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“H-how did—? I mean, what happened?”
Sam hesitated, reluctant to tell her Marci had been both bludgeoned and stabbed. He didn’t know the exact cause of death, hadn’t seen the crime scene, so he didn’t know if she had died from head trauma or if she had died from the stab wounds.
“I don’t know all the details,” he finally said. “I know she was stabbed. I don’t know the time of death or anything.” Those three statements were true, without being anywhere close to the whole truth.
“Stabbed,” Jaine repeated, and closed her eyes as if trying to visualize the crime.
“Don’t,” he said.
She opened her eyes and looked questioningly at him.
“You were trying to imagine what happened, how she looked, if it hurt,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Don’t.”
She took a deep breath, and he expected her to lash out at him, transferring the focus of her grief and anger to him, but instead she nodded, trusting that he knew best. “I’ll try, but—how do I not think about it?”
“Think about her instead,” he said, because he knew she would anyway. It was part of the grieving process.
She tried to say something, her throat working, but tears welled up again, and she settled for a jerky nod. She didn’t say anything else all the way home to Warren.
She felt old as she walked across their driveways to her house. Sam went with her, his arm around her, and she was grateful for his support as she ponderously climbed the steps to the kitchen door. BooBoo came meowing, tail twitching, as if asking why she was home so early. She leaned down to scratch behind his ears, taking comfort in the warmth of the sinuous body and the softness of his fur.
She put her purse on the table and sank down in one of the kitchen chairs, holding BooBoo on her lap and stroking him while Sam called his sergeant and carried on a quiet conversation. She tried not to think about Marci, not yet. She did think about Luna and T.J., and the anxiety they must feel because they hadn’t yet heard from Marci. She hoped Marci’s sister was contacted soon, because when she reported off for the rest of the day, her friends would know something was dreadfully wrong. If they called here to check on her, she didn’t know what she would say or if she could even manage to talk to them.
Sam set a glass of tea in front of her. “Drink it,” he said. “You’ve leaked enough to be dehydrated.”
Impossibly, that earned a shaky smile. He kissed the top of her head, then sat down beside her with his own glass of tea.
She put BooBoo down, sniffed, and blotted her eyes. “Exactly what did you tell everyone at the department about me?” she asked, just for something to talk about.
He tried for an innocent look. On that rough-hewn face, it didn’t work very well.
“Nothing much. Just that if you called, to tell you how to get in touch with me. I should have thought to give you my pager number anyway.”
“Nice try,” she commented.
“Did it work?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, I told them you cuss like a sailor—”
“I do not!”
“—have the sweetest ass this side of t
he Rocky Mountains, and if you called, to get in touch with me pronto because I’ve been trying to get you into bed and you might be calling to say yes.”
He was trying to cheer her up, she thought. She felt her chin wobble. “That’s so sweet,” she managed to say, and burst into tears again. She hugged herself, rocking back and forth. This outburst was violent but short, as if mentally she couldn’t sustain such anguish for a long period of time.
Sam scooped her onto his lap and held her head against his shoulder. “I told them you were special,” he murmured, “and that if you called, I wanted to talk to you no matter where I was or what I was doing.”
That was probably a lie, too, she thought, but it was as sweet as the other one. She gulped and managed to say, “Even if you’re doing your task force stuff?”
He paused. “Maybe not then.”
Her head was aching from crying so much, and her face felt hot. She wanted very much to ask him to make love to her now, but she swallowed the words. As much as she needed the comfort and closeness, the affirmation of life, she wouldn’t feel right; their first time shouldn’t be under such circumstances. Instead she snuggled her face against his neck and inhaled his warm male scent, taking what comfort she could from his closeness.
“What exactly does a task force do?”
