And here she was keeping one honkin' big secret from him.
She'd been prepared last night to bare every inch of her soul to him—to give him the ring and face the consequences.
But his lips had found her mouth and his kisses had grown from consoling to passionate. She'd easily convinced herself that was how they should spend their last hours together, making love, not shedding tears. Besides, she'd been too drained to deal with another guilt last night.
She touched his face, traced his forehead and cheekbones with her fingertips—traced his lips as though memorizing them. This may be the last time he'd allow her to touch him because she needed to give him the ring.
"I think I smell sausage on the verge of burning," he said, plucking her hand from his face and kissing her palm before turning to the stove and stirring the loose sausage.
Yeah, she should go back to the bedroom and take the ring from the sock she'd rolled it into and show it to him now.
But she couldn't get her feet to move. She was such a coward.
No. It wasn't about being a coward. If she showed the ring to him now, their last day together would be full of recrimination. Better to reveal the ring late in the day, closer to when he was leaving…so she wouldn't have so much time to bear his anger.
Great. She wasn't a coward. She was selfish.
"Hand me that cutting board with the chopped onions and mushrooms on it," he said.
Dumping the onions and mushrooms into the pan with the cooking meat, he added, "Normally I put green peppers into my omelets."
"But I don't have any," she said, that she couldn't even afford one lousy sweet pepper, another reminder of her dismal life, a life that was about to become even more dismal once Cole left. Which prompted her to ask, "Why didn't you leave last night?"
"Too much moonlight. Not enough cover," he said, whisking his omelet mixture.
"Oh," she said, a little disappointed his reason for staying was less about her and more about stealth.
He slung his free arm around her and drew her close to his side. "Besides, I had a better reason for staying."
She gave him a puzzled look. He gave her peck on the forehead.
"Just because you removed my stitches didn't mean I had to rush off, not when it meant leaving you."
Her heart leapt in her chest. He wasn't in a hurry to leave her. In that she would rejoice one last day.
They ate, chatting about unimportant things. They showered together, soaping each other's bodies, playing. It was near lunchtime when she heard the truck pull into her driveway.
#
Cole ducked into the bedroom. Andi went to the door and peeked through the curtains. Kelly Jackson—make that newlywed Kelly St. John—smiled back at her. Conservation Officer Kelly St. John.
Andi let the curtain fall shut. There would be no keeping Kelly out on the front porch. Kelly would know in an instant that she was hiding something if she didn't invite her in.
Pasting a smile on her face, Andi opened the door. "Well, if it isn't the newlywed back from her honeymoon. Come on in and tell me where you went and what all you did."
Kelly entered the cabin, chuckling. "I'll happily tell you where we went. But not all the details of what we did."
Andi forced a laugh. "Of course. How about some coffee?"
"Sure," Kelly said, hanging her DNR jacket on the back of the end chair at the kitchen table, the seat Andi had taken to using since Cole's arrival.
That meant Kelly faced the back of the cabin, the loft, and…the bedroom. Silently, Andi cursed that Cole had left the bedroom door open and prayed Tuff wouldn't give away his presence.
Andi placed a mug of coffee on the table in front of Kelly and sat with her own in what she'd come to think of as Cole's chair. "So, where'd you honeymoon?"
Kelly's eyes narrowed on her, the cop face. Andi cursed silently. She was playing it too chipper.
"Someplace warm, I hope," she said, trying to sound more like her usual glum self.
Kelly's cop face almost disappeared behind her smile, almost. "We started by visiting his brother Roman and his wife Tess down in Pine Mountain."
"Still in the frigid zone."
"But it was great. Tess is the one I told you about hitting it off back when Dane took me to his sister's wedding. It was really great reconnecting with her. And they have this big Victorian house. Loads of room. And their daughter is about a year older than Angel. It was just plain nice to do the family thing."
Kelly sounded so happy, Andi longed for her life.
"Then we spent some time down near Green Bay with Dane's sister Dixie and her family."
Family. How she longed for a real family of her own.
"She and her husband Sam have a little girl who's just a month older than Angel. They were so cute together. And Ben, Dixie's son from her first marriage, even though he's school age, dotes on his little sister."
Not the kind of relationship she'd had with her older brother.
"Still in the cold zone. Didn't Mr. Big Movie Star take you someplace special?" she asked, sounding more peevish than she meant to.
Kelly sat back in her chair. "Visiting family is special, Andi. I can understand how you might not think it is."
Andi waved her off. "I'm just envious."
"You sure that's all it is?"
Andi didn't like the way Kelly was studying her. Too much cop in her even if she was only a woods cop.
"Got taxes due and not enough cash to pay for them," she said, hoping to divert Kelly's suspicions.
"Dane and I could loan you what you need."
Tears scratched at the backs of Andi's eyes and she bit her lip to keep them from falling. She wasn't used to people offering her help. Kelly had been among the few who'd always treated her decently, Kelly, who had grown up secure but far from rolling in dough.
"Dane would be happy to help you out. He knows about living paycheck to paycheck."
Andi raised an eyebrow at Kelly.
"He didn't pop out of the womb an action-adventure star. It just about killed him that he didn't have enough income to help his sister when she nearly lost her home and restaurant, which wasn't all that long ago. And now that he's earning the big bucks, as he puts it, he's all about using it to help people in need."
"Thanks for the offer," she said around the lump in her throat. "I'll think about it."
Kelly leaned forward in her seat, all smiles again. "We did end up in Texas visiting his brother Renn. Is that warm enough for you?"
"Beats winter in the U.P."
"So," Kelly prompted, "what's been happening around here while I was gone?"
It wasn't a social call after all. It was there in Kelly's eyes, their keen focus.
Andi shrugged and took a sip of coffee.
"Hey," Kelly said conversationally. "You're in these woods as much as me and I've been gone well over a week. There must be something new to tell."
Kelly wrapped her hands around her mug and stared into her coffee, hiding her face behind a veil of loose hair. Kelly usually didn't ask her questions that would make her have to lie to her. She hedged with, "I heard there's some missing guy the cops are looking for."
"Yeah," Kelly said. "Tom Maki tells me he stopped by here yesterday. Showed you a picture of the missing man. Figured, how you cover the county—how well you know all the hidey spots in the woods in these parts, you'd be a good one to have looking out for our guy."
Our guy. He wasn't theirs. He was hers.
"So, you haven't seen anything unusual?" Kelly prodded.
"I've seen plenty unusual in my life," Andi said, meeting Kelly's gaze.
"How about in the last ten days?"
"Nothing I'd run to the cops about," Andi said, telling herself she wasn't lying because she had chosen not to go to the cops when she'd found Cole.
"Still keeping an eye on the vacant camps?"
"Yeah."
"Nothing odd about any of them? I ask because I took a ride through the backcountry
this morning, checked every vacant camp myself and there was one that I believe is on your watch list that seemed to have had a pane of glass recently replaced."
"Yeah. I know what camp you mean. It did have a broken window. I fixed it."
"When was that?"
"Couple days ago. Just before this latest snowfall."
"Anything else around the camp disturbed?"
Andi shook her head.
"No tracks around the place?"
"There wasn't much snow around the building the day I fixed the window." The truth. The early thaw had pretty much melted away her and Tuff's tracks as well as most of the toboggan trail.
"I had Max with me," Kelly said. "You know Golden Retrievers. All energy."
"Yup," Andi said, her hands tightening around her mug, knowing Kelly knew more than she'd so far let on—knowing the snow in the shaded woods would be slow to melt.
"Max ran off into the woods and you know what that silly retriever came back with?"
Andi shook her head, dread churning through her stomach.
"A man's wallet."
"No way," Andi said, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Kelly pulled a wallet from the jacket hanging on the back of the chair and laid it on the table.
Andi stared at it, knowing who it belonged to before Kelly even opened it up and pulled out the driver's license for Cole—Cole McCall. At least now she had a last name for him.
"It's the same guy in the picture Tom showed you."
Andi nodded. "It sure is."
"You think he might have broken into that camp, stayed there 'til he healed?"
Andi's heart dropped into her stomach, but she didn't let herself get tripped up by Kelly sneaking in the injured detail of Cole's condition. "Healed? What makes you think he was hurt?"
Kelly's narrowed eyes turned cop-watchful. "After Max brought me the wallet, I strapped on my snowshoes and tracked his trail into the woods. Not much to see in the snow, settled as it was from the warm weather and covered with a fresh snowfall. But there was a blood smear on a tree."
Andi nodded, knowing whose blood it was.
"My guess is this McCall guy broke into the camp," Kelly went on, "fixed himself up, then moved on pretty quickly…given how degraded the blood on the tree was and that you didn't see any signs of activity around the place when you replaced the window pane."
The moment between them stretched before Kelly asked, "You sure you didn't see anything inside the camp disturbed?"
Andi dropped her gaze to her coffee mug and offered through a forced chuckle, "Wouldn't look too good on my resume as a caretaker for vacant camps if I didn't report something suspicious like that." True. It wouldn't look good on my resume.
Kelly removed the wallet from the table and settled back in her seat, offering a more relaxed pose. "There's pressure on us to find out anything about this guy."
Andi looked Kelly in the eye. "Just what did he do that searching for him is being done in such an under the table manner?"
"I don't have that information."
"That's what I mean. Local authorities are looking for him, but nobody knows why?"
"He's missing. That's why."
Andi shook her head. "This isn't how the usual missing hunter in the woods search goes."
"No. It's not."
"There's something hinky about this whole thing," Andi said.
Kelly drew a deep breath. "Okay. I don't know details. I only know that the search is being done quietly and the orders to find him come from very high up."
Once more, Andi stared into her coffee mug, this time debating whether revealing a few things would help or hurt Cole.
"About a week before Tommy stopped and showed me the picture of your missing guy, two other guys showed up at my door with a grainy picture of the same guy. They said they were FBI. Does that figure into what you know?"
"The orders didn't come from the FBI. Did you tell Tom about the them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Andi sighed. "You know how I feel about cops, Kelly."
"So you blew off the FBI guys, too?"
"They weren't FBI. They were just a couple thugs looking for some guy. One was Harley Hakala, Dal's old pal in crime. I got rid of them."
"We've known each other almost all our lives, Andi. I don't think you've ever straight out lied to me. Of course I also avoid asking you certain direct questions. But if I knew at least that McCall was alive and well, I think it would put some minds at ease, maybe enough that they'd give me a little information in return."
Andi closed her eyes. True. She'd never outright lied to Kelly. She may have played the semantics game with some of her answers…just as Kelly had always seemed to phrase questions in ways that allowed Andi not to have to lie. But now…
Would telling Kelly Cole was okay put him at greater risk? Was it worth taking the chance to get some information about him? Hell, just her hesitation was enough of an answer for someone as smart as Kelly to figure out she knew something.
Andi opened her eyes, looked Kelly in the eye, and gave one nod.
"Okay then," Kelly said, pushing back her chair and standing. "We'll leave it at that for now."
#
"I should turn myself in to her," Cole said from the bedroom doorway.
Andi wheeled away from the front door toward him. "You shouldn't be out here. Kelly hasn't even pulled out of the driveway."
"Then call her back in here."
"You want to turn yourself in to her, fine. But not here. Not when I'm with you."
He approached her, took her hands in his. "You don't think your friend Kelly will help you get around any aiding and abetting charges…if that's even what you did?"
"She may be a woods cop, but she trained alongside state cop cadets—took the same vows they did to uphold the law."
"She wouldn't cut you a break?"
"DNR khaki runs through her father's veins. She was raised by a man whose view of the law is black and white all the way."
"But she's more flexible, isn't she?"
Andi nodded. "But I've never put Kelly in a position where she had to choose friendship over the law—over her job. Besides, we aren't even real friends."
"You talk to each other like friends."
"I don't have friends."
"Not even Mrs. Niemi or John Joki you trade with and make pasties for? How about the folks you plow out? Or the owners of the camps you watch?"
"Business," she said.
He gave her hands a gentle squeeze. "You sure about that?"
She thought how, whenever she plowed out Mrs. Niemi or mowed her lawn, the widow would wave her into the house and send her home with a double slice of homemade pie, a chunk of layer cake, or some other baked goodie. Mrs. Niemi would always say how she couldn't eat it all by herself and hated to see it go to waste so Andi should take it.
Then there was John Joki, always quick to offer his help, like when she was patching her roof and he showed up with what he said was "an extra bundle of shingles" leftover from his roofing job. And Kelly. There'd always been Kelly with her kindness, like today offering to loan her the money for her taxes.
Cole might be right, but…
She curled her fingers around his. "We're getting off topic here. This is about the cops being able to tie me to you."
"About you winding up in jail for helping me and losing everything you love," Cole stated.
Everything I love. Does he know that means more than Tuff and my land? Does he know it means him as well? Because I've gone and fallen in love with him.
He released one hand and stroked a stray lock of hair back from her cheek. "Don't you think Kelly knows something's up with you? Even that state cop. You have to know he sent Kelly to talk to you because he suspected you were holding something back from him."
"Suspecting I'm involved isn't the same as proof I am."
"Okay," he said, drawing her into his arms. "But I'd still like to arrange to turn
myself in to Kelly."
She pulled away from him and turned toward the fridge. "Want me to make you a sandwich?"
"Andi, you can't ignore the inevitable."
She stopped with her hand on the refrigerator door.
"I'm still turning myself in whether to Kelly or another cop. Help me figure out how to surrender myself to someone I feel I can trust."
She exhaled a heavy breath and nodded. After a couple hours huddled together on the couch, running through scenarios of how he could surrender himself to Kelly without leaving an obvious a trail back to Andi, they settled on her getting him back to the camp where she found him. He'd light a fire in the stove. She'd call Kelly and report seeing the smoke.
Resigned to the plan, Andi slumped against Cole. He drew her across his lap, brushed his lips across her temple, and said, "So, my last name is McCall."
With him wanting to turn himself in and their focus on how to go about it, she'd forgotten all about the one new piece of information she'd gotten on him. She smiled and ran a finger along his jaw. "McCall. Does it mean anything to you?"
He repeated the name as though trying it out on his tongue, in the end shaking his head. "Doesn't ring any bells."
"If Dal hadn't stolen my computer and I still had Internet service, I could look up your name, probably find out more about you. At the very least, find out if your name has shown up in any news reports." She shifted in his lap. "The library in town offers Internet service. I could go there and…"
He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. "It doesn't matter who I was or what I did. We have a plan in place."
"But if you knew why the authorities are looking for you, you'd be better prepared to face an unknown past."
"I'd rather spend the few hours we have left together."
"Hours?" she said, her heart stuttering.
He nodded. "I think we need to do this before nightfall."
She couldn't let him walk into this blindly, not if there was still a chance he might remember his past—not when she had a ring that might unlock his memory.
"There's something I have to show you," she said, sliding off his lap.
But she hadn't gotten halfway to the bedroom when the phone rang. She turned, stared at the phone. No one called her…unless they needed plowing out or a pull out of the ditch.
Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS Page 13
