the world. You surf?”
“No.” Now she angled her head. “Do you?”
“Every chance I get. If it’s cranking tomorrow, I may put on my steamer, grab my stick, and go on dawn patrol.” He winked at her. “Surfer talk.”
Intrigued, she sat on the floor, crossed her legs. “Did you ever see a shark?”
“See one? I punched one right in the face once.”
“No, you—really?”
“Hand to God.” He swiped one over his heart then pointed his finger up. “It wasn’t a very big one, but I like to make him bigger every time I tell the story.”
“Do you surf, too?” she asked Michaela.
“No.”
“I’m going to teach her.”
Michaela made a sound between a laugh and a snort. “No, you’re not.”
“You just wait.”
Hugh came in with a martini glass in one hand, a glass of whiskey in the other.
“My hero,” Lily murmured, took the glass and the first long, slow sip.
Hugh sat. “Nina’s finishing up the coffee. I hope you’ll come back, both of you, when you’re not on duty so I can mix or pour you your drink of choice.”
“I’ll see we do.” Red got to his feet as Rosemary came down the stairs. “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
“Not in the least.” Rosemary took the whiskey glass from her son. “Aidan, be a dear and get Hugh another glass of Jameson’s. I’m taking his.”
“The sheriff said he punched a shark in the face.”
Rosemary nodded, sat. “I’m not surprised to hear that. You’re an avid surfer, aren’t you?”
“Avid as they come.”
Small talk, he thought, kept things smooth until.
Until Nina came with the coffee.
“Okay then. We wanted to come by, tell you that Grant Sparks and Frank Denby, suspected of kidnapping our girl here, are both in custody. The state police apprehended Denby in a motel room south of here.”
“How did they know he was there?”
Red looked down at Cate. “Well, I’ll tell you he wasn’t too smart. We did our job, and got his name—”
“How?”
“Cate, it’s rude to interrupt.”
She glanced back at her father. “How will I know if I don’t ask?”
“There’s a point to that,” Red agreed.
But when he hesitated, Michaela made a decision. The girl deserved to know. “Ms. Dupont gave us the name when we talked to her. When we knew who we were looking for, we got some information. Like where he lived, and what kind of car he drives, and the license plate. We put out an alert to other police. And the state police spotted his car, the license plate, in the motel lot.”
“Then he wasn’t very smart.”
“No,” Michaela agreed, “he wasn’t. But he wasn’t very smart to leave you that spoon, was he? And you were the smart one.”
“That’s a stone fact,” Red put in. “As for Sparks, he was packed up to take off. Didn’t move fast enough, and the police in L.A. arrested him. Both of them are being transported here, and we’ll lock them up, we’ll talk to them.”
“How long will you lock them up?”
“Well, that depends on the lawyers and the courts. Mic and me? We don’t get to decide. But I can tell you with the evidence and statement and the case we’ve made? It’s going to be a real long time.”
“Like a year?”
“No, honey, a lot longer. Maybe twenty years.”
“My mother, too?”
More cautious here, Red looked at Aidan.
“We’ve talked about it. Cate needs to know, we all do.”
“Then I’ll tell you. Because your mother gave us information on the two men and information on what they all did, planned to do, the state’s attorney—that’s the person in charge of trying cases like this—made an agreement with your mother’s attorney. It’s called a plea bargain. So they made this bargain, and for the information, they eased back on some of the charges, providing she says she did the things she did. She has to go to jail, too, for ten years. She can get out in seven if she meets the requirements, and the people in charge of that say she can. But she has to go to jail for seven years for certain.”
“She won’t like it there,” Cate said, mostly to herself. “She can’t go shopping or to parties or auditions. I don’t have to see her.” She looked back at her father. “Even when she can come out.”
“No.”
“And we’re divorcing her.”
“Yes, baby, we’re divorcing her.”
“She doesn’t love us. Nina’s not in trouble.”
“Not a bit,” Red assured her. “We need to keep your phone in evidence for a while longer, Ms. Torez.”
“I don’t want it back, thank you. I really don’t