by BETH KERY
“Do you really want to hear this part now?” Dylan asked her doubtfully.
She nodded. Damn it, he was having trouble reading her. He looked at Sidney, who nodded once. He sighed and continued.
“One of the men was brought in to a Detroit police station for a serious assault charge ten months after Addie Durand was kidnapped. He had multiple arrests on his record, but none, including this arrest, had anything to do with the Durand case. The FBI’s investigation into the Durand kidnapping had been cooling fast as the weeks passed by, and then months. The expected ransom note never came. Leads to Addie or her kidnappers never panned out.”
A weariness hit him as he said the words. Maybe it was a remembered pain of all those months and years of waiting as hope slowly faded until it was nothing but an aching, cruel memory. Or maybe that pain lived in his bones still, and had knitted to the very fabric of them.
As if to fortify himself, he looked at Alice’s face.
“This man’s name was Jim Stout, and when they brought him in to the police station, he was intoxicated. He was put into a holding cell so that he could sober up before he was interrogated. But while he was still drunk, he confessed to the kidnapping of Addie Durand to one of the arresting officers. Apparently, he confessed because he was under the mistaken impression the Durand kidnapping was why he was being arrested. He wanted to make it clear that while he was one of the kidnappers, he’d never murdered the girl.”
“Murdered?” Alice asked. She looked blank with shock.
“According to Stout, Addie Durand had died when his partner, a man by the name of Avery Cunningham, had accidentally administered a lethal dose of the sedative they’d planned to use to keep her under control following the kidnapping. Stout was blabbing, panicked, and drunk to boot, because he didn’t want to have the charge of child murderer pinned on him. He soon passed out in the cell. When he woke up, and was confronted with his confession, everything was different. He must have realized how stupid he’d been to confess such a thing when he didn’t understand his current charges or have a lawyer present to protect him. He recanted, and no matter how much they pushed and pried, neither the police, the district attorney, nor the FBI could get him to open up ever again about a hint of Addie Durand.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said, and Dylan once again heard that hollow shock in her tone. He glanced at Sidney doubtfully, but the doctor was studying Alice’s face closely. Feeling highly uneasy, he placed his hand above Alice’s knee and squeezed slightly. She was wearing shorts. It was good to touch her, skin to skin. “What about the other man?” she asked. “The one Stout said killed that little girl?”
“Cunningham was already in prison on a separate murder charge,” Dylan said. “He’d killed a man a few months before when he’d been whacked out on amphetamines. Cunningham denied everything Stout had referred to during his drunk confession. To make a very long story short, a trail could never be picked up that provided sufficient evidence to make a formal charge against the two men. The FBI and police were convinced, however, that these two were the kidnappers of Adelaide Durand. And they believed they were also responsible for her murder.”
Beneath his hand, he felt Alice’s skin roughen.
“They just got away with it?” she croaked.
“It wasn’t like they went scot-free,” Sidney said. “Cunningham already had a life term. Stout’s assault charge was for a beating that had nearly been fatal. Given his past arrest record and the general suspicion that he was likely one of Adelaide Durand’s kidnappers and an accomplice to her murderer … well, let’s just say the judge made it certain that Stout wasn’t ever going to walk outside a prison’s walls.”
“And neither of them did, right?” Alice asked Dylan.
“No. Small satisfaction, given what they should have been nailed for,” he said grimly.
“You brought the truth to light, Dylan,” Sidney said quietly. “Who else would have had the determination and patience to chip away at an ice-cold case after so many years … after so much hopelessness.”
AGAIN, Dylan averted his face. Alice wondered what he was shielding from her.
It was like her consciousness crouched at the center of a swirl of confusing thoughts and feelings, like she existed at the still eye of the storm. She felt calm and clear enough, but chaos swirled all around her. She was so overwhelmed, she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. She did know one thing. When Dylan looked away like he was right now, she didn’t like it. It made the storm of confusion whirl closer.
“How did you find out the truth, Dylan?” she asked, damning the tremor in her voice.
She saw his jaw working subtly, but he didn’t answer.
“He never gave up hope,” Sidney said after a pause. “He’s had an investigator on retainer for the last eleven years, searching around on a trail that had long ago been swept clean. Most importantly, he insisted upon visiting Avery Cunningham twice a year for ten years. It looked as if it wasn’t going to pay off. Cunningham maintained he knew nothing about the Durand kidnapping. Until this past April.”
A shiver tore through her.
“Dylan … what happened on April eighteenth?”
Another shudder went through her when she recalled the heaviness of Dylan’s expression when she’d asked him that. Some part of her must have guessed that date was crucial.
“Are you all right?” Dylan asked, glancing around. He must have noticed her shivers. His dark brows slanted as he stared at her.
“What happened on April eighteenth?” Alice repeated her earlier question numbly.
She read a fierce misery in his dark eyes.
“Dylan?” she prodded.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “You’ve heard enough for now.”
“I disagree,” she said vehemently. “What happened on April eighteenth?”
“Alice—”
“Tell me.”
“Avery Cunningham confessed,” Dylan said through a tight jaw. “Every year when I made those visits to the prison, he was adamant about one thing: He swore he’d never killed a child in his life. Strangely, it was one of the few things he ever said that I believed. Most people thought it was just the standard denial of the guilty, but for me … Cunningham’s claim had a ring of truth to it.”
“That’s what kept you going,” Sidney said. “And as it turned out, you were right.”
“Cunningham was dying of prostate cancer, and he had nothing to lose,” Dylan continued. “He finally confessed to the Durand kidnapping, along with Jim Stout, after years of denying it. He also insisted he hadn’t killed Addie Durand. Stout had truly believed her to be dead. But Addie was still alive when Cunningham had last seen her. Addie Durand was still alive,” he repeated, his hand tightening on Alice’s knee. “And I found her.”
SHE held Dylan’s stare, her lungs burning, as his voice echoed all around her head.
“Take a deep breath of air, Alice.” She blinked and inhaled with a hitch of her lungs. Sidney must have realized she was holding her breath.
“What are you thinking?” Sidney asked her, his manner intent and concerned as he leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.
“I’m thinking it’s too incredible to believe,” she said. She glanced at Dylan uneasily. “But if you believe it,” she said. “It must be true. And that’s hard to comprehend, let alone accept.”
“It’s true, Alice,” Dylan said.
Her lungs jerked involuntarily, making her breath hitch. “Well … then I’m thinking that I’m sorry you went through all of that.”
Dylan opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to stop himself at the last minute. “The important thing is that it’s done. Addie Durand has come home.”
Alice shook her head in denial. Suddenly, she felt very tired. “I don’t know what that really means.”
“It will take a good deal of time before you do. You shouldn’t press yourself. Dylan and I are both here, to answer any questions you
might have over the next hours and days, weeks, and months. Years, if necessary,” Sidney said.
“Do you have any questions now?” Dylan asked.
She had a million questions. There were so many, but they were all caught up in the spinning maelstrom of her mind. She couldn’t extricate them, couldn’t focus.
“Not now,” she said. She put her hand on Dylan’s hard jean-covered thigh, and before he could stop her, she stood. Dizziness assailed her. Dylan flew up next to her, his hands gripping her upper arms. She focused with all of her will, and his chest solidified before her eyes.
“I’m really tired all of a sudden,” she said. Her throat felt raw, like it’d been scraped.
“I think a rest might be just what’s called for,” Sidney said pointedly.
Dylan nodded. “I’ll take her up,” he said to Sidney, putting his arm around Alice. “Are you going to stay?”
Sidney shook his head. “Call me just as soon as she wakes up. If need be, I can come back. Do you think you might need any medication?” he asked Alice.
“For what?” Alice asked, confused.
“You’re in shock,” Sidney said.
Alice shook her head. “No. I’m just tired. I don’t need any medicine.”
She saw Sidney and Dylan share a glance.
“This is going to take time, Alice. You know that you’re safe here, in the meantime?” Sidney asked kindly. “Dylan really is your champion knight. He always has been.”
Alice looked at Dylan’s face. He was right there, solid and beautiful. He steadied her, as always. What would she do if he wasn’t here?
She wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for him, she realized with numb disbelief. She pushed the impossible thought from her brain. Once again, fatigue pressed on her. She hadn’t thought it was possible, to be so tired when she’d just slept a few hours ago.
“Lie down with me?” she asked Dylan.
He nodded soberly. “I’m not going anywhere else.”
THROUGH her oppressive exhaustion, Alice recognized that Louise had straightened Dylan’s suite in their absence. She’d closed the drapes Alice had opened earlier, and the room was dim and cool. She and Dylan paused next to the great bed, and he drew down the duvet and sheet. He turned her to face him and began unfastening her shorts.
“You’ll be more comfortable out of them,” he said gruffly a moment later as her shirt joined her shorts on the carpet.
She curled into the opening of the bedclothes wearing just her bra and underwear. The cool sheets felt wonderful on her tingling skin. Dylan came in behind her, his front to her back. He hadn’t undressed. She wished he had. She shut her eyes tight, overwhelmed when his arms came around her. He pulled her against him. She gripped at his hands where they joined around her waist. Perhaps he felt her spasm of emotion.
“Alice? Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she gasped softly. “Just …”
“What?” he asked when she faded off.
“Hold me tighter,” she whispered.
SHE came back to consciousness to the sensation of him still embracing her, his presence the first thing onto which her consciousness latched, as if she’d awakened on a tossing sea and grasped for a solid hold. How long had she slept? she wondered muzzily. She squinted at the light glowing around the drawn drapes. There was a rosy quality to it. Her fingers moved on Dylan’s knuckles, and he turned his palm, her hand sliding into his.
“How long did I sleep?” she asked in a muffled voice.
“It’s almost eight o’clock.”
“At night?” she murmured, confused. It must have been no later than two o’clock when they’d got into bed. She tried to turn over in the circle of his arms. He loosened his hold, and she flipped over onto her other hip, facing him. His whiskers had deepened into a sexy scruff that highlighted his mouth. He nodded, his face shadowed and unreadable in the dim room.
“Did you sleep?” she asked, reaching to touch his jaw with her fingertips.
He just shook his head. When he did, she saw the gleam of his lustrous eyes. She’d been asleep for over six hours. They were in the exact same position they’d been in when they first got into bed. If he hadn’t slept, he must be so uncomfortable, lying there without moving.
She must have been so out of it. The memories of what had happened in the den seemed clear, but not as close somehow. They didn’t crowd her as much. Sleep had served to distance her from the bizarre events of this afternoon. Her body and mind had shut down to give her space.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, the thought of him enduring all those hours of discomfort so that she could have uninterrupted rest made emotion pierce her. “You must be so stiff,” she said, rubbing his shoulder and dense upper arm muscles. He felt so good.
“I’m okay. Are you?” he asked, and again she experienced his wary watchfulness. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the weight he experienced at that moment; what he’d been thinking while he lay there awake, holding her for hours. Every time she considered the burden he’d carried since he was a fourteen-year-old boy, it threatened to make emotion spill out of her like an erupting volcano.
She met his stare squarely, still rubbing his muscles. “I’m going to be fine. It’s not like what you’re thinking.”
Something flickered across his shadowed features. “What do you mean?” he rumbled.
“I’m not the one with the memories, Dylan. You are.”
Her soft reply seemed to hang in the hushed air between them.
She swallowed thickly, her throat congested with emotion. “I know I should thank you, but it just seems so”—she paused, several words popping into her head: lame, trite, hollow—“inadequate to say it,” she finished.
“You have nothing to thank me for.”
Her thumb found its way into the cleft on his chin. She rubbed it distractedly, loving the feel of his whiskers, his skin.
“I disagree.” She opened one hand over his chest, needing to feel his strength in order to ask the question.
“Dylan? Why did Jim Stout think Addie Durand was dead?”
He opened his hand on her hip. She was highly aware of his touch.
“Because at one point, she stopped breathing,” he said gruffly. “According to Cunningham’s confession last April, they both thought she was dead. That’s why a ransom demand was never made. They’d sedated her too strongly on the morning after she was kidnapped.”
She caressed his chest, absorbing the feeling of him. “Go on,” she whispered.
“Cunningham took her in the car just before dawn. The plan was to dispose of her body in a nearby creek in the country,” Dylan said woodenly.
Alice held her breath and kept stroking him.
“Do you really want to hear this?” Dylan asked.
“Yes,” she gasped.
For a few seconds, they just touched and stroked one another in the grave silence.
“There’s a train trestle that runs over a creek, about fifty miles from here. It’s at a desolate place in the country.”
She leaned back and looked into his face. “You’ve been there?”
He nodded. An image flashed into her head of him making that solitary mission after hearing Cunningham’s confession last April. Her chest ached.
She sensed his hesitation. “Dylan?” she prodded.
“Cunningham took her onto the trestle planning to throw her into the creek,” he said rapidly with the air of someone grimly ripping a stuck bandage from a wound. “But just as he started to let go, he saw Addie’s eyelids flicker open, and at the last second, he realized she was still alive.”
Shivers coursed through her. “So he didn’t throw her into the creek?”
His face looked like a death mask.
“He didn’t stop himself in time. Just as he saw the little girl’s eyelids flicker, he let go. It’s about a twenty-five-foot drop, depending on how high the water was at the time.”
Alice stared at him openmouthed, her care
ssing fingers stilling. Primal, atavistic fear sliced through her.
“What happened?” she managed after a moment.
“Alice, are you sure you want to—”
“I want to hear. You said I could ask you questions.”
He grimaced.
“Cunningham ran down to the creek bed and followed her body, finally wading in and pulling Addie out of the creek. Her head was injured, and she was bleeding and unconscious. But she was breathing,” Dylan said grimly.
She reached and smoothed her fingertips over his clenched jaw.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. He grasped her stroking hand with his.
“No, it’s not, Alice,” he said, his deep rough voice cracking slightly.
“Yes. It is. Or it will be,” she assured. “Why do you think Cunningham did it? Saved her after he’d—” She experienced a swooping sensation that stole her breath momentarily. Was this why she was so deathly afraid of heights?
No, that little girl wasn’t me. She couldn’t have been.
Don’t think about it now!
It took her breath away, to consider that adorable little girl and herself as the same person.
“—he’d dropped Addie into the creek?” she finished.
“I think that’s obvious,” Dylan said bitterly. “She was only worth something to them alive. Of course, that’s not the reason Cunningham claimed before he died.”
“What reason did he give?” Alice asked, her hand stroking lower, over Dylan’s ribs and taut abdomen.
“He said it was her eyes.”
Her glance jumped to his face. “What about her eyes?”
“He said they were huge and dark blue. Unlike anything he’d ever seen,” Dylan said gruffly, their stares holding. “He said her eyes haunted him, until his dying day. According to him, that’s why he agreed to see me every year while he was in prison. He regularly flirted with the idea of confessing, but Cunningham was a coward at heart,” he said, his lip curling in disdain. “He couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing until death was close.” His hand tightening on her hip. “Even though I despised him, I thought of Addie when Cunningham told me that. I’ve thought to myself since then: Damn. I could almost believe that worthless son of a bitch meant it.”
