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“Joe’s gotta show me how to make my boomerang come back,” Tommy insisted. “Or...” He assumed an air of patently false innocence. “I guess I could take it outside and figure out how it works myself.”
“Yeah,” Dawn snorted. “Like I’m going to turn you loose with an ancient hunting weapon.”
The Ellises’ home was in an older part of Bethesda, just over the Maryland border from Washington, DC. The neighborhood consisted of gracious brick and stone houses set on large, tree-shaded lots. Their backyard was enclosed in mellow brick and graced by a fanciful gazebo now dusted with a light snow. It was also overlooked by a half dozen plate-glass windows, all of which were at risk despite Tommy’s assurances that he would be real careful.
“We want to hear Joe’s news,” Dawn told the boy firmly. “Then we’ll all put on our jackets and go out with you.”
His lower lip jutted mutinously. “But...”
“Chill, dude.”
Always a man of few words, Joe got his point across without raising his voice. Dawn flashed him a rueful smile as she created a diversion for boy and dog.
“Why don’t you go into the den and get on the computer? You can pull up that website on the aerodynamics of boomerang flight your dad bookmarked for you. I bet Joe would like to see it after we talk.”
Reluctant but outnumbered, Tommy caved. “’Kay. Just don’t talk too long.”
Still clutching his prize, he scampered off with the pup hard on his heels. Joe shrugged out of his jacket and raised a brow as Dawn hooked the well-worn leather on the hall coatrack.
“Aerodynamics of flight, huh?”
“What can I say? Brian and his first wife were both engineers. It’s in Tommy’s genes.”
It was a measure of Dawn’s basic warmth and security in her two-month-old marriage that she didn’t want Tommy to forget his birth mother. Caroline Ellis had died of a brain tumor less than a year after her son’s birth. Tommy had no real memories of her except those captured in the exquisite digital book Dawn had made for him using all her skills as a graphic designer.
“C’mon. I’ll brew you some coffee while you tell us all.”
Dawn turned to lead the way down the hall, so she missed the casual hand Joe laid at the small of her friend’s back. Callie, on the other hand, felt the light touch right through her baggy purple sweater and cotton camisole.
When Joe called to say his plane had touched down, she’d almost dashed to the gatehouse to change, slap on some lip gloss and drag a brush through her mink-brown hair. She’d been thinking about taking Dawn’s advice and getting the shoulder-length mass shaped at one of DC’s elegant salons. With her life pretty much on hold these past weeks, though, she’d settled for just pulling it back in a ponytail or clipping it up.
She made a futile effort to tuck back some of the wayward strands as she and Joe settled in high-backed stools at the kitchen counter and Dawn plugged a fresh, single-cup, dark arabica blend container into the coffeemaker. As hot water steamed through the cup, the coffee’s rich aroma competed with the sappy tang of the fresh-cut pine boughs on the kitchen table.
“Okay,” Dawn demanded when the super-fast appliance delivered a steaming mug. “Talk! We’ve all been speculating like crazy since you took off so suddenly for Sydney. Tell us who the creep is who’s been sending those emails and why.”
Joe swiveled to face Callie. “Do you remember acting as ombudsman for a girl named Rose Graham?”
Frowning, she flipped through a mental filing cabinet of the cases she’d worked in her six years with the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate. Some files were slender; others were fat and crammed with tragic details. Still others were truly horrific. As best Callie could recall, though, Rose Graham’s case file was one of the thinner ones.
“I remember the name.”
“She was five when her parents duked it out in divorce court.”
From the corner of her eye Callie saw an all-too-familiar mask slip over Dawn’s normally expressive face. Her friend had been a young teen when her parents’ increasingly bitter arguments led to an even more acrimonious divorce, with their only daughter caught smack in the middle. Kate and Callie had acted as buffers as much as possible, but sharing Dawn’s heartache had been a significant factor in Callie’s decision to pursue a master’s degree in family psychology and accept an appointment as a children’s advocate.
“The mother worked as a paralegal,” Joe prompted. “The father was a software developer at one of Boston’s ultra-high-tech medical research companies.”
The details seeped back. Callie could visualize Rose Graham—fair-haired, small for her age and very bright.
“I remember the case now.” Her forehead crinkled. “As best I recall, it was pretty open-and-shut. The child was well adjusted, doing fine in preschool and clearly adored by both parents. Judges are predisposed to leave a female child that young with the mother unless there’s evidence of gross neglect or abuse. But...” Her frown deepened. “I’m pretty sure I recommended generous visitation rights for the father.”
“You did, which was why we didn’t give the Graham case as much scrutiny as some of the others. Only after I had my people go back and do a second scrub did we learn the father’s company transferred him to their Australian office earlier this year.”
“Uh-oh.”
With a sinking sensation, Callie sensed what was coming. Otherwise amicable divorce and custody agreements could turn ugly when overseas travel was involved. The cost of the travel itself was often prohibitive, and the court couldn’t discount the possibility a child taken outside its jurisdiction would not be returned. For that reason, Callie’s report to the judge had contained the standard caveat requiring review if either of the parents should relocate outside the US.
“Rose’s mother flat refused to let her daughter fly all the way to Australia,” Joe confirmed.
“And the law firm she worked for tied her ex up in legal knots,” Callie guessed. She’d seen that too many times, too.
“The father had to come back to the States so often for hearings and court appearances that he wiped out his savings and was forced to take out huge loans. As a result, he fell behind on child support.”
Callie grimaced. “And that in turn led the state to institute proceedings to garnish his wages from his home company in Boston, only adding to his legal woes and burden of debt.”
“He asked his company to transfer him back to Boston. He’s been waiting for six months for a position to open up.”
“In the meantime, his anger at the system festered.”
“And then some.” Joe shook his head in disgust. “I can’t believe it took my people so long to break through the series of firewalls he erected. The man’s damned good at what he does.”
“But your people are better,” Dawn commented.
“That’s why I pay ’em the big bucks.”
“So what happened when you confronted Graham?” she wanted to know.
“Pretty much what I’d expected. He acted astonished, then indignant. Then, when the Aussie cybercrimes detectives who accompanied me to his place of employment laid out the electronic evidence, he wouldn’t say another word without an attorney present. After his lawyer showed up it still took some persuasion,” Joe said with what both women suspected was considerable understatement, “but he finally admitted to fixating on the caveat in Callie’s report as the root cause of his problems.”
“Right,” Dawn snorted. “Not the judge who signed the visitation order. Not his ex-wife or her team of lawyers. And of course not himself.”
“Of course.” Joe’s silver-gray eyes frosted with icy satisfaction. “Bastard’s in a world of hurt now. He’ll be sitting in a cell for months while the US and Australia work out jurisdictional issues. Years, maybe, since the investigation and prosecution of terror-related cybercrimes takes far higher precedence in both countries than his threats.”
Callie might have felt sorry for Rose’s father if his vicious emails hadn’t disrupted her life for the past three months. She’d have to pick up the pieces and get on with it, she realized. But first...
“Thank you.” Reaching across the counter, she laid a hand over Joe’s. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. More than I can ever say. I hated involving you in the mess, but...”
“Hated me butting in, you mean.”
“Well, yes. At first.” She had to smile. “After all, we barely knew each other.”
“A situation I’ve been trying to remedy.”
He had. He most definitely had. Just remembering the hard press of his mouth on hers the evening before his sudden trip to Australia brought a wash of heat from the neck of her sweater. The heat surged even higher when Joe turned his hand, enfolded hers and brushed his thumb over her wrist in slow, easy strokes.
Callie didn’t dare glance at her friend. Dawn wasn’t the least bit hesitant to dish out advice or offer opinions. She and Kate had both already suggested—several times!—that strong, silent, super-macho Joe Russo had a serious case of the hots for the quiet, seemingly demure member of their trio.
Thankfully Dawn refrained from commenting on either Joe’s thumb movements or the heat now spreading across Callie’s cheeks. Instead she invented a quick excuse to depart the scene.
“I’d better go make sure Tommy isn’t trying to test those aerodynamic principles in the den. Give a shout when you’re ready to, uh, take the action outside.”
The door to the den swished shut behind her, and a sudden silence descended. Callie was the first to break it. Her hand still in Joe’s, she tried to ignore the skitter of nerves his stroke was generating and smiled up at him.
“I meant what I just said, Joe. I’m really, really grateful. And so relieved it’s finally over.”
“Me, too. It’s been keeping me awake at night.”
“I’ve lost sleep, too,” she admitted. “I can’t ever repay you for the man-hours you and your people put into the investigation.”
“If it gets the shadows out of your eyes, I’ll consider the debt paid.”
His gaze locked on hers. “Your eyes are the damnedest color,” he said after a small pause. “Not purple, not lavender. Sort of halfway between the two. First thing I noticed about you.”
Well, Callie thought with an inner grimace, it wouldn’t have been her ebullient personality or luscious curves. Dawn had the corner on those. And any stray male glances the flamboyant redhead didn’t instantly capture, Kate’s lustrous, sun-streaked blond hair and mile-long legs would.
“Thanks,” she said for lack of a better response.
“I tried to find the right way to describe the color when I gave my folks your vitals,” he said with a rueful grimace. “Couldn’t bring myself to go with hyacinth or heliotrope. Their jaws would’ve smacked their chests.”
Callie’s own jaw almost took a trip south. These were the most words she’d heard Joe string together in one sitting. They were also the most surprising.
“So what did you go with?”
“Pansy.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Lovely.”
“Yeah, they are.”
His hand tightened and tugged her closer. His other hand came up to slide under her hair. His palm felt warm on her nape, the skin hard and ridged in spots. She’d once read that expert marksmen fired thousands of rounds weekly to maintain their skills and developed shooter’s calluses as a result.
Okay. She’d read that just a few weeks ago. When she was trying to weave a more complete picture of Joe Russo from the scant threads of his past that he’d shared with her. She was thinking of the still-gaping holes in that picture when he reclaimed her attention with a gruff admission.
“Those damned emails weren’t the only thing keeping me awake.”
He lowered his head but didn’t swoop in and catch her by surprise, as he had the night before his abrupt departure for Australia. He gave her plenty of time to pull away, to ease out of his loose grip. So much time she was the one who leaned into the kiss.
That was all the encouragement he needed. With a low grunt, he pushed off his stool. She came off hers eagerly. The hand still wrapped around her nape moved up. He tipped her head back for a better angle and used his other arm to fit her against him. She strained even closer while his mouth worked hard, hungry magic on hers.
Within moments, Callie was aching for more. She wanted him out of his shirt. Out of his worsted-wool slacks and his Italian leather boots and...
“Caaal-lee.”
She jerked her back and looked over her shoulder to find Tommy glaring at them with equal parts indignation and accusation. His pup wedged through the door with him and yipped, as if wanting to add his two cents to whatever was going on.
“Mom said you guys were still talking. But you’re not. You’re kissing ’n’ stuff.”
They hadn’t actually gotten to the “stuff” part, but Callie was thinking about it. Thinking hard. So was Joe, judging by the wicked tilt to his mouth.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “we are.”
Scowling, Tommy planted his fists on his hips. “When are you gonna be done?”
Joe slanted Callie a wry look. “How about we finish our...discussion...later? Somewhere private. Inaccessible to kids and dogs.”
“Deal.”
“All right, kid. Get your jacket and your boomerang and we’ll go outside.”
Chapter Two (#u8c59b598-0523-5405-8c65-656f8f3a7c22)
When Joe stepped outside, he welcomed the clean, sharp bite of a DC winter. December was midsummer in Australia. During his flying visit, Sydney had been sweltering through usually high temperatures. As a result he enjoyed the brisk chill almost as much as he did Tommy the Terrible’s determination to get his boomerang to fly.
Before making the first attempt, though, the boy fingered the fine-grained wood surface and gravely explained its aerodynamic principles to Joe. “See, this is a nonballistic missile.”
“That so?”
“Uh-huh. It’s different from ballistic missiles. They’re, like, spears ’n’ arrows ’n’ bullets ’n’ stuff. When you throw them or shoot them from a gun, they fly up in an arc till gravity pulls them down.”
Which was about as cogent a distillation of ballistics as Joe had ever heard. He hid a grin as he thought of the hours he’d spent on the range as a raw recruit learning to calculate distance, velocity and trajectory.
“But a boomerang’s different,” Tommy continued, his face a study in fierce concentration as he fingered the intricate designs inlaid in the wood. “It’s got this curved shape ’n’ wide surface ’n’ the top is conver...convey...”
“Convex?”
“Yeah, convex. Anyway, Dad says if you throw it right, it’ll defy gravity as long as it has enough speed ’n’ the rotation will bring it right back to you.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the theory down. Want to put in practice?”
“Yes!”
Thankfully, Joe’s Aussie contact had directed him to an indigenous arts and crafts store with a very accommodating owner. The man had hooked a Closed sign in his shop window and taken his customer to the soccer field just a half block from his store. It took patient coaching and several attempts before Joe eventually got the damned boomerang to return.
The Ellises’ backyard wasn’t anywhere near as large as a soccer field, but Joe figured it was adequate for Tommy’s strength and throwing ability. Hunkering down on his heels, he shared his recently acquired knowledge.
“Okay, hold it in a two-fingered pistol grip.”
“Huh?”
“Sorry. Hold it here with your thumb and two fingers. Tuck the other fingers into your fist. Good. Now lift the boomerang vertical to your shoulder. A little higher. Okay. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to throw this. Just bring your arm back and hurl it forward.”
Tommy’s first attempt sent the boomerang plowing straight down into the snow-dusted grass. The second whizzed past the pup’s nose. The third actually flew off to the right, whirled and started to return before it ran out of speed.
“Joe! It was coming back!”
“I saw.”
Thrilled with his throw, Tommy almost tripped over his pet in his eagerness to retrieve the boomerang. Joe figured he’d pretty well exhausted his expertise and leaned against the garden wall to let the boy enjoy himself.
