Forbidden Territory
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When Lily Browning had hung up the phone, his first sensation had been relief. One more wacko off his back. Then he’d remembered Andrew Walters’s demand and his own grudging agreement. Call it following every lead, he thought with a grim smile. He exited the vehicle and headed across the street.
Lily Browning’s house was graveyard quiet as he walked up the stone pathway. A cool October night was falling, sending a chill up his spine as he peered through the narrow gap in the curtains hanging in the front window.
No movement. No sounds.
He pressed the doorbell and heard a muted buzz from inside.
What are you going to say to her—stay the hell away from Andrew Walters or I’ll throw you in jail?
Wouldn’t it be nice if he could?
He cocked his ear, listening for her approach. Nothing but silence. As he lifted his hand to the buzzer again, he heard the dead bolt turn. The door opened about six inches to reveal a shadowy interior and Lily Browning’s tawny eyes.
“Detective McBride.” She slurred the words a bit.
“May I come in? I have some questions.”
Her face turned to stone. “I have nothing to tell you.”
McBride nudged his way forward. “Humor me.”
She moved aside to let him in, late afternoon sun pouring through the open doorway, painting her with soft light. Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she skittered back into the darkened living room, leaving him to close the door.
Inside, murky shadows draped the cozy living room with darkness. When McBride’s eyes finally adjusted to the low light, he saw Lily standing a few feet in front of him, as if to block him from advancing any farther.
“I told you everything I know on the phone,” she said.
He shook his head. “Not quite.”
Her chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. Finally, she gestured toward the sofa against the wall. “Have a seat.”
McBride sat where she indicated. As his eyes adjusted further to the darkened interior, he saw that Lily Browning looked even paler than she had at school earlier that day. She’d scrubbed off what little makeup she’d worn, and pulled her dark hair into a thick ponytail. Despite the cool October afternoon, she wore a sleeveless white T-shirt and soft cotton shorts. She took the chair across from him, knees tucked against her chest, her eyes wary.
Her bare skin shimmered in the fading light. He stifled the urge to see if she felt as soft as she looked.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was long past his twenties, when every nice pair of breasts and long legs had brought his hormones to attention. And Lily Browning, of all people, should be the last woman in the world to make his mouth go dry and his heart speed up.
He forced himself to speak. “How long have you been a teacher at Westview Elementary?”
She answered in a hushed voice. “Six years.”
He wondered why she was speaking so softly. The skin on the back of his neck tingled. “Is someone else here?”
Suspicion darkened her eyes. “My accomplices, you mean?”
He answered with one arched eyebrow.
“Just Delilah and Jezebel,” she said after a pause.
A quiver tickled the back of his neck again. “What are they, ghosts? Spirits trapped between here and the afterlife?”
A smile flirted with her pale lips. “No, they’re my cats. Every witch needs a cat, right?”
“You’re Wiccan?”
A frown swallowed her smile. “It was a joke, Lieutenant. I’m pretty ordinary, actually. No séances, no tea leaves, no dancing around the maypole. I don’t even throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. The lines in her face deepened, and he realized her expression wasn’t a frown but a grimace of pain.
“Do you get headaches often?”
Her eyes swept down to her lap, then closed for a moment. “Why are you here? Am I a suspect?”
“You called me, Ms. Browning.” He relaxed on the couch, arms outstretched, and rested one ankle on his other knee. “You said you saw Abby Walters—how did you put it? In your mind?”
She clenched her hands, her knuckles turning white.
“Why call me?” he continued. “Do I look like I’d buy into the whole psychic thing?”
“No.” Her tortured eyes met his. “You don’t. But I don’t want to see her hurt anymore.”
He didn’t believe in visions. Not even a little. But Lily’s words made his heart drop. “Hurt?”
“She’s afraid. Crying.” Lily slumped deeper into the chair. “I don’t know if they’re physically hurting her, but she’s terrified. She wants her daddy.”
McBride steeled himself against the sincerity in her voice. “How do you know this?”
Her voice thickened with unshed tears. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I have a door in my mind that wants to open. I try to keep it closed because the things behind it always frighten me, but sometimes they’re just too strong. That’s what happened today. The door opened and there she was.”
Acid bubbled in McBride’s stomach, a painful reminder of too much coffee and too little lunch. “You actually saw her?”
Lily nodded slowly. “She was crying. Her face was dirty and she was afraid.”
“Can you see her now?”
Her quick, deep breath sounded like a gasp. “No.”
Tension buzzed down every nerve. “Why not?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Please…” She lurched from the chair and stumbled against the coffee table. A pair of cut-glass candlesticks rattled together and toppled as she grabbed the table to steady herself. Out of nowhere, two cats scattered in opposite directions, pale streaks in the darkness.
McBride’s heart jumped to hyperspeed as he hurried to Lily’s side. He caught her elbow. “Are you okay?”
Her head rose slowly. “Go away.”
“You can’t even stand up by yourself. Are you drunk?”
“I don’t drink.” Her head lolled forward, her forehead brushing against his shoulder.
“Drugs?”
He could barely hear her faint reply. “No.”
He wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up. Her slim body melted against his, robbing him of thought for a long, pulsing moment. She was as soft as she looked, and furnace-hot, except for the icy fingers clutching his arm. Her head fell back and she gazed at him, her eyes molten.
Desire coursed through him, sharp and unwelcome.
Ruthlessly suppressing his body’s demands, he helped her to the sofa, trying to ignore the warm velvet of her skin beneath his fingers. “What did you take for the headache?”
“I ran out of my prescription.” She lay back and covered her eyes with her forearm, as if even the waning afternoon light filtering through the curtains added to her pain.
“I can call it in for you. Do you have any refills left?”
“Just leave me alone.”
He should go, and to hell with her. It was probably another con. But she wasn’t faking the pain lines etched across her delicate face. “I can call a doctor for you—”
“The prescription bottle’s in the drawer by the fridge.” Tears slid out from beneath her forearm.
Her weak capitulation gave McBride an uneasy feeling as he headed to the kitchen to find the prescription.
He was back in fifteen minutes, using the keys Lily had given him to let himself back into the house. It was a few minutes after six and night had fallen, cool and blue. He fumbled along the wall for a light switch, but couldn’t find one.
Pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dark, he saw the pale sheen of a lampshade a few feet away, outlined in the glow coming through the windows from the streetlight outside. He felt his way to the lamp and turned it on. The muddy yellow circle of light from the low-watt bulb barely penetrated the darkness in the corner where it stood. But it was better than the unrelenting darkness.
Lily lay on the sofa, her arm still over her eyes.
“Ms. Browning?”
She didn’t answer.
McBride crossed to the sofa and crouched beside her, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest. She was asleep, without the benefit of the pills he’d just spent more than fifty dollars buying for her.
No matter. She’d probably need them when she woke up.
She shifted in her sleep but didn’t awaken. Waiting for her to settle back down, McBride gave in to the male hunger gnawing at his belly and let his gaze wander over her body, taking in the tempting curves and planes. At some point in her sleep, the hem of her T-shirt had slid up, baring a thin patch of smooth, flat belly and the indentation of her navel.
Heat sluiced through him, unexpected and unwanted. Dragging his gaze from that narrow strip of flesh, he pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from her.
He distracted himself with a quick, cop’s-eye survey of the living room. Clean. Spare. Simple furniture in neutral tones with just enough color to ward off boredom. He moved closer to the wall to study a framed water-color, a delicate rendering of a tulip in colors that would be subtle even with full illumination. A neat signature appeared in black appeared in the bottom right corner: Iris Browning. Mother or sister?
Movement to one side caught his eye. A Siamese cat crouched, frozen, near a small iron plant stand, staring at him from between the leaves of a philodendron. McBride barely made out glowing turquoise eyes in a chocolate face.
A shudder ran through him.
Suddenly, a scream split the quiet, snapping the tension in his spine like a band. Off balance, he stumbled backward into the lamp, knocking it over. The bulb shattered, plunging the room into darkness.
With his heart slamming against his rib cage, he turned to the sofa, peering through the blackness. In the glimmer of light flowing through the window, Lily’s face was a pale oval, twisted into a horror mask by her wide-stretched mouth, her scream rising and swelling like a tidal wave, chilling him to the bone.
LILY KNEW IT WAS NIGHT, black as pitch and deathly quiet except for whimpering sobs. She recognized Abby’s soft cries.
“Abby?” she whispered.
The child didn’t hear her, but stayed where she was, somewhere in the deep blackness, crying in soft little bleats.
Lily knew she was dreaming, that by waking she could spare herself whatever lay beyond the door separating Abby Walters from her abductors. But she couldn’t abandon the little girl.
She could almost hear Abby’s thoughts, the panicked jumble of memories and fears—Mommy lying on the roadside, blood streaming down her pale hair, tinting the golden strands red.
Mommy, wake up! Am I going to die? Daddy, help me!
Lily heard the rattle of a doorknob and the scraping sound of a dead bolt sliding open. Bright light sliced through the dark room, blinding them both.
Abby screamed.
A whistle shrieked.
Second shift at the lumber mill. Daddy would be home soon.
As she did every afternoon, Lily shut her eyes and watched her father wipe his brow with his worn white handkerchief, then reach for the switch to shut off the large circular saw.
Bam!
A log slipped loose from the hooks and slammed into Daddy’s back, pitching him into the spinning steel blade. A mist of red spun off the blade and spattered the sawdust on the table.
Daddy screamed.
Lily awoke in an explosive rush. Smothering blackness surrounded her, her father’s scream soaring, deafening her.
Then she realized the scream was her own.
Gentle hands emerged from the blackness, cradling her face. The couch shifted beneath her and a familiar scent surrounded her. Fingers threaded through her hair, drawing her against a solid wall of strength and warmth.
She felt a hammering pulse against her breasts, beating in rhythm with her own racing heart.
A low voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s okay.”
Her heart stuttered, then lurched back into a gallop as she realized the strong arms wrapped around her belonged to Detective McBride.
Chapter Three
Feeling Lily’s warm body stiffen, McBride let her go. “I think you were having a nightmare.” He stood and stepped back from the couch. “Do you remember it?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Think you can bear a little light?” McBride turned on the nearest of the two torchiere lamps flanking the couch. Golden light chased shadows to the other side of the room. “Okay?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze, her eyes huge and haunted.
He frowned. “You sure?”
“I’m fine. No need to babysit anymore.”
Though he had more questions to ask, he decided to let her stew awhile, wondering when he’d come back. “I put your pills on the kitchen counter. It cost fifty-six dollars, but since I broke your light, we’ll call it even.” He gestured at the lamp lying at a crooked angle, propped up by an armchair. “Sorry.”
Her glimmering eyes met his. A pull as powerful as the ocean tide engulfed him, catching him off balance. He forced himself to turn away, move toward the front door.
Sofa springs creaked behind him. He felt her approach, the hair on the back of his neck tingling. When he turned again, he found her closer than expected. Close enough to touch. He clenched his fists. “Stay away from this case, Ms. Browning. There’s nothing in it for you.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant.” She opened the front door. Her skin glowed like porcelain in the blue moonlight.
Quelling the urge to touch her, he slipped out the door and hurried to his car. He slid behind the steering wheel and took several deep breaths. When he felt more in control, he dared a quick look at the dark facade of Lily Browning’s house.
His lips tightened to a grim line. What the hell was wrong with him? Of all people, he knew better than to let a woman like Lily Browning get under his skin.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way.
SUNLIGHT KNIFED across Lily’s bed, waking her. She squinted at the clock on her bedside table. Nine. All that sleep and she still felt as if she’d been run over by a truck.
She pulled her T-shirt over her head, breathing in a faint, tangy scent clinging to the cotton. It took her back to the darkness, to the feel of McBride’s strong arms around her. She’d felt safe. Comforted by his solid body against hers, the soothing timbre of his voice in her ear, telling her everything was okay. God, she’d wanted to believe him.
Jezebel jumped from the dresser to the bed and rubbed her furry face against Lily’s chin. Lily stroked the Siamese cat’s lean body, from silvery mask to long gray tail. “Hungry, Jez?”
After feeding the mewling cats, she retrieved the Saturday morning paper from the front porch. Settling at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, she opened the newspaper.
Abby Walters’s freckled face stared back at her. Former Wife of U.S. Senate Candidate Found Dead, Daughter Missing, the headline read in bold, black letters.
Abby Walters, age six, had gone missing after her mother was killed in a carjacking Friday morning. The article speculated the attack might be politically motivated. Abby’s father and Debra’s ex-husband, Andrew Walters, was a state senator running for the U.S. Senate.
The door in her mind opened a crack. Resolutely, she slammed it shut.
“IT WAS A ONE-TIME THING. She threatened to get a restraining order and I quit.” The slim, nervous man sitting across the interview table from McBride pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his long nose with a shaky finger. “My God, y’all don’t think I had anything to do with it….”
McBride tapped his pencil on his notepad and let Paul Leonardi stew a moment. The man’s dark eyes shifted back and forth as he waited for McBride to speak.
“I was out of town Friday. I left home at five in the morning. You can ask my neighbor—he saw me leave.”
McBride pretended to jot a note, but he already knew all about Leonardi’s trip to Lake Guntersville for a weekend of fishing and eagle watching. It had taken the task force most of Sunday to track him down after Andrew Walters had fingered Leonardi as the man most likely to leave his ex-wife dead by the side of the road.
“I loved Debra. I’d never hurt her or Abby.”
“Lots of men kill the women they love. That’s why it’s called a crime of passion.” McBride felt a glimmer of satisfaction when Leonardi’s face went pale at his words. “I did check your alibi. The cabin manager said you didn’t show up until noon. That’s seven hours to make a two-hour drive to Guntersville. What did you do with the other five hours?”
“God, I don’t know! I took the scenic route part of the time. I stopped for gas somewhere around Birmingham, I think. I stopped at an antique store in Blount County and picked up an old butter churn to add to Mom’s collection for her birthday coming up. I went by the home store outlet in Boaz to pick up a pedestal sink for the guest bathroom I’m renovating at home.” He raked his fingers through his thinning hair. “Damn, I knew I should have waited and done all that on the way back home, but I figured I’d be tired and just blow it off.”
McBride wrote down the stops he mentioned, asking for more details. Leonardi couldn’t remember the gas station in Birmingham, but he supplied the name of the antique store and the home center outlet. McBride would put a couple of the task force officers on the job of tracking down the man’s movements on Friday morning.
“Back to Mrs. Walters for a moment—I understand you showed up at Westview Elementary one afternoon about a month ago, when she was picking up Abby.” McBride watched Leonardi carefully as he spoke. The dark-haired man’s eyes widened, dilating with alarm. Good. “That’s what convinced her to threaten you with a restraining order, wasn’t it?”
Leonardi looked down at his hands. “I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to tell me why she’d decided to end it.”
“She said you were a transition, didn’t she? Just a post-divorce ego stroke.”
Leonardi blanched. “It was more than that to me.”
“But not her. And you couldn’t take no for an answer?”
“I didn’t think she’d really given us a chance. She has these friends telling her she should go out, have fun, not tie herself down. ‘Don’t just settle for the first guy who comes along, Debbie. Have some fun, Debbie.’”
“How do you know what her friends said, Mr. Leonardi?” McBride leaned forward. “Did you tap her phones? Did you put a bug in her house? What?”
He pressed his lips tightly together. “I want a lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest. Why would you need a lawyer?”
Leonardi’s baleful gaze was his only answer.
“When you showed up at the school—how’d you know what time Debra would be picking up Abby? Had you followed her before?”
Leonardi didn’t answer.
“Maybe you know somebody who works there,” McBride suggested, tapping the folder on the interview table. He flipped it open, exposing an enlarged photocopy of Lily Browning’s driver’s license photo from the DMV database.
Leonardi’s gaze shifted down to the table as McBride intended. His brow furrowed slightly as his gaze skimmed over the photo, but beyond that, he had no reaction.
Not what McBride had been expecting, but he wasn’t ready to discount the idea that Lily Browning had a part in Abby Walters’s disappearance. “Know what I think, Mr. Leonardi? I think you have a friend who works at the school. She told you when the first grade would be letting out in the afternoon so you’d know exactly when to show up. Did she know about your plans for Friday, too?”
Leonardi’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t kill Debbie. Don’t you get it? I lost her, too, just like her friends and her family and her jerk of an ex-husband did. Why aren’t you talking to him? Don’t you always look at the husband first?”
McBride had already talked to Walters Friday evening, going over his alibi in detail. Over the weekend he’d been able to validate all the times and places Walters had supplied. Of course, it was possible Walters had hired someone to kill his ex-wife, but the autopsy report McBride had found sitting on his desk first thing that morning suggested that Debra Walters’s skull fracture might have been accidental, the result of a struggle with the carjackers.
They couldn’t even be sure it was anything but a random carjacking. Debra Walters’s Lexus hadn’t shown up anywhere yet.
Neither had Abby Walters.
McBride’s captain had left it up to him to put together a task force for the case. After contacting the FBI and the local sheriff’s department to supply their own officers for the team, McBride had picked six of the best cops on the Borland force to assist him.
Sergeant Theo Baker had the job of holding Andrew Walters’s hand and keeping him from calling every few minutes for an update. McBride understood the man’s anxiety all too well, but he didn’t need that distraction.
Some of the task force members were canvassing the area where Debra Walters had died, hoping for witnesses who might have seen something on Friday morning. Some were fielding calls from tipsters, most of them crackpots and attention seekers.
Others were monitoring Friday morning footage from the handful of traffic cams scattered throughout the city of Borland, hoping they could track Debra’s movements from the time she’d left her home to the time she’d stopped on the side of the road to meet her death. McBride didn’t hold out much hope for that angle; where she’d died was a lightly traveled back road without any camera surveillance.
“How long do you plan to hold me?” Apparently having a cry put the steel back in Paul Leonardi’s spine; he met McBride’s questioning look with a steady gaze. “I know my rights. You can only hold me for so long before you either have to charge me or let me go. Unless you think I’m a terrorist or something.”
McBride was tempted to toss him in the cages just to make a point, but he quelled the urge. “I’m going to be checking out your alibi, Mr. Leonardi. If everything pans out, no problem. But you shouldn’t leave town anytime soon.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Leonardi said. “At least, not until after Debbie’s funeral. Do you know when it’ll be?”
McBride’s eyes narrowed as he stood and motioned for Leonardi to follow him out of the interview room. Either the guy was really innocent or he had cojones of titanium. “Check with her ex-husband. He’s handling the arrangements.”
Back at his desk a few minutes later, McBride grabbed the bottle of antacids on his desk and downed a couple to ease the fire in his gut.
His captain, Alex Vann, chose that moment to pop his head into the office. He eyed the bottle as he sat down across the desk. “You eat too many of those things.”
Ignoring the remark, McBride gave him an update on his interview with Leonardi. “I don’t know if he’s good for it or not. He has all kinds of motive, but he just doesn’t feel right for this thing.”
“And the nutso schoolteacher angle?”
McBride arched his eyebrow at the description of Lily Browning. “He didn’t really react at the sight of her photo.” Nothing beyond the furrowed brow, which could simply mean he was wondering why McBride was flashing Lily Browning’s picture.
“Why don’t you take a break, McBride? Go get some lunch.”
“I’ll order something in.”
“Not good enough.” Vann’s jowly face creased with concern.
McBride didn’t pretend not to notice. He put down the papers and looked up at his captain. “I’m fine.”
“Maybe you should work another case. Take your pick.”
“I want this one.”
Vann’s gaze darkened, but he didn’t comment as he walked out of the office.
McBride didn’t expect the captain or anyone else to understand. Working the Walters case was like rubbing salt into an open wound, but McBride couldn’t let it go. He had to follow it to the bitter end. Find the child. Capture the kidnappers.
See justice done this time.
THE DOOR IN LILY’S MIND flew open without warning, catching her in the middle of grading papers in her classroom while her students played outside at recess. Her pencil dropped from her shaking fingers, rolling to the floor and disappearing in the silvery fog that washed over her in the span of a heartbeat.