though the feeling might be, some part of him was furiously hoping if he didn’t acknowledge it, she’d stay safe.

  “Hey, Texas!” Teague called out as he got out of his car. The former marine was smiling widely as he slung his familiar, battered leather jacket over his shoulder.

  But then he always seemed to be smiling since he and Laney had met last year about this time.

  As he waved a greeting it hit Liam that Teague had been in a similar situation. It had been Laney who had had a friend in trouble, and Foxworth had stepped in. The immediate attraction had been obvious to everyone—except Teague and Laney.

  His gaze snapped back to Cutter, who had been instrumental in that matchup, who had finally taken action of his own to make them get it together. Liam had even laughed about it himself, at the time. But all of a sudden it didn’t seem so funny. Not from this side.

  “Coffee’s on,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the building. “How’d it go up in Bellingham?”

  “Good, in the end. Got word out what was going on, the locals got mad enough and noisy enough that they dropped the criminal charges. Guess there’s hope for common sense yet.”

  Liam grimaced as he pulled open the door and they went inside, Cutter at their heels. “Well, arresting a ten-year-old boy for saving the life of a bird was pretty stupid.”

  “And since when has stupid stopped anything?” Teague asked.

  “Point taken,” Liam agreed. “Hell, I didn’t even know there was a Migratory Bird Treaty Act, let alone that taking an injured bird home to nurse it could land you in prison.”

  “Well, it didn’t, this time.” Teague grinned as he filled a mug with Liam’s strong brew, which he also preferred. “He’s a cute, big-eyed, innocent-looking kid, and by the time the image of him and that goose got around the internet, there were some pretty angry people gathering at half the Fish and Wildlife Service offices in the state.”

  “Nice to see social media used for something good,” Liam said.

  “Yeah. I wanted to keep going, push to get rid of the fine, too, but the kid was pretty upset already and his parents wanted it over.”

  “Their call,” Liam said. “We paying the fine?”

  Teague nodded. “Saddest part is, that kid probably won’t ever try to help again.”

  “Unintended consequences,” Liam muttered as he poured himself a cup.

  “Yeah. How about you? Quinn—he’s on his way back, by the way, left before dawn cracked and has an ETA of about ten local. But he texted me you’re onto something?”

  They walked out and sat on the patio as Liam gave him the digest version of what Emily and Ria had said.

  “The actual locket girl?” Teague asked.

  “Yep. She’s quite a kid.” And her teacher is quite a woman.

  “Anything to it?”

  “Something,” he said and explained about what he’d found last night. At least, what he’d found on Barton Oakley’s computer. The rest of what he’d found last night, in Ria’s arms, he kept to himself, even though it seemed so huge it was putting pressure on every part of him.

  “I see what you mean about the suspicious timing, but that could get dicey,” Teague said. “Pretty circumstantial.”

  Trout in the milk. Liam nearly smiled.

  “You think the kid’s being physically abused because Dad found out he’s not his?” Teague asked. “That’s ugly.”

  “It’s enough of a possibility that I called Dunbar. He’s going to round up a juvie detective and check it out.”

  Teague nodded. “Good. He’ll sort it out. What about the older kid, the one they came about in the first place?”

  “I’m heading over to his school in a bit. We’re going to keep him there while Brett does his thing.”

  “We?”

  Oops. He thought fast. “Cutter and me. The kid likes him.”

  So we’re a secret?

  Remorse jabbed at him again. Damn. Why wouldn’t she get out of his head?

  “What’s up with you, Burnett? You’re acting like a cat on a hot stove.”

  Liam studied him for a moment. Decided to risk it. Decided he had to, because he was going to explode if he didn’t let some of this pressure off. And even if talking about it, admitting it, would make it real, too real to deny.

  “Can I ask you something without you getting on my case?”

  “Me?” Teague asked with exaggerated innocence.

  “Yeah.”

  He saw his friend and colleague register his flat, non-joking tone. Teague’s expression shifted, became serious.

  “Ask.”

  “You and Laney,” he began and then hesitated.

  “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “But...it almost didn’t, right?”

  Teague didn’t hesitate, and Liam knew he’d sensed the importance of this. “Almost. If she wasn’t the gutsiest woman I’ve ever met, it might not have.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t believe it. I didn’t trust it because of how we met. The case. Thought I’d taken advantage of her worry about her friend, that she’d only...wanted solace and I let it get out of hand. So I tried to end it. But she and he—” he nodded toward Cutter “—wouldn’t let it happen.”

  Liam let out a long breath. Considered his friend’s words.

  “Bottom line,” Teague said after another sip of coffee, “she faced me down, told me not to walk away without even giving it—us—a chance, just because of how we met.”

  Yes, gutsy, Liam agreed. But the problem with the correlation was that Teague didn’t have his history. And no matter how reasonable, logical and valid Ria’s answer to that had been, he couldn’t shake the conviction that somehow, someway, the deaths of three had been his fault. That he was a jinx or had been cursed or any number of things he didn’t really believe in, yet seemed the only explanation.

  Or maybe it was that he couldn’t believe in that much coincidence. He was the only common denominator in all three deaths.

  “I gather you’re not going to tell me why you asked? Or would asking that constitute ‘getting on your case’?”

  He looked up. Teague was watching him steadily over the rim of his coffee mug. Liam shook his head, at a loss for words.

  “All right,” Teague said. And thankfully left it at that before saying, “You need me to do anything?”

  Knock some sense into me, maybe. Not that I’m sure what that would be right now. “No,” he said, “not now anyway.”

  Teague nodded. “I’ll go finish up my report for Quinn, then.” He rose and headed inside. At the door he stopped, looked back. “You want a woman’s view, Laney’s in the shop today.” He grinned. “You need a trim anyway.”

  Liam watched him go, thinking it was just like Teague to make the offer and then make it a joke. But he knew it had been sincere. He also knew Laney would help if she could. They’d gotten to know each other a bit while she’d been working on him with her clippers.

  He just wasn’t sure anyone could help him with this particular problem.

  He went back inside, Cutter following. The dog went over to the kitchen and sat expectantly in front of the fridge. He looked back at Liam with his head at a silly angle that made him laugh.

  “You’d better hope your mom didn’t forget to stock up before she left,” he told the dog before he pulled open the door. In the crisper drawer he found what the dog was waiting for. He pulled out a handful of the peeled baby carrots and occupied himself for a few minutes tossing them to the animal, who caught them easily and crunched them happily.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. He knew Dylan had a math class first thing this morning, in the time period that Ria had f
irst years for English. He planned to be there when that class was over. Which gave him about half an hour to get there.

  In the truck, he pondered what exactly he would say to Dylan, how they would explain. Ria would make sure it was tactful, gentle, instead of the blunt way he’d probably blurt it out. He didn’t relish the thought that the boy might be seriously angry that he’d lied about who he was and why he was there, but the safety of Dylan and his brother was more important. He’d just have to—

  The ring of his cell phone cut off his thoughts. It was the generic ring, so he half expected—hoped?—it might be Ria. He hadn’t assigned her a ringtone. Told himself he couldn’t decide on one, although he knew on some deeper level that it smacked of a permanency he couldn’t allow himself to think about, as if not doing it could somehow protect her.

  But a glance at the screen surprised him. Emily Parker.

  He tapped the button on the Foxworth interface they all had in their vehicles.

  “Burnett.”

  “Mr. Burnett, it’s Emily. Emily Parker. You know, from—”

  “Of course, Emily. What’s up?”

  “I wasn’t sure what I should do, but it’s just so unusual I thought you should know.” The girl sounded worried, and Liam sat up a little straighter.

  “What is it? Dylan?”

  “No, he’s fine. He got here early in fact, I saw him well before first period. It’s Ms. Connelly.”

  Liam’s heart sank. The kind of morning-after they’d had, and now Emily’s worried enough about Ria to call him? Maybe she hadn’t been as calm about the whole thing as she’d seemed when she’d left. Maybe he’d hurt her even more than he’d thought. Guilt slammed through him anew, harsher, sharper. He’d never meant to hurt her, at all, yet he had. Like always. He never, ever should have let last night happen, for so many reasons.

  “Hang on.” He was encountering traffic rushing for the next ferry, so he pulled over to the side and stopped before asking, reluctantly. “What about her?”

  “She’s not here.”

  He frowned. He hadn’t expected that. “What?”