Snapped (5 page)

The girl turned away and burrowed her head against Sophie’s dirt-streaked blouse.

Her throat tightened with frustration. She was terrible with kids. She’d never been one of those nurturing types who oozed mommy vibes, and yet here she was in this overcrowded waiting room with a child who refused to turn loose of her.

“How’s your head feel?” Sophie rearranged the ice pack, which was almost melted.

No answer, just more squirming. Sophie scanned the ER doors. They were automatic, but they stood permanently open now as a steady stream of people rushed in and out. Despite the signs posted around, there was a cell phone clutched in almost every hand,
and people were babbling away frantically. Everyone was looking for someone—a daughter, a boyfriend, a sorority sister. Sophie had positioned herself strategically by the entrance, and almost everyone glanced at her. But their gazes didn’t linger, and she knew they hadn’t come here searching for this brown-haired little girl.

“Let’s go for a walk.” Sophie tried to ease the girl off her legs, but she clung tighter. “Come on. Just a short one.”

Sophie scooped her onto her hip and managed to elbow her way through the mob of people swarming a table where a list of names was being maintained by a besieged staffer. It was worse than a bar after a football game, and Sophie didn’t have her usual tricks available to get someone’s attention. She resorted to rudeness and elbowed a skinny guy right out of her way.

“Ex
cuse
me,” she said, and the woman looked up from her handwritten list. “This child is missing her mother.” Sophie winced at the words, but it couldn’t be helped. “They were separated on campus, and I need to know if her mom came through here—”

“Name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not family?”

“No. Look, her mother’s pregnant. She was injured. She was taken away in a separate ambulance and—”

Someone jostled her out of the way, and she tripped backward, almost dropping the girl. Sophie turned and snarled, and when she looked back, the woman was bombarded with other questions.

Sophie scooted away from the crush of people. Her chair was already taken. She found a tiny bit of space
beside a ficus plant and leaned against the wall there as she pulled out her phone to make another round of calls.

Once again, no answer at San Marcos PD, probably because every parent of every kid at this college was trying to get through. She scrolled through her call list and tried the sheriff’s office again, and again, nothing. She tried the local CPS office, but was once again routed through a message system and dumped on someone’s voice mail.

Sophie adjusted the girl on her hip and reached deep for some patience. She left her name and yet another urgent message, along with her phone number.

The girl looked up at her as she clicked off, and Sophie forced a smile.

“Is your head feeling better?”

An ambulance screamed right up to the door, drowning out the question. The girl burrowed her face against Sophie’s neck until the siren finally ceased.

“Hey, you!” Sophie caught the sleeve of a man in scrubs as he hurried past.

He looked at her like a deer in the headlights. “I need a nurse here. This girl needs medical attention, and I also have to find her parents.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the exam rooms swarming with people.

“Her mother was badly injured,” Sophie said. “She’s short, brown hair, about eight months pregnant. Is she back there, do you know?”

“Uh, I really don’t—”

“Check.
Please
. This child doesn’t have a parent here. I don’t even know her name.”

He stepped back, and Sophie caught his hand. “Wait.” She plucked a pen from the pocket of his scrubs and shifted the girl onto her hip. “I’m going to write down my cell number.” He had hairy arms, so she wrote on the back of his hand. “My name’s Sophie,” she said, desperately trying to make a personal connection. “Find out if there’s a pregnant woman back there and call me.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Her injuries looked very serious, so she may be in surgery.”
Or the morgue
. “But I at least need her name. I’ve got to get in touch with this child’s family.”

“I’ll do what I can.” He glanced down at his hand and jogged off, and Sophie slumped against the wall. She felt faint, queasy. The room was hot and airless, packed with too many anxious bodies. Sophie closed her eyes. The girl’s skinny arms tightened around her neck, and she felt a fresh wave of panic. She had no idea what to do next, so she started humming the first thing that popped into her head. It was an old gospel song about flying away, which was exactly what she wanted to do right now.

The girl’s arms gradually relaxed, so Sophie kept humming. She glanced down at the scraped little legs wrapped around her waist. She smoothed a hand over the girl’s hair and picked a leaf from one of her pigtails. The girl’s head drooped, and Sophie continued to hum softly. She turned toward the door leading to the back where the guy with her phone number on his hand had disappeared.

A man stood there, staring at her. He was oddly motionless amid the chaos of the ER. Sophie shifted so he could see the girl in her arms, and his entire face flooded with relief. He pushed his way through the crowd.

“Becca!” His voice caught on the word, and the little head jerked up from Sophie’s shoulder.

“Daddy!” She launched herself out of Sophie’s arms and into the man’s, and he squeezed her to his chest. Sophie stepped back to give them room. Over his daughter’s shoulder, the man met Sophie’s gaze. The pained look in his bloodshot eyes spoke volumes, and Sophie knew that Becca’s mother was dead.

Jonah pulled into the apartment complex and glanced up at Sophie’s window. Looked like she was awake, which was both good and bad. Good, because he wouldn’t have to turn around and go home, and bad, because what he needed to do right now was turn around and go home.

Home was where he should be. It was late, he was beyond tired, and he wasn’t fit company for anything other than a bottle of Jim Beam. But he’d been thinking about Sophie all day, and somewhere along the way he’d convinced himself that this detour was a good idea.

He parked his dinged pickup and hiked up the stairs to her apartment. The place looked just as dumpy as he remembered it, only someone had gotten around to pouring some chlorine into the pint-size swimming pool. Must be new management.

Through the paper-thin walls, Jonah heard newscasts blaring as he made his way down the row of doors. Sounded like everyone in town was tuned into the same story. He reached Sophie’s unit and rapped on the door. He waited. And waited. He rapped again.

Jonah’s pulse spiked when she answered. He didn’t know what he’d expected. It was after ten. Maybe he’d thought she’d be weeping into her pillow, or talking on
the phone, or watching TV. He hadn’t expected her to be naked.

“You always answer the door like that?”

She had only a bath towel wrapped around her and she hitched it up higher. “Are you off for the night, or is this a police visit?”

“I’m off.”

She stepped back to let him in, and he frowned down at her as he crossed the threshold.

“You didn’t even ask who it was.”

“You have a distinctive knock.” She tossed a look at him over her bare shoulder as she walked to the back of the apartment.

Jonah’s feet remained firmly planted in her living room.

The bathroom door was ajar and he saw a sliver of her reflection in the mirror as she leaned over the sink.

“You just getting off?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Long day.”

“Yep.”

“There’s beer in the fridge.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

She finished doing some makeup stuff to her eyes and closed the door. He heard drawers opening and closing, then a hair dryer.

Jonah took a moment to look at her setup. It was just as he remembered it from the one other time he’d been in here: small TV, inexpensive prints on the walls, worn but comfortable furniture. Everything was simple and affordable, with the notable exception of her stereo. It was sleek and new and perched on a six-foot bookshelf,
along with her extensive collection of CDs. She had a purple iPod plugged in at the moment and was listening to something low and bluesy. Once upon a time, Sophie had been an aspiring singer, but he didn’t know if that was still the case.

Jonah glanced down the hallway. The bathroom door was open all the way now, and he guessed she’d slipped into the bedroom. What that particular part of her apartment looked like, he had no idea.

The last time he’d seen Sophie—before he’d seen her cowering at the base of that statue—he’d just closed a homicide case. It was a serial killer, and she’d been on his list of targets. She should have lost her life, but instead she’d walked away with some cuts and bruises.

And a boatload of emotional problems.

Jonah had been knee-deep in the case. He’d processed the scene. He’d taken her official statement. And his thoughts about her then had been just as inappropriate as they were right now. He probably would have acted on them, too, if he hadn’t been hit with a shit ton of work. When he’d finally come up for air, Sophie Barrett had moved on with her life, and Jonah had forgotten about her troubled gray eyes and her endless legs and the sly way she smiled when she got the upper hand in a conversation.

The bedroom door opened and she strode back into the living room wearing faded jeans, a snug-fitting Dallas Cowboys T-shirt, and leather sandals. There was nothing at all remarkable about the outfit, except the way she wore it.

“So. What brings you here?” She tossed a leather
purse on the couch and folded her arms over her chest as she looked up at him.

“Just thought I’d check in on you. What happened to your face?”

“Caught some tree bark.”

“Looks like it needs stitches.”

“It needs a Band-Aid. What are you really here for?”

She tilted her head to the side, and he realized he’d been kidding himself earlier. He wasn’t here to check on her. His reasons were much less noble. In some corner of his mind, he’d thought he’d just knock on her door and she’d let him inside and make him forget about everything else.

When he didn’t answer, she grabbed her purse off the sofa and dug out her keys. “I’m going out with some people from work. You know a few of them. Want to come?”

Sophie was the receptionist at a forensic lab, and Jonah knew a lot of her friends from past investigations. They were okay people, but he didn’t feel like being around them tonight.

“No. Thanks. I’ll get out of your way.”

“You can walk me down.”

She led him to the door and locked up, and he checked her out again while her back was turned. Her hair smelled good. She was wearing the same heeled sandals he’d seen earlier. She was almost six feet tall but he’d never seen her in anything besides heels.

“You get your car back okay?” he asked, shifting back into cop mode as they headed downstairs.

“It took a while. The campus is still closed. I had
to wait around for a security escort just to get into the garage where I parked. Guess they’re still searching for evidence?” She turned to look at him.

“Yeah.”

“So, have you identified him?”

“Not yet.”

They crossed the lot and stopped beside her shiny black Tahoe. Jonah knew it was no coincidence that she’d parked it near the one security light in the entire parking lot. She was safety-conscious—had good reason to be.

She gazed up at him with somber eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“What you did today. It was very brave.”

He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

“A job is answering phones. Flipping burgers. Not confronting a homicidal maniac. That takes courage.”

“Kind of like dodging bullets to save some kid you don’t know?”

“You saw that?”

“I was in a stairwell,” he said. “I heard about it.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she went up on her toes, and he tensed as he realized what she was doing. Her lips were soft and cool. They moved against his gently, teasing, until lust overcame his shock and he pulled her hard against him, and damned if she didn’t taste as hot and sweet as he’d always imagined—times a thousand. He wanted to take her back upstairs. He wanted to pull her into that bedroom and let her blow his mind.

And he was a manipulative bastard for coming here
tonight. Her hand slid up his chest, and he caught it.

She opened her eyes and eased back.

“What was that for?” he asked, and it came out like an accusation.

“I don’t know. My way of saying thank you?”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“No?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that why you came here? To get thanked?”

He stepped back.

She unlocked her car and tossed her purse inside. “Don’t look so guilty. Everyone has different ways of dealing with trauma. Some people need alcohol. Or pills. Or sex. It’s a coping mechanism.”

He crossed his arms, annoyed at being analyzed, mostly because she was right. “And what’s your coping mechanism?”

“Me, I need people. I need friends from work and a noisy bar without a single television.” She slipped behind the wheel, then gazed up at him and sighed. “And I’ll probably have a margarita or three to forget about this god-awful day. Sure you don’t want to come?”

“I’ll pass.”

“’Night, then. Don’t stay up too late thinking about your case. It’ll be there in the morning.”

“Yeah, sure.”

But as he watched her drive away, he knew he was going to go home to his bottle of bourbon and think about not much else.

The man watched the Tahoe turn onto Main Street and speed through a yellow light. It was 10:35. She was in a hurry. She’d wasted too much time with her visitor,
and now whoever she was meeting would be getting impatient. He rolled to a stop at the intersection and followed the SUV with his gaze as it turned into a crowded parking lot.

The light turned green, and he drove past the cafés and boutiques and textbook exchanges that lined the street. When he reached the beer garden, he glanced into the parking lot but didn’t make the turn. Instead, he circled the block and pulled into a lot beside a restaurant across from the bar. From there he had an unobstructed view of the entrance.