Bile rose in his throat, the way it always did when he was dealing with the abuse or death of the young. Of the innocent. Though, from what he knew about Jessie Brentwood, she was older than her years and far from innocent…an intriguing underage woman who was as manipulating as she’d been alluring. One of those females who knew intrinsically all of her attributes, how to use those wide hazel eyes and turned-up smile to get what she wanted, even if it meant playing with fire.
And he asked himself the question that everyone else seemed consumed with: Why was he so fascinated with this case? A simple missing persons case, they’d all said. Why did Mac care about this one so much?
He still had no answer. Maybe he’d been a little in love, a little in lust, with the beautiful, mysterious girl he’d never met. He’d handled dozens of cases where kids disappeared, but this one was different. She was different. He’d followed all the leads he could, dreamed about her, even. Fantasized about her, for God’s sake, and he’d taken a lot of heat for it. At the time his friends on the force thought he’d gone around the bend. She was a sixteen-year-old runaway. He was an up-and-coming hotshot detective who was obsessed by a ghost.
In retrospect, maybe they hadn’t been that far off the mark.
Now, twenty years later, a single father working homicide, Mac knew he’d definitely mellowed. He didn’t really want this case now. Old wounds. And problems.
But those Preppy Pricks were still out there. He wondered how they felt, knowing Jessie’s body had been discovered. One, or several of them, must be sweating bullets now.
Mac smiled thinly. Well, maybe this was the way it should be after all. Him, heading up a homicide case, a cold case that put all the smug bastards on the hot seat.
It was sounding better by the minute.
Becca set the newspaper on the coffee table and sank back on the couch, still staring at the folded pages as if they were Satan’s diary. She felt cold inside and out. What was this? What did it mean?
Ringo circled her feet, tail down, a soft, nearly inaudible growl emanating from his throat.
“Stop it, there’s nothing out there,” she said softly, as much to soothe her own jangled nerves as to calm the dog.
Jessie Brentwood had disappeared twenty years earlier when she’d been sixteen and a student at St. Elizabeth’s, the private Catholic school that had gone co-ed only a few years before. Becca had attended St. Elizabeth’s, too, though she was a year behind Jessie, a freshman. But she’d been friends with Jessie’s crowd, and she remembered all too well how she’d secretly yearned for Jessie’s boyfriend, Hudson Walker, with his dark, longish hair, slow, easy smile, and cowboy drawl. He’d been different from the others, a boy who seemed a tad older somehow, one with a cynical sense of humor and a distance to him that had made him all the more interesting. It was as if he’d known everyone for what they were, had seen through their teenaged façades, and had been amused by all their foolish antics.
Or maybe she’d just fantasized that he’d been more mature and intelligent and innately sexy than his peers. All she knew now was that she’d been crazy in love with him and had hidden it for years.
But that changed, didn’t it? Once Jessie was gone…then you made your move. You, Becca, were as calculating as she was.
Oh, God…
Becca pressed her palm into her flushed cheek, embarrassed and guilty anew, aware that she’d used Jessie’s disappearance and Hudson’s confusion and grief to her own advantage. Sure, it had been much later, after Hudson and Becca were out of high school and Jessie had been missing for years, but Becca now knew her own motives had not been pure. She’d been in love with Hudson. And when the opportunity arose for her to have her shining moment with him, she’d grabbed it with both hands and had vowed never to let go.
How foolish it all seemed now and yet, after all the years that had passed, over twenty since she’d first laid eyes upon him, those old feelings could rise to the surface in an instant. She’d read somewhere that first love never truly disappeared, that it always lay just under the surface, lingering there, waiting, like dry tinder that only needed the touch of a match, a spark, to ignite.
Did she still feel some of that? She hoped not. She hoped her first love was long behind her.
Yet she couldn’t stop thinking about Jessie. And Hudson. And her schoolgirl infatuation that she’d believed was true love. She’d harbored her feelings for years, then had seized her chance to make fantasy a reality.
It had been the summer after high school for Becca; the summer after his first year of college for Hudson when opportunity knocked. She’d ostensibly “run into him” one hot evening, although she’d driven by his parents’ home enough times to learn Hudson’s schedule and then had followed him to Dino’s, a pizzeria that had popped up that year, a place frequented by teenagers and the newly graduated.
Hudson had been meeting Zeke St. John at the pizzeria, as it turned out, and when Becca blithely swept through the swinging doors, she’d managed to hide her disappointment that Hudson wasn’t alone behind a bright smile. Zeke and Hudson had been friends in high school and apparently still were, Becca assumed, although she learned later that the friendship was barely on life support.
But when she sailed inside the pizzeria that evening, she only knew that she wanted to connect with Hudson. Her pulse ran light and fast, and though her grin was wide, she was trembling a bit. If she wasn’t careful her lips would quiver in a kind of excited fear, and she couldn’t have that. She sensed that she’d been treated as an afterthought with his group. Hudson’s twin sister, Renee, had barely looked at her, and it was only a carefully cultivated friendship with another girl, Tamara Pitts, that allowed Becca entry into their tight circle. Being a year behind them was like having a demerit-or worse yet, a scar that said “nerdy underclassman” burned into her forehead. So that night she needed to be confident, in control, and friendly.
She pretended not to see Hudson and Zeke straightaway, striding up to the counter and staring overhead at the listings of traditional and exotic pizzas. She ordered a small pepperoni pizza and a Diet RC, paid, then with her plastic number in hand, looked around for a table. She made eye contact with Hudson and let a surprised smile of greeting cross her face. Hudson lifted a hand back, then waved her over. As she neared, he indicated the chair next to him.
“Thanks,” Becca said gratefully. “This place is always crowded.”
Zeke St. John was maybe more handsome than Hudson, at least in the classic sense, with dark hair and grayish eyes and a chiseled jaw. He didn’t smile when Becca appeared, but the look Hudson sent her was warm. Amused. As if he could damned well read her mind.
Which was ridiculous.
She couldn’t really recall what she said after that. It was idle chatter on her part, though she asked a few pertinent questions, then soaked in the information Hudson offered about himself to dissect later. She learned that he had just finished his first year at Oregon State University in business, as had Zeke. They were both heading back to school in a couple of months, and Zeke was spending the summer working for his dad’s auto parts business, while Hudson was working on his father’s ranch near Laurelton, one of the far western suburbs outside Portland.
Becca herself was playing gofer at a law office, delivering coffee, making photocopies, answering the phones during lunch hours. She was due to start school at a local community college because she didn’t have enough money to leave home just yet.
After their “chance” meeting, Hudson called Becca. She could still remember how sweaty her palms had been on the telephone receiver. He asked if she wanted to go with him to see some mindless comedy at a local movie theater, and she jumped at the chance. All she recalled of the film was Hudson’s profile and some equally mindless conversation about the staleness of the popcorn, the lack of fizz in the sodas. And the fact that he called her out.