Friction (18 page)

“Discounting Neal, neither has anyone official. I never even discharged a weapon.”

“I noted that. However, in Mr. Gilroy’s view, the action you took might eventually come under internal review, and this time, he said, your agency—or any agency—might not be as lenient as they were after Halcon. If you were fired or forced to resign from the Rangers, you’d have nothing to lose by taking Georgia and disappearing.”

“Except that it would make me a criminal. A fugitive. Even if I chose that for myself, does Joe believe I would do that to Georgia?”

“I don’t know what he believes, Crawford. But I told him that
I
believed he was completely wrong. Unfortunately I didn’t change his mind, didn’t even make a dent. He left here to seek out another judge.”

He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “What kind of repercussions will there be for you?”

“For recusing myself?”

“For giving me warning of the TRO.”

“If Joe Gilroy learns of it, he could file a grievance against me.”

“Christ, Holly. I don’t want any of my crap to land on you.”

“I don’t want you to be provoked into an altercation with your father-in-law.”

He glanced at the door. “If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have been in his face by now.”

“Which is what I feared and why I gave you the heads-up. It flirts with violating ethics, but in good conscience, I couldn’t let you completely destroy your chances of getting your daughter back.”

“How destructive is it for you? What reason did you give for recusing yourself?”

“Giving a reason isn’t required. A judge can simply say he/she can’t hear a particular case. That’s it. However, what I put in the letter to Judge Mason and the governor—”

“The governor?”

“I felt he should know. I called his office, but he’s out of state at a conference, so I emailed him, explained the situation, and attached a copy of the letter to Judge Mason.”

“You have the governor’s email address?”

She made a gesture downplaying that. “What I said in the letter was that since you had saved my life, and that, by necessity, you and I are closely linked to the investigation, sustaining objectivity is virtually impossible. Which is the truth.”

“If not the whole truth,” he said softly.

“If not the whole truth,” she echoed in a whisper. “Plain and simple, I broke the rules. Even if no one else ever knew about what happened between us, I would.”

Their gazes held for several seconds, then he turned away from her and went over to the bookcase wall. Placing his hands on the edge of a shelf above his head, he braced himself against it, his head dropping forward between his shoulders. He remained like that for a full minute. She supposed he was trying to absorb everything that this development signified.

Finally, addressing the floor, he said, “Temporary restraining order. In other words, I’m an imminent threat.”

“You should be talking to William Moore about it.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “I’m talking to you.”

With reluctance, she nodded. “The TRO goes into effect immediately when you’re served.”

“And then I have to go to court and defend myself against Joe’s crock of shit.”

He did, or the full restraining order went into effect automatically, and it could remain in effect for years. Of course, he knew that, so she refrained from saying anything.

“How long before the hearing for the full restraining order? It usually takes, what? Two, three weeks?”

“Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer.”

“And Prentiss County is currently short one courtroom,” he said wryly. “Between now and the hearing, whenever it is, the TRO remains in place.”

“We don’t know for certain that another judge granted it.”

“Best odds?”

“Not in your favor, I’m afraid. Even though there’s been no physical abuse, your father-in-law is alleging harassment and threats of violence. With a child’s safety and welfare at stake…”

“The judge will sign.” Turning to face her, he added, “And they’ll waste no time serving me.”

“Honestly, I thought you might already have been served, so by telling you, I’m not going that far out on a limb.” She took a step toward him. “Crawford, you know that you must abide by the order. I beg you to. If you violate it, the consequences will be severe.”

“I know the consequences. I could go to jail. Hell, I’ve slammed people in jail for violating a TRO.”

“Beyond that, a ruling in favor of the Gilroys would be practically guaranteed at the hearing. As an offender, you could be kept away from Georgia for years. So please, promise me that you’ll comply with the terms.”

“How bad are they?”

“Until the hearing, you can’t get within one hundred yards of Georgia, the Gilroys, or their property. No contact whatsoever. Not even by phone. Any attempted contact will be considered a violation.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s difficult to hear this, to hear yourself spoken of in terms of an ‘offender’ but—”

“Screw all that,” he snapped. “Joe, the court, can call me any damn thing they please. What about
Georgia
? What’s she gonna think when I suddenly disappear from her life? She’ll think her daddy abandoned her.”

His chest rose and fell with emotion. “Whether or not you believe it, whether or not my in-laws like it, my little girl loves me. The last thing we talked about was the surprise I have waiting on her at my house. Now? Christ!” He made an angry swipe through the air with his fist. “I’ll never forgive Joe for this.” Stepping around her, he headed for the door. “I gotta go.”

“Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Get drunk maybe.”

Panicked, she grabbed his sleeve and held on even as he tried to shake her off.

“I won’t let you leave when you’re in this frame of mind.”

“You’d do well to let me go, Holly. When I’m in this kind of mood, I tend to act out.”

“If you act out, you’ll lose Georgia forever.”

He threw off her grasp. “That’s funny coming from you,” he sneered. “I’d have Georgia now if you had given her to me instead of wasting time enumerating my past transgressions. ‘Here’s your daughter, Mr. Hunt. Go in peace.’ Bang the gavel. We’re outta there. But, no, you had your judgmental points to make.”

She shrank away from him. She knew the harsh words were spoken in anger and supreme frustration, but that didn’t make them any less hurtful. Or any less true. They hovered there between them, widening the chasm that circumstances had already created.

He was the first to move. His motions abrupt, he gave the heavy doorknob a vicious turn, yanked the door open, and strode out.

 “They were together tonight. Alone.”

“Who?”

Pat Connor nodded a greeting to another police officer as he walked past carrying a Whataburger sack. Once the cop was out of earshot, he whispered into the burner phone. “The judge and Crawford Hunt. They had a closed-door session in her chambers for over half an hour. He came out looking like he could either fuck or kill somebody. Not necessarily in that order.”

He’d thought that was a rather clever turn of phrase, but there wasn’t so much as a snicker on the other end of the call.

“When was this?”

“Just now. He took the atrium stairs down. Fast. Practically at a run. He left the building. I followed him out and watched him drive away.”

“Where’s the judge?”

“Still in her office.”

“They might have been discussing the investigation.”

“Alone? Neal Lester’s here. So’s Nugent. Why wouldn’t they have been in on the meeting? And something else.”

“Well?”

“This morning after the press conference, he dragged her off for a whispered conversation.” Pat related everything he’d seen and overheard, leaving out the part about how he nearly messed himself when Crawford Hunt had singled him out. “Told me not to let anybody interrupt them. But Neal Lester showed up with her boyfriend, and that put a stop to it.”

Several moments lapsed, then Pat was asked, “Did he see you see him?”

“Tonight, you mean? Yeah, as he blew out of the judge’s office. We made eye contact. He bobbed his head, like ‘how you doin’?’ but he didn’t say anything.” Pat waited and when nothing was forthcoming, he asked, “What do you want me to do now?”

“See to it that Neal Lester knows about their meeting. Mention it to him in passing. Casually. But stress that Hunt was angry when he left her.”

“I don’t know,” Pat whined. “I don’t want to stick my neck out too far on this thing.”

The man’s chuckle was sinister. “Too late to be worried about that.”

C
rawford didn’t keep liquor in the house. After Beth died, he’d started drinking to dull the pain. It had no effect, so he drank more. Getting the DUI had been a wake-up call. He’d seen how close he was to becoming like Conrad, and he was not going to be like him. Not in any respect. Now, when he drank at all, he limited himself to one and went out for it.

He sat at the bar of a popular watering hole, slowly sipping the straight bourbon while ignoring the clamor around him—half a dozen TVs all tuned in to the same baseball game, the clack of billiard balls, the drone of conversation, the wailing lament of a country song being piped through the sound system.

If his cell phone hadn’t been on vibrate, he would have missed the call. He checked the caller’s name and hesitated, but only for half a second before deciding in favor of answering. Keeping his tone bland, he said, “Hey, Neal. What’s up?”

“You bastard.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Something wrong? You sound plumb overwrought.”

“You leaked his name to the media, didn’t you?
Didn’t
you?”

“Whose name?”

“It’s on the ten o’clock news. I’m watching it. A ‘new person of interest’ in the courthouse shooting. Chuck Otterman.”

Crawford couldn’t help but smile over Neal’s distress. He signaled the barkeeper to switch one of the TVs over to a Tyler station. On the screen was a reporter doing a live standup in front of the Prentiss County Courthouse. The audio was muted, but Crawford could guess what he was saying, because he’d practically spoon-fed it to the guy.

Neal’s lame approach to the investigation and his kowtowing to Otterman had left Crawford feeling that a shake-up was in order. A Houston station would have had ten times the viewers, but Tyler was closer, and its audience more homegrown. Therefore interest was greater about the goings-on in rural Prentiss. Using the burner phone he kept handy in the glove compartment of his SUV, he’d placed an anonymous call to the station’s news hotline and asked to speak to a reporter.

Sticking to the facts, Crawford told him about Otterman’s coming forward and admitting to leaving the crime scene, about his being asked by the “team of investigators” to view the body of the man erroneously suspected of the shooting. He hadn’t answered any of the questions put to him by the reporter, who was hyperventilating by then. He’d been purposefully evasive and made himself sound nervous about leaking information, hoping the tactic would whet the reporter’s appetite and ensure a deeper probe. His pot-stirring obviously had worked.

Neal was still ranting. “You were his ‘unnamed source,’ weren’t you? You tipped them. I know it.”

“They wouldn’t broadcast an anonymous tip without having it corroborated.”

“The reporter called me to substantiate it two minutes before air time.
Two minutes
!
”

“Then what are you yelling at me for, when it was you who confirmed Otterman’s involvement?”

“All I confirmed was that he’d done his—”

“Civic duty. He’s a model citizen, all right.”

“In fact, he is.”

“Then he’s got nothing to worry about, does he?”

“No, but you do. I’m going to have your ass over this. I’m going to have it mounted on the wall of my den.”

“Have you cleared that with the missus?”

“How am I going to explain this snafu to Mr. Otterman?”

“Jeez, Neal, I don’t know. But you’ve got, uhhh, ten hours and forty-eight, no forty-nine, minutes to figure that out. Wasn’t the convenient time for him nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“Fuck you.”

“See you at the morgue.”

Crawford clicked off, having succeeded in upsetting Neal and hopefully shaking Otterman’s equanimity. But it was a minor triumph that did little to cheer him. Rather than goose Neal into conducting a more aggressive investigation, the detective would more than likely become more stubbornly conservative.

Otterman was probably as solid a citizen as Neal believed him to be. Crawford couldn’t pinpoint why the guy had got under his skin, but his initial response had been dislike and mistrust. His gut instinct about people had been too reliable to start dismissing now. He would continue going with it until it was proven wrong about Otterman.

Before concluding that he was absolutely innocent, as Neal already had, he wanted to gauge Otterman’s reaction when he looked at Rodriguez’s corpse, and wait to see what, if anything, Smitty turned up on him and his unexplained meetings.

He left his drink unfinished. Rather than lifting his spirits, it was only making him more depressed. In contrast to the air-conditioned bar, the atmosphere outside felt particularly sultry. He was clammy with sweat by the time he climbed into his SUV. He blamed the heat index for his lethargy—not the wounded look on Holly’s face when he’d left her with that harsh accusation vibrating between them.

Talking dirty to her one minute, lashing out at her the next. If she hadn’t known it before, she knew it now: Refined, he wasn’t.

Feeling bone-tired and dejected, he let himself into his house through the back door, draped his jacket over a kitchen chair, slid his necktie from around his neck, and, without even bothering to unbutton his shirt, pulled it off over his head as he made his way down the hall toward his bedroom.

As he passed the open door to Georgia’s room, he did a double-take.

Then he stood there, stupefied, his brain trying to register what his eyes were seeing. Blindly he felt for the wall switch and flipped on the light.

The bedroom had been turned inside out, upside down, destroyed. The mirror between the upright spindles of the dresser had been splintered into a million shards, the picture books ripped to shreds, the stuffed animals disemboweled, the princess doll dismembered and decapitated. The bed linens had been sliced to ribbons. Red paint, flung onto the pink walls, looked obscenely like blood spatters.

The violation made him sick. He forced down the gorge that surged into his throat.

He did a quick walk-through of the other rooms, but nothing else had been disturbed, which upset him more than if his entire house had been trashed. The offender knew him well, knew what he valued most, knew how to strike where it would hurt the worst, and scare the shit out of him.

Any attempted contact will be considered a violation,
he remembered Holly saying. But he hadn’t been served yet, so with “screw that” haste, he called the Gilroys’ house. Grace answered.

“It’s me,” he said. “Is Georgia okay?”

“Crawford. Uh—”

“
Is she okay
?
”

“Yes, of course. She’s been asleep for hours.”

“Go check on her.”

“Crawford—”

“Just do it.” Reining in his impatience, he added, “Please, Grace.”

Fifteen seconds later, she returned. “She’s in her bed, fast asleep.”

He took his first steady breath since discovering the vandalism. “Is your house alarm set?”

“You know Joe.”

“Keep it set. Even during the day.”

“What’s the matter? Has something happened?”

An explanation would only support their argument that he was dangerous to be around. “A daddy thing,” he said, forcing himself to give a light laugh. “Moment of panic. You know how it is. Sorry I bothered you. Good night.”

He disconnected and, when he did, he became aware of a noise outside. Quickly but quietly, he went down the hall and into the living room. Slipping his pistol from the holster at the small of his back, he peeked through a front window and saw a shadowy form approaching the porch.

Crawford turned on the outside light and simultaneously flung open the door.

The man halted and shielded his eyes against the sudden glare. He blinked Crawford into focus. “Hey, Crawford.”

He was a professional server whom Crawford had used himself.

“I know it’s late, but I came around earlier and you weren’t here.” With apparent reluctance, he withdrew an envelope from the breast pocket of his jacket and extended it to Crawford. As he took it, the server said, “Sorry, man.”

Crawford didn’t thank him, but he shook his head to indicate that it was unnecessary for him to apologize. He was only doing his job.

The server touched his eyebrow in a quasi salute, then turned and walked back to his car parked at the curb.

Crawford closed his front door. Considered an immediate threat to Georgia, he’d been served with a temporary restraining order. He glanced in the direction of her despoiled bedroom.

The irony didn’t escape him.

As soon as her back hit the sofa, he flung open her robe, ruched up her t-shirt, and hooked his thumbs into the narrow band of her panties. They were off and flung to the floor within seconds.

She yanked his shirttail from his waistband and grappled with his belt buckle. More practiced at opening his fly, he pushed aside her clumsy hands and hastily undid the buttons.
Together they shoved his jeans and underwear over his butt. A heartbeat later, he was inside her. Completely and solidly. Engrafted.

For five seconds—ten?—neither of them moved, not even to breathe, possibly because they couldn’t quite believe that they’d reached this point of no return without kissing or wooing or foreplay.

Then he braced himself above her by placing one hand on the edge of the seat cushion, the other on the arm of the sofa behind her head, and began pumping into her. The angle of each thrust was perfect, the friction electrifying. Yet, greedy for more, she dug her heels in and tilted her hips up to amplify the grinding motion of his.

In a shockingly short time, she was gathering fistfuls of his shirt, then her hands moved up to his shoulders, where they held on, her fingers digging into the firm muscles. Her back arched and held in a silent plea for one more stroke…one more glide…one more… And she came.

The instant he felt her helpless clenching, he surrendered to his own climax. The intensity of it caused his arms to collapse. He settled heavily on top of her, pulsing inside her, his breath hot and damp against her neck as he groaned, “Christ, christ.”

The echo of Crawford’s grating voice jarred Holly out of the dream, which had been a startlingly lifelike reenactment, and her body had responded accordingly. Her heart was thudding. She was short-winded. Her sex was achy and wet and feverish.

Do you remember it like I do?

Throwing back the sheet, she got out of bed and went into her bathroom. She turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face. But it didn’t wash away the memory of Crawford sprawled on her chest, his own expanding like bellows while he took a few moments to catch his breath. Precious few moments, however. Then he abruptly raised his head and looked directly into her eyes from a distance of mere inches.

Her hands now trembling with the memory, she turned off the faucet and dried her face. As she lowered the towel and saw her image in the mirror above the sink, she realized that this is the way she must have looked to him in that moment: hair straggling over her face, eyes glazed and dilated, cheeks flushed, lips parted in bewilderment over what had just happened.

Then as now, her nipples had been so tight underneath her t-shirt, so sensitized, that the abrasion of the soft cloth had been enough to send tingles through her. If he had touched them in that moment, brushed his tongue across them, even fanned them with his breath, her heart might have burst from the pleasure.

But he hadn’t. He had broken that moment of shared wonderment by slipping out of her and levering himself off the sofa. That’s when she was struck with the enormity of what they’d done, the sheer calamity of it. Frantically, she’d pulled down her t-shirt and crammed the hem between her thighs. She rolled onto her side and drew herself into a ball. But there was no cause for modesty, because, by then, he was making his way out, his boot heels thudding against the hardwood floor.

Of all the factors relating to that event, the one that surprised her most was her own spontaneity. She hadn’t paused even long enough to ask herself
Should I or shouldn’t I
?
She had simply acted on a propulsive desire without giving any thought to the wrongness or rightness of it.

Which was unlike her. Following her father’s abandonment, her mother had relinquished all major decision making to her. Bearing that much responsibility, she had carefully weighed every decision. She couldn’t afford to make one wrong turn, because her future, as well as her mother’s, had depended on correctness.

There had been no place in her life, ever, for caprice.

As she gazed at her reflection now, she realized that, despite the consequences that might arise from that one rash act, she didn’t regret it as much as she should. Had she been her careful and cautious self, she would have missed those thousands of incredible physical sensations. She would have missed those erotically charged moments measured by the cadence of their hard breathing. She would have missed the utter wildness of it, the untempered carnality. She would have missed…him.

Better to be remembering it now with a trace of regret than forever regretting that she had denied herself the experience.

But he would always be the man she had compromised ethics for. And to him she would always represent the system standing between him and his child. His parting words to her last night had cut to the quick, but they had summed up the hopelessness of their situation.

After showering and dressing, she went into the kitchen to find Marilyn already there, sitting at the dining table, which she’d turned into a temporary workspace for herself. They exchanged good mornings, and when Holly asked Marilyn how she’d slept, she guffawed. “Some bodyguard I am. I went out like a light. What time did you get home?”

“Around ten thirty. I had a police escort all the way to the back door, then they parked at the end of the drive.”

“They’re still there. Did you happen to watch the news last night?”

“No.”

“They’ve got another person of interest. His name is Chuck Otterman.”