Calculated Revenge

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “There are half a dozen caves in those rocks.” Laney pointed toward them. “But they’re small and have been played in by local kids before and after Grace’s death.”

  “It can’t hurt to look again.”

  She shrugged.

  The sun bathed them in hot rays as they crossed the expanse of meadow dotted with white and yellow wild flowers. As they drew close, Noah estimated the cliffs were only about fifty or sixty feet high. Shallow cracks and fissures showed here and there, and a narrow skirt of sloped rock offered access to higher elevations.

  Noah’s cell phone sounded, and he pulled it from his belt holder. “Just a second, Laney. It’s Hank.”

  She waved and stopped. He flipped his cell open.

  “Ryder here.”

  “We got Hodge.”

  “With his mother?”

  “Nope.” The man chuckled. “But finding her led to finding the kid brother, and bingo!”

  “What’s our man got to say for himself?” Noah did a slow turn, surveying the area.

  “He’s carping about how everyone picked on him at school growing up. He’s especially angry that he was shunted into special education classes that never did him any good.”

  “So the guy did have it in for Laney.” He continued his slow swivel.

  “Not her, per se. What she stood for. But he’s blank as a slate when we ask him anything about Grand Valley and a little girl that disappeared eighteen years ago. Claims he was a circus roustabout on the west coast at the time, but that’s a job he never put on his résumé.”

  “Have you been able to check the story out?”

  “Yep. And he’s telling the truth. This guy sabotaged the school all right, but he didn’t kidnap Laney’s little sister.”

  Noah huffed a breath. “She’ll be disappointed. She had high hopes about Hodge as a suspect, but I had my doubts. Any sign of Glen Crocker yet?”

  “Negative. If he’s our guy, you might want to watch for him where you’re at.”

  “I’m checking right now for any tail Laney and I might have acquired.”

  Had he seen movement among the trees? His muscles tensed, and his gaze zeroed in on the spot. Could be their FBI tail. Nope. Just a clump of ferns waving at him. Unease filtered through him. Was this guy going to make another try for Laney? Or was some other nasty plan in the works?

  “Do me a favor, Hank. I have to get a guy to talk to me tonight, and I think we’re running out of time to close this case before a fresh tragedy happens.” Noah told the sheriff what he wanted, and they ended the call.

  He slapped his phone shut and turned toward Laney, but blank cliff face met his gaze. His stomach twisted into a knot in his throat. This couldn’t be happening again! A brief moment of inattention, and the woman he loved was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  “Laneeeey!”

  Noah’s panicked cry stood the hair straight up on the back of her neck. She raced out of the tiny cave so familiar from her childhood days of carefree exploration and hopped from rock to rock downward. The lone figure in the meadow below whipped around one direction then another, frantically calling.

  “I’m here,” she cried, stopping on a rock above his head.

  He whirled toward her voice, face gray as a corpse. “Laney,” he breathed. Color rushed into his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Noah. I didn’t think.” She took a step. “I—” Her foot slipped, and she screamed as she tumbled toward the ground.

  Noah cried her name again, and his strong frame broke her fall. A moment later, Laney found earth beneath her feet and solid arms around her, squeezing the breath from her body. She gazed up into green eyes fierce with—what? Fear? Fury? Both? And maybe something else.

  “Never scare me like that again.” His voice rasped, and his lips found hers.

  The kiss was deep and long and strong. Not the wild, demanding kind she’d at first thought so exciting from Clayton, but later learned was all take and no give. Noah’s kiss, like his embrace, was steady and solid from the sort of man who knew the meaning of commitment. Laney’s heart soared as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Noah pulled back first and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Now what am I going to do with you, Laney Thompson?”

  “I like this fine,” she said into his shirt.

  A brief chuckle rumbled in her ear. “No, I mean now that I’ve gone against every promise I’ve made myself and fallen top over tail for a woman who’s my client, where can you stay that you’ll be safe until this case is solved? I suppose the FBI would put you in protective custody.” He held her away from him, and Laney felt bereft of his closeness. “This moment has made me realize that I can’t protect you and do my job at the same time…just as I feared.”

  She gazed into his troubled face. “You’re thinking wrong, Noah. Being here is my choice. You can’t control that, and I don’t expect you to protect me. Sometimes safety is overrated when the stakes are this high.”

  Noah chucked her under the chin. “Sell your father that line.”

  She smiled and ran the pads of her fingers down his lean cheek. “My father is being a father, and you’re being wonderful you—the man who wants to cocoon the world in his cupped hands. I’ve heard tell that’s God’s job.”

  He turned his head and planted a kiss in her palm. A delicious shiver ran down her spine.

  Laney pulled her hand away. “Don’t distract me from my lecture.” She shook a finger at him. “Here, you let me think all this time that you weren’t the least bit interested.”

  “Considering all the people who saw through me, I’m amazed I fooled you.”

  “And who was that?”

  “Miss Aggie, for one. And your mom, who told your dad.”

  Her face warmed, and she looked away. “I’m a little insecure about my judgment concerning men, so I did my best to respect what I thought were your wishes and behave businesslike around you. My mom saw through me, too.”

  “Well, I didn’t. I was desperately hoping that I might have a chance with you after this mess was sorted out, but I wasn’t sure about that, what with Pierce Mayfield hanging around.”

  “Oh, him.” Laney scrunched up her nose. “He seems gallant and good-natured, but he doesn’t make my heart do somersaults with his smile.”

  “Somersaults? Really?” He grinned like a kid, and she could swear his chest expanded. Then he sobered. “So what about that FBI protective custody?”

  “Forget it.” She sliced the air with her hands.

  He sighed. “Then whatever you do, do not get out of my sight, unless I leave you somewhere behind locked doors.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Then let’s go explore those caves…together.”

  This adorable woman’s stubborn streak was going to drive him straight up the wall. “You don’t have to sit up until one o’clock and go on this little foray with me,” he told Laney during a leisurely supper at a chain restaurant next to the motel.

  The inspection of the caves had turned up nothing. They were little more than holes in the cliff wall. Wildlife wouldn’t even consider them decent dens, and certainly no place to hide a body. Besides, that backpack had been kept somewhere enclosed. Maybe a cave wasn’t the place at all. Then where? They’d also finished canvassing her neighborhood, with no result.

  Noah mentally shook his head. This gambit tonight had better strike pay dirt, but he wasn’t sure he wanted Laney anywhere near George Addison. The man had acted scary ugly when they showed up on his doorstep.

  “I am not afraid of the town drunk,” Laney told him. “Though, I’m a little afraid of the slander he might spew about my family. Something had to make him so mad, even if it’s a figment of his sauced imagination. But I do need to hear what he’s got to say.”

  Noah capitulated with upraised hands. “Let me handle the guy. You keep quiet, or you could set him off raving, and we won’t get a lick of sense out of him.”

  “I’ll do my best.”


  Noah read sincerity in her expression, but he knew her knee-jerk reactions when it came to anyone maligning her family. She might not be able to help herself. Whoo-ee! They could be in for an interesting ride.

  He paid for their meal, and they walked across the asphalt toward their motel. Noah’s gaze ranged over the area. The highway ran to their left, and traffic was sporadic. No vehicles slowed and none in the parking areas looked out of place or held anyone sitting and staring—other than the FBI guy. To their right, beyond the buildings, lay a corn field with green stalks about a foot above the ground. No place for a watcher to hide there, either.

  Laney touched the back of his hand. “My ever-vigilant protector.”

  He smiled down into her glowing face, and their fingers entwined. Alarm bells clamored in the back of his mind, but there was no taking back the kiss in the meadow, even if he wanted to put a recall on it. Which he didn’t.

  “We need to try to take a nap now,” he told Laney as they reached their rooms. “We could be up all hours of the night.”

  “Just a second.” She tugged him to a stop near a bench outside the rooms. “I want to call Mom and Dad and update them.” She pulled a cell phone from her purse and sat down.

  “Okay.” Noah tucked his hands into his jeans pockets.

  What would she tell her folks about this sudden development in their relationship? Or maybe it wasn’t sudden. Comparing notes over supper, they’d discovered they had been fighting mutual attraction since he’d first interviewed her for the job at the school. He frowned. This wasn’t exactly the time he would have chosen to make his move, but emotion had overridden judgment. And that’s what he’d feared about taking on a client that stirred his heart.

  Maybe he should remove himself from the case. But where would that leave Laney and little Briana? In a worse spot than with him on it. He was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

  “Hi, Mom,” Laney said into the phone.

  From her end of the conversation, Noah gathered that Roland was out, and Loretta and Briana were home in the company of one of the private guards Roland had hired. Laney told her mother about their trip to the site where the last sign of Grace had been found, but she didn’t mention the kiss in the meadow. Noah mentally mopped his forehead. It was better if her folks didn’t know they’d made a giant leap in their relationship a bit prematurely. Then she told her mother about canvassing the old neighborhood. Loretta must have had a lot of questions about that because Laney kept stopping and explaining details. Then she got to George Addison.

  “The guy was a total wreck, Mom. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw him. And bitter, too. We had a visit with old Mr. Bingham down at the station afterward. He says Adelle and Watts left him shortly after we moved away.”

  Noah couldn’t hear the response from the other end, but Laney’s posture stiffened.

  “Okay,” she finally said, then paused. “Sure, put her on.”

  The next few minutes passed with Laney chatting with her daughter. Then she held the phone up to him, grinning. “She wants to talk to you, too.”

  Noah took the phone and visited with the little princess about the cookie she was saving for him and the bedtime story she expected him to read to her next time they were together. The child’s steady faith that he was supposed to be a fixture in her life amazed and encouraged him. Maybe everything would work out all right.

  “Tell Mama I’ll say special prayers for you and her tonight,” Briana said.

  “That would be much appreciated,” Noah told her. And for some reason, assurance of her simple faith lightened the load of questions and uncertainties in his mind.

  They finished the conversation, and Noah held the phone toward Laney. “What’s the matter?”

  She was sitting with her hands on her knees and a dark frown on her face. “I don’t know. Something. Mom was so upset to hear that the Addisons’ marriage failed and George has become an alcoholic that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we’re going to talk to him again tonight. In fact, she ordered me to stay away from him.”

  “Maybe you should rethink coming with me.”

  Her jaw firmed, and she stood up. “Let’s grab that nap. Who knows what kind of a night is ahead of us.”

  At ten after one of a moonlit morning, Noah stood outside Bucky’s Bar and waited while stragglers exited. He’d left Laney sitting in the backseat of his car in the parking lot. He checked the vehicle again. No one approached where it sat under a streetlight. This investigating and bodyguarding at the same time was more than he’d bargained for. But then, so was her warm response in his arms at the cave site. A smile grew on his face. One sick animal to put behind bars, and then he’d sentence himself to the gentlemanly courtship she deserved.

  A grunt brought his head around. The pudgy figure of George Addison plodded out the bar’s front door. The man went still, swaying from side to side and squinting at the handful of vehicles remaining in the parking lot. He paid no attention to Noah.

  Noah took a step closer, and the fumes flowing from Addison nearly staggered him. “Do you plan on driving home?”

  The man jumped and tipped backward, hitting the bar door with a thud. “Wha? Wha?” Bleary eyes blinked in Noah’s direction. “Who are you?”

  Noah grimaced. His target was nearly too far gone to walk, but he’d better not be too far gone to talk. “We met on the front step of your house today.”

  George let out a thick snort. “Yeah. You’re the guy looking into Grashie’s dishappearance.” He nodded ponderously like a pickled sage. “I know ’cuz itsh all over town what you’re up to.”

  The man heaved himself forward and began to cross the parking lot toward a dilapidated pickup.

  Noah trailed him. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  George waved a vague paw and continued his erratic course. “I don’ know nothin’…” He belched. “’Bout that little girl.”

  Assaulted by fumes, Noah fell back. Then he caught up with the guy as he patted himself all over and finally pulled keys from the front right pocket of his jeans.

  Noah planted a hand against the pickup door. “If you attempt to drive yourself away in this vehicle, you’ll be arrested and lose your license for good.”

  The man scowled at him. “How d’you know?”

  Noah waved his arm in the air, and a darkened sedan across the street suddenly lit with red bubbles and bleeped a short wail. Hank had done that favor Noah asked him and encouraged the Grand Valley PD to help his plan out.

  George’s jaw hung slack, then he snapped it shut. “How’m I shposed to get home?”

  “Let me drive you.”

  Laney’s former neighbor gaped at the cop car, then looked at his own vehicle, and then at the keys in his hand. “You don’ give a guy much choice.”

  Noah heaved an inward sigh of relief. With that much reasoning power left in his fogged brain, there was hope the man could supply useful information. And yet he was soused enough that, if he was Grace’s killer, he might incriminate himself without realizing what he’d said.

  Taking George by the elbow, Noah guided the man toward his car and helped him get in, police-style, without bumping his head. Then he hustled around to the driver’s side. Laney didn’t need to be alone with her former neighbor one second longer than necessary. She’d promised to be quiet and let him handle the interview, but her emotions were bubbling high after that conversation with her mother.

  He settled behind the wheel and headed the car out of the parking lot. The vehicle reeked of cheap booze from the man sitting next to him, but Laney was keeping her part of the bargain…so far. If he hadn’t seen her sitting primly in the back when he climbed in, he might wonder if she was still there.

  George’s head lolled against the seat rest.

  “Stay awake and pay attention!” Noah nudged the man and received a glare for his troubles.

  “What you wan’ from me?”

  “Why don’t y
ou start by telling me why you’re so angry with a family of people who were once your best friends? After they lost a daughter so tragically, I’d think you’d have sympathy.”

  George gave a low growl. “I’m real sorry ’bout that li’l girl. She wash a funny thing, but I wished no bad on her. No, sirree. Not like that Jezebel of a mom of hers.”

  “My mother? What are you talking about?” Laney’s demand cracked through the air, and Noah shot her a fierce look across his shoulder. Passing streetlights revealed she didn’t have a glance to spare him. She stared at George Addison, who swiveled and squinted at her in return.

  A mean smirk formed on his features. “You may ash well know, girlie. Maybe I’ll feel better if I can wreck her family like she wrecked mine.” His face twisted into a mask of fury. “Working out in the flower beds, bending over in them shorts. Drive a man inshane, I tell you!”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my mother that way!” Laney’s palms smacked the back of his seat.

  From her tone, Noah was surprised George had any eyeballs left in his head. Maybe he should call a halt to the hostilities. He hesitated and turned a corner. Then again, maybe the heat of this exchange would bring out the truth. What had the mystery phone caller said to Laney in the hospital? Something about making players pay? Now here was George reveling in causing trouble for Laney’s family.

  “She made me fall in love with her,” George hissed. “I thought she loved me, too. Then she left me.”

  Laney leaned forward. Her white face and bared teeth loomed large in the rearview mirror. Noah caught his breath.

  “There is no way my mother had an affair with the likes of you.”

  George’s cold laugh shivered Noah’s spine. “Why don’t you ask her about that?” He rubbed a hand over his whiskery jowl. “I washn’t hard to look at myself…back then. And that bumbling bear of a Roland didn’ know the gem he had. All he did was work, work, work. Had no idea how to shatisfy a fine woman like that.”

  “No!” Laney’s shout reverberated through the car.