All he heard was silence. It extended long enough he thought the call might have been dropped.
“Mom?”
“You’ve made your point,” she snapped.
He’d swear she sounded...different.
Had she been crying? he wondered, stunned. For all her breaks with lovers and husbands, he hadn’t seen her cry since those long-ago weeks after Sheila’s death.
“Mom?”
“Please call me if there’s any chance.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’ll do that, Mom.”
She didn’t even say goodbye, she was just gone, leaving him wondering if he knew her as well as he had always believed he did.
He suddenly saw himself introducing Tess and his mother. What would they think of each other? He’d have to give Tess some advance warnings and...
Good God, was he serious? He hadn’t even introduced his girlfriends to his mother when he was in high school and still lived at home. He’d gone out of his way not to let any of them cross paths with her.
Nothing could have made him more uncomfortably aware that Tess was different.
He should have set up the damn receiver and gone home last night.
But then he’d have missed the best night of his life. They’d made love three times. But for some reason today what he found himself thinking about was how satisfying it had felt to hold her. He didn’t like having a woman cling to him. So why was it that when Tess snuggled, it felt instead like both trust and comfort, given and received?
He made a muffled sound and went to meet the salesman politely hovering a few vehicles away.
He’d intended to buy another Silverado, which would have been his third, but surprised himself by buying the F-150. Black, of course, he liked black. Something he and Bran apparently had in common.
As an option he took one with a truck bed liner already installed and drove straight off the lot to Lowe’s to pick up the shower, toilet and sink he’d chosen. He found the vanity he had custom ordered was in, as well, and just got everything in.
Tomorrow, he had a new garage door being delivered, a lot sturdier than the original. Automatic, which would be nice, too, but it was the security he especially wanted.
What worried Zach was the likelihood Hayes and company wouldn’t repeat themselves. He had already done enough work on the house that he would be seriously pissed if they burned it down even if his homeowner’s policy did cover it.
But he was more worried about Tess, less able to defend herself or her home. He didn’t like believing a fellow cop would go beyond threats, but Zach had begun to believe Hayes had lost any sense of honor he’d once possessed. What if, at some point, he and his buddies decided a dead witness who’d already given a damaging statement was still better than a live witness who wouldn’t back down and would be damned persuasive if she ever got in front of a jury?
It continued to chafe that he didn’t know what MacLachlan and Clayton were doing and whether they’d learned anything new. If they were doing their jobs at all, they had to be making Hayes nervous.
Pulling into his garage, Zach wondered what Tess would say if he invited himself to spend the night again.
* * *
IN THE NEXT few days Zach tried to keep his head down and to only be with Tess when it was unlikely anyone would notice. He was fine when he was out on the roads doing his job.
He did his best to follow his usual morning routine: get his head together on his way in to work, think about anything that had gone wrong the day before, any oddity he’d seen that made him want to go back and take another look.
He’d walk himself through possible scenarios, transitioning from being the man who spent his evenings sawing and swinging a hammer, and his nights making love to Tess, into a cop.
He continued his habit of stopping by the records unit and flipping through recent reports of break-ins, auto thefts, whatever, so he had an idea of what to watch for that day.
The preshift briefings should have been equally routine.
Zach tried to step into the room at the last minute so he could stand at the back. Otherwise he’d sit there with his skin crawling, knowing on some deep, primitive level that he was being watched.
Walking in and then leaving, he had to nod at his fellow deputies, including Todd Vance, who had kept his mouth shut to protect a cop who didn’t deserve it. Most of the time, Zach kept his expression bland. Only once did he meet his eyes and let Vance see his contempt.