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“Fine.” Bruised and sore, but she was alive, so who cared? “How about you? I heard you were limping after the blast.”
“Muscle pull. It worked itself out.”
“You’re a real hero. Carrying me while you were hurt.”
He shrugged. “I was happy to do it, Mallory.”
“I hope you still feel that way after we talk.”
“Yeah, so do I.” He sipped some of his coffee while she slipped out of her jacket and put it on the chair to his right, which she chose so she could have a view of the place. Despite what she’d said to Ginny yesterday about not being afraid, she wasn’t stupid. She planned on being careful, just not paranoid.
She needed to forget all Ginny’s worries about Shamus. He’d saved her life. His little jab about only doing so for selfish reasons had stung for a few minutes, but he had saved her life. That was all that mattered.
Sitting down, she faced him and rubbed the arms of the Victorian red pullover sweater she had knitted herself for warmth, glad she wore it. His silence felt chilly.
She’d just have to be the one to break the ice.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to be here talking to me, Shamus,” she said. “I’m used to it. My probationers are never happy to see me, either.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
There was a hint of teasing in his voice. Teasing was good. “They’re usually not happy because I get information out of them they don’t want to give.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You’ll be happy to know I’ve changed my mind about going after Tripp myself.”
He remained silent, his expression guarded, as always.
“Aren’t you going to say ‘I’m glad’ or ‘That’s good’ or something?” she asked.
“I’m waiting for your punch line. You’ve changed your mind about going after Tripp yourself, but…” He flexed his wrist outward, expecting her to fill in his verbal blank.
“This is me you’re talking to. There are no ‘buts,’ I promise. Ginny convinced me it would be too dangerous to go after him alone.”
“So she’s going with you?”
“Shamus,” she chided gently. “I’m not going to search for him. But I would like an update from you on what’s going on with my probationer. All Detective Sullivan said when he questioned me Saturday was that Tripp had escaped the blast after dropping a knapsack in the building, and whether it was the one he was wearing when we saw him or a different one is unknown. Are the police any closer to finding him or his daughter yet?”
Shamus started to say something, but shook his head instead. “What makes you think I would know that?”
“What? You don’t?” She twisted her mouth into a smirk. “They do let me supervise lawbreakers, Shamus. I might be cheerful and caring, but I’m not stupid.”
He grinned. Full-out and natural. She sucked in a breath at the sudden pull on her heart.
“So there is cynicism under all that sweetness,” Shamus said.
She shook her head resolutely. “No cynicism in me. I believe in staying positive no matter what. I’m not letting life take away my happiness.”
She didn’t add “like you did,” but she might as well have. His grin disappeared, and his eyes hardened.
“I hope you never have to eat those words, princess. Because I don’t think you realize just how bad life can get.”
“I’m not a princess,” she told him. “I grew up working-class poor with a distant father who started drinking and became emotionally and physically abusive when I was eleven. And—does this sound familiar?—he focused on the bad in life and nothing anyone ever did made him happy to this day, even though he’s stopped drinking.”
Shamus’s eyes narrowed at the sides. Before he had seemed guarded. Now he had that intensity back she’d seen right after the bomb had exploded and she’d opened her eyes while in his arms.
Oh boy, she didn’t need to be thinking about that intensity.
“What changed your father when you were eleven?” he asked.
“You promise not to think less of me if I tell you?”
His lips parted as if he was surprised by the question, but his gaze never changed. “I don’t think there’s anything you could say that would change my opinion of you, Mallory.”
She didn’t want to tell him. Didn’t want to think about what had happened that had made her aloof-but-otherwise-okay father into a moody, verbally abusive man who couldn’t succeed in drowning his sorrow. But if she told him, maybe he would understand he didn’t have to end up being another Gideon Larsen, minus the booze.
It was one way she could pay Shamus back for saving her life.
The story was sad, and she focused on the two children talking to the street Santa outside, hoping the happiness she saw there would get her through it.
She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him so he could hear. “I was eleven, and my older brother was fourteen. My parents both worked, so during the summer vacation, the two of us were responsible for watching our little sister, who was six.”
She wanted to stop there, to tell him how pretty and sassy Kelly had been, but if she did, she’d never finish. Just like always when she got to this part in the story, she wanted to cry. Watching the children outside wasn’t helping at all, so she transferred her gaze to her coffee cup.
“My brother, Ethan, had a ball game, and he told me to watch Kelly. We walked two blocks to the school playground so she could go on the swings, and then we walked back home and into the house, and I locked the back door. Before our parents got home, I was supposed to put clothes in the dryer and fold a couple of piles of clean laundry in the cellar, but Kelly was afraid of going down there, because sometimes there were mice. So I let her stay upstairs in the kitchen and went downstairs to turn on the dryer. When I finished the work, I went upstairs. The back door was open, and Kelly was gone.”
“They didn’t find a…her?” he asked quietly.
“No.” She met his gaze. His eyes had softened. She had reached him. But there was more. “My father blamed my brother and me both. I didn’t think my mother did, but she didn’t protect us from his yelling, so maybe subconsciously she did and wanted us to be punished. I don’t know. Anyway, Ethan was my best friend after that. Life was rough, and he kept promising me when he was eighteen, he would get an apartment and get me out of there as soon as he could. He said if need be, we’d move to another state.”
“It didn’t happen?”
“Oh, he got the apartment in another state, I guess. I don’t know for certain because he broke all ties with me and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Just a note saying he was very, very sorry, but he had to leave. That I would be all right. Haven’t heard from him since.”
“How long?” Shamus asked, frowning.
“About thirteen years, give or take.” She gave him a sad, closed-lipped smile. “It’s over and done, all of it. I just wanted to tell you this so you can see I know what misery is. I just choose to follow what the Bible says, that no matter what our circumstances are, we should be content.
“So if I’m happy and try to look at everything in a positive light, Shamus, it’s not because I’m stupid or naive. It’s because I don’t want to lose the life God wants for me.”
Like her father had. Like, maybe, Shamus would. She didn’t have to say that. Shamus understood. She could tell by the way his features changed to a pensive look.
“You know you weren’t responsible for whatever happened to your sister, don’t you?” he asked.
“I know it in my head, Shamus. But in here—” she tapped her finger against her chest “—I’m not so sure.”
“I know what you mean,” he admitted.
He was talking to her about something personal? Her eyes went big, but Shamus shook his head. “That’s all I’m saying on that, so don’t even try to get me to share.”
He was closing off to her again, so she had to get back to the reason why she’d come. “So what’s the latest on Tripp?”
“As of this morning,” he said, “he’s still just a person of interest in the bombing, and his daughter is still missing.”
Normally, with Tripp being involved in a felony, Mallory would need to revoke his probation. But in this case, where someone could be holding her probationer hostage by now, and his daughter’s life was threatened, it was a gray area, her boss had said. Tripp wasn’t supposed to be avoiding the law, but she didn’t know for certain that he was.
“Was the backpack they found at the scene the one we saw Tripp wearing, or a different one?”
“I wasn’t told,” Shamus said.
“But you asked.”
One side of his mouth quirked upward, but he didn’t reply. That meant he’d asked. Amazing how well she could read him. The very thought of that distracted her for a few seconds while she wondered if it meant anything about him and her. She decided it didn’t. She didn’t like him well enough for a “him and her” anyway. Her instincts were still sharp, that was all, despite the bomb blast knocking her silly.
“When was his daughter last seen?” she continued.
“Getting off her school bus at three-thirty Friday at the end of her street, by a neighbor. The man blackmailing Tripp—if there is such a man—may have been waiting for her at her house.” Shamus glanced at his watch and looked up at her with his eyebrow raised. “Any more questions?”
“Yep.” Sliding her chair away from him enough to give herself some elbow room, she opened her bag and took out the two cookies inside. “Want Santa or the reindeer?”
She expected him to be above the obvious bribe to keep him at their meeting, but he grabbed Santa right out of her fingertips. She hid her smile. “You have a weak spot for sweets.”
He stopped munching on the cookie abruptly, and swallowed, staring at her. “I guess you could say that.”
All of a sudden she felt like a warm sugar cookie.
“And you have brothers,” she added quickly to get her mind on where it should be—trying to figure out how best to pay him back. Because baring her soul earlier to make him see he needed to change wasn’t enough, she supposed. “Brothers, or a lot of friends.”
“Three brothers.” He bit Santa’s head off. That didn’t surprise her at all. “How did you know?” he asked a minute later.
“The way you grabbed Santa. Cookie survival. Before everything went south at home, my brother’s friends would come over at Christmas time, and if you weren’t fast when cookies came out of the oven, you were out of luck.”
A wave of emotion over the loss of her sister and her brother’s broken promises threatened her happiness for a few seconds until she shoved back the hurt. Grieving forever wouldn’t help a thing—her father had shown her that. She couldn’t bring Kelly back and win her father’s love or relieve her father’s grief. This was all God’s plan. Her only responsibility was to look to God and have joy in her heart, not misery.
She pulled out the reindeer with the green sprinkles, broke off a piece and ate, enjoying the taste of the butter and sugar flavors blended together and feeling her tense shoulders relax.
The pure delight in Mallory’s eyes teased Shamus’s weary heart, and he tried not to let himself warm to her. She’d lived through tragedy and hurt, and kept going. He admired that. Watching her happy was almost better than eating the cookie she’d bought for him. Definitely better than sitting in his house alone, waiting for the makeshift probation office to reopen tomorrow morning. Infinitely better than waiting for Christmas to pass so he could forget how bleak he felt inside.
He wished he knew how she did the happiness thing. It couldn’t only be God, because he’d turned to God over and over and gotten only silence, not joy.
Mallory polished off her cookie, wiped her fingertips and leaned over way too close to him again. He almost bolted away. He could handle Mallory being close. He could. He was just edgy because someone had tried to blow him up.
“Any more questions?” he asked her.
“Sure. Lots,” she said brightly. “Why do you suppose someone would force Tripp to bring a bomb into the probation building?”
“If you use someone else to do your dirty work, the police have a harder time finding you. The only problem is if the guy talks.”
“So you kidnap his daughter to keep him quiet,” she said softly. “But how long can that work?”
“Not long. A hostage is a lot of trouble. So is blackmail. Something usually gives in both cases.” Shamus’s focused stare told Mallory that Tripp and his daughter could already be dead. She worked her teeth along her lower lip. That would be horrible.
She had promised Tara she would help her.
“Why pick Tripp to do the dirty work?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I’m sure the police and the FBI are looking into Tripp’s associates,” Shamus told her. “Maybe it will turn out this isn’t about me at all.” He didn’t believe that, but hopefully she would and stop asking questions.
As she shook her head back and forth, doubt in her eyes, Shamus caught an odor of apples and spice, the scent of Christmas. Maybe from her hair. Maybe her cologne.
Maybe he was losing his focus. The cheerful, sweet woman next to him was cutting into his misery like the sugar into the butter used for the cookie he’d just eaten. When she’d been telling her story, he’d almost pulled her into his arms.
He had to get away from Mallory Larsen. He had to forget that she’d awakened an emotion in him that he thought he’d buried—anger. Anger at the sick creep who had abducted her sister, and anger that Mallory had been partially blamed by her father for something she had no control over. He didn’t want to feel anger again. It had almost destroyed him while he’d searched for his wife’s killer.
He’d rather feel nothing at all.
“We done?” he asked abruptly.
“Not yet, Shamus.” She flipped a few long chestnut locks over her shoulder, which drew his gaze to her hair. It was swept upward at both sides with red velvet barrettes, the old-fashioned, Victorian Christmas red his mother was fond of and which matched Mallory’s sweater. Miniature green ribbons hung from the ends of the barrettes and cascaded through the silky strands.
He watched her lips move, but he didn’t hear a word she said.
“Shamus?” She tapped his arm, and he almost jumped. “So you don’t think I’m a target?”
Did he? According to the detective handling the case, there was a lot the police didn’t know for certain yet. Probably wouldn’t know until they found Bud Tripp or his daughter. But if Shamus told her that, she would worry. He didn’t want that on his conscience.
“For now, I’m assuming you weren’t the target. The bomber was willing to let you leave. He mentioned my name, but not yours. And besides, you couldn’t make an enemy if you tried.” All of which were true.
The corners of her mouth lifted briefly. “I need to know for certain. I have to reassure my mother I’m not walking around with a big ‘Kill Me’ sign on my back. Otherwise, she’ll worry to the point of exhaustion.”
He shot her a concerned look. “Maybe she needs to take something for that.”
“Not her exhaustion. Mine.” She pointed her thumb at herself. “I need to reassure her before she worries me to death.”
She looked so serious, he didn’t smile at her joke. That was Mallory, always worried about someone else, never about herself. But now he understood why. She needed to take care of everyone because she felt she’d failed at watching over her sister.
“All right,” he grudgingly said. “The police don’t think anyone’s after you. But that’s all I’m telling you.”
She looked like she’d won the lottery. “If Tripp wasn’t after me, there has to be someone else involved. Because why would Tripp try to blow you up on his own? You weren’t in on his arrest, were you?”
For her safety, he needed to get her off this fixation she had with the case. “Look, any target in this bombing would more likely be me, not you. Logic says there’s more than one person running around loose who’d like to see me dead. So tell your mother you’re going back to a secure office in a heavily guarded courthouse basement tomorrow morning, and you’ll be fine. That’ll take care of her worries.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “One more question—”
He held up his hand. He’d had enough. Enough of the way her hair flowed over her shoulder whenever she moved her head, enough of her apples and spice, enough of the way she could get him to talk and relax his guard.
“Too many people here. Save the rest of your questions for the detective in charge of the case, okay?” Shamus wasn’t just making an excuse. The coffee shop had filled up fast with Christmas shoppers and teenagers out on Christmas break. He didn’t want anyone accidentally or purposely hearing what they were saying.
