Please call Detective McLean.

Mariah was not surprised to find a pink message slip in her mail cubby. Did he feel any guilt about making accusations he could never prove? Or did he believe that he held no blame for the disruption left in his wake?

She stared with burning eyes at his name, then crumpled the slip in her fist. It would be a cold day in hell before she’d ever call him.

She was glad she’d come early, so she had time to compose herself before her first class poured into her room. She paused to look at a wall mural lovingly created by one of her former students.

Her students liked her. Remembered her. Trusted her.

Tracy Mitchell had trusted her. Had come to her for help. How could she let one of her students down because her own scars weren’t fully healed?

Tracy had promise she would likely never fulfill. But it was there, and teachers were sometimes wrong about who would succeed or fail. The teenager did not deserve to be blackmailed, to have to feel that this, of all things, was her fault.

With a sigh, Mariah went to her desk and dug in her tote for her cell phone. Apparently despite the sunlight, it was really a cold day. A very, very cold day.

Somewhere.

Dear Reader,

This book continues the story begun in His Partner’s Wife about three brothers who felt compelled to become cops because of their father’s senseless murder. The Word of a Child touches on the damage done to lives by sexual abuse, but most of all it’s about trust and the suspicions that undermine love. What if you suspect your husband or parent or child of having done something terrible? Do you accuse them and find out you were wrong to trust them? We all want to believe that our family will always back us, will always assume accusations are wrong, will always believe the best until proved otherwise.

So what if you not only fear the worst about someone you love, but you never learn the truth? What does it do to that person, and to you?

These, of course, are the kinds of questions that fascinate me as a writer. I love the consequences that spread like ripples, touching so many other people. Sometimes I secretly suspect we authors are always writing about ourselves, on some level: How would I react? What would I say? Feel?

Hey, who needs psychoanalysis? Just write a few books! But you notice that I cut myself a break and always allow my characters to discover the deep, priceless love that gives our lives meaning.

My hope is that you, too, will find not just escape but occasional self-discovery in the pages of my books.

Sincerely,

Janice Kay Johnson

The Word of a Child
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With thanks to my wonderful editors at Superromance,

Laura Shin and Paula Eykelhof, who encourage me

to write the books that matter.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

MARIAH STAVIG HAD NO reason to fear the unexpected knock on the door. Her husband and daughter were safely at home; she’d hung up the telephone from speaking to her mother not five minutes before. She felt only mild surprise and curiosity about who might be stopping by at seven-thirty in the evening.

Strangers, she discovered, had come calling in the form of a very large man in a dark suit and a pleasant-faced older woman, neither of whom she knew. Which were they selling, vacuum cleaners or religion?

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Are you Mariah Stavig?”

Puzzlement replaced her initial annoyance at the intrusion. “Yes, I am.”

The man flipped open a leather case to show a police badge. “I’m Detective Connor McLean from the Port Dare PD.”

The woman displayed identification. “Gail Cooper from Child Protective Services. May we speak with you and your husband? Is he home?”

Beginning to feel wary, Mariah said, “Yes, he’s watching the Mariners.”

Neither asked about the score, even though the game was critical to the Seattle Mariners making it to the World Series and most people were at least mildly interested.

“What is it?” Mariah asked. “Is something wrong?”

“It might be best if we spoke to you and your husband together,” the woman said.

“Well, then…” Apprehension raised a lump in her throat as she backed up. “Come in.”

They followed her into the living room. Simon, a man with dark hair and the broad cheekbones of his Slavic heritage, tore his gaze from the TV and stood politely. Three-year-old Zofie, in the midst of tumbled plastic blocks and miniature people spread over the carpet, paused with a red block in one hand and stared at the visitors.

Mariah swallowed but failed to dispel the lump. “Simon, this is Detective McLean from the Port Dare police and Ms., um…”

“Cooper,” the woman said pleasantly. “Gail Cooper. I’m from Child Protective Services.”

His expression didn’t change, but Mariah felt her husband’s immediate tension. She supposed she was feeling it herself. It was so strange, having a police officer and a social worker drop by without calling, and at this time of the day.

“What do you want with us?” he asked. “Is this about someone we know?”

“In a way.” Ms. Cooper smiled at Zofie, who was alarmed enough to scramble to her feet and race to clutch her mother’s leg. “It might be best if we could talk without your daughter hearing.”

Real fear gripped Mariah now. Not questioning the suggestion, she boosted Zofie into her arms. “Honey, I need you to play in your room for a minute, while Mommy and Daddy talk to these people.” She started down the hall, as though her request was matter-of-fact, keeping her voice soft. “Okay?”

Zofie popped her thumb into her mouth and stared over Mariah’s shoulder at the strangers until her mother turned into the toddler’s bedroom.

Mariah set her on the floor beside her small table and chair. “I loved the drawing you made today. Can you draw me a new picture?”

Zofie hesitated, then sat down. Around her thumb, she mumbled, “Okay.”

“I’ll leave the door open so you can call if you need me.”

Thumb out of her mouth, the three-year-old was already reaching into her crayon box. “Okay,” she said again, obligingly. Thank heavens, she was almost always good-natured and compliant.

Simon and the two visitors stood exactly where they’d been when she’d left them, her husband stiff and still expressionless. He had turned off the baseball game.

“All right. What’s this about?” he asked, voice harsh, the moment he saw her.

Mariah gave him a reproving look. “Please. Sit down. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

The man looked at her, his light gray eyes somber. “No coffee. Thanks.”

The two sat at either end of the sofa. Mariah chose the chair facing them. Simon planted himself behind her, his hands gripping the winged back of the chair.

The police officer spoke. “A child who plays with your daughter has been sexually molested.”

Mariah pressed a hand to her mouth. “Who?” she asked faintly.

“Lily Thalberg.”

Zofie’s preschool classmate was an animated little girl with wild blond curls, bright blue eyes and enough energy and grace to make her “most likely to become a cheerleader,” as her parents joked. She and Zofie weren’t best friends, but these past few months they’d played at each other’s homes a couple of times.

“Oh, no,” Mariah breathed. “But…how? She wasn’t kidnapped, was she?”

“No, her molester was apparently an acquaintance.” Ms. Cooper looked straight at Simon. “I’m afraid she’s named you, Mr. Stavig.”

The chair jerked as Simon’s grip tightened. Mariah couldn’t breathe.

“This is insane! I hardly know who this kid is, and you’re claiming she pointed her finger at me?”

“I’m afraid she did,” the police officer said stolidly. “We’re obligated to follow—”

“You dare to come here, into my home, and accuse me on the word of a three-year-old?”

“At this point, nobody is accusing you,” the social worker soothed. “We simply need to ask you some questions, and inform you that we will be conducting an investigation.”

“An investigation!” He shoved violently at the chair, moving it several inches despite the fact his wife sat in it. Pacing, he snapped, “How can you investigate something like that? It’s ludicrous that you’re here at all. The kid can’t even talk! I can’t understand a word she says.” He stopped to glare at them with narrowed, glittering dark eyes. “Tell me—can you?”

The police officer’s jaw muscles knotted. “Yes,” he said, voice very level. “Even in a terrified whisper, ‘Zofie’s daddy,’ was clear as a bell.”

Mariah’s head swam. She felt distant, as if she looked down on a scene she didn’t fully understand and had no part in.

Lily. Pretty, comical Lily, touched…sexually? The idea defied imagination. How could anybody do something so horrific to a child so young?

And…Simon. They were saying he had done it. Mariah’s husband. The very idea was ridiculous! Mariah couldn’t believe this was happening. Had Lily ever even met Simon, except at preschool events like the Halloween party, where too many people were around for something like this to happen?

She’d missed a couple of exchanges.

Simon was shouting, “Maybe you should be looking at her daddy. Did you ever think of that?”

Mariah stared at him in shock. He and Tom Thalberg had talked about the Mariners in front of the house just recently. Tom was a nice man.

Seemed to be a nice man. These people wouldn’t be here if Lily hadn’t been molested. Somebody had done this unspeakable thing.

She heard her own voice. “Was she raped?”

The police officer’s cold stare for her husband turned to something gentler when he looked at her. She read sympathy in his eyes. For her, which scared her even more.

“No. We can be grateful, because she would have been injured badly if an adult male had actually penetrated her vaginally. From the standpoint of the investigation, however, the ability to gather DNA would have been helpful.”

“Oh.” Penetration… No. She would not imagine Zofie, instead. No. “Then…then what?” she asked, just audibly.

He told her about oral sex and objects pushed into Lily, things Mariah wished she’d never heard. She glanced at Simon, expecting him to look as shocked, but all he did was stand across the living room from the tableau the rest of them made, his nostrils flared, fury written across his face.

“My husband would never do anything like that,” Mariah said stoutly. “We have a daughter. You saw her. Zofie is fine. Surely a man who would molest another child would do the same thing to his own daughter.”

“Yes.” Detective McLean’s voice was very soft, the gaze he kept on her husband very hard. “Unfortunately that’s usually true.”

They started talking about how she needed to take Zofie to the hospital to be checked, and that for her safety, Simon should move out of the house and not be alone with her while the investigation proceeded.

Simon exploded. “You want to take my wife and home and child from me? You have no evidence and no right!”

The police officer rose to his feet, his bulk suddenly menacing. “We have the word of the victim.”

“Get out of my house now!”

“Daddy?” In her bright red overalls, her dark hair ponytailed, her small face pinched, Zofie stood in the hall. “Mommy? Why is Daddy yelling?”

Simon’s head swung as if he were an angry bull. “Go back to your room! Now!”

Her breath hitched and tears filled her eyes. With a muffled sob, she ran.

Mariah sat rooted, unable to go after her.

Taking advantage of the interruption, Ms. Cooper said, “Mr. Stavig, if you’d just answer some questions…”

“I will answer no questions! Get out.”

“Mr. Stavig, you might be able to clear this up in half an hour if you would cooperate,” the social worker tried again.

“Simon,” Mariah whispered. “Please.”

He didn’t even glance at her. “I’ve never been alone with this girl, I hardly know who she is. Look elsewhere for your monster.”

“Monsters,” Detective McLean said, “can take many forms, Mr. Stavig. Even that of a man like you.”

Face contorted with anger and, Mariah thought, an effort to hide fear or even tears, Simon stalked to within a few inches of the police officer. “Out,” he snarled.

The detective inclined his head. “Certainly. But we will be back, and you will answer questions.” Those light, compelling eyes turned to Mariah. “Mrs. Stavig, please try to persuade your husband to help us instead of hindering. And consider taking your daughter and staying elsewhere if you can’t persuade him to leave the house for the new few weeks.”

They walked out. Neither Mariah nor Simon followed. She sat frozen, stunned, reluctant to look at her husband. She heard him breathing as hard as if he’d been running, or fighting.

The front door closed quietly. From down the hall came the sound of quiet sobs.

Mariah waited for Simon to say, How can they think I would do such a thing? Or, Help me remember. I’ve never even been alone with this girl, have I? She waited for him, to come to her, perhaps kneel in front of her and take her hands and beg her to believe him incapable of being the monster Detective Connor McLean had named him.

Instead he turned that furious face on her and said, “You will take Zofie out of preschool so that no one else can accuse us.” And then he picked up the remote control and turned on the television, as if nothing had happened.

Stiff and tired and feeling terribly afraid, Mariah stood and went down the hall to her daughter’s room.

“Martinez is rounding third,” the commentator crowed.

She wasn’t sure Simon had even noticed she’d left the room.

If he had asked her, Help me remember, she would have had to say, Last Saturday, my students did a Sunday matinee of The Diary of Anne Frank. You agreed to watch both Zofie and her friend Lily Thalberg. I know nothing happened, but you were alone with the girls.

But he had not asked that or anything else. He had not been grieving for Lily, nor bewildered at such a terrible accusation. He had been in a rage that anyone would believe the word of a three-year-old child.

A child the age of his own Zofie, who was just as pretty as Lily Thalberg.

CHAPTER ONE

“MS. STAVIG? CAN I TALK to you?”

Mariah looked up with a smile. “Tracy! Of course you may. Come on in.”

A seventh-and eighth-grade literature and drama teacher, she kept her classroom door open during her planning period specifically so that students would feel free to drop by. Most often it was the theater enthusiasts who hung around her classroom during breaks, but she wanted to be available to kids like Tracy Mitchell who were falling behind with their assignments, too.

Mariah had been grading papers in which her eighth-grade advanced lit students were supposed to be analyzing To Kill A Mockingbird. Josh Renfield’s opening sentence was a tangle with no subject. He liked big words and multiple clauses, but basic grammatical structure apparently eluded him. Mariah laid down her red pencil with relief.

“Are you here to talk about your missing assignments?” she asked.

“No. Um…” Tracy fidgeted in front of the desk. “Can I tell you something? I mean, something…well, that I’m not supposed to?”

“Not supposed to?” Was Tracy mature enough to realize that a friend was in over her head with drugs or boys, that some secrets weren’t meant to be kept?

“Mature” was not the word that leaped to mind with Tracy Mitchell, who tended to spend classes passing notes and giggling.

“Yeah.” Her blond hair swung down, a curtain hiding her face. She spoke so softly, Mariah had to strain to hear. “This guy made me do things. He said no one would believe me if I was stupid enough to talk. I’ve been…I’ve been really scared.”

“Scared,” Mariah echoed, a chill hand closing on her heart. “Somebody threatened you?”

“I didn’t think anybody would believe me.” The girl looked up, her blue eyes full of hope. “But Lacy Carlson says you will. That you listen to kids.”

No. Please not me, Mariah begged silently. Choose someone else to tell.

Even as she had the pitiful thoughts, Mariah knew she was being selfish. Tracy had come to her because she had developed a reputation among students as trustworthy. She should be glad that the teenager felt she could safely tell her story. She should even be flattered that the girl had chosen her. It meant she had done something right as a teacher.

But, oh, she didn’t want to hear it. Not if the hearing meant she had to report the story to authorities and loose them on some man and his family.

Showing none of her inner turmoil on her face, she rose to her feet and closed the door to the hall. Coming back to the girl, Mariah placed a gentle hand on her arm.

“Why don’t we sit down.” She pulled a student desk to face the one Tracy chose. “Okay. Whoever ‘he’ is, it sounds like he doesn’t want you to think anybody will believe you. Which doesn’t mean they won’t.”

Tracy thought about that. “Maybe. Except—” she blushed “—I’m not a very good student. And I dress kind of…”

Like a slut, Mariah filled in. Aloud she said, “Provocatively?”

Tracy knew that word. She nodded.

“It’s against the law for a man to rape a prostitute, you know.”

“You mean, a whore?”

“That’s right. In other words, your clothing or even, in the case of a prostitute, your profession do not constitute an invitation. No one can touch you without your permission.” She paused a beat. “Is that what happened?”

Tracy’s blue eyes filled with tears. After a moment, she gave a jerky nod.

“Will you tell me about it?” Mariah asked gently.

“The first time, he, um, just touched me.”

“Where?” She kept her voice patient.

“My…well, my breasts. And, um, he kissed me.”

“Did you mind? Or did you like it?”

“I guess I kind of… I mean, he’s older and everything,” the thirteen-year-old mumbled to the desk.

“You were flattered.”

Tracy squirmed. “Kind of.”

“Okay. Any of us might be.”

“Only then, um, the next time he unzipped his pants and he made me touch his…you know.” She was crying in earnest now, and her nose began to run.

Mariah stood long enough to grab a box of tissues and hand her several.

Tracy blew her nose.

“He made you fondle him.”

“And…and put my mouth on him. He tasted…it was really gross. Especially when he…”

Mariah hid her shudder.

“Did anything more happen?” she asked quietly.

“Last time he…” She stole a look up. “He made me have sex. It hurt so bad! And I’m afraid I’ll be pregnant!” With her face puffy and wet, she looked like a frightened eight-year-old, not the teen she was.

Mariah took her hands and squeezed them. “How long ago did you have sex?”

Tracy snuffled. “It was…it was the day before yesterday.”

“There are morning-after drugs to keep you from being pregnant. That’s the first thing we’ll have to see to.”

Her voice lightened. “You mean, I don’t have to be pregnant?”

“No, you don’t have to be pregnant.” Mariah hesitated. “Tracy, is this man related to you?”

Her head ducked immediately, but she shook it no.

Actually, to the best of Mariah’s knowledge, Tracy’s biological father wasn’t in the picture. On the two occasions when Mariah had called the mother in for a conference, she had left a different unsavory-looking boyfriend lurking in the hall. Mariah wasn’t as surprised as she wished she could be that one of them, or another just like them, had molested the pretty young girl who dressed in tiny miniskirts and baby Ts that showed rapidly ripening breasts to superb advantage.

“Will you tell me who he is?”

“Will he have to know?” she whispered.

“If he’s an adult, he should be punished. In the eyes of the law, you’re a child. He cannot force you, or even persuade you, to have sexual relations. You did say he’s older?”

Fresh tears flowed. “He’s a teacher.”

Mariah’s heart sank even as her mouth made an O of surprise. Not one of the boyfriends.

A teacher. This was going to be ugly, and she wanted no part in it. Teachers were so vulnerable to these accusations. Look at her now: alone in the room with Tracy, the door closed. A student could say anything happened, and how would it be disproved?

“Oh dear,” she said weakly.

“He…he told me he’d give me a good grade if I…you know. And if I didn’t, he’d flunk me.”

“I wish you’d reported him then and asked to be transferred from the class.” She immediately regretted saying even that; she didn’t want poor Tracy to feel as if what happened—assuming it had happened—was her fault in any way.

Tracy’s head went down again. In a choked mumble, she said, “I thought it was kind of cool that he liked me. Even though he’s old.”

Mariah squeezed her hands again. “Who is it, Tracy?”

The seventh-grader murmured something.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

“Mr. Tanner.”

Mariah couldn’t suppress an, “Oh, no.”

Tracy’s chin shot up. “Do you think I’m lying?”

“Did I say that?”

She yanked her hands away. “You sound like it!”

“No. I’m only…sorry. I thought he was a well-liked teacher.”

“You mean, well-liked by you,” the girl said spitefully.

“Tracy, I know him only as a colleague. We aren’t personal friends. I’m on your side. I won’t abuse your trust, I promise.”

The flash of fear and anger faded. “Oh.”

“Can you repeat your story for Mrs. Patterson?”

“The principal?” she said in dismay.

“She’ll have to hear it, you know. And then I’m afraid you’ll have to tell the police or a social worker. You may even have to testify in court.”

“In court?” Tracy shrank back. “They can’t just fire him?”

“It’s not that simple. How can he be fired on the basis of one student saying he did something? He’ll likely be suspended while an investigation goes on, but unless he admits to having relations with you, he may have to be convicted of a crime before he can be fired.”

The teenager looked genuinely frightened now. “But…what if I won’t talk in court?”

Mariah hated having to tell the poor girl what she’d set in motion by choosing to come to a teacher.

“Now that you’ve told me,” she said sympathetically, “I have to report your story. That’s the law for teachers. It would certainly be hard to convict Mr. Tanner if you won’t testify. That would leave him free to molest other girls. Do you want that?” She gave Tracy a moment to reflect, then levered herself out of the student desk. “I’m going to call Mrs. Patterson to come here right now. Please stay and tell her, just like you did me. The worst is over, Tracy. It’ll be easier this time, I promise.”

Tracy sat hunched and small while they waited. Feeling out of her depth, Mariah talked gently about boys and how nice kisses were when both parties wanted them and how inexcusable it was for an adult to compel a child to have intercourse.

Noreen Patterson was a plump woman of perhaps forty filled with good cheer that didn’t disguise her willingness to command.

The good humor faded the moment Mariah said gravely, “Tracy has something to tell you.”

Tracy did haltingly tell her story for the principal. Afterward Noreen hugged her and said, “I’ll call your mother. We need to talk to her.”

“Will you fire him?”

The principal explained again about the necessity for an investigation, which Tracy took as an insult.

“You don’t believe me!”

As Mariah had a class, Mrs. Patterson took Tracy away. She paused to murmur, “Will you come to my office at the end of the day?”

“Yes, of course.”

Her seventh-graders were reading As You Like It aloud, stumbling over unfamiliar words and requiring constant explanations of Shakespearean language. Perhaps Shakespeare was too difficult for them, she thought, but then a student would read a passage with sudden understanding and relish for the rich language, and she would decide she’d been right to challenge them.

Today it was very difficult to keep her mind on the reading. Several times she was recalled by a loud, “Ms. Stavig? Ms. Stavig? I don’t get it.”

She avoided the faculty room during her break to be sure she didn’t run into Gerald Tanner, the computer teacher. He was likely to seek her out, as they’d talked about doing a joint project that involved Internet research in his class and a paper in hers.

She liked Gerald, who was new at the middle school this year. A tall bony man who made her think of Ichabod Crane, he was in his late thirties and had been teaching at a community college before he’d decided to “get ’em young,” as he’d put it.

Sexually? she wondered now in distaste.

But what if Tracy was lying for some reason? She might be afraid of her mother’s current boyfriend who had raped her, or mad at Gerald because he was flunking her, or… The possibilities were endless. She had seemed genuinely distraught, but Mariah had thought before that Tracy, who was in her beginning drama class, had real talent on the stage.

The accusation alone could be enough to ruin Gerald’s career as a teacher; such stories tended to follow a man.

She had reason to know.

Simon had lost his job after rumors got around, even though the accusation was never substantiated and he was never taken to trial. The excuse for firing him was trumped up, and he had known the real reason, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Now, three years later, he lived in Bremerton, where nobody whispered, but he’d had to take a job working at the Navy shipyard that wasn’t as good as the one he’d lost.

He’d lost his wife, too, but she didn’t want to think about that. Not today.

This was different, Mariah told herself; the victim was old enough to speak for herself, and it might not be too late for doctors to recover sperm and therefore DNA. This wasn’t anything like a child’s perhaps wild—or perhaps not—accusation.

Zofie’s daddy.

She would hear the quiet accusation until the day she died. Not in the little girl’s voice, because she’d never seen Lily Thalberg again. After the notoriety, after the investigation had stalled, the Thalbergs had moved away, wanting a fresh start, a friend of a friend had told Mariah. No, Mariah heard her husband named as a molester in the deep, certain voice of that police officer. Detective Connor McLean. He’d believed Lily Thalberg, she could tell. It was partly his certainty that had eaten at Mariah in the days and weeks following his initial visit, when Simon became furious at her smallest, meekest question and when she began to look at Zofie and worry.

She hated remembering. Second-guessing herself, feeling guilt again because she hadn’t stood behind her husband.

Why did Tracy have to come to her? she wondered wretchedly.

Her last student was barely out of the classroom when Mariah followed, locking the door behind her. In the office, the secretary said, “Mrs. Patterson is expecting you,” and waved her down the hall where the counselors and the principal and vice principal had their offices.

Both Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Lamarr, the vice principal, were in the office, she saw as she opened the door. But they weren’t alone. A second man who had been standing by the window turned as Mariah entered.

Her breath escaped in a gasp and she stopped halfway inside, clutching the doorknob.

As the big man with short, reddish-brown hair faced her, his light gray eyes widened briefly just before his expression became utterly impassive.

Anyone but him, she thought wildly. His voice would live forever in her nightmares and as the kernel of her guilt. If it had occurred to her he might be sent… But it hadn’t.

She heard herself say hoarsely, “I’m sorry, I can’t…” as she began to back up.

Noreen Patterson half rose from her chair behind the desk. “Mariah, what is it?”

Her wild gaze touched on him. She was breathing like an untamed creature caught in a trap. “I…I just can’t…” she said again, her voice high and panicky.

He said nothing, only waited at the far end of the office. A nerve spasmed under one eye, the only visible sign he understood her distress or felt it.

The vice principal had reached her. Gripping her arm, he said, “What is it? Are you sick, Mariah?”

Sick. She seized on an excuse no one would dispute.

“Yes.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling very well.”

Detective Connor McLean abruptly turned his back so that he looked out the window rather than at her.

“The flu is going around,” Ed Lamarr said. “Here. Why don’t you come in and sit down.”

In? She couldn’t.

But it seemed she could, because she allowed herself to be led to the chairs facing Noreen’s desk. Sinking into one, she tried not to look at the broad, powerful back of the man gazing out the window.

The principal sank back into her seat. “Do you feel well enough to talk about Tracy for a minute?”

Mariah breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. Slowly, carefully. She could be strong. He had never threatened her, never raised his voice.

He had only destroyed her marriage and her belief in both her husband and herself.

No. Her fingernails bit into her thighs. Be fair. It was childish to hold him responsible. He was not the accuser. If he had not come, it would have been someone else. He was only the messenger. The arm of the law.

Lily Thalberg’s voice.

As now he would be Tracy Mitchell’s.

“Yes.” Miraculously Mariah heard herself sound calm, if far away to her own ears. “I’m fine.”

“Ah. Well, let us know if it gets the best of you.”

Mariah sat with her knees and ankles together, her spine regally straight. Poised. A lady, who would never let anything get the best of her. “Of course,” she agreed.

“Then I want you to meet Detective Connor McLean of the Port Dare Police Department.”

Had he recognized her, or only seen that the sight of him upset her?

He turned.

She said stiffly, “How do you do.”

He nodded. “Ms. Stavig.”

Noreen smiled at Mariah. “Tracy Mitchell chose to come to Mariah. She tells me ‘everyone’ says you can be trusted.”

Mariah focused fiercely on the principal, blocking out her awareness of the police officer.

“In this case, of course, I couldn’t keep what she told me confidential. In the future, students may not think I can be trusted.”

“She understands that you did what you have to do.”

“Did she ask you to keep what she told you confidential, Ms. Stavig?” asked Detective McLean.

Mariah stared fixedly at the pencil cup on the principal’s desk. It was a crudely made and glazed coil pot, a child’s effort. “No,” she said. “What Tracy wanted, I think, was for Mr. Tanner to be fired. She must have realized I didn’t have the power to accomplish that. She did get somewhat upset at the idea of the police becoming involved, and particularly that she might have to testify in court.”

From her peripheral vision, she saw him pull a notebook from an inside pocket of his well-cut gray suit coat. “Will you repeat what she told you to the best of your memory, Ms. Stavig? I believe she may have been more expansive with you than she was with Mrs. Patterson.”

“Yes. Okay.” Mariah took a deep breath and began, at first disjointedly, feeling herself blush at the recitation of physical details, before pulling herself together to conclude like the articulate teacher she was.

“What was your first reaction?” the detective asked.

“That one of her mother’s boyfriends…” Mariah stopped herself and felt heat in her cheeks.

The principal smiled ruefully. “The same thought occurred to me.”

“Is it possible she’s accusing Mr. Tanner as a smokescreen?”

When no one else responded, Mariah did. “Anything is possible.”

He continued gently, relentlessly. “Tell me what you know of her home life.”

Mariah did, watching from the corner of her eyes as he took detailed notes.

“Do you know Gerald Tanner well?”

Surprised and made uneasy by the question, Mariah was unwary enough to look at him. Their eyes met briefly, and she turned her head quickly.

“Well, um, no,” she fumbled. “He’s new this year…”

“Aren’t you planning a project together?” Ed Lamarr asked.

“Yes.” Mariah explained. “We’ve never had any discussions I’d consider personal, however. I don’t even know if he’s married or has children.”

“Actually he’s single,” Noreen contributed. “No children.”

Mariah didn’t want to know that or anything else about her colleague. She wanted this never to have happened.

“What will you do?” she asked the principal.

“I’ve asked him to come to my office. I’ll have to tell him about the accusation, of course. Tracy has gone to the hospital for an exam, and, um…”

Mariah nodded.

“Unless DNA is recovered, however, the exam won’t be conclusive. Well,” she corrected herself, “unless she’s never had sexual intercourse at all and the entire story is fabricated.

“Detective McLean will be conducting an investigation. I fear parents will demand that Mr. Tanner be suspended during the course of it. I’m undecided about that yet. Students have been known to make frivolous accusations. I don’t want to overreact.”

“Tracy’s grades are suffering in my class,” Mariah said. “She may be flunking his.”

“And yet, the fact that she is a poor student can have no bearing on our response to her allegation,” Noreen Patterson pointed out. “In fact, I suspect her failing grade explains why she responded to his…um, blackmail. He wouldn’t have had the same leverage with a better student.”

Mariah nodded. “Yes. I understand. It’s just that…”

“That?” the principal prompted.

“It occurred to me today while we were talking that she and I were alone in a classroom with the door shut. She could have claimed I’d said or done anything. How will you ever know the truth?”

The police officer stirred. “I doubt a thirteen-year-old girl who is a poor student has the sophistication to have built an airtight case. She’ll have talked to friends, for example, possibly bragging about how she was going to get rid of her computer teacher and make everybody feel sorry for her. Clearly she didn’t understand that her accusation would go outside the school. In the stress of having to repeat her story to me, other officers, somebody from Child Protective Services, even a D.A., she’ll likely slip up.”

“If she’s not telling the truth,” Mariah felt compelled to say, surprised at her sharpness.

He lifted a brow. “Exactly.”

She started at a rap on the glass inset in the door.

Galvanized, Mariah leaped to her feet. She said hastily, “I know you’ll want to talk to Gerald without me here. Unless you need anything else, I’ll be going home now.”

Detective McLean’s light eyes flicked from her face to the man who stood behind her.

“Actually, Mariah, I was hoping you could stay.” Noreen cleared her throat. “I’d like your thoughts.”

Thoughts?

She was backpedaling, careful to avoid looking at the police officer who remained by the window, as though he imagined he could ever be unobtrusive.

“I don’t know what else I can add.” Please don’t make me do this, she begged the principal with her eyes. You don’t know what you’re asking.

But he did. And, damn him, remained silent.

Noreen Patterson said firmly, “I’d appreciate it if you would stay.”

Mariah stood for a moment, so near rebellion that she trembled. Nostrils flaring, she stared at Detective McLean, knowing what was coming, hating it and him. He could have rescued her, could have said in that quiet voice, “I don’t think we need Ms. Stavig to be here.”

But he said nothing of the kind, and after an intense inner battle Mariah went back to her seat and waited, head bowed.

Noreen Patterson raised her voice. “Come in.”

“You wanted to see me?” Gerald Tanner looked wary.

The principal asked him to take a seat. The remaining one was right beside Mariah. She stared down at her hands.

“Mr. Tanner, one of your students has accused you of trading a passing grade for sex.”

His body jerked, as though he’d been struck by a bullet. “What?”

Sounding calm, nonjudgmental, Noreen Patterson summarized Tracy’s story.

“Who is the student?” he asked, strain making his voice shake.

“Tracy Mitchell.”

“God.” He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ve had conferences with her—I know she can do the work if only she’d try—but I’ve never…” He drew a breath that was painful to hear.

Unable to prevent herself, Mariah turned her head to see the bewilderment and shock on his face.

“You don’t seriously think I…” He looked from face to face and saw that they did. “Oh my God. This can’t be happening!”

“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Tanner.” Detective McLean spoke quietly. “Any accusation of this magnitude has to be taken seriously.”

“But she’s thirteen years old! A…a child!” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I have never been interested, would never be interested…”

They began to ask questions, and Mariah watched his horrified disintegration.

“You’re going to take her word over mine?” He shoved his chair back. His frenzied gaze encountered Mariah. “Why is she here?”

Mariah opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“The student chose to confide in Ms. Stavig,” the principal said coolly. “Since she’s involved this deeply, I asked her to stay.”

He looked at her with deep hurt. “You couldn’t have come to me?”

“I…” Her voice stuck, unstuck. “You know I have to…”

“Set up an ambush?” He shot out of the chair as if he couldn’t bear to be so close to her.

“Ms. Stavig did nothing but what she is required by law to do, and you know it,” Mrs. Patterson said sharply.

“This is unbelievable!” He paced, his agitation making his gait jerky and his bony limbs look like sticks strung together. “Do I even get a chance to answer these charges? Does anybody care if I’m innocent?”

“Of course we care…”

He swung to face Detective McLean. “Are you going to arrest me?” he shouted. He stuck out his arms. “Here! Handcuff me now. Let’s get it over with. Apparently we can skip the trial, too. The judge and jury are right here!”

He had passed the point of listening to reason, and Mariah couldn’t blame him. They had ambushed him, and she understood his terror as the snares whipped shut on his ankles.

No matter the outcome, his life would never be the same again. Rumors would start, whispers would follow him. Even his best friends would feel doubt. Everyone would wonder: Did he do it? Even if Tracy Mitchell eventually recanted her story the doubts wouldn’t be completely erased. Maybe she was afraid of him; maybe that’s why she says it never happened. Maybe…

“I’m sorry,” Mariah whispered.

The only one who seemed to hear her was Detective McLean, whose mask slipped briefly to reveal a flash of—what? Compassion? Some inner anguish?

Or was it pity, because twice she had been fooled by monsters who walked as men?

The next moment he looked back at Gerald Tanner and said in that quiet, steadying voice, “Mr. Tanner, I have every intention of hearing your side. Teenagers do make up stories like this. You will not be railroaded, I promise.”

Mariah stood up and left, not caring whether the principal would be annoyed.

God help her, she would never look at Gerald Tanner again without hearing the whisper of doubt.

Already those doubts murmured in her ear as she made her way blindly through the office and out the double doors to the parking lot.

But the ones that were not content to murmur, that clawed deep, had nothing to do with a high school computer teacher. Always, always, they had to do with Simon, the man she had loved.

If he had done what they said—of course he hadn’t, but if he had—would he one day touch Zofie in a way no father should?

She got into her car, locked the door and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She tasted the salt of her own tears.

“What else could I do?” she asked aloud, and didn’t even know if she was talking about Simon or Gerald Tanner.

CHAPTER TWO

CONNOR TOOK A LONG SWALLOW of beer and announced, “I’m starting to hate my job.”

He and his brothers, policemen all, had gathered for their traditional weekly dinner and couple of beers at John’s. John was the only one of them with children and a wife, which meant the sofa coordinated with the leather chair and the Persian rug, the kitchen table wasn’t covered with old pizza boxes and take-out Chinese cartons, and instead of an overflowing hamper, the bathroom had clean, matching towels and, tonight, even flowers in a stoneware vase.

Connor was beginning to think a life of domestic happiness didn’t look so bad. Not that he had any prospects for marriage, but…hell, he could buy a house. A man didn’t need a wife for that.

Right now, the three were slouched in the living room. Natalie, John’s wife, had shooed them out of the kitchen and insisted that she and their mother would clean up. The kids were doing homework upstairs. Whether Mom was here or not, somehow Natalie always managed to give the brothers time to talk. After finishing in the kitchen, Mom usually left, while Natalie was likely to pop in long enough to kiss their cheeks and wish them good-night, exchange a slow, deep look with her new husband, and disappear upstairs to read in bed. And wait for John, who would start getting antsy in an hour or so. Who could blame him, with a luscious woman like Natalie waiting?

Even the idea of a wife wasn’t sounding so bad to Connor. Must be a symptom of age, he figured; his thirtieth birthday had come and gone.

His comment about his job still hung in the air when his mother appeared in the doorway. Voice sharp, she said, “Don’t say things you don’t mean. You sound like a teenager, making too much of some little complaint.”

Surprised by her agitation, Connor raised his brow. “How do you know it’s a little complaint?”

In the act of snatching up a coffee mug left on the end table, she demanded, “Well, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Just a case I was going to tell Hugh and John about.”

“Hardly your ‘job,’ then,” she chided him. A regal, fine-boned woman, Ivy McLean departed for the kitchen.

After a moment of silence during which none of the brothers moved, Connor cleared his throat.

“What’s with Mom?”

John gave him a look. “You know how important she thinks our work is. You aren’t supposed to bitch. You don’t have a job,” he said dryly. “You have a calling.”

“We’re making the streets safe, et cetera, et cetera,” Hugh added.

Connor grunted. As a kid, he hadn’t been conscious of pressure from Mom to become a cop, the way John claimed to. He’d become one because his big brother had. There was no question, however, that Mom was proud of the fact all three sons were in law enforcement. And maybe she had no understanding of the need to grumble. A stoic herself, she had raised her three sons alone with grit and without whining.

John gave himself a shake. “Back to your job. Why are you starting to hate it?”

Hugh, the youngest and best-looking of the three McLean brothers, slumped lower in his chair. “It’s that fuzzy, did-he-or-didn’t-he crap,” he announced. “Here’s free advice—go back on patrol. Do some real police work.”

John grabbed an empty and tossed it, connecting with Hugh’s chest. “You don’t think raping a thirteen-year-old is a crime? Arresting a rapist isn’t real police work?”

Unoffended, Hugh crumpled the can in one hand. “I listen to Connor. These cases aren’t clear-cut. This one with the schoolkid isn’t a rape, it’s a…jeez, I don’t know.” He gestured vaguely.

“A knife at the throat isn’t the only kind of force,” Connor said. “The power an adult—and at that a teacher, a figure of authority—wields over a kid is considerable.”

“I know that. I’m not excusing it. I’m just saying, you may never know who’s lying. Don’t you ever hunger for a good, old-fashioned shooting at a convenience store?”

Connor grunted. “Maybe.”

“Maybe” wasn’t the real answer; “no” was. Sometimes he wasn’t sure he was cut out to be a cop at all. Going back into uniform didn’t appeal, and he wasn’t sure investigating murders or arson or bank robberies as a Major Crimes Unit detective like John would make his view of the world any sunnier.

He was a cop, he was good at his job, and what else would he do? Until recently he’d never questioned any of the above, but lately he had felt restless. No, worse than that: he saw himself for the home wrecker he was.

Today, he’d seen it in Mariah Stavig’s eyes. She hated him for what he had done to her family. And the little girl Simon Stavig had supposedly molested? She was probably still in counseling. She’d probably have hang-ups her entire life, and he, Detective Connor McLean, had done jack for her.

John got the conversation back on the track. “Something getting to you about this case?”

Connor rolled his beer can between his palms. “Just a weird coincidence.”

They waited.

He told them about Mariah Stavig, the teacher the girl had chosen to confide in, and how he had investigated her husband three years before.

“Her face was familiar so I looked up the file.” He continued his story. “The case was ugly. A three-year-old girl who said Simon Stavig molested her, but without corroborating evidence we were never able to arrest him.”

John studied him thoughtfully. “But you think he did it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Connor shook his head in disgust. “He was one of those guys who got seriously pissed because we’d come knocking on his door. He wasn’t shocked, the way you’d expect. I mean, wouldn’t you be stunned if you were accused by some friend of Maddie’s? Nah, this guy wasn’t surprised. He was angry that we’d take the word of a kid that age.”

John grunted. “This Mariah Stavig is still married to him?”

“I don’t know. Now, she was shocked. I can still see her standing there waiting for her husband to say, ‘I didn’t do it.’ Getting more anxious by the minute when he didn’t. Big eyes, you know.” They were a mixture of green and brown that might make a poetic man think of the mossy floor of the rain forest. Not that he was poetic. “She was scared and puzzled. Even she recognized that his reaction wasn’t right.”

“And now she had to call you to investigate some other guy.”

“Yup.” Another swallow of beer seemed appropriate. Tonight he almost regretted that he wasn’t really a drinking man; the two or three beers that were his limit didn’t do much to drown the mocking voice that had lately been asking what good he was to the world. Irritably muting it, Connor said, “And she was damned upset when she saw that the luck of the draw had brought me.”

“She blames you.”

Connor shrugged. “Probably.”

They all sat in silence for a moment. The syndrome was familiar to them all. The battered wife called the cops, then was angry at the one who responded for making her husband madder, for jailing him, for letting the neighbors see the trouble behind the facade of her happy home. The storekeeper didn’t blame the punks who robbed him, he blamed the cops who offered inadequate protection, who couldn’t make an arrest. People called the police reluctantly, then saw the officers who responded not as saviors but as symbols of whatever bad thing had happened.

“You going to beg off the case?” Hugh asked.

Connor frowned. He’d considered it. He couldn’t exactly be said to have a conflict of interest, but certainly this investigation would be hindered by Mariah Stavig’s hostility. On the other hand, Port Dare was small enough that he often encountered people he knew. The sexual crimes unit was all of two officers strong. Penny Kincaid had plenty to do without taking on a call that had been his by rotation.

Besides, he was already hooked. He wanted to find out whether Tracy Mitchell was lying and why. And he wondered what had happened to Mariah Stavig in the three years since the case against her husband had been dropped. Despite her bewilderment at Stavig’s strange reaction to the investigation, had she maintained faith in her husband? Did she trust him with their pretty little girl? Or had she left the son of a bitch, and now had her struggles as a single mom to blame as well on the cop and social worker who’d come a’ knocking with an unprovable accusation?

“Nah,” he said, with another shrug that expressed more indifference than he felt. “She called us. She’ll cooperate.”

Hugh was apparently satisfied. He laid his head back and gazed dreamily at a wall of books.

Big brother John, however, studied Connor with slightly narrowed eyes. “Reluctant cooperation from her is going to eat at you, isn’t it?”

Connor pretended surprise and ignorance. “Why would it bother me?”

“Could be I’m wrong.” John’s gaze stayed unnervingly steady. “But I don’t think so.”

Connor swore. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He, too, crushed his beer can in his hand, getting more profane when a jagged edge bit into his palm.

“Sorry.” John didn’t sound repentant. He did, however, switch his gaze to his youngest brother. “So, what’s with this blonde you’re seeing?”

Nothing was with her, Connor could have told him. She’d go the way of all the other petite blondes their baby brother dated. Hearth and home did not yet interest him.

Truthfully Connor had a hard time imagining Hugh ever letting himself be vulnerable enough to experience anything approaching true love. Even with his brothers, he backed off from expressing emotion or admitting weakness. John thought Hugh had been hit hardest by their father’s murder; Connor privately thought the opposite, that Hugh had been young enough to be oblivious to much of their mother’s agony and to what he himself had lost.

Either way, Hugh did more than avoid commitment; he made sure the issue never had a chance to arise. He’d been damn near raised by his big brothers. Hell, maybe he wasn’t capable of softer emotions. A man was what he’d learned to be. Honor mattered to Hugh. Duty. Family. Probably friendship. But tenderness and romantic love? Nah.

Right now, Connor was just grateful for the change of subject. John was too perceptive.

Yeah, Mariah Stavig’s shock and hatred had gotten to Connor today. Probably she and her reaction to him were symbolic; he’d walked into too many living rooms to spread distrust, bewilderment, even fear, then walked away without a backward glance, much less resolution.

Mariah Stavig was the face that represented all the others who had been left to pick up the pieces after he shrugged and said, “I don’t have enough evidence to take to the prosecutor.”

Connor wanted to know what he had done to her life, and he wanted her forgiveness. It was ridiculously important to Connor that he somehow make her understand that he’d only been doing his job.

Suddenly the face his memory flashed like a slide in a projector wasn’t Mariah Stavig’s. The hatred and terror that blazed at him weren’t hers, but rather a teenage girl’s.

How could you do this to me? I trusted you, the girl in his memory had cried.

He could still hear his own stumbling response. I thought it was the right thing to do.

There it was in a nutshell, his credo: Do the right thing. Black and white. Right in this column, wrong in that. He understood the agonized choices and tragedy that lay between, but had never let those deter him from pursuing justice.

Trouble was, what did a man do when he began to wonder whether the credo he lived by was a simplistic piece of crap?

Making a sound, Connor got to his feet. “I’ll see you, okay?”

John stood, too, a frown gathering on his brow. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” To convince his brothers, Connor set up for a shot, released the empty beer can and crowed when it dropped with a clank into the brown paper bag by John’s chair. With their good-nights following him, he paused only long enough to stick his head in the kitchen, thank Natalie for dinner and say good-night to her and his mother before heading out to his car.

He was thirty years old. Almost thirty-one. Hell of a time to discover he had spent most of his adult life trying to vindicate a decision he’d made when he was seventeen.

I trusted you.

Connor revved the engine as he started his car. Swearing under his breath, he backed out of the driveway, then drove away just under the speed limit. He knew better than to think he could outrun a ghost.

MARIAH WAS UNSURPRISED to find a pink message slip in her mail cubby in the school office.

Please call Detective McLean.

Did he remember her? She’d bet on it. Did he feel any guilt about making accusations he could never prove, about leaving her family to live with doubt and whispers and questions? Or did he believe complacently that he held no blame for the disruption left in his wake?

She stared with burning eyes for another moment at his name, then crumpled the slip in her fist. It would be a cold day in hell before she would ever call him.

On a shuddering breath, she turned blindly and left the office, hoping nobody had noticed her distress. She was glad she’d come early, so she had half an hour to compose herself before her first class poured into her room.

The pink slip still crumpled in her fist, Mariah exchanged greetings with other teachers and aides as she made her way through the halls. Port Dare Middle School was badly in need of being bulldozed and replaced. Timber played a big role in the local economy, however, which meant luxuries like new schools were no more than dreams these days. This building was the original high school, now housed in an equally inadequate campus built in the fifties. Until a new industry could be coaxed to this isolated small city to replace the dying business of logging the Olympic rain forest, Port Dare School District would have a tough time passing bond issues. In the meantime, middle-schoolers—and their teachers—coped with a four-story Depression-era building with wonderful murals painted by WPA workers, decrepit bathrooms and insufficient classroom and locker space.

Mariah’s room was on the fourth floor, which kept her in shape. The English teachers didn’t complain, because they stayed the warmest in winter when the inadequate heat the ancient furnace pumped out all rose to their floor, making it comfortable while the math classrooms in the basement were icy.

A student, then a senior at the high school, had come back several years before to paint a minimural of Shakespeare surrounded by actors costuming themselves on the wall outside her classroom. Today she paused, her key in the classroom door, and stared at the lovingly created mural.

Her students liked her. Remembered her. Trusted her.

Tracy Mitchell had trusted her. Had come to her for help.

How could she let one of her students down because her own scars weren’t fully healed?

She turned the key and went into the classroom, for once locking the door behind her. Empty or full, this room was a refuge. Bright posters and glorious words decorated the walls. Old-fashioned desks formed ragged rows. Mariah absently traced with her fingers one of the long-ago carved notes that scarred them: JB+RS. Morning sunlight streamed in the wall of windows. She even loved the old blackboard and the smell of chalk and the uneasy squeak of it writing on the dusty surface.

Her meandering course between desks brought her to the one where Tracy Mitchell sat from 10:10 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. every day. Sometimes she whispered with friends or used her superdeluxe calculator to write notes for them to read. But once in a while, she actually heard the magic in words, saw the wonderful, subtle hues they conjured, and she would sit up straight and listen with her head cocked to one side, or she would read her part in a play with vivacity and passion if not great skill.

Mariah stood, head bent, looking at the desk. Tracy had a spark. She had promise she would likely never fulfill, given her family background and her tight skirts and her sidelong glances at boys. But it was there, and teachers were sometimes wrong about who would succeed or fail. She did not deserve to be blackmailed, to have her budding sexuality exploited, to have to feel that this, of all things, was her fault.

With another sigh, Mariah went to her desk and dug in her tote for her cell phone. Apparently, despite the sunlight, warm for October, it was really a cold day. A very, very cold day.

Somewhere.

She picked the wadded-up message from the otherwise empty waste can, smoothed it out on the desk and dialed the number.

“Detective McLean.”

“This is Mariah Stavig. You asked me to call.”

His voice was calm, easy, deep, and agonizingly familiar. “I wondered when you have a break today so that we could talk.”

“I take lunch just after eleven. Or I have a planning period toward the end of the school day.”

“Eleven?”

“School starts at 7:20.” Why did he think she was returning his call so early?

He made a heartfelt comment on the hour, with which she privately agreed; students would learn better with another hour of sleep. But Mariah said nothing except, “You must start work early, too.”

“Actually I just got up.” He yawned as if to punctuate his admission. “This is my cell phone number.”

“Oh.” Oh, dear, was more like it. Obviously he wasn’t at the moment wearing one of those well-cut suits he favored. More likely, pajama bottoms sagged low on his hips, if he slept in anything at all. An image of Connor McLean bare-chested tried to form in her mind, but she refused to let it.

“Eleven, then,” he said. “Where do I find you?”

She hesitated for the first time, hating the idea of him in here. But the teacher’s lounge was obviously out, late October days, however sunny, were too chilly to sit outside, and short of borrowing another teacher’s classroom—and how would she explain that?—Mariah couldn’t think of another place as private as this.

“I’m on the top floor of the A building. Room 411.”

“Can I bring you a take-out lunch?”

Annoyed at his thoughtfulness, she was glad to be able to say, “Thank you, but I packed one this morning.”

“See you then.”

She pressed End on her phone and stashed it again in her tote. Her heart was drumming. Ridiculous.

The door to the classroom rattled, and she glanced up to see a couple of blurred faces in the mottled glass. Startled, she saw that the clock had reached seven-fifteen without her noticing.

She let in the eager beavers. Probably eager not for her brilliant instruction, but for the chance to slump into their seats and achieve a near-doze for a precious few minutes before she demanded their attention. Most did, however, drop last night’s assignment into her in-box as they passed her desk.

This ninth-grade crowd was reading Romeo and Juliet. She was big on Shakespeare. She’d let them watch the updated movie version last week, the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio and guns and swimming pools, which she personally detested as much for what it had left out as for the interpretation. But she’d found it effective with the kids, helping them to understand that the words were timeless. Now she was making them read the original, not cut to suit the constraints of moviemaking budgets and filmgoers’ limited attention spans.

Tracy wasn’t in her seat for Beginning Drama. Was she too scared or embarrassed to come to school now that the cat was out of the bag? Or had her mom made her stay home? The principal might even have suggested she take a day or two while the police investigated.

The class passed with Tracy’s empty desk nagging at Mariah. The bell had rung and students were making their way into the hall traffic when Detective McLean’s head appeared above theirs. Under other circumstances Mariah might have been amused as he tried to force his way upstream in a hall so packed, kids shuffled along in file with their backpacks protectively clutched tight. Stopping to visit with friends was impossible, the equivalent of an accident during rush hour on a Seattle freeway.

His progress would have been even slower on one of the lower floors. This was the bottom of the bottle, so to speak, tipped up to empty. Students were fleeing it for the commons or the covered outdoor areas where they could hang out for the lunch hour.

“God Almighty,” the detective muttered when he finally stepped into her room. “What if there was a fire?”

“That,” Mariah said, “is our worst fear. There is a fire escape on each end of the building, which would help, but since going down that would be single file, evacuating all four floors would still take way too long.”

He looked back at the stragglers in the now-emptying hall and frowned. “The fire inspectors have been here between classes?”

“What are they going to do? Condemn the building? Where would we go?”

He growled something and closed the door on the hubbub. Mariah fought an instinctive desire to step back. Connor McLean was a very large man, easily six-two or six-three, with bulky shoulders to match. While she watched, he strolled around her classroom reading quotations, scrutinizing photos, smoothing a big hand over a desktop just as she’d done earlier.

“Place hasn’t changed at all.”

She raised her brows. “Since?”

“I went here. Smells the same, even.”

“I like the smell.” She was sorry immediately that she’d let herself get personal.

He inhaled. “Yeah. Creates instant memories, doesn’t it?”

Yes. Yes, that was exactly it. Floor polish and books and chalk dust could release a kaleidoscope of memories of herself behind one of those student desks. The rustle of a note being passed, the wonder of the passage a teacher read with deep feeling, the stumbling recitation of a report before bored classmates, the glow of seeing a huge red A—good work!—on the top of her paper. Days and weeks and years spent in classrooms like this, the time happy enough that she had chosen teaching as a career. No wonder she loved the smell of school.

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I suppose it does.”

He stood before the window for a moment, looking out. “This town doesn’t change.”

“The strip malls and Target and Home Depot weren’t here when you went to Port Dare Middle School.”

He gave himself a shake, as though ridding himself of memories she wasn’t so sure were good. “No, or the developments in the outskirts. But the view from here hasn’t changed an iota.”

“Unless we tear down all the Victorian houses or allow new development on the waterfront, it never will.”

Detective McLean turned abruptly, his gaze focusing intensely on her. “You didn’t grow up in Port Dare, did you?”

She wasn’t sure what business it was of his, or why he cared, but answering seemed harmless. “No. I’m actually from California. Sacramento. I came to college up here, met my husband and stayed.”

“Where did you go?”

Was he going to check her college transcripts? “Gonzaga, in Spokane. Then Washington State University for a masters degree.”

He made an interested sound as he strolled to the front of the room. “Why Port Dare?”

She looked at him steadily. “Simon found work here.”

“You’re still married?” He sounded casual, as if he didn’t care. And why should he?

“No.” Acid corroded her voice and her heart. “You did manage to destroy my marriage. Is that what you wanted to know?”

A muscle jumped in his cheek, but he didn’t look away. “I hoped you were divorced. For your little girl’s sake.”

Mariah tasted bile. “Now Zofie gets to spend weekends with her daddy. Without Mommy around at all.”

A frown gathered his brow. “He gets unsupervised visitation?”

“Of course he does!” She stared at him with dislike. “You never even arrested Simon. You never proved a thing.”

“It’s almost impossible when the victim is a child that young.”

She clutched the edge of the desk for support, listened to her voice shake. “Then what’s the good of making accusations you can never substantiate? If there is no sperm, no witnesses, why start something you can’t finish?”

His mouth twisted. “How can we not? He might have given something away. You might have been able to prove your husband was never alone with the child and her identification of him was wrong. You and he had a right to know he had been named. Would you really have wanted to go on with your marriage in ignorance? Maybe have had more children with him?”

The sound that came from her was nearly a sob. “I don’t know! How can I even remember life before you came and spread doubts like…like salt in a field?” Mariah drew a shuddering breath and fought for composure. “I hate what you did to Simon and me and Zofie. I had to say that once. Now let’s do what you came for and not talk about the past again.”

“It’s my job.” Did he sound hoarse?

“We all choose how we spend our lives.” She, in turn, was cold, unforgiving.

“Someone has to stop child molesters and rapists.”

“Just know that you do bad along with the good.”

He gestured toward the rows of empty desks and said scathingly, “Don’t you ever let down a student? Maybe not connect, because you don’t want to change how you present your material? Could it be you’re so sure everyone should appreciate Shakespeare, you ignore those kids who can’t read well enough. Or, hell, maybe you don’t listen, because you’re too busy or you don’t like that student anyway?” He stalked toward her, predator toward prey. “Fail her on a test, when she needed you to understand that her mom walked out last week and she’s cleaning house and doing the laundry and putting dinner on the table and taking care of her little brothers and crying when she should be sleeping? Maybe just failed to reach a kid, period, no matter how hard you tried? You’ve never done any of that?”

She winced inside. What teacher didn’t have regrets? Who was perfect? But she hadn’t chosen a profession where she destroyed more often than she built.

Chin high, face frozen, she asked, “Are you admitting that you ‘failed’ my family?”

That betraying muscle beneath his eye jerked, but he said quietly, “If I failed anyone, it was Lily Thalberg.”

Now Mariah did flinch. Sometimes she almost forgot Zofie’s small playmate, the child who had started so much when she whispered, “Zofie’s daddy.”

“You believed her.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever question her identification of my husband? I mean, seriously question it?”

“Did I consider that she might be transferring the terror from her own daddy to someone else’s? Is that what you’re asking?”

“I…” She swallowed. “Yes. Or from her grand-daddy, or…”

“Or someone. Anyone but your husband.”

Her mouth worked. Put that way, she sounded childish. Blame anyone but Simon. “He didn’t…he couldn’t…”

Harshly, Detective McLean said, “And yet, you left him.”

“Yes.” Now she froze inside as well as out. “To my eternal shame.”

He let out a ragged breath. “Ms. Stavig…”

“No.” She straightened behind the desk. “It is far, far too late for recriminations.” Not for guilt. Never for guilt. “I shouldn’t have started this. I’m going to ask you to leave if this is what you came to talk about.”

He moved his shoulders as though to ease tension. “You know it isn’t.”

“Then tell me what you need to know.”

“So you can ask me to leave?”

“So that my students don’t still find you here when they arrive for class in—” she glanced at the clock “—twenty-five minutes.”

His gaze followed hers to the clock and he muttered an incredulous oath. “That’s not long enough.”

Although he would loom over her, Mariah pulled out her chair behind the large teacher’s desk and sat. “I suggest you take advantage of that time,” she said crisply.

Frustration and something else showed in his gray eyes. “All right,” he said abruptly. His tone took on an edge, a sneer. “Here’s a question, Ms. Stavig. Why do you think, when Tracy Mitchell decided to tell her story, she chose you of all teachers to hear it?”

CHAPTER THREE

MARIAH STAVIG’S FACE was gently rounded, far from classically beautiful. She lacked the dramatic cheekbones or lush mouth that were currently in vogue. Her extraordinary eyes, gold and brown with flecks of green, framed by thick dark lashes, more than compensated, in Connor’s opinion. She had delicate features, pale, creamy skin and thick, dark hair worn in a loose knot on her nape.

Her face of all others had haunted him for years.

Now she stared at him with the intense dislike he had seen in his dreams. “Precisely what does that mean?” she asked sharply.

Still dogged with frustration and the bone-deep knowledge of wrongdoing, because he had played a part in destroying her marriage, Connor said, “It was a question. Nothing more. Why you?”

“My students trust me,” she said stiffly.

He half sat on a student desk in front of hers, letting one leg swing. “Tracy Mitchell is a seventh-grader. Right? You’ve had her now for…what?” He pretended to think. “Seven, eight weeks? I gather she’s not a top-notch student. How many students come through here a day? Be honest. How well can you even know the girl in that length of time?”

“Not as well as I do some of my eighth-and ninth-graders, of course. But Tracy is…noticeable. She dresses and acts older than her age. She’s smart but not a good student. She tends to talk back, speak out of turn, exchange loud comments with friends at inopportune moments. But sometimes there’s also something a little…sad about her. Do I know her well?” Ms. Stavig tilted her head. “Not yet. Do I know why she’s the way she is? No, but I can guess, having talked to her mother several times.”

“Already?” He hoped he didn’t sound as surprised as he was. “She a real troublemaker?”

“No. Simply an underachiever. I find it best to ride herd on kids from the beginning.” Her mouth firmed. “Now tell me what you meant to imply. What possible bearing does Tracy’s choice of me as the teacher to tell have on anything?”

“I thought maybe rumor told her you had escaped marriage to a sexual molester. That she assumed you would be sympathetic and not question her motivations or the…details of her story.”

Emotions flashed across Mariah Stavig’s expressive face before she narrowed her eyes. “But, you see, most people at school didn’t know Simon. I have no reason whatsoever to think Tracy Mitchell was aware that my ex-husband was accused of sexual molestation. And if she did know, she would also know that I supported him when he said he was innocent.”

“Did you?”

She ignored the question, although anger flared in her eyes.

“In fact, she would know that I think this kind of accusation rather resembles a witch hunt. Too often, it’s all emotion and little truth. If she were smart, she would have chosen another teacher. When I realized what she wanted to talk to me about, I almost asked her to do so.”

“And yet,” he mused, “you did listen and you went to your principal.”

Her face became expressionless. “I am legally obligated to report Tracy’s story.”

“If you weren’t?” He leaned forward. “Would you have told her to forget it? Maybe suggested she just ask to change classes? Chalk up the sex to experience? How would you have handled it, Ms. Stavig?”

She bent her head as if in rapt contemplation of her hands, flattened on her desk blotter. “Tracy’s situation is…different.” She spoke very quietly. “Of course I would have taken action.”

He didn’t say, Just as I had to take action. He didn’t have to. She looked up, shame staining her cheeks.

“I do realize that you had to do your job.” Now her hands knotted on the desk before she seemed to notice and moved them to her lap, out of sight. Her voice was low, halting. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It’s not your fault Lily accused Simon or that you couldn’t prove either his guilt or innocence. I do know that.”

Now he felt like crud. This whole interview had been about him. He’d desperately wanted her to say just this, and manipulated her until she did. If he had never seen Mariah Stavig before, he would have approached her very differently.

“No,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry. You have every reason to harbor…bitterness toward me. Probably I should have bowed out of this investigation because I knew that. Instead I’ve been making little jabs, just to see a reaction.”

She stared, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Why?” she whispered finally.

Connor closed his eyes for a moment. “Because I couldn’t take the way you looked at me yesterday. As if I were another kind of monster.”

“Why did you care?”

He could barely make himself meet her gaze. “Because I do have a conscience, believe it or not. I knew what I’d done to you, the decisions I’d left you to make. Every day I leave people to make those decisions. You were…symbolic, I suppose.”

“You wanted me to say it wasn’t your fault.”

His grunt was meant to be a laugh. “Yes. How small we can be.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “We can be, can’t we? My decision to leave Simon was mine alone. But I wanted to blame somebody so I didn’t have to take responsibility. The funny part is, I can hardly remember the social worker from CPS.” She made a ragged sound. “Not even her name. That is funny. I chose you to hate.”

Brows together, Connor studied her in genuine perplexity. “Why?”

Her gaze skittered from his. “I don’t know. I didn’t even realize…” Her breath escaped. “No, I do know. You dominated. Compared to you, she was a shadow. And then there was the way you said it. ‘Even in a whisper, Zofie’s daddy, was clear as a bell.’ You see, I remember that, word for word.”

He swore.

Mariah gave a crooked, sad smile. “That’s why I hated you. Because you were Lily’s voice.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, inadequately.

“No. You did what you had to do.” Visibly composing herself, she glanced at the clock. “My next period students will start arriving in just a few minutes. I’m afraid we’ve wasted our time.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We had to get past this.”

She gave him a brief, almost vague smile. Class dismissed. “I’m going to eat my lunch, very quickly, if you don’t mind.”

“No. Listen. Can I come back later? After your last class, maybe? Or do you have to pick up Zofie right away?”

Pulling a sandwich out of her brown paper bag, Mariah shook her head. “I do have that planning period, remember.”

“Oh, right. One o’clock?”

She agreed.

He stood. “I’ll get out of here, then, so I don’t start whispers.”

Mariah looked surprised and as innocent as he suspected at heart she was. “Nobody is talking about Tracy yet.”

What he’d meant was that they might whisper about her. He didn’t say so. “Good. I want to get to her friends before she can. Her mother promised she wouldn’t let her call any of them until I say it’s okay. I’ll do some interviews here at school, others tonight in the kids’ homes.”

Her brow creased. “I’m not sure I know who her best friends are. Her crowd, sure, but if she had a really close friend…”

“I’m sticking around school today to talk to some of her other teachers, too.”

“Oh. Of course.” She tried to smile. “Poor Gerald.”

“Maybe.” Connor hadn’t made up his mind yet.

He left, then, to hit up the next teacher on his list.

The consensus among the faculty, he found, was in agreement with Mariah’s brief sketch of the girl. “A smart mouth,” the math instructor said. All equivocated when asked about her academic potential. “She’s got the ability,” conceded the social studies teacher grudgingly. “If she’d ever pay attention.”

Several had also had meetings with her mother. They were guarded in their assessment, but having met Sandy Mitchell, Connor could read between the lines. She was apparently still married to the long-missing husband, which didn’t stop her from replacing him with a rotating succession of men. She claimed to want the best for her daughter, but she let Tracy baby-sit until the wee hours on school nights, wrote excuses for skipped classes and apparently paid more attention to her current boyfriend than she did to whether her daughter had missed assignments or flunked tests.

When asked how truthful they thought Tracy was, each and every teacher hesitated. But once again, there was general agreement. “Hard to say,” the social studies instructor said at last. “She’s darned good at making up excuses for late assignments. I bought a few of them before she tried one too many.”

Her art teacher was a standout. This was the one class where Tracy excelled. Even Connor could see real talent in the sketches Jennifer Lawson showed off. “Look at her clay project compared to the other kids’,” she said, leading him back to a worktable beside a kiln.

He studied the rows of squat pots, as yet unglazed, constructed with coils. Only one had character and unexpected grace; it was both taller and narrower than the others, the neck taking an intriguing curve. Connor indicated it, and Ms. Lawson nodded.

“She’s very focused in here. I don’t get the excuses from her I know the other teachers do.” She added simply, “Tracy Mitchell really has artistic ability. I hope she chooses to use it.”

Tracy’s mother had given permission for him to read her daughter’s school file, starting with a pre-kindergarten assessment—“bright and eager”—and ending with the sixth-grade report card, which consisted of Bs and Cs. There had been up years and down years, he discovered; teachers who had seen promise in the girl and worked hard to cultivate her enthusiasm and ability, and teachers who had disliked that “smart mouth” and early budding of sexuality.

Nobody particularly noted lying as a problem. Yeah, she probably made up excuses for undone homework, but what kid didn’t? Connor knew he had.

His one interview with the girl had left him undecided. Usually he had a gut feeling. Strangely, this time he didn’t. Sitting in the living room of the apartment where she lived with her mom, she had told her story in a disquietingly pat way. But then, Connor had reminded himself, this was the third time in one afternoon she’d been asked to tell it. Wouldn’t be surprising if it didn’t come out by rote after a while.

If she was lying, she was smart enough not to let any smugness or slyness seep through. He had detected some real anger at the teacher, but not the distress a girl raped at her age should feel. If she was already sexually active, the actual act might not have disturbed her as much as it would have your average thirteen-year-old. Even so, how much experience could she have? Shouldn’t she be traumatized?

But he wasn’t making assumptions too quickly. Sometimes the trauma was buried. It could take time to claw its way to the surface. Or, hell, maybe she’d seen her mother trading sex for favors over the years, so this swap, a grade for a quickie, had seemed normal to her, something a girl did.

Could she, at thirteen, not be traumatized by forced sex with a man three times her age?

Connor was more depressed by that possibility than by any of the others. Damn it, a thirteen-year-old was a kid. A little girl, who shouldn’t be seeing R-rated movies, far less be numbingly sophisticated about sex.

Anyway, assuming she was that sophisticated, why had she decided, after the fact, to tell her drama teacher what had happened? Because she was upset? Or because Gerald Tanner hadn’t kept his side of the deal? Say, he’d decided she should put out a few more times if she wanted that passing grade?

The bell rang. Knowing better this time than to try to force his way up three flights of stairs against the lemminglike plunge of the middle-schoolers toward their next classes, Connor waited outside in a covered area. Shoulder propped against a post, he watched thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds flirt, gossip with friends, struggle to open ancient metal lockers and act cool.

On the whole, they hadn’t changed since his day. Haircuts and clothing styles were a little different, but not the basic insecurity that was the hallmark of these young teenagers.

He didn’t see a girl hurrying by who would have been as calm as Tracy Mitchell, talking about the first time her computer teacher exposed himself to her.

The crowd was thinning out, the next bell about to ring. Connor shoved away from the post and through the double doors into the tall A building with its Carnegie-style granite foundation and broad front entrance steps. Stragglers on their way to class cast him startled looks. He was an alien in their midst, an adult who wasn’t a teacher or a known parent. He smiled and nodded when they met his eyes.

Tracy could be lying, all right. She wouldn’t be the first teenager who’d decided an allegation of sexual molestation was the way to bring down an adult she hated.

But Gerald Tanner was also the classic nerd who had probably been hunched over his computer when his contemporaries were developing social skills. Not to mention fashion sense. Even Connor, who didn’t give a damn about clothes, had shuddered at his polyester slacks, belted a little too tight and a little too high on his waist, and the short-sleeved white dress shirt and tie. Okay, Tanner didn’t have a plastic pocket protector, but the black-framed glasses made him slightly owl-eyed. Who wore a getup like that these days? Hadn’t he ever heard of contact lenses?

The point was, Gerald Tanner fit the profile of a guy who felt inadequate with women his own age. Here were all these teenagers, as awkward as he was with the opposite sex, the girls developing breasts, experimenting with makeup, learning to flirt and to flaunt what they had. What could be more natural than the realization that he was more powerful than they were? That he could fulfill his fantasies without having to bare himself, literally or figuratively, with a real woman?

Connor reached the top floor and paused briefly outside a classroom with its door ajar. The teacher was talking, but damned if any of the kids seemed to be paying attention. Some of them were studying, one girl was French-braiding a friend’s hair, a couple of guys were playing a handheld electronic game, while others drifted around the room. Connor shook his head in faint incredulity. In his day, you were in deep you-know-what if you were caught passing a note, never mind openly playing a hand of poker in the back.

The teacher raised her voice. “Everybody got that assignment on their calendar? Remember, the rough draft is due Tuesday.”

One or two students appeared to make notations in open binders.

Still shaking his head, Connor moved on.

What kind of teacher was Gerald Tanner? Did he wear any mantle of authority? Or did the kids see him as a computer geek, too?

Connor’s stride checked as it occurred to him that maybe times had changed. This was Microsoft country, after all, and Bill Gates was the Puget Sound area’s biggest celebrity. Hell, maybe jocks weren’t the only object of teenage girls’ lust these days. Maybe visions of the next computer billionaire danced in the heads of thirteen-year-old girls.

He’d have to ask Mariah.

Her door stood ajar, too. She sat behind her desk, papers spread across the surface, a red pen in her hand. Her concentration seemed complete. Connor wondered if she’d forgotten he was coming back.

But, although he didn’t make a sound, he was no sooner framed in the doorway than her head shot up. For a moment she stared at him with the wide-eyed look of a doe frozen in car headlights. Was she afraid of him?

But then she blinked, her face cleared, and he told himself he’d imagined the fear.

“Detective. I thought maybe you’d gotten lost.”

“Just avoiding the rush.”

“Smart.” She started stacking the assignments, her movements precise, the corners all squared. “What can I do for you?”

“Tell me what you know about Tanner.”

“Gerald?” Her hands stilled momentarily, then resumed their task. “Well…not very much, actually. As I said in Mrs. Patterson’s office, I didn’t even know whether he was married. We simply haven’t become that personal.”

Connor sat as he had that morning on a student desk in the first row. “Is he shy?”

“Um…” She considered. “No, not really. He’s friendly in the teacher’s lounge. He’s surprisingly funny.”

Okay, Connor thought, torpedo the stereotypes. Horn-rimmed glasses did not mean a man was humorless; skinny arms did not mean he was pathologically shy.

“We’ve sat together to eat lunch several times, especially since we’ve started a discussion on doing a joint project coupling writing skills with Internet research.”

“Have you seen him teach?”

She pursed her lips as she thought. Connor was annoyed to find himself fixated on the soft curve of her mouth. Scowling, he tore his gaze away.

“Only briefly. Generally, of course, he isn’t lecturing like I might do. The students work on computers, beginning ones on keyboarding skills, more advanced on computer animation or simple programming. So he tends to be wandering, looking over their shoulders, responding when they ask for help.” She shrugged. “That kind of thing.”

“Do they pay any more attention to him than the students down the hall—” Connor nodded toward the next classroom “—are to that young blonde?”

Mariah started to rise to her feet. “Is she having trouble?”

He waved her back. “If you mean, are they rioting, no. Are they hanging on her every word? No.” He told her about the activities he’d seen going on.

Sounding rueful, Mariah said, “Karen is a student teacher. She probably won’t be alone with the class for more than a few minutes. When Rich Sadow pops back in, the cards will vanish.”

“Ah. The substitute syndrome.”

“Exactly.”

“To get back to the point…” he prodded her.

“Gerald? He is new this year, remember. But I’d say the kids are pretty enthusiastic. He brought some very cool programs with him, I understand. Stuff that’s way beyond the school budget.”

Glancing around the classroom, Connor muttered, “Is there a budget?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No, now that you mention it. But, to get back to Gerald, he seems passionate about computers as tools, and that kind of enthusiasm almost always gets through to kids. Besides,” she added, “they like computers these days. They’re a lot cooler than books.”

“Does he always dress so…” He hesitated.

“Yes.” She frowned, as if annoyed at herself. Firming her mouth, Mariah said, “I don’t see what his choice of clothing has to do with your investigation.”

“Just trying to…create a picture. See the whole man, so to speak.”

“I honestly don’t know him very well.” Ms. Stavig sounded very businesslike this afternoon. “You’re going to have to look elsewhere for help with your portrait.”

Was she unable? Or unwilling? Connor couldn’t tell.

“All right,” he said agreeably. “On to Tracy. I took a look through her school record.”

Some of Mariah’s visible tension dissipated as she sighed. “It’s full of ten-inch-tall warnings, isn’t it? Here’s a girl who needs lots of attention, who is lacking positive reinforcement at home, who will get lost if you ignore her. And then what did half her teachers do but ignore her.”

“I noticed that,” he agreed. “She yo-yoed—is that a word?—from year to year. Her sixth-grade teacher downright disliked her, I’d say, reading between the lines.”

Mariah nodded. “Roberta Madison has, um, a reputation for doing better with boy students. The good little girl who can sit quietly in class is okay with her, too. A Tracy Mitchell apparently offends her sense of what’s right.”

Connor shook his head. “Okay. Let’s go back through your talk with Tracy.”

He had Mariah repeat yet again every word as close to verbatim as she could recall. She had a good memory—perhaps photographic, as she would pause, gaze into space with those tiny puckers gathering her brow, and then give a line of dialogue or describe an expression with certainty.

As she thought, Mariah Stavig seemed unaware that he was watching her. He found his mind drifting more than it should from what she was saying.

Light didn’t play off her hair the way it normally would. The texture wasn’t sleek and smooth, but more…downy, he decided. Connor imagined her hair loose, a fluffy, soft cloud like cotton candy, but less sticky.

Or he’d contemplate her long, slender neck, bowed gracefully when she gazed thoughtfully at her desktop. He liked her carriage, too; her back was always elegantly straight, her shoulders squared, as though someone in her childhood had impressed on her the importance of posture.

Mariah Stavig was a fairly tall woman, five-seven or -eight, he guessed, but slender. She was small-breasted, but he wasn’t a man who liked more than a handful, anyway. Her fingers were long, her wrists narrow, her legs… Well, with her sitting behind the desk, he couldn’t see them, but once, three years ago, when he had come to her house she’d been wearing jeans and he’d seen despite himself how long her legs were. A man’s fantasy, those legs.

Mariah would have been too tall to be a ballerina, but that’s what she made him think of. Delicacy and strength mixed together, grace coupled with innocence and unconscious sexuality. That’s what he saw when he looked at her.

Which he had no damn business doing, he thought in exasperation. Connor moved restlessly and the desk creaked beneath him. Mariah, pulled from a momentary reverie, cast him a surprised glance with those catlike eyes, as if she’d forgotten he was still there.

“So you mentioned the possibility of her having to testify in court,” he said gruffly. “And Tracy didn’t like the idea.”

“No.” Mariah’s brow crinkled again. “It obviously had never occurred to her that her complaint might go that far. ‘Can’t he just be fired?’ she asked.”

Mariah went on to tell him what she’d explained to the girl. Connor tried hard to listen and get his mind above his belt.

What in hell was he thinking? Mariah Stavig hated him! He’d broken up her marriage. She despised what he did for a living and was cooperating now only reluctantly, because of a sense of duty and a knowledge of the law. He hated to imagine how she’d react if she knew how intensely he was aware of her.

“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll be talking to her again this evening. We’ll see whether she’s forgotten any of her story, or decides to embellish it a little.”

“Do you think she’s lying?” Mariah asked.

“At the moment, I have no idea,” Connor admitted.

“Has she, um, been examined by a doctor yet?” She sounded timid. “I know it’s probably not any of my business, but…”

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Yeah, she had the works. Looks like she did lose her virginity in the past few days. No bruising or obvious signs that force was used. It was probably too long ago to recover DNA, assuming a condom wasn’t used.”

“She was afraid of being pregnant.”

“She’s thirteen years old,” he said bluntly. “When I asked whether he might not have put on a condom before they had intercourse, she stared at me with complete blankness. In theory she knows what one is. Unless it was neon-green, I’m not convinced she’d have noticed if he put one on quickly, with his back to her.”

The distaste and even embarrassment on Mariah’s face might have been comical, under other circumstances. “She was probably trying not to…look.” She was being very careful to keep her gaze fixed on his face, too.

A fact that stirred him uncomfortably.

Frowning, he said, “Exactly.” Looking at the bank of windows, he made himself think about Tracy Mitchell, not the prim teacher behind the desk. “I need to start talking to kids. Hard to do without lighting a bonfire of rumors.”

“Impossible, I imagine.” Mariah looked worried. “If word gets out to parents, they may want Gerald suspended.”

“Unfair as that could be,” Connor acknowledged, “I’m hoping to find answers soon. Dragging this out will only make it uglier.”

“You’re mostly counting on her making a mistake, aren’t you?”

“Or confessing all to a friend who has more conscience than she has.”

Mariah didn’t like that. “What if it’s the truth?”

“Then my guess is we find that Tracy Mitchell isn’t his first victim.” Connor’s voice hardened. “I’ll be talking to his former colleagues, students, neighbors… You name it. If he’s a pedophile, he’ll have offended before. And found he liked it, which would explain his taking a job where he’d be working with all these young girls.”

“Oh.” Her eyes were huge and alarmed, making him wonder how feral his expression had become.

He rose to his feet. Time to get out of here and do his job, not hang around wishing for the impossible.

“If I have more questions, I’ll be in touch, Ms. Stavig. Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome.” She almost sounded as if she meant it. He felt her gaze on his back as he left her classroom.

He headed for the office, where the principal would have students called to talk to him one at a time, starting with Lucy Carlson, the girl who had suggested Tracy tell all to Mariah in the first place. He wasn’t halfway when it occurred to Connor that he’d committed more than foolishness in lusting after a woman who hated him.

He’d committed a sin. He had to have lusted after her three years ago, when she was married and he was investigating her husband. Why else would he have remembered her face so well? Noticed her gloriously long legs in snug jeans to the point where he could still close his eyes and picture her walking away from him?

He might not have acknowledged his attraction, but what if it had affected his judgment, his objectivity? Looking back, he knew it had increased his abhorrence and animosity for Simon Stavig. Question was, had his peripheral but powerful awareness of Stavig’s beautiful, puzzled, hurt wife changed the way he’d conducted the investigation? Had he done something differently, because he’d disliked the son of a bitch for wounding his wife?

He growled in his throat.

Did it matter what he’d felt for Simon Stavig, when lately he’d begun to wonder whether his reasons for going into this line of work in the first place had prejudiced him beyond hope? Hell, wasn’t he already afraid he’d become a sort of avenger rather than a dispassionate investigator?

What was one more small sin added to the weight on his conscience?

Shoving through the double doors to let himself outside, Connor told himself it was time he found another job.

One that let him sleep at night.

CHAPTER FOUR

ZIPPING THE SMALL pink-and-purple suitcase, Mariah called, “Zofie, Daddy will be here any minute. Are you ready?”

Her six-year-old daughter appeared in the bedroom doorway, her small face set in a pout. “Do I hafta go?”

Mariah felt a familiar mix of potent emotions. Petty exultation—she loves me best—swirled with fear—is she afraid of him?—and finally a parent’s familiar impatience.

“You know you do.” She hesitated and added carefully, “You can always talk to me about Daddy and anything he says or does when you’re with him. Sometimes there are reasons kids can’t visit their parents, but as long as you don’t have a special reason besides missing Renee’s birthday party, you do have to go. Your dad loves you and wants to spend time with you, too.”

Her daughter hung her head. “It’s not just Renee’s party. It’s…sometimes Daddy…”

Mariah’s heart jerked as if she’d touched a live wire. She fought to keep her voice calm. “Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes he’s boring.” The first-grader sighed heavily. “He doesn’t do stuff with me.”

Mariah sagged. Of course Zofie would have told her if Simon had touched her like that. She had to quit scaring herself by reading something into nothing!

“I can’t always do stuff with you, either,” she pointed out, her voice only slightly shaky.

“Yeah, but then I can go to a friend’s house or something,” Zofie argued. “Or I have my toys.”

“I know perfectly well you have toys at his house, too.” Mariah raised her eyebrows and nodded at the bag in the hall. “Not to mention everything you just packed.”

Zofie squirmed. “Yeah, but…” She flung herself at her mother and hugged her hard. “I like being with you!”

Mariah dropped to her knees on the throw rug in front of her daughter’s bed and hugged back. Tears stinging her eyes, she said, “Oh, sweetie, you know I like being with you, too.”

Zofie sniffed and nodded hard. “But Dad loves me, too,” she mumbled.

“That’s right.” Mariah hoped and prayed Simon did, that he would always put the child they shared first.

One more sniff, and her petite daughter straightened, lifted her chin and said with resolution, “I’m okay.”

Mariah smiled, hoping her tears didn’t show. “Good.”

Zofie cocked her head. “Is that Daddy? Did you hear a knock?”

“No, but let’s go see.” Mariah grabbed the child’s suitcase from the bed and hurried with Zofie to the front door.

Opening it, her daughter cried, “Daddy!” with complete delight, as if she hadn’t just been bemoaning the necessity of seeing him.

Mariah stood back watching as he bent and lifted Zofie into his arms, a grin warming his saturnine face. For a moment he was the handsome man she had married, his dark hair tousled, his thin nose and wonderful cheekbones making him movie-star handsome. She had the jarring sensation of a temporal shift, as if this was once-upon-a-time, and he was just coming home from work, and he’d be looking up and smiling at her any minute…

Instead, over Zofie’s dark curls, his cold gaze met hers. “I take it she’s ready?”

Mariah forced a smile. “Yup. Zofie’s all packed.”

“Wait!” She wriggled in his arms. “I’ve got stuff to play with. I left it in the hall.”

“Run and get it.” He let her down and bent to pick up her suitcase.

The silence felt uncomfortable. Trying to sound friendly, Mariah asked, “Do you have any plans this weekend?”

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