Cop by Her Side. Janice Kay Johnson
I’ll bet you tried to keep Brianna from feeling too sad this summer.”
“I’ve tried to do something fun with her every week. Sometimes both girls, but Alexis is happier at the day camp than Bree is this year. I know Drew lets her stay home some days even when he takes Alexis.”
A father should want to spend individual time with his kids. Unfortunately, in his job, Clay had seen too many cases where a father liked being alone with one of his kids for a sick reason.
“I’ve mostly been working Tuesday through Saturday,” Jane continued. “So I’ve devoted a lot of Mondays this summer to the girls. Sometimes they spend Sunday at my place. In July I took just Bree over to that really cool water park in McMinnville.”
He decided he had to be direct. “Does she talk to you? Would she tell you if something was weighing on her?”
Jane’s uncomprehending stare slowly altered to one of outraged understanding. “You’re suggesting that...that Drew or Lissa was abusing her?”
“I’m asking if the possibility exists.”
“No!”
He held her gaze with a steady one of his own. “Jane, you’re not that naive. I know this is your family. Nobody ever wants to think a person she loves could do something like that. But it happens. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot more common than most people have any idea.”
She visibly choked on it, but she had been a cop too long to deny what he said was the truth. “No,” she repeated, but more moderately. “I really don’t think so. The girls are both cheerful and affectionate and—” Jane scowled. “If I could imagine it with either of their parents, it wouldn’t be—” She stopped again, unhappy.
“Your sister,” Clay said slowly.
Her mouth tightened. “Actually, I was going to say Drew. He’s a really nice guy. I think Alexis and Bree are more comfortable with him than they are with Lissa. She’s, I don’t know, uptight and—” something else she didn’t want to say “—self-centered, I guess.”
An unpleasant suspicion had entered Clay’s mind as she talked. Clay remembered the way Drew’s face and tone had softened when the subject of Jane came up. Now listen to the warmth in her tone. Was there any chance something was going on there? Even the idea enraged him.
But, truth was, he couldn’t think how a flirtation or even an affair between Jane and Drew could have played into today’s events, unless it had been a catalyst for a monumental fight between husband and wife. And then how did that involve the kid?
No.
He didn’t believe it anyway, he discovered. He thought Jane’s sense of integrity was too unbending to allow her to sleep with her sister’s husband.
But he also found he hated almost as much the possibility that she wanted to. That the two of them looked at each other sometimes with the knowledge between them that they might have been happy together.
And yeah, what grated maybe most of all was the way she’d described Drew. He was a really nice guy—while Clay Renner was scum of the earth.
Like acid in his belly, it ate at him knowing he’d given her damn good reason to believe exactly that.
And...maybe she’d be right to believe it. A self-confident man, Clay had taken a serious hit that day. Since she’d walked away, he’d looked hard at a lot of crap he’d grown up taking for granted. What shook him most was discovering how much contempt for women had been embedded in his father’s “traditional” views of male/female roles.
Yeah, well, too little, too late.
He stood abruptly. “I’m going in to see how your sister is doing. Then I want you to switch places with your brother-in-law so I can talk to him.”
By her narrowed eyes, he could tell she thought he really intended to bully poor, nice Drew, which upped his pissed quotient. But by God, he was too good at his job to let personal feelings influence an investigation.
He nodded at Jane, probably nothing too friendly showing on his face, and left her alone there.
* * *
DREW SAT IN the hard plastic chair beside Lissa’s bed in ICU, listening to the hum and beep of monitors and the squeak of shoes as a nurse walked past. Farther away were voices. Somebody else getting bad news? he wondered with a jab of pain.
Sometimes he tilted his head back and stared at the pattern of Lissa’s heart beating in jagged green lines across a monitor. Mostly he gazed at her face, so ominously still and unlike her. He sat on her good side, so he didn’t have to see the horrible swelling and bruising. Not that he could forget doctors had actually drilled into her skull.
He squeezed the lax, cool hand that lay in his. “Liss,” he murmured, “can you hear me? I really need you to open your eyes. You’re scaring me. I can’t believe you of all people—” He broke off with a harsh breath.
Melissa had been a revelation to him when he’d met her, filled with a vitality that made her stand out from everyone else he’d ever met. Enthralled, he hadn’t been able to resist her. He hadn’t wanted to resist her, even though he’d known he was hurting Jane.
The terrible thing was that sometimes he thought he’d been an idiot, that Lissa was all surface and flash, and he should have been able to see beneath it. He’d begun to wonder if she really loved him at all. Lately—
But he didn’t want to think about the suspicions that nibbled at him like mosquitoes raising welts. If only she’d open her eyes, they could talk. She would convince him that she had nothing to do with whatever had happened to Bree, and these doubts churning in his belly would go away. If only he could have Bree back, have Melissa back, he could forgive almost anything.
He leaned toward her, resting his elbows on his knees. “I need you to talk to me. Please, Liss. Please.”
But her face stayed still and sunken, and on a surge of anguish he tried to imagine never seeing her laugh again, or whirl on him in a fury, or light with some new enthusiasm. What if he had to plod on without her?
But on a clench of dread and fear, he knew: if he could somehow, magically, save either his wife or his daughter, but not both, he would have to choose Bree.
“That’s what you’d want, isn’t it?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer, of course.
CHAPTER FOUR
“AUNTIE JANE?” HUDDLED in a tiny ball beneath the covers, Alexis peered out. “Will you...will you stay till I fall asleep? And maybe even lie down with me?”
Jane’s heart squeezed painfully. “Oh, pumpkin. Of course I will.”
She untied her athletic shoes and dropped them on the floor, then turned off the bedside lamp before lying down atop the covers so that her head shared her five-year-old niece’s pillow and she could kiss her on the nose. The little girl wriggled a few times to fit into the curve of Jane’s body. Then she gave a small sniff.
“Auntie Jane, will you find Bree tomorrow?” The question floated, only a wistful thread.
Jane gave her a squeeze. “You know I’ll try, with all my might. But Sergeant Renner is really the one in charge of finding her. The good thing is, I know he’ll try with all his might, too.”
“’Cuz I miss her.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Jane squeezed her eyes shut in hopes of damming the tears and leaned her forehead against her niece’s. “I know,” she said huskily.
“Where’s Daddy? I mean, is he with Mommy?”
“Yeah. He’s with Mommy.”
The silence was so long, Jane began to hope Alexis had fallen asleep. Somehow she doubted it, though; even through the covers, she could feel