The Cold Nowhere

60

‘You know what would go great on this pizza?’ Cat said. ‘Peanut butter.’

Stride stared across the dining room table in disbelief. ‘You really are pregnant, aren’t you?’

Cat skipped into the kitchen in her socks. She came back with a jar of peanut butter and a knife and spread a dollop onto one of the tiny squares. When she popped it in her mouth, she rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. You really have to try this.’

‘I’ll pass,’ Stride said.

Serena laughed at the two of them, but she paid the price, wincing as pain jolted her chest. She smiled anyway. ‘You see, Cat, you’re violating the purity of a Sammy’s sausage pizza. For Jonny, that’s like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.’

Cat held out the jar to Serena with questioning eyes, but Serena shook her head. The girl shrugged and tossed her hair back, and she wagged a finger at them. ‘You guys don’t know what you’re missing.’

She hummed as she adorned more of the pizza, but Stride knew that her cheerfulness was an act. She was nervous and scared; he could see it in the little darts from her brown eyes as she tried to read their faces. He’d already told her that the two of them needed to talk to her. There wasn’t much pizza left now, and she was busy pretending that she didn’t have a care in the world.

‘So the car guy,’ Cat said. ‘He’s history, huh?’

Stride nodded. ‘Lenny resigned from the Council today.’

‘Rich men don’t go to jail.’

‘No, probably not,’ Stride admitted. ‘He’s got lawyers, money and leverage. He’ll probably walk.’

‘He kept his mouth shut back then. He should pay.’

‘He should. We’ll see. If we get him for anything, it’ll be his connection to this upscale prostitution ring in the city. We think Steve was right about that. We’re still digging into it.’

‘I heard about Brooke, too,’ Cat said. ‘That’s bad, huh?’

‘It could be worse,’ Stride said.

‘I guess.’

Three weeks had passed since the events at the graffiti graveyard. Serena had spent a week in the hospital, but the bullet had spared her major organs. The immediate danger of blood loss had passed after treatment on the first night in intensive care, and the lingering effect now was mostly the pain of broken ribs and torn muscles. She wasn’t moving well; she would be out of work for at least two more months.

For Brooke Hahne, it had been three weeks of behind-closed-door legal maneuvering.

‘If she’d gone to court, she would have faced multiple counts of first degree murder,’ Stride went on. ‘That’s life without parole. As it is, they pled her down to murder two because she wasn’t personally responsible for any of the homicides. She’ll still spend twenty-five years behind bars.’

‘I don’t know how I feel about that,’ Cat said. ‘She saved my life.’

‘But not before putting it in danger,’ Serena pointed out.

Cat nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Listen,’ Stride said.

The girl’s knee bounced nervously under the table. ‘Yeah?’

‘We need to talk about someplace for you to live,’ Stride said. ‘It’s been more than a month.’

‘I know.’ Cat played with a piece of pizza on her plate, pushing it back and forth with her fingertip. ‘Hey, it’s been fun. I’m really grateful. You’ll never know how much.’

‘You need somewhere permanent,’ Stride said. ‘You deserve more than a temporary solution.’

‘Yeah, I get it.’ She got off the chair with a shrug that belied her sadness. ‘Foster parents, huh? I know how the system works. I guess I better go pack. So where’s it going to be? Who are they?’

‘Cat, I want you to stay here with me,’ Stride told her.

She stopped. ‘With you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. If you want to, that is.’

The girl shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Why, because you feel guilty about my mother?’

‘No. That wouldn’t change how I feel at all.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because the more I thought about you being somewhere else, the more I realized I wanted you here,’ Stride said.

Cat sat down again. ‘For how long? A few months?’

‘As long as you need to stay. Until you’re an adult and on your own. I want to be your new legal guardian.’

‘I’m going to have a baby. It’s going to be crazy.’

‘Probably,’ he said.

‘A cop with a teenage hooker? How will that look?’

‘I don’t care how it looks.’

She didn’t want to smile. He realized that, to her, it felt like a candy cane on a string, and when she reached for it, someone would pull it away. Her eyes went back and forth between him and Serena. ‘You two are getting back together. I’ll be in the way. You don’t want me here.’

‘We both want you here,’ Serena said. ‘We talked about it.’

‘Will you stay here, too?’

‘I thought I’d stick around while I recuperate,’ Serena said, winking. ‘It’s easier than going back and forth to Grand Rapids. You and I can get to know each other better. When you’re not in school or doing homework, that is. Besides, if you and Jonny were alone here, all you’d ever eat is Sammy’s pizza.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Stride said.

Cat giggled. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She smiled. It was the smile he remembered from the first night, as glorious as a sunrise. ‘Well, maybe I could stay for a little while,’ she said.

She got up and began to clear the table, stacking the plates, making a clatter of china and silver. As he watched her in the kitchen, he felt Serena watching him. He had no idea if he was ready to have a teenager in the house. And then a baby, like an instant family. He and Serena hadn’t even talked about each other yet and where their own relationship was going. There was time for that. He only knew that it felt right, the way it did when you examined a missing puzzle piece from every angle and finally found the one that fit.

As much as Cat needed someone in her life, he thought he needed her more.

When Cat finished the dishes, she came over to him, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. ‘I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach, if that’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s safe to do that now, right?’

Stride glanced at Serena, who couldn’t hide a tiny grin. From this moment forward, every day would test his limits. It was odd how quickly he could think like a parent and a cop at the same time. The evening was dark, and there were monsters outside. Always monsters.

‘It’s safe,’ he told her, ‘but be back in an hour.’