Deeper Than Need (20 page)

Sims inclined his head and stepped aside, but Max had to force himself to take that first step.

The absolute last thing he wanted to do was claim that boy’s body. But his wife was Lee Brevard’s next of kin. That made him family.

Turning away from Jeb, Max started down the hall. Liz Pittenger waited for him, all neat and tidy in her suit, and he was certain she had all the forms ready, as neat and tidy as she was.

There was nothing neat and tidy about death, though. Lee Brevard had been far too young to die. Max shuffled down the hall, determined he wasn’t going to think about how very little he wanted to do this. He’d just get it done—

“We can’t find his cell phone.”

Max stopped and looked back at Jeb, frowning. “Beg your pardon?”

Jeb closed the distance between them, a thoughtful look on his face.

Max wasn’t fooled. He’d worked with too many cops during his career—he knew when one was fishing, although Max didn’t know
why.

“We can’t find his cell phone. I checked at his place already, looked in his car. Even did a walk-through at the house. But I can’t find it.”

“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.” Max readjusted his cap, eying the cop.
Smug bastard.
There was a reason the man was asking and Max even had a few speculations, but speculations weren’t fact.

“Just curious, that’s all. Lee had a hard time separating himself from the phone, you know. Had a citation or two because he was driving reckless, too busy texting and not watching the road. You’d think a man with his record would have been more careful than that, but it was like he was addicted to the damn thing. Now here he is, but we can’t find the phone. In case you were looking for it when you claim his personal effects.”

Max grunted. “I ain’t got no use for the phone anyway. I don’t think I could figure out how to turn it on.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Noah …

He was dreaming. There was no denying that.

As Trinity came to him, wearing nothing but an oversized white work shirt, he knew he was dreaming. She straddled his hips and the heat, the softness, of her was pure bliss.

Her mouth came down to press against his and he cupped the back of her head to hold her still. She laughed against his lips as he took the kiss deeper. She was sweet, so sweet.
Noah,
she whispered again as she broke the kiss and ran her lips down his jawline to his neck. She bit him and he groaned, listened as she laughed again.

The sound was a caress, almost palpable against his flesh, and the dull, pulsing need that had lived inside him from the very first time he’d laid eyes on her roared to life.

With a snarl he rolled, putting her beneath him.

The dream shifted, changed. She was naked, the shirt she’d worn fading away like mist.

You want me?
He had to hear her say she did. Had to hear that this need wasn’t all on his side.

All she did was twine her legs around him and thought died as he felt the slick, wet heat of her rubbing against his cock. Nerve endings popped, exploded, as fiery pleasure ripped through him. Shoving upward, he stared at her as he wrapped his hand around his cock. He leaned in, teased her clit with the head of his cock and groaned while they both shuddered.

Noah …
she whispered his name again.

He came down on her, tangled a hand in the cool, soft silk of her hair. As he slanted his mouth on hers, he took her, driving deep. It was the sweetest, softest torture ever.

Noah … Noah …

Eyes closed, he lost himself in the wet, hot warmth of her body while her nails tore down his back and her sex milked his cock.

Noah …

He stiffened.

Her voice—

Jerking back, he gaped at the thing in front of him. Her maw opened, revealing stubbled, broken teeth, frozen in a rictus of a smile. Her hair, incongruously beautiful against her dead skin, spilled down her back in a waterfall of red-gold curls.

Noah,
she said again. In Lana’s voice.

Just trust me.

*   *   *

He jerked up out of the dream, chest heaving while bile made a slow, vile crawl up his throat.

Scrambling out of the bed, he managed, just barely, to stumble into the bathroom. Freezing cold, shaking, he stood there, hands braced on the sink, head bent while the echoes of what should have been one sweet dream tore through him with nasty claws.

“Lana.”

He wanted to puke.

He refused to let himself.

The memory of her face, not quite like the body they’d found—worse somehow—danced through his mind and he couldn’t stop it.

Slowly, he shoved upright and stared at his reflection.

Hollow-eyed, pale and grim-faced, he looked like a man who’d crawled out of the gutter.

He looked like the older version of the messed-up waste he’d been years ago, before he finally dragged himself out of the bottle.

“We’re not doing this,” he said.

Turning away from the man in the mirror, he stripped out of his clothes and headed for the shower. He couldn’t wash away the remnants of the dream, but he could clear the fog from his head. Then he could drink a gallon of coffee. If none of that worked, he’d go for a run and then hit the bag in his shop for a while. He could beat the dream out of his head if he had to.

Sooner or later, Trinity would show up. Once he saw her, everything would be smoothed out.

Crazy, but that was all it would take to ease the ragged edges left by that awful dream.

*   *   *

Hank could still see the blood.

He had a hangover.

He had a headache.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a repeat of what had happened last night—Lee, shooting a look at him over his shoulder right before he darted out into Main Street, and then …

The arcing spray of blood felt like it had been burned on the inside of Hank’s lids. He closed his eyes and he saw it, again and again.

Now, standing twenty feet away from where Lee’s body had come to rest, Hank could still see the blood. It wasn’t his imagination—he could
see
the blood. Turning away from the grisly scene, he stared up Main Street and tried to tell himself he needed to get to work. Maybe if he made himself work, he could forget.

For a little while.

But he just didn’t know.

Taking a few uneasy steps away from the curb, he thought about maybe just going home. Or to Shakers. It was early yet, but if he got drunk … He shuffled in that direction, tripped and looked down, cursing as he tangled with one of the potted plants Louisa liked to put in front of her coffee shop. It fell over and soil spilled everywhere. Although he tried to right it, the damn bunch of leaves looked mangled even to his bleary eyes.

“Stupid plant,” he muttered. She’d raise ten kinds of hell over it, too.
Screw it.
He took a step, kicked something and swore again as he looked down.

It was a phone.

He knelt down and scooped it up, eying the familiar case. It was a blow, to his gut, to his heart. “Aw, hell. Lee. You stupid ass,” Hank said, as a fist grabbed his throat again.

He knew that phone, knew it as well as he knew his own name—how many times had he yelled at Lee to put the damn thing away when he was working?

A hundred.

A thousand.

The case, emblazoned with
H A LO 3
on the back, was scuffed, scraped. Hank pushed the button, watched as the phone came on. Something that might have been tears clogged his throat. The wallpaper was a picture of Lee, with the girl he’d been dating … he’d told a couple of the guys they were serious, too.

Slipping the phone into his pocket, he headed down the street and tried not to think about that spot as he passed it. That spot where Lee had died.

*   *   *

It was one of those days.

Trinity knew it wasn’t fair to think like that because, really, her day was going a lot better than it was for some; at least she was alive for her day to suck, right?

She kept seeing that guy’s face—Lee. His name had been Lee, and for some reason he’d broken into her home.

Her computer—what if he’d gotten ahold of her computer?

She had to get out there and check on things, but—

“Mama.”

Distracted, she looked up.

Micah stood in front of her, hair spiking out in wild tufts all over his head, dirt streaking his face and a woebegone look in his eyes.

“Hey, handsome.”

He just stared at her.

“What’s wrong, Micah?”

“I’m
bored.
” He slumped against the desk and his elbow caught the coffee cup she’d meant to dump out.

Now she really, really wished she hadn’t forgotten it. Jumping up, she snagged a handful of tissues. “Micah, damn it, would you—”

The sound of his sniffling stopped her before she could say anything else.

Clamping her mouth shut around the rest of the words building in her throat, she used more tissues to sop up the coffee as it continued to spread. With her free hand she moved papers and files out of the way. “I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her tone level. “It’s not your fault I didn’t dump the coffee like I meant to, is it?”

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, his voice small.

“No.” She sighed and gathered up the wet wad of tissues. “I’m mad at myself. Mad at the day.”

“Why are you mad at the day?”

“Because it’s a lousy one.”

Micah swiped at his nose.

“Please use a tissue,” she said. She would have handed him one, but her hands were still full of coffee-laden mess. Dumping the clump of tissues she held into the trash, she moved around the desk and headed into the small bathroom. It wasn’t much bigger than a closet, but it had a small shower, a toilet and a sink. Tucked under the sink was a stash of cleaning supplies—a pathetic stash, but as long as she could get the coffee up, that was all she cared about.

“Is Mr. Noah gonna be mad at us for spilling coffee on his desk?”

As she came out of the bathroom, she saw Micah still standing in front of the desk. “No, baby. He isn’t going to be mad.”

“Daddy would be.”

Yeah, well, Daddy is a class-act jerk.
She didn’t say that out loud, though. Instead, she lied through her teeth. “Of course he wouldn’t be. Your father knows that accidents happen.”

“He yelled at me when I dropped my cup once.”

Trinity stopped in her tracks.

Micah hadn’t seen his father in, well, almost two years—not since before the trial had started—and hadn’t been
alone
with Anton in even longer. What was Micah talking about?

“When did he yell at you, sweetheart?” she asked softly, moving to stand before him.

He leaned against her, tucking his face against her belly. “We were at his house. I don’t know where you were. But I had my cup. It was my Spider-Man cup. I dropped it. He yelled at me and threw it away.”

Kneeling down, she eased Micah back and studied his face. The look in his eyes was enough to break her heart. “I remember that cup,” she said, smiling at him, hoping he’d smile back. “It was one of your favorites—Grandpa bought it. I thought we lost it.”

“Daddy threw it away. Said I had to be more careful.”

Anger burned inside her, but she shoved it down, hid it. Some small part of her wondered just what had happened, when this had happened … and yes, how much of it Micah truly remembered. It had been so long since Micah had spent any time alone with his father.

In the end, though, what mattered was simply that something
had
happened and it had upset her son. Anton had already hurt the boy enough. With cold indifference and neglect.

Brushing Micah’s hair back, she said, “I think we need to find you a new Spider-Man cup. A dozen of them. Maybe I’ll even buy
me
one.”

“You can’t drink out of a Spider-Man cup.” He stared at her solemnly.

“Why not?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you tell me it’s because I’m a girl, we’ll box, big guy.”

“You’re a grown-up. Those cups are for kids.”

“Well, there’s no law saying that grown-ups
can’t
drink out of a kid’s cup.” She pursed her lips and pretended to mull it over. “Although the Spider-Man cup you had was a sippy cup. Maybe what we need to do is buy you new Spider-Man cups, but big-kid cups. Or grown-up cups even. That way, both of us can use them.”

He went to wipe his nose and then stopped, grabbed a tissue and wiped at it messily. “Maybe we can buy one for Mr. Noah, too.”

Her heart knotted. “Maybe.” Leaning in, she pressed her lips to Micah’s forehead. “Would that make you feel better?”

“I just don’t want him yelling at you.
I
spilled it.”

“Oh, baby. I can absolutely promise you that Mr. Noah isn’t going to yell over some coffee being spilled.”

She settled back on her heels and smiled at Micah. “How about we go out for lunch? I know we made sandwiches, but I’m having a bad morning and you look like you could use a pick-me-up, too.”

A few minutes later, they were out of the office, locking it up behind them. She left a note on the monitor in case Noah dropped by to look for her, although she doubted he would.

The warm summer sunshine beat down on her shoulders and she smiled as Micah all but pulled her down the sidewalk. “Maybe we can go home today,” he said, swinging their hands back and forth. “You think we can go back home yet, Mama?”

“I don’t think so, baby. Not yet. We still need to get the floor fixed.” They rounded the corner and started down Main Street.

Micah’s gaze locked on the pizzeria and she grimaced. “I think we need to pass on pizza today, man. I’ll look like a blimp if we keep eating pizza as much as you seem to want it.”

“What’s a blimp?”

“A giant balloon.” She puffed out her cheeks and watched as he giggled. “Let’s try the diner instead, okay?”

“Hot dogs!”

Like that was so much better than pizza.

They passed by the pizzeria, and as they came to a stop at the intersection her gaze landed on a bench a few yards up. There was a man sitting there. She started to look away, but instead, she found herself just staring.