Lost But Not Forgotten

by Roz Denny Fox

  The big dog’s ears pricked forward. His shoulders rippled with tension the way they did when he went on full alert.

  “Okay,” Mitch said without inflection. He dug a coin out of his pocket. “Heads I stop her at the front door, tails I go in the back.”

  Without looking at it, Ethan snagged the coin in midair as they dismounted. “I’m the only one here with a badge.”

  “I know that.” Mitch failed to turn away fast enough to conceal the pain in his eyes.

  Ethan clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “I promise, unless she pulls a piece, I’ll be gentle.”

  “Yeah.” Mitch ducked his head.

  “You won’t have to hike so far over rough ground if you take the front door. Taz and I’ll go in via the kitchen.”

  Nodding this time, the men exchanged a thumbs-up. Still, Mitch felt a hole open up in his chest as Ethan bent double, skirted the barn and hugged the ground in his effort not to be seen from the house. He’d taken his weapon from his shoulder holster, which made him appear too damned official.

  “I’m counting on you, Gilly babe,” Mitch whispered stonily. He didn’t think he’d be able to live with the consequences if he’d read her wrong and Ethan got hurt doing him this favor.

  Though it was near impossible for him to crouch, Mitch knew he had to, since he’d be passing two windows. Gilly could look out either one and see him sneaking up to the porch. If she spotted him first, she had the shorter distance to dash to her car. Then they’d never get answers.

  Most of all, Mitch wanted answers. Whatever mess Gillian was in, he wanted the names of those bastards who’d broken into her apartment.

  Halfway up the porch steps, his leg cramped. He fell to one knee. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hobbled the remaining distance. Breathing hard, he reached for the doorknob and muttered a final prayer. Sucking in a last massive gulp of air, he planted his shoulder against the door and burst inside.

  He’d got there before Ethan, whom he now heard jiggling the back door.

  It was hard to tell who was more shocked, Mitch or Gillian, as she screamed and spun away from his fireplace. In her hands she held baby Katie’s urn. As Mitch advanced, she maintained her grasp on the silver vase and edged steadily toward the kitchen, which led to a back door. She hugged the urn protectively against her breasts.

  Mitch heard Ethan splinter the lock to his back door—a noise that seemed to occur in a remote section of his brain. His sweeping gaze had landed on the suitcase still sitting on his coffee table. Neatly repacked, the blanket and frilly pink dress lay folded as they’d been when the bomb squad had first let him open the valise.

  Finally, his breathing leveled and his knees felt strong again. Mitch lunged for Gillian, grabbing her none too gently. “What in hell are you doing with baby Katie?” he demanded, his grip so tight Gillian cried out in pain.

  Ethan’s words came at him through a thick bank of fog. “You’re hurting her, Mitch. Let go. It’s pretty obvious if you ask me. At least one mystery here is solved.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  GILLIAN APPEARED ready to bolt. From wide, stricken eyes, she darted panicky glances between Mitch, who blocked the entry to a bedroom door to the kitchen where even now Taz stood guard. The instant Ethan filled the archway, Gilly wrenched out of Mitch’s hold and sank wordlessly to the floor.

  “Explain!” Mitch, still hurting from the stress he’d placed on his healing wounds, stared coldly down on her bowed head.

  “Would it do any good?” she asked in a shaky voice. “If you’re working with them, I doubt my telling you I don’t have the key will make an impression.”

  Mitch and Ethan exchanged bewildered glances.

  Taz sank to his haunches, teeth no longer bared. His tail made swishing sounds on the hardwood as he awaited some kind of signal from his master.

  “Them who? What key? Gillian—if that’s even your name—” Mitch shouted in exasperation, “for God’s sake, get up and sit on the couch instead of cowering on the damn floor. Ethan and I aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “I’m not cowering.” She tried to get up, but her knees refused to support her.

  Noticing that she quailed all over, Mitch reached down and gently helped her to her feet. He escorted her to the leather couch where just yesterday she’d lain in a faint.

  Ethan sauntered up to the heavy wood coffee table. He swept aside an untidy stack of computer paper, then sat in the spot he’d cleared. “It usually helps to begin at the beginning,” he said, not making eye contact with Mitch. “If you’d prefer to have a lawyer present before you say anything, that’s your privilege and your right.”

  She blanched at that. “I don’t have a…a…lawyer. Well, Daryl had one for the business.” She raised a badly shaking hand to scrape back a curl now drooping over one eye. Her hold on the urn remained tight.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, almost to herself. “Or maybe I have. I ran. First, because Daryl was convinced I’d be killed. Later when Patrick…when Patrick…” Gilly’s voice trailed away as her eyes filled with tears. “Someone else who tried to help me was viciously run down.”

  Mitch and Ethan shared a second look. “Maybe you could start over and tell us who’s chasing you,” Mitch suggested, tossing aside a pillow to make a place beside her on the sofa. She flinched when he sat down, and that hurt.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Why would I?”

  She stared blankly up at him. “I don’t know who they are, Mitch.” Backed into a corner of the couch, she hugged the urn for dear life, and haltingly told her sorry tale. She began with the wrenching loss of Katie, briefly touched on her misery and her divorce, then described the full events on the night Daryl had arrived at her rented town house. She quickly told them about her flight, ending with her coming to Desert City.

  “Where was his CPA firm?” Ethan asked, pulling a battered notebook from his jacket pocket. “Louisiana, right? And your name wasn’t…uh…isn’t Gillian Stevens.”

  Lifting her head in surprise, Gillian shrugged her shoulders. “Legally my name is Gillian Noelle Talbert McGrath. Daryl never liked Gillian. So from the time we started dating, he called me Noelle. After we got married, he insisted I use Noelle McGrath on everything.”

  Ethan scribbled faster in his book. “Flo said you showed her a driver’s license and social security card in the name Gillian Stevens. Are they stolen? Or phony?”

  “Phony, I imagine. Daryl provided them. They were in an envelope in the glove compartment of a car he must’ve bought out of state. At least, it had Mississippi plates that matched the driver’s license. Stevens is the name of my third stepdad. He d-died of cancer, but he gave me away at my wedding. That’s how Daryl knew him. Mom’s remarried again. We’ve grown apart.”

  Mitch choked and sputtered. “Then the story you fed me about your folks dying in a plane crash was a lie?”

  “Partially,” Gillian admitted, rallying in her own defense. “My dad died in the crash. Mother survived. She married the doctor who saved her life. He was my first stepdad. She’s not…strong, and she missed my dad so much. Oh, this is pointless. What does any of it matter? Lock me up, or extradite me to New Orleans. I’m tired of having to pile lies on lies.” She fingered the lettering on the urn. “I have Katie back. That’s all I really care about. I hoped I could help put away the men who killed Daryl. Only I don’t know anything. Not even their names. Beating them is impossible.”

  Ethan closed his notebook. He dug in his jacket pocket, and came out with handcuffs.

  “Now hold on a damned minute.” Mitch reached across the coffee table and jerked the gleaming steel out of Ethan’s hands. “So far nothing she’s told us adds up to cold-blooded contract murder, interstate chase scenes or stolen suitcases.”

  “It’s my suitcase. I had to change a flat tire, and I took my suitcases out of my trunk. Then I saw headlights on the road behind me. I was afraid it
was them—the men who’d followed me from New Orleans. I didn’t manage to get everything back in place. I’ve been searching the underbrush along your lane—until yesterday, when I saw you had all this.” Her hand swept the case and the urn.

  “What were you doing on my property in the first place?”

  Gillian gazed at Mitch. She seemed near shattering. “On the freeway, I saw a car in my rearview mirror—a big blue car like they drove. I panicked and took roads at random, hoping…trying to lose them. I think I always knew they wouldn’t give up.”

  “Okay,” Mitch said. “I’ll buy that. But later, when you saw I had this…” He stabbed a finger at the case. “Why not explain to me then?” What he didn’t say in front of Ethan, but the accusation he left hanging between them, hinged heavily on the personal intimacy they’d shared earlier that same day.

  She licked her lips, hesitating a long time. “The day I started working for Flo, I drove out here hoping the suitcase had simply been knocked into the underbrush along the lane. I…saw…the men who were after me go toward your house. After a while, they drove out again. You weren’t far behind. I hid, but you got out and started searching the area with a spotlight. I ran away. Tell me, what would you have deduced? I assumed you worked with them, and your befriending me was a setup.”

  Anger appeared in Mitch’s dark eyes. “I stuck my neck out making sure baby Katie didn’t get forgotten in the precinct’s evidence room. You think I lied when I said I’d find out where she belonged?”

  Gillian dropped her gaze guiltily. She knew what he was really wondering: how she could have slept with him if she thought he was mixed up with crooks and killers. His beautiful dark eyes were windows opening straight to his heart.

  She squirmed. With Ethan looking on, she wasn’t going to explain how Mitch affected her—how, with a mere touch, he stripped away every vestige of her good sense.

  Ethan snatched his handcuffs out of Mitch’s limp hands. “Gillian, you must’ve been mistaken about the identity of the men you saw leaving Mitch’s.”

  “Wait! Maybe not.” Mitch remembered back to the night in question. “One evening I thought some kids were messing around my corral. It was the same night you brought Trooper, Ethan. I chased after the car. I thought I saw a person—a silhouette in the trees—so I stopped to have a look.”

  “You weren’t looking for me because those men said they’d seen me?” Gillian asked.

  “No.” Mitch seemed thoroughly stunned.

  Ethan leaned toward him. “If they were the same guys who barged in on you at Gillian’s apartment this morning, and they dig deeper and start adding things up, we could have company here before we know it.”

  Gillian jumped to her feet. “Whoever they are, they think my ex-husband gave me a key to a safe-deposit box or a locker or something, where he put evidence that’ll send their outfit to jail.”

  When Ethan and Mitch stared at her, Gillian continued. “Daryl implied in an e-mail to a friend that he’d uncovered a big money-laundering operation, and that he’d hidden evidence. Daryl hinted I’d bring this man some kind of key. If I have one in my possession, I can’t find it. But I can’t…won’t let them destroy all I have left of my baby. Please, Mitch, could you put Katie someplace she’ll be safe, no matter what happens to me?”

  “Lord, Gilly. You’ve finally given us information we can understand.” Mitch got to his feet and paced. “Ethan, I won’t let you throw her to the wolves. Are you with me here, or do I have to try to hang these bastards on my own?”

  Ethan stroked the beginnings of a shadowy beard on his chin, obviously contemplating Mitch’s request.

  Gillian set the urn carefully and lovingly between the quilt and the dress in the little suitcase before closing the lid. “I can’t let you involve yourself, Mitch.” In a rush, she explained how Patrick Malone, a kindly cop in Flagstaff, had tried to help. “Because of me,” she concluded, “he was probably killed.”

  Ethan’s head shot up. “Stop. You’re saying these guys found you in Flagstaff? And in broad daylight they mowed down a cop in the precinct parking lot?”

  Gillian nodded unhappily. “Except the sun was going down, so it was hard to see.”

  “I saw a fax come into our office on that incident. The cop didn’t die. I think he’s recovering. The fax didn’t say he was in a safe house, but reading between the lines, I think the chief has him under wraps.”

  Tears filled Gillian’s eyes. “Thank heaven. Sergeant Malone was like a father to Daryl. The man was just weeks away from retirement. All this time I’ve thought he…thought those men…” She sank back on the couch, buried her face in her hands and wept huge, gulping sobs.

  Mitch and Ethan both seemed at a loss. Finally, Mitch pulled her up and into his arms. As he rocked her silently, Ethan shifted from foot to foot, gazing uncomfortably on the tender scene.

  After a few minutes, he leaned down and picked up the suitcase. “Look,” he said, sounding a bit raw himself. “There’s enough to this situation to warrant investigating. Can’t do that if our primary witness turns up dead. Mitch, since your ranch and Gillian’s apartment are known to these bastards, I think we ought to pull up stakes and reconvene at my house while we talk this through.”

  “Good idea,” Mitch agreed. “First on the agenda is to find a more secure place to hide Gilly. With all the traffic Regan and Odella have in and out of their home office, it’ll be hard to keep Gilly safe there. Besides, we don’t want you guys to be their next target.”

  Stepping away from Mitch, Gillian blotted her eyes. “I wouldn’t stay. Your family was in jeopardy once, Ethan. I’d never knowingly let something like that happen again on my account.”

  For the first time since meeting her, Ethan gave her a genuine smile. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, today is Regan’s day without appointments. That gives us several hours to knock together some kind of plan.”

  “I’ll work on that,” Mitch volunteered. “You’re the one who has the official capacity to dig up goods on the guy in New Orleans who’s calling the shots.”

  “What do you mean?” Gillian’s eyebrows rose. “Aren’t the men who’re chasing me clients of Daryl?”

  “Doubtful, sweetheart.” Mitch stroked the back of Gilly’s neck. “Sounds to me as if your ex stepped into the middle of a great big dirty operation. Before I transferred to Desert City P.D., I was involved in a sting in Philly aimed at bringing down a mob boss. They’re adept at keeping layers of underlings between themselves and the action on the street. It’s rare to compile enough documentation to nail any of the head creeps.”

  “It’s been done,” Ethan said. “By men like your ex, Gillian. It takes a witness who can track the money trail.”

  “You’re talking about the Mafia! I can’t believe Daryl would… Well, you’d have to know him.” She continued to look horrified.

  “We can’t say for sure this involves organized crime,” Mitch told her soothingly. “All this talk of gangsters is upsetting Gilly, Ethan. Can we save it for later? Right now, let’s clear out of here.”

  “Sure. Why don’t I drive Gillian to my place in her car? I have a couple of other questions. You return the horses to Dave. I left keys to the SUV in the ignition. Bring it to my house, okay?”

  When Mitch seemed about to object, Ethan added, “I expect you’ll want to ask Dave to keep Trooper, and cover your ranch. Probably better to be vague about your plans. Tell him you’re moonlighting on a case that’s liable to take you out of town.”

  “Goodness, look at the time,” Gillian exclaimed. “I’m due at the café in twenty minutes.”

  “No, Gillian!” Mitch and Ethan exclaimed explosively.

  Mitch completed their joint thought. “As much as Flo’s going to want to pound on me and Ethan for spiriting you away, the only smart thing is for you to call in and quit.”

  “I can’t do that! Flo hired me without references. Her niece left her high and dry. I won’t do that to her and Bert. They dese
rve better.”

  “Sweetheart, you aren’t thinking straight,” Mitch argued. “Those guys—and by the way, Ethan, one of them’s named Lenny—aren’t new at their job. They’ve tracked you halfway across the United States. I’m betting they’ve figured out where you work.”

  “True,” admitted an ashen-faced Gillian. “Bert’s seen two suspicious men around the café. I was afraid it was them. All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “But do you think Regan might know someone who might help Flo out, at least till she can hire someone new?” At his nod, she said, “That’s good. But someday, I hope I can tell Flo the truth.”

  “You will if I have my druthers,” Mitch said. “Ethan, I’m leaving Gilly in your hands until we meet at your house.” A strong, unspoken message underlay Mitch’s statement. Gillian was important to him, and he charged his best friend with keeping her safe.

  SOME FORTY MINUTES later they all reconvened in Ethan’s kitchen. Regan had fed the quadruplets breakfast before they arrived, and was putting the last child down for a morning nap. “There’s coffee, and cinnamon coffee cake Odella brought this morning,” Regan announced. She and Odella had worked together at Desert City’s Child Help Center. They’d left, believing they could help more children privately, without all the government red tape.

  An elegant black woman rose gracefully from the table, having accurately read the tension in the faces of Ethan and his friends. “If this is private, I can make myself scarce,” she offered.

  “If Mitch doesn’t mind, I’d like you to stay.” Ethan deferred to Mitch, adding for his ears alone, “Gillian and I talked some more on the drive home about what happened to Pat Malone up in Flagstaff. If the guys tailing her are up to their ears in organized crime, they might have moles in several police departments. Odella’s son works vice in Flag. He could get us Malone’s status easier than I can go sticking my nose in up there.”

  Mitch nodded. “If possible, I’d like to talk to Malone.” Spinning on his heel, he stalked to the kitchen table where Regan had just handed Gillian a steaming mug of coffee. “Gilly, is Pat Malone clean?”