Jeannette was staring so intently at the necklace—trying to place the tickle of recognition—that when the dead detective’s phone came to life in the center console, it badly startled her. She jerked forward hard enough that the seat belt scraped her neck. But what surprised her even more was Warren’s next statement.
“Answer it,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she replied.
She licked her lips nervously and watched the word PRIVATE scroll across the phone’s screen.
“I’m sure.” His tone was grim. “But don’t say anything right away.”
With unsteady fingers, Jeannette did as requested. And as an afterthought, she quickly clicked the phone onto speaker, too. For a moment, there was nothing but seemingly blank air. Then a man’s voice filled the sedan.
“You there, man?” he said.
Jeannette sucked in a breath and held it as silently as she could.
“C’mon, Tuck,” said the man. “Stop screwing around. You-know-who is waiting for you to—Tuck?” There was a drawn-out pause, and then his tone darkened. “This isn’t Tuck, is it?” Another second-long break. “What the hell did you do to him? Whatever it is...this isn’t going to end well. In fact, I’m pretty sure you just signed your own death warrant.”
The line gave a brief, staticky hum, then went dead.
Jeannette released her lungful of air. “That wasn’t exactly reassuring.”
“Or helpful,” Warren agreed.
“Do you think he was a cop, too?”
“No way to know for sure, but if I were to put my best guess on it, I’d say that the detective back there—Tuck—wasn’t a total lone wolf. He wasn’t exactly young, and he didn’t seem like the type to just come into corruption this late in the game.”
The dead man’s sightless eyes jumped to the forefront of Jeannette’s mind. She tried to shove the image down and replace it with what he’d looked like when he was alive and dangerous. But it didn’t work. The only thing she could picture was the slack jaw and crimson stain, so she gave up and refocused on the current moment.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “I still feel like we should call 911, and I’m sure the majority of the police department are the good guys, but...”
“If our call got back to the wrong person, we’d be in an even worse spot,” Warren filled in.
“Exactly.” Jeannette eyed the dead cop’s phone and shook her head. “What do people do when they can’t go to the police in a situation like this?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever met a person who’s been in a situation like this,” he replied dryly.
“No, I guess it’s not a typical Friday night.”
“Which should be a good thing, right?”
“Yes.”
Warren was pensively silent for a moment before adding, “But in all honesty, I’m wishing I had some kind of precedent to follow.”
Jeannette swallowed as her stomach rolled, but she didn’t voice her uneasy agreement aloud. No way would she wish this on anyone else. Even if having a baseline, how-to guide would’ve helped immensely.
So what are our options?
Her gaze slid to the front windshield as her brain tried to work out some viable solution. Overhead, the sky was still purple with the threat of the residual storm. On cue, a tiny bit of lightning flashed in the distance. It was both fitting and ominous at the same time. And no solution presented itself, which only added to the deepening sense of foreboding. As her attention hung on the mottled clouds, she finally remembered the necklace, and she pulled her eyes away from the horizon to take another look at the familiar-seeming piece of jewelry. When the phone had rung, Warren had dropped it into the ashtray. It sat there now, its tarnished and dirty chain just barely reflecting what light it caught.
“Where did you get that?” Jeannette asked, inclining her head toward it.
Warren’s stare dropped to the necklace, then quickly went back to the windshield, and his reply came out sounding forcedly flat. “I found it in the dirt near where Jimmy and his friend were digging.”
Her throat dried, and it took some effort to answer. “You think it belonged to the body they were searching for.”
The silence in the car weighed five tons, and the exhale he let out was louder than a heavy metal concert. “I assume so.” He rolled his shoulders as though trying to will himself to relax. “It belonged to my high school girlfriend.”
Jeannette frowned, sure she must be misunderstanding what he meant. “Your high school girlfriend had one like this?”
“No. She had this exact one.”
“But...how can you be sure?”
He reached out and touched the pendant in an almost unconscious-seeming way. “I bought this for her from a vendor at a market. The woman who made them did each one individually, and they were all unique. I was so pleased with myself for finding it. For picking it out.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I was sixteen. She was my first love.” His Adam’s apple slid up and down. “My only love.”
The admission gave Jeannette a strange little prick in her heart. It was an unusual sensation. One she couldn’t quite put a finger on. There might’ve been a hint of jealousy—maybe unreasonable, but still true. And a modicum of sadness at the fact that Warren hadn’t found love again in the years between then and now. And on top of those two things was something she wasn’t sure she should feel. A tickle of possibility. Jeannette was so caught up in her own feelings that she nearly missed the last bit of what Warren was saying.
“The week she went missing was hell,” he told her.
The words gave Jeannette’s memories another nudge that she couldn’t place. “She went missing?”
His head bobbed in a single nod of acknowledgment. “At first, the cops thought she’d run away. Her family wasn’t exactly a shining example of humanity, and her parents hadn’t reported her missing because she’d taken off before.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It was me who raised the alarm, but it took four days before anyone really took me seriously.”
Jeannette listened with an aching heart as he explained how he and his then-girlfriend had had an intense argument on the last day he’d seen her. How he’d said things he didn’t mean and wished he could take back. He’d confessed as much to the police, and he’d begged them to look into her disappearance. He’d told them that after their fight, he’d seen her talking to a rough-looking guy just outside of the high school—someone who definitely didn’t belong there. The cops had brushed off the observation as jealousy. In fact, they’d dismissed him altogether, claiming that his girlfriend was deliberately avoiding him as much as she was her parents. She’d turn up when she was good and ready, they’d said. But Warren had remained persistent. He was so sure something was wrong. So certain that he knew her well enough to believe beyond a doubt that she wouldn’t simply walk away in an angry huff.
“When her parents finally clued in that she wasn’t around, they called the school,” Warren said. “The school promptly informed her mom and dad that they’d called the house and reported her absence four days in a row with no response.”
At last the ball had started to roll. The police came in. They questioned the students. The teachers. People’s parents and the neighbors. And the pieces came together in a dark way. Just a block over from the family’s apartment, a corner shop owner had heard screaming the night before Warren had become concerned about his girlfriend’s whereabouts. A torn item of clothing was found. Then blood.
“They never found her, and after a while...the investigation began to feel more like a murder investigation,” Warren stated, his voice painfully soft. “And I was its center.”
It took a moment for Jeannette’s brain to connect the words and their meaning. “You were a suspect.”
“The prime suspect. Worst time of my life,” he replied. “I went from being the concerned boyfriend who’d reported her missing in the first place to a guy with an apparent motivation for making sure she was never seen again.”
“I’m sorry, Warren,” said Jeannette. “But at least they eventually cleared you, right?”
“I don’t know that they did,” he admitted. “My mom hired a lawyer, and he basically forced the police to back off. Like I said before... I was sixteen. I was a minor. No priors, no trouble with the law. Sure as hell no evidence.” He sighed, then freed his hand from the steering wheel so he could give the back of his neck a squeeze. “The locals started keeping a wide berth, though, and I felt like a criminal wherever I went. When I turned eighteen, some newspaper reporter showed up at my door. He was looking to do some cold case thing, and he found my name. Which is what prompted me to finally change it.”
“Change what?” she asked with a frown. “Your name?”
“Yes. I’d always thought about taking my stepdad’s surname anyway. My biological dad had been out of the picture since I was two, so keeping his didn’t mean much to me. I went from being Warren Hull to being Warren Wright, and I was finally able to move on with my life. Or mostly, anyway.”
A small lightbulb went off. “That’s why that detective back there couldn’t find out anything about you.”
He nodded. “I moved out of Okotoks and into Calgary with a clean slate.”
“What about Jimmy?” she asked. “He must know who you are. Or who you were, I guess I should say.”
“Maybe he really didn’t know who I was when he first started chasing us. But he’s got to have figured it out by now. I’m guessing the detective wasn’t high up enough on the food chain to be informed and tried to do some digging on his own.”
Jeannette’s eyes strayed back to the necklace. “So you think...”
“I don’t know.” He reached down and pulled the chain up from the console. “But I’m sure she was wearing this when she disappeared. A traffic camera caught a picture of her that same night. The image was incredibly clear, and you could see the pendant on her chest. It was the shot the police used for their missing persons flyers.”
As he said it, an image vividly filled Jeannette’s mind. A tall girl with dark, waist-length hair. A white tank top and cutoff shorts. A lazy, half smirk of the oh-so-teenage variety. And yes, the necklace. Both around the girl’s neck, and in a close-up. She could even hear a voice-over warning.
“Your girlfriend was Stephanie Timmons.” The statement burst out, full of shock, and Jeannette winced.
But Warren took it in stride, answering in a matter-of-fact way. “She was. I take it you heard the story way back then?”
“I was in tenth grade on the five-year anniversary of her case,” she recalled out loud. “There was some kind of incident at my school. Another girl...”
She trailed off, trying to remember the details. All the parents had been talking about the girl who’d gone missing. One of them had been an Alberta transplant, and shared the details of Stephanie’s case with the PTA. They’d called an urgent meeting. Trying to get a bunch of fifteen-and sixteen-year-old girls to listen without much luck. The girl had lived in a different suburb than Jeannette and her classmates. She was a freshman college student, and she seemed far removed from their life.
“Cassie-Lynn Phelps,” Warren said, cutting through her fruitless efforts to pull out any more of the decades-old memories.
The name fit. “Yes. That’s right. How did you know?”
“My mom called me when Cassie-Lynn went missing. There were so many similarities that it struck her as odd. There was the bad family situation. The long break between her disappearance and the police report. Her looks...just...everything. It was like Stephanie all over again.”
All of the hairs on Jeannette’s arms rose. “And was there a connection?”
“I honestly don’t know. I told my mom it was a coincidence, but it’s bothered me over the years.”
“It would bother me, too.”
He shot a grateful look her way, then directed his attention back out the window, his expression more haggard than it’d been all night. Talking about his past was clearly painful for him. Truthfully, though, it made Jeannette grateful, too. She was glad that he trusted her with his secrets. But the hurt on his face made her want to help him in some way. After a second, she did the only thing she could think of—she reached out and took his hand. And she was immediately glad she’d made the move. It felt right. Especially when Warren’s fingers tightened around hers.
Several moments passed in companionable silence, and Jeannette found herself staring out the window again. They were well outside the city now, and the clouds were finally clearing. She didn’t know where they were headed—or even whether Warren had a specific destination in mind—and she didn’t really care. Not right then, anyway. She was just glad that they were moving farther and farther away from the detective’s body.
But what are we going to do?
The moment the question popped up, a possibility struck her.
“Warren...” she said. “Do you remember any of the detectives who were looking for Stephanie? Their names or anything like that?”
“Just one. Harper. He was younger than the rest of the cops, and more relentless. He was the only one who came by after the lawyer got involved. He kept asking me if I knew something more than I was saying. If I’d witnessed anything he should know about. It was odd. And I’ll never forget his last words to me were ‘call me—and only me—if you ever have something to tell me.’ I thought it sounded like a threat.”
“What if you could call him?”
Warren’s reply was stiff. “Why would I want to?”
Jeannette almost bounced in her seat. “Because now you have what he wanted—something to tell him.”
“Yeah, I dunno. He seemed like the kind of cop who would assume the worst about all of this. Meaning the worst about me.”
“Maybe to start with. But you have the dig site as proof. And you’d have nothing to gain by turning yourself in, right?”
He pulled his hand from hers and strummed the steering wheel with both thumbs. “Okay. Let’s just say we agree to contact Harper. How are we supposed to get in touch with him, specifically? We don’t have his number, and even if we did, the only phone we have access to has a locked screen.”
She picked up the dead detective’s cell phone. “We don’t have to have his number. An emergency call will bypass the need for a password, and we can get them to connect us.”
“And if they won’t?”
“We’ll just have to persuade them. It’s not like we have a lot of other options presenting themselves.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “We don’t.”
A tiny sliver of relief worked its way to the surface. “Okay. Let’s pull over when we can, and we’ll make the call.”
And right then—as if she’d conjured it up—a sign for a rest stop appeared just ahead.
Wordlessly, Warren eased the car from the highway to the turnoff, then pulled into the empty, poorly lit parking lot and came to a slow halt. He nodded his agreement when Jeannie said she thought she should place the call because she had less baggage where Harper was concerned. He didn’t argue when she told him she felt like stretching her legs and getting some air, then suggested they make the 911 call from outside. He just followed her out into the now-starry night and leaned against the car as she pressed the keys. As he listened to the one-sided conversation—“Hello.” Pause. “No.” Another pause. “I’m looking for Detective Harper.” Pause. “A cold case.” A heartbeat. “An update that he’ll want to hear personally...”—Warren’s mind turned inward.
He felt strangely peaceful, when he was sure he should be feeling wrung out or ill at ease or something even less pleasant. After all, it was the first time he’d told anyone about Stephanie. Literally. Not once had he disclosed his status as a suspect in her disappearance nor revealed his identity. In fact, he barely let himself think about her. Not consciously, anyway. Even in the early days, when Warren had still been adjusting to having a new last name and no brick-heavy burden weighing him down, he hadn’t slipped up. He’d kept the secret from his long-ago classmates and teachers, from the few women he’d taken on dates over the years and from the people who he worked for and with and who he now oversaw. He’d kept it all in. From everyone. For so long and with so much thoroughness that he was sure the sudden release should’ve unleashed something more.
Should’ve been more of a ripping-the-bandage-off thing, followed by a little bit of discovering that the wound underneath wasn’t all that healed, he thought. Probably should be a little more worried about calling Harper, too.
Except he wasn’t. Not as much as he should be. Yeah, it stung. Yeah, it washed him with sadness. He was still sorry for the final argument he and Stephanie had. He wished he could take back the angry words he’d spoken in the heat of that moment. And God knew that he sure as hell didn’t think the persistent detective was going to be delighted to hear from him. Yet none of that mattered as much as it ought to. It was as though letting it out had unburdened him in some way.
“Are you okay?” Jeannie asked.
Warren realized he’d closed his eyes in unconscious contemplation. When he pulled them open, he found Jeannie’s brown gaze trained on him, her concern evident. The 911 call was obviously complete, and Warren was embarrassed that he’d missed the last part of it.
He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. I take it Harper agreed to see us?”
“More than that,” she replied. “When he heard what case we had information on, he said he’d come to us. Apparently, he’s on duty right now, and only ten minutes outside of the cell phone’s pinged location.”
Unease finally crept in. “Damn. I hadn’t even thought of the fact that we could be tracked with the detective’s phone.”
“Me, neither. But I don’t think it was his work phone. The dispatcher asked if we were going to remain in the current location with our pay-as-you-go phone.”
Jeannie’s statement didn’t make him feel any better. “So Harper is really coming here? Now?”
She nodded. “That’s what the dispatcher said.”
Warren’s hands tried to clench into fists. An uncomfortable pressure built in his chest, too. Though he normally did his best to keep the memories at bay, he could picture Detective Harper’s face with no effort at all. The man’s jaw was notably square—almost a caricature shape. He had pale blond hair and razor-thin eyebrows. Despite the fairness, though, he had a too-bronze skin tone that had made sixteen-year-old Warren wonder if the cop spent his off-hours sandwiched in a UV bed. At maybe five foot six, Harper had still managed to make him feel small and uncomfortable at the same time. Something in the man’s eyes had done it. There was a sharpness. A superiority. Warren hoped like hell that the sensation would be lessened now that twenty-five years had passed.
Jeannie touched his arm, dissolving the bad memories. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He started to insist again that he was fine. Then he thought better of it, and he opted for an admission instead.
“I was just thinking about Harper,” he said. “I didn’t like him when I was a kid.”
“Why would you?” Jeannie replied, stepping over to rest herself beside him on the hood of the car. “He was a cop who thought you might’ve had something to do with your girlfriend’s disappearance.”
“True. I wasn’t too crazy about authority in general, either, so...”
“Is that why you fell in love with Stephanie? You said she had a rough life.”
Warren waited for a stab of regret, but a bubble of warmth cropped up in its place, and he found himself smiling. “Oh, she was definitely into railing against ‘The Man,’ and I was definitely into that. My parents were pretty straight and narrow.”
“I remember you telling me once that your stepdad was a school superintendent and your mom was a second grade teacher,” Jeannie replied.
His smiled widened. “Yep. Mom was president of the PTA, too.”
“Mine was, as well. But I suspect her idea of the job was a little laxer than your mom’s was.”
“Right. She used to sneak wine in a water bottle into the meetings.”
“An embarrassing detail I’ve now told you twice, apparently.”
Warren chuckled, and they talked a little more about their childhoods. As they did, he realized something. They knew a lot about each other. He’d heard about her father’s early death and her mother’s struggle to raise a daughter on a variety of minimum wage jobs. She’d shared the grief she’d experienced when cancer took her mother just a few years earlier, and he was aware of the promise Jeannie had made to live a life that would make her mom proud. One that would cast aside her past mistakes and give her a fresh beginning. Though Warren had only learned tonight of just how rough that new start had been, he’d always sensed an underlying strength in the pretty barista. He admired it. He admired her. And there was something satisfying in the knowledge that they had inadvertently become closer than he would’ve guessed.
What about the bad relationship she mentioned earlier? Where does that fit in?
The thought made him frown a little. It was something that had never come up before. Why would it? Exes and their endings were the kind of thing saved for a more intimate connection. A romantic one. Except Warren felt a need to know it all. He opened his mouth to ask her what had happened, but what came out instead was a confession.
“All that stuff about Stephanie and the cops and my life before I changed my name...” he said, half startled by his own words. “I’ve never told anyone any of that before.”
“I’m sorry that you had to share it now,” Jeannie replied.
“I’m not,” he admitted. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s known more about me than I wanted them to see. Too long, probably.” He ran a hand over his head, then sighed and smiled. “Though I’m not saying that the simple man you’ve seen almost every day for the last few years is a lie.”
“I don’t think you’re simple, Warren.”
“Well. Yeah. Not now,” he teased.
Her mouth turned up, drawing his attention to her lips.
“I’m a thirty-six-year-old barista who decided to start her life over for reasons she can barely stand to think about,” she said. “It’s pretty safe to say I assume everyone has a complication.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“I knew there was a reason I’ve always liked you.” Warren meant it lightly, but as soon as he’d let the words out, he realized they were sincere and serious and not all a joke.
Her reply was equally earnest. “I’ve always liked you, too.”
The shared confession of mutual like hung between them, heightening details that had been merely background before. Like the way her bare thigh was pressed to his jeans-clad one. Or the way the light breeze carried with it that floral scent of hers. And the fact that at some point over the course of the conversation, Warren had unconsciously slipped his arm to her waist, where it rested with easy familiarity. Perhaps most significant, though, was the realization that Jeannie’s face was tipped up. Her eyes were on him, want evident in the dilation of her pupils. Those pink, lipstick-free lips of hers were parted in a way that held his attention again. Her chest rose and fell quickly, matching the tap-tap of his heart.
Warren leaned in. He knew he should stop himself. Jeannie deserved more than what he could offer. Look at what he’d brought into her life, just tonight? Even disclosing everything he had—that wasn’t enough to justify taking things further. Except he wasn’t sure he could help it. He was damn certain he didn’t want to stop himself. And when their mouths met, he was utterly glad that he hadn’t tried.
Her hand came to his cheek, drawing him in more firmly. She was warm and welcoming, and she tasted the way she smelled—sweet and with a hint some unknown flower. For a perfect moment, the world disappeared around them. No too-cool night air, no dead cops, no on-the-run hurry. There was just the two of them and the sweet meshing of their lips. The kiss was unhurried. Tender. Exploratory but not hesitant. Hungry but not overbearing. Then—far too abruptly—the crunch of tires on gravel cut them off.
Regretfully, Warren drew back. He pressed his forehead to Jeannie’s for the briefest second, ran a thumb over her jaw, then stood up straight to watch the approach of the unmarked vehicle. Behind the wheel, he could just make out the paleness of Detective Harper’s hair.
“Do you trust him?” Warren murmured.
“No,” Jeannie whispered back. “Not at all. That’s why I’ve got the other detective’s gun in my apron pocket.”
He wasn’t sure if the statement was more reassuring or more disconcerting. He didn’t get a chance to decide which descriptor fit. The sedan rolled to a halt, and the door swung open.