LAST SEEN...

by Carla Cassidy

  "Are you okay?" he asked after a moment of hesitation. His question surprised her. Clay rarely seemed attuned to feelings or if he was attuned, he rarely asked about other people's emotions.

  "I'm all right," she replied. "Why?"

  "I don't know … you just sound sort of funny."

  "I was napping and your call woke me up."

  "Oh, okay. Let me know if there's anything else you need," he said briskly. She could tell his mind had already moved on.

  "I will … and thanks, Clay." She hung up the phone and looked at the clock. It was already after five. She must have been asleep for over an hour.

  The night stretched out before her … empty … lonely. With Rachel and Maggie gone, the house felt cold and alien. She mentally rebelled at the thought of sleeping in her bedroom, which she knew would now smell of Adam's scent.

  She got up and stretched and decided what she really wanted to do was go to her parents' house and spend the night there, in the comfort of the three people who loved her most, her mother, her father and sweet Maggie.

  Tomorrow she would deal with her life. Tonight she just wanted the company of her family around her and no thoughts of Adam Spencer to intrude.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  Adam had known telling her the truth would be difficult. He'd known what he had to tell her would be a shock, but he hadn't expected it to be as difficult as it had been.

  Even a full day later, the image of her lovely face with her expressive eyes as he'd told her the truth about Kurt, about himself, was permanently emblazoned in his brain. As his words had sunk in, her features had fallen and her eyes had radiated myriad emotions—anger—and pain.

  He'd left her and had been angry with himself, his own heart aching in a way he'd never felt before. He'd never meant to hurt her. Dammit, he should have told her who he was and why he was here in Cherokee Corners the moment he'd first met her.

  But on that night when they'd first met, the belief that she might be a prostitute had thrown him for a loop. The other thing that had thrown him for a loop was her comment about bedding a half-breed.

  It had been ugly and shocking and he couldn't help but wonder if Kurt had left far deeper scars on her than Adam had initially suspected.

  He'd watched her drive off and had known instinctively that she wouldn't be back for the remainder of the night. He'd give her a day or two to cool down, then he'd hope to have a rational, nonemotional talk with her. Hopefully he could make her see that Edward and Anita deserved a chance to be a part of Maggie's life. Hopefully he could make her understand that he'd never meant to hurt her in any way.

  She came home the next day just before three and by four was getting into her car again. He assumed she was going to work. He was seated on the porch when she left and she gave no indication she saw him there, although he was certain he couldn't be missed.

  He decided to walk into town for dinner, not finding much appeal in cooking for himself and eating alone in the shabby little kitchen.

  As he walked toward the city square his thoughts turned to Kurt. His love for his cousin had always been unconditional, but as he thought of Breanna's pain and anger when she spoke of him, as he thought of the little fatherless Maggie, he felt the edge of an emotion that was both alien and distinctly uncomfortable.

  He focused on the scenery he passed instead. He wasn't ready to evaluate the emotions he now felt when he thought of Kurt.

  It was a perfect early May night. The air was cool and scented with sweet-smelling flowers and as he passed people working in their yards or sitting on their porches, they waved with small-town friendliness. Nice, he thought … much nicer than his sterile apartment where he had no idea who his neighbors were or what they did.

  He ate at a café on the city square that advertised a stupendous daily special. It was meat loaf. He people-watched while he ate, finding other people's actions and chatter far less disturbing than his own thoughts.

  After his meal he walked to the Redbud Bed and Breakfast and into the ice-cream parlor where Alyssa worked. Once again she was behind the counter and she greeted him with a reserved smile as he slid onto a stool at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee.

  "So, you're Kurt's cousin," she said as she set the cup and saucer in front of him.

  "You must have spoken to Breanna," he said with a grimace as tension rose inside him. "You didn't poison my coffee, did you?"

  "No. The way I see it, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your relatives."

  "I guess if we could pick our relatives, nobody would have a crazy Uncle Harry who always ended up with a lampshade on his head at family gatherings," he said wryly.

  She smiled and some of his tension dissipated. "In our family it's crazy Uncle Sammy. He's Uncle Thomas's brother and definitely the black sheep and most fun of the family."

  He took a sip of his coffee and eyed her curiously. "So you knew my cousin?"

  "For the brief time he was here. I'm afraid I didn't think much of him even though Bree was crazy about him. They married after just a month of knowing each other, far too quickly. I knew he was going to break her heart from the moment I met him." She eyed him intently, her dark gaze appearing to look deep inside of him. "And I have a feeling if you aren't careful, you could break her heart as well."

  He laughed, although with little amusement. "No chance of that. I've been quite clear with Breanna that I want no ties, that I'm not interested in a relationship. Besides, at the moment she isn't even speaking to me."

  Alyssa tilted her head to one side, not taking her gaze from him. "Then perhaps she'll break your heart."

  He laughed again, distinctly uncomfortable. "That isn't going to happen, either. Breanna is a loose end in Kurt's life that I needed to tie up. That's all."

  "Loose ends have a way of snarling you all up if you aren't careful," she replied.

  He took another sip of his coffee, then eyed her curiously. "Is this one of your visions talking or just idle speculation?"

  She frowned. "The only vision I have at the moment is one where I see that my darling cousin talks too much."

  "She was worried and mentioned to me about your visions. She said you've been having some bad feelings lately."

  Her eyes darkened, but she shrugged. "It's a curse from my grandmother on my mother's side. She, too, suffered from visions."

  "If you hold my hand, will you be able to see my future?" he asked, genuinely curious.

  She shook her head, obviously not offended by his question. "It doesn't work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn't."

  "Then how does it work?" Although he was intrigued, he also knew in the back of his mind that what he was doing by talking with Alyssa was keeping a connection to Breanna.

  "I don't know how it works. Most of the time I get a bit of a headache and I know I'm about to have a vision. The vision itself is kind of like seeing the coming attractions of a movie … a flash of scenes that don't always initially make sense."

  "Like what…? Tell me about a vision you've had in the past."

  She looked around, as if hoping somebody would need her attention, but the only other people in the place was a young couple sharing a banana split. They were too engrossed in each other to be paying any attention to Adam and Alyssa.

  She sighed and looked back at him. "Six months ago I was eating dinner in my apartment and I got a vision. In it, my father was telling me the story of Raven Mocker." She looked at him questioningly.

  "The witch who comes to take a life," he said.

  She nodded and continued. "Anyway, I couldn't understand why he was telling me a story I'd heard a hundred times before. Then I realized as he spoke that I was cold … colder than I'd ever been in my life. When the vision passed I tried to tell myself it meant nothing, but I decided to try to get in touch with my father."

  "And…?" Adam found himself completely caught up in her story.

  "And he wasn't home. My mother said
she'd been expecting him for the past two hours, but hadn't heard from him and just assumed his last job of the day had been a bigger one than he'd expected. My father works as a heating and refrigeration repairman. When I thought about the cold I'd felt during my vision I was suddenly afraid."

  She paused and grabbed the coffeepot and refilled his cup. When she continued speaking, her eyes were darker than he'd have thought possible. "I got hold of Dad's boss and insisted he meet me at the location of Dad's last job of the day, a butcher shop. The shop was closed, but we found Dad there. He'd been accidentally locked inside a walk-in freezer. He was suffering frostbite and hypothermia. The doctor said if he'd been in that freezer another hour or so we might have lost him.

  "So your visions can sometimes save lives," he said.

  "Sometimes … if I can figure out what they mean. The torment is in figuring them out too late, in knowing that something horrible is happening or about to happen and not being able to stop it.

  "Do you always pass out after a vision?"

  "No, only after a particularly bad vision."

  "Is that what happened on the day of the barbecue? You had a bad vision?

  He didn't think it was possible for her eyes to grow darker, but they did. "Yes and no," she replied softly.

  She broke her eye contact with him and looked around the parlor. He didn't know if she was checking to see if any of the patrons needed anything or if she was merely grounding herself in the here and now.

  When she looked back at him her eyes were still as dark as night and filled with what appeared to be fear. "I'm not sure what happened at the barbecue. It wasn't like my usual visions. It was like death … a feeling of loss, of emptiness too great to bear."

  "What do you think it means?" Adam asked as a chill walked up his spine.

  "I think it means somebody close to me, somebody I love is in grave danger." They both jumped as the bell over the front door tinkled and a family of four walked in.

  She freshened up his coffee again, then stepped away from him to wait on the newcomers. Adam had a feeling she wouldn't be back to talk to him about her visions, or Breanna or anything else of importance.

  He finished his coffee, waved a goodbye and left the ice-cream parlor. As he walked toward the cottage, thoughts of Breanna filled his head.

  Perhaps it was a good thing he'd made her angry. He'd been getting too close to her, had been seduced by her beauty and charm, her strength and her wit. Telling her the truth had put distance between them, and that wasn't a bad thing.

  If he was smart, he'd get the hell out of Dodge, pack up his things and get back to his own life. He'd done what he'd promised Kurt he would do, he'd found Breanna and Maggie and they were doing just fine. He'd never intended to get caught up in Breanna's life, hadn't anticipated being charmed by her family.

  He should return to Kansas City, tell his aunt and uncle about Maggie and let them deal with Breanna to gain some sort of grandparent rights. He could step away now and remain uninvolved in the whole mess, he told himself.

  He knew he was lying to himself. Despite all his protests to the contrary, he was already involved. Perhaps if he had never tasted the sweetness of Breanna's lips, maybe if he'd never held her warm and willing body against his own, he might have been able to convince himself that he wasn't involved.

  But he had tasted her mouth and he had caressed her heated body and there was no way he could pretend to himself that he could just walk away and not look back. Especially not with Alyssa's ominous words ringing in his ears.

  He halted in front of Breanna's house and stared up at the big oak tree, remembering the shock of seeing the pink plastic cradle and Mr. Bear hanging there. His stomach knotted with anger and a touch of fear.

  Again Alyssa's words resounded in his head. "I think it means somebody close to me, somebody I love is in grave danger."

  Was it Breanna? Was Alyssa's feeling coming from the same place as the phone calls and implied threat of a hanging stuffed animal?

  He entered his cottage, knowing that he wasn't leaving Cherokee Corners, he wasn't going anywhere. There was no way he could leave knowing she might be in danger. He moved to his kitchen window and stared out at her house.

  He wasn't going anywhere until he knew they weren't in any danger. If she never spoke to him again, then so be it. He would be a silent sentry watching over her, keeping her and her daughter safe from harm to the best of his ability.

  * * *

  Breanna was having a bad week. She'd arrived at work on Wednesday to discover that drug-trafficking charges against a repeat offender had been dropped that day in court due to a legal technicality. Although she and Abe hadn't been participants in the actual arrest of the creep, they had both logged long hours in surveillance on him.

  Every day when she left for work Adam was seated on his porch, and he was there once again when she returned home after work. She was grateful he didn't try to speak to her because she certainly wasn't ready to talk to him. She spoke to Maggie and Rachel every day at her parents' house and was surprised that the strange, lullaby phone calls appeared to have stopped.

  She figured one of two things, either the phone calls had truly been made by Michael Rivers and their little visit to him had scared him off, or they had been the result of somebody's idea of a sick joke and the joker had gotten bored and moved on to another game. In either case she was grateful that the disturbing calls had ceased.

  By Friday night she was starting to feel a little bit better. She'd made arrangements for both Maggie and Rachel to return home Sunday after the festivities at the Cultural Center. It would be good to have them back where they belonged, good to have their lives back to some semblance of normal.

  Her positive thinking lasted until her partner, Abe, delivered the bombshell that he'd be leaving the force for retirement.

  They were seated at side-by-side desks in the station house, catching up on paperwork when Abe told her he'd put in his two-weeks' notice.

  "You knew this was coming, Bree," Abe said. "I've been telling you for months that retirement for me was right around the corner."

  "I know. I just didn't realize the corner was so close." She was beginning to feel as if her life would never be the same again. Kurt was dead, Adam was a liar and betrayer and now her partner was leaving her.

  "Ah, don't look so glum," Abe said sympathetically. "You've got a great career ahead of you, Bree. You don't need an old coot like me hanging around your neck." He scowled, his grizzly gray eyebrows nearly meeting in the center of his forehead. "I just wish I was going out on a bang."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I dunno. I wish we were breaking a major prostitution ring or putting the finishing touches on a multimillion-dollar drug bust. I hate to think that the last job I'll ever do as a cop is arrest some hapless John with his pants half-down."

  Breanna grinned at him. "One John at a time, that's how we clean up the streets of our fair city." She noticed a blond hair shining on the collar of his dark jacket. She leaned over and plucked it off. "Have you got some sexy blonde who's going to help you spend your retirement years?" she teased.

  He laughed. "Yeah, a gorgeous little blonde. She weighs about three pounds and I call her Miss Kitty."

  "You got a cat?"

  "It's more like she got me." He threw his pencil on the desk and reared back in his chair. "She showed up at the house yesterday morning, I was sitting on the porch having a cup of coffee and there she was, the scruffiest little tabby cat I've ever seen. Looked like she was half-starving, so I opened a can of tuna and gave it to her."

  "You know what they say … feed a cat and you own a cat."

  Abe shrugged. "It's all right by me. She's obviously a stray … like me. We can keep each other company in the years I've got left."

  "Oh, for heaven's sakes, Abe, you sound like you're dying instead of retiring," she exclaimed.

  "I've got to admit that change isn't easy at my age. My whole life has always been the jo
b."

  "So what plans do you have?" She was so grateful to have something, anything, to keep her mind off thoughts of Adam.

  "I wouldn't mind doing a little work in the private sector … maybe consulting or a little private investigation."

  Breanna wished she'd had a private investigator on her payroll the night she'd met Adam. She would have had Adam checked out upside down and inside out before she offered him a word, a glance or a smile.

  But it was too late now. She'd already given Adam far more than a smile and she didn't know how to get him out of her thoughts now.

  She'd spent the past three days thinking of everything he'd told her. Her heart had ached with the knowledge that now Maggie would never, ever have a connection with the man who had sired her.

  And even though Breanna had told herself for a long time that she hated Kurt, she'd been surprised to realize there was a small piece inside her that mourned him, too. That mourning place inside her didn't come from any lingering love, but rather from the compassion of one human being for another.

  She was at least grateful for one thing … she was grateful Adam had stopped their lovemaking in order to tell her the truth about who he was and why he was in town. But it disturbed her that knowing the truth did nothing to staunch the hunger he'd awakened inside her. Knowing the truth did nothing to erase the desire she still felt to be with him intimately.

  She was equally conflicted when it came to the knowledge that Kurt's parents were alive and well and had enough money to buy the entire town of Cherokee Corners. She couldn't just forget all the things Kurt had told her about them and the things he'd had to say weren't particularly pleasant.

  She wondered if Adam had already told them about Maggie, wondered if at any moment she would be served with legal papers or get a phone call demanding some sort of visitation.

  The thought of sharing Maggie with people who would be ashamed of her heritage stirred a rebellion in Breanna that would not be easily overcome.

  She told herself Maggie didn't need anyone else in her life, and what the Randolfs didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Let them grieve for their son and let them leave her and Maggie alone. They had nothing that Breanna and Maggie needed, and Breanna certainly had nothing to give to them.