When Night Falls (9 page)

The ache in her heart changed, deepened. And she couldn’t keep up the shield of protocol and indifference. She was a cop by vocation but a woman by birth. A human being. She couldn’t just stand there and watch this strong man suffer, despite what her father had thought about the man. She could no more refuse to reach out to him than she could spin time backward and undo the events that had brought them together in the first place.

Her throat tightened. She felt herself move toward him, knew her booted feet crunched down on dried grass, knew the wind whipped at her, but the sensations faded to the background. When she stood mere inches from Liam, she lifted a hand and laid it against his back.

His muscles tensed beneath her fingertips, but he didn’t move away, didn’t break the connection between them. And for a transient moment, he didn’t speak. He just stood there.

Instinct took over, and she lightly rubbed her hand along his upper back, where the loose tank top he’d worn bared his shoulder blades. His skin was hot despite the steadily dropping temperature.

“Oh, God,” he rasped, resting his head against the palm of his hand. “Emmie loved this car.”

Jess braced herself, alarmed by the sudden, powerful desire to throw her arms around this tall man and hold on tight. Objectivity, she reminded herself. The cloud of emotion, the blur of desire, would only destroy her ability to give William Armstrong the one thing he wanted from her.

His daughter.

Ignoring the ache, she focused on the burned-out car. The fire had destroyed much of it, but she could tell it had been a sports coupe, and not a new one, either. Hardly the flashy convertible she would have expected William Armstrong’s daughter to drive. “Did you give it to her?” she asked softly.

He lifted his head and looked at Jess. His expression held equal parts joy and sorrow. “Emmie is a remarkable girl. I could give her the world, but she wants to earn it herself.”

Jess felt a smile touch her still-sore mouth.

“We struck a bargain,” he continued. “She’d let me pay for half of a car if she could come up with the remainder. She went on a baby-sitting crusade to earn enough money for a red convertible, but after a year of dirty diapers and fussy two-year-olds, she decided a pre-owned sports coupe wasn’t so bad.”

Something deep inside Jess shifted, and emotion bled through. William Armstrong hadn’t been much more than a child himself when he became a father, but he’d done well by his daughter, teaching her responsibility and a work ethic, despite the fact he’d built an Internet-based software development empire profitable enough to set her up for life.

It was getting harder and harder to imagine the girl running away.

Jess looked into his fierce blue eyes, and the cop in her wondered if he was coloring the past his way, leaving out the dark spots a growing number of acquaintances had warned her about. Emily’s grandfather. Adam Braxton. Marlena Dane.

Or had they been the ones coloring?

For everyone’s sake, Jess found herself hoping Liam was the one with a selective memory, that the girl really had taken off for a breather. Liam would be shattered, but in all likelihood, he’d have the chance to hold his daughter again. To tell her he loved her. To make up for past mistakes.

But if his memory was right, if their relationship ran as true and deep as he said, then his vindication would be as dark and dangerous, as empty as an old abandoned well.

“Well, well, isn’t this a cozy little scene?”

The mocking voice shattered the tenuous intimacy and had Jess glancing over her shoulder. Kirby strode toward them, a scowl on his face, a question in his eyes. His gaze was riveted on Liam’s back, where her hand still rested against his bare shoulder.

“Decided to take up social services in addition to detective work, Jessie?”

She glared at her partner, wondering why she suddenly felt like she had the night her father found her an hour after curfew, necking with the school bad boy in an out-of-the-way warehouse parking lot. She lifted her chin but didn’t sever the tenuous contact between her and Liam. “Find anything?”

Kirby cocked a brow. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Damn it—”

“Quit the games,” Liam growled. “Did you find my daughter, or not?”

Kirby’s gaze hardened. “I’m the one asking the questions,” he reminded, then raised his arm to dangle a plastic bag in front of Liam. “This mean anything to you?”

The blood drained from Liam’s face. He snatched the bag and fumbled with its opening.

“You can’t do that, slick,” Kirby said, reaching for it. “It’s evidence.”

Liam looked up. “It’s my mother’s wedding ring,” he corrected. “A gift to Emily for her sixteenth birthday. She never takes it off.”

Jess felt her heart clench. The two men held the plastic bag stretched between them, illuminating the intricately carved gold band inside. “Where did you get this?” she asked Kirby.

“Found it a few feet from the car.”

Liam winced. “My God.” The words were barely a whisper. “Someone’s got her.”

Kirby started to say something, but Jess rolled right over him. She looked into Liam’s eyes and touched his forearm. “What does the ring say to you?”

A shadow crossed his face. “That my little girl is in trouble. She loves this ring, admired it from the time she was just three years old. My mother gave it to her before she died, and Emmie has never taken it off since. She’d never just leave it here on the ground, discarded.”

Jess tried to strip the emotion from her voice, but it tightened her throat, leaving her words raspier than she liked. “We’ll check it for prints, see if they tell us anything.”

“You won’t find any but hers. She took it off. She was trying to tell me she’s in trouble.”

“Or maybe she was trying to tell you she was making a clean break,” Kirby said.

Liam went deadly still, all but his eyes, which took on an ominous glitter. “If anything happens to my daughter because of your inability to forget the past and be objective, you will find yourself missing more than just your badge, Detective.”

Jess hated standing between these two men. Kirby had a hard edge, but he’d watched her back for over three years. “I’ll take it from here, Kirb.”

He eyed her a moment before letting go. “Be careful, Jessie.”

She let his comment slide, switching her attention to Liam. “You, too. Let go.”

His gaze met hers. He looked deeply into her eyes, prodding, touching, then the tension eased, and his fingers released the plastic.

She let out a tense breath, not sure why the fact he’d entrusted her with the bag felt like he’d granted her the keys to a previously forbidden world. She didn’t want to slide backward now, but she needed to talk to Kirby. “Give me a minute,” she said, motioning for her partner to join her by his car.

“Give me my daughter back, and I’ll give you anything you want.”

The softly spoken words did cruel things to her heart. Jess ignored the impossible thoughts they conjured and joined her partner at the little black convertible he had dubbed the babe mobile.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

Kirby closed the distance between them. “You tell me.”

She frowned. She was tired of everyone treating Liam like he was a monster. “You have no business taunting him like that.”

“And you have no business touching him. Which is worse, Jessie? Which is less objective?”

The need to defend welled within her, but she refrained. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I sure as hell hope not,” he growled. “But you’re Wallace Clark’s daughter, Jessie. What better revenge for Armstrong than to sway you to his side? To make you believe and trust
him,
not your father.”

“The man’s daughter is missing. This has nothing to do with the past.”

“Everything has to do with the past, honey. Everything. It makes us who we are.” He paused. “Just know that I’ll be watching.”

His continued animosity toward Liam disturbed Jess. His resentment belied objectivity. He almost seemed jealous of the man. “This isn’t a show,” she told him. “It isn’t just a case. A young girl’s life is on the line, and it’s our job to help her, no matter who her father is.”

“No matter who the father is? Can you really say that? We’ve worked a lot of cases together. This isn’t our first missing child. But it is the first time I’ve seen that look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

He frowned. “Like you’re reaching, lying bleeding on the ground, searching for someone to find you but scared they won’t.”

The absolute candor of his words hit Jess harder than Braxton’s fist. “Trying out for the annual melodrama award?” she asked with a strained little laugh.

He looked her dead in the eye. “No—I’m trying to keep my partner in one piece.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Apparently, I did.”

Kirby’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “We’ll see,” he said, then turned and strode away.

Jess stood there for a moment, breathing deeply of the bitterly cold, late afternoon air, trying to process what had just gone down. She wanted to be angry with her partner but couldn’t. She wanted to blame Liam for twisting her inside out but couldn’t do that, either.

All the responsibility, all the blame, sat squarely on her shoulders.

She was a seasoned detective. She knew how to walk the line without crossing it. Kirby was right. She just hadn’t done a very good job of it. Because she was also a woman.

Whenever she saw William Armstrong, training shattered, everything her father had told her fled, and feminine instinct took over. She looked at him now, found him staring out over the field of tall brown grass where the line of officials continued to look for his daughter. Afternoon grayness was turning steadily darker.

Jess walked over to him. “I’m surprised you’re not out there with them.”

He glanced at her. “She’s not there.”

Jess frowned. He sounded so damn certain. “Liam—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t feel like you have to warn me not to get my hopes up.” He took her hand and drew it to his chest, where he pressed her palm to warm flesh. The tank top was loose, leaving part of a mauve nipple exposed to her touch. “She’s here, Detective. I feel her here. My daughter is not in that field.”

Jess’s heart staggered under the strain of his words. She snatched her hand from the moist heat of his skin and gazed over the field. Had her father felt the same way? Had he been so certain? So consumed?

Guilt pierced anew, and she quickly looked away. Emily might not have had a choice in the matter, but she, Jessica, had. She’d put her father through this, made him wonder if his little girl had been abducted or just ran away. Neither possibility boded well for the chief of police.

“Thinking about your own father?” Liam asked quietly. “Wondering if he felt the same way when you ran away?”

The silky question stripped Jess of all those barriers she worked so hard to erect, leaving her feeling like she stood before William Armstrong stark naked. Slowly she turned toward him, found him watching her with unnerving intensity. It was as though he could see straight through her.

She pulled the sash of her leather coat a little tighter. “It was a long time ago.”

“You think our fates were sealed the moment Heather ran away? You think our paths have been running parallel ever since, waiting for the inevitable moment when they would tangle?”

Almost an hour had passed since they arrived at the field, and during that time the temperature had steadily dropped. But Jess hadn’t felt cold, not until this very moment. “What do you mean?”

Liam’s eyes took on a glitter, but his voice remained whisper soft. “I mean the reason your father quit coming home at night, why he became so distracted, so consumed, why he stopped being a father to the daughter who needed him so much. I’m talking about you and the reason you ran away.”

He lifted a hand to streak a finger down the side of her face. “I’m talking about me.”

Chapter 8

«
^
»

J
ess reeled from the impact of Liam’s words. “I didn’t run away because of you. I didn’t even know you.”

His expression gentled. “But you saw the differences in your father, didn’t you? You knew his temper was short, his patience shorter. You knew he rarely came home anymore. He didn’t even notice when his little girl got involved with the school bad boy again, did he?”

God help her, it was as though Liam had found a nonexistent diary and read it—page by painful page. “You make me sound like a spoiled brat.
I
wasn’t a child. I was sixteen.”

“But there’s no age limit for craving a father’s love,” he said in that dangerously soft voice of his.

The field around them faded, the buzz of police radios, the officers still combing through the tall grass. Memories took over. She hated thinking about that dark time, how alone she’d felt, the risks she’d taken, but standing alone with the man who occupied entirely too many of her thoughts, his penetrating eyes focused on her, the past came crashing to the forefront. The fear and defiance, the regret.

She didn’t know why William Armstrong of all people would coerce those memories out of hiding, but they refused to stay in that dark corner any longer. Perhaps it was because he needed to know what had gone through her mind, what she’d been thinking. Because of Emily.

The last crack in the dam gave way, and the words poured free. “I never thought about it from his point of view. I never thought about what I might be doing to him. I just wanted to be away. To breathe. I wanted to spread my wings and fly without wondering what Dad would think, if he would think, if he would even notice.”

Liam stepped closer. “He noticed.”

The certainty in his voice made her wonder if he spoke on behalf of all fathers, hers or himself.

“Cold?”

She looked down and realized she’d wrapped her arms around her waist. The fading light left the temperature frigid, but with William Armstrong standing so close she felt the heat radiating from his sparsely clothed body, she wasn’t the least bit cold. At least not on the outside.

She hugged herself because of the memories. The strong drive to keep herself together, to not let too much slip beyond her reach. Jess refused to let herself wonder how much Liam could hold, the magnitude of secrets and memories he housed behind his granite expression.

“I’d offer you my coat, but I don’t have one.”

She glanced at him, tried to determine if his words were sarcastic or sincere.

Uncomfortable with the intimacy of eye contact, she looked instead to the field, where flashlights were being used. “I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when he found me in that old warehouse.”

Liam tilted her chin toward him. “Tell me.”

“It was the same look you had on your face when you saw me at the house earlier. Hope and horror, love.” And she could still feel it, all of it, when she closed her eyes.

He slid his hand to cup her cheek. “Anger?”

Jess went very still. She wanted to back away, but curiosity held her in place. The warmth of his palm against her face tempted her to think he was offering a white flag, but she was painfully aware the chill would return soon enough.

With William Armstrong, it always did.

He looked strong and solid standing in the fading light of early evening, utterly male. Dressed in his ratty running clothes, the man had to be freezing, but Jess could find no trace of it on the outside. He kept what he felt on the inside. He’d hardened the side of him that he showed to the world into such an impenetrable wall she doubted a drill could get through.

“That bad?” he asked, and she realized he’d misinterpreted her silence. Or had he?

“Just the opposite,” she said. “Dad never got angry, not with us, not in the loud, ranting sense of the word. The more we pushed him, the quieter he became. He’d go to work a little earlier, stay a little later.”

“And did running away change anything?”

“Not with him.”

“But you?”

Jess let out a slow breath. This man her father had so despised seemed to see what others couldn’t, understand her in ways no one ever had. If she were cautious, she’d turn and walk away. She didn’t. She wasn’t one to run, even though she knew the ripple effect one little pebble lobbed into a still pond could have.

“I spent three months on the streets,” she told him, “then came home to our cushy North Dallas home. Nothing had
changed, and yet
everything was different. I was different. The way I viewed life was different. It was one
of t
hose paradoxes that makes your head spin. Running didn’t change the world around me, but realizing that hiding from problems doesn’t make them go away changed
me.”

Liam held her gaze. “That’s a powerful reason for a sixteen-year-old girl.”

She told herself not to read too much into the compassion in his voice. “I regret the grief I caused my family and I’ll go to my grave believing the time on the street made me a better person. A better daughter, a better cop. Odd, isn’t it?”

What little sun there’d been was just about gone now, casting Liam’s face in shadow. “No more odd than the crossroads we’re standing at,” he said in an oddly quiet voice. “I bet your old man is really getting a kick out of this one.”

“What?”

He stepped closer. “Seventeen years ago his quest to nail me to the wall drove his daughter out of his home. Now the tables have turned. I’m the one with a missing child, and Wallace’s little girl is my best chance of getting Emily back. If ever you wanted revenge, payback, now’s your chance.”

Jess tried not to wince, but his words couldn’t have hit harder if they’d been stones. For a tenuous moment, they’d been communicating. Sharing. Or so she’d thought. He must have realized it, too, because the walls were going back up. She felt them as powerfully as if she’d slammed into a slab of granite. She saw them in the hardening of his eyes. Even his voice was different, harder, more remote.

She’d crossed the line.

William Armstrong was on the offensive. The man who always came out on top was pushing aside the father who stood dangerously close to losing everything. The need, the understanding he’d started to exhibit was wholly unacceptable.

If you get too close …
 
he simply cuts you out, no questions asked.

“I thought you wanted me off the case,” she reminded blandly, though there was nothing bland about the way this man unraveled her like a spool of thread.

He again touched a hand to her face, not in compassion as before, but in provocation. His fingertips skimmed her cheekbones, the pad of his thumb her mouth. “Wanting is dangerous, Detective. I learned that a long time ago. I want my daughter back. That doesn’t mean she’s standing here. A smart man deals in reality.”

She started to swat his hand away but realized she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He was the one who didn’t believe in getting too close, and even though he clearly intended to throw her off balance, very few things in life were more silkenly intimate than a man and woman standing in the muted shades of twilight, touching, speaking in hushed tones.

She could withstand the intimacy longer than he could.

“Reality?” she asked in the gentle voice Kirby called the calm before the storm. “I didn’t think that word was in your vocabulary. Aren’t you the man who doesn’t take no for an answer? Who finds a way to have what he wants, no matter what? Who twists and turns every situation to his own liking?”

He laughed. “Ah, Jessica. You really are your father’s daughter, aren’t you?” He stroked his thumb along the corner of her mouth, still swollen from Braxton’s fist. “Just because. I face reality doesn’t mean I accept it. All I’m saying is you have to know where you are before you map out where you’re going. What’s so manipulative about that?”

Jess just stared at him. She searched for a flippant comeback, but instead found an understanding she didn’t want to have. She opened her mouth anyway, clamped it shut when the tip of his thumb slipped inside.

“Careful,” he said in a dangerously soft voice. “Don’t want to hurt yourself again.”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away from her face. “Play your games with someone else. They won’t work with me.”

“I’m not playing. This is as real as it gets.” Shadows flickered against the hard planes of his face. “I was wrong to want you off the case. I thought the lines between us were too tangled, too blurred. I didn’t think you could be objective.”

“I’m a trained professional,” she reminded. Him? Her?

“You’re also your father’s daughter.”

“And you’re talking in circles.”

“No, I’m not. I’m simply saying you’ve got as much on the line as I do. You can’t afford to take the easy way out, to scribble runaway across Emily’s file and be done with it, because if it turns out she’s in trouble and you didn’t help, you’ll never be able to live with yourself. You’ll realize you let personal distractions blur your judgment. You’ll realize you’re just like your father.”

She winced, realizing the truth of his words.

“The lines
are
blurred, but because of that you might be the only cop in this narrow-minded town willing to turn over every stone to find the truth about Emily’s disappearance.”

Inevitability wove its way through Jess, the tie that bound her to William Armstrong, even when they’d both just as soon turn their backs on each other and walk in opposite directions.

She couldn’t carve him from her life any more than he could her. For now, for reasons pertaining to past and present, they needed each other too badly. And he knew it.

So did she. “I don’t need to be bullied by you to do my job,” she said, looking at Armstrong. “I promised you I’d bring your daughter back, and I will. We both want the same thing.”

A faint light glimmered in his eyes. “Then let’s quit wanting and make it happen.”

His choice of words, the low tone in which he uttered them, sent an unwanted sizzle through her. He’d done it on purpose, she knew. He always did.

“By all means,” she said in a clipped, professional voice, unwilling to let him get to her. To care any more than she already did. The price was too high. She’d grown up with a man like William Armstrong, after all. Loved him. Learned from him. Lost him.

“Let’s head on out,” she said, gesturing toward her car. “There’s nothing else for us here.”

The light in his eyes darkened. “Quite the opposite, Detective. I think we’re finally making progress.”

* * *

“This evening a new development in the case of missing heiress Emily Armstrong. Her car was found abandoned in a field near D/FW Airport…”

The television screen cut to an image of William Armstrong standing in front of his daughter’s burned-out car. The man looked like he was standing before an open casket.

Everything was unfolding according to plan.

The cops didn’t have a clue. Armstrong didn’t, either. Taking the man’s daughter had been as easy as giving candy to a kid. She’d had no reason not to trust. At first. She’d listened, then all but run out the door. Piece of cake.

“Are you watching? Can you hear me?”

A quick glance at the closed-circuit monitor across the room revealed a glaring Emily Armstrong. She stood in the corner of the Spartan room she’d been provided, staring at the camera mounted far out of her reach. With her long dark hair tangled around her face, those expressive Armstrong eyes flashing and her hands clenched into combative fists, she looked ready to audition for an episode of
Xena, Warrior Princess.
Whereas most teenage girls would be terrified, Emily seemed more furious than anything else.

She really was her father’s daughter.

She’d been treated with nothing but kindness, assured over and over she wouldn’t be hurt. But she refused to believe. She didn’t understand that hurting innocents was her father’s style. She didn’t understand that she was far more valuable alive than dead.

“You won’t get away with this,” she warned. “My father will hunt you down and make you pay.”

For a seventeen-year-old, she was amusingly ferocious. She really did think her dad could conquer the world.

If only she knew how wrong she was.

* * *

Liam slammed his fist against the hard leather bag. It careened back, and he went after it, hitting, punishing. Again. And again. Harder each time. He absolutely refused to grant any mercy.

Aren’t you the man who doesn’t take no for an answer? Who finds a way to have what he wants, no matter what? Who twists and turns every situation to his own liking?

With an animalistic roar, Liam kicked his leg and sent the punching bag swinging wildly. Damn her. Damn Detective Jessica Clark for throwing his life, his choices, in his face and trying to make him feel shame. To make him feel like he was the one in the wrong, when all he was doing was everything humanly possible to find his daughter.

Where was the crime in that?

Play your games with someone else. They won’t work on me.