Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Jose, Truong and Palmer hadn’t taken on a lot of personality in Reid’s mind yet. Neither Paula nor Roger wanted to see any of them as being twisted enough to threaten the existence of the shelter with arson. The only other kid they had grudgingly agreed harbored some real anger was Damon, the bullish-looking boy Caleb had fought with.

  So far, the Hales were refusing to give Reid the full names of their resident boys. While respecting their reasons, he was becoming impatient. What would it take to push them into admitting that the boys’ backgrounds needed to be investigated?

  Reid stepped carefully as he crossed the small porch, having already discovered that one board creaked. A faint smile crossed his face. Maybe he’d ask Caleb if the stair near the top in the lodge still did the same.

  Moving quietly in the darkness, he patrolled as far as the last cabin to the west, then retraced his steps. Twice he froze in place, once when a toilet flushed, a second time when he heard a thump. It was followed a moment later by a light coming on inside one of the cabins. Through the small-paned window, he saw a boy—Truong, he thought—lift a glass to his mouth and take a drink. A moment later, the light went out. Reassured by the continuing silence, Reid resumed his rounds.

  Down to the end of the line of cabins, the last several decrepit enough Roger was thinking of demolishing them. The moonlight picked out the charred hole in the roof of the damaged one, and the black fan on the side where fire had burned through the dry old logs.

  Reid had turned toward the lodge when he heard the muffled thud of a vehicle door closing. Not right out in front, but not far away, either. At a neighbor’s? Could be, but it also might be out at the road.

  His hand slid toward the butt of his weapon—“Habit,” he heard himself saying—as he ran around one side of the lodge, cutting between it and the half-burned woodshed.

  He stopped at the corner and scanned the front of the property, his gaze moving carefully over the black hulk of Roger’s truck and several rusting pickups and cars Roger had the boys working on, the vast porch with its deeper darkness that spanned the front of the lodge, the driveway disappearing into overgrown woods.

  Nothing. Not a hint of movement.

  But as he waited, an engine started. And, God damn it, he’d swear it was at the road. Before he could move, the vehicle was already driving away.

  Maybe a smaller SUV, but he suspected a full-size SUV or pickup truck. The sound was too deep.

  “Shit,” he muttered. If he’d started out five minutes sooner, he might have caught someone prowling.

  Or, hell, it was equally possible that a couple of teenagers had pulled over to neck, or the sound really had come from the neighbor’s driveway to the east.

  He decided to risk using his flashlight and turned it on, scanning the yard and front steps. More nothing.

  Turning off the light, he rounded the lodge. Just as he neared the back corner, he heard a sound that kicked up his pulse: a soft thud that this time he felt sure was the lodge’s kitchen door closing.

  Reid broke into a run, but when he reached the back of the lodge, the night was utterly still. No lights came on inside; he heard nothing from any of the cabins.

  He turned on his flashlight again and swept the beam over the surrounding woods and the shadows between cabins. He tested the back door to the lodge and found it locked.

  So somebody had been entering, not leaving. Sneaking back inside, he thought bitterly. Twice tonight, he’d been in the wrong place. Was it sheer chance that two people had been on the move, or had they been meeting? The timing suggested as much. And if so...one of those two people was either TJ or Caleb.

  If there’d been a meeting at all, there were explanations that had nothing to do with the recent fires. Either boy could have told a friend where he was or conceivably have met a girl who had driven out here.

  Brooding, he knew the possibility still existed that the sound of the car engine had come from a neighbor’s or had been a vehicle stopped along the road for an innocent reason.

  Given what had been going on here, though, Reid wasn’t inclined to buy an innocent reason for either of the boys sneaking out in the middle of the night.

  So—there had to be a reason.

  With fresh resolve, he began walking again, worrying less this time about staying unseen and unheard. He checked every one of the cabins, the woodshed, the new pile of firewood along one wall of the lodge. And finally, he climbed the front steps to the deep front porch and swept the flashlight beam in a slow arc.

  He had fire on his mind, so it took him a second to process what he did see. He brought the light back to shine on the huge old front door—and the wicked-looking hunting knife with a six-inch or longer blade buried deep in the wood. For one frozen second, he imagined the knife still quivering.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled and took out his phone to wake Roger.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “IT WASN’T ME,” Caleb repeated sullenly.

  As if anybody believed him. The three adults at the table wore identical implacable expressions.

  Paula cleared her throat. “Funny thing. TJ says the same.”

  Looking at her bothered him. Usually she was so together, but tonight he could tell she was scared.

  The other times, with the two fires, she’d either still been dressed or had gotten dressed really fast before Caleb had seen her. This time, she wore some kind of ugly, lumpy fleece robe over a high-necked flannel nightgown. It was the first time Caleb had seen her hair loose instead of braided. It was, wow, down to her butt. Wavy from the braids, but mostly gray.

  Roger’s hair was wild, too, and he wore slippers, saggy flannel pajama bottoms and a faded Kansas City Chiefs sweatshirt.

  Only Reid was fully dressed, in jeans, running shoes and a fleece pullover. Oh, yeah, and a shoulder holster holding a big nine-millimeter handgun. Thanks to Daddy, Caleb knew his guns.

  They stared at him. He stared back.

  “This was a threat, Caleb,” his brother said.

  He laughed. “Yeah, no shit.”

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “No, I don’t think it’s funny. What’s funny is you thinking I’m stupid.”

  It was always hard to tell what was really going on in Reid’s head, but right now was an exception. He looked sad. As if Caleb had let him down.

  “You could try trusting me,” Reid said quietly, his eyes holding Caleb’s.

  Temper and hurt flared. “Sure. Like you trust me?”

  “I’d like to. Hard to trust someone who won’t talk to you.”

  Caleb didn’t have to say anything. His brother’s eyes narrowed for a flicker, and then his face went blank. As usual.

  Caleb swiveled toward Paula. “Are you done with me?”

  They’d already asked whether he had heard anyone else up and around in the lodge the past couple of hours. Or anything unusual outside.

  He’d said no. And no.

  And tonight he hadn’t heard TJ get up. For some reason, he’d been totally out. But he knew. TJ was going outside most nights. What Caleb couldn’t figure out was what he was doing. Until this deal with the knife, there hadn’t been any excitement in a week. TJ had had plenty of opportunity, so why hadn’t he taken advantage of it until tonight?

  When Caleb got upstairs, for once the other boy’s door stood half-open and his light was on. Caleb hesitated, then stepped into the opening. So far, he’d kept his mouth shut, but he didn’t like being judged because TJ was into some kind of shit.

  Sprawled on his bed, TJ wore only a pair of sweatpants. He wasn’t any taller than Caleb, who was already six feet, but he had some serious muscles. He had a man’s facial and body hair, too. An unshaven growth of beard shadowed TJ’s lean face. His brown eyes were always flat and cold.

  When he saw
that he wasn’t alone anymore, his lip curled and he removed some earbuds. “That didn’t take long.”

  “I said the same thing you did. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Bet that’s not what they wanted to hear.”

  “No. They wanted me to say I hear you go downstairs every night. That I know it’s you who oiled the hinges on the back door so you can go in and out quietly.”

  TJ didn’t move, but Caleb wasn’t fooled into thinking he was relaxed. Just because he’d never seen a coiled diamondback ready to strike didn’t mean he wouldn’t recognize its state of mind when he did almost step on one.

  “I could say the same about you,” TJ said after a moment.

  “But you’d be lying.”

  “You don’t know anything, or you would have spilled.”

  Caleb made himself laugh, even knowing TJ wouldn’t like it. “Yeah? Shows what you know.”

  TJ sat up so fast Caleb jerked backward in instinctive reaction.

  “You’re threatening me.” The jerk snorted. “Or do you think I’ll pay you to keep your mouth shut?”

  “You don’t have anything I’d want,” Caleb scoffed.

  “So what’s the point?”

  Caleb balanced lightly on his feet and readied himself, even though he didn’t think TJ would attack him right now, not with Paula, Roger and Reid downstairs and alert. “I don’t want anyone to die because you’re pissed at everyone, okay?”

  TJ laughed, an ugly sound. “Yeah, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to bed, little boy.”

  Caleb never liked to back down. He was already mad at himself for flinching. He knew his stubbornness was rooted in all the times he’d had to duck his head and pretend to be submissive to Dad to avoid being hurt. Sometimes he wished he’d had the balls to refuse to back down. He could have taken whatever Dad threw at him. Or, better yet, killed the son of a bitch. Dad was careless with his weapons, a nine-mil Beretta and a Colt .38. A couple of times Caleb had seen one of the weapons lying on the kitchen counter and imagined himself grabbing it and just blasting away. Bam. Bam. Bam. Seeing the explosion of blood and the shock on his father’s face followed by...vacancy. Caleb had wanted to do it so much, he’d shocked himself. I won’t be like him, he’d told himself, but maybe that was just an excuse for being a coward.

  What he did know was that he’d never give anyone that kind of power over him again. TJ might beat the shit out of him, but Caleb would rather that than know how gutless he was.

  So he shrugged, real nonchalant, and said, “Keep telling yourself that.”

  Until now, he’d never seen anyone’s eyes dilate so much they were pitch-black. But he held TJ’s blistering stare long enough to satisfy himself, then turned and went to his room.

  Which had no lock. He could stand up for himself when he was awake, but what if TJ sneaked in when he was sleeping?

  After a minute, Caleb grabbed his desk chair and carried it to the door, bracing the back beneath the knob. At least this way he’d have some warning.

  * * *

  “WE MIGHT BE making a mistake to assume it was Caleb or TJ you heard going in,” Roger observed, once they heard Caleb climb the stairs.

  “That’s occurred to me,” Reid admitted. “It wouldn’t be hard for any of the boys to get his hands on a key to the front door. He might be coming in that door, out the back, depending on what he thinks is safest. For that matter, he might have opened the door, heard me coming around the lodge or seen a spear of my flashlight beam, closed the door real quick and stayed in the kitchen. He could have let himself out later, once we were all out front.”

  There were enough other possible scenarios to give him a headache. He had an image of clowns in whiteface and bulbous red noses opening and closing doors, popping in and out with bewildering speed until the watcher was confused over who was where.

  “But they’re still the two likeliest,” Roger said.

  Reid grunted.

  My brother.

  Without a word, Roger heaved himself to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen, carrying his empty coffee cup. When he returned with it full, Paula shook her head.

  “The caffeine will keep you awake.”

  He kissed her cheek, then straddled the bench beside her. “It’s four-thirty in the morning. I won’t be falling asleep again.”

  “Well, I plan to,” she said with a sniff. “You two can stay up all night long if you want.” She slid off one end of the bench, bent briefly to rest her head against her husband’s back, then came around the table to squeeze Reid’s shoulder. “Thank you for being here.”

  Reid, too, had just been thinking he could still get some sleep if he went home. He doubted anything else was going to happen here in the waning hours of the night. But clearly, Roger had something else to say, so Reid didn’t move.

  “You’re sure you don’t want a cup?”

  Reid shook his head. “You know something.”

  “What?” Roger looked startled. “No! Just that we’ve had more to do with local law enforcement than I’ve told you.”

  Reid tensed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve heard the story on your predecessor’s wife?”

  That was an unexpected sideways jump. Reid cast his mind back. “She had amnesia because of a blow to the head. Came back to town years later, and the guy who’d whacked her the first time tried to kill her again.”

  “You knew one of those attempts took place out here?”

  “You said something at the time,” Reid said slowly, thinking it through. “That she’d had a boyfriend who lived here back when she was a teenager.”

  “Right. She drove out here without knowing where she was going because he’d brought her to see the place, way back when.”

  What Roger had never said, it developed, was that an Angel Butte police detective named Duane Brewer had found the shelter years ago. Not long after Reid “graduated,” they figured out. This Brewer had been a runaway himself who claimed he wouldn’t have survived if not for the sanctuary given by a youth shelter. He wanted to help.

  So he started mentoring kids, usually one at a time. Sometimes a girl, sometimes a boy. Only it turned out that he’d been sexually molesting those girls, a number of whom subsequently disappeared.

  “We didn’t worry as much as we should have,” Roger said, his chagrin obvious. “You know kids walk out on us. We can’t hogtie them to keep them here.”

  Reid nodded. His first year here, he’d thought about running away himself. He hadn’t liked the restrictions or having to feel grateful. He hadn’t wanted to trust anyone. During the three years he’d spent at the old resort, three—no, four—of the residents had taken off. One girl, three boys. Staying here, studying hard, keeping clean and abiding by the strict rules on any contact with outsiders wasn’t easy. On occasion, Roger and Paula had had to ask kids to leave, too, trusting that they weren’t angry enough to betray the shelter.

  Reid had already asked if any kids who might be disgruntled had left in the recent past, but apparently it had been at least a year since the last had taken off. His choice, which made him unlikely for this campaign of fear.

  “We know now that Brewer murdered those girls. It all came to a head when he tried to kill Maddie Dubeau—now Nell McAllister.”

  More of what he’d read at the time was coming back to Reid. Wherever he was living, he had always paid attention to news from central Oregon. Yeah, he’d known that after Brewer was brought down, Jane Renner, née Vahalik, had taken over as lieutenant in Investigations. What Reid had never read was any connection with the runaway shelter at the old Bear Creek Resort.

  “How’d you keep your heads down?” he asked.

  “With help from McAllister and Lieutenant Vahalik,” Roger said. “That’s what I wa
nted to tell you. They both know what we’re doing out here and chose to keep their mouths shut.”

  Reid had trouble believing that. Going for blunt, he asked, “Why? Given their jobs, the ethical decision would have been to shut you down.”

  “In Sheriff McAllister’s case, I think his wife begged him to stay silent.” A frown gathered on his brow. “I’m less sure about the lieutenant. I guess I wondered—” He stopped.

  When he didn’t continue, Reid did it for him. “Whether she might have reason to sympathize.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. There’s something about her.”

  Funny, because Reid didn’t yet know her well, but he’d had the same underlying sense. For all that she was, so far as Reid could tell, confident on the job, there was something...vulnerable about her.

  The same something he’d recognized in Anna, he realized. Ghosts.

  “Then, later,” Roger continued, as if he were thinking aloud, “there was another cop. That one was with the sheriff’s department. Sergeant Renner. He came out to ask questions about a kid that went missing on our road. I can’t be sure how much he knew, but he said something about us doing a good thing, and if we ever needed help to call him.”

  “Clay Renner. He married Lieutenant Vahalik, you know.”

  Roger hadn’t known. He and Paula read the local newspaper, but Reid doubted they paid attention to wedding or anniversary announcements, even assuming two cops would have bothered with that kind of thing.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Reid asked. “Do you think we need more help?”

  “Now? No.” Roger shrugged. “But in case.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” Reid said his goodbyes and took off, his cover pretty much blown with the boys. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, as it might make their troublemaker hesitate.

  Assuming the troublemaker was one of the boys rather than the driver of the car Reid had heard.

  He realized how tired he was when he couldn’t seem to make his mind grapple with what his next step ought to be. He kept picturing the knife, blade embedded in the door, and the ghosts in Anna Grant’s eyes.