by Karen Fenech
Clare nodded. “I can get in touch with them.”
“I’d better make that call. You’re not big on tact. What was it you said to Sheriff Petty—oh, yeah—that he had ‘good ol’ boy’ shit going on with Dean Ryder?”
“The son of a bitch. I wouldn’t be surprised if Petty knew about Ryder’s mistreatment of Beth. You should have seen him with Ryder. It was a cliché from a B movie—corrupt sheriff shielding one of his own.” Her gaze sharpened on Jake. “Wait a minute—that’s why you’re really here—you came to neutralize the situation—to try to rein me in. Let me tell you, Agent Sutton—”
Anger sparked in Jake’s eyes. “You know me better than that.”
He was right. Jake’s approach was different than hers, but she’d never known him to interfere with her methods. And she’d never known him to bow to pressure when it came to an investigation.
Her remark had been uncalled for. She sighed. “Why are you really here then, Jake?”
His tone soft, he said, “You filed a missing persons report on Beth.”
Her throat tightened. “You’re up to speed then.”
His gaze became intent on her. “Are you all right?”
She’d been primed for a fight—not his concern—and for an instant didn’t have a reply.
“Fine,” she said, after a brief silence. But her eyes began to burn. She turned away from him, and seized the doorknob. “It’s been a long day, Jake.”
He made no move to leave. Gently, as if he feared she might shatter otherwise, he folded his arms around her from behind. He drew her close against himself.
Despite her efforts to the contrary, hot tears spilled onto her cheeks.
Jake turned her toward him and she offered no resistance. He held her close, with his arms wrapped around her, and she ground her face into the scratchy fabric of his jacket, against his hard, strong shoulder, and let the tears come.
Her arms slid around him and she clutched his waist. If he hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen.
Jake’s head lowered, resting against hers. His lips brushed her temple. “We’ll find her, Clare.” His voice was deep with emotion. “We’ll find her.”
“Will we?” she whispered. “We both know how many people go missing, never to be recovered. Or recovered alive.” It was her worst fear, and to her own ears the words sounded wrenched from within her. Tears welled in her eyes again. “It’s been ten days. Her trail has gone cold—maybe too cold, irretrievably cold.”
“Don’t.” Jake pulled her back a bit so he could peer down into her eyes. His gaze bore into hers. His grip bit into her shoulders. “Don’t do that to yourself. This isn’t over. We’ll find her, Clare. We will find her.”
His hands left her shoulders and rose to frame her face between his wide, warm palms. With his thumbs he brushed away the tears trailing down her cheeks.
“We will find her,” he repeated, barely above a whisper.
Slowly, he leaned closer. Clare’s heart thumped. He murmured her name and then his lips touched hers.
His kiss was careful, gentle, tender, giving not taking. It was comfort he offered, comfort and compassion and the message was clear: He was with her; she was not alone. A sob caught in her throat as she responded to him, moving her mouth beneath his.
The kiss began slow and soft, but in the next instant it was red hot. His hand left her cheek and then Jake’s fingers were knuckle-deep in her hair. Need surged within her. She seized his wrists, anchoring his mouth to hers.
Memories of being with Jake—like this—broke free of the chains she’d used to lock them away in the deep recesses of her mind. And with those memories came longing. Her strong reaction to him now was not purely physical. It wasn’t just the touch of his mouth doing all the right things that sparked this fierce need for him, but the emotions his touch evoked—and the emotions were dangerous.
His touch was familiar and welcome—so welcome.
At that thought, Clare pulled back from him as if he’d bitten her.
She broke his hold on her. “Good night, Jake.”
“Clare—”
She opened the door. “I said good night.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Good night.”
Clare closed the door behind him. She heard his SUV start, then the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.
She felt raw and hollowed out. The search for Beth had put them together again. That was the only reason their paths had crossed now. In three years he hadn’t called her, hadn’t missed her, hadn’t needed her. He hadn’t come to a realization that walking away from her had been a mistake and being together on any terms was better than not being together at all.
She would find her sister soon, and then she and Jake would go back to living their lives as they had been for the last three years. Apart. She leaned against the door, pressed her forehead to the scarred wood and closed her eyes tight.
Her head was pounding. She had pain reliever in her suitcase upstairs. She pushed off the door and mounted the steps in search of the tablets.
She’d looked inside the closets of this house and hadn’t been inspired to hang her clothes in any of them. Now, finding the small bottle of pills buried somewhere amid the clothing was a chore. As she rifled through the suitcase, she heard a vehicle in the driveway.
“Dammit, Jake,” she whispered.
The door knocker thudded three times, loud enough to wake even the soundest sleeper. She abandoned the search for the pain reliever and descended the stairs.
As she opened the door, a car sped away. She squinted to see the make and model, but the tail lights were off, and the vehicle blended with the darkness.
A rock the size of a melon had been placed on the first door step. A plain white paper was beneath it.
Clare bent and retrieved it. Bringing it to the light in the hall, she read:
I have information about your sister. Meet me at the entrance to the old mine shaft on Edgar Road at midnight. Come alone.
There was no signature.
Chapter Eleven
The headlights of Jake’s SUV lit up a tree and a squirrel scrambling up the trunk, as he drove away from Clare’s rented house. The radio was on low. Whatever the male DJ was saying was lost on Jake. His thoughts were all about Clare.
She was so hurt. He couldn’t remember a time she’d cried like that—as if her heart were breaking. He couldn’t stand that she was hurting.
At the intersection to Main Street, he pulled a U-turn and headed back to her place.
How many times in the last three years had he thought of her? Of them? Too many times.
He’d been the one who’d walked away, she’d said. She didn’t realize that she’d left him long before he took those final steps.
Now, here she was in Farley. He should be keeping his distance, letting the past lie. Instead, he’d insinuated himself solidly in her life by offering his help in the search for her sister. He wanted to help Clare because he knew what finding her sister meant to her. But that wasn’t all. Helping Clare enabled him to spend time with her. He still loved her, still wanted a future with her.
He reached the house and pulled into Clare’s driveway. Her car was gone. Her front door was open. She could have gone out and left it open herself . . . but Jake thought back to his conversation with Ozzie Petty and to what had gone down between Clare and Ryder earlier. She’d never answered his question about why she’d answered her door armed with her service weapon. Clearly, she perceived a threat from someone. Ryder?
Ryder’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway. Could he have left it parked somewhere, snuck up on Clare . . . Jake’s heart accelerated. He left his vehicle, and gun in hand, went through Clare’s front door.
The hall light was on. The light in the living room was on as well. Jake made his way through and scanned the room. Nothing looked disturbed. It appeared that she really had just gone out and hadn’t closed the front door or doused the lights.
He lowered his gun.
He could wait for her. Sammie was at a sleepover. He didn’t need to relieve a babysitter. It didn’t look like he needed to hang around, though. Clare’s pain over Beth had been eating away at him but, if she felt fine to go out, then she was dealing with it. The thought relieved some of the tightness in his stomach.
As he turned away, he knocked a piece of paper off the coffee table. Picking it up, the large, bold type caught his eye and he read the note. He released the paper to fall where it would and ran out of the house.
The SUV’s dashboard clock glowed 11:48. Jake pressed the gas pedal. Despite the air conditioning blowing from the vents, sweat broke out on his forehead. Maybe he was overreacting. He hoped so, but the fear that he might arrive after midnight burned in his stomach.
Edgar Road was on the outskirts of Farley. No other streets branched from it. Anyone driving down this road did so to reach the old abandoned mine. Since the mine had been closed and filled in some eighty years back, following an accident that had cost a dozen men their lives, it was likely that Edgar Road was getting more use tonight than it had in decades.
Jake switched to high beams and light cut through the darkness, illuminating bushes and scraggly undergrowth.
It was a couple of minutes to the hour. His lights spotlighted Clare’s car and then Clare herself, standing by the boarded entrance to the mine. Jake took his first deep breath since finding the note in her living room.
He hit the brakes. The SUV rocked to a stop, spitting up gravel and dirt. Parking beside Clare’s car, Jake cut the engine, but left the high beams on.
The light from his vehicle illuminated his path over the uneven ground as he made his way to Clare. If not for that light, her body would be indistinct. With the entrance to the mine shaft behind her, she would be in shadow, indistinguishable. He was relieved to see she’d taken care to conceal herself.
Clare met him on the gravel path.
“Jake! What are you doing here?” She raised a hand and gestured to where he’d left his vehicle. “You have to get out of here! Go! Now!”
“What am I doing here?”
“Leave! Now!”
“What am I doing here?” he repeated. Fear had been riding him hard and was now being joined by anger. “You answer your front door with your gun primed and ready, and then you come out here—alone?”
“I got a lead,” she said quickly. “Never mind. I don’t have time for this now. Leave.”
“It’s after midnight. I’d say your guy is a no-show.”
She glanced at her watch, then back at Jake. “He must have seen you drive up. You spooked him.” Color flooded her cheeks. “He had information about Beth and you spooked him!”
“Claimed to have. I saw the note.”
“You saw the note.” She shook her head. “Of course you must have or you wouldn’t be here. You saw the note and came charging out here? I had a lead and you blew it!”
Jake’s jaw tightened as he struggled to hold onto his temper. “Did it occur to you that whoever sent the note didn’t really have information to help you find Beth? That the note might have been a setup to lure you out here for some other purpose? Did it occur to you that Ryder may have sent the note?” A muscle throbbed in Jake’s cheek. He was going to find out just where Ryder was tonight.
“Of course it occurred to me. I decided it was worth the risk to find out.”
Jake lost the battle with his anger and shouted, “You came out here—without backup—and you decided it was worth the risk? Dammit Clare, what were you thinking?”
She glared up at him and spaced her words out. “I—was—thinking—that I had a lead to finding my sister. I can’t believe you knew that and came out here anyway!”
“You should have called me.”
“The instructions were explicit to come alone—”
“Since when do we take orders from criminals—”
“I already said I didn’t want to spook him.”
“If this had been any other investigation, you never would have done this,” Jake said. “If this had been any other investigation, I wouldn’t have had to come out here.”
“And cost me the only lead I had. I’m not some damsel in need of rescuing, Jake. I’m a trained, experienced federal agent.”
“Then act like it!” He exhaled a breath and passed his hand back through his hair. “Christ, Clare. You’re too good a cop for this. Too good to take chances like this.”
“It was a judgment call. My call. And I made it.”
“Well, it was the wrong call. Made because you’re too close. You need to take a step back.”
“I don’t like where this is going. Back off, Jake.”
He had plenty more he wanted to say, but he could see she’d closed herself off. He wasn’t going to get through to her. At least not tonight.
“I’ve got a flashlight in my glove box,” he said. “I want to take a look around, make sure whoever sent you that note isn’t lurking somewhere.”
When he returned with the light, Clare fell into step beside him and they trudged over tall grass and weeds that covered the ground around the mine. He aimed the light at a stand of trees that would offer some shelter. The only occupant was an owl.
Jake lowered the flashlight and squinted in the distance. Train track that was still in use ran across this land. Freight trains passed through this one road in Farley on their way to their destinations. Beyond the track was forest. Too much land for them to cover on their own, and at night. By the time a search team could be assembled, whoever had sent the note would be long gone. If he hadn’t already slipped away.
“We’re done here,” Clare said.
Jake agreed.
“I’ll follow you to your place,” he said. “You left your front door open. We need to check the place out.”
He thought it unlikely that whoever had lured her out here would have gone to her place when his plan went south, and now lay in wait for her, but he wasn’t taking the chance.
To his surprise, Clare nodded her agreement. “I was planning on doing that. It will be faster if we both go in.”
Shortly, they reached Clare’s rented house. Falling back into the routine they’d established when they’d worked together, they searched the residence. Jake was relieved to find they were the only occupants.
He retrieved the note from the living room floor. “We’ll see if the lab techs can get anything from this to lead us to who sent it.” Plain white paper. Computer-generated text. He wasn’t holding out much hope. “We need to coordinate an investigation of Beth’s disappearance with Petty.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll schedule a meeting with him for tomorrow. I’ll let you know when.”
Clare nodded.
Jake lingered in her doorway, wanting to make a pitch that she come home with him, and stay with him and Sammie. Knowing she wouldn’t, he said instead, “Lock up after me.”
Jake left Clare then drove to Dean Ryder’s house. The house was dark. Both of Ryder’s vehicles were parked in the driveway. Jake left his own vehicle and went to the sedan and the pickup truck in turn and placed his hand on the hoods. They were cold, which only meant that Ryder had not driven either one of them in the last thirty minutes. He could have delivered the note to Clare, gone to the mine, and still been back home for more than that amount of time.
