"Who had an excellent excuse." Her young son was sick, her husband out of town. It was too bad, because she'd been more enthusiastic about the idea of a stakeout than Abby was.
"But what if this guy doesn't come tonight?" Abby grumbled. "Or tomorrow night?"
"What? You afraid of ghosts?" Renee mocked, covering for the fact that she was afraid of ghosts. Her father's in particular.
"I appreciate my sleep." Abby sighed audibly. "Okay. I'll hide behind that bush. You can have the tree."
"You're skinnier. You should take the tree."
"This was your idea. I want to sit down."
Grumbling to herself, Renee conceded the point and went to stand behind the thick trunk of an old maple. Actually, she all but plastered herself to it, since she had no idea what direction the grave robber would come from. She was betting he wouldn't turn on a flashlight, except maybe briefly to be sure he had the right grave. Just so she wasn't an obvious silhouette, the tree would provide enough cover.
Silence settled over the graveyard. The late spring chill began to seep through her coat and athletic shoes. Leaning against the rough bole, she began to wish she could see the grave. What if nobody had dug it up? What if, by pure force of will, Ed Patton had pushed up the lid and risen from the coffin, returning to it with the first touch of dawn's light?
Oh, for Pete's sake! She should never watch shows like Buffy if her imagination was going to be this vivid! She'd seen his body. He'd been half bones, half mummified. Dead.
That didn't mean his spirit, as malevolent as he'd been in life, hadn't cast off the earthly shell and risen from the grave.
Taking the badge with it? she scoffed. Peeling up the sod and strewing dirt around it?
Don't be an idiot.
Every so often, she cupped her hand over her watch and peered at the faint green face. Ten o'clock became eleven, then midnight. The witching hour. How late should they stay? What made her think this guy was going to return the badge at all? He'd wanted it really bad. He'd recognize all that stuff in the paper as the fiction it was. If he bothered to read the paper at all.
One o'clock. Renee kept expecting to hear Abby declare, "Enough." She was being more patient than Renee had anticipated.
One-thirty. She was freezing. Stiff. She didn't care if ghosts wandered the cemetery. She just wanted to go home and crawl into her warm bed beside her big strong husband. He'd murmur in his sleep, and his arms would come around her. Maybe he'd even wake up, and his hands would wander over her while she told him about their futile stakeout, and after a minute she'd forget about everything but him, and his lips, and…
She jolted to consciousness. Her skin prickled. She'd heard something. A sharp breath. A muffled exclamation.
Renee held herself very still and listened. She was just thinking that she'd imagined the sound, or that she'd heard a foraging raccoon, or maybe Abby had stirred, when she heard the distinct sound of somebody breathing. Hard, as if he'd run, or was scared.
She inched around the tree, her back to it. Her eyes had long since adjusted to the dark, and she saw movement. The figure stopped by her father's grave. A circle of light appeared and illuminated the gravestone.
She stepped away from the tree and said, "Put your hands up! This is the police."
The light vanished, the figure bolted.
It didn't get far. There was a thud as a second figure hurtled itself at the first one. They toppled to the ground. Renee switched on her flashlight to see her sister struggling with a man clad in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. Renee walked over and planted her foot on the man's back.
"Freeze!" she snapped.
He went still, then sagged. Abby yanked his hood off and shoved him over onto his back.
"Oh, my God," she breathed, and scrambled away.
Aghast, the sisters stared down at the teenage boy who lay at their feet. He was the living image of a young Ed Patton.
"Who are you?" Renee whispered.
* * *
WITH THE DOME LIGHT on in the car and the heater running, the tall, rangy boy handed Renee the badge. "I'm sorry. I…This was really dumb. I never thought…"
Interrupting his stuttering, she repeated, "Who are you?"
"Mom always said he was my father. You know. Ed Patton." The boy shrugged awkwardly. "Except I can't prove it, 'cause she didn't put his name on my birth certificate."
"But…how old are you?"
"I'm sixteen. Well, almost sixteen."
Ed Patton had been dead only fifteen years. It was possible that he'd fathered a son that late in life…Late. What was she talking about? He'd only been sixty-four when he died. Men that age did sometimes have children.
"Wow." She shook her head. "We'll have to talk to your mother."
He shrank back against the car door. "The newspaper article said I could bring it back and not get arrested."
"I didn't mean that. I meant about your paternity."
"Oh." He was silent for a moment. "Mom's dead. She had cancer. She died when I was ten."
Renee and Abby exchanged a glance. "Then who do you live with?"
He shrugged again, voice full of bravado, face so young. "I'm in a foster home. I keep getting moved, but when I'm eighteen I won't need them anymore anyway."
Abby spoke for the first time in a long while. "You're a Patton, and you've been growing up in foster homes."
"I can't prove he was my dad," he repeated.
"Why did you take the badge?" Renee asked.
He ducked his head again, his brown hair falling over his forehead. Voice nearly inaudible, he said, "Mom talked about him a lot. She said he was like this hero. That I should be proud 'cause he was my dad. I just…I wanted something that was his. You know? I could pretend he gave it to me."
"You did this all by yourself? In one night?"
"Of course I was by myself!" he flared. Then he hunched his shoulders again. "Truth is, I peeled up the sod one night, then laid it back down. So it was faster the next night."
"So why'd you return it?"
He lifted his head, pain flashing across his face. "After I saw the article in the paper, I went to the library and read all about him. He wasn't a hero, was he? I don't want anything of his. He's not my dad. I bet she lied to me! I bet…"
Very softly, Renee said, "He was your father."
He jerked. "What?"
"We can run a DNA test if you want, but I don't think there's any doubt. You look just like him. Wait till you see a high school yearbook picture of him."
His Adam's apple bobbed. "I look like him?" Then he said, "But I don't want him to be my father!"
Abby snorted. "None of us want him to have been our father, but you can't change what is."
"Our father?"
Renee smiled at him and held out her hand. "Mick Sarich, I'm Renee Patton."
Mouth agape, he shook her hand.
"Abby Patton."
He shook hers, too.
"We're your sisters," Renee added helpfully.
"But…but you're…"
"A lot older than you?"
"And…and you're the police chief."
"But still your sisters."
He thought about it, then squeaked, "Jeez."
She put the car in gear. "Right now, I'm going to take you home. Tomorrow, you're going to meet the rest of the family. You have another sister and plenty of nieces and nephews."
Appearing stunned, he kept staring at her.
"We'll have to figure out who you're going to live with," she continued, conversationally. "Do you like horses? Daniel would be thrilled if you did. Maybe we'd be the best choice."
"Hey," Abby protested. "You know Ben would like a son. And Meg and Scott will be putting in a bid, too."
"We'll flip a coin. Or let him choose." As she braked at the foot of the cemetery road, she glanced at her passenger. "Unless you hate the whole idea…?"
Tears streamed down his face. "Why?" he choked. "Why would you want…"
"Beca
use you're family, of course." She reached out and squeezed his hand. "A Patton."
A hot tear dropped onto her hand.
With satisfaction, she pictured her father's dessicated corpse.
Yeah, roll over in your grave, Daddy dear. We've found him now, and he's ours. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
THE END
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8680-5
DEAD WRONG
Copyright © 2006 by Janice Kay Johnson.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
www.eHarlequin.com
*You know the blooper reel at the end of movies? Well, authors make bloopers, too. Little Matthew Jerome McNeil metamorphoses from one book into Evan McNeil in later ones, despite the vigilance of author, editor and copy editor.
return
*reissue of The Woman in Blue and The Baby and the Badge
return
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
BONUS FEATURES
Dead Wrong Page 29
