Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

Hudson stared at Mac. “You think Jessie was pregnant?”

“The girl in the maze was.”

“So that’s why you’re doing the DNA swabs,” he said slowly, thinking. “If I’m the baby’s father, then it’s a pretty sure bet the mother is Jessie.”

McNally nodded.

“Jesus H. Christ.” He couldn’t believe it. This had to be wrong. Had to be. “Then…then the remains aren’t Jessie’s.” But even as he said the words, he knew he could be mistaken.

“Was that the trouble she was talking about?” Becca asked softly.

“She would have told me.”

“Would she, Mr. Walker?” McNally asked and Hudson had no answer.

Gretchen stalked toward Mac like an angry jungle cat, meeting him at the station’s front doors as he came back inside after watching Hudson Walker and Rebecca Sutcliff leave. They were a couple, no doubt about it, and they’d both offered up their DNA. Actually, he’d had no resistence for the request even from that bastard of a lawyer Delacroix.

Which was interesting.

But he didn’t have time to think about it as now he was facing the she-cat, all ruffled, claws extended, fangs showing. God, she was wearying.

She met him at the door and walked with him back to his desk. “You leave me with the tech while you do the interviewing?” Her blue eyes shimmered with annoyance.

“You could have come to the memorial service.”

“You remember Johnny Ray, the meth cooker? And the dead body found at his lab?”

“It wasn’t homicide. It was an accidental explosion. Johnny Ray at his baking worst. I didn’t think I needed to be there.”

“You did need to be there, rather than running after those rich boys you wanna bring down so badly. The Preppy Pricks,” she harrumphed. “You’d better hope the press never gets wind of that or they’ll crucify you.”

Not that he cared.

“As for our meth boy, the sheriff’s department is trying to take over this one, but Johnny Ray’s place is in Laurelton’s lovely city limits.”

Gretchen’s mockery was because their resident meth problem, Johnny Ray, had a tract house on the edge of the city, where railroad tracks vied with Scotch broom and scraggly volunteer pine trees, all making a hardscrabble living out of rocky dirt. Perfect place for a meth kitchen, successful until Johnny Ray tried to start making pounds of crystal meth rather than mere ounces for his own use. Then he got on the PD’s radar when the neighbors grew alarmed at the smells emanating from the place. With Johnny Ray’s lack of focus, it was only a matter of time before someone stopped paying attention and the place exploded.

Mac just wasn’t interested. Drug use and abuse amounted to a large percentage of the homicides he investigated, but there was no mystery to the method, means, or motive. It was more an exercise for the legal system: were they guilty of murder, manslaughter, or simple stupidity, and the only question that remained after they were apprehended was for how long they should be put away.

“Did you ask them about the notes?” Gretchen asked, looking out the window toward the station lot, seeing Hudson Walker’s beat-up truck rumble away.

“I called everyone. The only one who didn’t get one was Zeke St. John, but it might still be coming because Scott Pascal got his a day late.”

“And they’ve all given DNA samples.”

“Yep.”

“They were all mailed from the same post office, right? In Sellwood. Maybe they were sent at different times,” Gretchen said, though she was looking past him, her tone distracted. She couldn’t care less about the notes, though Mac was fascinated by the mind that would put them together.

“What are they for?” he asked aloud, thinking about Mitch Bellotti’s reaction. The guy was certain they were from Jessie, and he was all nerves. It had been about all he could do to have his DNA swab taken before he bolted outside for a cigarette-make that two, back to back, or more accurately, end to end. Did he know something? Something he wasn’t telling? Or was there something else at work outside of this investigation?

“Maybe your little ghost girlfriend just forgot about St. John,” Gretchen suggested, once again trying to bait him into an argument.

“Maybe,” Mac said. This time he wasn’t going to bite.

Six days later, Hudson lay on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling in his bedroom, one arm draped possessively around Becca’s hip as the curve of her spine nestled next to him, skin to skin. He’d spent the time almost exclusively with Becca. Sometimes they were at her condo, most of the time they were at his ranch. Last night she’d even brought her dog over so that she wouldn’t have to leave at the crack of dawn to let him out. Ringo was downstairs in his bed and, after hours of whining, had apparently decided to accept his fate that he wasn’t sleeping in the bedroom with Becca.

All the feelings from high school that Hudson had done his damnedest to deny seemed to be back full force. He could scarcely stand to be away from her and, lucky for him, she seemed to feel exactly the same way.

They hadn’t talked about Jessie. Or much about Glenn and/or the fire and his death. They hadn’t pursued further discussion of the nursery rhymes-like The Third said, let McNally figure out who sent them and why. Hudson really didn’t give a damn. He didn’t want to think about Jessie or Glenn or any part of their group dynamics-the secrets, the lies, the undercurrents. If Renee wanted to dig around and come up with a story, she could have at it. All he wanted to do was breathe in Becca’s scent, feel the silkiness of her skin, listen to her musical laughter.

And make love.

Over and over again.

Now his hand caressed her smooth skin. They’d come together twice last night and it hadn’t felt like enough. He hadn’t been celibate the intervening years since his first relationship with Becca, but he hadn’t been actively looking for sex, romance, and female companionship, either.

It was as if he’d been waiting.

Maybe he had.

The sun was just starting to rise, and for the first morning in God knew how long its rays, though coolly blue in the early dawn, were not slanting through a gray haze of rain. Hudson could see the dark outlines of clouds through the window, just beginning to be visible in the first light, but it appeared, at least for the moment, that precipitation had been suspended.

Carefully, he climbed out of bed, pausing to take a look at the woman lying in the rumpled blankets. Her eyes were closed, lashes fanning her cheeks, her breathing even and restful. He felt like he knew everything about her, yet she was still full of mystery and complexities. It was intoxicating and vaguely dangerous. There was too much going on, too many unanswered questions to start a relationship. But he didn’t care.

And Jessie Brentwood might have been pregnant at the time of her death, at the time she’d been killed.

You might have been a father if something horrible hadn’t happened to her in that maze, in front of the Madonna statue.

How his life would have changed. He wouldn’t be here at the ranch with Becca, that much was for sure. He probably would never have known how it felt to be touched by her or kissed by her. He would have been tangled with Jessie-wild, mysterious, and dangerous Jessie.

But a kid-a kid who would now be nineteen. Hard to damned believe.

Pulling on a pair of boxers and jeans, Hudson headed downstairs only to encounter Ringo, whose low growl indicated he wasn’t quite sure of both the new surroundings and the intentions of this stranger. Hudson half smiled as he made a pot of coffee. The sun was lifting higher, widening the arc of its rays, burnishing the outbuildings beyond the kitchen window. He knew Rodriguez would show up soon. Grandy’s replacement had been as reliable as promised, though Hudson would rather have his family’s longtime ranch foreman back.