Just Eight Months Old... Page 3

  The moment he met Hannah nearly three years ago he knew he’d end up hurting her, but had been helpless to stop himself. He recognized instantly that the qualities that drew him to her would be the very traits that would eventually push them apart. Hannah demanded everything from life—and she’d expected everything from him. Only she hadn’t known that he no longer had everything to give.

  The way he saw it, their breakup had been inevitable. It had never been a question of “if” but of “when” and “how.” He knew from the outset that Hannah would one day finger him for the fraud he was. Would notice his shortcomings and boot him out of her life. What he hadn’t banked on was that her rejection would cut so deep. Or that his hurting her would hurt him so much it was painful sometimes to breathe.

  During his self-exile in Florida he had hoped his absence would help heal Hannah’s wounds. He had also sought forgiveness for having hurt her. From the sea where the Gulf met the Atlantic in the Keys, and from the vodka bottles that never had anything to give beyond illusionary escape. Each and every day he pushed himself to the limit in his two-bit assignments in order to feed his untouched savings account, and each and every morning when he awakened, he found himself more restless than before. He had moved his secondhand trailer from seacoast town to town, concentrating on local skip-traces and collecting license plates from uninsured vehicles for twenty bucks a pop. He had searched for a peace that proved as elusive as the answer to why his wife and son had been torn from his life four years ago, before he even met Hannah.

  No, he had nothing left to give Hannah…except his apology. And he’d been offered the perfect opportunity to give it to her when Elliott called him that morning.

  Hannah pulled into the no-parking zone outside the central Queens police station and turned off the ignition. Chad knew it was where she had served five years as a NYC police officer.

  “I thought we were going to pick up the Alfa,” he said.

  Hannah let herself out of the car and Chad followed. He tried not to watch her, appreciate the way she moved, the way she walked. He tried harder still to ignore the fear she tried to hide. He’d expected several reactions from her, but fear wasn’t one of them. Hannah had never been afraid of anything. Was it fear of him? Possible, but not probable. All he knew was he didn’t like to see the emotion coloring her eyes when she looked at him, which wasn’t often.

  “We are,” she replied. “Right after I find out what the police have on these bail-jumpers.”

  “Hey, McGee!” the uniformed officer at the front desk greeted Hannah as they entered. “What brings you back to this part of town?”

  Hannah stepped up to the desk and smiled. “Slumming it, I guess, Smitty.”

  The fifty-some-odd-year-old officer eyed her. “Slumming it! You’re a real barrel of laughs, McGee.”

  Chad noticed the way Hannah relaxed, appearing comfortable with the precinct banter she must have mastered during her stint as a police officer. Much more comfortable than she was with him.

  “Is Schindler around?” she asked.

  The officer moved a hand to his right. “Just where he always is. Guy should have gone home hours ago. I think he’d die without those blasted files.”

  She moved through the throng of people toward the records room, barely noticing that Chad had a difficult time following. Hannah greeted a few detectives as they slid through yet another room.

  “Here we are.” Hannah stopped outside a plain wood and smoked glass door marked Records—Do Not Enter and knocked.

  “Can you get into hot water for this?” Chad asked as she opened the door.

  “Don’t let the sign scare you. I think more people enter because of it.”

  She peered around a series of metal shelves. “Schindler?”

  There was a long silence, then a short, brawny man stepped from between two of the metal monsters over-burdened with worn manila folders.

  “Hannah, is that you?” She leaned closer to Chad. “The running guess around the precinct is Danny Schindler lifts file folders in lieu of weights in his spare time.”

  Chad got a whiff of her skin. She never had idea one how much her nearness affected him while they were together. The passage of time told him she still didn’t have a clue. It was the innocent smiles, the innocuous comments, the spontaneous touches that always got to him more than any obvious overtures. Then again, Hannah was obvious about nothing but her opinion. And she’d welcome his reaction—innocent or otherwise—as much as she’d welcome a bad sunburn on her fair skin.

  “Hey, Danny, I see you’re still buried up to your neck in files,” she said, oblivious to Chad’s thoughts. Which was just as well. If she caught a hint of what was going on in his mind, she’d likely push him into a taxi the instant they hit the street again.

  “Yeah, well, you remember how it is. A crime a second and all that. Someone has to keep track of them all.”

  Schindler scrutinized Chad as Hannah introduced him.

  Chad crunched the clerk’s hand in his, giving the muscle-bound geek a once-over before Schindler turned back to Hannah.

  “Tell me you’re not still living the life of a bounty hunter.”

  “Bail enforcer,” Hannah corrected.

  “Then this is more than a I-was-in-the-neighborhood-and-thought-I’d-stop-by visit, isn’t it?”

  She appeared slighted. “Now, would I be so crude as to use our friendship for my own professional gain?”

  The smile never wavered from Schindler’s face. “Every chance you get.” He dropped the files he held to his overloaded desk. Chad watched one slip toward the edge then fall to the floor. He didn’t move to stop it. “What can I do for you, Hannah?”

  “What have you heard on the two arrested at PlayCo?”

  “The team that unofficially skipped bail from Lower East?”

  “That’s them. I need whatever L.E. has on them. Can you handle it?”

  “There is nothing I can’t handle, you know that.”

  Schindler picked up the telephone and called what Chad guessed was his fellow records clerk at the Manhattan precinct.

  “Danny and I go back a ways,” Hannah quietly explained.

  “So it seems.” Chad settled his weight more evenly as he listened to Schindler persuade the person on the other end of the line to fax him the information.

  “What are the odds on them having something we can use?” Chad asked, shifting through the files strewn across the desk.

  Hannah closed a file he had opened. “Better than average. I’m sure PlayCo kept files on them. Whatever was in them was no doubt turned over to the police.” She tried to take another folder from him but he refused to let it go. She sighed. “Would you quit? We could get in enough trouble as it is.”

  Chad opened the file and scanned the contents. “You didn’t seem too concerned before.”

  “That’s because I’m used to being in trouble with the hierarchy of this precinct.” She pressed her index finger into his chest. “You, on the other hand, could very well be arrested for just being in this room.”

  Chad gazed at her finger, then slowly followed it up to her face. The finger against his chest grew suddenly hot. She quickly removed her hand.

  “It might be an enjoyable experience. Provided you’re in the cell with me,” he said.

  “It took a little doing, but Janice promised to fax the records right over,” Schindler said, hanging up the receiver. As he spoke, a telephone rang in the corner and the fax machine sprang to life. “And here they are now.”

  The three of them watched the information roll in. The physical data sheets listed Lisa Furgeson as a thirty-five-year-old female with blond hair and blue eyes, five feet, six inches tall, one hundred and thirty pounds. Eric Persky was a thirty-eight-year-old male with light brown hair and green eyes, six foot two, two hundred and fifty pounds. Grainy black-and-white copies of pictures followed.

  “Thanks, Schindler.” Hannah pulled the last page from the holder, looking to where Chad ga
zed over her shoulder. It took all of his restraint not to curve his arms around her waist and pull her against him, just as he used to do, back before—

  He took a step backward, barely aware of putting distance between them. Her closeness reminded him of times he had no right remembering. He watched Schindler offer Hannah a manila folder to put the fax in. Her hands shook as she put the flimsy paper into the file folder. Apparently she was as aware of their closeness as he was.

  “It’s a start.” Chad concentrated on something other than the shadow of fear in her wide blue eyes. “Mug shots, charges….” He reached around her, turning the top of the folder open, careful not to touch her as he did so.

  Hannah moved farther away from him. He dammed the groundswell of emotion her rejection aroused.

  “I’ve…I’ve got to make a phone call.” She hurried away from him and toward Schindler’s desk a few feet away.

  “Be my guest,” Danny offered. “You need anything else, give me a yell. Oh, and I think that it goes without saying, but this little…transaction stays between us, okay? The last thing I need is Marconi coming down on me.” He grinned. “I think that’s the last thing you need, too.”

  “You can say that again.” The records clerk disappeared between the towering metal shelves. Chad turned his attention back to Hannah. She tugged the slip of paper Blackstone had given her from her pocket and started dialing a number. Chad rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension bunched there. Who had left her a message at Elliott’s office?

  “Hi, it’s Hannah,” she said into the receiver, turning away from where he looked on.

  The familiarity of her tone didn’t sit well with Chad.

  Had she become involved with someone else since their breakup? He stiffened, something similar to jealousy burning through him. He wanted to take the receiver from her pretty little hand and hang up on whoever was on the other side of the line. Instead, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.

  “I see,” Hannah said into the phone. Chad slowly stepped around the other side of the desk, watching her brows draw together. What? Trouble in paradise? Good.

  She caught him watching her and turned quickly away. “Okay. I can be there in a couple hours. Is that all right? Good, I’ll see you then.”

  We’ll see about that, Chad thought, his jaw so tight he couldn’t say a word if he wanted to.

  “Who’s Marconi?” Chad asked as they left the precinct.

  Hannah vaguely noted the sun had set, but the air showed no sign of cooling. Not unlike her skin, which still tingled from Chad’s nearness in the records room.

  It wasn’t fair that she should still be so attuned to Chad’s emotions, feel so much for him. But if there was one thing she learned very early on—a point proved time and again since—it was that life wasn’t always fair.

  “He’s the precinct captain.” She glanced back at the plain, stone building. She had once wanted nothing more than to follow in her father’s policeman’s footsteps and become a cop. What she hadn’t counted on was Victor Marconi being just as determined to see her off the force.

  It was easy to remember Uncle Vic’s face when he’d told her, “Your father and I went back to Hell’s Kitchen, Hannah. He was more than my partner, he was my best friend. You were your daddy’s little girl, and you’ll remain so in my eyes.”

  “I am not a girl, Victor. I’m a woman.”

  Mickey D. McGee was the only person who remained untarnished and uncorrupted in Hannah’s heart and memory, unlike the other men in her life. His strength had been equaled only by his faith in a Catholic God that had comforted him after his wife’s death following the birth of their only child. A God she hadn’t been able to turn to when her father was shot and killed in the line of duty when she was only eighteen.

  “Your father turned in his grave the day you showed up here for recruitment, Hannah,” Uncle Vic had told her.

  “My father trained me to be a police officer from the time I could walk. Far from turning in his grave, I bet he would have been proud.”

  Now Hannah forced her gaze away from the precinct doors and the uniformed officers going in and out. It had taken Uncle Vic years to do what he promised mere weeks after he was promoted from commanding sergeant to captain: He’d made her quit.

  Victor Marconi, whom she hadn’t talked to since leaving the force, was just another ghost from the past she’d just as soon avoid right now. She looked at the other. Chad Hogan openly returned her gaze.

  She opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel. “I think it’s a good idea for you to catch a cab from here, Chad.”

  “You want to talk about something?”

  He got into the car after her and she started it. “About what?”

  “About what you were thinking just now.”

  Puzzled, she sat concentrating strictly on her breathing for a scant moment. “Victor Marconi is more than the captain of the precinct. He was…um, my father’s partner. Up until the night Dad was killed in the line of duty.” She handed him the manila folder.

  Chad took the data and put the file aside without opening it. “You told me your father died, but left out that it was in the line of duty.”

  She swept her hair back from her forehead. There were a lot of things she’d left out. And one of them was across the river now, waiting to be picked up. “Despite the history between Marconi and me, or maybe because of it, he won’t hesitate to have us both arrested if he finds—”

  “You didn’t respond to my comment, Hannah.”

  She pulled away from the curb. “Maybe because there isn’t a response.” She looked at him. “When we were together we were either working, arguing or…making love. There wasn’t much time for anything else.” She turned her head away from him to gauge the traffic.

  The silence in the car was strained until Hannah pulled up to the Ugly Duckling rental agency that owned the rust bucket they sat in. Which was just as well because it took Hannah as long to regain control over her emotions. In the back corner of the lot, the red Alfa’s waxed hood shone under a security light.

  “She looks good,” Chad murmured.

  She led the way up to the small shack where she traded keys with Frank, a skinny punk rocker wearing untied combat boots and a chain connected from nose to ear. Within moments she and Chad stood on either side of the gleaming Alfa Romeo. He stared at the For Sale signs in the back windows.

  “You’re selling her?”

  “Uh…yes.” Hannah felt as if she had betrayed him in some way with her answer. Despite the car’s role in their breakup—she’d wanted a ring, he’d bought her a car—she had grown attached to the Alfa. In an odd way it served as a concrete reminder that Chad had cared about her in his own way, even if it wasn’t the way she needed him to care about her. She avoided his probing gaze. He didn’t have to know that with the money she would get from Elliott for this trace, she’d be able to afford to keep it and pay the sky-high insurance premiums.

  She disarmed the alarm and slid into the driver’s seat, not objecting when Chad tossed his duffel into the back and entered the other side. She pressed a button and the canvas top folded back. She stared up at the ribbon of star-filled sky visible between the towering buildings.

  “I used to pass this car every day on the way to Blackstone’s before I…” His voice drifted off. “It had your name written all over it, Hannah. It still does.”

  Hannah sensed his gaze on her profile and slowly looked at his finely etched face, features she had once memorized with her hands and mouth. She wondered at the changes there. They were harder somehow. More skeptical. Her gaze flicked over his thick brows and his eyes. Gray eyes that hinted at a smoldering fire, rimmed by thick, dark lashes. Her attention focused on his mouth. That enticing, teasing, infuriating mouth that had once brought her more happiness than a hundred star-filled nights. And had made her hurt more than she would ever tell him.

  “You never said that.”

  Chad’s lips played at a
crooked grin, turning the right side of his mouth up just enough to make his emotions known. “There was something about the—” he stretched his arms, his right one going out over the side of the car, his left finding the back of her seat “—about the freedom of it that reminded me of you.”

  His strong fingers sought and found the back of her neck. Hannah tensed.

  “I saw you in it. Hood down…red hair flying around your face.” Chad’s voice lowered to a provocative hum, his fingers doing interesting things to the sensitive nerve endings at the base of her neck.

  Hannah laid her palm against his chest. She might be having trouble with her heart, but she was grateful her head was still screwed on tight enough to stop herself from making the same mistake twice.

  “Please, don’t, Chad. We’re not teenagers at a drive-in movie. Things have changed. Everything has changed.”

  He stared at her. “That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

  “Yes, well, that’s because it’s true. And you’ll find out why soon enough.” Oh, yes, he’d soon find out. And the instant he saw sweet little Bonny’s face, she had no doubt he’d beat a retreat faster than his last one.

  “These changes…they wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the phone call you made back there, would they?” he asked.

  She dragged her gaze down his face, then back up to his eyes again. “Yes, Chad. Yes, they do.”

  Chapter Three

  Hannah pulled up outside Eric Persky’s Forest Hills house on Juno Street and shut off the engine. She took in the large, Tudor-style structure.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” she asked.

  Chad checked the file Elliott had given her with the one Schindler provided. “This is it.”

  “For some reason I have a feeling this case isn’t going to be as easy as I thought,” she said.

  “Sure it is.” He stepped out and stared through the open window. “You planning to wait here?”

  “No.” Hannah let herself out of the car. The day’s events seemed to have happened months ago instead of hours. Not only had Chad sauntered back into her life—something she had yet to fully deal with—but vivid, tender memories of her father had flooded back with disturbing clarity. Hannah longed to sit on the couch with eight-month-old Bonny, three dozen Oreos with the double stuffing, a couple of boxes of animal crackers, the remote control, enough formula to fill the pantry and a gallon of chocolate milk and forget the world existed until she felt ready to deal with it. Which might be never. The only problem was the world wouldn’t allow it. Not when the four-day time constraint on apprehending Eric Persky and Lisa Furgeson was quickly ticking by. And not when Chad stood watching her, his gaze making her want to concentrate on everything but the case.