a thirteen-year-old should “mean” anything. “Your boss is right. You’re the best person for the job. If that’s true, then you have to take it. It’s your duty. And it’s my duty to help make it okay for you.”
I have no immediate response to this. Duty? She throws the word out with certainty and intensity. It’s another look into the direction her mind is growing, and it makes me wonder if agreeing to do this would be all wrong, after all.
“I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll let you know.” I check the clock. “Time for you to go.”
She collects her backpack and I walk her to the door. The bus stop is only a block away. She turns before she leaves and gives me a hug. “I love you, Mama-Smoky,” she says.
This I can handle. I hug her back. “I love you too, baby. Don’t forget what I said about the extracurricular activity.”
“I won’t, promise.”
Then she’s out the door and I watch until she disappears at the curve of our street. I close the door and sit back down at the table. Tommy has poured me another cup of coffee, bless him. He’s nursing his own and gives me a little smile.
“She’s something,” he says.
“Something? What’s with all the ‘duty this’ and ‘duty that’? Sometimes I think it would be better if I hung it up altogether. Quit the FBI and just concentrated on her.”
He studies the inside of his cup, takes a sip, then studies me. “I’ll back your play whatever you decide, Smoky. You want to quit the FBI and be a mommy? I’m with you. You want to head up this strike team? I’m with you. If you don’t want to work, we won’t need your income, and if we move, money won’t be a problem.”
One of the things I found out about Tommy as our romance progressed was that he is, if not rich, financially stable. He isn’t cheap, but he is thrifty. He struck out on his own as a security consultant after leaving the Secret Service and has done very, very well for himself. We can’t rent private jets for weekend jaunts to Las Vegas, but money isn’t a meaningful issue. I have my own assets too. The house was paid off by Matt’s life-insurance settlement and is worth a lot more than what we originally paid for it, even with the current housing-market depression.
All of that is nice, but it’s not what I need to hear from him. “But what do you think I should
He smiles at me and reaches out a hand to stroke my cheek. “I think if you quit working you’ll go crazy. It’s still in your blood. One day it won’t be, but for now it is. When I first joined the service, and for a long time after, that’s how it was for me. I had to leave when I was ready. You’re not ready.”
“And Bonnie?”
He sips from his cup and looks off into the distance. “People don’t come in boxes with ingredient listings, Smoky, so we’ll never know for sure how Bonnie is going to turn out. That’s life. There are a few things I do think. I think she needs to go to therapy. I understand why you haven’t taken her there before, but it’s time. In my opinion.”
I sigh. “You’re right. I just have trouble trusting anyone else when it comes to dealing with her.”
“I know. But get over it.”
“You said ‘a few things.’ What else?”
“What you did last night was on the money, Smoky. As long as you’re on the case as her mother and don’t let that slide, I think you’ll be doing the right thing. I’m not convinced that it would be any better for Bonnie to have you around all the time, if you weren’t working. In some ways, it might be worse.”
“Why?” I ask, intrigued.
“She needs a balance. What happened to her, and to her mom, did happen. We can’t unmake that. On the one hand, exposure to what you do runs the risk of keeping her attention on it too much, leading to things like the cat incident.”
“But on the other hand?”
He shrugs. “On the other hand, I think watching you do what you do, seeing you put away the kind of men who killed her mom, is therapeutic. Cathartic. It gives her a goal. It’s a balancing act, a darn shoddy one, but I think it’s more helpful than harmful as long as we keep that balance.”
I grin in spite of the gravity of the conversation; I can’t help it. “‘Darn shoddy’?” I tease. Tommy is a Boy Scout. Had literally been one. He never, ever uses profanity.
He doesn’t respond to the humor. My stomach flutters a little at the determination in his eyes.
“I’ll back you in either direction, Smoky, but I have one condition.”
“What’s that?” I ask, though I already know.
“If you decide to take the position, you tell them everything.”
You don’t even know what everything is, Tommy.
I keep this to myself. What he’s asking is fair.
“Deal.”
He shakes his head in the negative. “Don’t be flip. I want your promise. Your oath.”
Tommy flouts almost all of the Latin macho stereotypes, but now and again these oddities appear. Things like “your oath.” I’d crack a joke about it if he wasn’t so deadly serious.
Relationships are born of love but survive on compromise. Who was it who said that?
I reach over and take his hands in mine. Both are warm from our coffee cups.
“I promise.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“We have a hit on her fingerprints, honey-love.”
It’s the first thing I hear when I walk into the office. This is one of the good mornings, the well-organized kind. I am already well caffeinated and awake.
“Tell me,” I say.
Alan and I had met in the parking lot and taken the elevator up together. James and Callie had arrived before us. Alan unscrews the top of his thermos and pours coffee into his mug. I gave him a coffee grinder for Christmas. He’d rolled his eyes at the time, joking that all the real cops grew up on Dunkin’ Donuts and 7-Eleven coffee, but not long after he’d started bringing the thermos.
“I’m a junkie now,” he’d confessed. “After fresh ground, everything else tastes like crap.”
“Her name is Heather Hollister,” Callie says.
I frown. “Why does that name seem familiar?”
“Because,” she continues, “Heather Hollister was a homicide detective. From our very own LAPD. She disappeared eight years ago, without a trace. No body was ever found.”
“I remember that case,” Alan says, nodding. “Eight years? Jesus Christ.”
I remember it too. “It was big news,” I say, “and not just in the law-enforcement community. She was married, right?”
“That’s correct,” James pipes in. “Husband worked for an Internet service provider. His name is”—he consults his notes—“Douglas Hollister. They had twin sons, Avery and Dylan. They were two at the time.” He looks up from his notes. “They’re ten now.”
It’s an unnecessary statement, but I understand why he says it. James is human, however hard he tries to hide it. The concept of this woman being held for eight years is difficult to grasp. Her children provide the necessary contrast.
Avery and Dylan were two when she went away. They would have been riding tricycles and speaking in small sentences, disobeying and acting out, like all two-year-olds. When she disappeared, they were still three years away from kindergarten. Now they’re closing in on the fifth grade or are already there.
I force myself to focus. “What do we know about the investigation that was done at the time?” I ask.
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Callie says. “The FBI assisted, of course, but the primary investigation was headed by LAPD.”
Of course it was. Heather was one of their own. No way they were ceding that to anyone else.
