by Karen Rose
“Um … thank you,” she whispered. Thank you? How articulate she was after almost seven long years of college education. Her English teachers would just be so proud. She closed her “incredible” eyes against the second wave of embarrassment in less than a half-hour.
She expected him to release her chin and laugh at her bumbling idiocy.
Instead, he brushed his thumb over her lips. Once, twice. Three times.
Mercy.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded softly.
Caroline complied, dreading the condescending amusement she knew she’d see in his face. She looked out the corner of her eyes, straining her peripheral vision to its limit in an honest effort to avoid his face.
He cleared his throat and tugged on her chin. Gently. “I’m up here, Caroline.”
She dragged her eyes to his face. And caught her breath. There was no condescension there. No amusement. His eyes were locked on hers, dark and compelling. There was interest there.
Danger.
But she wasn’t afraid. No, fear was low on the list of sensations at the moment. Rock bottom. At the top? Heat. Lust. Unmitigated want. Desperately she visualized herself drawing the line in the sand. The line she shouldn’t cross. The line she shouldn’t even approach. She was unavailable. He was. Available. Sexy. Gentle.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Why?” Her lips mouthed the word, but no sound came out.
His thumb moved across her lower lip and a shudder rocked her spine, shivering out to her fingertips. “For this morning.”
Caroline furrowed her brows, his meaning escaping her fogged brain. Then the fog cleared. His students. Missi. Stephie. Long legs, bright smiles, golden tans. Jealousy emerged, unbidden and unwelcome. She tightened her jaw and tried to pull away, but he held her chin firmly. She could have pulled harder, but … didn’t.
She forced herself to smile, but could feel it was a mere baring of teeth. “No need to apologize, Max. You can talk to whomever you want. I’m sure Missi and Stephie will be more than willing to provide stimulating conversation.” She heard the nastiness in her voice as she enunciated the young women’s cutesy names, wondering if they’d be as attractive with names like Hildegarde or Gertrude. Of course they’d be. They’d just go by Hildie or Gertie.
Max shook his head, one brow lifting. “Maybe for other twenty-two-year-olds. Not for me.” His eyes gleamed. “I’m looking for someone a little more …” He hesitated. Then shrugged. “Come to dinner with me. Please.”
Caroline’s mouth fell open. Max pushed her mouth closed with the finger that still cradled her chin. “Me?”
Max smiled wryly and looked around the empty office. “Do you see anyone else here? Yes, you. Why are you so surprised? You must have men asking you out all the time.”
Caroline swallowed. “No, not as often as you’d think.” Where was that line in the sand again?
His smile dimmed a shade when she didn’t accept. “Are you seeing someone, Caroline?”
She shook her head. He’s not asking you to marry him, idiot. He’s asking you to go to dinner. Surely a dinner wouldn’t hurt anyone. Would it?
“Then how about dinner?”
Caroline filled her lungs with air, but it didn’t seem nearly enough. She felt cornered. Poised on the edge of the cliff. She was the captain of her fate, the master of her destiny. Uh-huh, right. Then why did she have the ridiculous mental image of Wile E. Coyote in freefall, holding that silly little umbrella? “Okay.”
His mouth smiled, a true smile, transforming his face and Caroline had the distinct feeling he was relieved. As if her turning him down would have meant something. Maybe even have hurt him. It seemed unbelievable. But stranger things had happened.
After all, Dr. Maximillian Hunter had asked her to dinner. And she’d said yes.
Mercy.
Chapter Six
Asheville, North Carolina
Tuesday, March 6
1 P.M.
She was out there. He knew it.
It was eating at him. How had she done it?
Winters sat back in his leather computer chair, arms tightly folded across his chest, watching the little hourglass spin on his screen. He’d checked every database and search engine he knew of and had found no record of Mary Grace by any combination of Mary, Grace, Winters or Putnam, her maiden name. It was like she dropped off the face of the earth.
How had she disappeared without a single fucking trace?
How had she planned it? Who helped her? She wasn’t smart enough to plan such an escape herself even if she had been able-bodied, which she wasn’t.
Where was she?
Where was Robbie? He’d be fourteen, just becoming a man. Winters dug his fingers into his upper arms, steadying himself against the sudden rush of grief and rage. He’d missed so much of his son’s life. She’d robbed him of that, of the little pleasures of watching his son become a man. Without his direction, Robbie had likely become soft, coddled. He’d have to fix that in short order time when he got the boy back. It would be difficult to drive out seven years of bad parenting, but he’d do it, no matter how drastic the measures.
The hourglass disappeared, a dialog box popping up in its place: Results of search: 0. That was the last database he’d known to search.
“Goddammit,” he muttered and reached for the can of beer on his desk. It was empty. Goddammit. “Sue Ann!” He crushed the can with one hand and threw it in the trashcan.
“I’m right here, Rob,” Sue Ann said quietly from behind him. A can of cold beer appeared at his elbow. “I’ve got to run to the market. Can I get you anything else before I go?”
Winters glanced at her over his shoulder. The bruises on her face had started to fade and she’d covered the remnants with makeup acceptably. He jerked a nod towards the door. “Go on. Stop by the ABC on your way home. I’m low on Jack.”
“Rob …” Her voice was mewling and whiny, the way it always got just before she started complaining about going to the liquor store. It grated on his nerves. He turned around in his chair to look her in her moon-face. She flinched and backed up a step.
“What is it, Sue Ann?”
“Are-aren’t you going to work today?” she stammered. Her eyes lifted to his computer screen, but he made no move to hide the search he’d been running. Sue Ann was too stupid to find her own ass. There was no way she could understand anything he was doing.
“I took a leave of absence.” He turned back to his computer, shutting her out.
“F-for h-how long?”
He wrenched around again and raised his fist. Felt gratified when she paled and shrunk back another foot. “Until I’m ready to go back. Now get out before you’re stuck here another few days.”
Sue Ann lifted a trembling hand to her jaw where the evidence of his last fist-to-bone connection could still be seen if you looked closely enough. She nodded and turned for the door.
Rob twisted back to his computer. “Don’t forget the ABC store.”
“Yes, Rob.”
The door closed and he was alone again. Sue Ann might never have existed. His mind was filled again with Mary Grace. And Robbie.
What next?
How could he find a trace of her if she’d changed her name? For finding her was the key to finding Robbie. He knew that. Missing children mostly stayed missing. They were too easy to hide. But an adult needed to eat, needed to have an income of some kind. There would be records. He just had to find where those records were stashed.
A sharp edge of fear poked at him as he sat brooding. What if she was smart enough? What if he never found her? What if he never found his son?
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He was afraid. He tightened his fist and clenched his teeth. He’d find her. She might have been smarter than he’d originally allowed. But she wasn’t smarter than he was, that was for damn sure. And she also wasn’t smart enough to do all this alone.
He’d have to find the person who helped
her. The person who planned the details of her abduction of his son.
He stood and paced the living room floor, a caged cat looking for any crack in the glass that separated him from the answer he knew was out there. Who had helped her?
If it was the old head nurse at Asheville General, he couldn’t get any information from her now. She’d died about six months after Mary Grace disappeared. He pursed his lips. Now he wished he hadn’t chosen that particular mountain curve to force Nurse Sanctimonious off the road. He should have chosen a more gradual drop, one she would have survived, but would have still scared the old bag into not giving any more photographs to the police. The old nurse was so sure he’d done it, so sure he’d murdered his wife and son. The interfering bitch had been feeding pictures she’d taken of Mary Grace during her hospital stay to the detectives who investigated his boy’s abduction. There was one detective she talked to all the time, Gabe Farrell, who looked at him like he was shit on his shoe every time a new photo turned up. That nurse had to be stopped.
Winters just wished he hadn’t done it so permanently.
His mind flipped back to the cracked and glued statue sitting in the Sevier County evidence locker. The nurse’s aide had given Mary Grace the statue. Maybe she’d given her a lot more.
He needed to know where that aide was now.
He disconnected his modem and picked up the phone to call the hospital to ask, but held the receiver without dialing until that annoying tone buzzed. He couldn’t just call and ask. Because, he thought, his jaw hardening, at this moment a “special agent” from the SBI was sitting in Ross’s office. He slammed the receiver down. Mr. State … what was the guy’s name? … Thatcher, yeah … Ross would make sure Agent Thatcher zeroed right in on him as a target of the investigation.
Winters reined in the urge to throw something. Him. A suspect. Again. It had been bad enough the first time. But to have it happen again. It was almost impossible to believe. Yet Ben Jolley had called his cell phone and told him so not thirty minutes before. It paid to have buddies in the department. At least he’d have an information flow while he was on his leave of absence. He wasn’t especially worried that they’d accuse him of anything.
He hadn’t done anything wrong.
He stared down at the phone, then at the computer. He couldn’t just call to ask the hospital about that nurse’s aide. Word would get back to Thatcher … and fast. And while he wasn’t worried they would find anything, he also knew they could force him out on unpaid leave while they scratched their asses and checked it out, still to find nothing.
How to get access to the hospital’s personnel files? He wasn’t good enough at computers to even attempt that one himself.
He’d just have to find someone who was.
Asheville, North Carolina
Tuesday, March 6
2:25 P.M.
“Well?” Ross stood in the doorway of the conference room she’d designated Steven’s office.
Steven pushed his chair back from the table, rising to his feet. He wiped his hand across the back of his neck and arched his back to stretch muscles that had remained immobile too long. “I find your hospitality lacking, Lieutenant Ross,” he said with a tired smile. “It’s got to be a hundred and fifty degrees in here.”
Ross leaned against the doorframe. “It does get a bit toasty,” she admitted. “Especially when the sun comes in that little window.”
Steven loosened his tie another inch and unbuttoned his collar button. “A little toasty? What’s this room like in August? Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“It was our interrogation room,” she grinned and Steven was taken aback by the impact on her face. Ross with a smile was an attractive woman. “But the state ruled it cruel and unusual for the untried. They built us a state-of-the-art interrogation room a few years back and now we save this room for esteemed guests.” She sobered and pointed at the skinny stack of files. “I told you it wasn’t much, but it’s all Records turned up. The testimony.” Her voice hardened as her gaze fell on the two photographs clipped to the front of one of the manila folders. “The pictures.”
Steven picked up the pictures by the corners, grimly studying one, then the other.
The first was a young Mary Grace Winters, maybe eighteen years old, holding a two-year-old boy with blond hair and a two-teeth smile on her hip. Her lips were bent back in a gross parody of a smile that didn’t come close to reaching her troubled eyes. The second picture was Mary Grace a few years later, in the hospital immediately after her fall down the stairs. One side of her face was swollen almost beyond recognition. Her blond hair had been butchered by some well-meaning nurse to enable her care during what would become a three-month stay in Hotel General Hospital. The hair near a bulging bandage was shaved to the scalp, the rest of her hair cut about an inch long all the way around.
On a personal level, the pictures twisted his gut. On a professional level, they matched his profile of domestic abuse. Unfortunately there wasn’t a shred of documentation to show Winters had ever even been accused of domestic abuse. And that fact bothered him. He carefully slid the photos into a folder, then looked up to see Ross studying him, her expression troubled.
Steven moved his shoulders in a combination stretch-shrug. “I don’t know. Somehow I expected to see at least one account of someone in this precinct suspecting him. After all, a cop’s wife and little boy were abducted ….”
“At the time the investigating officers decided she’d run away with the boy,” Ross said.
Not all of them, Steven thought. Not Lennie Farrell’s dad. “Yeah, I saw that. They thought Mary Grace Winters ran away because her husband was having an affair with the next-door neighbor.” He watched Ross’s face tighten. “Do you believe that, Lieutenant?”
Ross nodded, a frown twisting her lips. “It was certainly plausible. Rob’s always been very popular with the ladies. But what’s always bothered me is the boy. Rob Winters seemed to love his son almost to distraction, grieved for little Robbie for years. I can’t see him harming the boy. He never believed his wife ran away. He was always convinced some perp had stolen them both out of revenge.” She shrugged. “That’s not impossible either. Winters has made a lot of arrests over the years. Truth is, I don’t know, Thatcher. That’s why I agreed to bring you in.”
Steven looked down at the photos again. “I’d like to talk to Winters as soon as possible.”
“I can give you his address. He’s not here today. He took some paid leave,” she added, answering his obvious next question before he could ask.
“Okay. What about the investigating officers from seven years ago?”
“You can talk to Farrell, but not York.”
Steven straightened his tie. “Why not York?”
“He died last year.”
Steven frowned. “Line of duty?”
She shook her head. “Heart attack. The man never met a fried drumstick he didn’t like.”
Steven chuckled. “So he died happy.”
She grinned again. “As a deep-fried clam. Farrell lives up in the mountains, near Boone. You can see him tomorrow morning. He’s out on a fishing trip with some kids from the local scouting troop today,” she said as he gathered his files. “You’ll like Gabe Farrell. He’s a straight shooter.”
“I hear his wife makes a mean sweet potato pie.”
“Sinfully so.”
Chicago
Tuesday, March 6
5:01 P.M.
It was five o’clock. Finally. Max closed the book he’d been pretending to read. He’d listened to her answer phones all afternoon, that sexy southern drawl seeping through the walls. He’d listened as she prepared to leave, wondering if she was thinking about him. He’d sure as hell been thinking about her. All afternoon. Wondering where he’d take her to dinner. Anticipating the evening as he’d anticipated nothing in a very long time. Visualizing kissing her goodnight, hoping she’d be equally responsive to his kiss as she’d been to that simple touch on
her lower lip.
God. He’d barely touched her and he’d been ready to come. She’d shivered every time he brushed her lip with his thumb, her eyes growing wider with each breath. She was a novice to whatever she was feeling, those eyes of hers radiating trepidation, then wonder. There’d been something else there, too, he thought, worrying at his own lower lip with his teeth. She’d been startled when he approached her. Caroline was obviously a bit skittish.
A light tapping at his door broke into his thoughts. Caroline. Just thinking her name conjured all kinds of interesting mental images. He sat up straighter in his chair.
“Come.” And managed to keep a smile on his face despite the little stab of disappointment when a tall, young woman with a short cap of dark hair entered. “Evie, what can I do for you?”
Evie Wilson tentatively approached. Talk about skittish. The young woman moved like a colt, long-legged with bursts of uncertainty. He had no idea if she’d be a good secretary when Caroline graduated or not. He wouldn’t be able to tell until she got over her initial crush and stopped looking at him like he was a movie star. Or sports hero, his mind mocked. He abruptly pushed the unwanted thought aside.
“I just wanted to know if you needed anything from the library,” she offered, her voice small.
“No thanks, Evie.” He tried for a reassuring smile. He wasn’t good at warm and fuzzy. He was better at being called “sir” and “doctor” and having his requests immediately fulfilled. But the smile must have done some good as Evie blushed to the roots of her too-short hair and backed away, stammering a good-bye. Max sighed. He didn’t want a young secretary. He wanted an older, more efficient secretary that wouldn’t swoon over him.
After Caroline, of course. She could swoon over him as often as she liked. He’d just finished locking his desk drawer when another knock sounded at his door. “Come on in,” he called. Then he sighed quietly as the overpowering scent of perfume came drifting across the room. Dr. Monika Shaw. He’d been avoiding her all day. He lifted his head to find her standing in his open doorway, silently watching him with a predatory look. He knew that look. Elise had often worn it. He knew it now for the falseness it represented. Shaw’s brightly painted mouth curved up in what he thought she intended to be an alluring smile. He fought the urge to scream for help. “Can I help you, Dr. Shaw?”
