“And so are you.”
Nick moved behind her and gently pressed his thumbs into her shoulders, making her sigh and smile. She took a slow deep breath, smelling the clean river air, feeling her senses come alive.
She turned around and they undressed one another slowly, dropping their clothes onto the floor. She ran her hands over his arms and chest, her fingertips sensing the soft skin covering the hard muscles underneath.
Nick bent his head and kissed the hollow of her neck and then drew his finger down to her heart and left it there.
“You don’t need to keep that lead bullet in your heart, Josie. I don’t want you to keep hate trapped inside of you. I want to be the one who protects you, so you don’t worry all the time. I want to make you happy and keep you safe. Will you let me do that?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled her body into his, as close as she could get, and whispered into his ear, “I love you so much that my body aches with it. I didn’t even know I had this feeling inside me.” But she couldn’t answer his question. She didn’t know if she could let him be her protector, and she wouldn’t lie to him.
“We’ll just take this slow,” he said. “I’ll do my best, and you’ll do the same, and somehow I think it’ll all work out.”
He bent his head and kissed her until the words fell away, and the worries drifted out the window, and there was nothing left but two people in love.
EIGHT
Back to reality the next morning, Josie sat at her computer to email her contact from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about Isabella Dagati, whom they now believed had resided in Guatemala. Like so many customs issues, it wouldn’t be a simple deportation, especially with a murder connected to the case. The case could take months of sorting through policy and procedures with Homeland Security and ICE. Josie had just finished summarizing the situation for Prosecutor Tyler Holder when Lou buzzed and asked her to come downstairs. As the dispatcher, and the only employee working on the first floor, Lou spent her full shift at the PD, only getting out for lunch if one of the officers took her place.
Josie found Lou in front of her computer.
“I’ve been thinking about the girl at your house, and how you said there’s been a car driving by your place. This probably isn’t anything, but I thought I better mention it.”
“I’ll take anything.”
“I just remembered a man called here a few days ago and asked about your schedule. I thought it was odd, but it’s not like your schedule is confidential. I asked who he was and he said he was a police officer, but he didn’t give me his name. He wasn’t friendly. Didn’t seem like he wanted to talk, so I just told him.”
“You’re right. Nothing confidential about my schedule. He didn’t say what agency?”
“No. I thought that was a little odd too. Most law enforcement people state their name and who they work for up front. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer. I figured, none of my business.”
“I’d like you to track down the phone call. Get me the phone number as soon as possible. Somebody knew my schedule well enough to shoot a girl in the pasture beside my home when I wasn’t there.”
“I’ve already been thinking it through. I’m pretty sure it was five days ago. I remember because I got the phone call, and then a few minutes later I went off duty early for a dentist appointment. I should be able to pull the digital recording up pretty easy.”
“Thanks, Lou. Anything you can give me. Date, time, number, name, address.”
“I’ll work on it. Also, Marta just called. She said to get ahold of her this morning on her cell.”
*
When Josie was back at her desk she called Marta, who answered on the first ring.
“What’s up?” Josie asked.
“Let’s talk about Isabella.” Marta took a few minutes to recount her contact with the woman at the trauma center the night before. “She speaks English fluently. She opened up a bit last night. She wouldn’t tell me her family’s name, but she told me a few stories about her town in Guatemala. I think she’s ashamed to tell her family about the mess she’s in, but that will come.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I just think it’s odd she said she didn’t know the other woman’s name, the woman who was shot. Maybe they weren’t friends. Maybe they didn’t even know each other, and we’re way off with the trafficking theory.”
“You think it was a translation issue? Maybe we’re interpreting something totally different than what she meant,” Josie said.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make sense of it.”
“Anything else?”
“You said the psychiatrist thinks she’d be better off out of the trauma center, in a home, where she can heal.”
Josie knew Marta well enough to know where the conversation was headed.
“With Teresa gone away to college, I have an extra bedroom.”