Because of a Girl Read online

  “Are you going to have to wear braces?” His front teeth did kind of overlap, but they didn’t look that bad. But...why had she said that? She was supposed to be questioning him, not talking about braces.

  The color in his cheeks deepened as he withstood her scrutiny. “Yeah. I had impressions done.” His face contorted as if he was sliding his tongue across his teeth, feeling for imperfections.

  “Most people our age have already gotten it over with.”

  He hunched his shoulders and looked down at his tray. “I had to wait until my mom got a job with insurance that helps pay for it.”

  “Oh,” Emily said quietly. Waiting until he met her eyes again, she said, “My mom says she’s glad I didn’t need braces, because she couldn’t have afforded them.”

  He nodded, as if he understood what she was doing. His eyes were kind of a different color, she realized. Mostly gray, but flecked with enough gold that his driver’s license probably said hazel. Even though he was a sophomore, like her, he had a license. His birthday was barely before the cutoff for starting kindergarten, and he’d told Sabra his parents decided to have him wait another year.

  Uh-huh. Sabra, remember?

  “So you weren’t here at school that morning at all,” Emily persisted.

  Asher shook his head. “Not until after lunch.”

  Not even really talking to him, she said, “Then why—”

  “I don’t know!” He almost shouted it, then looked around quickly. A couple of heads had turned, but that’s all. A dull roar filled the cafeteria and nobody had any reason to pay attention to them.

  She wanted to believe him. Mostly she did. Except he did have his own car, and if his appointment hadn’t been until something like nine or ten, he could have driven to the school for some reason. Like to meet Sabra.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily heard herself say. “I’m scared for her.”

  He nodded. “I would have told you to—” Flushing again, he stopped really suddenly. Emily knew what he’d been about to say. But he changed it to, “Um, shove it, if I didn’t understand why you’re being so pushy.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking down at her still unopened lunch. “Do you mind if I eat here?”

  He shook his head.

  Neither of them talked at all after that. She sneaked a few peeks at him, and kind of thought he did at her. He finished first, half nodded her way and got up to bus his tray. When he left the cafeteria, he didn’t once glance back at her.

  Emily ate hastily because she needed to go to her locker before next period. Which happened to be Honors English, her favorite class.

  She wasn’t even thinking about the fact that she would pass Sabra’s locker until she saw something going on ahead. Her heart seized. Mr. Rivera stood back, arms crossed, making the tide of staring kids divert around him. And Detective Moore crouched in front of Sabra’s open locker, those thin plastic gloves nurses and doctors wore on his hands. He was busy stuffing everything that had been inside into a black garbage bag.

  I’m too late.

  She kept going, averting her face so that he wouldn’t even notice her.

  She tried to tell herself it was okay. She wanted him to find Sabra. But what if he discovered secrets Sabra hadn’t even told her?

  All the air left her lungs in a rush. Because...what if he found out she had been helping Sabra sneak away to meet her boyfriend?

  * * *

  THE LOCKER HAD been a health hazard as far as Jack was concerned. Rivera looked less surprised. What had interested Jack most was that the top shelf was completely bare. Because that’s where Sabra had stowed books she would actually need to grab at the end of the day? Because she’d taken whatever had been there with her the day before she vanished? Or because someone else had already been in the locker?

  A boyfriend might know her combination, but so would her close friend, the one with whom she was sharing a bedroom. He took a call about another investigation and decided to put off going through the crap in the garbage bag. Nothing had leaped out as promising. He thought it might be more interesting to go through it with Meg and Emily anyway. Meg for help, Emily so he could see her reactions.

  Emily Harper was beginning to exasperate him.

  He broke away from an interview to time his arrival at the Harper’s house perfectly. The school bus was just lumbering away, spewing exhaust, and Emily was walking the half block to her house, head down, the strap of her red backpack slung over one shoulder.

  He turned into the driveway and saw her head come up. She hesitated between one step and the next, then resigned herself and continued toward him. He opened the SUV hatch and took out the bulging garbage bag. Emily’s gaze flicked to it and then away.

  “Long time no see,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Without waiting for an answer, she stalked past and went to the front door. It proved to be unlocked. When she tried to shut it in his face, he flattened his hand beside the glass oval.

  “Ms. Harper?” he called. “You home?”

  She appeared immediately from the former dining room, wearing a snug T-shirt, flip-flops and thin black knit pants that hugged rounded hips and draped over those long, lean legs. Her hair was French-braided. His body stirred. Why couldn’t she have on one of her sacky getups? He forced his gaze to her face, bare of makeup. Did she ever wear any?

  “Emily, put your pack down.” Her stern tone was new to him, and it startled her daughter. “You and I need to talk.” Then she turned her gaze to him. “Detective.”

  “Jack.”

  Her lips compressed, but at least she didn’t share her daughter’s open hostility. She briefly contemplated the black plastic bag he carried. “I think you ought to see this, too.”

  This? His eyebrows climbed. “All right. I have something I’d like to show both of you, too.”

  Emily gave him a vitriolic look. “You took stuff from her locker.”

  He met her eyes. “I’m not the only one who did. Am I, Emily?”

  She backed up a step, crying, “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I think you know.”

  Her panicked gaze swung to her mother, who did not appear sympathetic. “Kitchen,” Meg snapped.

  “Fine!” Emily stomped toward the back of the house.

  Jack closed the door behind him, then gestured for Meg to precede him. He just had to see the view from behind. Her butt was a fine sight, as he’d expected, taut and well-rounded, shaped for his hands.

  A screech came from the kitchen. Shock and fury twisted Emily’s face. “You went through my room! How could you?”

  The farm table was covered with piles of what looked like schoolwork and handwritten notes. The pages were dog-eared, crumpled and creased.

  “I trusted you.” Meg looked almost as distraught as her daughter. “Jack was so sure you must know something, and I’ve been defending you all along. I really thought I wouldn’t find a thing.”

  “If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have searched my room.”

  Meg stared her daughter down. “In agreeing to take Sabra in, I committed myself to protecting her, just as I would you. I believe you’re scared for her. This—” her hand swept out toward the heap of papers “—suggests you do suspect things you aren’t telling me or Detective Moore.”

  If he wasn’t mistaken, the kid was shell-shocked by the emergence of Fierce Mom.

  “I don’t!”

  Meg’s bewilderment showed. “I don’t understand. Why would you have hidden anything of Sabra’s that might help us?”

  Jack nodded toward the table. “Is this what you took out of Sabra’s locker, Emily?”

  Her panicked gaze swung from one to the other of them. “Why would I—”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Why did you?�
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  “Because I thought I’d find something!” she screamed. “But I didn’t! Okay?”

  Meg shook her head. “Not okay. You must have realized the detective would be going through Sabra’s locker. What is it you didn’t want him to see?”

  “Nothing!” Angry tears brimmed in her eyes. “She’s my friend! She wouldn’t want him touching all her stuff.”

  If she’d been armed, he would have been afraid.

  “Emily.” Meg sank onto one of the straight-back chairs as if her legs had failed her. She sounded weary. “If you have even the smallest suspicion about where Sabra went or who she went with, you have to tell us. Whether you like it or not, we’re the adults.”

  “It’s not like you’ve found her, have you?” she spat. “You don’t understand either of us at all!”

  “I was your age once upon a time.” Apparently, Meg thought she had to try. “Like Sabra, I was pregnant. So what is it I don’t understand?”

  Tears ran down Emily’s cheeks. Seemingly mute, she stood with fists clenched.

  Jack had a flash of insight. Maybe he should keep it to himself, but his gut said no.

  “We’re not what’s bothering you at all, are we?” He tried to sound kind. “What upsets you is that you thought you were her best friend, but Sabra kept things from you. Big secrets. As if she thought you wouldn’t approve of whatever she’d done.” He paused, frowning. “Or she didn’t trust you.”

  Her face contorted, and she yelled, “I hate you both!” In what had become a familiar pattern, she tore from the room. This time, though, they both heard the front door open and slam shut.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “SHOULD I GO after her?” Jack said after a moment. “She’ll come home, won’t she?”

  “Where would she go?” Meg said dully.

  “A friend’s?” He thought of worse possibilities. “Hitch to a grandparent’s or aunt and uncle’s place?”

  “She has friends.” She sat like stone. “Relatives? We have none of the above.”

  “None?” he said, not as surprised as he should be.

  Her eyes opened at last, the expression so bleak he flinched. “None she would want to know.”

  Jack grabbed the chair closest to hers and sat, too. He took one of her hands in his, and, when he found it icy cold, reached for the other one, too, trying to share his warmth. He wasn’t sure Meg was even aware they were now holding hands.

  “Did your parents throw you out?” he asked gently.

  “And the prize goes to...” she murmured.

  He saw things day in and day out that he, as a human being, didn’t get. The hollow place in him left by his mother’s abandonment made him especially sensitive to stories like Meg’s—and Sabra’s. He’d known all along that his own history explained some of why he had become obsessed with finding the girl.

  He kept his voice soft. “Will you tell me what happened? How you survived?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Even Emily doesn’t have any idea how hard it was. I never wanted her to know.”

  His brows drew together. “What do you mean, she doesn’t know? Does she think you had loving parents who helped you? What did you tell her, that they died?” He paused. “Are they dead, Meg?”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She went still, staring at him. “I don’t...know what you’re talking about.”

  Or didn’t want to admit she felt the connection between them, too. But since he still wasn’t so sure he wanted it to go anywhere, he said nothing. Instead, he contented himself with tracing patterns on the backs of both of her hands with his thumbs, feeling the fragility of her bones beneath fine-textured skin.

  “I have no reason to think they’re dead, but I don’t know.” She said it so quietly, he had to lean forward to hear. “I’ve never looked.”

  “I’m sorry, Meg. So sorry.” Damn, his presumptions about her had been turned end over end. He couldn’t even be sure when it had happened.

  Jack was disturbed to be so convinced no kindly adult had taken Meg in, sheltering her until she was able to support her daughter. Maybe he was wrong, but...the faces of homeless kids he’d seen begging in Seattle slid through his mind. Some hungry, some with eyes so much older than their actual years. Girls turning tricks, boys, too skinny, sliding out of sight behind Dumpsters in dirty alleys. Had Meg Harper been one of them? He almost shuddered at the too-vivid picture. The need to know would eat at him now.

  “Meg?”

  She looked up at him, eyes wide, searching, painfully vulnerable. Then she began shaking her head and tugged her hands free of his, even scooting her chair back a few inches.

  “No. There’s no reason for us to be talking about this.”

  Punched by awareness of how much he wanted to know and why, Jack sought a back door. “Emily doesn’t remember?”

  “How much do any of us remember before we’re five or so?” she challenged him.

  “Consciously? Maybe not a lot. But judging by the research on babies that aren’t handled and talked to, we have to assume what happened when we were really young still has a profound impact on the kind of person we become.”

  Her laugh was harsh. “I hope you didn’t mean that to be reassuring.”

  Jack sighed. “No, and I shouldn’t have said it at all.”

  “You shouldn’t.” Pride had her holding her head high. “Can we talk about this?” Meg waved at the papers scattered over the table and the bag he’d let fall to the floor.

  “Yeah.” He shouldn’t have pushed at all. And he did need to know what she’d found that had upset her. “You start. Where had Emily stashed all this?”

  * * *

  JACK SOUNDED RELUCTANT when he said at last, “I should get out of here. Emily may be waiting until I’m gone to come home.”

  Call her pathetic, but Meg wanted to beg him to stay. He gave her the pretense that she wasn’t entirely on her own. That he cared, even though she kept reminding herself that he might still suspect she’d conked Sabra over the head and buried her body in the backyard. She couldn’t exactly say he made her feel safe, because he also alarmed her on a fundamental level. Not so much because he was in law enforcement, although there’d been a time she’d tried to avoid being noticed by any cop in the vicinity. His solidity and strength drew her, though; she couldn’t deny it. She liked his size and breadth, too, the lock of hair that sometimes fell over his forehead, the way his big hands engulfed hers. Her belief that he would be infinitely reliable when he offered his support was both seductive and unreal. But a man she hadn’t so much as met a week ago?

  And did it matter anyway? The harsh truth was that nothing in her life gave her the ability to love and trust anyone but Emily.

  “She feels betrayed.” The words rushed out. “And I didn’t even find anything very helpful.”

  “It’s interesting that Sabra seemed to have a crush on Bouchard.”

  Meg pulled herself together. Despite the temptation, she didn’t want Jack to guess how vulnerable she felt right now. “All girls have a crush on a teacher at some point. Emily blushes every time she mentions Mr. Fuentes. She scribbled his first name on the margins of one of her papers, and snatched it out of my hands when she remembered. And the truth is, Mr. Bouchard is an attractive man.”

  Jack’s mouth tightened, as if he didn’t like her thinking that. “He’s married. Has two kids.”

  “I know that. And so does Sabra. Which makes him safe as a fantasy figure.”

  “Huh.” He appeared bemused. “I didn’t have a single woman teacher I’d have wanted to imagine naked.”

  Despite herself, she laughed, her mood easing. “Were any of them in their twenties?”

  His grin was wicked and charming both. “No,
they were all at least as old as my dad.”

  His dad? Why wouldn’t he have said his mom, considering they were talking about women?

  He must have seen her speculative expression, because he said shortly, “My parents split when I was ten. I stayed with my father.”

  “Oh.” Were her cheeks heating, as if she were fifteen again? What an awful thought. The last thing in the world she would want was to go back to that year, of all others.

  “I’d like to take this pile with me,” he said.

  She’d already guessed that’s what he had in mind, as he’d set aside various notes Sabra had written. A couple had been in Spanish, which seemed to interest him.

  “But you’re leaving the dirty clothes for me?”

  He laughed. “Afraid so. I’ve got to tell you—her locker reeked. I always thought schools smell musty because they’re old, or the lunches are so bad. Now I know the truth. It’s the filthy PE clothes and shoes at the bottom of half the lockers.”

  She heard herself giggle. “There are worse things. Surely you’ve found drugs in school lockers?”

  “Yeah, when I was still in uniform, we took a drug-sniffing dog to the local high school. I worked in Bellevue at the time,” he added as a clear aside. “The dog was interested in a lot of lockers.”

  Meg shook her head. “And you’d think all the decomposing PE clothes would have kept them from smelling anything else.”

  Jack chuckled. “You would.” He considered her for a moment that stretched and made her pulse pick up speed, then pushed back his chair, stood and stretched. “Shall I take this garbage on my way out?”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll carry it out.”

  He shook his head and picked up the bag anyway. Meg could hardly argue. She walked with him, showing him where the bins were around the side of the house.

  “Why were you interested in the notes that were in Spanish?” she asked suddenly. “You’re not thinking Mr. Fuentes?”

  His glance was sharp. “I’m not ruling anyone out yet. Emily told me Sabra was tutoring a boy whose first language is Spanish. Fuentes is adviser to the program, but he didn’t think to tell me Sabra was involved. I can’t help wondering why.”