One Good Man(10)
“It’s going to be okay, Jamie. You have every right in the world to dread the unknown, to be frightened of what’s coming.” He stroked his thumb along her skin as he spoke, tightening his grip on her hand that was shaking. “What you’re doing takes enormous bravery.”
She blew a sharp snort, pulled her hand free and stabbed her fork into three stacked fries. She couldn’t deal with his kindness breaking her down. She needed her armor, Jamie’s armor, and she set about pulling it tight. “What about me makes you think I’m brave?”
Kell shrugged, and got back to eating as if nothing had passed between them. “You get up and go to work every day. You do so while looking over your shoulder. And you’ve done it now for ten years. What about that wouldn’t make me think you’re brave?”
“The first few years…” She shook her head, toyed with her salad, scooting the multicolored lettuce shreds around on her plate. “I didn’t get up every day. I didn’t work or go to school. I didn’t eat. I honestly don’t know how I came out of that darkness with anything left of my mind.”
Except she did know. Her mother—her voice, her hands, her heartbeat, her love—had been the only one able to penetrate the inky blackness that had swallowed Jamie whole, that had wrapped tentacles around her, into her, and pulled her away from the light.
“I’m sure Kate had a lot to do with that,” Kell said, reaching for his iced tea and staring at Jamie while he drank.
God. Again, he was there with the right words. Kind and perceptive and stealing her breath every time their gazes collided. Jamie nodded. “She had everything to do with it. She’s been my rock all these years.”
As if entertaining fond thoughts, his expression grew tender. “From what I saw of her earlier, she reminds me a lot of my mother.”
A topic of conversation that was safe. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Tell me about her.”
Having cleaned all but a strip of gristle and a bite or two of salad from his plate, Kell sat back. “My folks live in Austin. They retired early. My dad sold his dot-com start-up back when doing so still netted a mint. He golfs. My mom paints. It’s a nice life.”
“Very cool. Sounds like it would be, retiring when still young enough to enjoy it.”
“What about your mother? Would she enjoy an early retirement? Or does she love being a vet too much to hang up her, uh, whatever a vet would hang up?”
Smiling, Jamie reached for Kell’s plate, scraped his scraps into hers and carried both along with their flatware to the sink before she answered. “My mother will probably die surrounded by canine testicles and hair balls, a scalpel or laser in her hand.”
Obviously fine with Jamie doing cleanup, Kell rocked his chair back on two legs. “Yeah, my mind’s eye probably shouldn’t go there on a full stomach.”
“Sorry,” she said with a laugh, bending down for the squeeze bottle of dish detergent beneath the sink. “I forget not everyone grew up talking surgery over dinner.”
“Nope. The Hardings talked baseball, football, basketball, girls and food.”
“And which sport was yours? Besides the girls?” she asked, turning in time to catch Kell’s gaze on her ass. He looked up then, his eyes smoky hot, and she wondered how she was going to get through the night with him sleeping but one room away.
“Football. And baseball. Brennan played hoops and Terry came this close to winning the Heisman,” he said, returning his chair to the floor and holding his palms an inch apart.
She loved watching the Olympics every two years, but that was her only interest in sports. “No thoughts of going pro? The lure of the white hat and stick horse too strong? Dazzling dozens of damsels in distress with your big shiny star worth running into the occasional basket case?”
Kell got to his feet, carried the ketchup and salad dressing from the table to the fridge, but he didn’t speak until Jamie had filled the sink with soapy water and turned off the tap.
When she looked over her shoulder, she found herself backtracking over what she’d just said. She couldn’t find anything wrong…but the flare of temper in Kell’s eyes, and the pinch of displeasure around his mouth told a different story.
6
“WHY DO YOU DO THAT?”
“Do what?” Jamie asked, turning back to the sink, though Kell had seen a slip of guilty “ya got me” in her eyes.She could run, but she couldn’t hide—even in a sink of dirty dishes. “Make fun of yourself like that.”
She shrugged, a tense roll of one shoulder beneath her teddy-bear scrubs. “I always make fun of myself. It’s no big deal.”
“Not taking yourself too seriously is one thing. I’ve seen you do that more than once today. I’ve seen you get emotional over the situation you’re living in and make light of it.” He waited a minute to see if she would respond. She did so by turning on the hot rinse water full blast. “But putting yourself down is not the same thing.”
“Ten hours, and you know me so well.”
He reached around her to shut off the gushing splash of water. He hadn’t been ready for the silence, her stillness, her pain. The way she smelled like soap made of grapefruit and lemon zest. The sadness surrounding her.
He knew he should move, should give her space and time to work through what she was feeling, but he stayed close, noticing the fine hairs that curled into copper pennies at her nape. “I don’t know you. But I know crime. I know people. I know…victims.”
She bristled, tightened, lifted her chin to look out the window over the sink, but didn’t look at him. He moved to her side, leaning an elbow on the countertop to get a look at her face. “I know you don’t think of yourself that way, that you think of the people who died, of Kass Duren and Lacy Rogers and Julio Alvarez and Elena Santino as the victims. Of the Duren and Rogers and Alvarez and Santino families as the ones who suffered the most.”
“They did suffer the most,” she shouted, whipping her gaze toward him, her ponytail flying with the motion of her rage, her eyes angry, hurt.
He shook his head, softened. “They got the most sympathy. They were painted in the press as heartbroken. They lost loved ones. But your suffering has been just as great. You lost friends. You lost your innocence. You were accused of keeping things from the authorities. You had your life ripped away like a bandage off an open wound. I would say you’ve suffered just as much as anyone else.”
She hung her head, leaned forward on hands that were buried to her wrists in sudsy water. “I should have died. I played dead. He thought I was, and left me there. I should have died.”
Survivor’s guilt. Common. Not unexpected. And such a burden for her to have carried for ten years. Kell hoped he wasn’t about to make things worse. “I’ll bet your mother’s glad you didn’t.”
“She is,” Jamie said, choking back a sob.
“I’ll bet you’re glad, too.”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as tears dripped to salt the dishwater and her skin.
“It’s okay to be glad, Jamie.” He straightened, took a step closer.
She shook her head, saying nothing. She didn’t have to. He knew from interviewing victims as part of his work with the UCIT the things going through her mind. Knew, too, many who had given up.
“I’m sorry that I opened the old wounds. Hurting you wasn’t my intent.”
“I know that,” she said, snuffling softly and hunching a shoulder to wipe her eyes and nose. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
He thought she would be, thought, too, that revisiting the past would enable her to get rid of it for good. That didn’t mean it was going to be a painless process. But he wasn’t going to push beyond what was needed. He wouldn’t. That much he swore.
He hesitated, but in the end couldn’t bear to see her crushed, so he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. She didn’t want to lean, shaking the soapy water from her hands and sniffing back tears. He handed her a dish towel and didn’t let her go.
They stood like that for several moments, looking through the window and past her driveway to her neighbor’s property beyond, Jamie finally relaxing, her breathing growing steady and deep. Kell remained where he was, letting her move away even though he could’ve stayed there a lot longer.
“Wow,” she finally said, brushing back her hair with one wrist and getting back to the dishes. “Sorry about the meltdown. You would think after all this time my armor would be completely without chinks.”
It said a lot that it wasn’t, and as he set about clearing the rest of the dishes and food from the stovetop and table, he had high hopes that her vulnerability would lead to success tomorrow—no matter how mercenary it sounded.
THE BED IN JAMIE’S GUEST room was a full and required Kell sleep with his head at the top left, his feet at the bottom right. He didn’t sleep a lot, but he couldn’t blame the size of the mattress. Not completely.
He’d been known to sleep in the driver’s seat of his SUV, on the ground without a sleeping bag, in his chair at the office for a quick take five. Tonight, his inability to get to sleep and stay there was due in a large part to anxiety about tomorrow.It was due even more to the woman asleep in the room next to his, and the things he was feeling about her, because of her, for her, even. Things that had nothing to do with her cold case, and yet had everything to do with who she was because of what had happened in the diner that night.