High Noon

Chapter 22

She'd told him to go home. It pissed him off What the hell did she take him for?

Duncan paced the area outside her squad room. He couldn't sit; he couldn't settle, and he wished to God he couldn't think. Unfortunately, he could, and his mind kept sneaking back to that moment, that ohmyjesusgod moment when what had been a man had become… nothing.

Bits and pieces of meat and bone, and something like a horrible red fog.

He couldn't remember, not exactly, moving. He remembered feeling something-like a quick punch of air, and the sounds, whizzing and shouting, thunks-thunks of statuary and earth and God knew hitting trees and ground, other stones and statuary.

He knew he'd seen a piece of what had been Roy hanging in the lacy webs of Spanish moss. He thought he'd seen the stone angel's disembodied head fly, her face splattered with red, her smile peaceful and serene. But he might've imagined it.

He didn't remember running, walking, jumping toward Phoebe.

Just being there, he remembered just being there on top of her while the chaos boomed around them. He remembered hearing her say: What have I done? She said it over and over until someone-Dave, he thought, the captain-had pushed at him, pulled at them.

Are you hurt? Are you hit? That's what he'd asked first, Duncan was nearly sure of that. His face had been as white as the flying angel's. It blurred some after that. Lots of movement, lots of sound, more sirens.

And she'd told him to go. She'd stood in the middle of that nightmare and told him to go. Fuck that.

She was in with the captain, that's what they'd told him. In with Captain McVee and some others. So he'd wait. He'd goddamn wait. He wanted a drink. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to touch her just to assure himself one more time they'd both come through it whole. But all he could do was wait.

"Dune."

He turned, and his stomach did one hard shudder when he saw Phin striding from the elevator. For reasons he couldn't explain, seeing his friend had his legs going weak enough to have him sinking down onto a bench.

"Jesus. Oh Christ."

"You're okay?" Phin took a hard grip on Duncan's arm as he sat beside him. "You're bleeding. Are you okay?"

Dully, Duncan looked down at his shirt. "It's not my blood." Just a little souvenir from Bonaventure, a little memento of Roy. "But I think I've got a ways to go before I get within shouting distance of okay. Jesus, Phin. Fucking Christ Jesus."

"What the hell happened? Do they know what the hell happened?"

"He blew up. He just… It's not like the movies. Man, it's not like that." He pushed a hand through his hair. "Loo? The kids?"

"Fine. Kids are sleeping. We got cops around the house. This was Carly's father?"

"Roy. Roy Squire. Had him chained to the ground on a grave, strapped with explosives. Poor son of a bitch. Something about being grabbed out of his own garage, beaten up some, maybe drugged. Phoebe was talking to the guy who did it through Roy-the ex. He had, ah…" Duncan made a helpless gesture at his ear.

"Okay, I get it." Studying his friend's face, Phin pulled a flask out of his hip pocket. "Take a slug, brother."

"I'd kiss you for this, but I'm not feeling romantic." Grateful,

Duncan took the flask and swallowed straight whiskey. "He wasRoy-he was crying, begging. The guy… Cooper," Duncan remembered. "He told Phoebe to call him Cooper. He wouldn't say what he wanted, he wouldn't say why. Then he must've told Roy to say goodbye. And he pushed the button, he set off the bomb. He blew apart, Phin. Fuck, he just blew apart."

"Duncan, did you set the security before you left your house?"

"What? No." Had he? No. "We were out of there too fast."

"Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make some calls, get some people over there to do a sweep and to secure the place." Duncan let his head fall back. "Because he went after Phoebe's ex, he may come after me."

"No point in being sloppy, is there?"

"No, no point."

In the office, Phoebe sat ramrod straight. Her family was safe, and their homes under guard. She could put that worry out of her mind. Roy was dead; she couldn't change that. She had to block that guilt out of her mind, her heart, her belly.

"Hilton Head PD is investigating. They've got a crime-scene unit going over the house and garage. We're looking for the victim's car."

"The grave has to be symbolic of something or someone."

"We're getting the information."

"I need my family protected, not just for tonight-"

"Phoebe." Dave spoke quietly. "They will be."

"All right. He was engaged. I only know her first name-Mizzy. I don't know if they were living together or-"

"It'll be taken care of."

Of course, yes, of course it would. "A personal attack of this na ture has to stem from a personal grudge. Who have I pissed off, hurt, threatened?"

"We'll need to speak to Arnold Meeks."

"Yes." She drew a deep breath. "He needs to be interviewed and his whereabouts confirmed. But this wasn't his doing. He was a bad cop, he's no doubt a violent man, and a complete asshole. But he's not a killer. If what this Cooper told me tonight is fact, he's killed at least twice now. In cold blood. Meeks acts in rage, short-term planning, without factoring in the consequences."

"Someone acting on his behest. With or without his knowledge."

"Maybe. But I think it's more personal yet. You hurt me, I'll hurt you, and a whole lot worse. Something I did or didn't do. Someone I didn't save."

When she closed her eyes, pressed her fingers against her lids, all she could see was Roy. She dropped her hands into her lap. "A failure, a professional failure that was personal to him. Who did I lose, Dave? When?

How? I need to go back over my case files, all the way back. Any hostage or hostage-takers, any cop or bystander, anyone who was injured or killed during an incident where I was negotiator.

"I think it's going to be a woman," she added. "Why?"

"Because he's Gary Cooper. Because Roy was chained to a woman's grave. We can't discount anyone, but I think it's going to be a woman. He knows, or he's learned how to handle, weapons and explosives. Maybe he was trained in the military or law enforcement. Or maybe he trained himself. Because he planned this. Roy wasn't impulse, not spur of the moment."

She pounded her fisted hand on her thigh. "I couldn't hear. How could I listen and know how to respond, know how to bring him down when I couldn't hear his voice, the inflection, the emotion?"

"Phoebe, you're not responsible for this."

"Then why did he set it off? Did I ask the wrong question, choose the wrong tack? All the time, trouble, the risk he took to get Roy where he wanted him, to get me there, then he ends it? I have to listen to the tape, I have to figure out what I said-or didn't say-what pushed him to end it."

He swiveled his chair until they were knee-to-knee, face-to-face. "You know better than that."

"Under normal circumstances, we all try to know better than that. But this wasn't normal circumstances. It was about me this time."

"What you said or didn't may not be the answer."

"No. He's killed two people, because of their connection to me. I have to know why. We have to find the answer, Dave, because he has no reason to stop at two. He's been outside my house." She closed her eyes again. "He may try for someone I love next."

"He won't get near them."

"He can't once we identify him, find him, stop him. I… I need to contact Roy's fiancee. And I have to tell Carly. I have to find a way to tell Carly."

"What you have to do right now is go home, get some sleep. Take a little time, Phoebe. It might be a good idea for you to talk to the counselor about this."

"The best cure for guilt and misplaced responsibility in the negotiator is work, study and training." She managed a ghost of a smile. "Someone wise has been known to say that, often."

"Maybe I have, but in this case, you need sleep first. We'll talk about the rest of it later."

When she walked out of Dave's office, she went straight into the women's room and finally let herself be sick. Viciously, violently sick. Emptied out, skin clammy, eyes running, she sat back against the stall door until she got her breath back. She didn't weep. This had gone far beyond anything as simple and cleansing as tears. She simply sat on the floor, back braced, until she was sure she wouldn't be sick again. Then, after rising, she walked to the sink to wash her face, to rinse out her mouth with cupped handfuls of cold water. He'd been looking into her eyes, she thought as she lifted her head to look into her own now. He'd been looking straight into her eyes, his full of fear and pleas, this man she'd once loved. This man she'd made a child with.

Then he was gone. Gone, she thought, because she once loved him and made a child with him. Not for his own sins, but because she met him one night at a party, and let herself love.

So she'd find the answers. She'd search until she found them.

After drying her face, shoving her dampened hair away from it, she started toward her office. She'd go home-Dave was right about that. But she'd take some files with her. The odds of getting any real sleep were slim, so she could work off the hours, and maybe find some answers. She didn't see Duncan until he was pushing to his feet and walking toward her.

"You should've gone home."

"Don't even start that crap with me, okay?"

"What?"

"Goddamn it, Phoebe." He took her arms. Then he just jerked her against him. "Okay, fight later. Let's just do this for a minute."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"Yeah, me, too, and back at you." He eased her back to take a good study of her face. Her eyes were reddened, shadowed, exhausted. "I'll take you on home now."

No car, she remembered. She didn't have her car. "I have to get a few things out of my office first."

"I'll wait."

"Duncan-" She broke off when she saw Phin coming toward them, clicking his cell phone closed. "Carly."

"She's fine. She's fine." Phin kept walking, opened his arms and took Phoebe in. "She's sound asleep. Got a patrol car out in front of the house, another couple cops out the back, and my fierce wife and lovely dog inside."

It surprised a muffled laugh out of her. "Thank you. I should go by and get her, bring her home."

"Honey, it's four in the morning. Since it was damn near midnight before the giggling stopped, I bet those girls are going to be sleeping a few hours yet. Why don't Loo and I bring her home after she's up and around? We'll call you first, then bring her home. How's that?"

"Good. That's good. No point in waking her up to… No point.

I'm grateful, Phin, grateful to you and Loo, and I'm sorry."

"No need to be either about this."

"I need to get a few things. I'll only be a minute." Phin watched her go. "She holds up pretty good."

"She's got that strong spine. Something that appealed to me right off. Everything okay on the home front?"

"Taken care of. I'm going to go on. You get some sleep, you hear. We'll talk about all this later."

Duncan gave him a bump on the shoulder. "Thanks."

When Phoebe came back, Duncan stepped over to take her overloaded briefcase. "Good idea. You're going to work from home for a while."

"Not instead of, in addition to."

"Only so many hours in the day, Phoebe."

"So I need to make good use of as many as I can. This is police business, Duncan."

"Oh, don't pull that crap on me either."

She remained silent a moment, ordered herself not to respond. But her willpower snapped when they stepped off the elevator. "I seem to be pulling quite a bit of crap on you tonight."

"Yeah, and I can't say I care for it."

"Then you ought to just go on. I can get my own way home."

"In about one more minute, I'm going to take this shovel I'm using to pitch away this crap and hit you over the head with it. I've had a bad night, too, Phoebe, so watch where you push."

"I told you to go home, didn't I? I said-"

She didn't say a thing more as the breath whooshed right out of her when he whipped her around and pushed her back against his car. She'd seen him irked a time or two, even seen him on the edge of nasty temper. But this was the first time she saw the full-blown affair.

His eyes had the hard, hot look of a man who could and would kick any number of asses, then gesture for more to come on.

"We found out I like aggressive women-thanks for that. I like strong women, and smart women. I like women who can handle themselves. I like, apparently, a woman who knows where the hell she's going and how she wants to get there. You getting this?"

"You're hurting my arms, Duncan."

He eased his hold a fraction. "What I don't like is being told what to do, or how I should feel or what I should think. I don't like being fucking dismissed when-"

"I didn't mean-"

"Shut up, Phoebe. I'm not finished. I don't like being dismissed when a smart, strong, knows-how-to-handle-herself woman figures she doesn't need me anymore. I don't like, and I won't tolerate, being told it's none of my non-police ass's business when I stood out there tonight and saw that poor bastard blown to pieces. So go ahead, Phoebe, tell me one more time to go on home."

Her breath shuddered out once before she controlled it. "I didn't think I could face you again tonight."

"What? Why?"

"I wasn't sure… I thought I might break down if I did, or worse, that you'd look at me differently. I don't know. It's not rational, it's emotional, all right? I've got plenty of goddamn emotions."

"I'll say. Phoebe, first, if you'd broken down-"

"I said it wasn't logical." The shove she gave him to push him back had a little heat along with it. "Don't stand there trying to make it logical."

"Good point." He considered a minute, then reached into his back pocket for the flask Phin had given him.

"Oh God. Thank you." She took a short sip, then a long drink. "Oh Jesus." She leaned back against the car. "Oh Jesus, Duncan."

"I never…" He took back the flask for another quick pull. "It's not like I ever imagined. What happens to a person."

"The bomb guys call it pink mist."

He capped the flask, opened the car door for her. "You've been through it before?"

"Not like this." She waited until he was behind the wheel. "I've been on teams, a few times, when we weren't there soon enough, or something went wrong. I've never seen… nothing like this. I was so mad at him, I was so angry. About him getting married again and moving to Europe without giving Carly a thought." She rubbed the heels of her hands on her eyes. "I think it's worse, it's worse having those feelings in me for him than if we'd managed to be friends, or at least friendly. But that's what I had in me for him."

"That's not what I saw out there at Bonaventure. You weren't thinking about how mad you were. You were thinking about saving his life."

"Didn't think hard enough. And that's destructive," she said before he could speak. "I know it. It's indulgent and egotistical. Duncan, are you going to consider it more crap if I tell you it's best if we don't see each other for a while? If I tell you because the man who killed Roy may decide it's more fun to go after someone current in my life, it's best if there's some distance between us."

"Plenty of distance between you and Roy."

"Yes, but-"

"I'd consider it crap. And if I give you the respect of admiring the fact you can handle yourself, I'd appreciate the quid pro quo." She said nothing, just pulled out her badge as they approached her house. "Let me ID us to the radio car first." She stepped out, crossed over.

He waited by the car while she had a brief conversation. She'd have noticed, he assumed, that there were lights on inside the house. No one, it seemed, was getting a good night's sleep.

"I'm not telling you to go home," she began, "because I don't want to get beaned with that shovel. I'm just going to tell you that you don't have to stay."

In answer he simply took her hand. Ava opened the door as they stepped onto the veranda. "I'm so glad you're home!" She dashed out barefoot to wrap her arms around Phoebe. "They said you weren't hurt."

"I'm not. Mama?"

"I'm here." Her face gray, Essie stood a foot back from the open door. "Phoebe. Phoebe."

So the veranda was lost to her, for now, Phoebe thought, and moved into the house quickly to take her mother into her arms. "I'm fine. I promise."

"They said there was trouble, something bad. Carly-"

"Is fine. You know she's fine. She's sleeping."

"And… and Carter and-"

"Mama. Mama. You need to breathe. You need to keep breathing. Look at me now, and you listen. Everyone is fine. Carter and Josie and

Carly. You and Ava. I'm right here, too. Duncan's here. He brought me home."

Even as she spoke, Phoebe could see her mother was falling into a panic attack. Her breath was short and choppy-quick, strained indrawn gasps. The shakes had started. Sweat beaded on Essie's face.

"Ava."

Together, Phoebe and Ava eased Essie down to the floor before her legs buckled.

"Mama. I'm right here, Mama. Feel my hand?" She glanced up as Duncan draped the throw from the back of the parlor sofa over Essie's shaking shoulders. "Feel my hands, Mama? Rubbing your arms? Hear my voice? Take a nice breath now."

It eased, bit by stingy bit, minute by endless minute.

"All right now, all right." Phoebe drew Essie close, stroking her hair. "Nice deep breaths now. There you are."

"I couldn't stop it. I'm so sorry, Phoebe."

"Ssh. Ssh. It's all over now."

"Here, Essie, why don't you drink a little water?"

Essie looked over as Duncan crouched to offer a glass. "Oh, Duncan. I'm so embarrassed."

"Sip a little water. I'm going to go make y'all some tea."

"Oh, but-"

"You're not going to make me feel like company, are you, Essie?" A tear dripped down her cheek as she shook her head. "Phoebe, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to come home and worry like this about me. You look so tired."

"We're all tired. Come on now, Ava and I are going to get you up and get you to the sofa."

"Ava, you should go in and make that tea. That poor man. What must he think of this household?"

"Don't worry about Duncan." Ava helped Essie to the sofa. "Are you cold?"

"No, I'm fine now. I-" She passed a hand over her face and grimaced at the sweat. "Look at me! Like I had the mother of all hot flashes."

"I'm going to get you a cool cloth."

"I couldn't stop it," Essie told Phoebe when they were alone. "I know."

"You wish I'd take the medicine, but most of the time I'm fine the way things are. I was just so worried. We were both so worried. Then wouldn't you know when you're home and I know you're safe, I have a spell like that."

She reached out, touched Phoebe's face. "Something very bad happened."

"Yes, something very bad. Mama, I've got some of the pills. You could take one. I don't want you upset."

"I'm all right now. You said Carly and Carter and Josie weren't hurt. Or Dave?"

"Dave's fine."

"Okay. Okay. I'll be all right with anything else."

Ava came back with a small white basin and a damp cloth. "You better sit down, Ava."

She told them about Roy. Though Essie's face went sheet white again, she didn't have another attack. She and Ava sat together on the couch, gripping hands. Duncan said nothing when he came in, just passed around the tea, then sat while Phoebe finished.

It was Essie who rose to sit on the arm of Phoebe's chair. She put her arm around her daughter's shoulders, eased Phoebe's head against her and stroked.

"Oh, Mama."

"I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry. What a terrible thing. Poor Roy. Poor Roy. The man was useless as tits on a bull, but he didn't deserve to die like that."

"Mama!"

"People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it to the bank they're thinking ill."

Essie looked over, saw Duncan struggling against a grin. "And look at you, just worn out, too, aren't you? But the house is all locked up. Locked up tight and we're safe inside it. You need to rest awhile."

"Yes, we all need to rest." Phoebe took Essie's hand. "I'd never let anyone hurt you."

"We'll all go rest. Duncan, you're going to stay. It's safe in the house, so you'll stay. Come on, baby girl. Duncan's going to stay in with you so you're not alone. You'll sleep better."

When Phoebe lifted her eyebrows, Essie just shook her head and continued to walk her out of the parlor. "As if I had no idea the two of you haven't found your way into bed together already. Sun's going to be up before long. We'll all get some rest. We'll have a late breakfast." Ava nodded at Phoebe over Essie's head, then slid an arm around Essie's waist. "Eggs Benedict? Won't that be fine, Essie? And fresh berries." Phoebe sighed as Ava walked her mother down the hall to Essie's bedroom. "She's closed the worst of it out of her mind for a while. It's too big right off, so she keeps it out."

"Sounds like a healthy idea to me."

Phoebe turned into her bedroom. "If she can keep her mind on something else like eggs Benedict, she won't panic. But eventually, it'll claw its way in."

"Phoebe."

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking up wearily as she pulled off her shoes.

"I'd say what happened tonight, and the overall threat of what could happen? That earns a good dose of panic."

"Hard to argue. God. I'm too tired to get undressed." She simply lay down on top of the spread, curled on her side.

Duncan slid in behind her, spooned her. "Didn't expect our first overnight would end up with us both fully dressed."

"Duncan? I want to say that I appreciate the fact that you shovel away the crap when I get into one of those get-away-and-let-me-dothisall-by-myself spells."

He smiled into her hair. "I'm going to buy a couple of spare shovels tomorrow."

"That sounds like a good idea." She took his hand in hers, pressed it between her breasts.

And within moments, Essie proved right. Phoebe did sleep better with him there.