Agent Daddy

He’d heard rumors the department wasn’t run very well and, as he stepped up to the counter and found himself eye-to-eye with a kid wearing a slipshod uniform and reading a comic book, his expectations fell even further.

“I want to talk to whoever is in charge of the Gina Cooke investigation,” Trip said.

The kid looked blank. “Gina who?”

“Is there a detective here, maybe? Your boss?”

Now the boy looked more comfortable. “You want to talk to the Chief?”

“Sure.”

The boy nodded, turned around and hollered, “Chief Novak? Someone here to see you.”

“Thomas Novak?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

At that moment, a ticked-off-looking man about Trip’s age strode into the front area from the back. He wore a tight green uniform, buttons straining down the front. Heavy black frames perched ponderously on the bridge of his nose. Glaring at the teenager, he said, “Damn it, Lenny, how many times have I told you come get me, don’t shout?” He looked up from the cowering Lenny, met Trip’s eyes and rocked back on his heels. “I’ll be.”

“It’s been a long time,” Trip said. “You’re ‘Chief’?”

“That’s right. I heard you were back out at the ranch. Sorry about your sister and her husband. Hell of a thing.”

“Thank you,” Trip said. If Lenny hadn’t called Novak by name, Trip was pretty sure he would never have merged the skinny kid from their high school days with the corpulent man standing in front of him. “We need to talk.”

“You here about Gina Cooke?”

“That’s right. I have some information you might want—”

“See that, Lenny,” Novak interrupted, as he took off his glasses and began polishing the lenses with a tissue he plucked from a box on the counter. “Mr. Tripper here is a FBI big shot but he’s going to take the time to help us out. Isn’t that nice?”

Lenny slid Trip a glance.

“Gina is my babysitter,” Trip said. “And I’m no longer with the Bureau.”

“I know that.”

“You went out to my place when you found her car—”

“I was just following procedures. The hunt is over.”

“You found here? Where?”

“We haven’t found her, but we figured out what happened. She ran off with that boyfriend of hers.”

“Peter Saks?”

“Yeah.”

“My housekeeper said you found Gina’s car abandoned.”

Novak folded his glasses into his shirt pocket and leaned on the counter, resting his weight on his forearms. “Her car was found outside the Quik Mart on Apple Street. She apparently stopped there every day to buy a cup of coffee before heading out to your place. What got a pedestrian to call in was she’d left the window open and the rain was pouring in. Then there were the keys in the ignition.”

“A bad habit of hers,” Trip said.

“That’s what I hear. We sent someone out to your place to see if she showed up for work and someone else to talk to the girl’s boyfriend and her mother. The mother said Gina always leaves her keys in the ignition and that she and the boyfriend had a fight. The boyfriend wasn’t at home, neighbors said he packed up this morning and told them he was going on vacation.” He shrugged. “That Quik Mart is right on the way to the interstate. We figure Saks ran across her, maybe even waited for her to show up there if he knew it was her habit to stop. Maybe he talked her into a little make-up trip. It looks like she decided to go with him. End of story.”

Novak straightened and looked at Trip as though daring him to challenge these conclusions.

“And Gina’s mother is comfortable with this supposition?” Trip asked after a long moment of debating whether to share his suspicions about Neil Roberts with the chief.

“Says it makes perfect sense. Says her daughter was a pushover for Peter Saks.”

“Where did Saks go, exactly?”

“The neighbors don’t know. Camping, maybe.”

“In this weather? In December?”

“Maybe he went south. Hell, it’s a free country.”

Trip stared at Novak. “I can see where you’re coming from, but the fact Gina didn’t call bothers me. It’s not like her to just leave.”

“There you’re wrong,” Novak said. “Her mother said she ran off without a word a year or two ago.”

Trip hadn’t known that. “Gina told me Saks had a history of domestic violence.”

Chief Novak flipped his hand. “The boy’s a hothead, that’s all.” The big man heaved a sigh that put even greater pressure on his buttons and added, “Listen. I know you had a fancy career in the FBI. I bet it sucks to be out of the action. But this is my town, so why don’t you just go back to ranching?” Novak slapped his hands on the counter. Case closed.

Trip left before his temper got the better of him.

IT WAS GETTING DARK. The rain had let up, but the temperature had dropped, making the roads icy. Faith had taken the children to a big-box store where she changed Colin’s diaper and fed him some of the dry cereal and fruit she found in the diaper bag. She’d bought Noelle a banana, they’d returned to her car and now it seemed the baby had fallen asleep. By the hush in the backseat, Faith thought it likely Noelle had nodded off as well.

How had her life gotten to this point?

Six months before, she’d known who she was and what she wanted. It had been her friend, Olivia, who wanted out of Westerly, not Faith. And now she was driving two very small children around on a stormy night in a town she barely knew, while their uncle tried to find their babysitter. To add insult to injury, she couldn’t even take them somewhere decent, somewhere warm, somewhere safe because her landlady and her son made the Bates Hotel seem like a day spa.

“Ms. Bishop?” Noelle said. Guess she wasn’t asleep after all.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Can we go home?”

Home. “Well, I don’t want to run into those people again—”

“My home,” Noelle said. “Mrs. Murphy makes cookies sometimes.”

They were at the northeast edge of town. Faith knew Trip lived on a ranch with the children, she knew about where it was, as she’d passed a sign on one of her weekend drives. It was called the Triple T.