Stolen

by Carey Baldwin

  She was crying.

  They must be happy tears.

  He flicked his hand across his own eyes. “That’s a yes?” Taking the ring between his fingers, he prepared to slide it onto the fourth finger of her left hand.

  Her body stiffened, then she backed away, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  He looked down at the ring, then up at her.

  Caity smoothed her palms against her thighs. Her lower lip trembled.

  Maybe he hadn’t explained it right with all that talk about wanting to protect her and not being ready to admit to himself that she was the one. He should keep it simple. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Let’s sit down and talk about it. I’m open to the idea of getting married, someday, but this doesn’t feel right to me.”

  Heat climbed up his chest, and the grease burn on his neck seemed to catch fire. He tugged at his collar.

  She loved him.

  He knew that as sure as he knew he would never let her down one single day for as long they lived. But he was ready to answer whatever questions she had. He swallowed his frustration and tamped down his disappointment. “Tell me what’s wrong. I want to put a ring on your finger.”

  She let out a long sigh. “That’s part of my problem right there. It seems like you’re saying you want to make it legal between us.”

  “I do.”

  “But I don’t need to make it legal. And when you say you can’t bear the thought of losing me . . . I don’t know where you’re coming from. I understand that I seemed upset because of what happened the other night with Grady, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to lose me.”

  “So you’re not angry about me getting you kicked off the case?”

  “Yes, I am. And this seems like a very suspicious time for you to propose.”

  “Suspicious in what way? Since when did you become anti-marriage? You’re the one whose folks were happily married. I’m the one with the asshole father who led a double life and ruined my mother’s.” He realized he sounded as defensive as he felt.

  “That’s what I mean about suspicious timing. You just delivered the news to your mother, today. Then you drop on one knee and tell me, in different words, but I can read the subtext, that you’re nothing like your father.”

  “Because I’m not.” His hands fisted at his sides.

  “I already know that, Spense. You don’t have to marry me to prove it. I believe in you. I believe in us. But this seems like a dare.”

  “That’s nuts. Yes, I’ll admit my mother influenced me a little. She told me not to let you get away. But Caity, this ring has been burning a hole in my pocket since our very first case. The only reason I waited this long to ask you to marry me is because I was worried you’d think I was rushing into it. Then, after I talked with my mother, I realized that was wrong. Life is too short. I’m ready to marry you right now. Tonight if you want. To hell with timing and convention.”

  “I think you’re daring yourself to get married. You want to prove to me and maybe to your mother that you really are the man you wish your father had been. But this won’t undo the past. You have nothing to prove. You are a better man than your father.” She stepped in and met his eyes. “I believe in you. I love you. And I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive Jack—for your own sake, because holding onto that anger is going to eat you alive.”

  He could feel his brain starting to go fuzzy. “This has nothing to do with my father. I asked you to marry me because I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to be the mother of my children. And if you don’t believe that, then maybe you don’t really know me at all.”

  “Spense, I love you, but . . . it’s a no . . . for now.”

  “For now?” He could hear his voice rising. “A no is a no. This isn’t a standing invitation for whenever you get around to deciding. Either you love me, or you don’t. So I’m going to ask one last time, Caity. Will you or won’t you marry me?”

  Her face went ashen. “Are you seriously giving me an ultimatum right now?”

  He opened his mouth, but before he could reply, he heard the front door opening and footsteps coming down the hall.

  The moms.

  “Oh my stars!” The moms bolted in, all smiles. “Agatha forgot her glasses, is it official yet?”

  Though he felt as if someone had reached inside his chest and yanked his heart out, he forced himself to smile a greeting at his mother and Arlene. Then he went and sat down at the table. “Not yet. Caity needs some time to think,” he said as calmly as pass the gravy.

  “Well, that sounds reasonable to me.” Arlene put her arm protectively around her daughter.

  “Of course it does,” his mother said. She pulled up a chair next to Spense. “Everyone sit down. I’ll be darned if we’re letting this expensive rib-roast go to waste.”

  Chapter 40

  Sunday, October 27

  8:00 P.M.

  Hostel Digs

  Denver, Colorado

  Yesterday, after Kourtney Kennedy had read her note on SLY news, Laura used her loaner tablet and the free Wi-Fi at the Digs to e-mail Dr. Caitlin Cassidy—and that had been no easy task. The wireless service at the Digs was not only slow, it was overburdened by too many users, which meant Laura had been kicked off the internet midtask on multiple occasions. It had taken her all afternoon to get Cayman’s passport pages and the fun-booth photo scanned in, and to complete sending the large files.

  Today, the internet had gone down completely. Armed with the dates of her travels, she itched to complete an online search for the victims . . . but a blond wig was hardly sufficient disguise for a woman currently headlining every news show in the country.

  The Digs were no longer a safe place for her.

  She powered up her tablet, took a deep breath and tried once more to connect to the wireless. When the familiar “no signal” light appeared, a tear fell onto her loaner tablet. She slowly set it on the desk in her hostel room, feeling as though she’d just let go of a lifeline, and was now drifting further and further out to sea.

  Laura had plenty of reason not to trust the authorities, but at the moment, she had no choice. Cassidy and Spenser seemed her only hope. If anyone was going to put things together, it would have to be them. She could only hope they were as clever as the news stories suggested, and as honest as her heart longed to believe.

  It was time for her to go.

  Not daring to face the desk clerk, she threw her things into her pack, and left three twenty-dollar bills on the bed to cover her tab. Then she sat down on the floor, drew her knees to her chest, and stared at the wall.

  She had to get out of this place, but she had no idea where to go.

  There was a bounty on her head . . . call it a reward if you liked. There was nowhere she wouldn’t be recognized. She tugged at the sleeves of her jacket and adjusted the pressure of the straps on her pack. Then she looked down at her boots and thought of the code of the hikers:

  Take what you need and leave what you can for others.

  From her side pocket, she pulled out the map of the Eagles Nest Wilderness. If she caught a bus to Dillon, she could slowly make her way up the road on foot. She could practically hear the mountains calling out to her to come home—to return to the place where she’d been abused, yet still survived. A place where there was evil, but where there was also the promise of good.

  And it was that glimpse of the good in others that gave her hope.

  Decided now, she stood up and opened the door to her room.

  She peeked into the hallway, and noting the coast was clear, hurried out the back door.

  Chapter 41

  Monday, October 28

  8:00 A.M.

  Boulder, Colorado

  Caity raised the blinds in the study letting in a small burst of light. Even in the morning the room was dim.

  Over a sip of coffee, Spense nodded at her.

  She took a drink of hers
and sent back her usual sunny smile.

  Just like he hadn’t proposed to her last night, and she hadn’t turned him down, and afterward they hadn’t had the most awkward family dinner ever.

  Okay.

  If that was how she wanted to play it, he’d go along. If he tried to force a discussion now, it would only give her tinder to fire up that old our relationship is interfering with our work argument anyway.

  Nope. He had nothing else to say on the matter.

  Last night he’d opened up to her, unzipped himself like a winter coat, and she’d just stood there with her arms crossed, unwilling to accept the warmth and protection he’d offered her. And the things she’d said about his father had been like a knife to the gut, which she’d then plunged deeper by her rejection.

  One hand tightened at his side, as bile rose in his throat.

  Then he looked at her, and regret made his head dip down to his chest. That knife-to-the-gut comparison was unfair of him—he’d taken her by surprise, and she’d had questions. That wasn’t exactly unreasonable. He could see the dark circles painted around her eyes, the pale tinge to her skin. She hadn’t slept well.

  But the bile in his mouth tasted bitter.

  He, too, had not slept well—if at all.

  After dinner, the moms had pulled him aside and let him know he needed to give Caity space. They were sure she’d come around in time. But as far as he was concerned, she’d already had plenty of both—time and space.

  Ball was in her court.

  Until she came to her senses and figured out what she was missing, he was all business.

  Screw this stupid ache in his heart.

  “So what if . . .” Spense drained his coffee cup and tossed his cube in the air. He caught it, solved it, put it in his pocket.

  Business as usual.

  “Awesome, we’re playing the what if game.” Caity finished her coffee and set the cup on the desk, then settled into an easy chair and pulled her bare feet up, hugging her knees to her chest. She had on a white scoop-neck T-shirt and jeans. Luckily, her bent knees covered most of her cleavage, making it easier for him to think about something other than grabbing her and kissing her.

  “What if the dates in Cayman’s passport put him in a certain city at the same time our mystery woman went missing—assuming she did, that is?” he asked.

  “Then it doesn’t look good for Cayman, but it does look good for our predator theory. Let’s cross-reference his passport dates with local newspaper articles. For example, this stamp puts him in Wiesbaden in March, twelve years ago.”

  They each opened their respective laptops.

  Before the proposal fiasco last night, Spense had loaded his up with facial recognition software.

  The sound of fingers flying over keyboards filled the silence. A few minutes later, he began to breathe normally again.

  He could do this.

  In fact he needed to do this to prove to Caity that no matter how weird things got between them, they could still take care of business—because their business was really important.

  People’s lives depended on it.

  “I got nothing. No missing or dead women in Wiesbaden in March, twelve years ago,” she said.

  “If we found her on the first try, we’d miss the thrill of the chase.”

  “Spense . . .” She had a look in her eyes that wasn’t all business.

  “Can’t go there right now, hon. Let’s focus on the case.”

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, and he thought he saw frustration in the gesture.

  Good.

  Let her get frustrated.

  She’d earned a taste of her own medicine.

  “There’s a long list of dates over the past thirteen years. Maybe we should split them up.”

  Caity stretched her arms and tucked her chin. “I’ll take the first seven years, you take the rest.”

  He nodded, barely acknowledging her and passed over a copy of the passport pages. “I’ve got my own—I printed extra last night after you went to bed.”

  “I didn’t sleep all that well.”

  He retracted his arm and ignored her comment.

  All business.

  Thirty minutes later, he’d been through several years and as many countries. Whit’s life as a business mogul involved a lot of travel. But he still hadn’t found a connection to their mystery woman.

  “Spense.” She looked at him from under those incredibly thick, black lashes, her pupils swallowing the blue of her eyes.

  “You got something?”

  “I think I found her.”

  He tapped his touchpad with the intention of minimizing his window, but inadvertently pulled up the next article in his queue instead. “I found her, too. What city are you checking?”

  “Amsterdam, seven years ago. You?”

  “Huh. Mine is Paris, three years ago. Looks like the same woman, but we can’t both be right. Send me your file. I’m e-mailing you mine.”

  “Got it!” they said in unison.

  His heart boomed in his chest.

  Two women with remarkably similar looks.

  Two cities.

  Four years apart.

  Both gone missing from nightclubs.

  Their bodies later found strangled and stabbed, dumped in wooded areas.

  “Which one is she?” Caity put her hand on her heart. “Our mystery woman—the one in the photograph with Cayman.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, waiting for his pulse to slow. After all these years, this part of the job—putting a name to a victim, recognizing them for the first time as a real person with a real family—hadn’t gotten any easier. “According to my facial recognition software, she’s the young woman in the article you found, Stella De Jong.”

  “It’s uncanny though, the way she resembles the woman in the story you uncovered.”

  “Fabiana Luca, an Italian exchange student, studying in Paris at an academy of arts.”

  “So we have two women, strangled and stabbed in large metropolitan cities at the same time Cayman was there. It could be coincidence, except that Cayman knew Stella, and from the looks of this photo, they were on a date. How many dead, dark-haired, blue-eyed women do you think it will take to convince Hatcher?”

  “I guess we’ll find out when we call him. And Caity, don’t freak out.”

  “Stop saying that. What is it?”

  “I’m still looking at Paris, three years ago.”

  “Did you find another blue-eyed brunette?”

  He shook his head. “No. She’s blond. I’m sending the file to you now.”

  He got up and stood behind her, rested both his hands on her shoulders.

  She took in a sharp breath. Her body went rigid, then started to tremble.

  “Inga. Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I—I just assumed when Grady said she died in a hiking accident, he meant here in Colorado.”

  The article said Inga Webber fell from a trail while hiking in the French Alps.

  “Inga died one week after Fabiana Luca went missing?” Caity buried her face in her hands. “She and Grady must’ve been vacationing with the Chaucers at the time. If the entourage was there for a week, it makes sense they’d try to fit in a side trip to the Alps. Inga loved the outdoors.”

  He tried to catch her eye, but she was gazing pensively out the window.

  He let her have her moment, then pulled her to a stand and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Caity. I know Inga was your friend.”

  She looked up at him with glistening eyes. “What if her death wasn’t an accident? What if she knew something she shouldn’t? Grady said her sister, Asta, lives here in Boulder.” Her back went rigid. “I’m going to talk to Asta.”

  That caught him off guard. “When did Webber tell you about the sister?”

  She pulled away and went and stood by the window. “I’m not sure. But I remember him saying so. Spense, I believe there’s a serial killer out there. Maybe little girls were
n’t his thing, but now that Laura’s all grown up . . .”

  “She’s his perfect type and perfect age range.”

  “Do you think he’d risk coming back for Laura after all these years?”

  It felt like someone had opened a window, the way a chill went through the room.

  He shook his head. “Honestly, I wonder if he ever left her side.”

  Caity retreated back to her easy chair and pulled her knees up once more. “Remember what You Don’t Know Me8 said in that e-mail about not pre-judging?”

  “I do. And it’s awfully easy to pin this thing on Ty Cayman.”

  “Someone had to have known, or at least suspected something if they were living with a serial killer.”

  “Or vacationing with one. That was a regular traveling circus the Chaucers put together for their trips.”

  “Maybe I was wrong about the subtext in that e-mail. Maybe the real killer sent it to us in order to pin the blame on Cayman.” Caity tapped her chin.

  “Maybe. But if Cayman’s not our guy, then why is he posing in a photo booth with a dead woman, and why the hell did he disappear?” He picked up his cell and scrolled through his contacts, then he hit the call button. “Hatcher, it’s Spense. We’ve got some information for you, but first I need you to do me a favor. I’m going to fax over a list of dates. I need you to collect the names of each friend or personal staff member who traveled with the Chaucer family for every last one of them. And I particularly want to know if Grady and Inga Webber were along for the ride.”

  Chapter 42

  Monday, October 28

  7:00 P.M.

  Coffee and Conversation

  Denver, Colorado

  As it stood, things were tense between Caitlin and Spense—and she was downright miserable about that. He’d laid his heart open when he’d asked her to marry him, and though she’d tried to be gentle, her refusal had hurt him. Now her chest tightened, and her eyes stung as she remembered the look on his face. She’d barely gotten a moment of sleep since then. She kept hearing his words play over and over in her head.