by Jen Talty
“Oh, great.” Kaylee gathered up the sheet, wrapped it around herself and started searching the room. “My clothes are downstairs.”
“I’ll get them for you,” he said, hiking up his jeans.
“You don’t think he could be my father, do you?”
“He says it’s impossible.” Blaine gave her an apologetic smile. He wondered who else she thought could be her father and what she’d think about his theory. “I asked him to compile a list.”
“That would be unpleasant to look at,” she mumbled and then hauled ass to the bathroom, sheet and all.
Blaine couldn’t really fault her for her sentiment. Her mother had suffered from a horrible disease before killing herself. Then Kaylee returned home, landing herself in the middle of her father’s murder. Of course, Blaine couldn’t forget she was running from some very bad people.
Hadley pounded at the door just as Kaylee stepped from the bathroom. “Hey,” Blaine said, opening the door. “Wow, look at that snow.”
“Calling for at least twelve inches, maybe more.” Hadley dusted the snow off his shoulders as he took a step in. “Where’s Dave?” he asked.
Blaine blinked and then glanced out at the driveway. Dave’s pickup was parked right next to his. “He’s been dating my mother.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Hadley commented. “If you don’t mind me saying, your mom’s quite a looker.”
“So I’m told.”
“Hey, Kaylee,” Hadley said.
Hadley took out some papers and moved into the galley kitchen. “Got a beer?”
“What’s bothering you?” Blaine eyed the man helping himself to a beer. Hadley might have been an old friend, but they certainly weren’t that close.
“A lot of things, namely this.” He tossed an envelope on the counter. “I’ve been going through all my files on Rutherford, and I came across an old envelope he’d given me a while back. Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it.”
“What is it?”
“A list of people he knew was sleeping with Roberta.” Hadley tipped his beer back and swigged.
“I don’t think I want to be here for this,” Kaylee said.
“You need to hear what I have to say,” Hadley said.
Blaine glanced at the envelope. “Why would people sleep with her knowing she was unbalanced?”
“Early on, none of us knew. She’d always been precocious as a teen, and Rutherford knew she had a reputation when he started dating her.” Hadley seated himself on the barstool. “Her family was powerful, and I think Rutherford turned a blind eye. Then he just tried to control her actions and keep things under his roof, so to speak.”
“When did he give this to you?” Blaine lifted the envelope and carefully pulled out the single piece of paper. He’d always wondered why Rutherford didn’t force Roberta to take her medication, or institutionalize her or something.
“I think it was right before she killed herself. Deep down Rutherford really believed he was protecting her. And Kaylee.”
“A lot of good that protection has done me over the years.” Kaylee sat at the breakfast bar, her arms folded across her chest.
Blaine read over the list. “What do you think?”
“I think Rutherford was a spiteful man.” Hadley polished off his beer. “I wonder if he wasn’t planning these men’s demise.”
“Were he and my mom ever happy?”
“Happiness comes in degrees.” Hadley rubbed his jaw. “Rutherford wanted a wife from a certain background, a child, and the perfect home. He got more than he bargained for.”
“And this is code for what?” Blaine asked
“I’m sorry, Kaylee,” Hadley said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but your father got what he deserved.”
“Now you’re the one who sounds bitter.” Blaine folded the paper and set it aside, not wanting Kaylee to see it.
Hadley let out a hearty laugh. “We were like brothers. Sometimes I loved him and other times I wanted to beat the shit out of him.”
“Maybe you wanted him dead.” Blaine got himself a beer.
“Well, he’s driving me nuts, even in death.” Hadley ran his hand across his face. “But I should tell you that I lied about something.”
“What?” Blaine asked.
“Kaylee, I hope you will be able to forgive me.” Hadley stood up, but didn’t move.
“For what?”
“You know I had an affair with your mom before she and Rutherford were married, but…well, I slept with her later on, too.” Hadley craned his neck. “At one point, I thought I could be your father. But then we all started to realize how sick Roberta really was. She started talking crazy, and I thought it best to leave it alone until after you were born.”
“What happened when I was born?” Kaylee asked.
“Your dad really thought you’d make Roberta happy and she’d snap out of it. Then the diagnosis came, and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the affair until you got sick.”
“I’m confused,” Kaylee said. “Are you my biological father? Do you know who my father is?”
Hadley shook his head and tossed another piece of paper on the table.
Blaine moved to stand next to Kaylee and put his arm around her. None of this could be easy for her to hear.
“You were six when you needed a blood transfusion. He wasn’t too happy when the doctor told him his blood couldn’t help you. Privately, I got tested, but found out it wasn’t me either. No one else came forward, though your father privately asked a few people.” Hadley looked at Kaylee with guilt and shame in his eyes.
“You all knew since I was six that my dad wasn’t my dad?”
Hadley nodded.
“Kaylee got her blood transfusion. Who was the donor?” Blaine asked.
Hadley shrugged. “They had some in the blood bank, and Rutherford begged me to help him keep this whole paternity thing a secret. It didn’t come out until Kaylee almost bled to death in childbirth.” Hadley rose from the chair and moved across the room.
“Where did the blood come from after Deslin was born? I had to have a transfusion then too, but I don’t remember…” Kaylee’s voice shook, and her eyes pleaded with Blaine.
“The hospital had enough of your blood type.”
“He looked so hurt when I yelled at him later, calling him a fake,” she whispered. “I accused him of using me to not only trap Mom and hold her hostage, but that he’d been the one drugging her and making it look like she was sick.”
“Those are your mother’s words, not yours, and you’d just been through hell and back. Then to find out your father wasn’t really your father, no one could blame you.” Blaine tried to comfort her, but he’d failed her ten years ago when he’d chosen not to be there for her. He knew he was too late now. “Hadley, do you think anyone on that list would have a valid reason for killing Rutherford?”
“Valid or logical?”
To a sick individual, the reason wouldn’t matter, and Blaine knew that. “Just asking your opinion.”
“All of us at one point or another had reason to hate the man, including the two of you.”
Blaine really couldn’t argue that point, and he didn’t want to. “Anything else?”
“All of Rutherford’s assets are tied up until his death can be resolved.” Hadley rose and walked toward the door. “I’ll keep going through my files, but I’d search that house and look for anything he might have kept of your mother’s. And that damned room he always bragged about.”
“You think my biological father killed him, don’t you?” Kaylee followed him to the door.
“Either him, or someone who doesn’t want the truth to come out.”
“Didn’t your mother get into the booze and rant about perverts that would come and rape her?” Blaine asked.
“When she had stopped taking her meds altogether, she’d go nuts, dressing up and trying to sneak out. She’d drink and rant about the men Dad would send to seduce her.” Kay
lee covered her face and shook her head. “When she got like that, it scared me. I didn’t want to end up like her, but the meds made her even more pathetic. She’d sit at the table and color, like a kid.”
“She needed help. Help your father should have gotten her.” Hadley took Kaylee into his arms. “I should’ve been a better friend to both of them.”
Blaine glanced out into the white of winter, trying to piece together everything he could remember about Mrs. Mead. One thing kept coming to mind: she believed Rutherford was always watching, but never doing anything to help her. She’d even once cornered Blaine, begging him to get her out of the ‘house of cameras.’
“Thanks for stopping by.” Blaine closed the door after a whoosh of air blew some snow into the house. “I’m hungry. You?” A good mystery always got his stomach going. He’d given up trying not to eat at inappropriate times.
She snapped her head up and glared at him. “You are unbelievable.”
“I know this is hard for you, but thus far, you haven’t learned anything new.”
“Great,” she muttered. “And I thought you’d changed.”
“I have.”
“Not.” She flipped on the stove, pulling out a skillet. “Still an insensitive bastard.”
“I’m just hungry.” He cocked his brow.
“Okay, I get it.” She pulled out the eggs. “You’re always hungry.”
“Sit. I’ll cook.”
“Works for me,” she said.
“Tomorrow we go check out your house, and then on Sunday, we go to church.”
“Neither one of us do church, unless—”
“I don’t do church, but I have an idea about who your father could be, if you want me to find out.”
“I do and I don’t, but you seem to think my father’s death has to do with whoever my father is and not whoever is trying to kill me .”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility.” He tossed some bread on the counter. If Nino De Luca wanted her dead, she’d be dead by now. Those men who shot at them could have easily hit their mark. But they didn’t. Nino wanted something from her. Something important. “You’re not going to like this.”
“I don’t like anything about being back in this town.”
Blaine squeezed the egg in his hand, cracking it. He rinsed his hand in the sink. “You seemed to like what we were doing about an hour ago.”
“That was an hour ago.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said. Stupid to be upset over her sarcasm, but he just wanted an acknowledgement from her that he still mattered. “I’ll order a pizza.” He grabbed the phone and headed for the door. He was being stupid and childish, but she had the ability to crush his heart. Again.
“Blaine, I—”
“Save it.” He slammed the door shut. There he stood in the snow, barefoot, staring down at the sky, sucking the cold air into his lungs.
Life had too many cruel twists, although this had nothing to do with cruel twists, but sheer stupidity on his part. He had only himself to blame. He knew the moment he climbed into bed with her that he’d be the one to suffer the consequences.
8
KAYLEE opened the door and yelled. “Now who’s running?” She slammed the door and stared out the window at Blaine’s back. He hadn’t even turned around. This wasn’t about them having sex. This was about her crazy mother and not-so-sane father. This was about her life, her problems, not his stupid ego. He shouldn’t take things so damn personally.
She sighed, leaning against the wall. He’d always been the quiet, sensitive type. One of the many things that had drawn her to him. He loved deeply. It was the kind of love you felt through to your soul. It was the kind of love that stayed with you forever. She felt just as connected to him now as she did the day she found out she was carrying his baby. And maybe he felt it, too.
Large snowflakes fell from the sky. The wind swirled and howled, but Blaine didn’t even look cold. A shadow by the garage door caught her attention. She opened the door, and this time Blaine turned around.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She stepped in behind him and wrapped her arms around his strong waist, resting her head on his back. “I am too. Who’s in the garage?” she asked.
“No one.” He leaned over the railing.
A loud swooping noise filled the crisp night air, and wild orange and red lights flickered in the window below. “Is that—”
He pushed her aside as he went into the house. A snowmobile raced across the street and into the driveway. Blaine returned with his weapon in his hand.
“What’s going on?” She glanced between the two figures on the snowmobile and Blaine. “Is that Toby?”
“Yes,” Blaine said.
Toby waved frantically toward the backyard as a smaller figure leaped from the moving snowmobile and headed for the garage.
“Go to the main house.”
She watched Blaine jog across the yard, his dark hair whipping around wildly as he headed off into the night.
“Kaylee, come on!” his mother yelled.
She stuffed her feet in her shoes and grabbed Blaine’s coat, then raced down the stairs. The heat from the fire warmed her skin as she passed the door to the garage.
Dave was running across the yard. “Get inside,” he said. “I’ve called it in.” Dave grabbed the hose from the figure in front of the garage. “Go. Get in the house.”
But Kaylee couldn’t move. She stood in the middle of the driveway, staring at the flames flickering in the night. The person who had jumped off the snowmobile took off their helmet. “Emma? What are you doing here?”
“Came with Toby and we saw the fire and then a figure running out the side door of the garage.”
“Come on, girls,” Shima yelled. “In the main house. The fire department is on its way.”
“Whoever started the fire went that way.” Emma pointed through the backyard.
“I bet they trudged through the woods and have a car waiting for them by the interstate,” Dave said, doing his best to douse the fire with a small hose.
“Pretty stupid in the snow,” Kaylee said, still staring at Emma. Not in a million years would she think that woman would ever wrap her legs around a snowmobile, much less Toby. And the fact Toby was even interested in that type of women? Things sure did change around this town.
“Not if they expected everyone to be asleep, then the snow would cover their tracks by morning.” Dave continued to hose down the inside of the garage, specifically Blaine’s late-model Mustang.
Kaylee glanced back at the garage. Small flames flickered inside the car, and her nostrils were assaulted with the stench of burning leather. Her pulse slowed to a painful beat.
“Blaine loves that car. This is going to really piss him off,” Emma said, looping her arm over Kaylee’s shoulder. “Let’s get inside. I’m sure there isn’t much damage to anything but the Mustang.”
“We’d be dead by morning,” Kaylee barely managed behind the constriction of her throat muscles.
“That might have been the point,” Dave added.
Kaylee shuddered, wrapping her arms around her middle. “I have to get out of here.”
“No, you don’t,” Emma said.
“You don’t understand. As long as I’m here, everyone is in danger.”
Emma nudged her up onto the porch. “You’ve got the best two cops in the county, the best P.I., and, if you need me, the best legal representation. We’ve got your back.”
“Really. You don’t understand.” Kaylee shrugged her arm off. She stomped the snow off her shoes and entered the kitchen. She headed straight for the bathroom. Her stomach swished and gurgled.
The small bathroom smelled like lilacs and vanilla. She inhaled sharply, taking in as much of the soothing scent as possible. Nino’s cronies had found her. No doubt about it now.
She turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face. No way would she be responsible for anyone else getting hurt. This ended right now. “Okay, Nino, yo
u win,” she said to herself in the mirror. “I’ll get you what you want.”
She unhooked the latch on the small window, lifting the wood frame carefully. Before she climbed through, she checked around for the snowmobile and Blaine, but she didn’t see either of them. She stepped onto the toilet and hoisted herself up, lifting herself feet first, then jumped from the window.
The police station was about five miles away. It would take her about an hour to get there, more in the snow. Maybe she should just call Nino and have whoever had just tried to kill her come get her. Save her some time. Then they could just go get what Nino came for and then…
“This is nuts,” she whispered.
“You certainly are,” Blaine’s smooth voice echoed in the night.
She looked around the front yard. She hadn’t taken more than ten steps when she’d heard his voice. “Where are you?” she demanded.
“Right here,” he whispered in her ear.
“Asshole.” She whipped around “I’ve always hated the way you sneak up on people.”
“And I’m not too keen on how you always run out on me.” His biceps bulged as he folded his arms across his broad chest. His deadly stare didn’t help calm her nerves.
“It’s not exactly running out on you this time.”
“Then what exactly are you doing out here?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Probably not,” he said as a slight hum in the distance caused his gaze to shift. “Come on, let’s get inside. I feel like an ice cube.”
“I can’t keep putting your family in danger.”
“We’ve been over this.” He tucked her under his arm and started pulling her toward the house.
“If I go back, he’ll leave you alone.” She cringed at the thought.
“Maybe. But then you’d be dead.” His hand shifted down her spine, painfully reminding her of the damage to her back. “I’m a cop. I get paid to put my life on the line to make sure you don’t have to.”
“But I could leave, and you couldn’t stop me, right?”
“I suppose.”
“I’m not a suspect anymore, right?”
