Solid as Steele. Rebecca York

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      “Fine.” She ate a piece of bacon before asking, “What about you?”

      “We’ll stop at my house. I keep a bag packed.”

      She nodded, then got up and scraped the rest of her breakfast into the trash. He ate a few more bites, then cleaned off his own plate.

      “I’m sorry,” he said.

      “About what?”

      “Upsetting you.”

      She made a sound like harrumph and began cleaning the pan where she’d cooked the eggs, her shoulders rigid.

      He turned away, went back to the living room and folded up the afghan.

      “I’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs. When she was gone, he waited a moment, then pulled his cell phone from the holster on his belt and called the office.

      Max Dakota answered. “Mack, I see from the log that you checked out last night. Where are you?”

      “Something came up. I need to make a quick trip to Gaptown.”

      “Because?”

      He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s personal,” he said, glad that Light Street detectives had a lot of freedom. Still, he held his breath until Max said, “Okay.”

      “I could be out for a couple of days,” he added, just as Jamie stepped back into the living room and stopped short when she saw he was on the phone.

      As she gave him a long look, he said, “I’ll talk to you later.”

      “Who was that?”

      “The office.”

      She kept her gaze on him as she asked, “Did you say you’re driving a nut to Gaptown?”

      “Of course not,” he snapped, then changed the subject, striving for an even tone. “You packed fast.”

      “We’re not going out dancing,” she muttered.

      “Yeah. Right.

      “Do you want me to take out the trash?” he asked. “I mean, since you’re going out of town.”

      She hesitated for a moment. “All right. The cans are by the back door.”

      He pulled the plastic bag out of the kitchen trash can and carried it outside. When he came back she was loudly shaking out a new bag, and he knew she was uncomfortable with him doing a job her husband had obviously taken care of when he’d been alive.

      The little kitchen drama set the tone for the trip to western Maryland. After a quick stop at his house to pick up his bag, they headed down Route 70 toward Hagerstown, then onto Route 68 toward Gaptown—the supposed scene of her nightmare.

      JAMIE SLID HER EYES toward Mack, then away as she sat in the front seat of his SUV, wondering what she was doing there. She could have stayed home, but she’d insisted on coming along, and once she’d committed herself to the trip, she’d known that he wasn’t going to let her drive her own car.

      Now she felt trapped in the front seat with Mack Steele, wishing she were anywhere else. What if the dream was something she’d conjured up out of her own anxiety? She’d be embarrassed that Mack was driving her all this way to check out a figment of her imagination, but that would be the end of it. Despite her mixed emotions, she clung to that hope as they drove west, the terrain becoming more hilly the farther they got from Baltimore. Her refuge. She’d established a life in the city, and she was going to keep living there.

      Last week, she’d gotten a letter from her mother, asking her to come home for a visit. She’d ignored the request, because going home always stirred up the bad feelings between herself and her mother’s boyfriend, Clark Landon, along with memories from her childhood that she’d rather forget.

      Her earliest recollections of her father were of him staggering around the house drunk, yelling at her mom. Because of his fondness for the bottle, he’d barely been able to support the family with a series of jobs for the railroad, a couple of trucking companies and then as a delivery man for a local flower shop. Because home hadn’t been a warm and comfortable place, she’d spent as much time elsewhere as she could. She’d haunted the library and gone home with friends after school. But the time would always come when she had to go back to the dilapidated bungalow where she lived. And she never knew what she was going to find there. Maybe her parents would be fighting. Or maybe Dad would be at one of the bars he frequented, and Mom would lock the door to keep him out. Then he might smash a window to get in and cut his hand and end up in the emergency room.

      Dad had finally drunk himself to death before he was fifty, which had made home life calmer. They’d gone on welfare, which hadn’t even made much difference in their lifestyle.

      She’d still been living at home when she’d met Craig. Moving to Baltimore had been the first step in her break from the past. They’d had four good years together, and when he’d gotten killed, she’d been in danger of slipping into depression—until she’d pulled herself together and started over again on her own.

      She’d thought she was in pretty good shape—until she’d woken up scared and shaken last night after a nightmare trip back to Gaptown.

      The closer they got to home, the more her nerves jumped and the more certain she was that she wasn’t going to like the outcome of this trip. Not at all.

      “Slow down,” she said. They were the first words she’d uttered since she’d gotten into Mack’s car. “There’s a speed trap ahead.”

      He pressed on the brake and they rounded a curve, where a cop car with flashing lights had stopped another motorist.

      “Thanks,” he said. “Was that a psychic insight?”

      “No,” she snapped, then continued in a milder tone.

      “I’m a native. I know the cops are lying in wait for out-of-towners around that bend.”

      When she saw a highway sign coming up, she felt a little jolt as the exit name flashed by. Smokehouse Road.

      “Take this exit,” she said.

      “Why?”

      “Take it,” she insisted.

      “Why?” he asked again.

      “I don’t know for sure,” she answered honestly. “But I think we’re going to…find something.”

      She gripped the sides of her seat as he took the exit a little too fast. She wished she knew why she was giving him these directions. Or maybe she already knew, and she didn’t want to admit it.

      “Right or left?” he asked with an edge in his voice when they came off the exit ramp.

      “Right,” she answered, wondering why she was so certain where they were going. There was absolutely no hesitation on her part as she gave him directions.

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