The Strong Silent Type Page 9

  He knew how that could be.

  And he was certain.

  But it wasn’t enough. She had to come back with him. Rose had to come back home.

  So here he was, sitting in the diner’s parking lot, steeling himself off so that he could convince her by using photographs of their life together, photographs of the children they’d had, both looking the way they’d looked when she’d disappeared and the way they looked now.

  He needed to know where she’d been for fifteen years and why she didn’t remember him.

  The pit of his stomach felt as if it were harboring a cannonball. Praying, he got out, the album and novel under his arm.

  When he walked in, the diner was empty except for the sunlight that filled it.

  Rose wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  For a moment, his heart froze. Had she disappeared again? Had he imagined it all? Imagined her? No, the fingerprints were real. And Rayne had seen her, too. It wasn’t just him.

  Over in the corner, the cashier looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Can I help you?”

  He crossed to her, hoping she could. “Excuse me, is Rose—I mean, is Claire around?”

  The heavyset woman beamed. “No, she’s off today. Just me and my husband here today, I’m afraid.” She began to rise from her perch. “Everybody always asks for Claire. That smile of hers brings in a lot of business. What’ll you have?”

  “Do you know where I can find her?” He saw a wary look come into the woman’s brown eyes. He lowered his eyes to her name tag. “Lucy.”

  She shook her head. Her smile was sympathetic. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

  She probably thought he was some kind of stalker, Andrew guessed. “It’s really important I find her. I need to talk to her.” Before she could turn him down or call her husband out, Andrew opened the album and placed it on the counter between them. He pointed to the photograph of a young Rose surrounded by their children. He was standing next to her. “I’m her husband. I’ve been trying to find her for fifteen years.”

  Lucy’s mouth fell open.

  Half an hour later, he was standing before the door of a garden apartment, feeling as if his very life were on the line. He’d chased down dark alleys after perps with less fear than he was feeling now.

  He’d told his story to Lucy and the woman had been deeply moved. She’d pored over the photographs in the album, saying that she’d known all along that had to be more to Claire’s life than what the woman had told her. Claire had turned up at their diner fifteen years ago, looking for work, having no place to stay. She’d seemed overwrought and nervous. Lucy told him that she and her husband had put Claire up for a few weeks and when she’d gotten together enough money, she moved into a place of her own.

  No one, Lucy said, could have asked for a better, more tireless worker. Lucy loved her like a daughter.

  At the end of her story, she’d given him Claire’s address.

  The door opened on his first knock.

  His Rose was in the doorway, her hand on the doorjamb, her body blocking any access.

  “Lucy called me,” she explained. She looked at him hesitantly. “You’re the man who came into the diner the other day.”

  They had history—years together—not just a few moments over opposite sides of a cup of coffee, he wanted to shout. Instead he whispered, “Don’t you know me?”

  “You’re the man who came in the other day,” she repeated, as if clinging to that piece of information.

  “Rose,” he began, reaching out to her.

  She pulled back, but still blocked his way into her apartment. It was obvious she didn’t want him to come in. “My name is Claire,” she insisted. “I don’t know a Rose. Please go away.”

  He’d waited too long to be sent away like this. “Rose, I’m your husband. I’ve been looking for you for fifteen years.”

  She swallowed, uncertain. Afraid. That old, haunting feeling was coming back. The one that stole into her dreams, making them nightmares. She tried vainly to block it. “If you were my husband, something inside of me would know you. I’m sorry, but—”

  Desperate, Andrew opened the album and held it up in front of him. “Look, this is you holding Callie. She’s our first daughter. And here’s Shaw, that’s our oldest boy. And here—”

  Shutting her eyes, she shook her head. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember,” she repeated more loudly. “I don’t know who any of these people are.” He was frightening her now. Images were flashing through her brain like sections of an electrical storm. It’d been like that when she’d first come to. Just before that man had picked her up on the side of the road. The one who’d tried to force himself on her. She’d thrown herself from the car just in time. The past frightened her. She’d given up trying to remember it. “I’m sorry you can’t find your wife, but she’s not me.”

  “What were your parents’ names?”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know.”

  “Amy and Bill Gallagher,” he told her. Her parents were dead now. They’d died thinking their only child had drowned. Andrew fired another question at her, trying desperately to shake her, to get to her. “Where were you born?”

  “I don’t know!” Her voice cracked.

  He wanted to take her into his arms, to hold her, but he knew that would only frighten her more. “Aurora, California. The same place where we lived. Where the kids and I still live. Aurora,” he repeated. There was no flicker of recognition in her eyes. She began to shut the door. He spoke more rapidly. “Your name is Rose Gallagher Cavanaugh. We met in elementary school and got married before I graduated from the police academy. All of them followed, you know—the kids, they all work at the police department. And they miss you very, very much.”

  She didn’t want this, didn’t want to make the nightmares come back. He had to leave. “Look, I’m sorry you came up all this way for nothing, but I’m not the woman you’re looking for.”

  He put his hand up as she started to close the door. “I matched your prints.” She stopped to look at him, confusion on her face. Andrew fished a spoon out of his pocket and held it up. “I took this from the diner and matched the prints on it to the ones that were on your favorite book.” Handing the spoon to her, he showed her the novel. “Gone with the Wind. Remember?” He peered at her face, but there was nothing to indicate that he’d broken through. “You used to like to read it every night. I told you I felt like I was competing with Rhett Butler.”

  When he offered her the book, she pushed it away. “No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. Please leave me alone.” This time, she managed to close the door on him.

  Andrew stood staring at the door for several moments, waiting for her to open it again. Waiting for her to come out and tell him that she’d changed her mind, that she’d hear him out.

  She didn’t.

  He took out a card from his pocket, one of the old ones that had his number at the precinct on it. He’d crossed out the number and written in his home number instead. Andrew stuck it inside the book beside the dedication.

  Bending down, he placed Rose’s book down on the doormat that cheerfully proclaimed Welcome and then walked away.

  Chapter Eight

  S he was getting to him.

  Hawk stopped looking over the files spread across his desk, stopped pretending he was reading them. Because he wasn’t. He’d been stuck on the same damn sentence for over ten minutes now. Stuck on it and it still hadn’t registered.

  He’d never thought it could be possible. It had taken nine months, but she was getting to him. Giving no warning, sounding no alarms. Odorless, tasteless, invisible, like carbon monoxide, Teri Cavanaugh had somehow managed to slip into his system.

  He would have said that it had all started when his partner had been looped on painkillers and had kissed him in the car, but that, if anything, had just been the trigger. The process had begun a lot earlier than that, although for the life of him, Hawk couldn’t pinpoint
exactly when.

  He was attracted to her.

  Attracted physically and emotionally, although he would have been the last person to think the latter was possible for him. But if not, why else would he have told her about Jocko? Why else would he have allowed her even a glimpse into the life he’d once led? Why else had he opened up the smallest bit to her, he who conducted himself with the gregariousness of a clam?

  There was no other explanation. Thoughts of Teri popped into his mind at random times, completely unrelated to whatever he was thinking.

  Because she’d gotten to him.

  Gotten to him with her nails-on-chalkboard-grating cheerfulness and her over-the-top optimism.

  Cavanaugh was a cop, for Pete’s sake. The daughter of a head cop. She knew about the kinds of people who had once populated his own world exclusively. And her mother had died when she was still a kid. How the hell could Cavanaugh maintain her upbeat attitude against those kinds of things?

  And yet she did. And because she did, because she seemed to care about everything and everyone, she’d somehow managed to get to him. To burrow her way under his skin and take up residence.

  He didn’t want to be gotten.

  He wanted to continue just as he was, being a dedicated detective working the cases he was assigned. He didn’t need a social life, didn’t need anything at all beyond that. Just work, just the feeling that somehow, some way, he was making the slightest bit of difference by tilting the balance between good and evil to the plus side just a fraction.

  That was all he needed.

  But now, with this—this woman buzzing around in his life like an annoying hummingbird that wouldn’t fly away, he needed more.

  Wanted more.

  Wanted her, he realized with a shock that coursed through his body.

  She felt Hawk’s gaze before she ever looked up from her desk. When she did, she couldn’t read his expression.

  So what else was new?

  She straightened, pushing her shoulders back just a little. Like a prisoner standing against a wall, facing execution without knowing the crime.

  “What, am I wearing my lunch?” She ran a thumb quickly along either side of her mouth even as she asked. Lunch had been a sandwich grabbed from a popular fast-food restaurant.

  Hawk shook his head. “Just thinking.”

  “You looked as if you were shooting darts in my direction. Anything I did? Lately,” she qualified before he could launch into a list of her shortcomings. Her sins in his eyes were many, at the top of which was probably breathing.

  “Nothing you can help,” he muttered, looking back at his notes.

  Okay, what did that mean? And why, in the middle of a growing investigation that was bringing more and more home invasions with similar M.O.’s to the fore, did she suddenly feel as if goose bumps were forming up and down, all along her arms? Goose bumps were connected to being cold, to fear and to feelings.

  The last thing in the world she needed was to have feelings for her partner. That way always led to trouble, and when that partner was a monosyllabic, scowling man who’d rather cut her dead than talk to her, trouble suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

  If he knew, if he suspected the growing attraction she felt for him, Hawkins would be out looking for a new partner before she could count to one.

  She didn’t want that. She was finally breaking him in to where he was, if not comfortably predictable—because with Hawk there was no comfort zone—at least to where they had some kind of a moderate rhythm worked out. She didn’t want to lose it.

  Get your mind back on your work. At least that’s safe territory.

  Leaning back in her chair, Teri looked at the new case files that had recently been added to the pile on her desk. These involved people who had reported home invasions as far back as three years ago. She’d been looking them over since she’d come in this morning, and had found only one pattern. The income and lifestyle of the people had been so diverse and they’d been so scattered across the city that the M.O. hadn’t really stood out until someone went looking for it.

  Not one of them showed any signs of forced entry.

  Tossing aside the pen she’d been chewing on, she voiced out loud the thought that suddenly came to her. “What if they didn’t start out doing home invasions?”

  Hawk raised his eyes in her direction again. “What do you mean?”

  She pulled her chair in closer, drawing nearer to Hawk. “What if they started out doing simple burglaries, you know, when the people weren’t home.” The more the idea gelled, the more excited she became. This could open up doors. “Maybe they graduated first to home invasions, for the kicks of pulling it off in front of an audience, then went on to culling their quarry so that they only hit the ones they knew for certain were well-off—the ones who drove the most expensive cars,” she concluded, pulling in the piece of information they were still trying to follow up on, that of the lead Jocko had given them. “With whatever nest egg they’d accumulated to fall back on, they could afford to be a little discriminating. Hit the right place, it’s worth hitting three other lesser affluent ones.” She beamed at him, finished. “We clear this up, we could be clearing a whole rash of burglaries.”

  He supposed the idea had merit, at least enough to check out the possibilities. “How far back you want to go?”

  She thought a second. The ones on her desk and his already went back three years. “Five years should give us a good foothold.”

  Back from lunch, a container of black coffee in one hand and a package of cupcakes in the other, Mulrooney walked in on the tail end of her statement. He looked from Hawk to Teri. “You want to investigate five years’ worth of burglaries?” The question was punctuated with a groan.

  “Just the ones without signs of forced entry,” she qualified.

  Kassidy was bringing up his partner’s rear and stopped cold. “And then what?”

  Teri said the only thing that followed logically. “And then we talk to the victims and find out if they’d ever gone to a restaurant along Bancroft Avenue before the burglary took place.”

  Hawk had another take on the matter. “Too exclusive.” She looked at him quizzically. “Spread the net wider. See if any of the victims ever used a valet service of any kind, anyplace.” Valet services were not restricted to just restaurants. “We get a pattern, we can start focusing on specific valet services.”

  Mulrooney’s eyes narrowed. “You think someone at a valet service is behind the home invasions? Why?”

  “Got a tip,” Hawk told him. “The idea bears checking out.” He looked at the two men across from him. He could see that neither one of them thought very highly of the speculation. “Hey, until something better comes along, we go with this.”

  “You’re the primary.” Mulrooney sighed. Then his small eyes darted toward Teri accusingly. He’d picked up enough to know who was behind the idea. “Think this is a waste of time,” he muttered, trudging off to his desk. Kassidy followed behind him, shaking his head the way he always did whenever there was extra work to do.

  “Nice work,” Hawk said almost under his breath after the other two detectives had gone to their desks.

  Teri raised her eyes. “Excuse me?” She tilted her head, as if to hear better. “Were you talking to yourself, or was that a general comment?”

  “Neither.” Hawk sighed. He should have never said anything in the first place. “It was intended for you.”

  She smiled in mild triumph. “Might be nice to hear it said a little louder.”

  “Don’t push it, Cavanaugh. It was a good idea. That doesn’t mean it’s going to get us anywhere.”

  “I think it is.” Teri leaned her head on her upturned palm. “Care to make a small wager?”

  His scowl deepened. “I don’t bet.”

  The way her mouth curved smugly got under his skin. “Afraid you’ll lose?”

  He surprised himself by asking, “What kind of a wager?”

  Mentally Teri rubbed he
r hands together. “If I win, you come to breakfast at my house.”

  He thought of the Shannon. “Is this another one of your attempts at trying to ‘socialize’ me?”

  It was, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “No, it’s just letting my dad finally meet my partner.” He’d met all her siblings’ partners and he’d once been partnered with the man who’d preceded Hawk. But since Hawk never attended any group functions, her father had never met him. “Besides, he makes a mean Belgian waffle.”

  “The chief cooks?”

  What planet had he been living on? Everyone knew her father was every bit as good with a spatula as he was with a service revolver. But then, this was Hawk, who rarely listened to anything that went on in the precinct unless it was work related.

  “Like a dream,” she declared. “He put himself through school and the academy by working as a chef. My father could cook rings around my mother—when he had the chance. Most of the time, he didn’t. Not until she…” Her voice trailed off. The next moment, she’d regrouped. “So, is it a bet?”

  To her surprise, there was mild interest in his eyes. “What do I get if I win?”

  His question caught her unprepared. “Huh? I really hadn’t thought about you winning.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. Whatever else she was, he’d developed a healthy respect for her instincts when it came to the cases they worked. It hadn’t come easily. At first glance, she looked like the classic bubble-headed blonde. Having her talk a mile a minute didn’t exactly dispel the impression. But she’d worked hard and eventually, he’d changed his mind. The lady was sharp. “You’re that sure about this?”

  “I’m that sure.”

  Hawk blew out a breath, taking a momentary respite before trying to tackle his work again. “Must be nice.” He had never been that sure of anything, other than himself and that he was meant to lead a solitary life. That was why having her around, rattling his cage, shaking up the foundations that he’d been so certain had been set in stone but were now quivering like Jell-O, was so damn unsettling. The last thing he was certain about—he wasn’t anymore.