Operation Reunion

by Justine Davis

  Kayla sank down into the chair Dane held for her, feeling suddenly wobbly. This all seemed to be happening quickly now that it had begun. She’d only met them this morning, yet Quinn was already on the move.

  “The sheriff’s office? But the Redwood Cove police handled the case.”

  “Yes, but the sheriff’s office did most of the forensics. Redwood Cove doesn’t have its own lab.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “Sam was able to pull up the reports for me, at least the basics. The locals trust this guy. He can get answers that others can’t because of that.”

  “Meaning distraught, crazy family members?” Kayla knew she sounded bitter but couldn’t help it.

  “They never thought you were crazy. And if you were distraught, they knew you had good reason.”

  She sighed. “To be fair, they never said so. In fact, except for a couple who got sharp about it, told me they had their suspect and to give up, they were unfailingly kind. Even though I knew they hated to see me coming.”

  “Cops get that way when they can’t help any more than they already have.”

  “But they could have. They could have looked for other suspects, they—”

  She stopped herself before the whole, long, painfully familiar spiel unwound.

  “You know what the evidence was,” Quinn said gently. “It’s pretty conclusive that Chad was in that room either during or shortly after the murders.”

  “The bloody fingerprint,” Dane said.

  Quinn nodded. “He’s certain it was left while the blood was...”

  Quinn’s voice trailed off as he looked at Kayla.

  “Still wet,” she finished for him. “Fresh. I know. I’ve heard it a hundred times. I’m used to it.”

  “It’s still awful,” Hayley said. Her tone was comforting, but nothing made Kayla feel better than Dane’s arm tightening around her.

  “Yes. But I’m not going to fall apart talking about it. I really don’t wallow it in every day.”

  She managed not to glance at Dane, although that wasn’t really fair; he’d never accused her of wallowing, only of letting this overwhelm her own life.

  “I never disputed that Chad was there,” she said. “He still came to the house often, even though he’d moved out. He’d sneak in through the den window and then head to the kitchen to get food.”

  “So you think that’s what he intended that night? To raid the fridge?” Quinn asked.

  She nodded. “And he found them lying there in the den, panicked and ran.”

  “Leaving you to deal alone, as usual,” Dane said.

  Kayla stiffened. Dane let out a compressed breath. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ll stop. I promised you one last shot, and I meant it.”

  Neither Quinn nor Hayley commented on the moment of tension, although Cutter let out a low whine as if he’d sensed it and didn’t like it. After a moment, Quinn nodded.

  “I’ll need some things from you,” he said. “Names of Chad’s friends, his interests. Then the same about your parents.”

  Kayla frowned slightly. “That was all in the reports.”

  Quinn smiled. “Sam bends the rules occasionally, but letting those reports leave the building without me jumping through all the hoops would be outright breakage. That we’ll have to do through regular channels.”

  “Sorry,” Kayla said. “Of course.”

  “Plus, I’d like to save bugging the local LEOs for things we can’t get anywhere else. They’re a bit understaffed.”

  “Back at the time, they were thinking about dissolving the department and going back to contracting with the sheriff because they were so strapped and short-handed,” Dane said. “Maybe that’s partly why they didn’t pour a lot of energy into this after Chad ran.”

  Kayla wanted to hug him for that; it was the most supportive thing he’d said lately.

  “I know once they verified where I’d been at the time of the murders,” Dane went on, “they didn’t have time to talk to me much.”

  “Except when you’d push them, for me.”

  He deserved that acknowledgment, Kayla thought. For a long time, longer than most would, Dane had been right there with her, at the forefront, pushing, nagging, pressing the police. Dane gave her a smile that further warmed a heart that had been nearly frozen by his departure two weeks ago. He’d really asked so little of her, she thought. And she’d abused that.

  “It got so they hated to see us coming,” Dane said.

  “Can’t blame them,” Quinn said. “It’s a small department, they’ve got a huge case on their hands and they have no resources or experience dealing with that kind of thing. Sam said Detective Adams was a good guy, but he was out of his depth on this. And by the time he asked for help, what trail there was had gone cold.”

  “He knows that,” Kayla said quietly. “He admitted that to me last year, when he retired. He feels guilty about it.”

  Dane gave her a sideways look. “You never told me that.”

  “You didn’t want to hear anything about it by then,” Kayla said, carefully keeping any sort of accusation out of her voice; Dane was back at her side, and she simply had to keep him there. She knew that now, that nothing mattered more.

  “I’ll need the same info from you, too,” Quinn said to Dane. “Anything and everything you can remember.”

  Dane nodded.

  “And no comparing lists,” Hayley said. “You each have your own memories and viewpoint, and we need them as pure as possible.”

  Kayla nodded, although the words made her a little nervous. Dane and Chad’s mutual dislike was going to color Dane’s recollections. But he was doing it, cooperating, which was more than she’d had this morning. She didn’t ever want to feel that alone again.

  She would keep her promise as Dane was keeping his, she vowed. She would pour all she had into this last-ditch effort, she would do whatever Quinn and Hayley said was necessary and, in the end, she would accept the results.

  And then, she swore silently, she would do what Dane had wanted her to do for a very long time now.

  She would move on.

  Chapter 7

  All the way back to her house, Kayla fought the memories stirred up by spending two hours writing down everything she could think of—the name of every one of Chad’s friends, descriptions of those she couldn’t remember the names of, every place he used to hang out and putting a star on the most frequent, even listing the times he’d gotten in trouble and with whom. She didn’t want to sugarcoat anything.

  Dane had commented on that, when he’d seen her list after finishing his own, shorter one and going over it with Quinn; Hayley had taken Cutter outside for a run while they worked. Kayla had been grateful for that; the dog was almost spooky in the way he looked at them, the way he seemed to sense every change, every shift in mood, and understand it in a way that had to be impossible for a dog.

  “You told them about when he got arrested twice,” Dane had said.

  “Yes.” She’d stood up to face him. “Once, all I wanted was to prove Chad innocent. Now I just want the truth.”

  Dane had blinked, clearly startled. “When did that happen?”

  “About two weeks ago,” she had said, knowing he’d understand. “Everything changed two weeks ago.”

  They’d agreed at the Foxworth facility that they’d spend some time searching their memories for anything they might have forgotten, any additional details that might help.

  She pulled into her driveway now and for a moment just sat there.

  She had considered, seriously, that she might have to sell her beloved little house. She’d bought it with the cash from the sale of her parents’ home, a place she had known she could never set foot in again. She didn’t want to move again, but she didn’t think she could bear to live here without Dane. They weren’t living together in the usual sense—he still had his place, but he also ran his business out of the den, and the work tended to spill over into the rest of the house. So he spent most night
s here unless he was on a major project and working eighteen-hour days.

  That boy’ll go far. He’s not afraid of hard work.

  Her father’s words echoed in her head. As did his tone, touched with a sadness it had taken her a few years to figure out was over not being able to say that about his own son.

  Her father had liked Dane, although that hadn’t stopped him from keeping a close watch when Kayla had been younger. But he’d soon been convinced Dane looked at her like a little sister, and sadly, he was a much better protector than Chad was, standing up for her more than once when those who thought her too studious and odd started harassing her.

  And then Dane was there, pulling his compact SUV in beside her, and her world snapped back into balance. For a moment the relief that he was back swamped her, making it impossible for her to move.

  He waved at her next-door neighbor, Mr. Reyes, who was out working in his yard as usual. The man called out a cheerful hello and went back to trimming his hedge. It was a measure of how distracted she was, Kayla supposed, that she hadn’t even noticed him there.

  Dane came over and opened her driver’s door.

  “You okay?”

  “I will be,” she said, meaning it.

  But when they got inside, it didn’t take long for her improved outlook to be shaken. She noticed first one thing, then another, ran to the bedroom then the bathroom and finally turned on him.

  “Your things are gone.”

  He didn’t deny the obvious. “Yes.”

  “They weren’t this morning.”

  “I knew you’d be gone this morning so I came over and got them. I didn’t want to fight.”

  The same sort of creeping chill that had overtaken her when she’d realized he was serious this time began to envelop her again. He really had left her. He’d packed up all of the things that had gradually made their way over here—toothbrush, clothes, books, razor, the laptop he kept here in case something came up that was too much to handle on his tablet, all of it was gone. The reality pounded at her in a way it hadn’t when his familiar things were still there, and she realized she hadn’t really accepted it, investing hope in those inanimate objects, hope that he didn’t really mean it.

  Now she knew he had. And was thankful he hadn’t done it before.

  “Then why,” she said when she thought she could speak without her voice wobbling, “did you show up at the post office?”

  He didn’t dodge that either. But then, this was Dane, who was utterly honest, forthright and occasionally blunt. As he was now.

  “This,” he said, reaching into the watch pocket of his jeans and pulling out the square gold key that had been on his key ring since the day she’d given it to him five years ago.

  A shiver went through her. “Dane—”

  He waved a hand. “Let’s not. We’re going to deal with this, give it our best shot, and then...then we’ll see where we are.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. She wanted to know now, wanted to hear him say he was back, that things would be fine, that they would pick up their old, familiar life.

  He didn’t say any of it.

  He’s an honest one. Doesn’t just tell you want you want to hear. I admire that.

  Again her father’s voice echoed in her head, as clearly as if he were standing beside her.

  And she wondered if she’d really gotten Dane back at all.

  * * *

  Dane watched as she turned the pages of the old scrapbook she’d dug out of a box in the back closet. It seemed a good idea, to help stir any memories that might help.

  He’d seen it before, had gone through it himself, because he wanted to know everything about her and loved seeing the early pictures of a wide-eyed, dark-haired pixie who had seemingly faced the world with an endless wonder.

  There were several of her and her brother together, with Kayla generally staring up at him adoringly while Chad looked annoyed and sullen. They were eighteen months apart, Dane knew, and he’d often wondered if things would have been different, if Chad would have acted differently toward her, if it had been more.

  She turned another page and there was the photograph he’d been waiting to see. Kayla, now a brand-new junior, off to her first school dance. A worldly high school graduate himself now, about to leave for college, he’d come by to return a borrowed book that evening and found her father chuckling over the fact that she and her mother had been holed up all afternoon, preparing.

  But when Kayla, barely sixteen, had come down the stairs, Dane wasn’t chuckling at all. His odd, shy, bookish, tree-sitting buddy was nowhere in sight. Instead he saw a young, slender woman with graceful curves highlighted by the fitted, strapless, shimmery dress she wore. Her hair was smoothed into a sleek sweep, her eyes seemed huge and luminous, her mouth touched with a color that made him wonder what it would be like to kiss it off.

  And that had taken his breath away.

  She’d come to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and given him an impish smile.

  “Did it work?” she asked.

  “I— What?”

  He knew he sounded like he felt—gobsmacked.

  “I promised you I was going to play the game, do all the girly stuff, just to show them I could if I wanted to.”

  “Kayla.” It was all he could get out, even though she was suddenly looking anxious.

  “It’s like we talked about,” she said, the anxiety echoing in her voice. “Show them I can, then when I don’t, they know it’s because I don’t want to. My choice. Just like you did, making the football team, getting everybody fired up about how good you are, then walking away because it was your choice not to play their game.”

  “And that had its down side, if you recall.” He’d proved his point, but he hadn’t realized some would take it as dissing the whole school by not wanting to play for the team that represented them.

  “But they respected you,” Kayla had said. “That’s all I want.”

  He didn’t remember now what he’d finally said to ease her nerves. But he’d made her smile, reassured, so it had worked. And he spent the remainder of his own evening reminding himself she was still his young, very smart, annoyingly honest and perceptive sounding board. And he was still the boy next door to her, her sounding board in turn, sometimes her protector, but always her listener.

  “Dane?”

  He snapped out of his reverie.

  “I remember that night,” he said, unable to help or care that his voice was a little husky. “Two years seemed so little separation and yet so long.”

  “I didn’t ask you to wait until I was eighteen.”

  “Anything else seemed a little too...predatory to me.”

  For a moment she just looked at him, and then she smiled, that slow, dawning Kayla smile that always reminded him that there was warmth in the world, no matter how cold it might seem at any given moment.

  “You were—and are—a gallant man, Dane Burdette.”

  Her use of the old-fashioned term made him smile in turn, even though he hadn’t felt in the least gallant at the time. Only his vow to wait until she was eighteen had made his new-found appreciation of her as a woman acceptable. Where his eighteen-year-old self had found the will to wait he wasn’t sure, although he was ruefully aware that the stigma of dating a high school girl when you’d graduated had played a bigger part than he’d like to admit. With Kayla’s support he had flouted the expected norms with some success, but he had found himself unable to get past that bit of peer pressure. And he’d harbored the notion that maybe, if he put her off-limits, he’d just get over her in that two years.

  He hadn’t.

  And then three months after that dance her parents were dead, changing both their lives forever, and self-control was no longer an issue. He would no more risk further damage to her already shattered soul than he would cut off his own arm. He’d shoved his newly awakened awareness of her into a cage and locked it, setting out to be what she needed and only what she needed—a strong s
houlder, a comforting ear and a safe place to be.

  He’d succeeded, he thought.

  He’d just never expected to be in essentially the same place ten years later.

  Chapter 8

  Kayla woke up screaming. And alone.

  The nightmares had, thankfully, become rare. But when they came, they were as vivid and terrifying as ever. And real, all of it—walking into the dark den, hearing the odd squish of the carpet, reaching for the light switch, then wishing she hadn’t as the scene flashed into being before her stunned eyes.

  Normally Dane was there to hold her, easing her out of the remembered horror gently, not pushing her, not giving her meaningless platitudes, not telling her it would be all right when it never could be, but simply holding her, his strength and understanding flowing to her as if there were a direct connection between them.

  But Dane was not here.

  He had left early last evening, refusing to settle right back into the routine they had developed over the years. She supposed she should feel hurt, but she was more scared than anything. This further evidence that things weren’t the same had rattled her. He was back, and yet he wasn’t. It pounded home to her anew that their relationship had been damaged.

  Shaking, she reached for her phone. She knew it was late, after midnight, but she couldn’t help it—she had to hear his voice. If he was angry that she’d woken him up, so be it.

  He answered on the first ring and sounded anything but asleep.

  A possibility hit her, biting deep. It was Friday night. And until today, until the Foxworth Foundation had been brought into things, Dane had been through with her.

  A date. Had he been out on a date? Was that why he’d insisted on leaving early? Had he already started seeing someone else? He would never have cheated on her; she knew that as surely as she knew his eyes were golden. It just wasn’t in him. But he’d told her he was done two weeks ago. Enough time to ask someone else out. More than enough time if he’d already known her, whoever she was.

  And whoever she was, she likely had a much simpler life, free of trauma and tragedy. Dane would probably find that wonderfully refreshing, and—