be nothing more than the same questions she’d asked three dozen other people. “Have you talked to Brad lately? Did he mention anything about taking the kids on vacation?”
She could do it. She could call him.
All she needed to do was concentrate on finding her children. Ask J.D. a few simple questions. Listen to him with the same focused detachment she’d listened to all those other voices during the past forty minutes, and forget that his voice had ever been more than a simple source of information.
She could do it.
Swallowing a hard, salty knot in the back of her throat, Kirsten reached for the phone.
“Ryder, you just missed a call.”
Jonesy sounded smug about it, J.D. noticed. The guy was probably hoping it would attract notice from upstairs…Ryder’s been out all morning, losing focus ever since he gave notice. Put me in instead.
Well, maybe they would. It was hard to imagine someone as spit-shined as Jonesy taking over the contacts J.D. had spent three years coaxing from the alleys of south Phoenix, but the brass upstairs seldom saw things the way he did. One more reason he’d be glad to get started in Chicago.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the message slip from the junior officer and heading for his desk. The past month of fourteen-hour days had at last reduced the mountain of paperwork to a very short stack, which he hoped his replacement would appreciate. He added this morning’s reports to the pile, checked the vacation-refusal box on the resignation “Freedom Form” someone had finally delivered, then glanced at Jonesy’s message slip and felt a jolt of heat down his spine.
Kirsten Laurence?
It startled him how quickly the sight of her name could still make his skin tighten. Eight years should have put her safely in the realm of old memories, the kind that roused only a vague nostalgia. High-school friends, good old days, Tubac’s Terrific Trio, nothing more than that.
Kirsten…
It was nothing to get excited about, J.D. told himself, initialing his resignation form and dropping it in the battered Out tray. She was probably planning a class reunion, a surprise party for her ex-husband, something like that. Something that required a courtesy call, some message she couldn’t send via Brad…the way she used to send Christmas or birthday greetings whenever he and his old buddy got together for a beer or a Super Bowl game.
Although those greetings had dwindled to a halt even before the divorce two years ago. He had wondered whether he should phone Kirsten with condolences when Brad described the new love of his life—a former Miss Scottsdale whose attraction had faded so quickly that she’d never been mentioned again. But he had decided against it.
There wasn’t much he could say beyond, “I never expected that.” Nobody would’ve expected that if they’d known her and Brad back in high school…the way he had, during those years when the three of them shared a long bus ride each day. They’d become a trio of best friends, which had amazed J.D. even as it warmed him—but still, that long-ago friendship was no justification for getting in touch with Kirsten. She’d probably put him out of her mind a long time ago, and he didn’t need her taking up any more space in his awareness.
The way she would if he let himself hear her voice again.
But this phone message was something he couldn’t ignore. She’d asked for him specifically, which meant it couldn’t be a simple coincidence of her needing some police officer. Not that a Tucson homemaker would likely need a Phoenix narcotics detective in any case, especially one with only two weeks left on the job.
She’d left a new phone number, J.D. noticed, looking at the message slip and steeling himself against the impact of seeing her name again. This wasn’t the number he remembered using for Brad on those rare occasions he’d called his friend in Tucson. But it made sense that Kirsten would’ve found a new place…she probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the same house she’d shared with her ex-husband.
An ex-husband J.D. would have pummeled for walking out on her, old friendship or not, if only she hadn’t wound up happier without him.
Brad hadn’t said that, of course. But he had said that after trying to talk Kirsten into a reconciliation and being flatly refused, the only conclusion he could come to was that she preferred someone who’d take more of an interest in the kids.
Which Brad, in spite of his comfortable heritage, apparently never had done. Except at their last meeting in January, J.D. recalled, when his friend had waxed eloquent about the glories of family. “I never realized how great my parents were until that plane crash, and now all I’ve got are the kids. But once the boys and Lindsay come visit this summer, I could keep them with me. Show ’em a great time…Las Vegas, skiing at Telluride, sailing off Catalina Island…”
The list of sites sounded almost like an itinerary, J.D. had thought at the time, but after the Super Bowl broadcast he had dismissed it as “bar talk.” While Brad might conceivably be planning to abscond with his kids, the possibility wasn’t worth mentioning to Kirsten. There was no reason, J.D. had managed to convince himself, for phoning a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years.
A decision he’d come to, he admitted, mainly because of the same uneasiness he was feeling right now.
J.D. flattened the message slip against the front of his desk. Drew it across the curved edge to smooth out its surface. Propped it against the phone and gazed at it, trying to imagine how Kirsten looked—as quietly stunning as ever, probably, with those incredible blond tresses and the perfect skin to match—and how she might sound when he called. Did her voice still have that faint lilt, that occasional edge of huskiness when—
Forget it, Ryder.
It was a phone call, nothing more. No reason to sit here gaping at a piece of paper as if it contained all the promise of a desert rainfall. Torn between annoyance at himself—he was a combat veteran, for God’s sake, and acting like a teenager!—and a grim awareness that he couldn’t quite seem to draw a full breath, J.D. punched the number into his phone.
One ring.
Gazing blankly across the cluttered squadroom, he forced himself to breathe in as much air as he could. If he wound up talking to her answering machine, he should at least sound reasonably in control of his own voice.
Two rings.
Kirsten might not even be there. She spent every summer taking the kids to art classes, swimming, gymnastics, the kind of thing “every mom does,” according to Brad. J.D. knew that wasn’t true of every mom, but he’d never argued the point. Even though he now had plenty of casework to cite, he’d spent the past decade letting his friends believe that their all-American lifestyle was the normal one.
Three rings.
“Hello?”
It was Kirsten. Sounding exactly the way he remembered. J.D. gripped the phone tighter and closed his eyes.
“Kirs, it’s J.D. How’re you doing?”
He could have said something smoother than that, he realized with a twinge of embarrassment as soon as he heard himself. But she hadn’t called to evaluate his social skills. All he needed to do was listen to her reunion invitation, explain he was taking off for Chicago in another few weeks, and put her out of his mind.
Again.
