“I still think about her, you know,” she said.
“Of course you do.” These days Adriana had two little boys with Stan. There had to be moments when she looked at them and couldn’t help remembering the little girl she’d borne before they came into her life. “Do you ever regret your decision to give her up?”
“No. I wasn’t ready to take on a child. I wasn’t even through with school. I had no resources. And it wasn’t as if Jonah and I were planning to be together. We both knew what happened that night was…out of line, nothing we’d ever repeat. He cared too much about you to—”
Francesca jumped to her feet. “Don’t even say that.”
“It’s true. I don’t know why he came on to me. It was…like he was purposely chasing you away, daring you to love him. You know how easily spooked he was. But I could tell he cared by how broken up he was afterward.”
Despite the lump suddenly clogging her throat, Francesca fought to keep her voice level. “We were just stupid kids. We didn’t know what love was, neither of us.”
The tenor of Adriana’s voice changed. “He didn’t want me to give her up. Did I ever tell you that? He offered to raise her. But I wouldn’t agree to it. He wasn’t any more ready to be a parent than I was…. It took a bit of convincing, but he’d finally agreed we should contact a good agency and let them do their thing. They found a great couple who was dying to have a baby and couldn’t. The Williamses.”
“Have you heard from Jonah since he came to the hospital that day?” Francesca already knew Adriana had never communicated with the Williamses. It’d been a closed adoption. But she’d often wondered if Adriana and Jonah had kept in touch, if only occasionally. In her determination to forget, to move on and allow Adriana the same opportunity, she’d never asked.
“No. Not once.”
“I hadn’t heard from him, either.” Not since they’d muddled through the next few months of working for the same police force, avoiding each other. By Christmas, she’d moved from Tempe to Chandler and secured a position with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. “Not until he walked into the sheriff’s station today.”
“How’d he treat you?”
She wasn’t sure how to describe the meeting. There’d been a surfeit of negative emotion but, considering their history, that wasn’t unexpected or unusual. “Fine.” She hadn’t waited to see what he’d do; she’d gone on the offensive. I know very well how much you like the ladies….
There was another long pause. “Are you okay, Frannie?”
For the first time since she’d picked up the phone, Francesca thought of Butch Vaughn and her gaze shifted to the knife on her nightstand. The blade gleamed in the light streaming in from the hall. She usually didn’t sleep with lights on, but tonight she’d left almost all of them blazing.
It’d be easier to talk about Butch than Jonah, but why scare Adriana? Then neither of them would be able to sleep.
“Of course. I shouldn’t have called.” She didn’t really understand why she had, not after so long. For a brief moment she’d been angry again and had wanted to lash out, that was all. The memories had crowded too close. “I’ll let you go. We can talk tomorrow.”
Adriana hesitated. “Will we have to talk about Jonah?”
“Damned if I know.” She hung up, but the pain she’d heard in her friend’s voice wouldn’t let her leave it at that. Will we have to talk about Jonah? Although what had happened ten years ago still hurt, especially after seeing Jonah today, Francesca didn’t want Adriana to suffer any more than she already had. What was the point?
Aware that she was the only person who could release her, Francesca picked up the phone. But when she pushed the talk button, she couldn’t get a dial tone. Assuming the phone hadn’t had a chance to reset after she’d disconnected, she waited a few seconds and tried again.
Nothing.
“What the heck,” she complained. It was such a bother not having her iPhone.
Then it dawned on her. She didn’t have her iPhone because Butch had kept it; he’d made her dependent on her home phone. And now…
“No,” she breathed, but in her heart she knew. He’d cut the line.
5
Someone was out late.
Smiling at the fact that he’d caught Butch yet again, Dean stood at the back of the house, scuffing his shoe against the hard patch of dirt where his brother-in-law usually parked his big red truck under a metal carport. He could still smell the exhaust of the diesel fuel, could make out a dark spot on the ground where the engine had leaked oil. In the moonlight, it looked like blood….
So where was Butch this time? The way he’d pawed through Francesca Moretti’s purse after Paris went to bed made it all too easy to guess. He was going to pay the private investigator a visit. Paris had to know he was going, too, but she was turning a blind eye. Again.
The fact that she refused to see what Butch really was drove Dean crazy. Well, crazier than he already was, he thought, and chuckled at his own joke.
“You’re a bad boy, Butch,” he whispered into the darkness. “Such a bad, bad boy.” But Butch definitely made life interesting. Dean had to give him that.
Feeling safer than when his brother-in-law was stalking around the place acting like the king of all he surveyed—his sister’s husband was such a Neanderthal—Dean walked around the front of the house to the gate, took the key from his pocket and let himself into the salvage yard. Ever since he was a child and his parents took him to see a magic act where the magician could escape anything, no matter the lock, he’d been fascinated by the concept and spent hours on the Internet, learning to pick locks himself. But it was trial and error that had made him good. He could’ve picked this lock instead of using a key. He did it all the time, just to keep his skills well-honed. But he wasn’t in the mood for a challenge. It was tougher than any house lock he’d ever encountered.
Demon barked, but only to say hello. The noise wasn’t anything that would rouse the fam. He barked worse than that at a squirrel or a lizard.
“Hey, boy. How are you tonight?” Dean stopped long enough to give the dog a scratch. As friendly as Demon was to him, the sheer power in his body reminded Dean too much of Butch. He didn’t want to think about the damage either of them could cause if they really wanted.