Killing Bliss (24 page)

Silence, dark and heavy, shrouded the air between them. "No. At first I wasn't even sure the shots I heard were real. Thought they might be from the TV—there was so much going on down there. But, no, I didn't see anything. Gus called up the stairs, and I came down. By then, it was all over... except for the bleeding Belle was on the floor—" She shuddered.

"What about Gus? Beauty?"

"Beauty told me later they'd been hiding in Belle's room, that while they were there she'd calmed the baby down. She said she didn't see anything, either."

"When Gus went downstairs, did he have a gun?"

She looked stunned by the question. "No."

"Logical question," he said calmly.

"We might have been street kids, but that doesn't mean we were armed and dangerous."

"Then what?" he asked, shifting away from the gun talk—and not so sure about the armed and dangerous part, considering what he'd heard about Vanelleto.

She glared at him a while longer, then said, "Gus yanked me into the bedroom, then nearly threw me out the window. Beauty was already gone. He said he'd be right behind us, but he never came. We waited—a long time—then we took off together, stuck together, too, for over a year before she moved on. Actually, coming to Star Lake was her idea. Gus? He disappeared like smoke. He was good at that."

"And the boy? What happened to him?"

"I don't know." She shook her head, the gesture weary. "I didn't even see him. Gus got me out the window so fast... All I know is he wasn't crying anymore."

"Beauty was in the room with him for a while with Gus. What did she say?"

She hesitated, then again rubbed her forehead. "She said he was sleeping in the middle of Belle's bed, which was probably why I didn't see him."

Cade's logic denied the sleeping scenario. Through the sound of gunshots? All that racket? Damned unlikely.

Bliss's police statement reared up in his brain.
Gus did the killing; the girls egged him on...

Someone was lying: Addy to protect her friends, or Frank Bliss to protect himself. The thought unsettled him, and he reminded himself—again—he wasn't here to solve a murder. But no matter how much he denied it, the murder and Josh's disappearance were a sealed unit—Josh, a box within a box—with the odds of finding him alive lessening with every word Addy said.

Damn. He shouldn't believe a goddamn word out of her mouth. He wasn't sure she believed herself when it came to what happened to the boy. He shouldn't care about a young girl who'd found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, whose loyalties were probably skewed by too many nights sleeping on a cement mattress.

He should be the hard-nosed skeptical cop.

But then, he'd always been a lousy cop.

Addy stared morosely out the cabin window, as if lost in the pain and horror of that long-ago night, as if talking about it had emptied her.

He stood, walked to her. "You miss your friends," he said, lifting her chin, and deciding to, if not change the subject, change the course of it.

She pulled back, but not right away. "Yes. We took care of each other. We were family, you know. Loved each other. Like you and your... wife."

I don't have a wife, not anymore.
The pain in his chest was sudden and sharp, but not a dagger this time, more like the thorn on a rose. "That I know," he said.

She raised a hand to her face, brushed at what he expected was a tear. "You know those should-haves we talked about? That little boy is one of mine. Always will be. I shouldn't have listened to Gus. I should have gone downstairs when I wanted to, took that baby, and put him somewhere safe. Then at least I'd know for sure I'd done something." She turned back to face the lake, added. "Other than run away."

"You were a scared kid."

"Yeah, I was that all right."

The silence in the room grew, and he sensed the woman in front of him, looking out over Star Lake, was emotionally drained. He knew the feeling. He also knew the past was an unstable place, the disconnect between then and now irrevocable, only as clear as drifts of memory allowed. And when the past was shaped by fear and violence, as Addy's was, the effort to retrieve something of value from the confusion, denial, might-have-beens, and endless should-haves was exhausting. And it hurt like a son of a bitch.

He touched her nape, gripped her shoulders. Tension, transformed into knotted sinew and compacted muscle, ridged hard and high along her shoulders. When she tried to pull away, he held her tighter. "Don't," he said, pressing his thumbs into the base of her neck under her short hair, kneading gently. "You don't have to say any more. Not right now, at least."

"I should—"

"—do nothing except relax," he whispered close to her ear.

A dark silence filled the room, and Addy stood quietly, and very, very still, the tension in her shoulders unyielding under his massaging fingers. It was like trying to make an oak tree bend in a breeze. He leaned close to her ear. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Her answer, after a long pause, was a nod, then a long bone-loosening shudder. Feeling her soften under his hands, her muscles mellow under his thumbs, was a gift. A gift he'd won with a lie—because he knew in the end he would hurt her, and the thought of it settled on his brain like a burr.

"I don't want to have sex with you, Harding," she murmured, letting her head fall forward so he could run his fingers up to her hairline.

"I know. You've made that sadly clear." He bent to kiss her neck, and she sighed. "And believe it or not, I'm okay with it."

"Good thinking. Smart men avoid sex with women wanted as accomplices to murder."

He spun her around, lifted her chin, and forced her to look at him. "Did you kill anyone, Addy?"

Her expression darkened, moisture gathered in her eyes. "No, but I should have done something for that little boy, and..."

"And?"

"I wanted to kill someone." The words came in a low halting rush.

"Who?"

"Frank Bliss, for what he did to Beauty. Belle Bliss, for what she did to Gus."

"I wanted to kill the dry cleaner who ruined my graduation suit, but I didn't."

She surprised him by leaning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist. "Yeah, I get your point. There's a world of innocence between the wanting and the doing." She recited the last with the resignation of a child forced to repeat the instructions of an overbearing parent.

"Someone tell you that?"

"Lund Baylor—when I first came to the lake." She raised her eyes to his, her expression open and stark. "You asked if I killed anyone, and because
I
'm going to ask you for your help, I'll say it again. No. I did not kill anyone—and I didn't help anyone else kill anyone, either. And it's important to me that you believe that." She looked up at him, her gaze fearless, but slightly baffled, as if she couldn't believe what she'd said.

He touched her chin with his knuckles. "I do believe you," he answered, and despite it going against all his logic and experience, his years of training, and the cynicism he'd nurtured as a cop, he meant it—which made him as baffled as she was.

Her gaze settled on his mouth, and he recognized the longing that misted her eyes, felt the same way. "I should go," she said, not moving an inch.

He ran a finger along her jaw. "You should stay."

"I don't want to ha—"

"—have sex with you, Cade," he finished for her.

She smiled, but it wouldn't hold. "I mean it. There's more to tell, and sex will make things... messy."

"Sex does that all right." He touched her crazy ragged hair. Amazingly soft. Then he reached behind her to turn off the lamp beside the chair. The room went into half light, some of it slanting through the open door of the bedroom. "I still think you should stay." He ran a finger around the curve of her ear. "First, because you have a story to finish, and second, because I don't want you to go."

The second reason was the critical one, the truest one, the one that would, in the end, cause the most trouble.

He took her hand, led her to his bedroom.

Chapter 16

Addy let him lead her to the side of his bed, but once there she stopped, scanned its even surface with an expression part curiosity, part terror. "I wasn't kidding, you know. Sex really isn't my thing."

"Sex is everybody's thing, but not tonight." He turned on the bedside lamp, tossed the quilt back, and looked over his shoulder to where Addy stood, rigid as a steel girder.

She looked at him, looked at the bed, looked at him again. The light from the lamp, casting downward, showed the polish of the maple cabinet it sat on, but did little to illuminate her face.

He sat on the edge of the bed, offered his hand. "Come here."

She took his hand, and he pulled her down to sit beside him. "That wasn't so tough, was it?" He smoothed some hair back behind her ear. When it sprung free again, he repeated the move, stroking her soft cheek with the back of his hand on his way back.

When she closed her eyes, he eased her back onto the bed, stretched out beside her, and pulled her into his arms. She was tense, but she didn't protest. After a few moments, she shifted closer to him, and he kissed her hair, careful to hold her loosely.

Neither of them spoke, until Addy broke the silence. "I guess you're pretty good at it, huh?"

"At what?"

"The sex thing."

"Okay... given the necessary inspiration." He kissed her hair again, and she nuzzled under his chin. Her breath, breezing hot and low across his neck, currently provided all the inspiration he needed. He kept that flash to himself.

"I bet."

No response required, so he didn't give one, and the silence deepened.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Uh-huh."

"Do you think there's something wrong with me?" she asked, her voice low and serious. "I mean, because I don't, uh, want it."

"No."

She pulled from his arms and sat up lotus-style on the bed to look down at him, her expression intense, deeply curious. "Then why don't I? Want it, I mean?"

He put one arm under his head. "Probably because you've got a damned skewed idea of what it's all about. I'm sure life on the street and Beauty's rape didn't help. Add in a couple of unsuccessful trial runs with summer tenants you probably didn't care about, and from your point of view, what's to like?" He reached out his hand, tugged her earlobe. "That kind of experience makes a wheelbarrow full of dirt and a good day's work beat sex hands down."

"What made you so damn smart, anyway?"

"That's not smart, it's common sense." He shifted his head to look at her more directly. "Which doesn't stop me from wanting you, by the way."

She picked at the sheet, did a bit of lip chewing, then said, "Even if I'm a loser in bed."

"Even if." He propped himself up on one elbow. "Though I seriously doubt—if you had the right partner—you'd be a loser. In anything."

She rested her elbows on her thighs, cupped her face in her hands, and stared at him. Whatever her thoughts were, she kept them to herself. And whatever they were, they didn't make her happy. She looked edgy and annoyed.

He patted the bed beside him. "Don't over think it. Let it go."

"I don't think I want to. Let it go, I mean." She took her hands from her face and clasped them loosely between her knees. "When I finish what I started tonight, when you know all I know about Belle Bliss's murder, it's going to change everything. You might not feel... what you're feeling now. I mean about wanting me." She sighed. "Which means I might never have this chance again." She looked at him then, with her own delicious mix of innocence and courage. "I think we should make love, Cade. Because"—she faltered—"because I trust you. And because you make me feel like... like an ice-cream sandwich under a hot sun."

When Cade located a working part of his brain, he reached for her hands, took them in his. "You sure about this?"

"I'm sure, but"—she swallowed—"you'll have to do all the work."

He kissed her palm. "Sweetheart, making love to you will be about as far from 'work' as I can imagine." Although there was a problem. Addy was virtually a virgin, and he hadn't made love since before Dana died, which could be a challenge to his long-ignored libido.