Page 77 of Tear Me Apart

“Dr. Juliet Ryder. I’m with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.” She flips open her credentials and holds them out so he can see. It feels important to her to be someone for this man, not just the sister of a grief-stricken woman and aunt to a stolen child. She needs him to take her seriously, immediately.

She doesn’t understand the look that passes over his face. But some of the tension goes out of his shoulders, and the dog grins at her, and the two of them come up the drive.

Juliet nods to the driver, who’s been watching, and with a little wave, the girl zooms away to get her next fare, leaving Juliet alone on Zack Armstrong’s doorstep.

40

Zack lets them into the house and gives Kat a fresh bowl of water, which she laps up noisily. They did a full circuit this morning, and he took his time getting them home, stopping for a long lunch break on the way. It is a beautiful late-winter day in Nashville, crisp, cool but not cold, the edges of spring thinking about fighting their way in. Just the kind of day he likes to spend outside, and Kat does, too.

He offers the CBI agent a cold bottle of water, which she accepts. He drinks one down himself, then fills it again from the tap and sits down at the counter.

There is so much tension coming off the woman he doesn’t know if she is going to last another moment without talking. She looks tired, and excited, and scared. Not the usual persona he is used to from law enforcement. And after the visit from Parks and his pet detective yesterday, Zack is paying even more attention.

“Well? What brings the CBI to Nashville?”

She breathes deeply and squares her shoulders. “This is going to come as a bit of a shock. I have a line on your daughter.”

Zack stands so quickly he knocks over the water, and Kat starts to bark, low booms coming from her chest. He is at the woman’s side in a heartbeat, a hand gripped like a vise around her bicep.

“What did you just say?”

“Let go of me, right now.”

He realizes he has a death grip on her, lets loose his hand and steps away. “Shush,” he says to Kat, who whines and sits on her haunches.

“I’m sorry. You caught me by surprise.” Every word is enunciated, carefully, slowly, so there is no misunderstanding. “You think you have a line on my daughter?”

She starts for her pocket, and Zack can’t help himself, he moves into a defensive position.

“Whoa,” she says. “I’m getting out my phone. Calm down.”

“Sorry,” he repeats, simply, but keeps his hand on his waist. He has a Walther PPK in a custom-made holster tucked into his running pants, and he’s kept up with his weapons practice. Old habits die hard.

Zack stands deathly still while she unlocks her phone and pulls up a photograph. When he sees it, Zack thinks his heart might burst.

“My God. She looks like Vivian. My Violet,” he says, the blood rushing to his head. He feels the faint coming as it happens, goes down before a second thought comes.

* * *

Zack wakes with his head pillowed in Juliet Ryder’s lap, Kat licking his face, whining and pawing at his arm.

“You fall gracefully for such a big guy,” she says, a note of humor in her tone, and he realizes she has very pretty eyes, golden brown, which is hard to miss, considering how close they are to his.

He starts to sit up, and Juliet helps him. Kat is ecstatic at the change in latitudes and gives him smelly bone-breath kisses until he puts an arm around her neck and pulls her close. “Stop, you goose. I’m fine.”

“You good to get up all the way?” Ryder asks.

“Yeah. Let me up.”

She stands and brushes off her jeans, then holds out a hand. Zack takes it and gets up cautiously. He hasn’t fainted since his first summer in the Army, after a ten-mile run through a thick, steamy South Carolina jungle forest in full gear and one-hundred-plus temperatures. He felt foolish then, but not now. Now, fainting dead away seems like the only appropriate thing to do, considering. He steels himself, filled with dread and joy, emotions he hasn’t felt in a very long time. He hasn’t felt anything for so very long.

“Let me see her again.”

Juliet hands over her phone. “You can just swipe around. There’s a bunch of them.”

He sits on the couch, staring, memorizing every image. The photos aren’t in any order. Child Violet, teenage Violet, young child Violet, Violet skiing, messy Violet eating carrots with a spoon, Violet with a book, lifting weights, in a perfect backbend against a mountain sunset, laughing into the camera so hard and happy he can see her perfect molars.

Tears run freely down his cheeks. He looks at all the photos twice in utter silence, then sniffs hard, wipes his face with his sleeve. The idea that this is his daughter, his Violet, is both wrong and somehow exactly right. She doesn’t look how he’s always imagined; now he can’t imagine her any other way. He knows her; his body reaches out to hers. His soul recognizes his baby girl.