down to their level, Gabe read between the lines. Tommy had awakened, crying, after a nightmare and had kept Holly up all night. She was frightened for him. What caring mother wouldn’t be? She had taken him to a doctor. A pediatrician or a psychologist? Poor little Tommy might need both.
“Did Tommy have a tummy ache?” Gabe asked gently, though he suspected what the answer would be.
“No.” The frantic expression in Holly’s eyes suggested that she had reached her wits’ end and didn’t know how to help her scared son. “We saw Tommy’s new doctor again, a special one who likes to talk to children and likes them to talk to her, too.”
“I hope it was a good visit,” Gabe said. But he could tell from Holly’s demeanor that it hadn’t been, that Tommy hadn’t opened up even to a specialist.
“It was a fine visit,” she said nonetheless, her voice falsely cheerful. “It was so good that we’re going back to see the doctor again next week. And maybe then Tommy will take his turn and talk, too.”
“Great. How about if I come over tonight and read Tommy another bedtime story. Would that be all right with you, sport?” Gabe held his breath. Tommy obviously had something he was keeping inside. Gabe wasn’t an expert like the doctor they’d seen. He wasn’t likely to be any more successful at extracting whatever it was from the child. But someone had to, for Tommy’s sake, as well as for the investigation. And Gabe was going to try. He’d gotten one word from the boy, at least. Maybe he could get more.
He allowed himself to breathe again when, very slowly and solemnly, the sweet-faced child nodded.
Gabe stood. “Great. You guys like pizza?”
Holly rose, too. “You don’t have to do that,” she whispered very softly, so only Gabe could hear.
“I know I don’t have to,” Gabe replied. “I want to.” The damned unsettling thing about it was that he did. He wanted to return to that pretty beach community house with its attractive furnishings. He wanted to spend more time with this very sexy woman whose only interest in him, if any, would disappear as time passed and memories of her husband faded.
Any man she became attracted to now, when her emotions were turned upside down by her loss, would be thrown out like yesterday’s pizza crusts when she began to heal.
And that wasn’t for Gabe. Not again.
But he intended to unravel the threads that had led to her husband’s death. As quickly as possible.
Almost subconsciously, his conditioning as a longtime cop kicking in, he heard the sound of someone driving too fast down this busy street. He looked up. At the same time, he heard one bleat from a siren. Good. A patrol officer was on it.
A small, white car pulled over to the side of the street into an empty space right beside where Gabe, Holly and Tommy stood, a patrol car with rotating lights hugging its rear. It was the unit assigned to Bruce Franklin and Dolph Hilo.
Gabe, and all the people on the sidewalk, watched as the two officers did all the right things: taking their time getting out of their vehicle—undoubtedly checking the plates with their onboard computer, then approaching the stopped car.
Dolph Hilo was the officer who got out on the passenger side, nearest where Gabe stood with Holly and Tommy. He smiled and saluted.
And just as at his father’s funeral, Tommy Poston began to scream.
Chapter Four
Terrified, wanting to cry herself, Holly dropped to her knees on the hard pavement and hugged her wailing son. “Tommy, honey, it’s all right,” she soothed. But her voice broke, and she knew she was lying. It wasn’t all right.
Why did Tommy scream this way? Of course it had something to do with Thomas’s death, but why this reaction? Had Tommy seen how his daddy was killed? Then why was he still alive?
Thank God he was still alive….
Holly looked up. Gabe—kind, thoughtful Gabe who had been there for her at Thomas’s funeral and last evening, too—knelt beside them. Bruce Franklin and Dolph Hilo had joined them. They had been friends of Thomas’s, fellow patrol officers, and…
And they were in uniform! Gabe was dressed in a well-tailored suit, befitting an administrator, but the other cops were in patrol uniforms—complete with navy blue military-style shirts with epaulets, badges and emblems, Sam Browne belts, matching dark trousers. Could that be it? There had been many officers in uniform at Thomas’s funeral, when Tommy had begun to shriek. Some were dressed more formally, but some looked just like this: the uniform Thomas had usually worn.
“Tommy, honey, are you upset because you see the uniforms like your daddy wore?”
He stopped screaming in her ear, took a breath. When she looked him in his red, blotchy, wet face, he stared at her. He didn’t nod, but didn’t shake his head no, either.
She looked desperately at Gabe, whose expression was both compassionate and angry, as if he would choke with his bare hands the demons tormenting her son. “Could that be it, do you think?” she asked. “Is this because he misses his father so much that every time he sees someone in uniform he gets upset?”
But how could Gabe know?
“Maybe,” he said through gritted teeth. “We’ll have to find out. But not now.” He took Tommy from her arms. He was sobbing once more, but at least he had stopped screaming. Holly was reluctant to let him go, but Gabe had known instinctively what to do with him before. Maybe he could help now, too.
“You know what?” Despite the ire Holly had seen in his face, Gabe’s voice was gentle. “I see these guys every day, and sometimes I feel like crying when they’re around, too.”
He made a quick sideways motion with his head. The patrol officers must have somehow understood, for Dolph, a short, dark-haired man with a barrel chest and Asian features, said, “Yeah, he does, too, the wimp.”
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