Chapter 15

© Copyright 2004 by Elizabeth Delayne



"Everything okay?"

Derek turned from where he stood at the window to find Amy leaning against the door frame. The paperback textbook she'd been reading during her break dangled from her fingertips as she tapped it against her leg.

She was limited to paperwork and answering phones—a job she'd been limited to when Ham first brought her in. She'd been seventeen then, untrained and underage.

He understood her frustration, but he still wanted to laugh at the brewing look in her eyes. While she'd been lounging on the deck with the phone at her side and a book in her hand, he'd been out on patrol, pulling a teen out of the frigid December water.

He'd come in wet and cold, miserable for a half hour before he could change, and she was battling the resentment that it hadn't been her call, her duty.

"You know, if you wanted to go in water—"

He lunged for her, and grabbing her at the waist tossed her over his shoulder. Her reaction was instant. She squealed right in his ear, twisted and starting pounding with her fists.

Laughing, Derek set her back down quickly and rubbed his stomach where she'd nailed him with a kick. She place a hand against his chest to hold him back, but he kept his hands on her arms, supposedly to protect himself. She had a nasty jab.

For a moment, he just looked at her, surprised to find the dazzling array of tones in her brown eyes. This close he could almost forget who she was and why he needed to take a step back.

But he did step back and swallowed the regret. "You've had practice."

"I grew up out there—" she stepped out of his reach herself and tilted her head to the long window, "with an older brother and his friends. You learn a few things."

But she was laughing, he thought. Finally.

"I bet. Your brother also taught you to fight dirty."

"Some things a big brother teaches you, some things you learn on your own out of desperation." She smiled coyly. "My mom once said that I was his favorite tag-along toy."

"Tag along?" Derek asked and leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms as he watched her.

"I chose to go with him—I could have stayed at her side. I put myself in his clutches, and his friends' clutches, at times. Until he became serious about baseball, and heeded my dad's advise to focus on one thing, we spent much of the year out at the beach, in the early mornings. Then, since summer is the season for baseball, the last two years all we had was the winter—for the most part. You can't keep a true California boy out of the water." She walked over to the window and stared at the waves that tumbled in. "He had a couple of friends that would try anything."

"Cage was out there this morning."

"Cage is always out there in the morning," she glanced over at him. "How'd you know he was a friend of my brother's?"

Derek shrugged. "We've talked some. It's what I do."

She laughed. "I suppose so. Cage looks a lot like Ryan looked in what my dad called his winter attire. Scraggly, unshaven. They surfed, boarded, did everything together. Neither one of them had a problem with me hanging out—well, not that they said."

She sighed and turned from the window. She dipped to pick up her book she'd dropped when he'd tossed her over his shoulder. "So, you didn't answer my question. How's the kid?"

"Cold—and a little scared. The hospital cleared him."

"That's what happens when you try to go swim in forty degree water."

"It's what happens when you skip school and fall into a dare."

Amy shook her head. "You're telling me."

She knew about getting in trouble, but he left it alone. "New kid in school—trying a little too hard to look cool. He'd been bragging that he'd gone swimming as late as this before without a wetsuit, so he was challenged to do it, to prove it. It's a lot warmer south of here."

Derek picked up a pen and twirled it as he watched her. They'd fallen into an uneasy friendship since Thanksgiving. She accepted his presence, attempted communication, but he saw, and understood, the resentment.

Boss and protector—both came before friend. He couldn't separate the three. He wasn't sure where one left off, were one was more intense, where one trusted the other.

He felt something for her, but he was also very aware that the something was tied to his duty to serve and protect.

In Ham's place.

They'd both received postcards from Ham over the last few weeks. From here or there as they reached Hawaii, met with old friends, and made plans to move on. He didn't seem to be worried about their course or anything beyond the weather, unless you understood the implications of the last sentence.

Take care of Amy.

The file was on Derek's desk, under a couple of other miscellaneous cases. It wasn't an official one, but papers he'd worked out, time lines, lists, informal interviews and notes, possibilities and issues. Amy didn't know how far he'd checked.

But he'd begun to reconstruct a thorough file, down to the whereabouts of the other teens with her that night, family and friends of Matthew West and the Lyons, as well as a few associates he'd noted from her father's side.

So ... he waited out the storm.

"You got plans for tonight?" he asked. It was a normal question. They'd been going out, checking ports and known travel areas for the past couple of weeks.

"Chloe and I are going shopping ... looking," Amy shrugged and glanced down at the book she held in her hand. "Chloe thought we could take a break from studying."

"You've been working a lot. Studying."

She snorted. "Not as much as I should."

"You need to talk through cases or something..."

"Anna talks it through with me."

"Still—"

"I trust you," she said with a laugh, "but have to get some work done—if it would be called work what I do. Anna and I talk shop, as it's called, over dinner."

"You guys are getting pretty tight."

"She's different then I thought." Amy dropped into a seat. "She's giving me a place to stay. Steps in and handles my dad. She doesn't like Vince, I don't like Vince. What's not to like?"

"You feel like your freedom has been taken away."

"It's not her fault."

"No." He tapped the pen on his desk blotter. "It's building up though. Inside of you."

"Have you ever been on probation?"

"No."

"Had someone try to kill you? Stalking you?"

"Not that I know of. Are you looking for sympathy?"

"No." She set the book in her lap and rubbed her hands over her face. "Derek, it's hard not to just sink, you know? I feel so lost. Andrea and Chloe are living in this complete circle. They are moving on, their lives wrapping together so easily ... and I'm stuck, wrapping myself back to what it was before ... it's all coming back."

"The way it was? Completely? Amy," he walked over and stooped in front of her, waited until her eye connected with his. "Don't fool yourself into thinking that the circumstances are going to turn you into the person you were. I didn't know you then. I know you now."

For a minute she studied him, her eyes searching his. She had questions, he could tell. What do you know? What can you see?

He prayed she would ask them when she was ready.

Amy leaned back and looked toward the ceiling, releasing a long, weary breath. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be. Just remember who you are. Remember that the girl you were made things tense between you and Anna. Things are different now. Why? Pinpoint that—focus on that instead."

Amy frowned over it a minute, her fingers worrying over the pages of her book. "I guess I always saw her as my dad's ally."

Derek nodded, prodded her to go on.

"She was—for most of my life. Two adults, trying to help out a messed up kid. He would call her when I was in trouble, she would stop me, warn me, question me on the beach in front of my friends. It wasn't cool then ... it's not so hot now."

She laughed and shook her head. "Not that I wasn't hiding something then, but now she's mine, I guess, as much as I'm hers. My dad plays the same games with her. She's in—she's out. He moves back and forth. He doesn't want to see who she is, what she stands for ... on any level. Anna and I have that in common—my dad sees what he wants."

Amy winced at the bitterness in her voice and glanced out the window. "It doesn't matter."

"Have you talked to him?"

"We talk—but we don't communicate. He talks to Anna—when he wants. They fight, she walks away. She doesn't allow him to control her. I think he cares for her some, but he likes his bachelor life playing the field with Vince at his side. I know she cares for him, wishes ... I don't know what keeps them apart, besides ... well, besides the fact that our faith holds him back. I don't think he can accept ... what wasn't part of my mom."

The phone rang and Amy waved away his hand when he reached to answer it. "I'll get it. I might as well do something."

Derek watched her leave, then tugged the file from it's place and made an addition to his list of questions. Tapping his pen on the paper, he frowned over the list of unanswered questions.



"I thought you were finished shopping," Amy complained good-naturedly. Chloe only had one pay check left before they left for the mountains, so she's shopped early, dragging Amy out with her the day after Thanksgiving for a last round of small purchases.

"I was," Chloe said and walked passed the door Amy held open for her and into the designer store. Christmas music cascaded lightly from the store's central speakers. The Christmas decorations shimmered. "Mitch is getting a dog. Some lady saw on the news how dogs were being used to help find missing people in the snow and she's paying for the dog and the training and ... well, whatever, I suppose."

"What kind of training?"

"The dogs help find missing people in avalanches, skiers lost, that kind of thing. Like Mitch is all that good with his nose. He can't even tell the difference between my bath spray and perfume."

Amy smiled, picturing Mitch trudging through the snow with a dog at his side. She reached the rack Chloe had chosen and started shifting hangers. The clothes were fashionably winter, but too thin to actually do any good in the mountains.

"So you have to get his new dog a gift?"

"I think it's a girl. And of course I have to get her a gift. She's part of the family—or will be—if I am. He's in Colorado this week training with her."

"So, whether he wants a dog or not, he's got one."

Chloe laughed as she turned to look at another rack. "I think he volunteered himself. Oh—he made it sound like he was reasoning it out. The dog's a German Shepherd, the deputy has kids, blah, blah, blah. He wanted a dog. He says he didn't, something about a dog he used to have--but he wanted one. He just needed the excuse."

"Of course he wanted one. You didn't know Mitch when he had Mad-dog, his old dog. He used to go running on the beach with him, bring him out while he was surfing. The two were alike in so many ways. Goofy—not mad. I have a picture of both of them shaking the ocean water off. Two different photos—we never could get them to do it at the same time."

"What happened to him?"

"Old age. A lot of excitement." She pulled out a long sleeved shirt, running her ringers over the soft fabric. "They’d been together a long time. Mitch wrote a song about him. Something like ‘he'd splash in the waves and make you feel like the world was okay, run at your side, happy and full of life.' You should ask him about it. He might be ready to sing it again."

"Amy?"

Amy turned, holding onto a green sweater she'd just pulled off the rack. She blinked in surprise. "Mrs. Thompson."

"You look so much like your father. So much like him."



"You're going to have to tell someone."

Amy opened a cabinet methodically and pulled out a box of wheat pasta. Chloe sat on a stool on the other side of the wood isle, trying, as she had for the last hour, to reason with her. Amy battled the irritation with the sudden need to be with her friend. No one should have been able to rock the foundation she had with Chloe and Andrea.

And yet she evaded the question—and the desire to dodge her friend. "Why?"

"There's too much going on in your life, Amy, for you to keep this a secret. Ignoring it is not going to bring things to a close."

Amy felt the waves of desperation crash over her and struggled.

"Can't you just let it out?"

"What?"

"The anger, the rage? Whatever's been brewing inside of you for the past hour? The past couple of months?"

"For what reason? I can get angry—furious, rage and scream and I'm still going to be twirling around in this nightmare!" Taking the pasta between both hands she snapped it in half, then opened her hands and slowly let it slide into the boiling water. "I don't know that I feel anything anymore."

"And what was that?"

"Frustration? You know what makes me the angriest?" Amy asked as she lifted a spoon to stir. "That--for just one moment I wasn't thinking about everything--and then she comes along and ruins it. We're going to start the whole process all over again. Anna will call my dad, he's going to fuss and fight and tell me to move home. They will fight. And someone's still going to be out there looking to ... do whatever they're planning to do with me."

"Maybe it was Loraine Thompson all along. Maybe it will all be over if they can talk to her, check her out."

"Don't you think they have? That she was one of the first? Derek had a ton of questions about her a few months ago." Amy shook her head. "Besides, it wasn't-it couldn't be. Once upon a time she had a crush on my dad. She never tried to hurt any of us. Tried to break apart a marriage maybe, but not hurt us physically."

"Time change. Mental problems ... they can worsen, can't they?"

"But why would she hurt me?"

"Maybe because she thinks you hurt your dad. I don't know. I‘m not a physiologist. I'm just your friend. I'm worried about you."

They'd left the mall when Lorraine excused herself, the air around them strained. Despite that, Amy refused to call Anna or Derek—or her father.

"This whole thing is messing things up for us. This is our last chance to be roommates. Our last moment of freedom. And we can't even enjoy it."

"You could move in with us. We could change things."

Amy remembered the night Chloe had been attacked—the way she'd looked on the sofa the next day trying to balance her fear so she could except the love Mitch had for her.

"And put you both in danger? Eric and Mitch would both have something to say. Not to mention Andrea's parents."

"You know that's not true. Eric and Mitch care about you. They like you. We could work something out. Just because—" Chloe broke off when the front door opened. "You have to tell her."

Amy reached back and turned off the burner. She stared at the bubbling water that held the pasta, felt the steam against her face. "I know."



Somehow Amy managed to tell Anna everything over dinner. The words just spilled out. How Loraine had approached them in the mall, how she'd rambled on and on about hearing how things had happened, the murder of Maureen, Amy's stay in the hospital, asking about Amy's father.

"She was nice." Chloe jumped in as Amy fumbled for words. "It was just odd, you know. You could tell she was strained. She kept twisting the strap of her purse in her hands, then she would look down at it as if she didn't know what she was holding and back up at us—and for a moment, it was like she had forgotten who we were and why she was talking to us. Odd to seem so out of shape."

"She was served with a restraining order." Anna looked at Amy. "She's not supposed to talk to you. She knows that. She broke it."

"It's been 20 years, nearly. And I was a child."

"She was only reminded a few months ago. The language was clear—there are details I can't divulge dealing with the terms for receiving assistance on her part, but she has never been allowed to forget. She's not supposed to be in contact with your father, or any member of his family, ever."

"You seem to know it fairly well."

"You know there have been reasons, recently. It is your legal right as your father's daughter to know. Lorraine was ordered to take medication. It may just be she needs to fix the dosage—or that something's off. The last time I spoke with her, months ago, she seemed stable. I'll check into it."

Amy's hand squeezed around her fork. She glanced down at the clean lines of Anna's simple plate and realized she'd eaten most of her dinner without realizing it.

"I don't want her drugged, Anna." I don't want her to feel as I feel-locked in, trapped-she wanted to say. "She didn't do anything wrong."

"She did, according to the courts. And someone has in the past—someone with access to drugs."

"She'd almost 60. If she had been moving around our stuff the day things happened, I would have noticed. Someone would have noticed ... right?"

"Her whereabouts for the day in question are elusive. She was at the beach, somewhere."

Amy thought of the sympathy her mother had felt for the woman, how pitiful Lorraine had seemed—then, today. Amy pushed away from the table, then looked at Chloe. "I told you we shouldn't say anything. Drugging her is just as containing for her as this whole thing is for me—except it must be worse. My mind's not being contained."

"Amy—"

"Just—" Desperate, Amy escaped.

There was only one place she could find solace and safety. Only one place she could go.



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