“Maybe Mrs. Urbansky helped your mother disappear. Hell, maybe she and the chief are in it together.”
“Okay—I get it,” Nic said. “I didn’t know. That’s all. I saw him here earlier and it just surprised me.”
“Was he with a woman?” Reyes asked.
“How did you know?”
“Jesus, were you watching? I didn’t peg you for that sort of thing.”
Nic felt her cheeks burn. “I wasn’t watching.”
Reyes stared at her, raised an eyebrow.
“Not like that. I saw him walk to the truck and I didn’t know what to do.”
Reyes was now contrite. “I’m sorry. I don’t meant to give you a hard time. Two things—first, the chief has his vices. It’s common knowledge. His wife’s death did a number on him. But second—the chief is also the man who took me in when I needed a change. Saved my life, really. And the things he does for the community—the kids in this town. You have no idea. Since he lost his wife before they could have children, he’s been a man of service. And a man of vice. Every coin has two sides, right?”
Nic ran this information through the other facts she now held back. How he’d helped Daisy Hollander leave town. The contempt Kurt Kent seemed to have for him and Reyes, contempt that Nic had yet to understand but knew was very real. And the tone of his voice when he was done with that prostitute in the parking lot. He’d been cruel and degrading, practically shoving her out the door.
“I didn’t know,” Nic said.
“It’s all right.”
She thought then about two sides to every coin. About the two sides of her father.
“I need to tell you something.”
Reyes leaned in and listened intently as she told him about her suspicions, the late nights, the car parked downtown and not at the train station.
“I’m sorry about that,” Reyes said. “You think it had something to do with your mother’s disappearance?”
“I don’t know. Except that I all but told her the morning she left. Maybe it pushed her over the edge.”
“And now you blame yourself.”
He touched her arm. She didn’t pull away. And she felt it again, the anticipation of relief that she knew would come if he held his hand there. If she let it linger just long enough to travel throughher. A little bolt of electricity. And from there, another touch, and another and another until they were swept away.
“Tell you what,” Reyes said, moving his hand. “Tomorrow we’ll check the land records and utilities for the property, and the log for the search and canvass. We can even go knock on the door if you want. And I’ll do a little looking into your father. Shouldn’t be too hard. We have all the bank and credit card statements.”
That would all be fine, tomorrow. But tonight—what about tonight and right now? Exhausted, confused, the hollow spaces wanting to be filled. She couldn’t fight it.
The words flew from her mouth.
“Let me buy you a drink.”
23
Day fifteen
Iwake up with two bodies beside me. Alice is lodged against my spine, under the covers. One arm over my waist, the other on the back of my neck.
But I feel another hand on my hip. Over the covers, but still heavy enough to feel its weight. The hand of a man. The hand of Mick.
I do not move a single muscle. I do not turn my head to see him, to confirm what I already know. I stare at the beams of light coming through the cracks of the boarded up window. And I wait for them to stir. His touch is repulsive, and yet I am suddenly filled with hope.
Be patient, I tell myself this morning, as the light comes in and the plan continues to form in my mind. Maybe I have more time than I thought. Maybe he is starting to like me the way Alice does.
I feel the hands touching me, the bodies stealing comfort from mine. I lie still.
