Distrust

by Lisa Jackson

  “Not yet. I thought I’d get my facts straight first. Look, can I talk to the bus driver?”

  “Sure. You can use the phone in the office to call over to the bus barns.”

  The phone conversation was short. Unfortunately the bus driver wasn’t able to tell her anything other than the fact that Cody had definitely gotten to school. Dani hung up the receiver and felt her shoulders slump under the weight of not knowing what had happened to her son.

  “Any luck?” Amanda said hopefully.

  “None.”

  “Listen, why don’t you call me in the morning?” Amanda suggested. “If Cody hasn’t shown up, all of the teachers will ask their classes about him. Maybe one of the children will know where he is. And I’ll call all the students in my class tonight, if that will help.”

  “Thank you,” Dani murmured as she walked out of the building.

  “Good luck.”

  Without much hope, Dani drove away from the school and after stopping at Blake’s brother’s house and finding no one home, she steered her pickup to the police station where she reported Cody missing, talked to the sergeant, filled out a missing person’s report and gave the police one of the pictures of Cody she kept in her wallet. She repeated the procedure at the sheriffs office and finally, drained and exhausted, she returned to her dark, empty house.

  Runt barked excitedly and whined at the door as Dani opened it, but she walked into the shadowed house with a heavy heart. Nothing had changed. Cody hadn’t returned. The note she’d written him was still on the refrigerator, the ice box hadn’t been raided, there was no loud music filtering down from his room, nor any dirty tennis shoes or books scattered in the living room.

  The pain in her heart wouldn’t go away. Nor would her wild imagination, filled with horrible scenarios of what had happened to her son, be still.

  Once she’d had a steadying cup of coffee, she called everyone she could think of, including the Anders brothers and, much as it rankled, Caleb Johnson.

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that your boy’s missin’,” Caleb said, his insincerity drifting over the wires. “Anything I can do?”

  “Just let me know if you see him,” Dani replied.

  “Will do. And I’ll tell the hands.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Good.”

  “Caleb—” she said, hating herself for having to ask anything of the old man, but desperate to find her son.

  “What?”

  “Is Chase there?”

  “Not now. Seems he had some business in town and then he went right down to the creek. But I’II tell him you called,” Caleb said coldly. “Soon as I see him again.”

  “Thanks.”

  She managed to get through the evening chores alone, all the while listening and praying for the phone to ring. It took twice as long to feed the cattle and horses and by the time she was done, she was sweaty, dirty and despondent. Rain peppered the tin roof of the barn and gurgled in the gutters, and the wind, blowing with gale force, shrieked around the buildings.

  “Let him be safe,” she prayed quietly over the restless shifting of the cattle and the whistle of the wind. The facade she’d held in place all day began to slide away and tears slid down her cheeks.

  Too tired to wipe them aside, she sat on a bale of hay and sobbed quietly to herself. “Oh, Cody,” she whispered to the dark interior of the barn while listening to the rain, “where are you?”

  * * *

  Through the sheets of rain, Chase looked at the stream and silently congratulated himself on a job well done. The clear water swirled over deep pools and rippled over strategically placed rocks and logs as it ran its course through Johnson’s land. Now, if Caleb kept to his word and didn’t disturb the banks while constructing his resort, there was no reason Grizzly Creek wouldn’t become one of the best trout fishing streams in western Montana.

  He glanced at the sky and hunched his shoulders against the thick rain that was pouring from the heavens. Water ran past the collar of his jean jacket and slid down his back. Miserable weather, he thought in agitation, and unusual. Hot and dry one minute, a downpour the next.

  “That about wraps it up,” Ben Marx said with a satisfied smile as he lit a cigarette and pushed his shaggy wet hair out of his eyes.

  “All that’s left is to stock it.”

  “And then we’re outta here, right?”

  Chase nodded and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Right. You and the rest of the crew can leave tonight if you want; I’ll finish up with some of Johnson’s hands.”

  “Whatever you say!” Ben drew on his cigarette and let it dangle from the corner of his mouth. “Right now I’m going to get the hell out of this rain and head into town. Check the action at Yukon Jack’s. I could use a beer and a change of scenery.”

  “Take Frank and Brent with you,” Chase suggested, and watched as the bearded young man shouted to the rest of the men. They all climbed into a pickup, waved to Chase, and drove across the field to the gate in the corner and the dirt road leading to the center of Johnson’s farm.

  Chase waited until they were out of sight and then slipped through the fence and ran up the slight incline toward the back of Dani’s house. He hadn’t seen her all day. Throughout the afternoon, he’d experienced an uncanny sensation that something was wrong; he attributed his discomfiture to the trouble with Cody the night before and the fact that the boy obviously preferred his father’s company to Chase’s.

  “Can’t blame the kid,” Chase told himself, wiping the rain from his face and hair before sauntering up the back steps. He rapped on the screen door with a knuckle and wondered why none of the interior lights had been turned on.

  “Cody?” Dani called, jumping to her feet. She’d been sitting in a corner of the couch, her feet tucked beneath her, her fingers absently scratching Runt’s ears.

  “Nope. Sorry to—” Chase walked into the room and met her halfway. Immediately he saw the pain in her eyes. “—disappoint you. Dani?”

  She couldn’t help the small cry that caught in her throat as she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, God, I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered into his wet shirt. “Just hold me. Please.”

  He did just that. Resting his head on her crown, he tightened his grip and said softly, “Believe me, I have no intention of ever letting you go.”

  “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

  “I was working . . .” He held his head back and studied her tear-filled eyes. “Hey, wait a minute. Something is wrong. Really wrong. Maybe you’d better sit down.” Guiding her to the couch, he scrutinized her while she slipped back onto the worn cushions and sniffed back her tears. “What’s going on?”

  “Didn’t Caleb tell you?”

  “I haven’t seen him all day,” Chase replied, every muscle in his body tensing. “What’s he done?” He pulled a clean, slightly damp handkerchief from the pocket of his jeans and wiped the back of his neck.

  “It’s not Caleb,” she said, shaking her head and sighing.

  His jaw clenched. “That bastard of a husband of yours has something to do with this, doesn’t he?”

  “It’s my fault,” she breathed, gathering her courage. “All my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “Cody,” she choked out, pressing the back of her hand to her lips and looking up at Chase. “He’s missing.”

  “Missing? What do you mean?”

  “Just that. He got on the bus around seven-thirty this morning and no one’s seen him since.”

  “You’re sure?” Sitting on the arm of the sofa, his blue eyes scanning her white, pinched face, he placed his large hand on her shoulder and her fear infected him. Dani wasn’t a woman who panicked easily. Usually strong, now she was scared to death.

  “I’ve called everyone, looked everywhere,” she said, standing, pacing and wringing her hands.

  “Wait a minute. Slow down and back up,” he insisted, taking hold of her and sitting her back on the couc
h. “Now why don’t you start at the beginning. Cody got on the bus to go to school—then what happened?”

  Slowly, in a slightly broken voice, she told him every last detail of the search for her son.

  “You should have come to me.”

  “I—I couldn’t. I didn’t know where you were and . . . well, you know how it is with Caleb. I did call him and he said he’d get word to you.”

  “He didn’t bother.”

  “Figures.” Dani sniffed.

  “You haven’t heard from Blake?”

  Dani shook her head and sighed. “Nothing.”

  Pacing the length of the house, Chase tried to unscramble his jumbled thoughts while his suspicion increased. Chase didn’t trust coincidence and there were just too many coincidences in Dani’s life right now. “I wonder if this has anything to do with Jenna Peterson taking off?”

  “I don’t see how. Jenna had an argument with Caleb and Cody . . . Cody’s probably run off with his father. They could be in North Dakota by now, or Idaho . . . or Canada. I wouldn’t put it past Blake to take him out of the country.”

  “But why, Dani?” Chase asked, his thick brows pulled over his eyes as he strode purposefully into the kitchen, rummaged in Dani’s cupboards, found a dusty old bottle of Scotch and poured them each a stiff drink. He carried the glasses in one hand and the bottle in the other as he came back into the living room and snapped on one of the table lamps.

  “Why did Blake take Cody?” she repeated. “To be with his son, of course.”

  “I don’t think so.” Chase handed Dani a glass. “Drink it.” When she started to protest, he set the bottle on the table and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “Just this once, Dani, don’t argue.”

  “But Cody’s got to be with Blake—they’re both missing.”

  “You think.” Chase downed his drink in one swallow and poured himself another. His knuckles whitened around the glass as he frowned into the amber liquid. “Y’know . . . there are just too damned many twists of fate around here to suit me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that Jenna Peterson, a woman who’s worked for Caleb for years, took off about the same time that Blake blew into town?”

  “But Blake’s been writing Cody for months—”

  “And don’t you think it’s just a damned sight too convenient that both Blake and the boy are missing—right after we confronted Caleb Johnson with the fact that we know he’s done everything from poison your water to low-ball you on the land to get you to sell out to him.”

  Dani sipped from her drink and a chill ran down her spine. “You’re trying to tell me that Caleb’s behind Cody’s disappearance.”

  “I’m saying that I don’t trust him and that things are happening too fast to be just a matter of fate.” He glanced out the window to the gathering storm. “You’re the one who put the idea into my head, y’know. You said it yourself: You were tired of being manipulated. I think it’s about time to set a few things straight with my ‘partner.’” He finished his drink and set the glass on the table with a thud. “Get your coat. This time when we talk to Johnson, we’re going to get some answers—straight answers!”

  * * *

  “You can’t be serious!” Caleb said, shaking his great head and even managing a nervous laugh. “I don’t know anything about your son’s disappearance other than what you told me on the phone this afternoon.”

  He was standing near the fireplace in his living room and looking at Dani and Chase as if they were out of their minds.

  “Why did Jenna leave?” Chase demanded.

  “I told you, I have no idea.”

  “I talked to her daughter. She said that when Jenna left the woman was beside herself. Jenna apparently had an argument with you and something happened to make her leave. It had something to do with someone you’ve hired recently . . .”

  Caleb’s eyes grew cold. “We had words,” Caleb admitted.

  “About?”

  The old man stepped forward, close enough that he could reach forward and touch Chase. Instead he rubbed the back of a leather couch and concentrated on the hard angles of Chase’s face. The younger man was regarding him warily, silently accusing him with those damned indifferent eyes—eyes so much like his own.

  Dani, her arms wrapped around her torso, felt suddenly cold; a premonition of what was to come. “I just want to find my son,” she interjected, looking from the face of one angry man to the other. Tension radiated between them.

  “Just as I wanted to find mine all those years ago,” Caleb said evenly.

  “Pardon?” Dani said. “Your son? But I didn’t think—” She broke off midsentence and saw the unspoken message pass from Caleb to Chase.

  Beneath his tan, Chase blanched, all of his muscles tightening in revulsion, his back teeth clamping together in denial. “What are you trying to say, Johnson?”

  “It took me a long time to find you. Ella hid her tracks well,” Caleb said.

  “You’re out of your mind!” Chase said angrily.

  “Face it, boy: I’m your father!”

  “What the hell is this, Johnson?” Chase demanded, getting hold of himself and eyeing the older man with a deadly calm that belied the raging torrent of emotions roiling deep inside. “This is just another ploy to avoid the subject—”

  “It’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up for some time.”

  “Like hell!” Chase’s anger boiled to the surface. “I’m sick of your lies. Come on, Dani!”

  He turned to go, but Caleb’s words stopped him. “This is no lie, boy. Jenna guessed the truth and knew how you felt about me. Seems you’d had a discussion earlier. When I told her that I was going to spring the news on you, she had one helluva fit. Told me to leave well enough alone.”

  Chase’s eyes narrowed to hard, glinting slits. His back and shoulder muscles bunched and it took all of his control to keep his hands off Caleb’s throat. “You’re wrong!”

  “Why do you think I went to the trouble of finding you? There were a dozen other companies I could have contacted. Eric Conway underbid you by thirty-five-hundred dollars. You can check it yourself, in the study. It’s all in the files. But I wasn’t interested in the lowest bidder,” he said with chilling clarity. “I wanted you, and don’t flatter yourself thinking it was because you were the best!” Laughing at his own weakness, he said, “I had this stupid, mortal desire before I died to meet the only son that I’d sired.”

  Hatred and fury radiated from the younger man. Chase grabbed hold of Caleb’s shirt, the clean, starched fabric wrinkling in his angry fists. “You’re lying. This is just one more of your cheap tricks to blow smoke in my face!” His nose was pressed up to Caleb’s, and his furious blue eyes burned into those of the older man. “Now why don’t you tell us the real reason Jenna left. While you’re at it, you can tell Dani how you’re involved with her ex-husband and where the hell her son is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re pushing it,” Chase warned through clenched teeth.

  Caleb glanced nervously at Dani and then fixed on Chase. “Let go of me and I’ll prove it.”

  Chase hesitated and his nostrils flared. “Go ahead.” He unclenched his fist and Caleb smoothed his shirt.

  Without a word Caleb walked out of the living room, crossed the foyer and walked into his study. He was gone several minutes. When he returned he carried a faded photograph in one hand and a stack of letters banded together in the other.

  He dropped everything on the glass-covered table near the fireplace. Dani stared at the picture in disbelief. It was a grainy photo of a man and woman, their arms linked, a cocker spaniel pup at their feet. She didn’t recognize the short, blond woman in the picture, but the man was Chase—or someone who looked enough like him to be his brother. Or his father! Shock waves rippled through her as she accepted what Chase couldn’t.

  “Isn’t that your mother?” Caleb demanded, pointing at the woma
n.

  “Looks like her,” Chase admitted slowly. Stunned, Chase fought the truth that stared him straight in the face.

  “And the dog—didn’t you grow up with a black cocker pup?”

  “It’s not the same dog.”

  “Named Charlie.”

  Chase didn’t move. His guts wrenched painfully as he stared at the picture.

  “And what about the man?” Caleb asked. “Is that your pa?”

  “No!”

  Caleb snorted and shook his white head. “Give it up, son. That’s me!” He tapped his finger on the slick picture. “And the first time I saw you, it was like lookin’ into a mirror thirty years ago!”

  Chase flinched and tried to hold on to his temper. “I don’t believe you. I don’t know how you manage to—”

  “Then look at the letters. They’re all addressed to me, in your ma’s handwriting. Read what’s inside,” the old man demanded, pushing the stack of letters from the table and letting them scatter on the floor. “They’re from your ma all right. And they even told me about you. But of course, that was when she’d already made plans to marry another man. She never told me his name and it took me nearly thirty years to track you down. By then she and her husband were both gone.”

  Chase picked up a letter, scanned the handwriting and then crumpled it in his fist. Anger and disbelief mingled into an ungodly rage that contorted his features and made his insides knot. “Go to hell!”

  Dani took hold of his arm. “Let’s go—Come on, we’ve got to find Cody. It’s obvious he can’t help us.”

  “And all this time you thought another man was your pa,” Caleb taunted.

  Chase coiled like a rattler ready to strike and his eyes sparked, but there was a trace of wariness in his voice. “If you knew all this when you first came to me, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “I still don’t.”

  Caleb shrugged his big shoulders. “Then it didn’t really matter none, did it?”

  Dani watched the argument with growing horror. Whether Chase believed it or not, it was evident to her that he was Caleb’s son. Sick with the thought, she backed to the window, watching as the two men glared and argued with each other, their voices climbing with the fever pitch of emotion. Chase, ready to strike, ready to lash out at the cause of his pain, and Caleb, smug in his knowledge of the truth.