Janice Johnson - A Message for Abby

A sniff and a nod were her answer; Renee had buried her face in a dishtowel, using it as a giant hankie.

“PMS?” Out of nowhere, a thought zapped Abby. “Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”

“What?” Renee whipped the dishtowel from her face.

“You heard me.”

“I...” She blinked. Blinked again. “It must be PMS. You know I get cranky.”

“But not deranged,” Abby gently suggested. “When are you due?”

“Due? Meg’s the one... Oh. You mean...” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t keep track. It just... comes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess it’s been a while.” Renee’s green-gold eyes widened. “Ohmygod. What if I’m pregnant?”

“You celebrate?”

“I’m being sworn in two weeks from tomorrow!”

“Surely you wouldn’t be the first police chief in America who was pregnant.”

“Most of them are still men.” That dry comment sounded more like Abby’s big—well, middle sister.

“Buy one of those home pregnancy tests,” Abby advised. “In the meantime, I’ll carve the turkey. You go do something to your face.”

Renee squeaked at the sight of herself reflected in the door of the top oven. “I promise. I’ll be right back!”

Shaking her head, Abby picked up the knife.

“Want me to do that?”

The deep voice came from so close behind her, she was the one to squeak and jump this time. Wheeling around, she pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“Sorry.” Ben Shea lifted one dark brow as smoothly as Daniel did. It gave Ben’s face a saturnine look. “Just thought I’d offer to help.”

Crowd me, you mean, she thought unkindly. But this was her fault; she’d encouraged him by inviting him tonight. No surprise he didn’t want to be abandoned to her family.

“Here. You carve the turkey.” She set down the knife instead of handing it to him. “Renee didn’t feel good for a minute. I’ll see if the rolls are hot, figure out what else she was going to feed us.”

“All right,” Ben said agreeably.

A potato salad and a fruit salad were ready in the refrigerator. All Abby had to do was peel back the plastic wrap and stick in serving spoons.

She carried them out to the dining room, tickled Emily who giggled gratifyingly, and went back to the kitchen. Intent on his job, Ben barely glanced up.

“That wasn’t you crying, was it?”

“You heard...” She stopped. “I don’t cry.”

“You don’t cry.”

“That’s what I said.”

He looked her over with the same curiosity and lack of emotion he’d shown toward the bloody cab of the pickup. “You figure men don’t cry, so you shouldn’t, either?”

“I don’t care what men do,” Abby said shortly.

“As long as they’re fun.”

She lifted her chin a notch. “And it’s fun I can live without if I have to.”

He shook his head and went back to carving. “You got a real healthy attitude.”

Oh, yeah, he’s going to kiss you good-night now.

“You want a healthy attitude, don’t ask out another cop. Try the clerk at the health food store.”

“Very funny.”

What on earth was wrong with her? Ben Shea was nice; he was gorgeous; he was unmarried. Vouched for by her sister. She should be batting her eyelashes, not being as disagreeable as a streetwalker about to be booked.

Oh, good analogy, she told herself.

He studied her with those penetrating eyes. “When’s the last time you cried?”

“I don’t know. Years.”

He muttered a profanity. “Are you armor-plated? How can you help but cry sometimes?”

She froze in the act of taking the hot bag of rolls from the oven. “You cry?”

He wanted his shrug to look careless, she could tell. “Sometimes. Like just a couple of weeks ago. This guy killed his wife and two-year-old daughter, then swallowed the gun himself. It was seeing that kid...” His body jerked, and then his eyes shuttered and he went back to carving turkey. “I did my job, but when I got home, I cried. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

Her back to him, Abby dropped the crisp, hot paper bag on the counter. Cops and firefighters didn’t often confess to that kind of weakness—for so it would be considered in the station house. Maybe he’d done it to test her—to see how deep she went Maybe he was a sensitive kind of guy who liked talking about feelings.

Or maybe the sight of the dead child had eaten at his soul until he had to tell someone the horror, and she was just the lucky nominee. Whatever his reason for talking so frankly, she knew she couldn’t blow him off.

Past a sudden lump in her throat, she said abruptly, “It was two years ago. The last time I cried.” She wouldn’t look at him. “House fire. We found these kids, all under the bed. Like they were hiding from an intruder. But you can’t hide from fire, or smoke. They looked...like dolls. Waxy and stiff. The fire had been set. Mama had dumped her boyfriend, and he was pissed. Didn’t even get Mama. She’d left her three children, all under five, alone while she worked a graveyard shift cleaning an office building. After that night I decided to become an investigator. Putting out the fire isn’t enough anymore.”

Whether the tears had been cause or effect, she didn’t know. Maybe she’d become an investigator because she didn’t want to cry anymore, not to right wrongs. How could anyone judge her own motives?

All Abby knew was, she’d hidden under the bed more than once, small and scared.

And crying made her feel weak. A big girl now, she allowed no weakness.

“Shedding some tears helped,” Ben said. “I felt better.”

Abby dumped the rolls into a basket. “I didn’t.”

His hand shot out to stop her as she passed to return to the dining room. “Are you as tough as you sound, Abby Patton?”

Tough was her private ideal, not her public image. Tough was the shield she wore like a bulletproof vest—it would keep you alive only if no one noticed you were wearing it. Because if they did, they might shoot you in the head.

Letting someone—this man—see that tough outer shield might put her in danger.

So she batted her eyes, smiled slow and mysterious, and said, light and flirty, “Oh, I don’t know if tough’s the first word I associate with myself. What do you think, Detective Shea?”

Eyes narrowed, he let her go. “What I think is, finding out might be fun. And that’s important, right? Having fun?”

She had to work at making her smile saucy. “Oh, number one. Absolutely.” She could sound blithe, unconcerned. “Why don’t we go dancing after this?” Somewhere, she thought, with really loud music. Somewhere they couldn’t talk.

“Why don’t we,” he said. “Something tells me you’ll know just the place.”

CHAPTER THREE

ABBY HAD KNOWN A PLACE, all right. Ben’s ears were still ringing the next day when he drove toward the outskirts of Elk Springs to begin knocking on doors in hopes of hitting on someone who’d seen either the green pickup or a lone motorcyclist pass down Barton Road at the right time.

After leaving her brother-in-law’s last night, Abby had taken Ben to Paganucci’s, a club aimed at the twenty-something crowd. With a population of twenty thousand and climbing, Elk Springs had gone from hick town to resort town in a few short years, although the process had been well advanced by the time Ben had taken the job here. But even since he came, the downtown hardware store had moved off Main Street to make way for an art gallery and café combo. Downtown was no longer for locals. Now antique stores, boutiques and espresso joints jostled trendy restaurants and nightclubs that appealed to skiers.

Paganucci’s was one of them. Sleek decor, dim lighting jolted by flashes of brilliant white strobes, music that vibrated through the floor and penetrated the very air the way an electric shock did. The drinks had names he didn’t recognize. The other men looked as self-consciously stylish as Don Johnson had on “Miami Vice.”