“Mind if I talk to them?”
“No, please, be my guest.” Cara huffed in exasperation.
When J.D. approached the girls, they scooted their chairs closer together. He looked from one to another. Jacy had the same dark red hair and brown eyes as her aunt, but was not as pretty. Presley was cute as a button, with curly brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her pert little nose. And blond, blue-eyed Reesa possessed the promise of becoming a real femme fatale in the tradition of a long list of bosomy Hollywood blondes.
J.D. grabbed an empty chair, turned it around, and sat down, straddling his legs around the back and resting his arms on the top of the frame. “Where’s Zoe?”
Silence.
“Jacy, where’s my daughter?”
Jacy hazarded a glance at J.D. “I don’t know.” She quickly cast her gaze downward again.
“Presley?”
She stared at him, a look of sheer terror in her hazel eyes. “I—I don’t know where she is, Mr. Cass. I don’t.”
“Reesa?”
She smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the long sleeves of her colorful T-shirt, then lifted her head and smiled at him. “Zoe’s all right. You don’t have to worry about her. She’ll come home when she’s ready to.”
“Hush,” Jacy warned.
“You promised,” Presley chimed in simultaneously.
“Oh, get over it,” Reesa told her friends. “I didn’t promise Zoe anything. You two did. And I’m not going to be given the third degree by her dad, who I’m sure knows all kinds of ways to make us talk since he’s a TBI agent.” Reesa batted her eyelashes at J.D.
Good God, the child is actually flirting with me.
“Aunt Cara,” Jacy wailed. “You won’t let him give us the third degree, will you?”
Cara managed to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’ve already given Mr. Cass … uh … Special Agent Cass permission to do just that, if he believes it’s necessary.”
Tears filled Presley’s eyes. Jacy whimpered.
Reesa snorted. “You two are pathetic. He can’t do anything without your parents’ permission.” She looked at J.D. “Can you?”
“Is that what you girls want?” he asked. “You want to involve your parents?”
“Zoe’s with my brother Dawson,” Presley blurted out.
J.D. grimaced. His daughter was with some boy doing God only knew what. “How old is Dawson?”
“He’s sixteen,” Presley said.
Well, at least the boy was just that—a boy. “Where did Zoe and Dawson go?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Presley looked him in the eye.
He could tell that she wasn’t lying. She was too frightened to lie.
“They just went for a ride in his new car,” Reesa said. “They wanted to have some fun, to be alone together. There’s no crime in that, is there?”
Reesa was a little smart aleck, but she was not his problem. Zoe was.
“He’ll take her home,” Presley said. “It’s not as if they’ve eloped or anything like that.”
“Thank God for small favors,” J.D. grumbled under his breath, then told Presley, “Call Zoe. She won’t answer her phone if she sees I’m the one calling her. Tell her that her father said to get her butt home ASAP if she knows what’s good for her.”
“Er … ah … yes, sir.”
Presley placed the call and they all waited for Zoe to answer. And then Presley gasped, “What? Oh my God, no! Are you okay? Is Dawson okay?”
“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, his heart beating ninety-to-nothing. When Presley stared at him wide-eyed and her mouth agape, he snatched her phone out of her hand and said, “Zoe, this is your father. What the hell is going on?”
“Oh, J.D., please help us.” Zoe sounded desperate.
“Are you all right? Where are you? What’s happened?”
“Don’t be angry. Please don’t be angry.”
“Zoe!”
“We’re in jail.”
Chapter 7
Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He had hated the pity he’d seen in Willie’s eyes and the sympathetic expression on Tam’s face. He hated that Garth was in denial and preferred to dismiss the possibility that one of the dead toddlers might be Blake. He understood that Garth simply couldn’t accept the fact that Blake was dead. It had taken Wayne years to accept the truth. Yeah, sure, somewhere deep down inside him a glimmer of hope still existed, but he knew only too well how illogical that hope was. Blake was dead. The odds were that he had been one of Regina Bennett’s victims. Wayne had visited the crazy bitch in the mental hospital twice, and both times he had come away with more questions than answers.
Just as he started to open the door to his Chevy Silverado, he heard footsteps behind him and knew without turning around that Audrey had followed him.
Go away, girl. Go away and leave me alone.
“Daddy …?”
He gripped the door handle with bone-crushing strength.
Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your sympathy or your comfort.”
“No, you never did, did you?”
Without so much as glancing over his shoulder, Wayne climbed up into the cab of his truck and slammed the door. After starting the engine, he buckled his seat belt and put the gear into reverse. As he drove out of the parking area, he caught a glimpse of his daughter in his peripheral vision. She stood alone, tall, slender, and elegant, and looking so much like her mother.
I’m sorry, little girl. Sorry I’ve been such a worthless father. I’m sorry for so many things.
If he could go back to when Audrey had been a baby, to when he’d been madly in love with Norma, there were so many things he’d do differently. But he couldn’t go back. A guy didn’t get any second chances in this life. He had loved two women and he’d lost them both. And he’d fathered two children and had lost both of them, too. Death had taken Blake from him. And his own stupidity had lost him his daughter.
As he made his way down Amnicola Highway and hit 153, his mind swirling with memories and an ache in his gut growing more painful by the minute, Wayne wanted only one thing—to forget. He didn’t want to remember Norma Colton. How beautiful she’d been. How he had adored her. How she had felt lying beneath him. How sweet her lips had tasted. How badly he had disappointed her by being unable to give her all the love and attention she craved. He hadn’t understood why she’d had to be so possessive, so demanding. The more she had clung to him, the more he had pulled away.
I’m sorry, Norma. God, I am so sorry. I wish I had been able to give you what you needed. I wish I had realized that you were the love of my life. I wish I’d had the chance to tell you.
The late-afternoon sun sank low on the eastern horizon, a blaze of color spreading across the sky. Wayne sucked in a long, hard breath. He had made more than his share of mistakes, and others had paid the price. Not that he hadn’t suffered, wasn’t still suffering, but he deserved it. Neither of his wives had. And God knew, neither of his children had.