Guilty (20 page)

Which was stupid. Keeping an immaculate house was not and had never been one of her priorities. At least the place was clean (well, reasonably), if not entirely tidy.

"Who was that man, Mom?" Ben asked as she closed and locked the kitchen door, then turned back into the kitchen. She folded her arms over her chest, rubbing her upper arms with her hands to ward off the sudden chill that beset her despite the supposed warmth-giving properties of the oversized sweatshirt. Braga was watching her. Hoping to hide as much of her agitation as she could from his too-keen gaze, she dropped her arms to her sides as she forced a smile for Ben. Her little boy's eyes were big on her face; his small mouth was tight with anxiety. His expression killed her, but with Braga watching, she tried not to let it show.

"I don't know." Shaking her head, she took the garage door opener from him and put it in their catchall place on the counter by the door along with all the other things they would need before they dashed out in the morning.

"So, you want to tell me what's going on?"

Braga's eyes were on her face. They were almost black in the unforgiving light, and narrowed with speculation. He looked even more tired than he had earlier, she thought, and on edge. His lean jaw was dark with stubble, and the set of his mouth verged on grim. The lines bracketing his nose and mouth had deepened, and there were fine lines around his eyes and shadows beneath them that she hadn't noticed before. The top button of his white shirt was undone, and the knot of his dark red tie had been loosened. He wore the same worn tan blazer—minus its top button now—and navy slacks as before.

"There was a man outside," Ben said, before Kate could reply. Of course Ben was going to tell what he knew; she wouldn't expect, or want, him to do anything else. Unlike her, her son had no reason to lie. "He was scary."

"Just now?" Braga stiffened and glanced past Kate toward the door, as if he was prepared to head back outside. "When I pulled up?" "He left," Kate said. "It really wasn't anything." "What did he do?"

"He came out from behind the tree and said, 'Are you Ben?'" Ben told him. "And then my mom came."

The idea that the stranger had known she had a son named Ben took Kate's breath away. She felt dizzy all over again. But she couldn't let it show, not now, not with Braga there. He was too perceptive, and she had too much to hide.

"He just said my name," Kate said. "Like this:
'Kate
—
White.' "
She imitated the ominous tone. Then, for Braga's benefit, she shivered ostentatiously. As if that alone had been enough to terrify her silly.

Braga frowned. "That's all?"

"Mom told me to run into the house. That's what I was doing when you came."

Braga's gaze shifted back to Kate. She nodded agreement.

"Who was it? Did you know him?"

Kate shook her head. "No."

"Can you give me a description?"

Kate complied.

"I thought he was going to kill us." Unzipping his hoodie as he spoke, Ben looked earnestly up at Braga. "So did my mom." He glanced at her for confirmation, and when she didn't say anything, he added, "You know you did. I could tell."

Braga's gaze fixed once again on her face.

"It was ... a little unnerving," she admitted. That had to be one of the great understatements of her life. "I think it scared us so much because it was dark and ... he just appeared out of the blue." She followed up with a small smile and a shrug, diminishing the importance of the event. "It was kind of bizarre."

Braga evidently did not read body language very well, because he was moving purposefully toward her—and the door—even before she finished. His jacket parted to give her a glimpse of a businesslike black shoulder holster and gun lying flat against the left side of his chest. "Where are you going?" She still stood in his path. But unless she meant to physically block his exit, there wasn't anything she could do to keep him in the kitchen. Bowing to the inevitable as he kept coming, she stepped aside to let him pass.

"Outside to look around." Beaching for the knob, he glanced back at her as he spoke. "In case this joker's still close by. You can fill me in on any details I missed when I come back in."

"He's long gone." Kate was certain of that. Besides, if he wasn't, she certainly didn't want Braga to find him. She didn't want this veteran detective grilling any acquaintance of Mario's about anything. The thought was almost as scary as the stranger's sudden appearance had been.

Almost.

"I'll just check." He picked up the garage door opener and left the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

Pressing her lips together, trying to slow the still-frantic racing of her pulse, Kate was left staring at the white-painted panels of the closed kitchen door. While she listened to the muffled growl of the garage door rising, she said a little prayer that the thug was indeed long gone.

"Are you okay, mom?" Ben asked from behind her.

Kate jumped, caught herself, then turned to smile at him. The last thing she wanted was to frighten her child any more.

"Of course I'm okay. I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." He regarded her critically. "You look really upset."

"I am upset," she admitted, because there wasn't any point in denying something he already knew. "But I'm getting over it. Just having somebody pop up like that would upset anybody. But he didn't really
do
anything."

"It was like something out of a horror movie," Ben said. "I thought he was going to start slashing us up or something. Like in
Halloween."

Kate was starting to feel a little more normal, normal enough at least to put up a front of normalcy for Ben. She narrowed her eyes at him. He wasn't allowed to watch R-rated movies, and he knew it.

"Which you saw when?"

He looked guilty. "Uh ... Samantha was watching it one time."

"Uh-huh." But Ben seeing a forbidden movie was near the bottom of her list of worries at the moment. She shook her head reprovingly at him, then moved toward him and wrapped her arms around his thin body, hugging him tight. What would her life be like without Ben in it? She didn't want to find out. "You were so brave out there. You did exactly what I told you to do, too. Good job."

Instead of protesting or trying to wriggle away, which ordinarily he would do, Ben hugged her back, quick and hard. Kate knew from that that he was still shaken by the encounter.

They heard the rattle of the garage door closing a split second before the kitchen door opened. Ben was already pulling out of her arms as Braga walked in.

"Nobody," he said in response to Kate's questioning look. "I have a black-and-white looking around the neighborhood, though, just in case." He glanced at Ben, who stood by Kate's side regarding him with some caution, then smiled and held out his hand. "I'm Tom Braga, by the way."

"Ben White." Ben shook hands, looking and sounding so grown up suddenly that Kate felt a tightness in her throat. There was such a man-to-man air about the exchange, and again she felt she was being given a glimpse of the man her son would someday become.

If she could just keep the monsters at bay long enough.

That thought was enough to make her tense all over again.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Moving toward the table, she started to gather the remains of their homework session as she frowned at Braga over her shoulder. As an aside, she added, "Ben, would you put these away? "

She passed the two pencils they had used to Ben, who took them without comment and put them in the cup by the microwave where they kept writing implements of various descriptions. It was a measure of how rattled she had been that it was just now occurring to her that Braga's opportune arrival couldn't simply be chalked up to good fortune.

"I wanted to talk to you." His tone was easy. But there was something, some expression, in his eyes as he watched her move around the table that made her apprehensive in a whole new way.

She tried to keep her tone and her expression casual. "About what?" "Nothing that important. Just a few details about what you told my partner and me earlier."

Kate's heart lurched. She wondered if he was acting like it was no big deal for Ben's benefit, and decided he was.

"If it wasn't important, I'm surprised it couldn't wait until tomorrow."

He shrugged, and she turned away, crouching down to put the notebook paper and calculator away in the cabinet where she kept school supplies, glad for a chance to hide her face until she could school her expression. The whole time, she could feel his gaze on her back.

"So, are you a friend of my mom's or what?" Ben's question came out of nowhere, bristling with sudden protectiveness.

Kate took a quick—and she hoped unseen—breath, stood up, and turned around. There had been just the two of them for so long that they naturally took care of each other, but she didn't want Ben thinking he had to fight her battles for her. Her son had paused in the act of stripping off his hoodie to look at Braga with clear challenge, she saw. Obviously, he had sensed something in the atmosphere that worried him.

Braga answered before she could say anything.

"I'm a friend," he said. With a quick glance at Kate, who nodded confirmation, Ben relaxed. Braga's gaze shifted to Kate. His lips stretched into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have any coffee available, by any chance, would you?"

Actually, she did. The last two days had been long and exhausting, and she couldn't have gotten through them without massive infusions of caffeine.

Her eyes narrowed at him. She appreciated the fact that he had scared away Mario's henchman, and reassured Ben just now, but she completely recognized his present show of relaxed affability for what it was—a show. Clearly, he had a question about something she had told him, and just trying to imagine what it might be made her stomach knot. Not that she meant to let him know it.

"Detective, would you like a cup of coffee?" A healthy dose of irony underlaid the question.

"Thank you. That would be great." He responded with aplomb. "And please call me Tom." There was the tiniest of pauses. "Kate."

So we're Tom and Kate now, are we? Just so you know, that doesn't fool me into thinking we're friends.

"Milk or sugar, Tom?" There might well have been bite in her tone if Ben hadn't been standing there listening.

"Black," Braga answered, then turned to Ben. "Maybe you and I could go sit down somewhere, and you could tell me exactly what happened outside again. Just to make sure I've got it straight."

"Okay." Ben finished taking off his hoodie and dropped it on the table. "You want to come in the living room?" Suddenly uncertain, he glanced at Kate, probably picking up on something she was subconsciously projecting in her lace or stance. "It's all right, isn't it?"

Kate just barely managed not to purse her lips. She suspected that Braga thought that without her presence he could get more information out of Ben. Which was probably true, except for the fact that, minus a few unimportant details, Ben had already told Braga everything he knew.

Thank God he didn't hear the last part of that man's message.

"Sure." She glanced at the big, round clock that hung on the wall above the refrigerator. It was eight-fifty. "You'd better talk fast, though. You've got till nine o'clock. Tomorrow's a school day."

Ben groaned.

"I hate school," he said glumly, and headed toward the living room with Braga following.

As Kate turned to get the coffee out of the cabinet—there were only dregs left in the four-cup pot she had made when she got home from work, she discovered when she checked—she was suddenly conscious of her heart knocking against her ribs.

C h a p t e r 14

IN THE LIVING ROOM, which was just off the kitchen, close enough so Tom could hear Kate clattering around as she made coffee, Ben clambered into a gold plush chair—a rocker/recliner, Tom saw as it moved beneath the kid's weight. Ben settled in with a serious expression on his face and both arms on the armrests. His feet didn't touch the floor. Tom sank down near him on the couch, which was big and comfortable, and glanced around the room, which was small and comfortable and decorated in earth tones. A pair of brass lamps on either end of the couch were already switched on, giving the room a cozy glow. There was a good-size TV on a stand by the fireplace at the far end of the room, and a multipaned glass-and-wood door that appeared to lead into another room. Both the TV and the other room were dark. To his left were the front door and stairs leading up to the second floor.

The smell of coffee wafted beneath his nostrils, drawing his attention back toward the open doorway to the kitchen.

Probably not going home and crashing before tackling Kate White had been a mistake, but what Charlie had told him had disturbed him to the point where he knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep until he had at least made a stab at clearing it up. According to Charlie, who admittedly had been lapsing in and out of consciousness as he lay on the floor of the holding cell after being shot, when everybody else was gone and just before he'd been rescued, there had been two men and a woman alive and on their feet in the secure corridor.
Two
men, not one, both wearing prisoners' orange jumpsuits. The woman, whom he'd only glimpsed from mid-calf down through an opening door, had great calves and ankles and had been wearing sexy black high heels.

Bingo.
Tom remembered those calves and ankles, and the shoes, too: Kate White.

But there shouldn't have been two men.

"So, what do you want to know?" Ben's question penetrated his reverie.

Tom looked at the kid. Like his mother, he was thin and fine-boned, with a shock of white-blond hair and big, vividly blue eyes. He guessed him to be about seven or, at most, eight years old. Just about the age of two of his nephews and one of his nieces.

"Okay, let's start at the beginning: What were you doing outside in the first place?"