Johnny cried louder.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” She bounced him, and he quieted a bit as she carried him downstairs. Too many things to worry about. Right now, she had to take care of her baby.
The circuit breaker panel was in the basement. Rae flipped the basement light switch, but of course the bulbs didn’t light. She found the electrical panel. All the breakers were turned off. She flipped each on, and when the basement lit up, she relaxed. The feeling didn’t last long.
Why would Gram shut off the power? If she’d moved, she certainly would have told Rae. Or maybe not. Maybe, knowing Rae was pregnant and confined to bedrest, Gram wouldn’t have said a word.
Johnny fussed, red-faced, and wound up for another wail.
She kissed his cheek. “I know, you’re hungry. Let’s feed you.”
She carried him upstairs, grabbed her bag off the porch, and fixed the baby’s bottle before collapsing on the sofa to feed him.
Halfway through the bottle, he nodded off. What to do? Gram was supposed to take over now. Tell her where the old cradle was, hold the baby while she fetched it. But Gram wasn’t there.
She changed Johnny’s diaper and slipped him into fuzzy pajamas. He didn’t stir. She carried him upstairs and laid him in the center of Gram’s king-sized bed.
He’d be fine until she located his cradle.
She glanced in her parents’ old bedroom. It looked just like it had when they’d been alive.
Rae checked her old room. Her double bed was made as if Gram had expected her. Rae pulled back the quilt to find sheets beneath it. She sniffed. Not freshly-laundered, but not stale, either. Gram must have washed them regularly, just in case. The thought made Rae smile.
She grabbed her suitcases and two shopping bags out of the car and carried them upstairs to her room. From one crumpled sack she pulled the used baby monitor she’d purchased at the pawn shop in Boston. She’d walked in with thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels and walked out with a used baby monitor and a wad of cash that should last until she found what she’d come for.
She went to Gram’s room and plugged the monitor in, then grabbed the receiver and headed downstairs.
That old cradle had been in the barn since Rae was a child. She wasn’t sure exactly where in the barn, and the ancient building had always been piled high with stuff accumulated over generations. But it was out there. Rae remembered when her mother had brought the cradle into the house eighteen years earlier. For years, the cradle had been the symbol of her mom’s shattered life—and her own. Today, she would change that. Johnny would redeem the cradle.
The property had been in her father’s family for generations. Gram had told her stories about secret passageways and hidden treasure. But in all her searching, Rae’d never found any passages or treasures. Gram had only tsk-tsked when Rae called her on it.
“Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
Gram’d always had an active imagination.
There was treasure now, though not buried years before by an ancestor. Rae hoped it wasn’t buried at all. She needed to find the inheritance her father had left her, and she needed to do it fast.
She turned up the thermostat to sixty-eight, as warm as Gram ever let it get in the cold months. She could hear the old woman’s voice now. “If you’re cold, wear more clothes. We aren’t Rockefellers, you know.” Rae smiled at the memory. Then her stomach dropped. Where was Gram?
When she heard the furnace kick on, she grabbed the flashlight and headed to the barn for the cradle.
Three
Terrorists could be so unpredictable.
Julien Moreau hadn’t planned to be gone overnight, but his business associates, as he preferred to think of them, had needed some convincing.
He’d told Rae it was possible he’d have to stay, but only as a precaution. He hated leaving her, and especially now, with the new baby. The huge deal he’d just closed was worth the small sacrifice.
He double-parked outside his building and stepped out of his SUV.
Hector came around from the opposite side to drive the car the few blocks to the parking garage. His suit jacket didn’t mask his giant muscles, cultivated by pumping iron and swinging fists.
Julien said, “I’m going to spend the rest of the day with my family. Set up delivery and call me with the details.”
“Of course.” Hector nodded his shaved head and slipped into the driver’s seat.
Julien turned for his apartment. He unlocked the outer door, reveling in the beauty of the building. In another life, he’d have time to research the architecture, to understand the property and the neighborhood. But he hadn’t been given a choice of occupations. Being a Moreau came with expectations. Studying architecture had never been an option.
Julien jogged up the stairs to his apartment, slipped the key in the lock, and stepped inside.
Something was wrong.
The space was silent. Even the air felt stale.
He walked across the foyer and into the living room, where Rae often sat and watched the news, their child nestled in her arms. He didn’t want Jean-Louis exposed to the evils on BBC, but Rae laughed when he suggested it wasn’t good for the boy.
“I don’t think he’s worrying about the tension in the Middle East quite yet.”
He’d let it go. If she’d just let the nanny take their son, it wouldn’t be an issue. But Rae insisted on keeping the child with her, sending the nanny away most days. So American. He’d enjoyed watching her interact with their child. She wasn’t one of those women who had children, then passed them off. She took motherhood seriously. Like his own mother had.
There was only so much a mother could do, though. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.
The living room was empty and still. He checked the kitchen. Also empty. He kept the office door locked, so there was no reason to check that room.
“Rachel?”
His voice echoed in the hallway as his footsteps clipped along the floor.
Jean-Louis’s pajamas were lying on the changing table in the nursery. Julien lifted the garment, fingered the soft fabric, and looked around the room. Everything seemed in order.
He moved on to the master bedroom. From her bureau, he lifted one of her perfume bottles to his nose. It reminded him of her, but the chemicals lacked her unique scent. Where was his wife?
Her silky robe lay across the chest at the end of the bed. The housekeeper should have picked that up. So had the housekeeper not been here, or had Rae worn her robe this afternoon? Perhaps she was ill.
He lifted the robe, held the cool fabric to his cheek, and inhaled. He imagined she was in his arms, pressing into him as she so often did.
When Rachel looked at him, he felt like the man he pretended to be.
He dropped the robe and turned toward the door, but a folded piece of paper on his nightstand caught his eye.
He read the note, then read it again.
Her grandmother was sick. Rae had left. Not just the apartment, not just the city. She’d left the country, the continent. Without his permission.
He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the texts and missed calls. None from her. No voice mails, either. But he’d made it clear she shouldn’t call him when he was working. Emergencies only. He crumpled the paper in his fist. Packing up their son and leaving the country would qualify.
He shoved the paper in his pocket and dialed her guards.
Lionel answered on the first ring. “Oui, monsieur?”
“Where are you?”
“Outside, of course,” he said. “We are in the van.”
“Do you know where my wife is?”
A pause. “We haven’t seen her leave.”
“When did you see her last?”
“She hasn’t come out since you left yesterday morning.”
“Has the housekeeper come? The nanny?”
“No, monsieur. But that isn’t unusual. When you’re not here—”
<
br /> “Yes, yes. Has anyone else come?” Julien stalked back to the living room.
“People have come and gone from the building, but there are many apartments. We’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You missed something, because she’s gone.”
“That can’t—”
Julien ended the call and dialed his wife.
It went straight to voice mail.
“It’s me.” He forced his voice to sound calm. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. Call me as soon as you get this. I miss you.”
He pressed end, pulled his computer from the case by the door, and headed for his office. He’d track her phone…
No, he wouldn’t, because he’d taken her smartphone. He’d wanted her to rest, and she never rested when she had constant access to news and email. Always working on some story or looking for a new one. He couldn’t track the cheap phone he’d given her, but he hadn’t worried about that. He hadn’t needed to insist she stay close to home since they’d come to Paris. She’d been confined to bed rest. And then she’d had a newborn. Where would she go?
California, apparently.
Without telling him. Maybe her phone wouldn’t work in America. It hardly worked here. That might explain why she hadn’t answered.
But why hadn’t she called? There were phones in America. He knew her grandmother had one—Rae spoke to her often.
He was not accustomed to people defying him. Most knew better. Those who didn’t paid the price. Nobody got away with going against his wishes. Certainly not a woman. Not even his wife.
Four
Brady Thomas had put up with his share of ribbing over the years, so the barbs the two officers threw at him now were nothing. He led the way as they entered the police station, then shifted around the counter toward the back, ignoring them.
“So she just outran you?” Donny said, his grin wide.
Eric sized Brady up and down, then scrunched up his baby face. “She was, what?” He held his hand at shoulder height. “About five feet tall?”
The girl had been closer to five five, but Brady wasn’t about to point that out. He absolutely wouldn’t defend himself, not to these two.
“Tell us about the skateboard again,” Donny said, glancing at Eric. “That was the best part.”
Brady crossed his arms and nodded toward the two drug dealers they’d arrested an hour earlier. “You guys better focus on your jobs. They get off on a technicality because you were goofing off, I’ll have your badges.”
Their smiles vanished. “Gotcha,” Eric said.
Satisfied that they were on task, Brady pushed through the door to the squad room. He hadn’t taken two steps toward his desk when the chief’s door swung open.
“Detective,” the chief shouted. “In here.”
Brady veered toward the chief’s office and entered.
“Close the door.”
Brady did, then stood straight and still while Chief Will Jamison returned to the leather chair behind his cluttered desk, sat back, and glared. He had the blackest eyes Brady’d ever seen. Back in the day, his hair’d been black too. Now what little fuzz was left had turned gray. His pale skin showed through, a little red now. Did everybody’s scalp turn red when they got angry, or was it just the chief’s?
“What happened?”
Brady detailed the bust, which had gone according to plan and resulted in two arrests and a great lead for another. “If we’d had more manpower, we could have followed—”
“I saw your request.” The chief stood and hitched his pants up over his ever-growing belly. “You shouldn’t be wasting time worrying about what the state police will do, not when you let one get away. You wanna tell me about that?”
Brady resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “She was in the kitchen. When we busted in, we told her to get on the floor, and she did. Donny stayed with her. But then Chubby freaked out and started resisting, and Donny stepped in to help. The girl bolted out the front. I left the guys with Marker and Chubby and followed on foot. I was closing in, but she managed to get to a longboard and take off. I didn’t want to leave my officers with two dangerous criminals, so I returned to the house.”
The chief’s mouth moved like he was chewing on his words. After a minute, he said, “I know you’re still adjusting to life after, you know…”
Brady clenched his hands tighter. “This has nothing to do with that.”
“You ever have to arrest a woman in Afghanistan?” the chief asked.
“Yes.”
“How about in Boston?”
Brady forced his voice to remain even. “I’ve arrested women here too.”
“Not many.”
“Most of our criminals are men.”
“Some bad guys are girls, you know.”
Brady tried to picture that.
Chief Jamison leaned forward. “Why didn’t you tackle her?”
Brady looked at the floor. He should have. He’d told himself to, but when it came down to it, he could question women, lecture them, take them into custody, even arrest them. But he’d never been able to risk hurting one. And the chief knew that.
“I would have if I’d thought it was necessary.” Brady stood taller and crossed his arms. “We ran surveillance on that house for weeks, and that girl had never been there before. You know how Marker is. He doesn’t have flavors of the week, he has flavors of the hour. That girl was tonight’s flavor.”
“For all you know, she was the supplier.” A vein was pulsing in the chief’s forehead. “But we’ll never know, because you didn’t stop her.”
“She wasn’t a woman, she was a girl.”
“You checked her ID?”
“She looked like a teenager.”
“Eighteen is an adult.” The chief sighed. “Look, I don’t want to be stuck in this office forever, Detective.” He ran his fingers over his buzz cut. “There’s a whole load of fish in the lake just waiting for me and my new boat. I’m going to have to find someone to take over for me pretty soon. If you’re not the guy, I’ll need to look elsewhere.”
The thought that he might lose the chief’s job over this rankled. “Look, the girl looked familiar, and I can track her down. I’ll have a talk with her, see if she knows anything we can use. Maybe keep her from getting into trouble again.”
“Do that. Now that Marker and Chubby are behind bars, I want you to focus on the break-ins. I’ll get Detective Green to finish up with those two yahoos.”
Brady opened his mouth, then forced it closed. From drug dealers to petty thieves, all because he hadn’t tackled a teenage girl.
“Next time you have the chance to stop a female suspect,” the chief said, “stop her. Got it?”
Brady swallowed his retort. “Yes, sir.”
Brady left the chief’s office. He wrote up what he had to and decided to put the rest of the reports off ‘til Monday before heading for the door.
“Is Gronk back tomorrow?” Donny asked from behind the counter.
“I haven’t heard,” Brady said through gritted teeth. When the Patriots had first drafted Tom Brady, the fact that Brady’s name was so similar to the new backup QB’s was sort of funny. A lark. All these years later, and Brady wished he could change his name.
“Either way, have a good game, Tommy.”
“That joke never gets old.”
* * *
Finally, Brady was headed home after his longest day in months. The clock on his dash told him it was almost one in the morning. His sandpaper eyes told him he needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe he wouldn’t toss and turn over all the what-ifs of his life tonight.
When his phone rang, he resisted the urge to throw it out the window. Instead, he connected the bluetooth. “Thomas here.”
“You home yet?” the chief asked.
“Not quite. What’s up?”
“Just got a call. A neighbor reported a light on at Dorothy’s place.”
“In the house?”
“T
hat’s what she said. Thought maybe that prowler was back.”
“Can’t you send—?”
“You’re driving right by.”
True. And this was the third time in two weeks they’d gotten a call about a prowler over there. But what kind of prowler turned on the lights?
Brady owed it to Dorothy to check it out. Maybe if he came in low and quiet, he could catch the guy this time. “I’m on it.”
Brady parked on the street beneath the trees and out of sight of Dorothy’s house. He grabbed his flashlight but didn’t turn it on, unholstered his Glock, and picked his way through the woods. A black Honda was parked in the driveway. He noted its temporary plate.
Burglars who parked in the driveway?
Lights lit all the windows on the front of the house, two upstairs, and a few on the side. Brady headed toward the kitchen window to peek inside. Nearly there, he heard a crash coming from the barn, followed by the faint sound of a voice. Sure enough, through the dark window on the front of the old building, he saw a flashlight beam bouncing around. Just in case, he looked in the kitchen window, then the dining room. Not a soul.
He crept to the partially open barn door and stepped inside. He’d been in here enough to know only a fool would rush through this place in the dark. The barn was so stuffed with crap, the people at that show about hoarders might want to bring out a camera crew.
Something banged, and he heard the voice again. Sounded female. Just what he needed. He’d tackle whoever it was this time. Nobody who had the nerve to break into this place would get away with it on his watch.
He heard shuffling, muttering, and a loud, “Ouch.” He felt his way around an old wardrobe, past what he thought was a chest of drawers, then a couple of ladder-back chairs.
Dorothy had always referred to this as the barn, but it hadn’t stored animals or feed in a couple generations. When Brady was a kid, this space had served as an office and, in another section, a craft room. It had also served as the scene of a thousand games of hide-and-seek. But there was nothing playful about sneaking through the space in search of a criminal.
Convenient Lies Page 2
