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She didn’t have any coffee in the house, a fact which horrified both Mac and Colt. But she did have an electric tea kettle and an impressive assortment of tea bags. Colt declined and headed out, offering a quick goodbye and then a wave to the corner of the room. Giles? She didn’t want to know.

Mac took a mug of steaming tea and sat on the couch. His lost gaze said a lot about what he was going through.

Loran sat in a chair near the end of the couch with her own cup. She was tempted to sit beside Mac, but she didn’t. She didn’t dare. “Tell me about Carrie.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Didn’t know, or didn’t want to? “You might not want to talk about her, but you need to. I see it. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”

He looked at her then, hard; those steely gray eyes narrowed. “Do you think you can help?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to try.” If Mac’s ex could project Carrie so strongly into Loran’s mind that she was compelled to paint, maybe the ghost could also pass on more information. Colt had used the word channeling. Whatever it was that led to the portraits was strong, specific, she’d never been able to explain it. Had never really tried. If she could channel an image, was it possible could she pick up on something more? A location. A name. A message. Anything.

“I haven’t talked about Carrie in years,” Mac said. “Not until Kylie’s ghost showed up and told me to find her. That brought Colt into the mix, but no one else knows. I’ve investigated, I’ve done my best to track her down with zero success, and since the wedding I’ve hounded Colt to find out something. Anything. But I never talk about the child, the young woman, she was.”

“Give it a shot,” she whispered.

Mac took a sip of his tea, placed the mug on the coffee table and muttered something about it being crap. Then he turned to her again. The man did have a way of looking at a woman that made her insides twist and turn.

“When I was young and foolish and my brain listened to my dick more often than it should, I started seeing a woman who had a child. Carrie was three years old at the time, adorable the way little kids can be. She looked very much like her mother, except for the hair. Kylie was beautiful, and she knew it. We’d been together three months when we got married. It was a wild three months.” His expression showed both joy and horror. “No big ceremony. I didn’t have any living family other than a few elderly aunts and uncles spread all over and a handful of distant cousins in Texas and Alabama, and Kylie said she didn’t have anyone, either.”

“Three months isn’t any time at all.”

“Tell me about it,” he grumbled.

“Carrie couldn’t say Max, so I became Mac. First to her, then to everyone. My friends, most of them other cops, thought it was cute. They also thought the nickname would annoy me, but it didn’t.”

Loran thought of the young woman on the easel, what she might’ve been like at three years old, and pushed back tears. The poor girl was in some kind of trouble. Why would Kylie push Mac to find her if that wasn’t the case?

Mac didn’t need tears from her, not now. He needed support. He needed a friend. She’d be strong for him. She suspected no one else ever had been. He was the one who was always strong for others, but who did he lean on?

“I knew within a year that Kylie wasn’t the woman I thought she was. She was hooked on pills, a real junkie, but she was good at hiding her addiction. I think she was clean when we married, I really do, but… everything might’ve been a lie, even that. Whatever we had when we met, it didn’t last. But there was Carrie. She loved her mother, of course she did, but she also came to love me and dammit, I loved that kid. Kylie tried to discourage it, but Carrie started calling me Daddy. I tried to adopt her more than once, but Kylie always said no. She absolutely refused.”

“Carrie is the reason you stayed married as long as you did.”

“She is,” he said softly. “One day, when Carrie was eight, I got home after my shift and the house was empty. And I do mean empty. Not a dish remained, not a stick of furniture. I tried to call Kylie, but of course she’d blocked my number. Tried from other phones, and she’d just let the phone ring. I asked a couple of the higher ups to trace Kylie’s phone for me, but that was against the rules. No personal use of resources, and all that. They thought I was well rid of her, and I was, but…”

“Carrie.”

“Yeah. I needed to know the kid was ok, but they’d vanished. A few months later, divorce papers landed in my lap. I wasn’t sorry to be rid of Kylie, but I wanted to stay in touch with Carrie. I had no rights, none, but I tried. I did eventually get an address in Missouri, through a friend of a friend of a neighbor. Tried to head up that way for a visit, but Kylie wouldn’t let me see Carrie. I sent Christmas and birthday presents I’m almost positive she never got, but I sent them anyway. Just in case. And then one day a birthday present I’d mailed was returned. Not at this address.” After that I just stopped. I… I let them go.”

“You haven’t seen Carrie since she was a child.”

“No, but I should’ve.” Anger crept into his voice. “Kylie made things so difficult, I gave up. I moved on, focused on my career, did my best to get that old life out of my head. I should’ve fought harder for Carrie, I should’ve knocked down doors to get to her, but I didn’t. That’s what keeps me up at night, thoughts of what I should’ve done.”

“You can’t…”

“But I do.” He reached for the tea he didn’t like, maybe just to have something to do with his hands. “Five years ago word reached me that Kylie had died of an overdose. It had happened months earlier. Carrie was sent to a foster home, but she didn’t stay. She ran away, vanished. No one was much interested in tracking down a troubled fifteen year old with a history of shoplifting and getting into fights at school.”

“No one but you,” Loran whispered.

“No one but me. I tried, but didn’t have much luck. By that time I was a detective in New Orleans, so I had access to resources I hadn’t had when I divorced. Still, I didn’t have much to go on, and I didn’t have the time to devote to the search. The only photo I had of Carrie was taken when she was seven years old. That wasn’t much help. I hired a PI who tracked Carrie here, to Seawolf Beach. She had a cell phone for a while, but she dumped it at some point. The trail ended here. The PI eventually got tired of taking my money and gave up.”

“You didn’t give up.”

“I can’t,” he said. “It’s my fault. If I’d fought harder, if I’d done more…” He took a sip of the tea, made a face that told her how much he didn’t like it, and returned the mug to the table. “This Police Chief job is much less demanding than my gig in New Orleans, so I thought I’d have time to focus on Carrie. I do have the time, some days I’m downright bored, but my efforts haven’t paid off. She’s out there, somewhere, and I… I can’t seem to do a damn thing right.”

Loran set her cup aside and moved to the couch to sit beside Mac. He was big, tough, and accustomed to handling everyone else’s problems while his own were eating him up inside. “It’s not your fault.”