Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(93)

My father inhaled one last time, then stubbed out his cigarette. He didn’t use an ashtray; his scarred workbench got the job done.

“Knew you’d come,” he said, speaking with the rasp of a lifetime smoker. “News just announced your escape. Figured you’d head here.”

So Sergeant Warren had copped to her mistake. Good for her.

I ignored my father, heading for the acetylene torch.

My father was still dressed in his oil-stained coveralls. Even from this distance I could tell his shoulders remained broad, his chest thickly muscled. Spending all day with your arms working above your head will do that to a man.

If he wanted to stop me, he had brute strength on his side.

The realization made my hands tremble as I arrived at the twin tanks of the acetylene torch. I took the safety goggles down from their nearby hook and set about prepping for business. I wore the dark gloves Juliana had supplied for me. I had to take them off long enough to dismantle the cellphone—slide off the cover, remove the battery.

Then I slipped the black gloves back on, topping them with a heavy-duty pair of work gloves. I set the duffel bag next to the wall, then placed the cellphone in the middle of the cement floor, the best surface when working with a torch that can cut through steel like a knife through butter.

When I was fourteen, I’d spent an entire summer working at my father’s shop. Helped change oil, replace spark plugs, rotate tires. One of my misguided notions, that if my father wouldn’t take an interest in my world, maybe I should take an interest in his.

We worked side by side all summer, him barking out orders in his deep, rumbling voice. Then, come break time, he’d retreat to his dust-covered office, leaving me alone in the garage to eat. No random moments of comfortable silence between father and daughter, no spare words of praise. He told me what to do. I did what he said. That was it.

By the end of the summer, I’d realized my father wasn’t a talker and probably never would love me.

Good thing I had Juliana instead.

My father remained on the stool. Cigarette done, he’d moved on to the Jack Daniel’s, sipping from an ancient-looking plastic cup.

I lowered my safety goggles, lit the torch, and melted Officer Fiske’s cellphone into a small, black lump of useless plastic.

Hated to see the thing go—never knew when the ability to make a call might come in handy. But I couldn’t trust it. Some phones had GPS, meaning it could be used to track me. Or if I did make a call, they could triangulate the signal. On the other hand, I couldn’t risk just tossing it either—if the police recovered it, they would trace my call to Juliana.

Hence, the acetylene torch, which, I have to say, got the job done.

I turned it off. Closed the tanks, rewrapped the hose, and hung up the work gloves and safety goggles.

I tossed the melted cellphone, now cooled, inside my duffel bag to reduce my evidence trail. Police would be here soon enough. When chasing fugitives you always visited all past haunts and known acquaintances, which would include my father.

I straightened and, my first order of business completed, finally faced my dad.

The years were catching up with him. I could see that now. His cheeks were turning into jowls, heavy lines creasing his forehead. He looked defeated. A formerly strong young man, deflated by life and all the dreams that never came true.

I wanted to hate him, but couldn’t. This was the pattern of my life: to love men who didn’t deserve me, and, knowing that, to yearn for their love anyway.

My father spoke. “They say you killed your husband.” He started to cough, and it immediately turned phlegmy.

“So I’ve heard.”

“And my granddaughter.” He said this accusingly.

That made me smile. “You have a granddaughter? That’s funny, because I don’t remember my daughter ever receiving a visit from her grandfather. Or a gift on her birthday, or a stocking stuffer at Christmas. So don’t talk to me about grandchildren, old man. You reap what you sow.”

“Hard-ass,” he said.

“I get it from you.”

He slammed down his cup. Amber liquid sloshed. I caught a whiff of whiskey and my mouth watered. Forget a circular argument that would get us nowhere. I could pull up a chair and drink with my father instead. Maybe that’s what he’d been waiting for the summer I’d been fourteen. He hadn’t needed a child to work for him, he’d needed a daughter to drink with him.

Two alcoholics, side by side in the dim lighting of a run-down garage.

Then we would’ve both failed our children.

“I’m taking a car,” I said now.

“I’ll turn you in.”

“Do what you need to do.”

I turned toward the Peg-Board on the left side of the workbench, dotted with little hooks bearing keys. My father climbed off his stool, standing to his full height before me.

Tough guy, filled with the false bravado of his liquid buddy Jack. My father had never hit me. As I waited for him to start now, I wasn’t afraid, just tired. I knew this man, not just as my dad, but as half a dozen jerks I confronted and talked down five nights a week.

“Dad,” I heard myself say softly. “I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m a trained police officer, and if you want to stop me, you’re going to have to do better than this.”

“I didn’t raise no baby killer,” he growled.