Chapter Three
“Are you hungry?” Rochelle asked her passenger. Her stomach reminded her that she’d choked down half a dry bagel for breakfast along with a large black coffee too many hours ago.
“I could eat,” Camden said in a distracted tone. He knew Kage better than she did, and his wheels must have been turning after this last interaction.
“Mind if we go through a drive-through while we talk through what just happened with Kage?” she asked, motioning toward the famous burger fast-food chain up ahead and on the right.
“Sounds good to me,” Camden responded.
Rochelle made the turn and then got in line behind four other vehicles. “Figure we can review the surveillance tape together while we eat. See what else we can find on there.”
“Maybe we can catch Kage drinking alcohol,” Camden said. “Catch him in one lie, and we’ll have a better edge next time we talk to him.”
“At least we know where to find him,” Rochelle said before inching up one car length. “He’s not going anywhere while on parole without alerting his parole officer.”
“True,” he stated.
“The fan-loyalty issue is something to consider,” Rochelle said, moving up another car length. Soon, they’d be at the squawk box, where she could half scream her order into what felt like the void.
“I can’t get past that one—the wrong ball cap,” he said. “Which might just be bias on my part.”
“Makes sense though,” she said. “Especially when I apply the logic to my father.”
“Fan is short for fanatic,” he pointed out.
“What’s your favorite sports team?” she asked, curious about what he liked.
“Used to be the Miami Heat during the Holy Trinity era,” he said without hesitation.
“Holy Trinity?”
“LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade,” he responded like it was common knowledge. “I’ve heard them called the Big Three.”
In Texas, sports held a similar status to religion. The mantra she’d heard repeated over and over again when she’d been anywhere near the high-school-football coach was: family, God, football.
Growing up here, she figured the order was wrong.
Football would never have come last to most of the kids she’d gone to high school with.
At least Austin had its own funky, artistic vibe, even if it had become corporate before her eyes.
The city’s flawed thinking had been that no one would move there and overrun the city if they didn’t build roads.
The city hadn’t built roads, but people had moved there in hordes anyway.
Now, the traffic was a nightmare despite the loop that had been built too late.
At least some drivers were able to escape the nightmare that was downtown traffic.
Not that it bothered her enough to want to move.
This was the only home she’d ever known.
Back to sports, she would file the ball-cap information for future use, then see if anything else similar popped up.
“What do you want?” she asked her distracted partner as she pulled up to the squawk box.
“Whatever you’re having,” he said as he studied his cell.
Rochelle ordered two hamburger meals with Cokes before pulling around to the pay window. Before she could reach for her wallet, Camden handed her a couple of twenties from his pocket.
“This one’s on me,” he offered.
She thanked him, paid, and then pulled up to the food window. After taking the bags and handing over the drinks, she found a parking spot toward the back of the small lot. No other vehicles were parked there beyond the spaces marked for employees.
Camden set up the food using the console as a makeshift table while she pulled up the surveillance footage and wound it back to half past eleven.
“I figure starting here should give us a sense of what the night was like at the bar,” she said, sitting back to watch and take down her burger and fries.
Camden studied the screen with the same wrinkle in his forehead that he’d had a minute ago while he’d focused on his cell phone.
“Did you get anything from your phone worth sharing?” she asked, motioning toward the phone he’d set next to his leg like he might be waiting for a call or text.
“No,” he admitted. “It’s personal.” His tone said it was heavy.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Camden chewed on a bite of burger before swallowing and then washing it down with a sip of Coke. “Do you want to hear about my family?”
“Sure,” she said, realizing he most likely had a wife and possibly kids.
A quick glance at his ring finger revealed no tan line.
She’d noticed there was no gold band a few seconds after they’d first met.
It was habit and had nothing to do with the little frisson of awareness she’d experienced when she first set eyes on him.
A little voice in the back of her mind decided to point out the fact she was attracted to him and there was more to it, but she refused to entertain the idea. Besides, it wouldn’t be productive to go down that path at work.
Camden exhaled a slow sigh. “My grandparents were in a crash several months ago that put them both in comas. My grandfather recently woke up and is alert with perfect cognitive function, but he’s been with my grandmother since high school, so we’re obviously concerned about keeping his spirits up until something happens with her one way or the other. ”
“That’s so sad,” she immediately said. “I’m so sorry that happened. Sounds like your family is close.”
“You could say that,” he said after thanking her for her sympathy. “They raised me, my sister, Julie, and my brother, Dalton, from when we were little kids. They took on our cousins too, so they basically raised six kids while running a small paint horse operation.”
“They sound like saints,” she murmured.
“They were…are,” he corrected, his voice revealing a measured calm, as though he couldn’t allow himself to get emotional about them, or the landslide would turn into an avalanche. Her heart went out to him. “It’s been a roller coaster of emotions since the crash.”
“I can only imagine how helpless you must feel watching the ones you love fight for their lives,” she soothed. “It has to be the worst.”
“It’s not easy,” he admitted, turning to catch her gaze. A mix of emotions played behind his eyes, making her want to reach over the console and find a way to ease his pain.
At a loss for words, all she could do was listen as he continued.
“Each of us is taking a turn watching over them so they’re not alone,” he said. “I’m next, and then I guess we’ll start over from the beginning again if nothing changes with Grandma Lacey.”
“Sounds like they’re being surrounded by love,” she said, wondering what that would be like.
As an only child, she had no idea what growing up with siblings and cousins was like.
After relocating to Austin from Amarillo, they’d had no extra money for vacations back to Amarillo, so Rochelle had never developed a relationship with extended family.
They’d preferred driving to nearby Galveston to go to the beach or Padre Island when it wasn’t spring break and overrun with drunk college kids.
“I haven’t thought about it in those terms,” he said, “but you’re right. I’ve been focused on feeling like the worst human for being unable to drop everything and be with them after they took me in and raised me like their own.”
“We might have only just met, but I generally get a good read on people within a few minutes of being in their presence—call it a job skill or hazard, depending on your point of view.” She cracked a small smile, hoping it would be contagious. “It causes problems with dating sometimes.”
Camden’s face broke into a smile, revealing straight, white teeth. Another quality that made him almost irresistible. “Would it surprise you to know that seems to be a universal problem with law-enforcement officers?”
“Too easy to spot a liar, right?” she said, forcing her gaze away from eyes that reminded her of the sky on a spring morning after it rained.
If only she’d met Camden socially instead of at work…
This was the first time Camden had spoken to someone outside of the family or medical team about his grandparents since this whole ordeal had started.
Rochelle was easy to talk to. Someone he could see himself trusting.
He ignored the voice that tried to convince him a greater magnetism was at work, a pull that shouldn’t be disregarded.
“Your grandparents are fortunate to have so much love in their lives,” Rochelle said after a thoughtful pause, keeping her gaze trained on the screen as the surveillance footage rolled.
Camden thought he was the lucky one. “My mother took off when I was seven and a half years old. By age ten, my father had died—some say of a broken heart after the woman who birthed me took off, but it was probably heatstroke. I’m the oldest of three.”
“You have an oldest-sibling vibe,” she said.
“Controlling, high achieving, and entitled?” he quipped.
“I was thinking more along the lines of conscientious, determined, and hardworking,” she corrected with a small smile that caused his chest to squeeze. “But you know yourself better than I do.”
The mischievous lilt in her voice cracked through some of the shame he felt whenever he was shrouded in guilt about not being bedside, holding vigil for his grandparents.
“Oh, no,” he countered. “I like your adjectives way better than mine.”
She laughed, and it filled the cab of the SUV with something that felt a lot like hope.
“Then, we go with mine,” she said, then added, “I lost both of my parents a year apart to lung cancer. Dad was a lifetime smoker. For Mom, it was all secondhand smoke that caused hers.” She shook her head.
“My dad loved her beyond anything I’ve ever seen or will probably ever experience in my lifetime, so it would’ve killed him to know he was the reason she followed him in death a year after he left us. ”
After mumbling a few words that fell short of providing the comfort he wished he could give her, he asked, “How long ago did you lose your mom?”
“Seven months ago,” she said, her voice filled with a surprising vulnerability.
Here, he’d been rambling on about his own family situation when her hurt was still so recent and so close to the surface. “I should’ve asked about you before I went on about my own problems. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Camden,” she said.
He liked the way his name rolled off her tongue.
“My parents had a great love story. I wholeheartedly believe my mom didn’t want to be in this world without my dad.
Or, maybe that’s what I choose to believe because that makes her somehow in control instead of a helpless victim. Does that sound weird?”
“Makes sense to me,” he said softly. “I never bought in to the idea we have no control over what happens to us. I mean, sure, the details aren’t always ours to decide, but what would be the point if our lives were predetermined, and we had no say?
What would be the point of having a brain that allows us to think if we weren’t meant to use it? ”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said. “I never understood or accepted the idea of a scenario that gave us no control over our decisions or responsibility for our mistakes.”
Camden liked Rochelle. She was intelligent and fierce when she needed to be.
“I miss them,” she said. “I’m thirty-three years old and still wish I could call my mom when something really great happens.
Honestly, she’s the first person I think about when I have good news and bad news.
There are times when I’ve already picked up my cell before I remember she’s not an option to call anymore. ”
Camden reached across the console, took Rochelle’s hand in his, and then gave a gentle squeeze for reassurance and comfort. Lightning struck at the point where their skin touched. The jolt of surprise in her hazel eyes said she’d felt the same thing.
If it had been winter, he’d blame static electricity. But that electricity would’ve had to be on steroids for the effect it had on him.
Once the initial shock was over, Camden was flooded with warmth the equivalent of a dozen campfires on a cold night.
He stared down at his hand like it didn’t belong to his body anymore, like it had taken on a life of its own. Whoa!
An awkward moment passed between them as they both seemed to catch on to the rarity of an occurrence like this one, like trying to explain how the engineering marvel that was the Taj Mahal had been built back in the mid-1600s.
Out of the corner of his eye, Camden saw the red ball cap on the screen. He pulled his hand back and refocused. “Can we rewind?”
It took a second for Rochelle to act, but then she nodded and reversed the footage.
“There,” Camden stated. “He’s walking outside.”
Being distracted had caused them to miss the ball cap walking inside. Dammit. Camden was a professional. This wasn’t acceptable.
Rochelle cleared her throat, then took a sip of Coke. After rewinding, she pointed at the screen. “The place is practically wall-to-wall people. But, from what I can tell, he walks inside an hour earlier. See?”
Sure enough, the red ball cap entered the nightclub. In the mass of people, it was impossible to see much beyond the back of the ball cap.
“The place is hopping,” he said.
“Good place to blend into the crowd and go unnoticed,” Rochelle pointed out.
“True,” he agreed as she fast-forwarded the footage.
“Here he is again, walking out with someone who could be Justina,” she said as she slowed the footage.
Too bad it was grainy, and the place was shoulder-to-shoulder people, making it nearly impossible to make out anything except blobs.
“Justina is tiny by comparison,” he stated. “A good defense lawyer might be able to argue it isn’t even her with the guy in the red ball cap.”
And then something happened. Justina looked up almost directly at the camera, a smile on her face.
She’d had no idea she was about to disappear.