Alone & Lonely, page 5
“I hate when you talk to me like I’m two.”
“I’m not… Listen, Grace, I don’t want to go to the school every week. I might as well run the program if that’s how it’s going to be, and I don’t want it. It’s not in my talent wheel. You’re the one who connects with those kids. They see me, and they see danger. I’m far too close to a social worker for them.”
“You’ve earned their respect.”
“Respect, yes. Trust, no. Trust is what you have.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to consider Alonzo’s offer.”
“To transfer to IAB? Fuck that. Absolutely not.”
“Grace…you know what? Never mind. I need to get going to the school. We can talk about this some other time.” Amya stood up from the couch, now clearly annoyed and angry.
Grace didn’t want to leave it on that note, but she wasn’t sure how else to change the conversation, to repair it. Standing herself, she gripped Amya’s fingers and pulled her forward for a gentle kiss. “I’m so sorry.”
“Tell that to the kids you’re walking out on.”
“Don’t do this,” Grace fired back.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Amya—”
“Come on, out. I’ve got to figure out what we’re talking about today.”
Grace sighed. “Taxes.”
“You’re kidding me.” Amya’s eyes widened.
“Nope. They need to know these things.”
Amya rubbed her temple. “Could you have picked a topic I know more about?”
“You can always talk to them about God.”
Amya shot Grace a sharp look. “For a public school program? That’ll go over real great.”
“I was going to talk about safe sex next week.”
“Jesus, Grace.”
“What?” Grace’s eyes widened. “These are things they need to know!”
“I know, it’s just… why can’t I do mock interviews or something less touchy as sex and money.”
Grace shrugged. “There’s a whole lot about sex and money in the Bible. You should be used to it.”
Amya’s jaw dropped, and Grace smirked.
“What? I do pay attention.” Sighing, Grace pressed her lips gently to Amya’s. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Go to the school is what you’d do.”
“I wish. I’ll see you at home tonight.”
“Hmm…try not to wake me when you come in this time.”
“I’ll try.” Their lips brushed again, and Grace left Amya’s office with a wave to Khloe.
She was definitely calmer than when she’d first walked in, but the sense of unease and doom hadn’t left the center of her chest. Amya’s suggestion was off the table, but she would have to figure out how to deal with Paige sooner rather than later. It was getting to be too much for the family, which had been Amya’s real point in her suggestion. IAB? Grace couldn’t imagine it. She’d never work in Internal Affairs.
###
The family was closed lipped. Grace had managed to get the sister on the phone, but she had no information that was useful and half the time she’d spent blubbering. Hanging up, Grace wrote down all the notes she needed to file in the report and moved on to the next call. Maybe she could finish enough of them that she could leave the office at a reasonable hour the next day instead of pulling a ten or twelve hour shift.
She texted Abrams, who promptly told her to go home and stop working. Grace glanced at the clock, realizing it was nearing ten at night, and she’d have to stop calling family members to talk to them. Typing up all her notes, she emailed them to Abrams so he would have record.
The cup that slid in front of her surprised her. Paige sat on the corner of her desk, a smile on her lips as she stared down at it. “Thought you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Uh…thanks.” Grace took the orange juice and sipped at it. Finally looking around the room, she realized she and Paige were the only ones left, which had been something she’d sought to avoid as much as she possibly could. “Didn’t think you’d still be here.”
Paige cocked her head. “Figured I could stay to help you out a bit.”
“I don’t need help, Paige. Abrams has been quite helpful already.”
“I’m sure he has, but he’s never worked Missing Persons before.”
Grace curled her toes in her boots. “True. Still, we seem to be working well together.”
Paige gave a small hum as she pointed at the computer. “What have you found out so far?”
“Not a whole lot. No one has seen the baby in over a week. Felicia, it seems, didn’t actually interact much with her family.”
“Who did she talk to then?”
“I haven’t quite figured that one out. She’s got a lot of incoming and outgoing calls, and a bunch of text messages. I’ve started the process to get records of who the numbers are registered to, but that takes some time and we just hit a weekend.”
Paige nodded. “I can help you with that paperwork.”
“It’s already filed.”
“Oh.” Disappointment echoed through Paige’s tone. “What else do you have?”
“Baby daddy, or Jonas Erikson is actually an ex-husband. Their divorce was finalized right around the time of conception.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, but he wanted a paternity test. We’re obliging him since Felicia never got the chance to get one done.”
“I saw the request for that.” Paige reached down, her hand covering Grace’s arm.
A shiver ran through Grace at the touch. Amya loved to touch her there, to hold on to her arm, to loop their arms together as they walked some place, and she would rest her head on Grace’s shoulder. She moved her gaze, following the line of Paige’s arm to her shoulder to her lips to her eyes. The desire in Paige was unmistakable, but she’d yet to do anything so forward as to give Grace reason to file a complaint. Ever since the last time Grace had talked to her about it, Paige had been far more careful in her attempts to woo.
Grace wanted to move away, but there was very little excuse for her to get up and leave or to catch someone else’s attention since there was no one else there. Her heart rate sped up, and she tried to find a way out of the conversation, a way to get away from Paige and back home to Amya. Never before had she been so uncomfortable in a job she’d had. Any time someone had tried something and she’d told them to back off, they had respected her. Paige just did not give up.
“What time will you be in tomorrow?” Paige asked.
Grace had hoped to avoid that one, because she’d really wanted to sleep in and arrive later, but since Paige was asking and she had to put an actual time to it, she knew it was going to be morning. “Seven or eight.”
“Need a hand?”
“I think I’ve got it covered. Abrams will be joining.” It was a lie. At least, she wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. They’d talked about meeting up to work on the case since it was so fresh, but they hadn’t set a time or a place. But any buffer between her and Paige would be welcome.
“That’s good. Do be careful with him, though. He tends to be nice upfront, but like I told you before, get on his bad side, and he’ll stab you in the back.”
Grace’s chest tightened from the stress. She couldn’t take too much more of this. Maybe Amya was right and a transfer to IAB was the only solution. Alonzo had pretty much guaranteed her a job there if she wanted, but Grace knew how these things worked. There wasn’t always a job available to give.
“I think we need to do some more media releases.”
“They’ve gone wild with it already.” Paige’s hand on Grace’s arm tightened. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. The more chitchat we can get around Andrew the better, I think. What do we have to lose?”
“Setting off the kidnapper to the point that the kid is murdered isn’t a concern of yours?”
Grace sighed. “They have to know we’re looking for him. It’s already been in the media, and an Amber Alert. They can’t be stupid.”
“Babies are easy to hide, Grace. They’re small.”
“They’re noisy.”
“They can easily be hidden under a guise of another gender, and they all look alike.”
“They don’t all look alike, Paige. That’s a stupid assumption to make.”
Paige turned her hand so she was gripping Grace’s elbow and tugging the rolling chair closer. Grace tried to catch the corner of her desk with her foot to stop the chair, but she missed and instead rammed her knee into the corner of it. Cringing, she jerked her hands down to grab her injured knee.
“Jesus, Grace.”
“I’m fine. I do it all the time.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “Let me look.”
“No, it’s fine.” The words came out rushed, but she was defensive. “I need to work on the case, anyway.”
“Fine. Talk to me about your interviews.”
Drawing in a deep breath, Grace licked her lips. “Felicia’s mom seems the most concerned. Jonas seemed slightly concerned for Felicia but not for the baby.”
“He might still be separating himself in case the kid isn’t his.”
“There’s no reason to think he’s not. No one has said Felicia has been with anyone except Jonas in the last few years.”
“How long were they married?”
“Two years.”
“Were they babies when they got married? Damn.”
“Eighteen,” Grace answered.
“All right. This baby—who would want him?”
“Anyone who has wanted a baby and couldn’t have one, someone who wants the attention that comes with new parenthood. It’s easy to fake being pregnant. It’s not easy to fake when there is no baby at the end of a pregnancy.”
Paige nodded. “Are there any records of anyone faking a pregnancy in our county? For whatever purposes?”
“What kind of records?” Grace furrowed her brow. “It’s not like we keep track of all the lies criminals tell. That’d be a headache in and of itself.”
Paige laughed, the trill of her voice echoing the room. “That’s funny. No, if any of it did enter into the criminal sphere, like trying to adopt out the baby and then suddenly there being no baby. Or even just scour social media to see if someone has lied about it in the past.”
“I mean, yes, that could help, but the research for that is immeasurable. It helps to have someone to focus on if we’re going to do that.”
Raising an eyebrow, Paige leaned down close to Grace, their face’s only inches apart. “That’s why you’re the detective, Grace. Get too investigating.”
“You want me to look at random social media posts about fake pregnancies? How far back should I go, to the dawn of the ages?”
“You make that call.” Paige stood up from the desk. “But I’d like a report on it in the morning.”
“Paige, this is ridiculous. I can’t possibly do that amount of research in that short period of time.”
Shooting a look over her shoulder, Paige smiled. “I have faith in you, Grace. You always get your work done on time and do it well to boot.”
Paige slipped into her office, leaving the door open. Grace stared at her exit open mouthed until she turned back to her computer. Paige was chasing phantoms. Grace could focus on the family, but since Felicia didn’t seem to have a close relationship with most of her family, she wasn’t quite sure which one to begin with.
Scratching the back of her head, she glanced at the clock on the computer screen. She would not stay past eleven-thirty. Paige could go fuck a duck for all Grace cared. She was not going to work into tomorrow just to sleep for a few hours while on a wild goose chase. She needed her wits about her in order to properly do the investigation.
An hour. That was it. That was all the time she’d give to this stupid idea of Paige’s. It took Grace the full hour to find out that Jonas’ sister had been pregnant roughly around the same time as Felicia, but she’d announced her miscarriage two short days after she’d announced her pregnancy. That had been a dead end. She’d put it on her list of information that would be helpful to know, but unless they found baby Andrew at her house, she was reluctant to bring up bad memories and a sensitive topic.
Grace’s head hurt. Paige had left fifteen minutes before, a soft caress to Grace’s shoulders as she’d walked by, a wave at the door, and a wink as she stepped through it. Grace’s stomach churned. Anger pooled within her, and after spending ten minutes glaring at her computer screen, she gave up.
Turning everything off, Grace grabbed her stuff and stalked out of the room. Once she was in her cruiser, she closed her eyes. She had no idea what to do. She could not keep working like this. She was going to mess up at some point from her exhaustion and her frustration, and it could be detrimental to a case, which she absolutely could not allow. She especially couldn’t do that for baby Andrew’s case. She had to find him.
Perhaps that was what she would do. Focus on Andrew and nothing else, get the case done, and then she’d deal with Paige. Dragging in a breath of fresh air and some relief, Grace put her cruiser in reverse and drove home. When she got to the house, every light was out except the front porch light. Amya’s SUV was parked in the double driveway when Grace pulled up next to it.
Getting out of her car, she quietly moved into the house, dropping her keys and wallet and bag next to the front door. Izzy rustled from the couch, lifting her head to look over at Grace and whine. The cat lay curled up on the top of the couch arm, completely asleep. Even the animals were used to her coming home so late—which wasn’t a good thing.
She settled on the far end of the couch and pulled off her shoes. Grace needed to figure out a way to make more time for the family. Amya was right. At the end of the day, they only had a couple short months left with Peter home if he really was going back for the spring semester, and only half a year with Kit before she graduated. And Kit was bound and determined to get out of the house as soon as she turned eighteen or as soon as she graduated. Grace was hoping it was the latter. There was no reason for her to leave at eighteen if she had a roof over her head and food to eat.
Grace waited until she got to their bedroom before she started stripping her clothes. She’d started that once in the hall and ran into Peter in the middle of the night and had never done it again. She was not used to having so many people in her house, but oddly, it felt good. Pulling on a loose pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt, Grace slid onto the bed and under the covers.
Amya popped her head up, turning to look at Grace. Freezing, Grace waited to see if she was fully awake or still mostly asleep. Amya narrowed her gaze and muttered, “What time is it?”
“About midnight.”
“Jesus, Grace.”
“I know,” Grace whispered. “Go back to bed.”
Amya sighed. “Come here.”
Amya gripped Grace’s hand and pulled her close to her back so Grace spooned her. Obliging, Grace pressed her front against Amya, wrapping her arm over her side so she could cup Amya’s breast, her nose pressed into Amya’s neck. She smelled so good.
“Grace?”
“Hmm.”
“I want you home when I go to bed tomorrow.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“No, Grace. I want you to hear me. Be home tomorrow when I go to bed.”
“Okay.” Grace closed her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t have too much of a say about it, but she was planning on trying her damnedest to make that happen. “I love you, Amya.”
“Love you, too, Grace.”
“Night.”
Amya’s deep and even breathing told Grace she was already fast asleep again. It took Grace at least another hour before she was able to quiet her mind and fall asleep with Amya by her side.
Turducken
Amya’s head was full of to-do lists. Everyone was working on Thanksgiving. Since Kit got her final work schedule for the week when they filled out paperwork, Amya had balked. She’d known they needed to find another day to celebrate Thanksgiving, but the only day was Monday, which meant they had a whole meal to plan and cook in a few days. Luckily it was just the four of them and no one else, but still, it was rough.
Letting out a breath, Amya relaxed on the couch in the empty house. She’d just gotten back from the grocery store after dropping Kit off for her first official shift. Peter was at work, and Grace was…well, who knew where Grace was. It was Sunday afternoon, and while Amya had gone to church that morning, no one else had, and by the time she’d gotten back, Grace had been gone without a word as to when she’d return.
It was wearing on her. It was wearing on them. The amount of time they spent together was so small that Amya worried for their relationship and what the future might hold. Not only because Grace was working just about every waking hour there was but also because Paige was the one making her work.
And it was Paige who Amya had issues with. Ever since Grace had gotten her new partner two years before, Amya had been worried. Something about the way Paige treated Grace set Amya on edge every time she saw their interactions or Grace talked about her. It had taken Amya at least a year to fully realize just how jealous she was, and it wasn’t because she thought Grace would do anything. No, she didn’t trust Paige.
Since Paige had gotten the temporary promotion, it had made her home life a living hell. She saw Grace more at work than she did at home, and Kit and Peter felt the change too. Amya had tried to bring it up on multiple occasions but only one time did Grace truly admit what was happening, and that had been last winter. Since then, she’d done a spectacular job at avoiding. It was something Grace was fluent in—avoiding any strong emotions or big decisions as long as she possibly could.
Sighing, Amya stared out the front window of their house. It had begun lightly snowing about an hour before, and it was supposed to pick up through the night until the morning when they’d end up with at least three or four inches. They’d have to get up early to shovel so Grace and Kit weren’t late, which they had been more often than not lately. Kit needed the structure and the adult to tell her to show up on time, especially where it concerned work if she wanted to keep the job.
