Usually Gloria couldn’t sneak up on her. Gloria could pose for an older version of the Swiss Miss. Stealth wasn’t an option.
“Nope, you two would have been competing all your lives and never would have been able to realize that you’re both talented at what you do. Rafe, now he’s a better match for you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’d be good for each other. He needs to realize that he can’t keep the world safe. And you need to realize that the world is yours for the taking.”
Gloria had never before showed any gift at fiction. Funny she was sprouting it now.
“What do you mean he wants to keep the world safe but can’t? He’s a cop, he’s supposed to help people.”
“His urge to protect stems from more than being a cop, it goes back to before he was born, when his brother was taken and—”
Rafe was back. And he didn’t look happy.
He put Gloria in her place with a crisp “Not your story to tell.”
* * *
RAFE WASN’T SURE why he didn’t want Janie to know about his family’s tragedy. Maybe because he didn’t want her to pity him. Or maybe because he didn’t want to hear her echo what others said about missing-kid cases—that they were hopeless.
“She’s gonna find out one way or another,” Gloria said matter-of-factly. “It’s not as if people don’t talk.”
Usually, Rafe didn’t care. If the worst his critics could come up with was: “He gets too involved,” or “He takes it too personally,” he had no problems living with that. Better that than the cop so hardened he didn’t get involved, or had forgotten that some things deserved to be personal.
And yet, maybe he had let the Travis case become too personal. He had many other things to do, and yet instead he was here at BAA, just in case something happened. Would he have gotten so involved if it had been anyone else except this woman?
“Go ahead,” Gloria urged. “I can watch the shop. You two go off somewhere—one of the food courts or, hey, better yet, head on up to the cabin. It’s not being used today. You’ll have privacy and—”
“He’s here on business, Gloria,” Janie finally said. “When the business is finished, so is he.”
Well, she’d certainly been clear about her feelings.
Before Gloria could make another matchmaking attempt or Janie could remind him of how not interested she was, he left the gift shop and busied himself by returning phone calls and catching up on paperwork in his SUV.
Not a very productive day.
As the afternoon crowd thinned, he decided it was going to be just another typical day at the zoo. So at two, Rafe headed over to Lee and Sandy Travis’s. They lived just north of downtown Scorpion Ridge. Lee sold insurance.
Toys were spread across the front yard, neglected. Up until four months ago, Rafe couldn’t visit the Travises without having their youngest daughter grab his knees and beg to be carried, or without having their only son toss him a football. Their middle daughter, just a year younger than Brittney, usually sat on the step, watching her siblings, a cell phone in her hand as she texted. Last few times Rafe had driven by, no one played in the yard.