The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [99]
“You’re not ready for this.”
“Oh? And at what point is someone ready to take on Jim Beckett? After they’ve been a homicide cop for ten years, twenty years, thirty years? Oops, I’m sorry. He killed them too.”
J.T.’s grip tightened on the wheel. She’d been withdrawn, sarcastic, and bitter ever since getting the news. So far she’d been everything but afraid. That was a bad sign. Fear served a purpose; it helped keep people safe.
“Let me drop you off at a hotel,” J.T. tried again. “I’ll check out the safe house and see if there’s anything to be learned. If there’s a trail, I’ll find it. We’ll go from there.”
“No.”
“So eager to be part of the action?”
“My daughter, my ex-husband, my problem.”
“Your death.”
Her jaw clenched.
“Tess,” he said quietly. “How long do you plan on punishing yourself?”
“What?”
He took the exit for Springfield. “You heard me. There’s more on your mind than Jim Beckett, and, honey, you’d better get it out. Because you take him on with a chip on your shoulder and he will eat you alive.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re angry.”
“He murdered my friend! He kidnapped my child!”
“Not at him. You’re angry with yourself.”
“And why would I feel that? Because I left my daughter alone to be taken? Because I left the state so Difford could get killed instead of me?”
“Because Samantha was kidnapped while you were screwing a former mercenary and playing family counselor to siblings only Manson could love?” he finished for her. “Come on, Tess. Get it out, get it all out. Hit me if you want. Hit yourself. Then pull it together. Because I’m not letting you out of this car until I know your mind’s one hundred percent on the matters at hand. You’re worthless otherwise.”
“Dammit!” she cried. Then she did hit him. In the shoulder, hard. Next she hit the dash. Three times. He could still feel her frustration and rage.
“I should’ve stayed with Sam,” she whispered miserably. “I should’ve stayed with my daughter.”
“Then you’d be dead too. You wanted change, Tess. This is it. Stop being the martyr and learn to be the cavalry.”
Neighborhoods appeared around them. He knew they were getting close. In a low voice Tess directed him to the former safe house. Most of the neighborhoods appeared older, comprised of one-story ranchstyle homes with two token windows, one token chimney, and not much else. Like growing up in a cereal box, J.T. thought.
He turned down another street. This late, there was no one around. Cars slumbered in driveways. Houses hunkered down on their foundations. Not even a porch light offered a ray of comfort.
He looked over at Tess. She was very pale.
“I can still take you to a hotel.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, yeah, Tess. You’re tough.”
She scowled, then pointed to a house tucked between two others. Yellow crime scene tape encircled it like a garish boa.
J.T. parked the car next to the curb. He looked down the block just in case an unmarked car was watching. Nothing. Of course the action here had already come and gone. The crime lab chemists had probably spent a solid day here, analyzing the scene, dusting for prints, cataloguing evidence. Dogs had been brought in to locate Difford’s body, which Tess said they still hadn’t found. Now the real police work would be performed in the lab, the house just an old monument to the violence.
J.T. and Tess had come for that testimony. They needed a starting point to track Beckett, and his last crime scene seemed as good as any. Maybe it would tell them something, maybe it wouldn’t.
J.T. opened the door and stepped out into the stunningly cold fall night.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Give me a cactus any day.”
He jammed his bare hands into his front jeans pockets and hunched lower in his leather bomber jacket. Tess was already climbing out of her side of the car, much more suitably attired.
“Stay here.” He stepped up onto the sidewalk.
“No.” She closed the car door and squared her shoulders.
He didn’t feel like arguing. He walked right over to her and pinned her against the car with his body. His dark eyes bore into