Holding Out For A Hero

The only thing she was thankful for was that her parents hadn’t witnessed her fall from grace. Her dad, thanks to his job, had known almost everyone. Beyond that, he’d been the guy who could fix anything. Right now, he couldn’t fix himself. Alzheimer’s was like that.

Her mother had, at one time, been in charge of the store’s bakery. When Shelley came along, her mom had started her own business and baked from home. For twenty-some years, she’d made the town’s wedding cakes, baby-shower cakes and designer cupcakes. She’d wanted Shelley to take over the business.

But Shelley’d been a dreamer and thought the big city offered something small towns didn’t. She’d been college-bound and career-ready. Now she was garage apartment–bound and unsteady.

She shouldn’t have to hide. After all, she hadn’t really been married to Larry Wagner because Larry Wagner hadn’t been his real name. She’d found that out too late. It was a name—one of many—he’d used to con people, and he’d certainly pulled the wool over her eyes during the lowest, most vulnerable point of her life.

Now she was too busy and too angry to let anyone take advantage. Or help. She had to take care of Ryan and get ready for baby Isabelle’s entrance into the world. So far, it felt like she was carrying a quarterback or trapeze artist in her belly. As if to prove the point, Isabelle kicked and Shelley whistled.

“I see dog,” Ryan said happily, and before Shelley had time to focus, he was in the street, crossing to the other side.

Large dog, Shelley noted as she sped up, putting a hand on her stomach and hoping the animal had a big heart, because no way was Ryan not going to pet it.

“Honey, wait a minute...”

The dog’s owner paused, seemed to realize he couldn’t get out of the way in time and, to Shelley’s surprise, stopped and calmly said, “Sit, Peeve.”

The dog obeyed, tongue lolling, just as Ryan wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck. Peeve looked like a stoic old man—er, old dog—resigned to the attention of small beings who tugged on his collar and gave hugs.

Shelley slowed, disaster averted. There’d been a time when she wasn’t afraid of anything. Now everything, everyone, every action needed to be thought over, accepted or rejected, and it all fell to her. Maybe it was just the pregnancy. She hoped so. Because then, after the baby was born, things would go back to normal.

Normal? She wondered if she’d ever see normal again.

“Peeve likes kids.” The voice was deep, the smile broad.

So were the shoulders. He was tall, taller than her, square-chinned, with black hair cut short but still managing to look somewhat shaggy. Shelley might have added gorgeous to her assessment. Instead, thanks to Larry, she looked for a flaw.

Not his eyes. They were so deep a brown they bordered on black. Bushy eyebrows. Yes, that was it. His eyebrows were too bushy. He reminded her of someone; she couldn’t place who.

“You have kids?” she asked. Maybe he was the dad of one of Ryan’s preschool peers.

“No, just the dog. He’s enough.”

“I want dog,” Ryan said, letting go of Peeve’s collar. “Big one.”

“Not until after the baby’s born,” Shelley said, silently adding the words years after. By her best estimate, if she were careful, she had enough money to support her, her children and her father for a few months. Now was not the best time to put in job applications.

“Soon,” the dog’s owner said to Ryan with a quick glance to her stomach, “you’ll have someone to play with who’s even better than a puppy.”

Ryan didn’t look convinced.

“Boy or girl?” the man asked.

“Girl.”

“Must be an exciting time for you,” he observed. Shelley had no response, just an empty, festering feeling that took her breath away—right when she needed it most. The back pain had her closing her eyes. She squelched the tears. She wasn’t even sure which of her many messes she wanted to cry about this time: her ex-husband, missing and wanted by the police, her father’s worsening Alzheimer’s or the loneliness that dogged her steps.

After a minute, she opened her eyes and cleared her throat, her mind scrambling for a response. She didn’t need to bother. Tall, dark and bushy knew a messed-up female when he saw one. He took about three steps back, his eyes guarded. “There’s such a thing as too much excitement. You all right?”

“I’m fine. We’re running late. Ryan, come on. Time to go.”

Ryan, however, had left the sidewalk and was hurrying toward the large front window of the house whose sidewalk they were standing on: the newlyweds’. Shelley’d waved a brief hello a time or two but never stopped to chat. If you didn’t count Mr. Dupont, tall, dark and bushy was the first neighbor she’d spoken more than a greeting to, apart from Bianca.

Not really a successful encounter for either of them. The man and his pet were already at the next house. Not looking back.

“Ryan, wait!” She skipped the walkway and rushed across the grass and around the back of the red Prius in the carport.

Ryan peered inside the house—a short, unafraid Peeping Tom—and asked, “Asleep?”

Great—just what Shelley needed. She didn’t want to deal with the woman waking up and seeing two people looking in the window as if they were spying. “Come on, Ryan. We need to get to your school. Then you can have something to drink.”

Shelley carefully bent down, her hands cupping Ryan under his arms, and started to scoop him up. Since his father disappeared, Ryan spent half his time being clingy and the other half being angry. She was doing her best to deal with both, but she’d had only a little over a year to practice. Ryan was Larry’s son, but Larry had gotten full custody when Ryan’s mother went to prison.

So many secrets in her ex’s life.

Ryan, giggling, struggled and pulled away. She understood. The mommy in her wanted to swing him high, tickle his stomach, get him laughing, maybe laugh herself. Ryan escaped her fingers and turned back to the window.

Shelley followed and stepped closer to the window. Judging by the blood and open, unblinking eyes, the woman who lay on the floor wasn’t asleep. She was dead.

Worst of all, Shelley recognized the man standing behind the woman.

Larry Wagner, her ex-husband.

CHAPTER TWO (#ua098f4e0-e42f-54eb-9214-a86f3408103c)

“I JUST MET Shelley Wagner face-to-face.” Oscar Guzman sat on his bed, Peeve content and panting at his feet, and spoke via phone to Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Townley. Currently, Townley was Oscar’s boss at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Before that, during Oscar’s military service, Townley had been the second lieutenant who’d given Oscar most of his orders. Of all the men Oscar had served with, he respected Townley the most. So much so that when Townley requested Oscar be pulled from a long-term assignment for this under-the-radar case in small-dot-on-a-map, New Mexico, Oscar said yes before he’d known the specifics.

Of course, Oscar had spent a summer of his childhood in this small dot and had an aunt here. He had contacts in Sarasota Falls and could get close to Shelley Wagner without her suspecting who he worked for and what he wanted: her ex-husband, Larry Wagner.

“She was walking her son to preschool.” No surprise there. Since his arrival, Oscar had tracked her routine. Two weeks ago she’d made things amazingly easy by moving into a garage apartment just five houses away from his aunt’s bed-and-breakfast.

“I thought we were going to avoid contact for now,” Townley said.

Oscar thought about Shelley and just how hard, in the flesh, she’d been to avoid. For a moment, when he realized she was heading his way but also her son was doing a nosedive aimed at Peeve, he’d been unable to move.

She’d been wearing white capris, a huge red shirt and sandals. Her toes had been painted the same red as her shirt. Cops noticed things like that.

Even more, red-blooded men noticed things like that.

Pregnancy, if anything, only made her more beautiful.

But he’d not been in his cop persona. He’d been an overtired dog walker thinking about a big breakfast and his bed. “She must have been running late. Usually she’s gone when I walk Peeve.”

“Anything unusual happen?”

“No, not really. Ryan wanted to pet Peeve. She and I exchanged pleasantries. I acted like I didn’t have time. She acted like she wanted to get away. After a moment, I watched her hightail it back to her apartment. Funny, I thought she was taking the kid to preschool. Maybe she forgot something. Anyway, it was bound to happen, us meeting. We’re living so close.”

Townley waited a couple of beats before saying, “You’re right. Do you think there was something unusual about her being late?”