KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (7 page)

Chapter
Ten

Kim exhaled. That was it? That was his whole case? It
was all built on the fact that a missing page from a thirty-year-old file could
potentially
have cast “reasonable doubt”
on the case? Maybe he wasn’t as smart as those intense eyes seemed to show.

“Um,” Kim said, wondering if she should voice this
argument or keep it to herself and be on her way. She’d already thought of a
way she could, possibly, help, if he’d been able to convince her. Now, she knew
that option was null and void. There was no way she’d…

“There’s more,” Kennick said, and Kim’s mouth
twitched. If his next argument was as weak as his first, she’d only have
herself to blame for getting her hopes up. “There’s this.”

Rising from his seat, he went to a far corner of the
trailer, where a small cupboard held various knickknacks and papers files.
Rummaging slightly, he found a thick manilla envelope and brought it back to
the table. His wolf-like grace as he moved wasn’t lost on Kim. Nothing he did
was lost on Kim.

“I keep this in Beebi's trailer because she's less
likely to spill beer all over it than my brothers,” he said with a fond smile.
“And my sister? She'd lose it the second I handed it to her.”

Dumping the contents onto the table, he began to
separate the various papers. Kim saw glimpses of newspaper clippings, weathered
photographs, handwritten notes, yellowed pages of neat type. One by one, he
began to slide pieces of paper across the table for her to examine.

The first one appeared to be a receipt. For a ring.
Dated in 1981. She looked up at Kennick.

“He bought that ring two days before Rhonda was
murdered,” he said. “He kept that ring his whole life. He was going to
propose.”

He slipped a second piece of paper across the table.

“Application for a marriage license,” he said. “Dad
started filling it out the same day he bought a ring. Got so damn excited he
wanted to get started before he even asked. Only stopped because it got to
parts he needed her to fill out.”

The sheet was clearly an old form; I wondered if there
was any way to cross-reference it with other marriage licenses from the time,
or if Town Hall even kept records of their old, outdated forms.

“Two tickets to a show in Dover for the week after she
died. Lou Reed. Rhonda’s favorite,” Kennick said.

Kim thought that was a pretty weak piece of evidence,
but she nodded. The next paper slipped across the counter was a letter written
in elegant, feminine script. Kim picked it up and squinted; the print was small
and cramped, but some words stood out.
Stalker.
Afraid. Protect me?

“A letter she wrote to my father the month before.
They were together all the time, but he still had a box full of letters she’d
written him on nights they couldn’t stay together. All the ones from that July
and August mentioned this guy who’d been scaring the shit out of her. She
didn’t say who, only referred to him as ‘the guy’. I don’t know if she knew who
he was or not, but she clearly knew someone was following her. Even coming into
her house at night. Leaving threats on her pillow and shit. Wanted her to leave
Dad.”

Now this
was
interesting.
It clearly put a third party in the mix, someone who wasn’t Pieter who had
already threatened Rhonda, already made it clear that she wasn’t safe.

“How did this not make it into the papers or
anything?” Kim asked, looking up from the letter. Something like this would
have thrown some major doubt on the case built up against Kennick’s father.
Kennick’s jaw set hard as he stared at her.

“This is a small town, Kim,” he said. “Small and
cruel. Dad showed all this to the police. They took some of the letters, and
Dad never heard another damn thing about it. Like it just got tucked away into
some file cabinet. It was just a lot easier to blame
him.
He said one detective even accused him of being the stalker,
setting it up so that he could kill her and throw the blame on someone else.”

“Rhonda didn’t go to the police about it herself?” Kim
asked.

“Apparently not,” Kennick said. “Dad told her to, but
she was afraid. Whoever it was, he had her scared so shitless that she was
afraid to tell anyone but Dad.”

“But didn’t they search her room? There would have
been some evidence of…”

Kennick shook his head.

“I don’t fucking
know
what
they did. All fingers
were pointed at Dad. They thought they had the case locked up. By the time they
got around to exploring other options, Rhonda’s parents had trashed her room in
a fit of grief. Maybe they did search her room, before all her shit wound up in
a landfill – but they never found anything, or at least never found anything
that went public. I imagine she might have thrown it all away, too. Would you
keep a knife someone had stabbed into your favorite teddy bear?”

A shiver ran through Kim. This time, it wasn’t from
looking at Kennick, or imagining what it would be like to be underneath him. It
was the cold reality starting to form around their conversation. This really
wasn’t
some suspense novel. This was
real. Thirty years ago, a pregnant girl had been shot dead in cold blood. Time
was starting to seem irrelevant to the hard emotion at the heart of that fact.

“Jesus,” Kim breathed. “This is actually…this is,
like, really strong. Evidence, I mean. I just can’t believe it was kept hidden
for so long…”

“Can’t you?” Kennick asked, eyes flashing. “You’ve
lived in this town your whole life. And you’ve seen how rarely people change
their minds.”

“That’s not true,” Kim said, defensive now that she
felt her town attacked.

“Isn't it?” Kennick said, shaking his head with a
pitying smile on his face. “I'll make you a wager. They'll let us live here,
let us start our businesses, let us pay our taxes and funnel cash into Main
Street. But they'll still look at me and mine like we’re lepers. They want us here
because they know we’ll save their asses from total desolation. But they sure
as hell don’t want to rub elbows with us in the store, or see one of their
precious daughters slurping milkshakes with a gypsy at the Tastee Freeze.”

Kim bit her lip, not wanting to admit to this
double-sided nature of the people she’d known all her life. Good people. People
who hosted potlucks and didn’t complain when a family was too poor to
contribute anything. People who showed up at the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving.
People who bought the fireman’s charity calendar every year. People who adopted
dogs from the shelter instead of buying them from a pet store. People who
smiled and said hello on the street and asked how you were doing, who brought
casseroles during hard times and bought rounds during good times. Her people.

“So,” she said, wanting to change the subject. She
leaned forward, turning her head slightly to look over the rest of the
scattered pages. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, some things, like…”

At that moment, they were interrupted by a telltale
whooping noise. Kennick’s body immediately stiffened; Kim thought she even saw
the bristly hair on his massive arms stand up for a second. Turning to look out
the window, she watched a patrol car roll up to the trailer.

Chapter
Eleven

Kim saw Jimmy Marone in the driver’s seat or the
patrol car. She’d gone to school with Jimmy, had even dated his best friend for
a short while. But, when she turned back to Kennick, she saw nothing but cold,
seething hate in his eyes.

Woah,
she
thought, for the first time realizing what really lay at the bottom of this
man’s heart. She’d been lusting after him so hard, she’d barely even thought
about
who
he was. She saw his jaw
set. Fear coiled in her breast.

What the
hell are you doing, Kimberly James,
she thought, but even that thought
didn’t stop her hand as it flew across the counter, grabbing onto his and
squeezing. His whole body seemed to radiate heat, the massive energy in his
skin a tactile presence. The hate left his eyes for a fleeting moment as he
looked down, wide-eyed, at her hand covering his. She felt his fist clenching
as he turned those eyes towards her, taking her breath away; not for the first
time, and not for the last time.

“Hey,” she whispered, gathering her wits. “Don’t worry.
That’s Jimmy. He’s a good guy. A good cop.”

Kennick ripped his fist away from her, and she
flinched as though he’d lunged at her.

“No such thing as a good cop, not where my people are
concerned,” he sneered, but she saw a momentary softness in his face when he’d
seen the effect his anger had on her.

“Well, I’m here,” she said, tapping some deep resource
of strength inside her. “I’ll help work out whatever…”

“Shit!” Kennick interrupted, his voice a quick bark.
Kim followed his eyes out the window. Jimmy had just opened the back door of
the patrol car, and a small, tow-headed boy was sliding out. He had to be ten
or eleven; no older. He had a look on his face that was part petulant scowl,
part worry. As Jimmy shut the door behind him, the kid kicked at the dirt in
front of the trailer. In a flash so quick she missed it in a blink, Kennick was
out of his seat and at the door, the hinges whining, the door slapping against
the frame.

“What did you do now, Pieter? Goddammit, boy, I swear
on….”

Kim followed, stepping outside just in time to see
Kennick advancing on the boy, all hunched over. The kid jumped, spine straight
as an arrow, and before Jimmy or Kennick could reach him he was off, running
through the trailer park at top speed, his tiny body veering aimlessly. Hoots
and cackles seemed to follow him; Kim watched as the people milling about made
half-hearted attempts at catching him, but soon enough he had cleared the last
trailer and was hurdling himself deep into the woods, Kennick and Jimmy left
staring after him.

Kim saw, with some relief, that Jimmy was wearing one
of his patent “life’s funny” smiles. He had always been gentle-natured; it had
surprised everyone when he became a cop, but in a good way. You felt good,
having Jimmy Morane on the force. He was easygoing but fierce when it came to
protecting those he loved. He’d go easy on the town drunk but not hesitate to
put himself in the line of fire when necessary. He’d let pot-smoking kids go
with a warning, but smash a meth lab to bits. He was a good man.

Kennick wore no such smile as he turned to face the
policeman, who was a few inches shorter and notably thinner. Kennick towered
over him, but Jimmy didn’t back down. As Kim approached, she caught the start
of their conversation.

“…think they got him on a dare. It was just a Coke,
but I had to pick ‘em up anyway. Kids were kicking each other the whole damn
ride. Made me think my parents were saints on those family trips.”

Jimmy was unruffled by Kennick’s glower. When he saw
Kim, his eyes registered surprise but soon melted into a familiar warmth.

“Hey, Kimmy,” he said.

“Hey, Jimmy,” she said back, suddenly aware that her
presence here would raise some eyebrows on both sides. She felt the stares of
the people in the park on her back. It wasn’t unfriendly, but it sure as hell
wasn’t comfortable, either.

“What happened to the other boys?” Kennick asked.

“Dropped ‘em off at home, too,” Jimmy said with a
shrug. “Probably getting a strong lecture on consequences right now. Your
cousin’s the smart one, lighting off like that. Damn, but he’s a runner. Track
star someday, I bet.”

At this, Kim saw the slightest smile twitch at the
ends of Kennick’s mouth.

“Only if the track team gets his Ma to follow him
around the course with a shout on her lips,” he said, and Jimmy laughed
heartily. But when the laugh died, a strange look came over his eyes. He
glanced at Kim but looked back at Kennick and stepped a bit closer. She saw
Kennick’s shoulders bunch slightly, his nostrils flare the slightest bit,

“Listen, man,” Jimmy said. “I don’t want you getting
the wrong idea about me saying this, but I feel I should. I don’t care about
your boy here being, you know, a boy. I don’t think anything about you folks.”

Jimmy looked uncomfortable for the first time,
shuffling his feet slightly as he looked up at Kennick.

 
“But you
might wanna spread the word that the line is pretty thin,” Jimmy continued.
“I’m not the only guy on the force, you know? And some of the guys…well,
they’re all good guys but they might not be so…”

Jimmy’s eyes flashed to Kim again.

“They might not be so friendly,” he finally said,
studying Kennick’s stoic form. The larger man was studying the cop hard, as
though trying to find out if there were any further layers to the words he was
saying. Kim knew to trust Jimmy and take what he said at face value, but she
could already tell Kennick had no warm feelings towards authority of any kind.

“Thanks,” he finally said, the word flat and thick on
his lips. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Then Jimmy’s bright smile flashed across his face
again.

“Speaking of being friendly,” he said, “my Mom’s got
some raging migraines. I heard you gyp…you guys have some homeopathic cure for
that. Mind if I swing by when I’m off duty to pick some up?”

Kennick’s eyes narrowed, a frown darkening his face.

“Or not,” Jimmy said, holding his hands up. “I get it.
The uniform complicates things for sure. Just figured there was no harm in
asking.”

Jimmy smiled, opening the door to his car, and gave a
two-finger salute before starting the engine and driving away.

“What was that about?” Kim asked as they watched the
car disappearing. Kennick looked down at her, eyes caught between wariness and
amusement.

“Just what he said. Old gypsy migraine cure,” he said.
Kim saw the hint of a lie in his mouth as he spoke, but before she could demand
he elaborate, he was beginning to walk away, towards the woods. Kim watched his
purposeful stride, the way his body moved easily over the ground, like he and
the earth were kindred.

“I gotta go deal with this,” Kennick said over his
shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

“Wait,” Kim said, her heart fluttering. She didn’t
want to leave. As unbelievable lame and pathetic as that seemed to her, she
couldn’t get enough of being around him. She already hated the idea of the
drive back home to her empty apartment. Kennick turned, hands in his pockets.
An old couple sitting outside their trailer watched the two from a distance.

“I think I can help you,” Kim said, trotting up to
stand before him. “I mean, I know someone you can talk to. My sister, she’s on
the paper. The newspaper, I mean.”

“I know what you meant,” Kennick said, eyes sparking.
He leaned in closer to her, and she was swept up again by his devouring gaze,
riding the wave of his stormy green eyes as they rolled down her sides, along
her hips, across her chest…and then returned to her face.

“I’ll call her tonight,” Kim said, nodding firmly,
lips pursing together. “I’m sure she’d be interested in talking to you.”

When he smiled at her then, Kim knew it was over. That
was it. She’d never get him out of her head now.

“I’d appreciate that,” he said in that low, sexy voice
that went straight to her legs. His eyes flicked to the side and his tongue
snaked out, crossing his lips quickly. “Come by tomorrow.”

“What?” she asked, caught off-guard. “I don’t know if
I’ll have anything concrete to tell you by then. I mean, she’ll have to run it
by her editor and…”

“No,” he said, starting to back away. “That’s not why
I asked. I’d like to cook you dinner. Tomorrow night.”

Kim’s words caught in her throat. Unconsciously, she
followed him a few steps. Did he mean…was he actually asking her…

“Like a date?” Kim asked, knowing that she sounded
stupid as soon as she said it. They weren’t high school kids. But when he
laughed, it put her at ease. Shaking his head, that smile lingering on his
lips, he paused in his backward retreat.

“You’re fuckin’ cute,” he said. When he saw the
conflicted look on her face, he took a step forward again. Moments ago, he’d
been glowering at a cop. And right before that, he’d been telling her about all
the reasons his father could never have murdered a woman, and calling out the
town on its duplicity. And now, suddenly, he was laughing and inviting her to
dinner.

“It’s just…it’s kind of out of nowhere,” she said. His
eyebrow rose as he considered this.

“Sure is,” he finally said. “We’re kind of an
unpredictable breed, woman. Don’t come if you don’t want to. I’ve just got a
hell of a soft spot for pretty girls.”

Kim blushed despite herself, and it made him smile
again.
Unpredictable,
she thought.
Unpredictable might not be so awful…

“What time,” she asked, and he shrugged.

“Whenever you feel like it,” he said. “I don’t have a
watch.”

And with that, he was gone, turning away and jogging
between the trailers towards the woods. And Kim was still center of attention,
looking after him, wondering what the hell had just happened.