“He was always really good at math,” Jax said. “He wants to be a pharmacist.”
“Oh.”
“I like mixing chemicals,” Quinten said in his growing-into-a-man voice, a big smile spreading over his face as he chewed another bite.
“You can imagine all the explosions I had to deal with when he was in high school.”
Penny laughed and ate a small bite of beef and broccoli. The strong smell of broccoli suddenly stood out from all the other aromas. A few seconds later, her stomach churned. She put her fork down. What was that all about? She put her hand on her stomach. She felt nauseated. Why did she feel nauseated?
“Have you ever thought about having kids?” Jax asked.
Penny slid a glance toward her purse. Kadin was out in his car listening.
She forgot about her upset stomach. “Not really.”
“Career woman, huh?” Jax grinned. “A damn good one, too.” He sipped from a bottle of water. “Seriously, though. Do you want kids someday?”
Penny pushed her food around, not liking having to think about that and not having an appetite, anyway. “I’m already in my thirties. I suppose if I’m going to, I should be working hard to find a man.”
Jax grinned. “I’d like to have more kids.”
“Dad,” Quinten complained. “I’ll be decades older than a kid brother or sister.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
Quinten shrugged, chewing and swallowing. “It’s weird.”
“Not if it’s with the right woman.”
Penny didn’t like how certain Jax sounded, and the unmistakable suggestion that she’d be the one having kids with him.
Quinten sipped his water. “Yeah, if you get busy right now having one.” He glanced at Penny with a playful grin.
She set her bottle of water down and said nothing.
Jax reached over and put his hand on hers with a squeeze. “You never know what can happen.”
Quinten laughed while he shoveled more food into his mouth. “I don’t know, Dad, she doesn’t look too enthused.”
“I don’t think I want kids,” she said. Not with him, anyway.
“Phew.” Quinten wiped his forehead as though wiping off sweat. “I’m saved.”
A quick glance at Jax and Penny didn’t doubt he didn’t like her statement. “You seriously want more kids?”
“I love kids.” He looked fondly across the table at Quinten. “Raising him was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done in my life.”
“Aw, shucks,” Quinten teased. And then he turned to Penny. “He’s a really great dad.”
She smiled. “I can tell.”
The young man got up, taking his empty plate to the kitchen. “I’ll leave you two alone so my dad can get to work changing your mind, Penny.”
“Hey. I thought I saved you.”
He chuckled and came back to the table, going around to his dad’s side. He leaned down and hugged him. “I’m driving back to the city this afternoon.”
Jax gave him a pat on his shoulder. “Okay. I figured you would.” He looked at Penny. “He brought a girl up here last night.” He winked.
“Ah.” She put her fork down and leaned back. This all felt so normal. Jax was a good dad and his son loved him. Maybe he had told the truth about his truck, after all.
When Quinten left, Penny got up and began to clear the table, a little disappointed that Quinten had gone.
Jax stood and came into the kitchen with her, leaning a hip on the counter by the sink. “Did you find anything else on Mark?”
She debated over how much to tell him. And then decided not being totally honest would get her nowhere. “Not really.” She rinsed her plate and put it in the sink. “He sent me a file with an extra tab that had some different numbers than the ones we report to the board. I think he’s doing something with the books.”
“Embezzling?”
Penny finished rinsing Jax’s plate and turned off the water. After drying her hands, she faced him. “I have no real proof of that, but yes, that’s what I think he’s doing, hiding it by sending the board wrong numbers in his reports, the ones I see.”
Jax looked all over her face and finally said, “Dane and Mark robbed a convenience store in college.”
“What?” That came as a total shock. “Mark?”
“He and Mark did a lot of things they should both be in prison for. Things off the record that your detective wouldn’t know.”
Penny decided to ignore that comment.
“They’ve always watched out for each other. Like that day my brother did what Mark wanted and forced me to keep working with you on the ads.”
And Jax knew both their secrets. Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Because Dane was his brother? Maybe that was why he was at odds with Dane.
“How do you know all this?”
“I grew up with Dane. We’ve always been close.”
“You don’t seem very close anymore.”
He wandered over to the kitchen window and sighed. “There’s only so much I can take of my brother. I don’t agree with some of the things he’s done with the business. I think he’s getting reckless, and keeping secrets from me.” He turned to look at her when she came to stand closer. “I heard him and Mark talking one day. Mark said the board at Avenue One had begun to ask questions. He was in a panic. Dane reassured him that one of the board members was a friend of his. Just before Mark was about to leave his office, Dane saw me standing in the door opening.”
“He knows you know about Mark?”
Jax nodded.
That was motive for Dane to protect either his friend or himself for his involvement.
“Why are you telling me all this?” she asked.
He didn’t reply right away. “Why do you think?”
He wanted her to believe that he was innocent, that Dane might be a person of interest, too.
* * *
Kadin listened to Penny talk about nothing in particular with Jax. The weather. Something political on the news. They had an easy way together. After hearing Jax tell her all about his brother’s shady past, Kadin began to wonder if he’d told the truth about his truck. He also began to wonder if he should take a closer look at Dane.
Penny’s declaration that she would never have kids relieved him. While he didn’t think he’d ever fall in love and marry again, he could do that more than he could have another child. All the emotion that went into having one, the overwhelming, incomprehensible love, the responsibility and care, haunted him. He could not risk feeling that way again. He could do without the torturous comparisons, too, always wondering if Annabelle would have done what the new child did, or be hit with bittersweet sorrow at milestones like proms and weddings.
His cell phone rang. Kadin answered, leaving the earpiece in his other ear in case something happened with Penny.
“Detective.” Kadin sat straighter on the seat. He must have some news.
“Hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time?”
“No, not at all.” Jax was boring Penny with talk about Quinten when he was a young boy now. Did he hope to win her over to have kids?
“I received some test results back from the forensics lab.”
Kadin gripped his phone tighter, remembering these calls after his daughter’s body had been found. He struggled to stay focused and to listen carefully to what Cohen said.
“We have nothing from the truck, but we expected that. The lab analysis came back and we’ve identified the fiber found on Sara Wolfe as some kind of rope fiber.”
“What kind of rope?” Ballard’s Sporting Goods probably sold rope.
“The lab is still narrowing that down. They ran into some problems during testing and had to start over with
a clean sample. Once that’s complete we can start tracing where it might have come from.”
The detective thought what Kadin did. He’d try to match it to something Ballard’s sold. If Jax was their suspect, then he wouldn’t have had to purchase any rope.
“I’m still waiting on DNA analysis on Jax.”
“Good.” Penny’s ex seemed confident he wouldn’t be a match. “Does he know you have DNA from Sara’s body?”
“We didn’t tell him.”
Some criminals got overconfident when trying to convince others they were innocent. If Jax didn’t know, he probably felt sure they had no evidence and didn’t anticipate them finding any.
“I’ve reviewed the files I asked you for,” Kadin said, referring to the missing persons cases. “I picked out two that resemble Sara Wolfe’s case, but I’d like some more time to analyze them.” He went on to explain about the two girls.
“All right, let’s stay in touch,” Detective Cohen said.
“Will do.” Then he remembered something. “Detective?”
“Yes?”
“What have you got on Dane Ballard? Penny told me he has a suspicious friendship with her boss, Mark Pershing. I’m not trying to bust anyone for embezzlement, but Dane is Jax’s brother.”
“I’ll check him out.”
They disconnected and Kadin used his phone to look up the highway that passed Sara Wolfe’s crime scene. Highway 190 connected to another highway that led to Park City, a back way to Jax’s mountain home, where his truck had been found in an abandoned barn that had mysteriously burned down.
Cohen had a rope fiber. Ballard’s manufactured sporting equipment. If he could get inside Jax’s cabin, he could search. And he’d be closer to Penny in case Jax had lured her here for some nefarious purpose. Why try to kill Penny, though? She couldn’t prove anything more than the police already knew. Unless Jax didn’t know they’d recovered the VIN and she had pictures. If he thought she could testify...
The man in the hoodie had only watched her. Now that the police were involved, would he or Jax or whoever stand back and watch? And when they got too close, strike again?
What better way to keep an eye on Penny than to earn her trust?
Kadin got out of his vehicle and trekked through the woods toward Ballard’s house. He wouldn’t be able to hear Penny but they’d still been in the kitchen. In daylight, he’d be easily spotted, but he only had Jax to worry about. At the clearing where the driveway widened, he stayed in the trees and walked the perimeter until he reached the side of the cabin. He couldn’t see through the windows. Jax could be looking through one of them.
Seeing a woodland garden with native plants and boulders, he crouched and sprinted there, taking refuge behind a big boulder. Peering around the edge, he moved to the next boulder and then ran to a pine tree. From there, he took cover among some aspen trees and then made it to the back corner of the house.
Angling his head for a quick glimpse of the back and finding it clear, he ducked below the frame of one window and stopped at the edge of a floor-to-ceiling window. With his back against the house, he rolled to look inside. A large living room transitioned to a more formal one. Adjacent to that, Kadin caught some movement. Penny pointed at a digital picture frame and Jax came to stand beside her, talking. Probably telling her stories about each photo. She seemed interested.
Kadin crossed the patio to a sturdy trellis that rose to the bottom of a balcony. He jumped up and grabbed a horizontal, vine-entangled beam and pulled himself up. He climbed to the balcony and hauled himself over the railing. At the door, he tried his luck and gave it a tug.
It opened.
Finding himself in a bedroom, he checked the closet. The room must be for guests, but not Penny. Her things weren’t here. Leaving that room, he went into the hallway. An open railing a few feet from where he stood carried the sound of voices.
“Quentin used to love camping,” Jax said.
“He doesn’t anymore?” Penny asked.
“He goes with friends. Going with his dad isn’t cool anymore.”
Kadin quickly searched the next bedroom, a master suite with an overnight bag that must be Penny’s. Across the hall, another master bedroom matched Penny’s. She was going to sleep right across the hall from him?
Clamping down on the rebellion that stirred, Kadin went through Jax’s drawers and looked under the bed and in the closet. He kept everything tidy, but that must be a housekeeper’s accolade. Finding nothing upstairs, he made his way to the open railing.
Penny and Jax had moved to another area of the house, their voices fainter now. Kadin descended the stairs, pinpointing Penny to be around the wall from the stairs in the living room.
“That’s beautiful,” she murmured.
Kadin didn’t like how genuine she sounded.
“We took a long trip to Banff. That was in the Selkirk Mountains,” Jax said.
“That’s Canada, right?”
“Yeah. They have bear crossing signs.” Jax laughed once.
Weren’t they getting cozy? Gritting his teeth, Kadin reminded himself to stay focused on the task at hand. He found an office on the other side of the wall from the living room. Began riffling through drawers.
“You don’t strike me as the camping type,” Penny said.
Jax didn’t strike Kadin as that type, either. Narcissistic business executive who liked fine things and would love his brother out of the way. He’d rather lead, even though he probably wasn’t the leader his brother was.
“Let’s go camping, then,” Jax said.
Penny laughed. “I’m a city girl.”
“I have an RV. You wouldn’t rough it.”
“Ah,” Penny said. “That’s more like you.”
Kadin stopped navigating through Jax’s computer, straightening and going to the door to listen. Penny sounded so enchanted, enjoying the play. Did she play the same way with him, loving the game, the attention of a man? He should be glad. Sometimes the thought of starting over with someone new made him physically ill. What about Penny changed that?
She posed no threat. He didn’t have to worry about any expectations of commitment.
Sometimes he thought she hadn’t meant that all that about being safe with her. When she reacted to him, when he felt their chemistry heat up, he didn’t feel safe. Did she still think they could just be and not worry about the future? Maybe she’d never truly believed that they could treat this attraction so casually.
He resumed his search of Jax’s computer, not finding anything incriminating, distracted by Penny giggling over a fishing tale with Quentin that Jax recounted.
“Where is that?” she asked.
Then they must have finished going through the pictures because Jax said, “Why don’t we go for a walk? It’s a beautiful day.”
Kadin put the computer back to sleep and walked to the door. She wasn’t going to agree to that, was she?
“All right.”
He cursed under his breath. Apparently she’d concluded the same about Jax, that perhaps he’d told the truth. He wished she wouldn’t be so trusting.
“Great. I’ll get us some water.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Okay. Meet you by the front door.”
Kadin peeked into the hall and saw Penny come around the corner, ducking when Jax appeared, looking at her rear. When Kadin peeked again, Jax had his back to him on his way to the kitchen and Penny’s steps faltered when she spotted Kadin.
He stepped across the hall and into the bathroom.
She glanced back to check on Jax and then entered after him. “What are you doing?”
Kadin shut the bathroom door and faced her. “You’re not going on a walk with him.”
“It’s just a walk.” She put her hand
on the two-sink marble counter. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“It’s also remote.” He took in her slim hips in distressed, ripped jeans and then roved over her tight white T-shirt.
“You won’t be far away.” She smiled, having noticed his wandering gaze.
“Penny...”
She stepped forward and flattened her hands on his chest, rubbing provocatively, and then slid her palms up to his shoulders. “Yes?”
Her breathy response deterred him from his purpose. Standing in the bathroom of a potential murder suspect’s vacation home, in the middle of an unauthorized search, he put himself in a vulnerable situation.
“What am I supposed to do? Hide in the trees?”
That smile remained, tempting, enticing. “Just knowing you’ll be there will be enough.” She rubbed her hands down his chest again.
“He’s going to miss you.”
She rose and pressed her mouth to his.
Fire furled in his core. He kissed her back and doubted even she’d expected their chemistry to erupt this way, at this moment, with Jax in the other room. Somehow that enflamed him more, made him feel as though he were stamping his claim on her.
She made a soft sound low in her throat, parting her lips farther as her small, delicate fingers laced into his hair at the base of his neck. He gave her what she asked, capturing her tongue for a long, deep caress. She raised her thigh along the side of his, escalading this out of control. He lifted her, planting her butt between the two sinks, just on the edge so that he could press close to the apex of her legs.
“Are you all right in there?” Jax said from the other side of the door.
Kadin broke apart from Penny, staring at her while the two of them quietly caught their breaths.
She hopped down with a hand over her mouth. “Uh...yeah. Be right out.”
“What are you doing?”
“I...I just got a little nauseated. I’m okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
After a few seconds, Jax said, “Okay.”
“Don’t go on a walk with him,” Kadin whispered.
“There’s a hiking trail in the back,” Penny said in an equally hushed tone. “The road at the end of the driveway goes to the barn and boarded-up house.”
A Wanted Man (Cold Case Detectives Book 1) Page 12
