Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(86)

They should head for HQ, get out before the rural road became impassable. She needed to prepare for the inevitable press conference. Good news, we probably found the body of Sophie Leoni. Bad news, we lost her mother, a distinguished state police officer who most likely murdered her entire family.

They reached the car. Bobby opened the passenger-side door. She slid in, feeling jumbled and restless and almost desperate to escape her own skin. She didn’t want to be a detective anymore. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren hadn’t gotten her man. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren hadn’t rescued the child. Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren was about to become a mother herself, and look at Tessa Leoni, trooper extraordinaire who’d killed, buried, and then blown up her own kid, and what did that say about female police officers becoming parental units, and what the hell was D.D. thinking?

She shouldn’t be pregnant. She wasn’t strong enough. Her tough veneer was cracking and beneath it was simply a vast well of sadness. All the dead bodies she’d studied through the years. Other children who’d never made it home. The unrepentant faces of parents, uncles, grandparents, even next door neighbors who’d done the deed.

The world was a terrible place. She solved each murder only to move on to the next. Put away a child abuser, watch a wife beater get released the next day. And on and on it went. D.D., sentenced to spend the rest of her career roaming backwoods for small lifeless bodies who’d never been loved or wanted in the first place.

She’d just wanted to bring Sophie home. Rescue this one child. Make this one drop of difference in the universe, and now … Now …

“Shhh.” Bobby was stroking her hair.

Was she crying? Maybe, but it wasn’t enough. She pressed her tearstained cheek into the curve of his shoulder. Felt the shuddering heat of him. Her lips found his neck, tasting salt. Then it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean back and find his lips with her own. He didn’t pull back. Instead, she felt his hands grip her shoulders. So she kissed him again, the man who’d once been her lover and one of the few people she regarded as a pillar of strength.

Time suspended, a heartbeat or two when she didn’t have to think, she only had to feel.

Then, Bobby’s hands tightened again. He lifted her up and gently set her back, until she sat squarely in the passenger seat and he sat in the driver’s seat and at least two feet loomed between them.

“No,” he said.

D.D. couldn’t speak. The enormity of what she’d just done started to penetrate. She glanced around the small car, desperate for escape.

“It was a moment,” Bobby continued. His voice sounded rough. He paused, cleared his throat, said again: “A moment. But I have Annabelle and you have Alex. You and I both know better than to mess with success.”

D.D. nodded.

“D.D.—”

Immediately, she shook her head. She didn’t want to hear anything more. She’d f*cked this up enough. A moment. Like he said. A moment. Life was filled with moments.

Except she’d always had a weakness for Bobby Dodge. She’d let him go, then never gotten over him. And if she spoke now, she was going to cry and that was stupid. Bobby deserved better. Alex deserved better. They all did.

Then, she found herself thinking of Tessa Leoni and she couldn’t help but feel the connection again. Two women, so capable in their professional lives, and such total f*ckups in their personal ones.

The radio on the dash crackled to life. D.D. snatched it up, hoping for good news.

It was the search team, Officer Landley reporting in. They’d followed Tessa’s trail for two and half miles, as she’d run down the snow-packed rural road to the larger intersecting street. Then her footsteps had ended and fresh tire tracks had begun.

Best guess: Tessa Leoni was no longer alone and on foot.

She had an accomplice and a vehicle.

She had disappeared.





32



When Juliana and I were twelve years old, we developed a catchphrase: “What are friends for?” We used it like a code—it meant that if one of us needed a favor, most likely something embarrassing or desperate, then the other had to say yes, because that’s what friends were for.

Juliana forgot her math homework. What are friends for, she’d announce at our lockers, and I’d hastily share my answers. My father was being an * about letting me stay after school for track. What are friends for, I’d say, and Juliana would have her mother notify my father that she’d bring me home, because my father would never argue with Juliana’s mom. Juliana developed a crush on the cute boy in our biology class. What are friends for? I’d sidle up to him during lunch and find out if my friend stood a chance.

Get arrested for murdering your husband. What are friends for?

I looked up Juliana’s number Saturday afternoon, as my world was imploding and it occurred to me that I needed help. Ten years later, there was still only one person I could trust. So after the man in black finally departed, leaving my husband’s body down in the garage, buried in snow, I looked up the married name, address, and phone number of my former best friend. I committed the information to memory, in order to eliminate the paper trail.

Shortly thereafter I built two small explosive devices, then loaded up the Denali and went for a drive.

My last acts as a free woman. I knew it even then. Brian had done something bad, but Sophie and I were going to be the ones punished. So I paid my own husband’s murderer fifty thousand dollars in order to gain twenty-four hours’ lead time. Then I used that time to desperately get two steps ahead.