Shelter in the Tropics

by Cara Lockwood

  “Really?” Cate looked skeptical, even as she began to look up, scanning the branches of the nearby magnolia. Tack nodded as he began a thorough search of the back of the property for any trees with branches low enough for a four-year-old to reach.

  “I’ve never seen Avery in a tree,” Cate said, following Tack toward the thicket of small blooming trees. A giant poinciana tree, with bright red blossoms, sat in the middle, with a low-lying branch at the perfect height for a preschooler to grab. Tack glanced up and saw the small white rubber sole of a boy’s shoe. Almost everything else about Avery was covered in thick blooms.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Tack said and pointed up.

  “Avery!” Cate cried. “Avery! What are you doing up there?”

  “Climbing!” the boy declared, sounding proud. “I’m going to go to the top!”

  Already, Avery stood on the thinnest branches of the tree, and with each new step he took, the top of the tree swayed under his weight. He was already more than twenty feet up, and headed to thirty. One false move, and he’d come toppling down. He had a fifty-fifty shot of hitting softer green lawn or the hard concrete paved path.

  “No!” Cate called. “Avery, stop!”

  “I’m going to the top, Mama!” Avery had his eyes pinned upward, to the small, wispy branches with the biggest red blooms. “I’m going to get you a pretty flower!”

  “Avery, it’s okay. Mama doesn’t need a flower!”

  “The biggest ones are on top!” Avery said, grunting as he hoisted himself up.

  “Avery, you come down right now!” Cate planted her hands on her hips, trying to look stern, but Tack could see the real fear on her face.

  “Hey, kiddo. Listen to your mom, okay? Come on down.” Tack shaded his eyes from the sun, trying to track the boy’s upward momentum. He was a seeker, that kid, and fearless. He had to admire that. Might make a fine marine one day.

  Avery ignored them both and continued his ascent with determined, small hands grabbing each new branch. Then he placed his small sneakered foot on a new branch that couldn’t support his weight. It didn’t crack but bent downward, like a reed in the wind, and his toe slipped right off. For a heart-pounding second, he dangled by two hands and no feet.

  “Avery!” Cate shouted.

  But Tack was already climbing swiftly upward. He didn’t have time to worry about the tree holding both his weight and the boy’s. He needed to get there and fast before Avery lost his sweaty grip on the single branch, the only thing keeping him from plummeting to the ground below. He reached Avery just as the boy slipped from the branch.

  Below, he heard Cate gasp.

  Tack caught Avery awkwardly with one arm, managing to hold the kid roughly about the waist. He squirmed a little but then grabbed hold of Tack’s neck, like a baby monkey, he thought. Tack carefully maneuvered downward, the boy clinging to him tightly. When he jumped the last few feet to the ground, he kept the boy secure. Cate rushed to them, peeling Avery off Tack and squeezing him to her chest.

  “You scared me!” Cate breathed into the boy’s hair. She sat him on the ground and searched his face for signs of branch scratches. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said, confused about all the fuss.

  Cate cupped her boy’s face with her hands. “Did you hear us calling for you?” Avery nodded and tried to squirm away from his mother’s grip. “Why didn’t you come down?”

  “I wanted to get a flower for you, Mama!” he cried, as if that made it all okay.

  Tack saw the warring emotions on her face and thought the Cate Allen he thought he knew would yell at the boy, put him in his place. But instead she simply scooped him up in her arms and gave him a big squeeze.

  “You’re sweet to think of Mommy, but next time, don’t sneak off, okay?”

  Avery nodded into her shoulder. By now, Mark, who’d seen the last minute of the rescue, hurried over. “Is everybody okay?”

  “Fine,” Cate said. “Thanks to Tack.”

  “Fast thinking,” Mark said, stretching out his hand to Tack’s for a shake. “Nicely done, marine.”

  Tack shook Mark’s hand. “It wasn’t anything.”

  Cate held her boy on her hip. He laid his head on her shoulder. The way the boy clung to his mother told Tack how much the boy depended on her. He could see the strong bond between them, and then he felt a pang of guilt for working for the man who’d rather see the boy away from his mother. Of course, Rick had never said that. He’d only said he wanted to find his boy. But Tack knew it probably wouldn’t be so that he could ask the court for joint custody.

  Don’t think about it. Adeeb is your problem. Adeeb, his wife and his daughter. Cate and Avery are not your responsibility.

  “A rescue and modesty, now you’re just making me look like a chump,” Mark said, and laughed. “And you, kiddo...” He tugged on Avery’s nose. “Don’t go scaring us like that again! We thought the pirates got you.”

  “There aren’t any pirates!” Avery said, looking doubtful as his blond curls fell over his left eye. He swiped them back with a grubby hand.

  “Oh, yes, there are! Remember? I told you they buried treasure all over this island.” Avery giggled, as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard. “Uncle Mark, you’re funny.”

  “Funny looking,” Mark conceded, and then gave the boy’s nose another affectionate tweak.

  Tack glanced at Mark, standing close to Cate and Avery, and thought how solid they seemed, how much like a family. He felt a twinge of guilt as his suspicions rose once more. Was there something going on there? The thought kept coming up, no matter how much she denied it. That relationship ran deeper than just a financial partnership.

  Avery squirmed in Cate’s arms, so she put him down.

  “Can I go play, Mommy?” he asked.

  “Stay where I can see you,” she replied.

  “Come on, kiddo,” Mark said, taking the boy’s hand. “Let’s go find Aunt Carol and let her know not to worry about you.”

  Avery grinned as Mark led him down to the beach.

  Left alone, Tack felt a pull to Cate. She met Tack’s gaze and smiled, and Tack felt a rush of warmth run down his spine.

  “Thank you,” she said, and reached out and took his hand. The gesture surprised him. He put his own hand over hers and fought the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me.” She held his gaze a beat longer than necessary, and he felt a twinge of guilt. The way she was looking at him now, like he was her hero, made him uncomfortable. If only she knew he wasn’t a hero. Heroes didn’t leave good men behind.

  He wondered what she’d think if she knew he was working for her ex-husband, that he was working for the very man who planned to take her boy from her. Tack felt his heart speed up a little as she squeezed his hand. Everything had seemed so simple when he’d been sitting in Allen’s office, when he’d seen the man in his wheelchair. But now, with Cate, things were becoming disturbingly gray. She wasn’t the woman he said she’d be.

  She was such a good mom, such a loving mom, and he had a hard time seeing her as the coldhearted killer who’d tried to murder her husband and steal his fortune. Tack was a good read of people, and Cate just wasn’t the ruthless woman Rick had said she was. The warmth in her eyes and the gratitude right now were real.

  I made the mistake of letting the wrong person look after me. That’s what she’d said over lunch. Did she mean Rick Allen? Did she mean someone else? Maybe she’d met someone after Rick. Someone who took all the money she’d stolen.

  I’m supposed to be doing a job. Yet more and more he found himself wanting to know more about Cate. Not whether she was the woman he was looking for, but just because she fascinated him.

  Something in his gut told him
there was more to her story. Then again, his gut might just be like the rest of his body—eager to get her naked as fast as possible. And it wasn’t just her body, he realized. She was complex, more so than any other woman he’d met in a long time. She intrigued him. He could admit that much to himself.

  “No, that was great. What you did. You’re a hero.” She smiled at him, and he could feel the warmth of it in his toes.

  “I’m no hero.” He said it gruffer than he expected. “If you knew...” He let the sentence hang there. What was he about to admit to her? The debacle of his last tour of duty? The fact that he was a private eye working for her ex-husband? He felt like he ought to clamp his hands over his mouth. There was something about Cate’s open face, her big, green eyes.

  “If I knew what...?” she pressed, studying him with an intensity that made the urge to admit everything grow. He’d never felt this way before with a woman, felt that if he told her everything he might be accepted. He’d never had that before.

  “I’m just not a hero, that’s all.” He had to grit his teeth to keep from telling her more.

  She stared at him a beat. “Listen, I don’t know what happened to you over there, and you don’t have to tell me, but I know you, here. And from what I’ve seen, I know you only meant to do good, so maybe it’s time to stop beating yourself up about it.”

  “There’d never be a time I won’t beat myself up about it,” he admitted truthfully.

  “Well, how about just not while you’re here, then? You just rescued a little boy. And by the way, there’s only a small outpatient clinic on the island. If he’d really gotten hurt, we’d have to airlift him out of here, so you did save him. And you should feel good about that.”

  “Anyone would’ve...” She stepped forward and put her finger on his lips to shush him. The warmth of her finger there shut him up instantly.

  “No, they wouldn’t.” She was so close now, he could see the dark green rings around her irises. “Look, take it from someone who’s made her share of mistakes, okay? One bad decision doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. And mistakes are how we grow to be better people.”

  Mistakes like trying to kill your husband? The thought popped into Tack’s mind before he could stop it. Yet for the first time, Tack could see real regret on Cate’s face. Maybe she had made mistakes that she regretted. Maybe she wasn’t completely beyond redemption. Maybe she had regrets. Just like Tack did.

  In his pocket, his phone chimed with an incoming text. He reached into his pocket and glanced at the face of his phone.

  Rick Allen had seen the photographs he’d sent and he’d responded.

  That’s her, he wrote. I want DNA to confirm in 24 hours.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TACK WASN’T SURE he could move that fast. He sat at the nearly empty bar that evening, sipping a beer, brooding as he tried to figure out how the hell he was going to swab the inside of Cate’s mouth and send it to Mr. Allen in the next twenty-four hours.

  Maybe you could use your tongue, a devilish voice in his head said. No matter how hard he tried not to be attracted to the woman, just the thought of her made him think the dirtiest thoughts imaginable.

  From his seat, he had a view of the pool, and behind him sat a bunch of empty tables.

  Given everything he’d seen, the woman was broke.

  That much was obvious. Yet how could she be with the amount of money Allen said she’d stolen? A lot of things were starting not to add up about his story.

  He’d seen what a great and caring mom she was, had seen her frantic with worry about Avery. That wasn’t a woman who saw her child as an accessory. Plus, she’d been so grateful for his help that afternoon, and that wasn’t the act of an entitled snob. He knew she didn’t have an entitled bone in her body.

  Then, there were all the interview—her father, childhood friends and college roommates. They all swore she was the nicest person they knew.

  Something didn’t add up.

  When he’d taken the case, it was all about freeing Adeeb. He didn’t much care about anything else.

  Tack checked his phone. No new message from Adeeb. But sometimes he went days without answering. Tack sent up a little prayer, hoping his friend was all right.

  He took another swig of the beer and frowned as he looked at his phone. Time was running out, and Tack had already wasted so much of it running after Cate Allen’s ghost.

  Life was so damn complicated sometimes. He almost missed Afghanistan. There, he didn’t have a whole lot of time to worry about his feelings or second-guess his decisions. In the moment in war, there were orders and there was enemy fire, and there wasn’t a whole lot of thinking.

  The thinking came when he got home.

  Now he wished he could turn his brain off again. Just be told what to do, be back in a place where orders were orders.

  “Want another one?” Mark, who was working the bar, asked him, startling him out of his reverie. “You look like you need one.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Mark shrugged. He grabbed Tack’s empty beer glass and filled it from the tap. “This one’s on me, Marine,” he said, nodding to the T Marine Battalion T-shirt he wore.

  “Thanks, man,” he said, nodding back at the fiftysomething man with the nearly white hair and the Bermuda shorts. Tack still wasn’t sure just what his relationship was with Cate, but now was as good as any to find out. “Have you known Cate long?”

  “A few years,” Mark said, a little guarded.

  A few years? Tack wondered if that meant right at the time of Cate’s escape. Had she been having an affair with Mark? Had he offered to save her if she stole from her rich husband?

  Right. A married man ran off with his mistress and took his whole family with him? That might just be the dumbest plan Tack ever heard.

  “You guys close?” Tack asked, trying to pry a little more without raising suspicion. Mark dried off a glass, taking a minute to answer. Finally, he looked up, a knowing half smile on his otherwise no-nonsense face.

  “You like her.” It wasn’t a question.

  The comment took Tack off guard. In part, because he realized at that moment he actually did.

  “Well...” Tack hesitated.

  “It’s obvious to me, but probably not to her,” Mark said. “Don’t worry, big guy. I’m just a friend. Nothing more.”

  Tack’s gut told him the man was telling him the truth.

  “She’s like a kid sister to me. Or, hell, with my age, my daughter.” Mark chuckled to himself as he picked up another wet glass and gave it a swipe with the bar towel. “But I look after her. She’s got a big heart, and she’s been through a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mark looked at him a beat and then poured two tequila shots.

  “For this, we need a stronger drink.”

  He slid one shot over to Tack, who took it. He met Mark’s gaze and then drank the amber liquid that burned like fire down his throat. He was reminded suddenly of his first free night after boot camp, where he and a gaggle of new recruits had laid waste to more than one bottle of tequila.

  “Phew,” Mark said, and shook his head. “There we go. That hits the spot.” He grinned at Tack. “Another?”

  Tack shrugged. Why not? He wasn’t going to get a DNA swab this evening unless he rappelled off the resort roof and onto Cate’s balcony. He’d have to come up with something tomorrow.

  That or Allen could wait.

  Mark slid another shot his way, and the two once again simultaneously downed them, knocking the glasses onto the wooden bar with a satisfied thunk.

  “That’s serious business,” Tack remarked. He grabbed his beer and took a swig to wash down the tequila. “So what has Cate been through?”

  “Her mom died when she was little. Her dad was an al
coholic.” All facts Tack already knew. “And she has had some very bad relationships.”

  “How so?”

  “A bad guy, that’s all I’ll say. Bad in every way.”

  “What? Did he hit her?”

  Mark just glared at Tack, saying nothing and letting him draw his own conclusions, which weren’t good. Cate was in a relationship with an abusive man? Tack did a quick catalog of all the people he’d interviewed. She’d had one boyfriend before Allen, a mousy engineer with a nerdy streak who went to Northwestern. Tack couldn’t imagine he’d be the violent one. Though, sometimes, you never knew about people. Still.

  “Was it her husband?”

  “I’ve already said too much,” Mark said, looking spooked and glaring at his empty glass as if it were to blame.

  Was Mark talking about Allen? If so, this straightforward case just got a hell of a lot more complicated. If it was Allen, then Tack was going to have to hit someone. Now.

  Tack gripped his glass so hard, he thought it might shatter.

  “Forget I ever mentioned it,” Mark said, and that was the last thing the man would say on the matter. But Tack wasn’t finished. He was going to find out the truth, one way or another.

  * * *

  CATE COULDN’T STOP thinking about Tack. Even the next day, as she sat with Mark going over some ideas to revamp business for the resort, he was still in her thoughts. Without him, Avery would’ve fallen from that tree and broken his arm—or worse. If Avery had fallen out of that tree and broken something, they would have had to take a helicopter to St. Thomas, which had the closest hospital. And what would’ve happened if they’d double-checked their IDs? Asked more questions than Cate was comfortable answering? Mark had made it clear when she’d run that the best way not to get caught was to stay off the grid. Stay out of hospitals and away from the police. Their fake identities were strong, but why push it? She and Avery had new last names now, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be found out.

  She was so grateful that Tack had thought to look in the tree and had found Avery. She couldn’t help but think it was because Tack was a man, who’d once been a boy. He thought like one. Most days, she had no idea what was running through little Avery’s head, no idea how he decided suddenly to climb trees or jump in a pool without his life jacket. He was a little daredevil, a trait he most certainly didn’t get from her.