by Sandra Brown
Munching on peanuts saved from his flight, he’d watched the house through the dinner hour and into the rest of the evening. Night fell. Through the fogged windshield, he’d kept surveillance on the house until all the lights inside were out, then he’d stayed for another hour. Nothing happened. No tall brute sneaked into the house under cover of darkness. Drat the luck.
On his return trip to the hotel, he’d picked up a heart-attack-in-a-sack at a fast-food drive-through. He’d eaten the meal while catching up on e-mails, then went to bed.
Now he was back, anxious to see what the day would bring.
At seven forty-two, the garage door came up and the minivan was backed out. The door went down. The van came in his direction and drove past. In the passenger seat was a preteen girl, texting on her cell phone. The driver was a blur through the rain-streaked windows, but the white hair was unmistakably Rebecca’s.
He waited until they had rounded the corner and then followed, keeping several cars between them.
After a short drive, Sarah was dropped off at a parochial middle school. The girl stopped texting long enough to lean across the console and kiss her mother’s cheek before getting out.
From there, Rebecca drove to a Starbucks. She went inside with her laptop tucked under her arm. A few minutes later, he saw her sit down at a table near a window. Observing from a parking lot across the street, his mouth watered for a hot cappuccino, but he didn’t want to chance going into the store and being recognized by her.
She remained engrossed in whatever was on her laptop. No one joined her at the table. A few minutes to nine o’clock, she left, taking a coffee with her.
The town center reminded Jack of New England villages. Trendy shops and restaurants occupied older buildings that had been attractively renovated. Rebecca Watson’s shop was one such enterprise.
At nine thirty, she flipped the OPEN sign on the glass door of Bagatelle.
Jack called Wes Greer. After exchanging good mornings and giving each other recaps of the previous day, he asked if Wes had obtained the information he’d requested.
“She does all right with the shop,” his colleague reported. “Especially in the summer months during tourist season. It slows down this time of year, but she enjoys a brisk holiday season. And June’s good.”
“What happens in June?”
“People get married.”
“Huh. What does she sell?”
“Stationery, glassware and china, gifts. Like that. Stuff your wife clutters up the apartment with.”
Jack wouldn’t know. He didn’t have a wife.
Not for lack of trying. Although his ex-fiancée would dispute the effort he’d put into nurturing the relationship. Vehemently. You’re not even trying to make this work, Jack. If I left, it would take days for you to realize I was gone.
It had taken three.
Before hanging up, Jack asked, “Anything else shaking?”
“Pretty quiet. How’s the weather out there?”
“It sucks.”
Despite the rain, Bagatelle did a respectable weekday business. All except one of the customers were women, and the sole male who went into the store wasn’t the one Jack sought.
By twelve thirty, his bladder was bursting and he was hungry. He pulled his jacket up over his head and dashed to a deli he’d made note of earlier. He ordered a sandwich, then went into the bathroom and peed a quart, at least. He returned to the car with his food and drink. After eating, because of yesterday’s long flight and short night, he struggled to stay awake as the afternoon progressed.
For stimulation, he opened the file and reviewed material he already knew by heart.
Physical description: six-four, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, dark hair, blue eyes, crescent scar above left eyebrow, one tattoo on lower abdomen. DOB: February 3, 1976. POB: Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Education: Bachelor of Science degree, Constructional Engineering, Virginia Tech. Military Service: Army. Criminal history—
Jack glanced up in time to see the subject’s only known relative flip the sign on the door to her shop. She’d waited until straight up five o’clock to close, although she hadn’t had a customer in more than an hour. She was as disciplined as her brother.
Jack let several vehicles go past before he pulled out into traffic behind her. He followed her home, not turning the corner onto her street for a good five minutes after she had. He drove past the house. The garage door was down. She hadn’t come out to get her mail yet. There was a magazine sticking out the top of it.
He drove to the end of the block and parked under the conifer, put his camera within reach, and yawned broadly as he settled in for another hours-long vigil.
It lasted only a couple of minutes.
Rebecca came out onto the porch, but she didn’t stop at the mailbox. Instead she popped open an umbrella, strode down the front walkway, stepped off the curb, and—
Oh shit!
She marched down the middle of the street straight toward him, and she was steamed.
Chapter 22
I don’t know.”
The semicircle of faces around Emory’s hospital bed registered varying degrees of the same expression—disbelief. Jeff’s was tinged with consternation. Drs. Butler and James exuded a sympathetic bedside manner. The two detectives regarded her with skepticism.
She repeated, “I don’t know. Not his name. Not the location of his cabin. I’m sorry. I know you were expecting me to give you a full explanation, but the truth is that I don’t remember much.”
Jeff leaned down and whispered in her ear. “This isn’t a test, Emory. Don’t become upset. If you can’t remember, it’s okay. What matters most is that you’re back.”
“Your husband’s right, Dr. Charbonneau,” said Sergeant Detective Sam Knight.
He had introduced himself as the lead investigator on her missing person case. He had a grandfatherly countenance and a laid-back manner. Because she had liked him immediately, she hated lying to him. Although, stripping the facts down to their bare bones, she didn’t know the name of the man she’d spent four days with. Nor could she lead them to his cabin or locate it on a map.
Knight gave her an encouraging smile. “Take your time. We’re in no hurry. Let’s take a different approach. How ’bout telling us what you can remember, not what you can’t.”
“I remember parking my car near the overlook on Saturday morning and setting out to run. But beyond that, my recollections are indistinct. I don’t even know if they’re sequential. They’re piecemeal.
“I remember waking up with an excruciating headache. I was dizzy and sick to my stomach. I threw up at least once that I remember. But time had no relevance. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Until I woke up this morning.”
That was a lie, and everyone must have suspected it was because no one spoke for several moments.
Then Knight said, “Going back to Saturday, you told us you ran the Bear Ridge Trail. Any particular reason why?”
At least she could answer this one truthfully. “I’d marked it on a map I had of hiking trails. The map showed it to be winding but eventually ending at an overlook on the other side of the peak. That was to be my turnaround.”
“Bear Ridge branches off into others. Might be helpful for us to see your map, so we’d know exactly where you went.”
“I’m not sure I took the path I charted. As it turns out, my map wasn’t that reliable or accurate. It designated Bear Ridge as being paved. It was, but badly. Long sections of it are reduced to little more than a gravel path. I think I must’ve fallen in loose gravel and hit my head on a rock or boulder.”
Jeff gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s a miracle that you survived.”
Unanimously they had marveled over her basically sound physical condition. She had assured them that being admitted to the hospital was unnecessary, but her protests had been overruled. The detectives, Jeff, and the ER personnel had insisted that she have a brain scan, and when it confirmed that she�
��d suffered a concussion, it was decided that she be kept overnight for observation.
She had disagreed, but by then the two doctors with whom she shared the clinic in Atlanta had arrived, and they concurred with the local medical staff. She was staying in the hospital overnight. Period.
The cut on her head had been examined. It was healing. Nevertheless, it had been thoroughly cleaned with a strong antiseptic, and she was given antibiotics to counter any incipient infection.
Her sprint to the Floyds’ house had aggravated her stress fracture. She explained it as an unfortunate outcome of her strenuous run on Saturday. An ice pack had been strapped to the foot and it was now elevated on a pillow.
She was getting fluids through an IV. That precaution was entirely unnecessary, but she couldn’t refuse it without assuring them that she’d been adequately hydrated for the past four days.
She didn’t have to fake her headache. She wasn’t suffering the stabbing pain of her recent concussion, but the dull throb of a classic tension headache, one exacerbated by intense and contradictory emotions. At her request the window blinds had been closed. She’d said that blocking out the light helped relieve the headache, when actually she feared the sunlight beaming in would spotlight her lies.
Lying went against her nature. Being untruthful to her colleagues and to the detectives shamed her. It was even harder to lie to Jeff. From the moment he’d entered the service station and taken her into his arms, he’d been reluctant to let her out of his sight even long enough for her to receive medical treatment.
He reached down now and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, not knowing that it evoked a memory of another man’s touch.
Doc? Are you going to wake up or sleep through?
Unable to handle both that recollection and her husband’s adoring smile, she looked toward the foot of the bed where her associates stood shoulder to shoulder. “Jeff told me about the award you offered.”
They believed it to be news to her. It wasn’t, but having known about it since yesterday didn’t diminish her gratitude. “I can’t…” Her throat grew so thick she could barely speak. “I don’t know how to thank you for your willingness to do that.”
Dr. James said, “We would have doubled the amount in order to get you back. As it is, in celebration of your safe return, we’re donating the original twenty-five thousand to Doctors Without Borders.”
Completely overcome with emotion, she sniffed. “I need a tissue.” Jeff grabbed the box off the side table and extended it to her, then kept his hand on her shoulder while she blotted her leaky eyes. After a moment, she gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m not usually such a waterworks.”
“The emotions you’ve kept pent up over the last four days are just now surfacing.”
How wrong he was. Over the past four days, she’d had numerous outbursts of widely varied emotions, all of them passionately felt. But she gave him a weak smile. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Knight waited for her to compose herself, then said, “Would y’all please give us a few minutes alone with Dr. Charbonneau?”
“What for?” Jeff asked.
“We just need to clear up a few details for the paperwork we’ve gotta file. Also, the department’s PIO is waiting for clearance from us on the statement he’ll give to the media, and we need her input on that. Don’t want to say anything that’s incorrect. Shouldn’t take long.”
His rambling was a non-answer, but short of challenging the officer, Jeff had little choice except to comply. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be in the hallway if you need me. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He shot the two law officers his frostiest and most disparaging look, then joined her two associates as they filed out.
Knight remarked on Jeff’s disdain. “He doesn’t regard us too kindly.”
“Can you blame him? You suspected him of God knows what.”
“Were we that obvious?”
“Apparently so. He told me you treated everything he said and did with suspicion.” During a private moment in a curtained-off area of the ER, while waiting for her CT scan to be assessed, Jeff had told her about the detectives’ preoccupation with him while she remained missing in a frozen wilderness.
“Well,” the older detective said now, “I’ll admit that Grange and me bounced around some theories. In situations like this, it’s often the significant other that’s the culprit. My apologies to both y’all.”
He pulled a chair nearer her bedside and sat down. Grange remained standing at the foot of the bed. He wasn’t as gregarious as his partner, but he made up for it by being extremely observant, which put Emory on guard.
Knight began. “We don’t know much more than we did while you were missing, Dr. Charbonneau.”
“I realize how frustrating that must be for you.”
“Let’s start with the man you can’t name.”
The mention of him filled her with such despair, she feared it would be detectable.
Knight said, “He told you he came across you laying on the trail, out cold.”
“While he was hiking.”
“And he carted you off to his cabin.”
She nodded.
“You can’t direct us to it?”
“No. For four days my universe consisted of a bed behind a screen.”
“Screen?”
“A folding screen of louvered panels. He set it up to give me privacy.”
“Decent of him.”
“Very.”
“But you don’t remember much about him?”
“Only that he treated me with extraordinary kindness.”
“Like a Good Samaritan?”
“Yes, whatever I needed…”
Sorry, Doc.
For what?
Keeping you awake.
I haven’t complained.
So, you don’t want me to stop?
No.
Don’t stop this?
No. God no. Don’t…don’t stop.
You’ll have to be the one who says you’ve had enough.
I’m not there yet.
Good. Because I can’t stop.
The deputies were looking at her curiously. She cleared her throat. “He was very thoughtful. Considerate.”
Neither of the men said anything.
She wet her lips. “He took care of my needs. I was aware. But not. Do you understand? Most of the time, he left me alone. To…to recover.”
Knight folded his arms across his sizeable middle. “In all that time, he never offered to call nine-one-one?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t remember. Wasn’t there a storm? Fog? Weather that made the roads impassable?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He told me—he promised—that he would deliver me safely back once the roads cleared.”
“But he didn’t,” Grange remarked. “Most of the roads were clear yesterday.”
“I’m certain he would have if I had felt better.”
Jesus, you feel good. Sweet. Perfect.
Buying time before continuing, she reached down to reposition the ice bag on her elevated foot. “But I wasn’t up to it yesterday. Then I woke up this morning. My head was clear. I asked him to drive me here, to Drakeland, and he did.”
“Actually he dropped you outside of Drakeland,” Grange said. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not drive you to the sheriff’s office?”
“I don’t know.”
“He could have collected the reward.”
“Maybe he didn’t know about the reward.”
Grange shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Knight ran his hand over his face. Grange said, “What kind of truck was he driving?”
“A pickup.”
“I mean Ford, Chevy, Ram…?”
“I didn’t notice. I don’t know much about pickups.”
“Color?”
“Blue. Sort of
silvery blue. And…tall.”
“Tall?”
“High off the ground,” she said.
“What about him? He tall, too?” Knight asked.
“I described him to you earlier.”
“Yeah, but in all the confusion, you might’ve forgot something.”
At the combo service station/convenience store, the scene had been chaotic. Her reunion with Jeff. The excitement among the personnel running the place. Customers taking pictures of her on their cell phones. A man delivering tobacco products trying to get a selfie with her.
Amid all that, the two deputies had pressed her for an explanation as to how she’d come to be there, and, when she told them that a man had dropped her off a short distance away, they’d naturally wanted to know his name. Since she couldn’t provide them with that, they’d asked her for a general description. She’d been inordinately general: Caucasian male.
“Hell, that circus going on at the Chevron almost made me forget what Miz Knight looks like.” Knight’s broad smile did little to put her at ease. “Let’s start with the basics,” he said. “Like his age.”
“He was old. Ish. There was gray in his hair.”
“Height? Weight?”
“My perspective wasn’t good. I was lying down; he was standing.”
“Not even an estimate? Taller than me or Grange? Noticeably shorter?”
“Not shorter. Slightly taller than Sergeant Grange.”
By a head, at least.
“Good,” Knight said. “We’re getting somewhere. He have a belly like mine?” he asked, patting it. “Or was he more of a hard body like my partner?”
“Somewhere in between.”
He repeated the words in a mumble, as though committing them to memory. “Distinguishing features?”
“Like what?”
“Big ears? A wart on his nose? Facial hair, scars, tattoos?”
Keep kissing my lightning bolt at your own risk, Doc.
Why? What happens?
It strikes my cock.
She looked away from Knight’s perceptive gaze. “No distinguishing features that I recall.”
“Approaching town, which direction were you coming from?”
