She thought of the framed copy of the Malaya on the wall behind her. ‘You said he was in the Philippines. In Bataan. He must have seen, experienced, terrible things.’
‘Then and later,’ Marcus murmured. ‘He was in the press corps in Korea.’
‘It changes you, seeing death and dying. People suffering. Knowing you can’t stop it or fix it. That you can only do so much. It damages you. Damages your soul. Pieces break off and shrivel up until they’re not recognizable as anything that had ever been good. But it sounds like your grandfather still had a fair bit left inside him that was good. That could feel. That cared and, importantly, could maintain reason. He was an adult with strong hands. You were a child and he was afraid he might truly hurt you. That he was able to separate himself before he raised his hand to you is commendable. A lot of people can’t do that, and they end up hurting the people they’re supposed to love the most. Sometimes physically and sometimes emotionally.’
His eyes were locked on hers, warmer now. Less remote. ‘We couldn’t have hurt him physically. He was Stone’s size and we were children. But we wouldn’t have hurt him emotionally either, even when we grew up.’
‘I know. I think he probably knew that too. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what you know. The fear goes far deeper than that, because that piece of our soul that we keep is the connection to what’s left of our humanity. If you allow yourself to open up, even to the people you love the most, and that good part somehow becomes damaged, too? What then?’
‘You have nothing,’ he murmured.
‘Exactly. The need to protect isn’t rational. It’s instinctive, the way you protect an injured part of your body when you’re in a fight. You want to be able to open the gate, to let people in, but only the people you love, who you can trust not to hurt you. Then you close the gate tight when you go back into the world. But sometimes it gets too hard to keep opening and closing the gate. You run out of strength.’
He finally broke eye contact, looking away. ‘Or the gate becomes rusty.’
‘True,’ she said quietly, wondering if either of them was still talking about his grandfather. ‘And sometimes you close the gate because you’re ashamed to let anyone in. To let anyone see. Because you keep seeing things you can’t unsee. And the damage spreads.’
‘Like a rot,’ he said flatly.
‘Yep.’ She drew a breath. ‘So you close the gate tight. Quarantine the rot. Make sure it doesn’t spread to anyone else.’
‘So why not quit before the rot consumes you?’ he asked, almost as if to himself.
‘I suppose only the individual can answer that question for himself.’
He met her eyes once more, his no longer guarded but sharp. ‘Or herself?’
She nodded soberly. ‘Or herself.’
‘So why, Scarlett? Why do you continue seeing things you can’t unsee?’
The question took her by surprise. ‘Because it’s all I know how to do,’ she answered honestly.
Anger flashed in those dark brown eyes. ‘Let someone else do it.’
She smiled up at him sadly. ‘And let the rot spread? That’s not the way I’m built.’ She cleared her throat. ‘And now I’m even later meeting Deacon. I need to go. Just email me the list when it’s done.’
‘It is done. It’s on the printer.’ He crossed back to his desk and picked up the single sheet of paper. ‘I’ll email it to you as well, in case you want to send it to Deacon.’
She took it and scanned the short list of names – only eight. Marcus had added the date of the threat, the exact wording, and a short summary of the article that had incited the person’s anger to begin with.
Carefully she folded the paper and slid it into her jacket pocket. ‘Thank you. And thank you for calling me this morning. I only wish I had gotten there a little sooner.’
‘I wish I had too. I might have gotten her out of there alive.’
Scarlett looked over her shoulder, her eyes drawn to the copy of the Malaya, and she realized that she still hadn’t told him about the baby. ‘I don’t think Tala would have left with you. Or with me, for that matter. She was going back to wherever she was being kept.’
He frowned down at her. ‘How do you know?’
‘Malaya wasn’t just her way of asking you to free her family. I think Malaya is the name of her child.’
Marcus paled under his tan, just as she’d feared he would. ‘Child? She had a child?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘How old is the child?’
‘It’s hard to say exactly. The ME thought Tala might have given birth anywhere from one to three years ago. If I had to guess, I’d put the baby’s age closer to a year. We found a teething ring in Tala’s pocket and we know she was still nursing.’
His throat worked hard for a moment. ‘She was only seventeen, Scarlett.’
‘I know,’ she said gently.
‘That means she would have gotten pregnant when she was fifteen.’
‘I know.’
‘She said the man owned her . . .’ He looked away without voicing the question they were both asking themselves – was Tala’s pregnancy the result of a rape? ‘How do you know the baby’s name was Malaya?’ he asked instead.
‘CSU found a pacifier in her pocket that had been labeled at some point. The ink is worn and smudged, but I think it said “Malaya”.’
His teeth clenched, a muscle ticking in his jaw. ‘Then she’s still out there. Unprotected.’ Abruptly he turned on his heel and went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and pulled out an older-model Glock and a double shoulder holster.
Scarlett considered asking if that was the gun he’d been carrying that morning while looking for the shooter, but decided the question would keep for a time when he was less . . . volatile.
He met her eyes as he shrugged into the well-worn leather holster, daring her to say a word. When she stared back silently, he broke eye contact to check the Glock’s chamber, set the safety and shoved the weapon into the left-hand side of the holster, then loaded the ammo carrier on the right. ‘I have a concealed carry permit,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘I know,’ she said calmly. ‘But I would like to know where you think you’re going.’
He looked up, his smile a mere baring of his teeth. ‘To find the child. Are you coming with me?’
Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 11.10 A.M.
Marcus stared at Scarlett across his desk, waiting for the recrimination that would undoubtedly come. Which he undoubtedly deserved. She’d trusted him with details about Tala and her baby that she could have – and probably should have – kept to herself, and he’d reacted by arming himself and acting like a deranged idiot. But . . . God. A baby. As soon as Scarlett had told him that Tala had been wearing a tracker, he’d wondered why the girl had taken such a huge risk coming to him. Now he understood.
From across his office, Scarlett studied him with those dark, dark blue eyes. He wondered what she saw. Probably a headstrong, reckless man who tended to get himself shot too often. Not anyone she’d take seriously.
But he wouldn’t back down. He couldn’t. Tala had come to him for help and he’d failed her. He was not going to fail that innocent child too. Not while he still had breath in his lungs.
‘Where will you go?’ Scarlett asked him in the same calm voice she’d used when she’d told him about the baby. He wanted to scream when he heard it, but then he remembered the stark pain that had ravaged her eyes when she’d told him how badly Tala had been beaten.
She could only have known that information if she had witnessed it. Which meant she’d viewed Tala’s body lying on a slab in the morgue. And it had torn her up inside. Marcus had seen that so very clearly. He’d also seen her wipe that pain from her eyes, hiding it away so that she could function. The calm voice she used now was as much a facade as her expressionless eyes had been.
‘Back to the neighborhoods around the park,’ he said. ‘Someo
ne had to have seen her or that dog.’
‘I’ve had uniforms canvassing the neighborhoods since daybreak. They haven’t found anyone who had seen her before – or will admit to it anyway.’
‘Because you sent uniforms. They might be more inclined to confide in someone who’s not a goddamn cop.’
He thought she’d wince at that, but she didn’t. She kept her calm and he wondered how much it cost her to do so. ‘Like a reporter?’ she asked mildly.
‘Yeah. People may not like us and they may not trust us, but there’s always one narcissist in the crowd who wants to be on the TV news, even in the nicest of neighborhoods.’
‘You’re not with the TV news,’ she pointed out, her tone logical and emotionless. But he could see her pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat and knew that while she seemed plasticized on the outside, she was very much alive on the inside.
He pulled a camcorder from the same drawer that had held his gun. ‘Fifteen minutes of fame is irresistible to people who crave it, regardless of the medium.’
She lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘Are you trying to make me angry with you, Marcus?’
‘Maybe. Maybe I just want to see you. The real you. I know you’re in there somewhere.’
She was quiet for a few pounding beats of his heart. Then she nodded once. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m in here somewhere, but I don’t have the luxury of letting the real me out to kick ass and take names just to entertain you. I can’t stop you from questioning the neighbors. But understand, if you cross the line, I will arrest you.’
Marcus had to swallow, the mental image of Scarlett kicking ass making his mouth water and his cock grow instantly hard. Which was ridiculous and inappropriate given the gravity of the situation, but completely undeniable. He casually shifted his weight to one foot, trying to relieve the pressure behind the zipper of his jeans.
‘Message received, loud and clear,’ he managed in a level voice. Then he lifted his brows, unable to resist one last jab at that shell of hers. ‘Does this mean that you’re not coming with me, Detective?’ he asked silkily.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh for the love of . . .’ She huffed an impatient sigh. ‘Just try not to get shot again, okay?’
He gave her a sincere nod. ‘I’ll do my very best.’
Shaking her head, she almost marched to the door to his office, then hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Thank you for the list of names. And for the videos.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said seriously, all posturing shoved aside. ‘Thank you for telling me about Tala and her baby. I know you didn’t have to.’
She made a face at that. ‘And I probably shouldn’t have. Do me a favor and keep that out of your paper, even though you make your living digging for news. I’d like to keep my job a little longer.’
‘I won’t print it or post it. Or blog about it. I promise.’
She nodded once. ‘If you do find that one narcissist who craves his fifteen minutes of fame . . .’
‘I’ll be sure to give you any information I’m able to pick up. Where will you be? Just,’ he added when she lifted her eyebrows again, ‘so that I know where to find you to tell you.’
She gave him a pitying look. ‘Really, Marcus? That’s the best you can do? If you want to know where I’m going next with this investigation, just ask.’
He snorted before he thought better of it. ‘I did ask earlier. You got that pissy look and said “To do my job.”’
Her lips twitched, so slightly that he might have missed it had he not been staring so intently. ‘Fair enough,’ she murmured. ‘Ask again. I’ll endeavor to be less pissy.’
He walked around the desk, stopping inches from where she still held the doorknob in an iron grip. He leaned down until their foreheads almost touched, allowing the scent of wildflowers to fill his head. ‘Detective Bishop, where are you going next with this investigation?’
That she had to draw a steadying breath before she answered did wonders for his ego.
‘I’m meeting Deacon in the park. We figured that if she knew her captors could hear anything she said through the tracker, she might have written something down. He’s looking for any message or note she might have hidden under a bush or in the knothole of a tree.’
‘He won’t find anything.’
She pulled back a few inches, eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because I’ve already looked. I spent hours going over that patch of woods. I didn’t need to know about the ankle tracker to know she was desperately afraid of someone or something. I figured she was afraid of being followed, or maybe that she didn’t speak English, or maybe even that she was mute. I thought I might find she’d dropped a note on the ground, or hidden one, so I looked . . . and looked. But I found nothing.’
‘Did you search at night or in the day?’
‘Both.’
She frowned. ‘You might have trampled any evidence by searching.’
‘Yeah, well I didn’t realize she was about to be shot.’
She sighed. ‘Good point.’ Then she stunned him by poking his chest with her forefinger, hard enough to make him wince. ‘If you do go out, make sure you’re wearing a vest, and be careful.’ And with that she was gone, leaving him staring at the door, listening for any disturbance in the lobby as she made her way to the front door. He turned his gaze to the security monitor on his desk and watched her walk toward the street, immediately checking her phone the moment she was clear of the building.
He realized he’d been staring up at the monitor for more than a minute when his neck started to go stiff. All he could see was Scarlett’s back, but still his mouth watered. Which was pretty damn pathetic. The only consolation was that she’d seemed affected by him too.
There would be time to explore the possibilities between them later, once they’d located Tala’s baby and the couple who’d owned the girl. To accomplish either of those things, he needed to stay intact. Plus, he kept his promises. Especially promises made to a woman with midnight-blue eyes who had him wishing to hell that he were a better man.
Marcus backed away from the door and stripped out of the shoulder holster, stacking it and its contents on his desk. Once again he opened the drawer that had held his gun and pulled out the old Kevlar vest Stone had retrieved from his apartment that morning. The vest he’d worn in the alley had been a newer, lighter model, one he could wear under a T-shirt without attracting suspicion. But that vest was now in CPD custody, ruined beyond repair anyway. His old vest was bulkier and far more stifling. He’d need to wear a long-sleeved button-up shirt to hide it.
He grimaced. Bulky Kevlar and a long-sleeved shirt. In August. Freaking fantastic. I’m going to roast to death before any bullet has a chance to do me in, he thought sourly as he pulled his T-shirt off over his head.
The sharp rap of knuckles was the only warning he had before his door cracked open. ‘Marcus?’ Gayle said, sounding tense.
He spun, putting his back to the wall behind him. All he needed was for Gayle to see the bruise on his back, which was huge and dark if his current level of discomfort was any indication. ‘Not—’
The door pushed all the way open, leaving Gayle holding the outer doorknob and glaring at Scarlett Bishop, who shoved past her and stopped cold.
‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ Gayle said furiously. ‘She is the rudest woman I have ever met. Stone isn’t here. Should I call 911 and have her removed?’
Scarlett hadn’t said a word in her own defense, because she was staring at Marcus. Specifically she was staring at his bare chest, making him want to preen.
But he didn’t, of course, keeping his dignity intact – at least on the outside. ‘It’s okay, Gayle. Leave her alone. And please close the door.’
With a dark glare, Gayle complied, slamming the door with more force than necessary. The sound jerked Scarlett out of her deer-in-the-headlights trance. She turned around quickly, but not before he saw her cheeks turn tomato red.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I . . .’ She blew out a breath. ‘Are you decent yet?’
‘Of course,’ he said, grinning when she turned to find him still shirtless. He spread his arms wide, letting her look her fill. ‘I am far from indecent. I show a lot more at the beach. Besides, you barged into my office. Again. Would have served you right to find me buck naked.’
The red in her cheeks spread to cover her entire face. ‘Do you plan to get dressed anytime soon?’ she asked stiffly, making him want to chuckle. ‘Because I need your help.’
Instantly he was sober. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, shoving his arm into the sleeve of the vest. The other sleeve eluded him, though. His back was so sore that reaching behind him had become a problem.
‘Nothing bad.’ She approached briskly, taking over the task of putting him into the vest. Gently she gripped his forearm and slid it into the sleeve, then pulled the vest snugly around him and snapped all the fasteners in place. ‘That bruise on your back has to hurt. Did you ice it?’
‘No,’ he said tightly, his heart ricocheting inside his chest cavity. Her hands were capable and quick, but they’d been her hands and they’d been all over his torso.
She picked up the T-shirt he’d discarded. ‘Were you going to wear this?’
He needed a moment to rein his pulse back to safe levels. ‘No. I’ve got a long-sleeved shirt in my closet. It’s in the bathroom. In there.’ He pointed vaguely in the right direction.
She’d disappeared into the bathroom when he heard her exclaim, ‘Holy shit! This bathroom is bigger than both of mine at home, put together.’ She emerged, a dark blue shirt in her hand. ‘This one okay?’
‘Yeah.’ He probably could have dressed himself, but let her do it, breathing in the scent of her hair as she buttoned him up.
‘Did you have that bathroom put in or did you inherit it?’
‘Inherited. My grandfather liked his creature comforts.’
‘I can see that.’ She stepped back, all business again. ‘I have a task for you, one that I think would be a better use of your time than knocking on doors. You wanna hear it?’