Free Body Search by Jessica Andersen Page A

balked. “No. Don’t wanna go home. Wanna see Hazel. My Hazel. But she won’t come to the house. Says it’s too much like Suzie there.” His head lolled bonelessly. Dale curled his lip at the fumes and cursed the punch of pain when Trask murmured, “My Suzie.”
    “Let’s haul him to the motel and dump him on one of the benches to sober up,” Dale said roughly, hating that Tansy had seen this, hating that she knew what he’d come from. Who he might have turned into.
    “Be reasonable, Dale. Hazel is busy with the patients. Let’s take him home and get some coffee into him.” Tansy’s tone was chiding. In the darkness lit only by the reflected lights from the meeting house, her face reflected her disappointment. In him.
    “Don’t want to go home,” Trask repeated, straightening and looking almost sober. “Need to talk to you, boy, about your parents. About Suzie. You were right—they weren’t lost at sea. I’ve got proof! I’ve got—”
    “There you are, old friend!” Churchill’s voice broke into the suddenly tense moment. He and his Amazonian bodyguard-cum-chauffeur, Frankie, appeared out of the darkness. “We’ve been looking for you! Rumor had it you were tying one on at The Claw.”
    Dale winced at the thought of Churchill being forced to babysit his drunken uncle. Without a word, as though she did this five times a week, Frankie lifted Trask’s limp form in a fireman’s carry and walked down the dark path to the house Dale’s uncle had shared with his bride.
    When they were gone, Churchill touched Dale’s sleeve. “If it helps any, this is the first time I’ve seen him drunk since the day you left.” When Dale didn’t answer, the older man sighed, and said, “I’m sorry you had to see this, son. I’m sorry you came back.”
    Then he, too, was gone, swallowed up into the shadows with only a swirl of sound to mark his passing.
    Dale and Tansy were silent for a moment, then she hissed a breath. “I can’t see how that would help any.” She turned to him. “That man just all but accused you of driving your uncle to drink. How dare he? What right does he have?”
    Anger tangled with hurt and desperation in one lonely, messy ball in Dale’s chest until he snapped, “He dares because he was a friend of my parents and because he helped me escape this awful place. He has every right because he’s the only one who ever gave a damn about me.”
    The moment the words were out, Dale wished he could call them back. But he could no more unsay the words than he could take back the shallow, self-absorbed things he’d said to his mother the night she died.
    He reached out a hand in the darkness. “Tans…”
    She turned away. “Never mind, Dale. It’s okay. Your emotions were one of the few things you never lied about. You didn’t believe I cared for you, and you sure as hell didn’t care enough for me.”
    Dale followed her in silence up the path to his boyhood home. Part of him wished he could tell her the truth, that of all the things he’d lied about—his past, his position, his very nature—pretending not to care for her had been the biggest lie of all. And the most necessary, because he had no intention of falling in love.
    Just look what it had done to his uncle.
    When they reached the house, he slid the key from the pocket of his borrowed jeans and swung open the kitchen door. Tansy brushed past him without a word, but the tense set of her shoulders shouted her hurt.
    Dale knew he should let her go. She was returning to the mainland the next day—whether she knew it or not—and it would be best for both of them if she hated him when she went.
    But he reached out a hand towards her. “Tansy.”
    She halted. Turned back. “Yes, Dale?”
    I’m sorry I lied about who I am. I’m sorry I didn’t let you in when you asked. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder when you left. He cleared his throat. “You’re in the first bedroom on the left, in my old room. Lock your window and