Out of Reach (Can't Help Falling Book 2), page 21
"Lyss-- I'm sorry, okay? I panicked when I got that text message."
She closed her eyes to his husky, timbered voice. That damned earnest, humble Teagan voice . . . that somehow made her want to forgive anything. He'd likely used it a million times. The convincer. A sexy, get-out-of-jail-free card. "What are you doing in here?"
He checked the stalls, making sure they were empty. "What if he was hiding in here?"
"Oh-- now you believe me? I'm not just a crazy, distraught-"
He pulled her against him, scattering her thoughts. "Damn it, Lyss-- you scared the hell out of me. I got that text and I dropped everything to get down here . . . but I didn't know where I was going."
His admission deflated the hot, angry balloon in her chest. "I texted you so you wouldn't think I was being careless," she admitted. "I'm taking the safety thing seriously."
Gentle fingers wove through her hair. "How bad does it hurt?"
"Just a headache. Probably a bruise tomorrow."
"I knew . . . something was going to happen." Releasing her, he leaned against the tiled wall while she cleaned herself up. "I could feel it." As she splashed water on her face, Teagan told her about his morning-- about the bearded man under the magnolia. When he mentioned another man . . . shorter, blond-- she stiffened.
"Did you see him?"
"He's blond?" She experienced the sudden, pulsing intensity of full-on Teagan concentration. "There was a guy near the elevator when I first got down here." She tucked in her shirt and turned for the door.
"Wait. Tell me the rest," he suggested.
"In the ladies room?"
He didn't budge. "There's no one down here. We have a minute of privacy."
She walked him through the story of the intern in the hallway. "He said his key had broken off in the other hallway," she remembered.
"What did he look like?"
"He was blond. Hazel eyes, I think," she recited. "Taller than me-"
"That's pretty much everyone." Amusement flashed in sober eyes. "Was he taller or shorter than me?"
Alyssa studied him, his features etched with concentration. Behind the gray-flannel eyes his brain, hard at work processing information. Hair standing up from his agitated fingers; his charcoal suit was dusty and rumpled from sitting on the floor with her.
Her heart suddenly overrun with affection, she found it hard to stay wary of him. He was such a good man. Yes, he'd leave her soon. But in the meantime, in some strange way, he cared about her. He'd taken ownership of the investigation. Despite issues with his own family . . . he'd embraced hers. Despite the life-altering decisions he needed to make about his own future . . . TJ cared enough to do this job to the best of his ability.
"He's a lot shorter than you."Trying to summon the memory, she acknowledged she hadn't paid enough attention. Her mind had been focused on datebooks. "He said he was interning in the Safety Commissioner's office-" She remembered the twisted badge. Had that been on purpose? "His badge was turned around."
"That's easy enough to check." Teagan scrolled through his phone. "Anything else? Clothes? Smells? Accents? Did he have a scar? Any moles?"
She stifled a bubble of laughter. "Would you choose stalker as a career if you had so many recognizable features?"
He didn't smile. "What about him?" He showed her a picture on his phone. "Not a great shot of his face because I'm looking down on him-"
"His shirt-- it was gray." Alyssa stared at it. "But it didn't look like a t-shirt. I would've remembered that."
"What if it was turned inside out? Would you notice?"
She'd been nervous about the basement; concerned she wouldn't find the box- "Probably not."
Back in the corridor, they waited for the freight elevator to descend. A few uniformed maintenance workers wandered the halls that had been barren an hour earlier. Glancing up, she noticed the cameras. "T-- look."
He waited until they were inside the elevator. "Luther was calling building security about the tapes as soon as he got back to his office." He handed her the pile of records from the file room. "What are you researching?"
"A memory I had while we were at Theo's last night."
"About the blackmailing? Why didn't you-"
"Not the blackmail," she cut him off. "It's about two years ago."
"The attack?" His gaze narrowed in that way he had-- as though he was about to launch a strike-- and she was the target. "You remembered that at Theo's?"
She paused for the elevator doors to open, relieved for sun-washed windows and the familiarity of the plant-filled lobby outside the mayor's suite. "When you were discussing the Ready Brigade-- his time in the Gulf. I remembered something that happened about a week before I was attacked."
"Why'd you keep it to yourself?"
Startling at his quiet tone, she glanced up. "We had a lot going on last night. Ten minutes later, we were engaged-"
"Lyss, with everything else right now-- can't this wait?"
Rather than enter the suite, where their voices would carry, Alyssa crossed to the bank of windows. "This is important to me."
"More important than your safety? More important than those pictures going public?"
"I have gaps in my memory." Alyssa was surprised to realize she wanted him to understand. Maybe more than anyone. Glancing up at him, his gaze was fixated on the view of the esplanade. "Two years-- and I still don't know exactly what happened to me."
Grateful for the throng of people clamoring through the marble lobby, the voices and laughter blurred to a strum of white noise that muffled her trembling voice. "Last night I remembered something new." She grabbed his hand, willing him to look at her. "Do you know how rare that is?"
"Why don't we tackle one problem at a time?" His strained voice suggested impatience-- as though her pursuit was some sort of hobby.
"We don't have to tackle this. I do. I have the right to seek answers."
"Well, I could probably help-- if I wasn't working on ten different problems at once." His jaw tightened. "Blackmailers, stalkers . . . and now you want to look into an attack from two years ago?"
"I've never stopped looking into it." She didn't need his permission. Or his attempts to wave her off.
"What's the memory?"
She could see his wheels turning. His grim expression suggesting a determination to resolve every problem. Instantly. As though he were some sort of god and she, a mere blundering mortal. Settle her damned issues so I can finally take a vacation.
"This isn't on your agenda. And I have a meeting to prepare for." She turned, heading back to the suite. "We have dinner tonight at seven. MaryJo will be there, too."
TJ resisted the urge to bang his head against the glass. The sharp tap of her heels faded as Alyssa entered the suite. Pissed at him. Again. Any other woman-- and he could charm the damned pants off her. With Alyssa, all he seemed to do was infuriate her.
Still seething over the missed opportunity to catch Little Guy, he pulled out his phone. If he'd been with her in the basement, he'd have run straight into him. They could've taken out one of the stalkers. With a little persuasion, they probably could've gotten him to flip on No-Key. Instead-- he had nothing.
He released a frustrated sigh. Maybe Burke had had time to review the tapes from the basement. When his fingers brushed against the lumpy tissue in his pocket, TJ remembered the cigarette butts. He dialed Mullaney instead.
"What?"
He smiled at the old man's surly voice-- as though he'd caught him in the middle of an argument. "Do you still have access to a lab? It's probably a needle in a-"
"Whaddya got?"
"I found cigarette butts this morning under the tree out front. I was thinking they might belong to the guy who tailed me here."
"The one we coulda followed-- if I'd known about this whole stalker business sooner?"
Another missed opportunity. You're batting a thousand today. "Yeah."
"Bring 'em to me tonight and I'll get it done. I still got a connection in the lab. He'll rush it for me."
He hung up with Mullaney. Glancing over his shoulder, TJ debated a run down to Luther's office. Alyssa was safe in the suite. "If she'd just stay there," he muttered.
Crossing the lobby, he entered the public elevator. An hour earlier, frantic after the text from Lyss, he hadn't noticed the freight elevator around the corner and had jumped in the one he was in now. Thankfully, Burke had met him in the lobby and shown him the way to the basement.
His mood blackened when he thought of her alone down there-- Little Guy stalking her in the claustrophobic darkness. What the hell did he want with her? Why was she being stalked? A lone guy stalking a woman was a fixation. A weirdo getting off on scaring her. Gaining a sense of power over her. Feeding on her fear. He remembered Alyssa's haunted eyes when he'd told her about No-Key nearly breaking in.
What else was it? TJ closed his eyes as the elevator descended two floors. Stalking was a form of recon. It was knowledge about your prey. It was mission prep. Stalking was practice. For a future act of violence.
"But, this is two guys." The knot in his gut twisted tighter. What the hell did they want with her? Kidnap? Ransom? Madeline was wealthy. He reviewed the possibility before discarding it. They'd already had several opportunities to act. He scrolled back through their conversations. She'd fled her apartment. After two break-ins. She'd been hiding at his place for several days before he arrived home. Plenty of time to grab her if the motive had only been money.
"So . . . not money." Were they working for someone else? No-Key and Little Guy. Tailing her. Tailing him. Surveillance-- for a third party? His brain circled back to a reason. Why? What had Alyssa done to trigger it? What did she know?
On the second floor, TJ checked the directory. At the door to the mayor's security office, he paused. What did Alyssa have access to-- that no one else did? He thought again of the photograph in Theo's study. Was it possible -- the two situations were connected? Blackmail was typically conducted for a payoff. Money. Exerting power. Delivering a threat. Preventing someone from acting. Did someone want Theo out of the governor's race?
Backing away from the door, he crossed the lobby and sat on a bench near the window. There, he redialed Sean. "Hey, it's me again."
Sean suggested he may have too little to do if he was calling him so often. TJ's smile was distracted. "Maybe we need to look closer at the list I gave you this morning."
"The busywork list I gave Mads?"
"Yeah." He lowered his voice, acutely aware he was standing twenty feet from the location of one of the men in the photo. "We need to talk about this. Something isn't adding up."
TJ was relieved that night just to have the day over. The op he'd believed would be a cakewalk was turning out to be frustratingly complex. But tonight, at Madeline's house, he was willing to set aside the day's annoyances and just enjoy dinner.
Bathed in the glow of an elaborate chandelier, he experienced a flash of happiness. The laughing faces around the table reminded him of long ago suppers around a smaller, more crowded table. Mama Lou's tired face flashed before his eyes. A tired, loving face with smiling eyes-- no matter the chaos that reigned around the old table.
At the moment, he was pleasantly full. Roast beef. Garlic mashed potatoes. Glazed carrots. Likely half a loaf of the crusty sourdough Maddie had served. He'd stopped counting after three slices. He was pleasantly relieved-- that Alyssa had called a truce on the drive over. Though he suspected the lack of argument had been a result of her headache, rather than a sudden desire to agree with him on every issue.
"Can you take the baby while we clear the dishes?" Alyssa's voice jarred him from his thoughts. "Unless you'd rather work clean-up with Sean?"
He smiled when Sean mumbled an excuse about taking trash down to the chute. And again when his daughter called his bluff. MaryJo-- his new partner in crime-- was a younger, far more attractive version of Mullaney. Her mannerisms like her dad's-- especially the scowl. Unafraid to voice her opinion. Comfortable going toe to toe with Mullaney. But her prettiness suggested she'd taken after her mother. An Italian beauty named Isabella. MaryJo was as dark as Alyssa was fair. Nearly as tall as him, she towered over Lyss. A long fall of straight, black hair. Freckles. Tilted brown eyes that seemed to light with amusement. Until she put on her nerd glasses-- when she suddenly morphed into the elusive hacker role she was currently playing.
If he wasn't addicted to Lyss, he would have found MaryJo exceedingly approachable. TJ frowned over the sudden admission.
"Too late." Alyssa plopped the baby into his arms. "He's yours."
She leaned in to plant a kiss on baby TJ's cheek, which meant a full body press against him that was just long enough for his own to notice. He inhaled her scent, his disturbing thoughts scattering with the onslaught to his senses.
"Come on, little man. Since Dad's out of town, I'll introduce you to the Bruins. If you're gonna be a life-long fan, we need to practice our insults."
"No swearing."
"Has anyone ever suggested you're not much fun?"
"Julie will kill you," she warned. "His first words can't be the Rangers suck."
"Just curious-- if it was the Yankees?"
Her smile was impish. "Well, that's entirely different."
He was relieved to see the sparkle return to her eyes. During dinner, when he'd been unable to stop watching her, she'd eaten little, moving the rest around on her plate. "We'll be over here-- on the couch."
"He'll need a bottle soon," Maddie called from the kitchen.
Heading for the couch, he suddenly noticed the rocking chair that hadn't been there before. Changing direction, he eased into the wide seat and settled the squirming, grunting, wide-awake baby boy in his lap.
TJ grinned, thinking how foreign this scene was to his existence. Family. A home. Dinners . . . filled with laughter. His sigh was restless. Could he ever do this? Live a normal life? Work a day job. Home every night. He thought of his apartment. Maybe a house . . . someday.
Despite the room's warmth, he shivered as a fierce wave of longing swept him. Where the hell had that come from? He scanned the living room, grateful he was alone.
Glancing down, he stared at the baby staring back at him. Unblinking. Bouncing on his lap. Content. Trusting-- him.
His best friend in the world had done this. Matt had created a tiny, helpless person. The kid looked so . . . peaceful. It struck TJ that he’d been like that once. A defenseless baby . . . catapulted into the world. Forced to rely on the strangers around him for-- everything. He could only assume his mother had come through. But based on the few memories he held of her, it was a mighty huge assumption.
"What's up little man? How come you're not tired yet?" It was after eight. He began to slowly rock back and forth. Making sure no one could see, he rubbed his chin over the peach fuzz hair standing up on his head as though he'd stuck his tiny finger in a light socket. The little guy's wide awake eyes took in everything with a perpetual expression of surprise.
The solid weight in his arms felt like an anchor holding him to the chair. It was comforting. Settling. Right. TJ tried to shake free of the weird train of images chugging through his brain. But the strange sensation hit him again. A rush of noise in his ears. His heartbeat accelerated, making him woozy. Confused, he clutched the baby tighter, afraid he might drop him. Resting his head against the rocker, he released several cleansing breaths. Grateful to be seated, TJ willed himself to ride out the uproar.
As the fog cleared from his brain, he suddenly . . . knew.
He missed Mama Lou. He missed Finn. He wanted more than just a stilted conversation every eighteen months. He wanted . . . ballgames at Fenway. He missed going for a beer with Conner. Enduring a lecture from Brady. No matter how it had ended . . . they were his family. And he wanted them back. Whatever time he had left of his vacation-- he would fix it. "You'll call Louise," he muttered.
His gaze still locked on Joey's expressive face, he smiled when the baby erupted in a spate of babbled words that softened his epiphany. When he buried his little face in his shoulder, he left a puddle of drool behind. "Dude-- I'm not a napkin."
TJ was still laughing a few minutes later. The dizziness had passed. His heartbeat was reverting to normal. Without looking up, he spoke to the shadow approaching him. "Am I doing this right?"
"He's not complaining, is he?"
Alyssa's beautiful eyes softened as she stared wistfully at the baby in his arms. She wants one, he acknowledged. She would be a good mother. A flexible, roll-with-the- punches kind of mom. Lyss would laugh more and be frustrated less. And she'd throw the rule book out the window.
"So-- this is it? Feed them, change them, put them to bed? Even I could handle this." Where had that come from?
She stifled a yawn. "For now. He’ll start crawling and being less of a lump-"
"Did you hear that, bud? She called you a lump." TJ shot her a glance. "Don't sweat it. She's called me worse." Floored by a sudden swell of affection for the snuffling, wriggling bundle crowding his neck, he felt the urge to sprawl on the couch and sleep with the warm, satisfying weight against his chest.
Alyssa's gaze followed his little fist up to his mouth where he began slurping noisily. "I guess this is nature’s way of easing parents into the process. Before you’re hit with a lifetime of worries, you earn your stripes on the little stuff."
They spent the next several minutes in comfortable silence. Almost by reflex, TJ sorted out the sounds in the room. Alyssa’s breathing was soft and rhythmic from her spot on the couch, his own barely audible from years of training and pure, bone-weary fatigue. The murmur of voices and rattling of dishes in the kitchen. The distant, muffled sound of traffic out on Park Street.
A whimper shook him from his reverie. Glancing down, he was surprised that in the space of a heartbeat, TJ's grinning face had crumpled to anger. "Oh, hell. What does that mean?"
Alyssa chuckled. "He's hungry."
He examined his reddening face. "He's grunting."
"Oh, that." She rose from the couch.
He began to suspect what it was. "Maybe you should-" The words hadn’t left his mouth before TJ felt a warm explosion in the diapered butt cradled in his hand. The smell soon followed. "Lyss-- do something."
