“Wait a minute, lady.” Another firefighter nabbed Rosie by her coat sleeve. “You can’t go up there.”
“My dad’s up there,” Rosie said.
“No one’s up there.”
“Are you sure?” Tess sagged in the firefighter’s arms. “How can you be sure?”
“Crawford.” A man in a different uniform stepped forward. “Take these women to the trailer.”
The firefighter named Crawford gripped Tess’s arm and Rosie’s and escorted them to the trailer. Along one of its corrugated metal sides, visible in the pulsing neon of the emergency vehicles, Tess saw huge lettering in an ugly, spray-painted scrawl-the acronym of a terrorist organization.
Environmental terrorists.
“No civilians past this point.” A police officer stepped from the shadows near the trailer’s door and met them at a bobbing line of yellow crime-scene ribbon. “Take these women back out to the street.”
“This is Quinn’s daughter,” Tess said, yanking her arm free of Crawford’s grip.
“And who are you?” the officer asked.
Tess opened her mouth to reply and froze. The project architect. Quinn’s lover. A friend. None of the phrases seemed to have enough power to get her past the barrier and through that door to be by Quinn’s side, to see for herself if he was all right.
“She’s my dad’s fiancee,” Rosie told the men.
Crawford raised the yellow crime-scene tape. “Let them through.”
Tess followed Rosie toward the short metal steps. “Why did you tell them I’m his fiancee?”
“I saw it in a movie.” She shot Tess a bland glance over her shoulder. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“This is real life, kid,” Tess said as she shoved the trailer door open. “No happy endings here.”
Inside, two men in uniform stood at the counter, and beyond them, in his desk chair, sat Quinn.
“Dad!”
Rosie dashed around the corner and threw herself into his arms. He scooped her up and into his lap, burying his face in her hair for a long moment before looking up, across the room, to where Tess stood.
She took a step forward and then stopped, staring at him, at his sticky hair and bloodshot eyes, at his torn and muddied clothing. And she breathed in the smell of him, the sickly sweet smell of whiskey that permeated the air around him.
“You’re okay,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” she managed.
And then, her heart numb and her brain buzzing, she crumpled and crept into the safety of a familiar, black nothingness deep inside, and she turned and walked out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY
QUINN SAGGED against the unforgiving back of the wooden visitor’s chair in Reed Oberman’s corner of the police station late Thursday morning, feeling every bruise he’d acquired the night before. He’d taken Rosie home and tucked her into bed, showered and collapsed on his own mattress. And then he’d lain awake, staring at his ceiling, reliving the night’s events. Reliving the surging rage and the heart-stopping terror and the knee-buckling pain, until the evening shadows faded to filmy daylight.
Hunger and thirst had driven him from bed shortly after seven, and he’d limped through the front room, heading toward the kitchen, hoping a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice would cure the insomnia that exhaustion hadn’t been able to dent. It was then that he’d discovered what Tess had done, what he hadn’t noticed a few hours earlier when he’d carried a sleeping Rosie down the hall.
His front room had been painted a soft, silvery green. Plump new pillows on his old brown sofa picked up the beautiful color in lively tones, and a watercolor print of a lighthouse on a sandy shore hung on the wall above. She’d managed to make his run-down, secondhand space seem updated and inviting without changing much of anything at all.
Imagine what she might have done with me, he’d thought, if she’d cared enough to stick around and try.
He’d stared at the walls and the print, at the pretty bakery cake and festive party things arranged on his coffee table. And then he’d closed his eyes and seen again the revulsion in her face when she’d come close enough to smell Wade’s whiskey on his clothes, and he’d heard again her flat, emotionless voice when she’d turned her back on him.
Damn. Needing Tess more than he’d ever needed a drink was a hell of an improvement in his addictions. He’d stood there, in that room she’d brightened, fighting the pressure building in his chest and the thick, hot pain clogging his throat. And then he’d returned to his room to dress.
After leaving Neva to watch over his still-sleeping daughter, he’d come to the police station to make another statement and check on the status of the investigation. He had to do something, make some sort of progress. Like a shark, if he stopped moving, he’d drown.
Reed returned to his cubicle and dropped heavily into his desk chair. He rubbed a hand over his reddened eyes and sighed. “Wade isn’t changing his story. He’s still insisting he acted alone.”
“Did you offer him a deal?”
“Working on it.” Reed tipped back in his creaky chair and yawned. “Still trying to convince the DA there’s enough evidence to point to an accessory.”
“There isn’t any evidence.”
“There’s the problem.” Reed frowned. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that-”
“It’s easier to hang this on Wade and forget about the conspiracy angle.”
Reed nodded. “We’ve got a witness, we’ve got a truck showing damage consistent with reported events, we’ve got forensic evidence in that same truck and on Wade’s clothes. And we’ve got a confession. It’s an open-and-shut case.”
“Neat and tidy.” Quinn shifted in his chair, his own words a fresh reminder of the pain this had caused Tess, as he forced down another surge of anger. “Except for what was spray-painted on the side of my trailer.”
“Wade’s confessed to that, too.”
“Did you ask him what it meant?”
Reed glanced up. “No.”
“Ask him. If he knows what it means, ask him how he heard about it, where he got the idea in the first place. Press him for the details.” Quinn stood, wincing as he straightened. “You and I both know Wade’s too stupid to plan things through like this. He had a fairly strong motive for cutting that board on the scaffolding. He didn’t have any reason to cause that spill or start that fire. He came looking for a job-he wouldn’t have wanted to destroy the job site that might have given it to him.”
“There’s one motive you haven’t mentioned,” Reed said. “Revenge.”
Quinn stopped in the doorway and glanced over his shoulder. “It’s a sorry testament to my life to admit I can consider that as another possibility.”
TESS KICKED OFF her shoes and stretched out on the plush sofa in her grandmother’s blue parlor the evening after the fire. They’d shared a quiet dinner in the kitchen, allowing Julia to cluck and fuss over them both and soothe them with asparagus bisque and steaming sourdough baguettes fresh from the oven. The thought of returning alone to her house, of waking in her empty bed and beginning again in the morning was overwhelming. “I’m too tired to move, Memere. Maybe I’ll stay right in this spot for the rest of the week.”
“Nonsense. We’ve more to do-and more reasons to do it-than ever.” Geneva poured herself a cup of tea. “Although I must admit this project has turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d expected.”
Tess laughed sourly. “Your talent for understatement never ceases to amaze me.”
“And your capacity for passion has never failed to disappoint me.” Geneva continued. “So why do I get the feeling you’re not as angry over what has happened or as determined to see this through as I thought you’d be?”
“I don’t know. It’s the shock, I suppose.” Tess rolled her head more comfortably against a pillow and closed her eyes. “I’m just so tired.”
“I’ve heard depression can sap one’s energy.”
“I’m not depressed. I just-I haven’t had much sleep lately.”
The clock on the mantel chimed its deep, metallic bong, marking another hour of her life. Tess had always loved that sound, but tonight it seemed…
Depressing.
She shifted on her side and studied her grandmother. “Did you love Grandpa, Memere? Always? Even toward the end, when he was so sick?”
“Not in the same way. He wasn’t the same man at that point.” Geneva sighed and smoothed a hand over the soft throw on her lap. “And anything I may tell you about my relationship with your grandfather has nothing at all to do with you and Quinn. You’re two different people.”
“He’s an alcoholic, Memere.” Tess rolled to her back and stared at the beamed and plastered ceiling. “I swore I’d never get involved with a man who had that problem.”
“Had is a word in the past tense. And it’s another convenient excuse.”
“Why are all excuses convenient?” Tess’s eyelids drifted shut. “Why can’t they be excellent, or justified, or brilliant?”
“I suppose I should sit quietly and be supportive,” Geneva said impatiently, “or serve as a sounding board while you work your way through your quandary. But I’ve never enjoyed that particular role in any relationship.”
“This isn’t just a relationship,” Tess said. “I’m your granddaughter.”
“And that’s why I’ve tolerated your foolishness for as long as I have this evening.”
Tess sat upright and faced her grandmother. “I’m trying not to be foolish. I’m trying to consider everything that could possibly go wrong.”
“And looking for reasons-or excuses-to back out of the first serious love affair you’ve had for years.”
“Maybe that’s what I want to do, deep down inside.” Tess stared at the clock, unable to face her grandmother’s stern gaze. “Back out of this.”
“Would that make you happy?”
“No. Not now. But maybe, in the future, I’ll be glad I took some time to think about this.”
“You’ve had several months to think about this,” Geneva said as she lifted the cup to her lips.
“I haven’t been thinking about marriage.”
“No. But you’ve been thinking about the man.” She paused for a sip. “What do you think of him, Tess?”
