Chapter 7 #2
Taking bone and adding flesh wasn’t an exact science, but it was the art she’d studied the most. The work she poured her heart into.
With the music playing over the air conditioner droning on an on, she worked, her mind building and erasing layer by layer and then inch by inch.
Like the tides of the ocean that she’d only seen in tv and videos, the images in her mind built and unbuilt over the skull in front of her, but the more she did it… The more frustrated she became.
The eyes.
The eyes were missing.
Just dark shadows, dark empty pits looked back at her.
Noelle sat back and sagged against the chair wondering if she would ever find the face that belonged to that skull.
That woman.
Could she give her a chance to rest in peace with her own name on a stone marking her grave?
Was this the first time that a face was… out of her reach?
A soft click in the door lock turned her head.
Unlike Ranger Douglas’ unwanted intrusion, Noelle sat up smiling at the Rangers walking through the door.
“Jack.” She got up from her chair.
Jack walked in with a tray of paper wrapped sandwiches and then stepped aside. The man walking in behind her was someone new, but Noelle wasn’t phased by it.
The fact that Jack was so at ease with him told her what she needed to know.
“Uh… Hi.” He grinned at her and her own smile twisted a little at one corner. “I’m Dillion Ewing,” he held up a drink carrier in one hand. “But you can call me Dally.”
He moved to the next table over were Jack was putting out the sandwiches on napkins.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Garcia.”
She shook her head. “Noelle is fine. Thanks.”
Jack looked up. “I don’t know what you like to eat so I got a few different 'wiches and you can pick what you like.”
Dally sat down and looked up at Jack with a kind of puppy-dog expression. “Let me guess, I get last choice?”
Jack thought about it and then sighed. “You let me drive to the diner. You can have your pick after Noelle.”
Dally clapped his hands together. “Sweet.”
Noelle didn’t take long to pick, she saw a piece of bacon poking out from under the bread and picked up that sandwich and put it down in front of her seat.
Dally reached in and snatched up a sandwich. Noelle smiled. It didn’t even look like he took more than a moment to choose.
Jack sighed and picked up the third.
There was a fourth, but Noelle didn’t ask who it was for, she was curious about the ranger sitting next to Jack. “Can I ask how y’all got your… is it called ‘nicknames’?”
Dally grinned at her showing a bunch of pearly white teeth.
She wondered if one of his parents was a dentist seeing how amazing his teeth were.
Jack passed her a little dish full of fries and spoke first. “I’m Jaclyn. My father wanted a boy so I was always trying to make him happy. Of course by trying to be more of a ‘son’ I somehow also pissed him off. When I took my first law enforcement job someone called me Jack and it stuck.”
Dally took a bite of fry off of Jack’s plate and got his hand smacked for the theft. “I thought you had another name that folks were using for a while.”
She shrugged and her mouth turned up in a little smile.
Jack looked at Noelle across the table. A few people floated the idea of ‘Jaws.’”
Jaws.
Noelle nodded slowly wondering how that name had started.
Jack turned toward Dillion. “What about you? I don’t remember you talking about how you got your name.”
Noelle saw the other man shift on his chair.
“It’s a thing.”
Jack met her gaze and then they turned back to look at Dally. “Spill.”
Dally sat forward in his chair, leaning his forearms against the edge of the table.
Noelle mimicked his posture thinking that he might not want to speak very loudly.
“My grams was a big fan of Dallas the TV show,” he started to explain.
“She was so damn proud that they used the name Ewing for the big name family on the show.” He folded a fry into his mouth and quickly chewed and swallowed.
“Even after the show was done there was no way anyone could convince her that we weren’t ‘connected’ to the show somehow although she wanted to kick JR in the ass. ”
Jack looked at him, nodding. “She was a fan of Bobby, right?”
Dally nodded enthusiastically. “Damn straight. Although after that season where he was dead but wasn’t… she felt the show lost its magic.”
“Agreed,” Jack added.
Noelle was struggling to figure out exactly what they were talking about. She took a sip of the lemonade they’d brought her.
“So while my parents named me Dillion, she’d always wanted to call me Dallas.”
Noelle almost choked on her sip of lemonade. “Dallas Ewing?”
Jack sat back, her nose wrinkling. “It’s a little spot on.”
Dally nodded. “She mentioned that around some of the guys I started with on the job and they started calling me Dally.”
“Ahh…” Noelle nodded. “I was thinking it was something like Dilly Dally.”
Jack snorted out a laugh. “Dillon - Dilly. Hell we could’ve called you Pickle.”
Noelle chuckled at that. “Dill Pickle.”
Dally groaned and leaned forward until his forehead hit the table a little too hard. “Why… Why did I say anything?”
“Looks like we might have some interrogation talent in the room.”
Noelle turned her head and saw that the door had opened up again.
McCrae was back.
He walked over and pulled out the chair beside her. “Thanks for saving me a sandwich.”
Noelle felt her cheeks get hot enough to send steam off of her skin.
“I… I didn’t.”
He reached over and wrapped his hand around hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Okay, thanks for saving me a seat.”
Noelle started to look across the table, but she chickened out. Still, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Jack and Dally were watching them both with interest. “I was wondering how things went this morning.”
His jaw hardened and she wished that she could take back her words.
“Sorry…”
He wrapped his hand tighter around hers and lowered their joined hands down off of the table and onto his thigh. “I’m not mad at you.”
Her shoulders sagged in relief.
“Good.”
He leaned in a little and lowered his voice. “Douglas has been told to stay away from you and this room.”
“Douglas?”
There was nothing wrong with Jack’s hearing.
“What did he do?” By the sour sound of her voice, Jack didn’t like Douglas much.
Noelle didn’t want to talk about him, just the thought of him made her itch.
Duval didn’t seem to have that problem. He grumbled out what he knew and the thin excuses that Douglas had given when he’d been called in to see Chief Fagan and West.
“That man,” Dally groused, “is just… creepy.”
Jack nodded and spoke around her straw. “He’s going to be one of those LEOs who ends up doing something super shady and ending up on a 60 Minutes segment.”
Noelle’s stomach soured at the idea.
“I could do without seeing him ever again.”
Duval looked her in the eye. “You won’t have to. I’ll make sure of it.”
She felt warmth through his hand.
Warmth and reassurance.
“Thanks, McCrae. I know you didn’t have to do that.”
He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong.” He gave her a little lift of his chin, meeting her gaze square on. “I did.”
She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “I… I was wondering when you have some time in the evening… sometime soon.” She felt her heart trip in her chest. “My mom and I could take Ciela to a park near our house and maybe you could stop by.”
McCrae’s hand stilled on hers. “Yeah?”
She smiled. “Yeah. Ah… but not with your badge on.”
He nodded, understanding. “Yeah… it would be better without the Cinco Peso.”
Noelle frowned at the words. Not because she didn’t understand them. She didn’t know what he meant by five peso.
Dally sat up and pointed at the badge on the left side of his chest. “This is the Cinco Peso.” He unpinned it and handed it across the table to Noelle.
“There was a time when they used five peso coins as the base for our badges. Now they just make them like this, but people still call them by that old name.”
She nodded and handed it back.
Jack braced one elbow on the table and looked at Noelle. “Is your family in danger?”
Noelle shook her head. “No. That’s not why I wanted McCrae to come to the park.” She hesitated a moment later, unsure if she could talk about it without… without…
“Can I tell them?”
Her heart caught in her chest at McCrae’s soft voice.
She nodded, glad that she didn’t have to navigate those feelings again.
He looked across the table and looked at his teammates. “I stopped by Noelle’s house to give her a pass for her access to the evidence room and anywhere through security in the Texas Rangers office…”
As she listened to McCrae tell the story she managed to take bites of her BLT and fries.
She heard his tone of voice change as he spoke and what she heard, the concern she felt, made her realize that he wasn’t just a good lawman, he was a damn good man in every way.