He’d pursued the woman, despite a strong inner voice telling him not to. He’d set something in motion when he couldn’t offer what she needed and deserved. Her husband had ignored her, belittled her. Maybe Dom would never belittle her, but eventually he would ignore her, in subtle, soul-killing ways. It was who he was, a cop first, a person second. Jordan needed someone who would put her first.
Hell, Jordan needed someone who loved her. Dom didn’t love her, wouldn’t allow himself to love her. He didn’t even like to think of that word.
Love.
He’d loved once, married her, let her down, maybe even destroyed her. He was a lousy love candidate. There was no room for it in his life. He was committed to his career, always barreled ahead, always did it his way, didn’t know how to do it any other way. Maybe the fact that he followed no one’s agenda but his own was what made him a good cop—or used to, anyway.
But because he lacked the ability to compromise, to let anyone else in his life in any kind of meaningful way, he made a lousy life partner. Hadn’t he proven that with Theresa?
Now here was Jordan in his life just in time to prove something else. He used to say he was a good cop but a bad man. Now even the good cop part was wrong.
Jordan turned onto her side, muttered something. Dom moved to the edge of the bed, adjusted her blanket so she wouldn’t get chilled. He stayed there, gazing at her.
If he sometimes felt a strange stirring of emotion when he looked at Jordan, if when they made love he experienced a newer, deeper level of sensation than he ever had before, that didn’t mean he was in love. It only meant that, if he were a different person, she might be someone he could love.
That was all it meant.
He lay next to her and nodded off, but the moment the morning light came in through the blinds, he was up. He showered, got into his clothes, went out and got two cups of coffee and several doughnuts, then sat on the edge of the bed, waving a plastic cup under her nose.
She stirred, then opened her eyes. She was groggy, unfocused, her lids heavy. “Where are we?”
“In what passes for a motel in Buttonhollow. Come on, we got some investigating to do.”
Their first stop was at the Kaczmaraks, who informed them that no, they had not heard from Myra. Dom and Jordan were at the church day-care center when it opened at seven. When they found the woman who ran the program, Dom questioned her about Myra. Had she ever mentioned any favorite places? Hobbies?
Jordan stood next to Dom but let him do all the talking. Even with a few hours of sleep, her energy was nearly depleted. She was running on sheer raw nerve, and knew it. If she tried to assume the persona of female officer she’d managed yesterday, she might very well scream at someone, “Listen to me! We have to ask you these questions! My little boy’s life depends on it!” So she kept quiet.
They needed a break, Jordan thought. Someone somewhere had to know something, had to have seen something. Someone...
“Excuse me?” a woman said, tapping Jordan on the shoulder.
She turned. “Yes?”
Jordan found herself facing a friendly-looking woman with freckles and short red hair holding a child in her arms. “You’re asking about Myra Kaczmarak, aren’t you?”
Jordan was instantly alert. “Yes.”
“I saw her truck last night, parked in the woods near my house. Just the truck, not her.”
The woman lived twenty miles out of town, in a tract of homes that had been built in the seventies. Myra’s truck was parked, as she had said, near a wooded area adjacent to a double-size lot where two houses were under construction. There were no workmen at the site.
A quick perusal of the trees told Dom that no one was hiding among them, so he turned his attention to the construction. A high chain link fence, woven with barbed wire for extra security, surrounded the two homes, each in a different stage of completion. A stucco machine and a tractor were parked inside the fence, and piles of brown dirt were pushed to the perimeter.
Dom walked quickly around the fence, looking for a way in. He’d gone about a third of the way and had found the padlock and chain that connected two sections of fence when he heard Jordan call softly, “Michael?”
He turned to see her staring at something in the construction area, but his line of vision was blocked by one of the homes. Quickly, he made his way around the fence to where she stood, transfixed. Again, she said, “Michael?”
And then Dom saw him. A little boy, standing in the dirt in front of one of the wood-framed structures. His hair was white-blond. One index finger was in his mouth. With his other hand, he held a small teddy bear to his chest. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, and his legs, bare arms and face were smudged with dirt.
The child stood very still, staring at Jordan as, again, she whispered, “Michael?”
He cocked his head, then moved slowly toward her, a puzzled look on his face. He stopped about a foot away from the fence that separated them. Dom watched while Jordan put her finger through the fence, wiggled it at him and smiled softly. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Dom came closer, put his hand on her shoulder, stared at the little boy. His movement caught the child’s attention, and he shifted his gaze from Jordan to Dom.
From this distance, Dom had no trouble making out the details of his face. It was thinner now, more mature. The nose, the mouth—yes, he’d seen those before.
And, of course, he’d seen the eyes, which were a pale, eerie green color. They were achingly familiar. They were Jordan’s eyes.
Dom was staring at Michael Carlisle.
Chapter 13
Her heart was so full, Jordan could barely contain it within the boundaries of her chest. Her son, her beautiful, darling little boy—he was not only alive, but he was right in front of her looking at her. And looking at her as though he almost recognized her. Her voice seemed familiar to him, that much she could tell from the way he cocked his head each time she spoke.
“Hello, Michael,” she said again. “Remember me? It’s all right if you don’t, we have lots of time.”
“Jordan,” Dom whispered warningly as, seemingly from out of nowhere, a woman appeared.
Myra, Jordan knew at once, but a completely different Myra from the woman in the glamour shot If at one time she’d been blond, curvaceous and flashy, now she looked like a slightly younger version of her mother. Not only was she considerably heavier than in her picture, but her dry-as-straw blond hair was almost eclipsed by brown roots, and her face had angry red blotches all over it. Myra wore a large white overblouse, black pedal pushers and scuffed loafers, and her clothing and her face were smudged with dirt. Obviously Myra and Michael had spent the night at the construction site.
Myra grabbed the little boy’s hand. “Rory, come here,” she said as she began to pull him away.
“Michael, no!” Jordan cried.
Stopping dead in her tracks, Myra turned and stared at Jordan with a look of dawning realization. Gripping the child’s shoulders possessively, she raised her head defiantly. “His name is Rory.”
“No, it’s Michael.”
“Rory, I said. I know who you are, and you, too,” she added with a quick glance at Dom. Then she turned the boy and picked him up in her arms. Unprotesting, he went to her. “You can’t have him,” she told Jordan. “He’s mine.”
As she backed up, her eyes darted from left to right as though seeking an escape route. Her gaze landed on the house on the farthest edge of the lot It stood on a concrete foundation and had been framed and bolted. Electrical wiring ran along its beams, its roof rafters and ceiling joists were in place, but there were no walls, no floors, no windows yet.
Myra dashed for it With amazing agility for a woman of her size, she began to climb a thirty-foot ladder propped against the side of the structure, holding Michael in the curve of one arm and using the other to pull herself up.
Dom, in the meantime, attempted to climb the chain link fence, but his progress was hindered by the barbed wire t
hreaded through the links. By the time he was halfway to the top, his hands were bleeding. Myra was nearly at the roofline.
Holding a ladder rung with one hand, she turned to face Dom and Jordan, shifting her weight enough to make the ladder wobble. “Stop!” she screamed. “You come over that fence, mister, I jump. Remember, I got Rory!”
Dom—one leg slung over the top of the fence, his pants ripped, his hands streaked with blood—froze in place. Horrified, Jordan looked from Myra to Dom and to Myra again. The woman was extremely far off the ground, and if she did as she threatened, it could be catastrophic. No, no, no, Jordan thought, her heart in her throat. To be this close to her child and have him snatched from her again. No, it was not acceptable.
“Dom,” she called. “Come down.”
“I mean it, mister,” Myra shouted. “Climb right back down, or I’ll do it, I swear I will.”
“Dom,” Jordan said again, tugging at his pants leg. “Please, do as she says.”
“She’s bluffing,” he said through clenched teeth. “She won’t jump.”
“You don’t know that.”
He glared at Myra, a look of fury on his face. Then, with obvious reluctance, he climbed down the outside of the fence, cursing under his breath as he did.
Triumphant, Myra climbed the next two rungs, then maneuvered herself so she sat on the roofline between two rafters. After she set Michael on her lap, both their legs dangled.
Panting from her exertions and scowling at Dom and Jordan, Myra kicked the ladder away. It fell with a loud clatter against the adjacent house frame. The board she sat on creaked wamingly beneath her weight, but she froze in place, and it continued to hold her.
“He’s mine,” she screamed. “You can’t have him.”
Jordan bit her knuckles to keep from screaming at the woman. The roof was high enough off the ground so if the wooden beam broke, if Myra fell off or jumped, if she dropped Michael, he could be injured seriously. Scattered about the concrete foundation were all kinds of debris—wood chips, nails, tools—all of them potential dangers.
Jordan bit harder on her knuckle, tried to summon up a plan or at least some rational thought instead of the nightmare scenarios that were popping around in her head like grasshoppers. Her son. She needed to focus on her son.
His gaze kept alternating between Myra and her, and although he didn’t make a sound, he was obviously confused and frightened. Who could blame him?
Moderating her voice so the child wouldn’t pick up on her terror, she called, “Myra? Can we talk about this, at least?” She tried to sound friendly and upbeat, but she heard the way her voice quivered.
Dom whispered in her ear. “Distract her, then keep her talking.”
Nodding to let him know she’d heard him, Jordan inhaled a deep breath and began to climb the chain link fence herself. The barbed wire cut into her palms, and it was difficult getting a solid foothold, but she managed to make it a third of the way up before Myra screamed, “Hey! Don’t you come over that fence! I told you, I’ll jump off and take Rory with me.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Jordan observed Dom move away and slip quietly into the copse of trees next to the construction site. Clinging to the fence, Jordan called out, “Please, Myra, all I’m trying to do is talk to you.”
“He’s my Rory.”
“Yes, of course he is. I just want to hear all about him, that’s all.”
“Climb down first. And no tricks or nothing. His name is Rory.”
The repetition of the name seemed to give the woman comfort. Wally had said his sister was in and out of reality. Her mother had called her unstable. Jordan had no doubt that what she was seeing now was a woman on the perimeter of insanity, which meant she had to be very careful not to push her over to the other side. Not while Michael was a hostage.
As Jordan jumped off the fence, she said, “Okay, no tricks.” Wiping her bloodied palms on her pants, she looked at her son. “Hi, Rory. That’s a great name. Is he named after anyone, Myra?”
Michael, firmly held by Myra, stared at Jordan with that puzzled expression on his face, but said nothing.
“Can Rory talk, Myra? I’d love to hear him talk.” There hadn’t been a sound out of him so far. Had his vocal cords been injured? Or, traumatized by the switch in mothers a year ago, had he stopped speaking completely?
“Myra,” Jordan went on, “I mean you no harm, I promise. In fact, I understand how difficult this must be for you. Your child, our children, they mean the world to us, don’t they? I know mine did, and it broke my heart to lose him.”
A movement behind Myra caught Jordan’s attention, but she made sure her gaze didn’t shift in the slightest. Dom had made it to the other side of the lot and was quietly easing the two sections of gate apart, proceeding very slowly so as not to make any noise. Jordan moved a little to her left so Dom was completely out of Myra’s line of vision.
And all the while, she watched the face of the little boy who had her eyes.
“Tell me about that day, will you, Myra?” Jordan said conversationally. “That last day?”
“What day?”
“When Reynolds was in the car with Michael? Or was it Rory?”
“My son is Rory.”
“Of course, your son is named Rory. Mine was named Michael.”
“Michael’s dead.”
“Yes, I know. I was so sad when that happened, I wanted to die myself.”
Suspicion mixed with confusion were in Myra’s expression, as though she wasn’t sure how to respond. Dom had said to keep talking, so Jordan had been trying a little mother-to-mother bonding. However, Myra was probably too far gone to allow any kind of connection between the two of them.
Dom had made it through the gate and was moving slowly and stealthily toward the framed house. Jordan schooled her face not to reveal anything.
“So, will you tell me about that day?” she repeated. “Who was in the car that day with Reynolds? Were you there? And Rory, too? Where was Michael?”
With another look of triumph on her face, Myra announced, “No. All four of us were in the car. Ray honked the horn—I called him Ray, you know—he honked the horn, said let’s go, the kids, too.” As she continued with her story, she seemed to become distracted, and her dangling legs kicked back and forth nervously. “He never did that, never brought Michael along, never invited Rory to come with us. It was the first time.”
“Really?” Jordan said. “How nice.” It was thoroughly ludicrous to be talking pleasantly about a ride in the car with the woman who held her son’s life in her hands. But if that’s what it took, Jordan would chitchat, sing, tap dance, whatever, till her face turned blue.
“Yeah,” Myra went on dreamily, “me and Ray and Rory and Michael, just like a family, we all went for a drive to look at the ocean. It was a real pretty day.”
With each movement of her legs, her grip on Michael seemed to loosen. When he grabbed at her knees for purchase, Jordan screamed, “Myra! Don’t let him go!”
“Huh?” Myra snapped awake, then pulled Michael closer to her, wrapping him in her embrace. “I...I was just shifting,” she said petulantly. “My back hurt.”
Willing Dom to hurry, Jordan reminded herself not to let the conversational ball drop. Keep talking, keep breathing. “Of course. So, you were going to look at the ocean?”
Dom was grateful that a stack of drywall leaning against the house kept his progress masked. Even though he was directly behind her, Myra could still turn around. If she did, she wouldn’t see him. Not until, that is, he began the final part of his climb to get the kid.
Listening to the two women’s conversation and keeping an ear cocked for any inflection in Myra’s voice that she was aware of him, he carefully propped a small ladder against the side of the house, climbed it slowly and evenly, so as not to set off any vibrations in the wood structure. Then he used a second-story window frame to boost himself up. The top of his head was at the roofline.
Bracing his hand
s on the beam, Dom was on the point of pulling himself up when he heard Myra say to Jordan, “Don’t think you can fool me. You’re trying to keep me talking—Hey! Where’s the other one? The cop?” She looked around wildly. “Where is he?”
“I honestly don’t know, Myra,” Jordan replied.
“You’re lying.” Holding Michael to her with one arm around his waist, Myra used a rafter beam to help her get to her feet. “The two of you have this plan to take Rory from me. Never. You’ll never get him.”
Knees bent, she clutched at the beam and stared measuringly at it as though deciding whether to climb its deeply pitched angle. All of a sudden, the little boy began to kick wildly, which made it difficult for Myra to maintain her balance. She slung an arm around the rafter and held on tightly while Michael struggled.
“Myra,” Jordan screamed. “Please don’t move. From the bottom of my heart, all I care about is his safety, not who has him or who doesn’t, what his name is or isn’t. Only that he’s safe!”
Jordan’s plea died away and from a distance, sirens sounded, heading in their direction.
“What’s that?” Myra shouted, her head bobbing wildly, trying to see where the sounds were coming from. “He called the cops, that’s where he went. He called them.”
Letting go of the rafter for an instant, she grabbed Michael’s kicking legs. “I told you,” she said, teetering on the edge of the roof, “I warned you....”
One, two, three, Dom said silently, then hoisted himself onto the beam In no time, he had hopped from joist to joist. Balancing himself by hanging onto a rafter, he grabbed Myra and Michael from behind.
Jordan, in the meantime, ran along the fence, squeezed through the opening and stood directly under the three struggling figures. “I’m here,” she shouted to Dom.
Sirens blaring, two patrol cars pulled up to the fence, lights flashing.
Dom used all his strength to contain Myra’s angry efforts to push him away. She was strong, but he was stronger. Finger by finger, he released her hold on the child, then he pulled the little boy away from her. Tucking Michael under one arm like a football, he took off, vaulting from ceiling beam to ceiling beam until he was on the opposite side of the house. Below, a hill of brown earth backed into the chain link fence.
The Tough Guy and the Toddler Page 23
