All Sleuth and No Play, page 17
"Okay, so maybe I overreacted to that. But you did make a pit stop to check up on Keith's parents without me. That's not cool."
He cleared his throat. "Sorry. I guess I was just on autopilot. Work has always helped me clear my head when life gets stressful."
"Plus you still left Mac in the middle of the night in a strange place with no note."
"How was I supposed to know she'd follow me?" he asked. "I thought she'd be asleep for hours, and I'd be back before she even knew I was gone. I never thought she'd track me down."
Proving he hadn't gotten to know the real Mac before last night. "She's only sixteen. You can't just leave her in the middle of the night without a word."
"I get that now." Brett did look contrite. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry about what happened. I'm not used to having anyone care when I come and go. I didn't think it through."
I shivered, the icy wind tossing my hair every which way and slapping the back of my neck. Brett's attention was fixed at the low shrubs two houses up. I studied his profile, seeing both the boy I had loved and the man I'd been raging against for months. It wasn't Brett's fault that Mac's attention was now divided and that I felt…neglected. Hadn't I made a monkey-butt ton of mistakes over the last sixteen years? Surely he was entitled to a few.
What had occurred hadn't been entirely Brett's fault. If Mac and I hadn't been on the outs, she wouldn't have been at his place. And she was the one who had virtually stalked him to the literal scene of the crime.
"Mac has been showing less than stellar judgment lately," I admitted. "She skipped school to hang out with her much older boss, who she has a ridiculous crush on."
"Should I have him taken care of?" Brett deadpanned.
His phrasing made me smile. "No. For one thing, he's a cop. And for another I'm 99.9 percent sure he isn't actually interested in her." It was that .1 percent that made me break out in a cold sweat.
"A cop, huh? Like mother, like daughter." Brett whistled a few times, I presumed for the dog.
I reached forward, gripped his arm, and turned him to face me. "Promise me it won't happen again."
Brett put a hand over his heart. "I promise I won't ever leave our daughter alone without telling her how to get in touch with me."
Another chill made me quake, and he put an arm around me. "We should have spied paw prints by now. Let's head home."
The idea of just giving up made my stomach turn over. "She'll freeze if she stays out all night."
"So will we." He held me tighter, and his warmth felt good enough that I didn't pull away.
My gaze slid to the large colonial across the way. If Nona was right, that was the house occupied by Yvonne Tate, aka the woman who'd dated Hunter while we'd been apart, and her mother. There was a light on by the front door as well as one in the front window. Someone was definitely home. Was it wrong that I wanted to know what she looked like? And behind her house, the Victorian where pierced boy who may or may not be abducting neighborhood pets resided.
"Let's just knock on a few doors and see if anyone has seen her," I spoke slowly, hoping Brett would put the kibosh on the plan.
He didn't. Instead, he looped his arm through mine and helped me up the slippery concrete steps until we stood in front of the door. I raised my hand and knocked, discreetly distancing myself from Brett in the process.
No barking dog, no noise at all from inside, not even the sound of approaching footsteps. But all of a sudden, the door was pulled back, and I stood face to face with a petite blonde. The first thing I noticed was she was incredibly slender. Slim to the point of gaunt, she wore a shapeless sack of a dark wool over darker leggings that accentuated rather than disguised her thinness. Sharp cheekbones and a delicately pointed chin jutted, and her dark brown eyes were huge in her face. I could eat nothing but broccoli until the end of time and still never look so lean.
She blinked owlishly up at me. Way up, like almost a foot of difference. She looked frightened for a moment, probably at finding a giantess on her front porch directly after a blizzard. I backed down a step so as not to intimidate her.
"C-can I help you?" she stuttered.
"Hi, yeah. I'm Mackenzie Taylor. I live down the street." I pointed in the direction of the villa.
She didn't say anything, and I added, "Sorry to bother you, but our dog got out of the yard. You wouldn't have happened to see a puggle roaming the neighborhood, have you?"
Slowly, her head turned back and forth, her confusion clear. "I'm sorry, a what?"
"A puggle. It's a dog, about this big." Brett held his hands apart to indicate Snicker's approximate size. "Half pug, half beagle."
Her gaze shifted to him, and then she offered another slow headshake along with a not so subtle step back. Brett was smiling, all friendly and non-threatening, and still she looked ready to wet herself. Try as I might, I couldn't imagine this mousy little woman with Hunter. He would have towered over her, and though he was more of a gentle giant, even his intense presence would have had her cringing in a corner. What had Maureen been thinking?
Probably that Yvonne didn't get out much.
"Sorry." She started to close the door, obviously eager to distance herself from us.
"What can you tell us about the people who live behind you?" Being the bull in the China shop, I stuffed my giant clodhopper in the crack of the door before she could shut us out.
She flinched when my foot connected to her door, but the sturdy construction of my steel-toed Cat boots protected the appendage. It took a moment for my question to register, and then her pale lips parted as she looked up at me. "You mean the Lancasters?"
"They have a son, right? With all the piercings? How old is he?" And did he find pleasure in tormenting small mammals?
"Evan? He's seventeen or eighteen, I guess."
"Have you noticed him lurking around the neighborhood?" I pushed. "Maybe leaving notes on cars?"
She shook her head with more vigor and stared down at my foot. "He doesn't come out much during the day. I think he takes night classes at the community college."
I'd stowed a few business cards in my parka pocket and extracted one, passing it to her through the crack in the door. "If you see my dog, please give me a call."
"I will." She opened the door a smidge so I could extract my foot, and then added a tentative smile and a "Good luck," before closing it again.
"What the hell was that?" Brett hissed as we hit the sidewalk again.
"What? I was just conversing with a neighbor."
"About the kid?"
I gave him a brief update on the Nona and Agnes theory about missing animals and a potential serial killer in the making as a snowplow drove by.
Brett shook his head. "That's just gossip. The kid is probably perfectly normal."
"There's more. Someone has maybe been…stalking one of us."
Brett stopped short. "Maybe?"
"There have been things. A flower, a note, and a hang-up phone call. At first I thought it was directed at me."
"Because everything's about you," he grumbled.
I ignored the dig and confided the suspicion that had been growing since Nona had brought up the creepy boy. "But maybe if this kid is behind it, he could be fixated on Mac. She drives Fillmore more than I do, and we have the same name on our cell phone lines, and we live together."
"Did you ask her if she knows this kid?" Brett asked.
"Not yet. I want to look him in the eye first myself." Before I did something more drastic, like call the police.
We'd reached the Victorian. Large mounds of what I guessed were the infamous lawn gnomes created a lumpy look to the front yard. The house was dark on the ground floor level, but flickering light from an upstairs room told me someone was watching television or surfing the net.
"What are you going to say?" Brett asked.
"Hell if I know," I answered and pressed the doorbell. This time, there were footsteps along with the ominous creak of floorboards. No sharp bark or tip tapping of dog nails on hardwood though.
The door opened, and I knew right away why this kid had attracted the yenta's notice. His face was half metal studs, half human skin. He had no eyebrows, though the area where they should have been sported arches of metal rings. Cheek studs created an infinity symbol sort of pattern, and he had those ghastly button type piercings in his earlobes that would create holes the size of golf balls and give him permanent Dumbo ear sag when he hit his thirties.
He wore all black, but his T-shirt was tight enough that I could make out nipple piercings along with a few others. But the most disturbing thing about the kid was the crisscrossing of thin white scars leading from elbow to wrist in a horrific rainbow of pain.
"You look familiar," I said, more to myself than to him. Brett frowned too, as though trying to place the kid.
A cutter. If Mac had ever met Evan, she would definitely have remembered him. I'd probably have nightmares for weeks.
He glanced from me to Brett and then back again. "You were at my grief group, bitching about your mother."
"That's it. Weird coincidence. I live just a few doors down, and I'm sorry to bother you. Have you seen a small dog?" I asked. "He escaped from—"
The door was slammed in my face before I could do the foot doorstop thing again.
"Now what?" Brett asked,
I shook my head. "I have no idea."
* * *
"Did you find her?" Mac pounced on us in the entryway. Her face fell when she didn't see any sign of Snickers.
I glanced from her to my mother, whose gaze fixed on Brett while wearing an expression of thin-lipped disapproval. Aka her resting face.
"I'm sorry, sweets. It's too dark, and we're half frozen. We'll go out again at first light, I promise."
Mac's lip trembled, but she nodded.
"I'd better head out." Brett was almost blatant in his attempt to not look in my mother's direction. "Give me a call if you want me to help you look again."
"Thanks." Mac turned back into our apartment. After a silent moment, Agnes followed.
"I'll just see you out." Looping my arm through his, I dragged him outside. When I was sure no one would overhear, I asked, "What's going on with you and my mother?"
"What are you talking about?" Brett didn't look at me, instead fidgeting with the auto start on his car remote.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "She's glaring daggers at you, a trick she usually reserves just for me. And that's a big 180 from the stuff she was saying in the fall."
He blew out a sigh. "Are you sure you want to hear this now?"
When I raised my eyes to him, he pivoted so we were standing face to face. "Mackenzie, I'm serious. Some things you can't unlearn, so be sure you want to know."
"After a speech like that, how could I not want to know?"
When he just stared at me, I continued, "Look, Archer, I'm cold, I'm tired, and I have a million things to do and not enough coffee to do them, so cut to the chase."
He studied my expression a moment more and then nodded. "Alright. About a year ago, your dad hired me to follow your mother because he suspected she was having an affair."
Silence reigned. My heart rate increased as I stared up at him. I knew the deal, had made my pitiful living off the deal for the last few months. In cases of infidelity, a person didn't hire a PI until they were sure the spouse was cheating and needed evidence. My father had railed at Agnes for stepping out in the fall, but I hadn't known it had gotten to the gathering of evidence stage. "My father accused her, said awful things to her, but I didn't know if it was true. Do you know who she was with?"
Brett shook his head. "I don't. I refused the case."
I turned a little to put the wind at my back. My hair was blowing every which way and my eyes stung. "You did? Why?"
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "I'm pretty sure he picked my name out of the yellow pages. I'm one of the first PIs listed. He didn't know who I was, but I recognized the last name. I didn't want to take on the burden of wrecking your parents' marriage."
"Even though you hadn't seen me in years?"
He nodded, blue eyes bright as he looked down at me. "I'm kinda sorry I didn't. I would have found out about Mac that much sooner. I guess everything happens in its own time. Anyway, it was done, but when I started spending time with you and Mac, I felt like your mother should know what Reg had been up to."
"And she slaughtered the messenger." The poisonous looks suddenly made sense.
He nodded. "Are you upset?"
"Yes, but not with you. This is their damage." I put my hand over his for a reassuring pat and then made the mistake of meeting his eyes.
The way he was looking at me, I knew he was considering laying one on me. It was too much. I'd barely gotten past his actions over the past few days. "Brett…I'm with Hunter."
His fingers grazed my cheek again. "I know. But you won't be forever."
I tried to move away, put a little distance between us, but he moved with me, until my back hit the railing and I couldn't retreat any farther. "Why would you say that?"
"Because you were meant for me." He punctuated his statement with a swift kiss.
I pushed him away quickly, but maybe not as fast as I'd intended. Nostalgia or fatigue, something made me slow, and I got a hit of cinnamon gum and the familiar press of his lips to mine.
"I'll wear you down, Mackenzie. One of these days, you'll see." He trotted down the steps and over to his idling SUV.
I stared after his disappearing taillights, half-aggravated with Brett, the cocky bastard, and the other half annoyed with my mother, the cheater.
As I trudged up the steps, I thought about the awful things my father had said to her the last time he'd been at our place. My mother had an affair, I'd known that much, but after hearing the verbal onslaught from my father, I'd sort of taken her side and asked no more questions about it. But Brett claimed the Captain had tried to hire him a year ago. Maybe I needed to know more about my mother's infidelity, get all the facts.
"Put it on the to-do list," I grumbled. I'd just made it up the steps when a car pulled up at the curb. My face flamed when Hunter climbed out. He paused, said something to the cop behind the wheel. All I could think of was that if he'd arrived five minutes earlier, he would have seen me kissing another man.
My guilt doubled when he took the steps two at a time, and then without a word, pulled me into his arms. He tasted of coffee laced with dark spices, and I clung to him like a life raft and I was afraid of drowning.
Hunter pulled back first, stroking his hand down my cheek. "Not that I'm complaining, but what are you doing out here, Red? It's freezing."
"Brett kissed me," I blurted.
He stepped back. Said nothing.
"I want to say it didn't mean anything, but it did. Not to me. To him." I was babbling, trying to reassure him while info dumping what had happened so he didn't think I was hiding anything from him.
His expression hadn't altered one iota. He just stood there while I flailed and the verbal diarrhea continued to flow.
"He all but said I belong with him, which is a short and very fine step away from belonging to him and hell-o, I don't belong to anyone. Except maybe Mac. And my coffee pot, but that's it. You're not angry are you? Please, please, please don't be angry. It was just that Snickers got out of the yard, and he was helping me look, and then my mother gave Brett a look, and apparently she was screwing around on the Captain a year ago and I was all stunned, and then he kissed me, and please tell me that my stupid baby daddy hasn't screwed us up because you mean so much to me, and I can't stand the thought of losing you—"
Hunter shut me up in the most effective way possible, by kissing me senseless.
My toes curled and my hands clutched his jacket, clinging to him with fervent desperation. He broke away only long enough to open the front door, and then his mouth was on mine, our kisses all-consuming. His hands were everywhere, in my hair, unzipping my jacket, untucking my shirt. Lifting me up against the wall. Mine were equally adept at multitasking, absorbing the feel of him, greedy for the touch of bare skin. Parts numb from cold thawed and grew blazing hot. Touching him was better than a thousand cups of coffee and a million snuggly blankets. I wanted it to go on forever, need for him blocking out every other thought, all my problems and worries.
Being with him was just…right.
Until it wasn't.
"Don't make me get the hose," a tart voice said from behind us.
My head thumped against the wall as I jerked out of the kiss. "Ow!"
Hunter set me down. Then his fingers went to the spot to massage my scalp.
My mother stood there in her pink flannel pajamas, hands on hips. "Really, Mackenzie. What are you thinking? Fornicating in the common hallway where anyone can see?"
"We weren't fornicating." Though we hadn't been far from it. I caught the quicksilver flash of Hunter's amused smile as he reached out to steady me.
"You need to come talk to your daughter. She has this insane idea she's going to go out and find that animal in the dead of night."
I wasn't sure if it was from overwhelm or conking my head, but a wave of dizziness washed over me, and I leaned more heavily into Hunter.
He held me tight, his voice rough with concern. "You, okay Red?"
I nodded and then winced. "Yeah, just exhausted. I need to talk to Mac though."
"Snickers is missing?"
"We think it's the serial killer." That helpful tidbit came from Agnes.
"What serial killer?" Hunter helped me across the hall to my door.
"My mother can tell you." I didn't have the oomph to rehash it.
Mac stood next to her open laptop, fingers flying. "Mom, I need to go to the store. We're out of ink cartridges and I need to print up flyers for Snickers."
"Babe, nothing's open because of the weather. We'll go first thing in the morning."
"I need to do this." She was borderline tearful.
"I have a printer," Hunter offered. "Bring your computer to my place, and we'll get them ready for the morning. I'll help you look."
