Love Undecided Read online

  Stacy comes over and gives me a quick peck on the lips.

  “Not appropriate, Stac,” I say wiping at my lips. She just giggles.

  One of the girls taps me on the elbow. “Are you Miss Hunter’s boyfriend?”

  “No,” I say at the same time Stacy says, “yes.”

  I sigh, frustrated. I need to break it off with Stacy. There just never seems to be a good time to do it. It’s gone on too long and she’s getting way too involved.

  We both agreed in the beginning that it was casual, just sex, and that it wouldn’t lead to anything more. And that is because I’m in love with someone else. I was brutally honest with her about it. She said she just wanted to fuck a fireman. That it was a fantasy of hers. That she’s not a commitment type of girl.

  I should have known better. Every girl I’ve met who says she’s not a commitment type of girl is the exact opposite.

  The bell rings, signaling the end of recess. Stacy’s class aide starts to herd the kids into the classroom. Stacy grabs my forearm and hooks her arm through mine to walk into the class. I carefully disengage myself from her.

  “Stacy, I’m on duty.”

  “I know, but I’ve missed you,” she says, with a pout. “Can I make you dinner tonight?”

  “I can’t tonight. But we do need to get together, to talk.”

  We are inside the class by now and she takes that moment to clap her hands to get the attention of the kids, so I’m not sure that she heard me or not.

  “Class,” she says. “We have a special treat today. A real-life hero is going to talk to us about safety with strangers. He’s an extremely brave firefighter, and someone who is very special to me. Let’s give him an extra warm welcome, Lieutenant Brad Matthews with the San Soloman Fire Department.”

  I’m not happy that she introduces me as someone who is very special to her. I can’t be any clearer about our situation, and my lack of feelings for her. It’s like she doesn’t process what I’m actually saying, and just believes what she wants to about us. I know this game she’s playing, and it doesn’t end well for her.

  I finish with my part of the talk in about fifteen minutes, then spend another ten answering questions about being Miss Hunter’s boyfriend. She walks me out to my truck after, leaving the class in the hands of her aide.

  “Shouldn’t you be in there with them?” I ask.

  “No, they’re fine with Anna. I often have other things to do that take me out of the class. Besides, if I stayed there, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” She reaches down to cup me.

  “Stacy, what the fuck!” I pull her hand away from me and thrust it back at her.

  “Baby,” she whines.

  We reach the truck and I open the door to get in.

  “Stacy, look—”

  “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. And, I just, I’m feeling really scared right now. My students are being kidnapped. I don’t know how to handle that. I’m just so grateful you are here. I don’t know what I would do right now. I mean, they are so innocent.”

  She has tears in her eyes.

  Which makes me feel like an asshole.

  It’s crazy to still fall for it when you know you are being manipulated. Yet, here I am, falling hook, line, and sinker.

  I give her a hug and tell her to be strong and I will check in with her later.

  Then I head back to the station.

  I know what I did wrong. I took Stacy out to dinner for her birthday, recently.

  Big mistake.

  Now, she wants to eat together all the time, mostly she wants to cook for me. I don’t want to eat with her. I just want to fuck her and go home.

  When I’m at Stacy’s, I’m in and out. No pun intended. I don’t spend the night, I don’t leave clothes there, I don’t bring a toothbrush. We don’t cuddle, we don’t have dates.

  Which is why going to her class to talk to the kids feels wrong. I have no issues talking to a classroom of kids. Our station does it all the time.

  It’s the fact that Stacy wanted something from me, and I delivered. It feels like a promise of something more.

  It’s not fair to her if I give the impression we are something more than we are.

  I mean, I’m not a total asshole. Just a partial one.

  Chapter 14

  Kat

  We begin by tracking down the detective on the Sofia Carter case - Detective Benson. He’s a smallish odd-looking man, like if the actor, Steve Buscemi, had strawberry blonde hair and a mustache, but looked more like a woman. He fills us in on what’s happened so far, his voice too unsure and effeminate to carry much authority.

  “The, uh, abduction happened when she was on her way home from school. At… Uh…” Benson consults his notes. “Sail Point Middle School. Uh. Less than three blocks from her house.”

  “Was she alone?” Bauer asks at the same time I ask, “How’d he do it?”

  He looks back and forth between the two of us, unsure who to answer first.

  So, I ask, “Was she alone?”

  Just as Bauer asks, “How’d he do it?”

  I backhand him in the stomach. “Stop!”

  His stomach is hard and firm.

  Sigh.

  “Tell us what happened,” I say to Benson.

  “Well,” Benson begins, “she and two of her friends all walk home together. They, uh, live on the same street. So, every day they walk home together, Sofia and one of the other girls both stay at the third girl’s house. And that’s because, uh, her mom works from home. So, they, uh, do homework or whatever until their own parents get home.”

  “Is this your first case or something? How did you get assigned?” Bauer asks, obviously annoyed.

  I smile at Benson in what I hope is a reassuring manner, nodding at him to continue.

  “He makes me nervous,” Benson says, motioning to Bauer. “Can’t I just talk to you?”

  “How did you even get through the fucking academy?” Bauer practically yells at him.

  I turn to Bauer.

  “Go away.” I point down the hallway toward a few benches that line the walls. He glares at me. For a minute, I think he’s not going to do what I ask. But then he turns and stomps down the hall.

  I smile at Benson again, reaching out to touch his arm as I ask him to continue.

  His voice much firmer now. “Per Sofia’s two friends, a man in a police uniform, driving a plain white car, pulled up beside them, got out of the car and walked up to the girls.” He pantomimes the moves as he speaks. “He pointed to Sofia and said, ‘Sofia Carter, you are under arrest, I need to take you in to the police station.’”

  “Sofia started crying and said she didn’t do anything. Then asked why he was arresting her, but the man just said, ‘you know why’.”

  Benson attempts to deepen his voice for the male part of the conversation and raise his voice when he speaks as Sofia. I have to stifle a laugh.

  “He handcuffed her, put her in the back of the car, and drove off. The other two girls ran to tell the mom at home what happened. She called Mrs. Carter first, who didn’t know anything about it, then the precinct to find out what was going on.

  “Meanwhile, Mrs. Carter, went immediately to the precinct, the desk officer told her that we would never arrest a minor without a parent present. And that there was nothing in the system regarding Sofia Carter. So, Mrs. Carter reported Sofia missing.

  “An Amber Alert was issued immediately. We found Sofia’s phone a few blocks from her house, the screen cracked. I’m guessing it was tossed from the car so we couldn’t use GPS to track her.”

  “What about the other girls?” I ask. “Were they able to give us any useful information?”

  Benson shakes his head. “The other two girls couldn’t definitively tell anyone what the man looked like. One said he had brown hair and the other said he had blonde hair. Both were certain he was wearing a police uniform, a police hat, and sunglasses. And both were
certain it was a white car that looked like a police car without blue and red lights on the top.

  “This is the card for the first responders,” he says, handing me a business card. “In case you have any additional questions. I know he filed a report too. There shouldn’t be any more information than what I’ve given you, but there might be.”

  I thank Benson and look down at the card he gave me.

  Ha!

  Brad Matthews

  Lieutenant, San Soloman Fire Department

  I’m tempted to call him.

  Because I need the file.

  And not for any other reason.

  But instead, I head down the hall to Bauer and relay the information to him, as he continues to complain about Benson and his competency as a detective.

  “I got the info for the first responders too,” I add. “In case we need to talk to them. But all that info would already be in Detective Benson’s report, right?” I’m hoping I’m wrong, and we need to call Brad, just as strongly as I’m hoping I’m right. My emotional inconsistencies know no bounds, it seems.

  Bauer extends his hand for the business card in mine. I hand it to him.

  “Is this your jealous little ex-Romeo, Cookie?”

  “He’s not jealous,” I mumble as I nod my head.

  “Our next step is to talk to Sofia Carter’s parents, Cookie. Not your boy-toy,” Bauer says as he crumbles up Brad’s card and tosses it to the ground.

  Well, so much for that.

  Chapter 15

  Kat

  The Carter Family lives in a two-story Tudor style home on a quiet street at the end of a cul-de-sac. Today, the street is unusually busy due to the search command center that had been set up in their home shortly after Sofia had been abducted.

  Dozens of volunteers have been taking phone calls with tips, scouting the wooded areas behind the house, and searching the surrounding streets in the neighborhood. But there has been no sign of her or the white car. She’s been missing now for almost forty-eight hours.

  We talk to both parents for a while; as expected they are extremely upset and not able to give us much information. They’ve not been contacted for a ransom and have no clue as to who might have taken their daughter.

  They do, however, give us permission to inspect her room. Unfortunately, that doesn’t yield much either. Her room is clean, organized, and tidy.

  A twin bed with a white ruffled comforter was pushed in the corner, bookshelves with a built-in desk on the same wall as the door, windows on the opposite wall from the doorway, and a closet taking up most of the fourth wall. Her bookshelf is filled with books, stuffed animals, a few knick-knacks, and a Bose speaker system for her iPod. A MacBook Air sits on the desk along with a calculator, pad of paper, and a pencil cup filled with brightly colored pens, markers, and pencils with fuzzy animal heads stuck over the erasers.

  “She’s got a better stereo system than I do,” I joke with Bauer. He doesn’t respond.

  “Totally kidding,” I say. “I have a killer system. Rock on!” I flash him the rocker sign and stick my tongue out Gene Simmons style. He doesn’t even look at me.

  “Tough crowd.”

  “Uh, working here,” he says, clearly irritated.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. Nothing like a good tangent to make me look like an asshole.

  God, what is it about this guy that makes me act like such a juvenile idiot? I graduated from a top ten law school, fifth in my class. To see me with this guy, you’d think it was a top ten rodeo school and I was head clown.

  I keep looking around. There is nothing shoved under her bed; her clothes are all neatly hung in the closet and nicely folded in the drawers. Her shoes were in a rack on the closet floor seemingly arranged by style. Her nightstand held an iPad, a charger for an iPhone or iPad, alarm clock, and a bedside glass/carafe combo that she must use for middle of the night water breaks. No diary as far as I could tell. Although these days, kids probably put all of that online.

  I am amazed at the order and cleanliness of it all. There is nothing unusual about Sofia Carter’s room. In fact, it seems to be the perfect room for a twelve-year-old girl who is well cared for and loved. I still know we are missing something, I just can’t get a beat on it.

  Bauer finds me after speaking with Mr. Carter, I’m still standing in Sofia’s room trying to figure out what I’m missing.

  “Well, there goes that theory,” he says. “They were never visited by the shower stealer. So much for tying the two together. I guess we are back to the proverbial drawing board now.”

  “Sorry, Bauer. I really thought we had a connection here.”

  “No worries, Cookie, I did too. We’ll figure it out.”

  “God. I just want something to click in this whole situation so I don’t feel like we just wasted our time.”

  “Welcome to police work,” he says. “Where things rarely click and you always feel like you’re wasting time.”

  Chapter 16

  Brad

  I get back to the station and join Ethan and the guys on the clean-up and restocking of the rig.

  “How’d it go, bro?” Ethan asks.

  “Which part?

  “I thought you went to help Kat with the case?”

  “I did,” I say. “But then Stacy called and said her class was scared and so I went to talk to them.”

  “Oh,” Ethan says flatly.

  “Exactly. Dude, she introduced me to the kids as her boyfriend, or her someone special, or some shit like that. And she kissed me in front of them. Then she followed me out to the truck and grabbed my dick. She’s a fucking nut job.”

  “Crazier in the head makes ‘em better in the bed!” Ethan says.

  I laugh at him.

  “Seriously though, bro, I’ve got three words for you. Break. It. Off,” he says.

  “I know, E. I need to. And I’ve tried. But, when I’ve brought it up before, she gets all upset and starts crying then next thing I know we’re fucking.”

  “I get it. You’re like a victim in all this. You have no control over the situation,” Ethan says.

  “Fuck off, dude,” I say with a chuckle. Even though I hate when he calls me on my shit, I need it. It’s why he’s my best friend.

  My phone buzzes with a call, I grab it from my belt clip and see it’s Kat calling.

  “Be right back, E.”

  “Hi,” I say into the phone.

  “Hi,” she says, sounding a little tentative.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Oh, yeah, totally. I just… I talked to Detective Benson, the lead on the Sofia Carter case, and he said you were the first responder when she was abducted, and then he gave me your card in case I had any questions. Which I found funny since you’re like the only person whose phone number I know by heart.” She laughs, so I do too.

  After a slight pause, she continues, “But I wasn’t sure if you maybe had anything you could add to what you helped us with this morning. That thing about all the houses having twelve-year-old girls was brilliant. And despite what Bauer says, I think we need all the help we can get with this case.”

  “I’m always happy to help you in any way that I can. But I’m not sure I have anything more than what I saw you guys had in the file. I can bring you my report if you want to verify. Do you have any gaps in the information you’re trying to fill? Maybe I can help with that,” I tell her, hoping that she’ll say we should go over the report together.

  “Well, we thought we had something a little bit ago, but it turned out to be nothing.”

  “What was that?”

  “We were trying to make the connection between the kidnapping and The Shower Stealer, but Sofia Carter’s house wasn’t visited by The Shower Stealer.”

  “Don’t you find that name to be just a little bit humorous?” I ask her.

  “Ohmigod! Yes! Like they couldn’t come up with anything better than the literal description of the crime? And then, is it really a crime? I mean, I know it’s b
reaking and entering, but it’s not like he removed anything from the home. So they’d be hard-pressed to prove criminal activity since he wasn’t caught in the act.”

  “You would know better than anyone,” I tell her.

  “You’re right, I would,” she says, laughing. “Ah, that’s funny.”

  I have to smile when she says that, even though I know she can’t hear it through the phone. There’s just something about her voice. Her laugh. Her thoughts. It makes me feel all put back together again.

  “I guess it’s better than water waster,” I say.

  “Liquid looter,” she says.

  “Bath burglar.”

  “Agua abductor.”

  “Tub taker.”

  “Washing withdrawer,” she says as her voice dissolves into hysterics, she’s laughing so hard.

  I love that sound. The sound of her laughter. If I could pick one sound to hear for the rest of my life, that would be it.

  “Okay, okay, stop, you’re killing me, smalls,” she says. The Sandlot reference is a favorite quote of hers. “I forget how much fun you are sometimes,” she says, her voice much softer this time.

  “Kat –” I start, but she interrupts me.

  “Um, okay, well, I gotta go. But I’ll call you if we need the file. Thanks, I appreciate it! Bye.”

  She disconnects before I have a chance to say anything else. I’m not sure what I would have said had she not interrupted, but I would have rather had that chance and still be on the line with her, than standing here on the side of the fire station holding a silent phone.

  Chapter 17

  Kat

  With late afternoon traffic, it takes me a while to get to Lovestone, my bestie Lexie’s, boutique winery.

  I walk into the tasting room, the girl working the bar gives me a big smile and then an even bigger glass of wine.

  “Lexie said to fill you up with As You Wish, then send you back to the barrel room to find her.”

  Lexie is a total romantic at heart and she loves a happily ever after. Especially if it comes in the form of a movie with a dashing and heroic male lead. If you make the movie black and white with actors named Cary, Humphrey, or Clark, it’s even better.