Together always (15 page)

"She doesn't know enough to give us an ID, Dushane. All she saw was a man running from the store. About the only good it's done us is that we can eliminate a gang-related incident. The man she says she saw was gray-haired and rather thin."

"What kind of a car?" Trace leaned forward, wanting, needing, something solid to grasp, but Jacobs shook his head.

"Blue. Medium-sized. Might have had two doors or then again it could have been four. He went east or maybe south. She didn't think anything of it until one of her neighbors told her what had happened and then she decided maybe she ought to tell us what she'd seen."

"I guess it's better than nothing," Lily offered.

**Not much!" Trace heard the snap in his voice and shook his head. "Sorry. I just hoped maybe we'd have something to work with."

"Where are those precocious twelve-year-olds with the eagle eyes when you need them?" John's dry comment brought reluctant smiles.

**Yeah, let's hear it for precocious twelve-year-olds." Trace leaned back on the sofa, reaching out to catch Lily's hand in an absent gesture. *'So we don't have anything, then?"

"Not much. We're still working on it. We're going back through Mike's case files, looking for anyone who might have held a grudge, but he'd been off the force a long time. Anybody who was holding a grudge against him would most likely have done something about it years ago."

**So you have no idea who killed Dad and you don't really expect to have any idea." John's succinct summation didn't leave much room for hope. Jacobs backed away from anything quite so final.

*'We aren't giving up. Not by a long shot. We're going to get this guy. Sooner or later something will turn up."

No one said anything for a long moment. They all knew just how thin Jacobs's promise was. No matter how much the police wanted to catch Mike's murderer, they couldn't do it without some clues, some evidence.

Jacobs left soon afterward, leaving a vague depression behind him. It was impossible to recapture the morning's calm. They finished cleaning up the wind damage but no one seemed to feel much satisfaction in the results of their efforts.

Dinner was a take-out pizza and it was eaten in virtual silence. They all went to bed early, and neither Trace nor Lily suggested they spend the night together. Perhaps she felt the same need for a little distance between them that he did.

Trace lay in bed, his hands behind his head, staring into the darkness. There were no winds tonight and the house was quiet. There was a waiting quality to the silence and he wondered if the others were as wide awake as he was. Too much had happened too quickly. He still hadn't dealt with Mike's death and now there was Lily.

Lily. He didn't have to close his eyes to remember the way she'd felt in his bed, in his arms. She'd felt so right, as if she were made to fit only him. But that was what he wanted to believe. Lily wasn't for him. Oh, maybe for a little while he could let himself pretend, but it could only be pretend.

Lily was sunlight and laughter. She was brightness. The angel on the Christmas tree. And he was none of those things. It didn't matter how many years had gone by or how many miles he'd traveled, there was a part of him that would always be poor white trash. He could never forget where he came from. Jed's face was clear and sharp in his memory— the bitterness, the weakness. He hadn't been the man's son but Jed was as close to a father as he'd known all his young years. What if the seeds of Jed's particular madness lay somewhere inside him, just waiting to come out?

He shuddered and pushed the thought away. It didn't matter how often he told himself that nothing on earth could ever make him like Jed, there was still a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. The old truism came to mind. He couldn't have spent all those years living Hke trash and not carry the scars. Sometimes he could feel them burned deep into his soul as if they were something alive and eating into him.

Just thinking about Lily was enough to soothe the ache, and when she was with him, he could almost imagine the marks weren't there. But she deserved someone who could come to her whole and unscarred.

He could pretend for a little while, but that was all it could ever be—just make-believe.

But it was one thing to know that was the way it had to be and another to make his heart believe it. It was impossible to just walk away from her. She was too much a part of him. Too much a part of his life. So he told himself it was all right to stay close to her, all right to be a part of her life for now.-

*'I DON'T KNOW about anybody else, but if I don't get out of this house, Fm going to go nuts." Trace threw down the deck of cards from which he*d been dealing his thirtieth game of solitaire and looked at his companions. Lily glanced up from the book she was supposedly reading, though she hadn't turned a page in at least ten minutes.

"I could use some time out of the house."

John looked up from the television. His eyes swung from Trace to Lily. **Count me out. I've got a lot of lost time to make up for on Dallas. I'm still trying to figure out who shot J. R."

Lily laughed. "You're not going to find that out from this week's show."

"No?" He shrugged. "Who cares? I've been out of the country a long time. This way I catch up on what people are doing. You two go on without me."

Trace wasn't going to argue with him. It wasn't that he disliked the man, but it felt strange to have a third person always around. It didn't seem to make any difference that he hadn't seen Lily in two years or that he'd lived apart from her for much longer. In a way, it had always been the two of them, even when he didn't see her every day. Not even Mike had changed that feeling. Somehow, with John, things were different.

He couldn't put his finger on what it was. He didn't know if it was the shift in his own relationship with Lily or if it was the fact that everything had changed around them, but John seemed to slip between them in a subtle undefinable way. Whatever it was, Trace was just as happy when he chose to stay home, leaving him and Lily to go out alone.

It was a cool night, but the skies were clear. Trace's *65 Corvette, his most prized possession, swooshed down the hill into Glendale. It was past rush hour and traffic on the Ventura Freeway was light. Neither he nor Lily spoke. It was enough to be out on the open road, alone together. The

freeway curved north around Hollywood and swept into the valley. From there it was a short trip to Mulholland Drive. Trace heard Lily sigh with pleasure as he turned the 'Vette onto the famous road. It had always been one of her favorite places to go.

The 'Vette's engine was a low growl as it took the hills and sharp curves, as if born to run on a road like this. At the top of the drive Trace pulled into a shallow turnout and shut off the engine. The sudden silence was almost a presence of its own. The lights of the San Fernando Valley were spread out below them like billions of jewels on a swathe of black velvet. Seen from this distance, it was hard to believe that people lived and died under those sparkling lights.

''It's beautiful, isn't it?" Lily's voice was low, in keeping with the still night.

'*It's about the only time the valley looks good."

They were quiet again, staring out at the stunning display beneath them.

"You know, you haven't— John's been there and all, but you haven't acted like you had any interest in me."

Trace didn't need to be a mind reader to hear the hurt beneath her words. He reached out to catch her hand in his.

"Lily, I— Sometimes I can be a real jackass, but the one thing in the world I don't ever want to do is to hurt you."

"I know that." He could see the curve of her cheek in the starlight as she looked down at their linked hands. "But it's not your fault if you don't feel the way I feel about—"

"Don't." Trace cut into her words. "It's too soon for anybody to be talking about the way they feel. Look, we've just been through a pretty rough time. Things have changed so quickly, there are times when I'm still not sure what's going on. Let's not rush into anything."

"We've already rushed into quite a bit," Lily said quietly without looking at him.

'*l know, but let's take things a little slower from here on. We hadn't even seen each other in two years until the.. .until the funeral. Maybe we should get to know each other again."

As if he didn't know her in the innermost recesses of his soul already. She was part of every breath he took.

**You mean we should date?" He didn't need a bright light to see the way she wrinkled her nose in surprise.

"I.. .yeah, I guess that's what I mean." Coward, It wasn't what he meant at all. Why didn't he have the guts to tell her that they were all wrong? That they would always be friends, always be linked by their past—but it couldn't be anything more?

"So I guess we could consider this our first date."

**Yeah, I guess we could."

She tilted her head to look at him and he caught the glimmer of her eyes. ** What's your sign?"

*'What?"

"What's your sign? That's one of the questions you always have to ask on a first date."

"Really? I didn't know there was a handbook on it." Her mood had shifted so quickly from intense to humorous that Trace felt as if he were stumbling, trying to catch up with her.

"There are just certain things you do. One of them is to find out the person's sign, and I need to know what kind of a car you drive and how much you earn a year. Of course, I can't ask that directly, so generally it's best to ask what you do for a living."

He relaxed back in his seat, catching the lightness of her mood. "Do you have a chart that gives you relative salaries for various jobs?"

"Naturally. Oh, and it's important to know where you come from and who your family is. A girl can't be too careful these days. If a guy tells you that he spends every sum-

mer with his mother, you can eliminate him immediately. Nobody wants mother-in-law problems/'

"Well, you don't have to worry about that with me." Despite his best efforts, there was a bitter note lacing the Hght words. Lily must have heard it, too, because she was silent for a moment.

''How is your mother?"

*'She's fine, I guess. I talked to her at Christmas. She seems to like Florida. I guess after the winters in Oklahoma she's still not used to being able to pick oranges right off the tree in January."

There. His tone had been light enough. Nothing to reveal the turmoil thoughts of his mother always brought with them.

"I don't remember much but I do remember that she was kind tome."

"She was a kind woman. Probably still is."

"You know, it's stupid in a way, but I've never asked you why we ran away." Lily's tone was thoughtful. She might have been commenting on the weather. Trace's fingers tightened around hers in shock before he pulled his hand away.

"It was a long time ago." A weak reply but the best he could come up with. There'd been a time, when she was in her teens, when he'd half expected her to ask questions and he'd tried to prepare himself with some stock answers. But that was years ago and he couldn't remember what he'd planned to say. Besides, she wasn't a teenager anymore, and the half truths and vague realities he'd intended to tell her then wouldn't do now.

"When I was a little girl, it didn't occur to me to question you. If you thought we should run away, I just accepted that that must be the right thing to do."

**Let's hear it for little girls." His humor held a gaUows edge to it. He had a feehng he wasn't going to like where this conversation was going.

**Then, when I got a little older, I guess I was too busy with other things to worry too much about how I'd come to be where I was. But I thought about it while I was in England and I realized that I'd never asked you any questions. Why did we run away? What happened?"

*'It was all a very long time ago, Lily. Does it really matter?" It was a last-ditch effort to avoid dredging up memories he'd spent years trying to bury.

**It matters to me. Whatever happened, it was part of my life and I want to know.''

Trace stared out at the blanket of lights below them, wondering just what words to use. She had a right to know, but that didn't stop him from wishing she hadn't asked.

*'How much do you remember?"

'*Not much. I remember your mother was nice to me and she had a soft voice. And I remember spending a lot of time with you."

'That first day you came to the house, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life." The lights faded, replaced by memories. Trace could almost smell the dusty yard and see the worn pickup. He remembered the way his heart had seemed to catch in his throat for an instant when he first saw her. She'd been so tiny and so perfect. He'd wanted to protect her and take care of her from the first moment he saw her, and the feeling hadn't changed over the years.

'Trace?" Lily's voice brought him back to the present. He glanced at her, catching her questioning gaze in the darkness.

*'Sorry. A lot of memories. Do you remember Jed?"

**Some." In the 'Vette's small passenger compartment, it was possible to feel the faint shiver that ran through her. The

stroigth of his old anger surprised him. After all these years he still wanted to feel Jed's bones breaking beneath his fist^s.

'*Jed had... ideas he shouldn't have had."

**Ideas? About what?"

** About you," he told her flatly. There was a moment •./: dead silence and then he heard her quick catch of breath as she realized what he meant.

**But I was just a Httle girl." Her appalled protest echoed in the small car.

There was nothing he could say. He'd had sixteen years to come to terms with the past, yet all that time hadn't helped.

*'Is that why we left?" she asked after a long while.

''It seemed like the best thing to do. I didn't know what else I could do to keep you safe."

**You were just a kid yourself."

**There wasn't anyone else," he said simply.

**What a'oout your mother?"

Trace laughed, a short sound that held more bitterness than he liked to admit. Funny how he'd been far more tolerant of the choices his mother had made when he was a child. As he'd grown older, he'd realized just how great was the burden she'd allowed him to carry.