Chapter 10

THE HOUSE was dark when I came in.

I stood in the foyer just for a moment and enjoyed the strange feeling of being back… well, home. No matter what happened between us, this just felt like home. Danny might be a no-frills kind of guy, but he knew how to create comfortable surroundings. And his house, chock-full of large, handcrafted, masculine furniture and dark, polished hardwood floors certainly qualified.

Through the glass wall of the living room, I could just make out a figure relaxing on the deck—a dark form slouched in a worn Adirondack. I headed that way and followed the lighted path the moon created for me.

The daytime mugginess had given way to a little breeze that whistled through the trees like a nighttime symphony. The sounds of crickets and other wildlife rose above the whisper of the wind. After the unrelenting glare of the sun most of the day, it was refreshing.

I paused just short of his chair and found him sleeping—lashes dark against his cheeks, sensitive mouth a little slack. I smiled a bit at the half-empty beer bottle lolling in his hand, about to hit the floorboards. He worked too hard. Maybe it was just carryover from our relationship, but I still liked to see him rest. I reached over, half leaned on his chair, and tugged at the bottle.

His eyes flew open, and suddenly I had my face full of gun. I looked into the dark hole of the weapon and I stood stock-still and tried not to exacerbate the situation. Waited for recognition to dawn in his eyes. When it finally did, we blinked at each other for a few seconds. Then I began to swear. A lot. Loudly.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry, I didn’t—”

“What do you think you’re—”

“I didn’t know it was you.”

“Jesus Christ, McKenna,” I said, and I put one shaky hand to my neck. Nothing to end a night like getting blown away. I glared at him as he continued to blink at me. “What the fuck?”

“I could ask you the same question.” His voice was hoarse with sleep and the shock of what he’d almost done. “What’re you doing sneaking around out here?”

“Sneaking? You were dead asleep. I just didn’t want you to drop the fucking beer.” I held up my palms. “But hey. You want the Heineken, you keep the Heineken.”

He looked down at the bottle in his hand as though seeing it for the first time. “Sorry. I was having a bad….” He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“You wanna put that thing away?”

He tucked the Sig back in the holster. “It’s been a long day.”

I dropped down in the Adirondack next to his. I felt a little shaky myself. “You know, next time someone offers to make me a reservation at a gator farm, I’m going to accept.”

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?” He rubbed a hand over his face. “How was your visit?”

Considering you were about two seconds from blowing my fucking head off? I tilted my head back against the chair. “Can’t complain.”

“Did you see Rick and the girls?”

“Yeah. All that’s left is my father, and I’ve done my filial duty. You know how it goes.”

“Sure.”

There was a lot unspoken in that sure. A lot. Some of it was tied to whatever he’d been dreaming about that made him pull a gun on me. But I knew that he’d been adopted at a young age, and he’d been remarkably closemouthed about his past. I didn’t need to be a profiler to know there was a reason for that.

“Do you know how it goes?” I asked delicately.

“Let’s just say not everyone’s parents are wonderful half-baked hippies. My parents don’t ride around in an old conversion van, and my mother’s specialty is not making oversized oatmeal cookies.”

I didn’t take offense. I knew he loved my parents. They loved him right back. “What’s your mother’s specialty?”

“Crack, mostly.”

I didn’t know what to say about that. From his relaxed profile, it didn’t seem like he would welcome any comfort. Not from me, anyway. I pointed at his forgotten beer. “You gonna finish that?”

He shook his head and passed the bottle. “Knock yourself out.”

I took a long swig and grimaced. “It’s warm.”

“Want me to get you a fresh one?”

“Nah.” I took another drink, longer that time. “Liquor not being the optimal temperature isn’t a deal breaker for me. I’m enough of a lush to admit it.”

My mouth on the bottle flirted over the same places his had been. Beer mixed with Danny was a little more than intoxicating. I wanted a better taste. A more direct taste, not diluted with pale ale. Only we were friends. Friends and nothing more. Right?

I looked up at the sky. I was almost relaxed enough to believe that bullshit. That all I would ever want from Danny would be friendship. On a night dark as pitch, with stars twinkling sporadically like faceted diamonds, a lot of things seemed possible. I listened as the crickets and cicadas filled the comfortable silence with their night rhythm, joined occasionally by the low belch of a frog. Swampland at its finest.

I cleared my throat. “Can I ask you something?”

He sighed. “I knew you’d ruin it.”

“You can say no.”

“If I were capable of saying no to you, we wouldn’t have had a cream couch, Diet Coke in the fridge, or three annoying wind chimes.” As though to underscore his point, the offending wind chimes tinkled in agreement.

I beamed. “You kept the wind chimes?”

He sounded a bit resigned when he continued. “What is it?”

“Are you ever planning to tell me who Anna is?”

“Who told you about Anna?”

“You say her name sometimes. When you’re dreaming.”

He was silent so long I didn’t know if he’d answer at all. I forced myself to be patient and stared at one of the deck railings. The flaking, peeling paint drew my eye. It really needed to be sealed again. “I didn’t know,” he said finally. “That I said her name that often.”

“Let me guess. Rutabaga?”

He gave me a small smile, but he didn’t say anything. Early on in our relationship, we’d come up with a term to respect each other’s boundaries. Especially since he would follow me clear to another planet to have his say, and I would jetpack to another galaxy to avoid a confrontation. It was a safeword for when things got too intense. It wasn’t saying no. It wasn’t saying yes. It just meant no more for right now.

I didn’t know which of us was more surprised when he spoke again. Maybe because he knew he didn’t have to. “She was my sister.”

“Was?”

“She went missing over fifteen years ago.”

I bit my lip. Leave it to me to bring up the most painful event in his life. I’m smart like that. A member of MENSA. The social outcast division. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because it’s in the past.”

Not so much in the past judging by those dreams. And the way he was acting about Amy’s disappearance. “What happened?”

“When the state took us from our parents, I got lucky with a good home. She didn’t.”

“Have you looked for her?” I almost slapped myself the moment I heard the words. “That was stupid. Of course you have. Why wouldn’t a detective look for his own sister? But it’s been so many years. Do you think she’s even alive?” Another mental slap. “What I meant was—”

“Rain.” When I looked at him, really looked at him, I could tell he was amused at my bumbling, not annoyed. “It’s okay. Yes, I’ve looked for her. Look for her, I guess. But there’s not much of a trail to follow. One night she walked out of her foster home, got in a car with someone who was waiting outside, and disappeared. The one kid who saw her leave didn’t get a make or a model. Hell, he barely got the color. Maybe dark blue or black. That’s it.” He looked a little bleak. “That’s the end of the trail.”

“But you have a theory.”

He half smiled, self-deprecatingly. “I always have a theory. I’ve thought about it fifteen thousand different ways. My sister wasn’t promiscuous, and she didn’t have a boyfriend. She barely had any friends at all, let alone secret friends who would pick her up in the middle of the night.”

“Low-risk lifestyle,” I murmured. “So she probably knew the person.”

“Knew him well, I suspect.” His jaw went tight as he paused. “No matter how many times I go over it in my mind, the only person I can see her going with is my father. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

I sucked in a breath. “You think your father—”

“I don’t know.”

“But you think—”

“I don’t know what I think,” he snapped. He sent me an apologetic look and took a deep breath. “I don’t like what I think.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Well, do you have a stupid answer? What did he say?”

“He told me to go to hell. Among other things.” He sighed. “And that he had no idea what happened to Anna. That I was an idiot to even question him. ‘We’re all we have left, Danny boy,’” he mocked. “‘No sense in us turning on one another.’”

It was like a key to the puzzle that was Danny. That was probably why he never talked about his father. Or Anna. And why he had such trouble letting people in. Believing that someone could actually love him. Probably why he went into cold cases. It helped him achieve closure for other families—almost like setting things right for her.

His sharp voice cut into my musing. “Don’t fucking profile me.”

I glanced at him sheepishly. “Sorry. Bad habit.” He knew me well. Profiling was almost second nature. I couldn’t help myself. After a pause I asked, “Do you think he killed her?”

“I don’t know. He says he wasn’t there. And part of me does wonder if maybe I’m just eager to find a way to blame him. If he’d been a better father, maybe….” Danny’s throat worked as he shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t want to believe she ran away. But she’d been unhappy for a very long time.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.”

“Isn’t everyone a little unhappy in their own way?”

I had no witty riposte to that. Mostly because it was true. Working in my field, seeing the things I saw… I sometimes got to see people on the worst, unimagined day of their lives. The beginning of their own private hell. So hell to the motherfucking yeah, it was just one of those truths of life I couldn’t dispute. Sometimes life sucked, and everyone was a little unhappy in their own way.

“You must hate them. Your parents, I mean.” I certainly did. “You must hate them in a very real ‘I’d put a bullet in you if I thought I’d get away with it’ kind of way.”

He sent me a grim smile. “Not nearly as much as I should.”

I watched as he levered himself out of his chair and stretched, and I enjoyed the sight of that long, lean body. The way his muscles pulled at the threadbare shirt. The brief glimpse of bare stomach as the shirt lifted a little. He caught me watching before I could avert my eyes, but other than a small smile, he didn’t say anything. “You coming in?”

How many times had he asked me that question before? Nostalgia made my throat a little thick, and it was a moment before I could reply. “Not yet. I just want to sit here and enjoy this beer.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“You don’t have to.” God, what are you saying? “Go, that is.” My mouth couldn’t seem to stop moving in what was, admittedly, a terrible direction.

He stared at me for a moment, his gaze dark and unreadable. He knew exactly what I really meant. My skin was suddenly flush… a little embarrassed, but mostly aroused. I didn’t know what I would do if he rejected me… even less what I would do if he took me up on it.

And then he came toward me with his inherent liquid grace, and I swallowed and wondered if I’d bitten off a little more than I could chew. That wasn’t just desire on his face. There was anger there too. Anger with me for leaving. Anger with me for trouncing all over our unspoken truce. Anger for even wanting me at all.

That was a lot of anger for someone to fuck you with.

And then it was too late to move, and his arms came down on either side of my chair, boxing me in. A sense of the familiar lulled me. The breathless expectation, the anticipation… even the smell of him turned me on—pine, beer, and faint traces of sweat and fresh air. It addled my brain. That’s the only excuse I have. I reached up and knotted a hand in the open vee of his shirt. Using the fabric as leverage, I pulled him down until we were face-to-face. Skin-to-skin. Breathing each other’s air.

I kissed him gently at first and pressed against slack lips. For a moment I was afraid he was going to push me away. That he wouldn’t kiss me back. I sank my teeth into his bottom lip and pulled him in gently but forcefully. And then he groaned—a brief sound of surrender as he gave in. He took over the kiss, and his lips pulled at mine—sucking, biting, demanding entry.

Our tongues slid against each other, hot and hungry as we took turns exploring each other’s mouths. I kissed him without reservation. Kissed him like it was the first time. Kissed him like I’d never left.

Only I had. And from the reserved way he kissed me back, he wasn’t about to forget it anytime soon. Even through my haze, I could tell it wasn’t… Danny. Wasn’t us. It was like kissing a stranger, someone I’d met in a club earlier that night. Hot. Really fucking hot. But impersonal. He wasn’t going to let me get close.

I let his shirt slip from my grasp and watched as he straightened. Our breathing was uneven. Choppy. He looked at me darkly. Quietly. There was no love in his gaze. For the first time, I’m not even sure there was like.

“I’m not a doll,” he finally said. “And I don’t like sitting on a shelf until you’re ready to play.”

My gaze dropped from the contempt in his blue eyes as heat climbed my cheeks. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s a fucking first.” He headed toward the house. “Good night.”