And how did she like being engaged to a washed-up cop? That shouldn’t even enter into the equation, but he couldn’t stop the thought from lodging in his head.
So what did that mean? He wanted her to like him? More than like him? Did he think she was going to actually wind up climbing into bed with him?
He repressed the urge to laugh out loud, because this engaged couple’s game was some kind of cosmic joke. Would he have chased the boys in the pizza parlor away if one of the girls hadn’t been Olivia? He had been very aware of her in high school, of course. Probably everybody had because she was gorgeous, even back then. And now she was even more striking because she’d learned how to enhance her natural beauty with the right haircut and makeup. But under normal circumstances, he never would have met her when they were all grown up and out in the world.
Back in his Donley days he’d been on the fast track to the juvenile detention center. Another lost kid with no one to rein him in. His dad had battled with his mom constantly, and finally the drunken jerk had just walked away one day when Max was twelve. After that, his mom worked long hours to try and support herself and her son. It hadn’t been an entirely successful effort. She’d kept a roof over their heads in one of the subsidized apartment complexes in Ellicott City. But clothing and food were another matter.
By the time he was thirteen, he was tired of wearing the secondhand shirts and jeans that they got from church charity sales. And he was tired of his stomach growling because all there was for dinner was a mayonnaise sandwich or a package of cheese crackers that he’d lifted from a gas station convenience store.
By his sophomore year at Donley, he’d taken matters into his own hands. He and another guy in similar circumstances had started breaking into houses in affluent neighborhoods and stealing anything that they thought they could sell for cash. They’d been pretty good at it. And for over a year they’d gotten away with a string of robberies that made the local papers.
Then they’d gotten caught, and Officer Cliff Maringer had taken Max into an interrogation room and sat him down for a long talk. Did he want to go to juvie, where he’d be living with a bunch of badass guys who would teach him to be the kind of loser who grew up with nowhere to go but federal prison?
Max had pretended to be tough. Inside he’d been a scared kid. Maybe he’d responded to Cliff as a father figure. And responded to what Cliff was offering him—a way to make something of his life and not just drift along from one bad situation to another. Cliff got him a job at a fast-food restaurant in Columbia, where he could earn some money and where he could eat for free when he was on shift. It wasn’t the best food in the world, but it was better than what he’d gotten at home. And there was certainly more of it.
The relationship with someone who cared had turned him around. And when he’d gotten a little older, they’d become friends. When Cliff had died of an early heart attack, Max had vowed to honor his memory by going to the police academy.
He’d joined the Baltimore City PD as a patrol officer, then graduated to detective. Since he’d turned his life around, the values he’d absorbed from Cliff had been his guide in his job—and in his life. The memory of his old pain had spurred him to help troubled teenagers make better decisions, partly by sharing his own sordid story with them. And he’d always made it a point to go the extra mile for the little guys who expected the cops to stick it to them—not defend them. He’d been secretly glad of making a difference. And then bad luck had slapped him in the face.
Which was another reason he wasn’t so glad to be back here now.
His dark thoughts were interrupted by a beeping sound, and he was instantly transformed from reflection to protective mode.
“Stay down,” he ordered Olivia as he hurried toward the keypad for the alarm and looked at the readout.
“What?” she asked.
“Somebody’s out there.”
“Or it’s just an animal,” she suggested. But the little quaver in her voice gave away her jittering nerves.
“Yeah, well, we’re not going to take a chance on it being a deer chomping down the cornfields.”
Chapter 6
As Olivia’s pretend fiancé, Max hadn’t gone armed to her reunion committee meeting. But his weapon was handy. He walked to the desk in the small room that had been set up as an office and opened the bottom drawer. Taking out two Sigs, he checked the magazine on both of them, then handed one to Olivia. After accepting the assignment, Max had been relieved to find out that she could shoot. Apparently that had been part of her lifestyle out here on a farm where there were acres of open space around the house. She’d said her dad had taken In Cold Blood to heart. It was the true story of a couple of killers who went looking for cash in the home of a farm family and ended up murdering all of them, told in vivid detail by Truman Capote. After reading it, Farmer Winters had taken Olivia and her mother out onto the property for regular target practice sessions, although neither woman had ever needed to use a weapon to defend herself.