Ominous

by Lisa Jackson

  “Don’t say you can’t use more help,” Shiloh said. “Those K-9 teams I see all over the Croft property are coming up empty. Helicopters haven’t found anything on forest land?” When Kat didn’t respond, she said, “And no clues from where we found Courtney’s body and where Addie disappeared.” She leaned in and added in a low voice, “You know we know Ruthie’s rapist.”

  Kat frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “He seemed familiar to us. He sure did to me, and he did to you too.”

  “We never saw his face.”

  “All I’m saying is, he’s not a complete stranger. And I want to check out some of the guys around here, see if they ring any bells.”

  “We’re already doing that. Don’t get in the way,” Kat warned.

  “This is what I’ve been saying! You’re freezing me out.” Shiloh got to her feet. “I’m going to do some checking on my own.”

  “Shiloh, no.”

  “I’ve got Beau with me. I won’t get in the way of your investigation.” She started down the hall.

  Kat ground her teeth together and said in a stage whisper to Shiloh’s back, “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt. Leave it to the authorities.”

  Shiloh lifted a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t turn around. Kat stared after her, irked, then got up to follow after her friend. Shiloh was just too bull-headed for her own good sometimes.

  Brrrinnngg. Her desk phone rang before she had taken two steps. She hesitated briefly, then turned back and snatched up the receiver. “Yes?” she answered tightly.

  Naomi said, “Phone call for you. Mr. Blair Kincaid.”

  Blair.

  “I can’t take it right now, Naomi. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “He’s pretty insistent. Says it’s something about a kid named Noel Brinkman getting into trouble on Kincaid property?”

  Kat made a strangled sound. The Byrds’ grandson again? “Okay, put him through.”

  A few seconds later Blair’s familiar drawl raised goose bumps on her arms with, “Hey, Kat. How’re you doing? This kid here says you’re the one to talk to.”

  “Noel Brinkman’s on your property?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What’s he done?” She just stopped herself from adding now.

  “Well, we’re not far from Hal Crutchens’s place, and apparently Noel and some of his friends opened up the gate and let Crutchens’s old nag out. The beast ended up on our property, and, well …”

  Kat silently swore inside her head. “What? Is the horse okay?”

  “Right as rain. ’Cept for the ‘F-word’ and ‘you’ spray-painted on his haunch.”

  Dammit. “And Noel’s with you now?”

  “Mike, my foreman, caught him and a couple other of the little delinquents before they ran away. I was about to start taking names, when Noel offers up his own name and says to call you, like you’re his lawyer.”

  “Have you contacted his parents?”

  “John and Rinda. I was about to—” There was a commotion on the other end of the line, and then Blair said, sounding faintly amused, “Your client wants to talk to you, counselor.”

  “Detective Starr?” a young, thin voice warbled, sounding near tears. “Don’t call my parents. Please, please, please don’t call my parents. It was Reed and Ben’s idea. It’s water-based paint. It won’t hurt him none.”

  “Noel, it’s not up to me. You’re a minor. Your parents are your guardians.”

  “I said you’d help us! I said we wouldn’t go to jail!” He dropped the phone, and Kat heard a scuffle and then someone barked out, “Stop right there!” then silence.

  “Noel?” Kat asked, alarmed. “Noel?”

  The phone was picked up again, and Blair said, “It’s all right. Flight from custody averted. Mike stopped them from running. They are all now shaking in their boots on the back porch, waiting for the long arm of the law to come crashing down on them.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes …”

  “I’ll call their parents,” Blair said. “See you soon.”

  *

  The Kincaid ranch sprawled over hundreds of acres of farmland and was close to the size of the Dillinger ranch, maybe even as big or bigger. Kat hadn’t been back to it since that night with Blair, and she approached with a feeling of extreme weariness. She wanted to find Addie Donovan. She wanted to find Ruth’s rapist and Courtney Pearson’s kidnapper. She wanted to know what had happened to Rachel Byrd and Erin Higgins. She wanted to scream and rip out her hair and lie down on the ground and sob.

  She’d put in a call to Ruth on the way, sick at heart that Jimmy Woodcock had sensationalized her story as only he could. When Ruth picked up, Kat immediately began apologizing for the leak in the department, swearing she would get to the bottom of it, but Ruth told her not to worry.

  “I spoke to Woodcock myself,” she revealed, to Kat’s surprise. “I called your cell, but you didn’t pick up, so then I phoned the department. You weren’t in, so I ended up talking to Ricki. She was so sympathetic and determined to get the guy that it was easy to talk to her. It was good, and then I asked myself what I was waiting for. She knows, Sam knows, my parents know. So I called Jimmy and gave him the bare bones story.”

  “You left Shiloh and me out of it.”

  “He didn’t need every detail. He just needed to report that I was raped. He was bound to add his own spin, but it could’ve been a lot worse. Honestly, Kat, it’s really helped to have Ethan here, encouraging me. Woodcock’s a lowlife, and it’s too bad he owns the paper, but … so what. We need to catch this guy.” Kat could almost hear her brother’s words coming from Ruth. “This is going to sound weird,” she’d gone on, “but I think Jimmy was deeply shocked by my story. Shocked that it happened to me. You know, good girl, Ruthie, and all that. He could have been covering up, I suppose, but I just don’t think he’s that good of an actor … so I’m thinking of moving him down on my suspect list.”

  They’d talked a bit more, but then the entrance to the Kincaid ranch had come into view, and Kat had wound down the call.

  “Maybe my story will help get this guy. Someone might remember something, or maybe it’ll give them courage to come forward. Something,” Ruth had added hopefully just before they hung up.

  “I’m glad you’re with Ethan,” Kat blurted back, meaning it.

  Now, she drove through the gates and down the long drive that circled in front of the sprawling two-story ranch house with its flanking wings. There were new boards on the porch, and the shutters looked freshly painted. She took in three deep breaths and exhaled them and was staring at her hands, still clenched around the steering wheel, when her cell phone rang. She dug through her purse, completely aware that she was glad of the distraction. It was her father, and that gave her pause, but in the end she answered, “Hi, Dad.”

  “Where are you? Are you at work?”

  “Yeah …”

  “You don’t sound too sure. You’re not on your way to Massey’s, are you?”

  “No, I’m at the Kincaid ranch.” She gave her father a brief update, fully aware she was going against department protocol since this wasn’t part of the Pearson investigation, but she wanted Patrick to know what and whom she was facing.

  He understood immediately, warning grimly, “Be careful with the Byrds.”

  “I can’t seem to get away from them,” she said on a sigh.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Look, I gotta go deal with this, so I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I wanted you to know that I had dinner with Goldie.”

  “Great. Can we talk about this later?”

  “Sure enough. Ruth’s client is probably Hank Eames. That’s the only guy Goldie’s seen going into her office who fills the bill.”

  Kat had a mental image of Eames, and a cold feeling settled between her shoulder blades as she recalled Shiloh’s words: You know we know Ruthie’s rapist. He seemed familiar to us. He sure
did to me, and he did to you too.

  Could Hank Eames be the guy?

  What was Ruth’s mantra? Wide girth … something… thick something …

  Kat had mostly seen him in profile, but his face had been obscured. His body, though …

  “Katrina?”

  The ranch house front door opened, and Blair strolled onto the porch. Through the windshield, her gaze moved upward from his cowboy boots, to his jeans with the dull-silver belt buckle, to his insouciant smile, the amusement in his eyes below the tip of his hat. A rush of emotion ran through her—annoyance, breathlessness, a rush of inexplicable desire. Man, she didn’t want to want him. It was downright perplexing that she did.

  “I’ll call you, Dad.” She clicked off and stepped out of her Jeep into a blasting July sun. Her scalp prickled with the heat. Mentally tamping down on her uneasy stomach, she strode his way.

  “Thought I was going to see that back bumper in my grill the other day,” he drawled, nodding toward her Jeep.

  “You snuck up on me,” she said shortly.

  “Did I?”

  He was staring at her in a way that made her feel he was asking a different question than the one she heard, but she ignored him. “Where’s Noel?”

  “Out back. Come on through.” He opened the screen door and pushed in the oak front door with a booted foot. Kat heard an approaching vehicle and looked around.

  “The Brinkmans,” Blair said. “And the Byrds.”

  They both waited as Rinda and John Brinkman, the Byrds’ oldest daughter and son-in-law, and silver-haired Paul Byrd and his wife, sad-eyed Ann, moved toward them. John’s face was a study in contained fury, while Rinda’s face was flushed with color—embarrassment, it turned out. Paul glared at Kat as if the whole thing was her fault, while Ann regarded her anxiously, apparently feeling the same way.

  “Come on in,” Blair invited, holding the door for all of them. Kat waited to bring up the rear with Blair, who whispered in her ear, “You do something to piss off Grandma and Grandpa?”

  “I’m Patrick Starr’s daughter.”

  “Ahh …”

  They all trundled through the house to the back porch, where Mike, the foreman, a brawny, fifty-something man with a wide chest and muscular arms, was leaning against a back rail and whittling on a small piece of wood. Three tween boys were seated in a row on a wooden bench, all sitting with straight backs and sober expressions. Their eyes swung as one to the Brinkmans, and when Noel saw his father, he shrank back and looked at the floor.

  Paul Byrd looked around, glaring, then his angry eyes landed back on Kat. His gaze skated down her slim frame, centering on her midsection, and Kat felt herself go cold. He knows. Rhianna told him.

  “What happened?” John Brinkman asked Noel, but it was Mike who brought him up-to-date on the horse prank. Noel’s father looked stricken, and Noel’s chin sank down further. His friends tried to look at anything but the group of adults on the porch.

  “What were you thinking?” John demanded.

  “I dunno,” Noel mumbled.

  Paul Byrd said evenly, “I’d prefer to keep this matter out of the hands of the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “That will be up to Mr. Crutchens,” Kat answered.

  “Has he been told yet?” Byrd was laser-focused on Kat. She wasn’t certain the others were aware of their silent little war, but she sure was.

  “Not yet,” Blair put in. “But it’s kinda hard to hide the, uh, sentiment on the horse’s hide.”

  “He’s just such an a-hole,” Noel muttered.

  “Noel!” Rinda cried.

  “Well, he is.”

  Byrd looked like he was going to yank his grandson to his feet and shake him. Kat stepped forward instinctively, and so did Blair. Everyone else looked stunned.

  Byrd rounded on Kat. “If Hal Crutchens wants to file a report, he can file a report. We don’t need you keeping score!”

  “What’s going on?” Blair interjected tautly before Kat could respond.

  “I’ll be talking to the sheriff,” Byrd assured him. “He’s a good cop. Diligent.”

  Kat felt her face flame, but she told herself not to rise to the bait.

  Blair, however, wasn’t known for holding back. “You got something to say, you better just say it.”

  “You her boyfriend?” Byrd challenged.

  “Dad,” Rinda said, discomfited.

  Blair’s brows raised. “What’re we doing here?” he asked.

  “The sanctity of marriage shouldn’t be laughed at, especially when there’s a new life on the way.” He swung his gaze meaningfully toward Kat, and everyone else looked at her too.

  There was a buzzing in her head, and the sunlit field behind the Kincaid ranch house began to swim in front of her eyes.

  Shit.

  Chapter 24

  She didn’t completely pass out. After several seconds, her vision righted itself, and with the attention off him, Noel seized the opportunity to plead his case, whining that old man Crutchens deserved everything coming to him because he was a mean, nasty, old bastard.

  Ann Byrd stepped between her husband and his grandchild, and Rinda and John Brinkman looked at their son like he was a creature from another planet. They decided to walk Crutchens’s horse back to him with the help of the truants who were desperate to wash off the water-based paint before he saw his horse. They wanted to go alone, but their parents ignored them, and the whole family trooped toward the Crutchens property.

  Mike had diplomatically disappeared to one of the outbuildings, and Kat pulled out her phone, glanced at the screen, and said with false lightness, “I’d better go. Duty calls. It’s in Hal Crutchens’s hands now, and hopefully he won’t be too hard on them.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  Of all the scenarios she’d thought of, and there had been a few that had run through her mind, about how, when, or even if she would tell Blair he was about to be a father, this was one of the worst.

  “I’m …” She stopped. There were no words she could think to say. She wanted to deny it all. She wanted to lie. She couldn’t do it, so she just stopped.

  Blair was regarding her through incredulous blue eyes. “Is it mine?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not mine?”

  “It’s … I’m … I haven’t figured this out yet, and I’m … taking some time to, uh …”

  “But you are pregnant?”

  “I haven’t seen a doctor. Nothing’s for sure.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” he bit out. She didn’t like the way he was gazing at her so intently.

  “No, I don’t know. It could be any one of the guys I’ve been seeing,” she snapped.

  “What guys?”

  “The … the ones I’ve been dating.”

  “Name one.”

  “It’s a secret. They don’t know about each other, and it’s gotten worse, the stakes are higher now with the … this …”

  “Name one,” he insisted. He took a step toward her, and it was all Kat could do not to step back.

  “You threatening me, Kincaid?” she demanded.

  “You’re pregnant, and it’s my baby, and you weren’t going to tell me.”

  “You’re making assumptions!”

  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re …”

  “Kat,” he whispered when she couldn’t go on.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Blair! You don’t know anything about me, and that’s the way it’s going to stay!”

  “What’s with you, Kat? Two months ago … practically three … we end up making love, and then you won’t talk to me, and now you don’t tell me that you’re pregnant?”

  “I just learned, okay? I got a pregnancy test from that pharmacy at the edge of town, and the Byrds’ daughter works there, and she saw me. Don’t tell me that you have any rights because you don’t! I don’t want to hear that from you.”
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  “Well, you’re going to.” His lips were pressed blade thin.

  “To hell with you.”

  “To hell with you,” he shot right back.

  They glared at each other.

  Kat was a mess inside. She couldn’t believe she was having this verbal skirmish, all of it out in the open. “I haven’t seen a doctor yet. Or told my dad. Or people at work.”

  “Well, you’d better do it soon,” he growled. “’Cause the word’s out.”

  “I’m not sure I’m keeping it!” The words rang out between them. They were false. She’d already determined she wouldn’t be able to go that route. But she was alarmed. He was alarming her! Where did he get off being so proprietary?

  “Kat,” he said in disbelief.

  “I gotta go.”

  She turned away from him, yanking open the back door, hurrying through the house, blinded by her own tumultuous thoughts. He was right on her heels, and when she ran onto the porch and slammed the front door into the outside wall, he grabbed her arm. The door banged back into him, but he wasn’t fazed.

  “Kat. Wait.”

  She tried to shake him off. “Stop it. I don’t want the Byrds to come back and see us fighting. Just let me go.”

  “Come on, I’m sorry. You shocked me. I don’t want to fight. I just need to talk. You and I. Talk.”

  There were tears rising to her eyes from the depths of her soul. Oh. God. No. She couldn’t break down. She didn’t even feel like breaking down. It was her out-of-whack hormones. “I can’t right now. I’m working. I’ve got … things to do.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Addie Donovan’s missing, and Courtney Pearson’s dead. Would you let me go?”

  He dropped her arm. “Is it mine?”

  She shook her head, glad that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  But his words followed her to her Jeep. Yes, it’s yours. There’s been no one else.

  She tore away from his ranch, seeing his image retreat in her rearview mirror as he watched her leave. What was it that made her act like an adolescent around him?

  “You should’ve told him,” she muttered through her teeth.

  She glanced down at her cell. It would be a simple matter to put that right.