by Janice Kay Johnson - Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte)
A moment later, Jane heard a ring, then a second. On the fourth, Drew answered.
“Sergeant Renner?” His voice sounded far away.
Clay carefully wrapped Bree’s fingers around the phone. She raised it to her ear.
“Daddy?” she whispered. “Daddy, it’s me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“JANE FOUND BREE.” Drew stood beside his wife’s bed. His voice was rough with emotion. “She’s okay, Lissa. She’s safe.”
She stared at him incredulously. Tears welled in her eyes and began to overflow, dripping toward her ears and the pillow. “Then it’s all over?” she whispered.
“Over?” He really never had known this woman. It was odd to feel such a strange detachment where she was concerned. “It’s not over for Bree. Who knows what they did to her? What aftereffects she’ll suffer?” He made a gruff sound. “For me? No, I think it’s safe to say nothing will ever be the same for me. It’s not even over for your sister, or for Sergeant Renner. They both shot and wounded men to rescue Bree. They took some chances today and their careers may be impacted.” His jaw muscles flexed. “And it’s especially not over for you, Liss. You admitted to extortion. Chances are good you’ll be arrested, tried and convicted. No juror or judge is going to be sympathetic, not after hearing that you knew your employer was running illegal drugs and, instead of going to authorities, you decided you deserved a cut of the money he was earning.”
Her mouth worked. Shock and the sheen of tears made her eyes even more beautiful. Drew was not moved.
“But...I thought...”
“What? That Sergeant Renner would feel sorry for you because you got banged on the head and had to worry about your daughter for a few days?”
He didn’t remember ever stunning her speechless before.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Bree’s being brought into the emergency room. Jane wants her checked over. I need to be there when she arrives.”
Jane herself wasn’t coming with Bree. Because they’d discharged their weapons, she had explained, both she and Clay had to stay on scene. A young female deputy was bringing Bree. Jane had promised to follow as soon as she could.
“Will you bring her...?” Lissa pleaded.
“Yeah. Bree will want to see you. She told me she thought you were dead.”
His back was to her when she said, “I thought I was doing the right thing for us.”
Drew closed his eyes for a moment, swallowed and turned. He felt so much he couldn’t identify it all, and yet at the same time was curiously empty of the emotions he might expect to feel.
“Nothing you did was for us.” Her face was stricken, stunned again; he wondered if it was all an act. “There hasn’t been any ‘us’ for a long time, has there, Lissa?”
“But...does this mean you’re...you’re leaving me?” The way she had to fumble for words, he could tell this much shock was genuine.
Until now, he hadn’t even known he’d decided. Not that long ago, he’d thought if she regained consciousness and Bree was home safe, he could forgive Lissa anything. He’d been wrong.
“Yes, I am. Not right away. As long as you’re out on bail, you can stay at the house. In the guest room. We’ll try to figure out how to pay for an attorney for you. But the house is going up for sale as soon as I can get it listed. The next decent job offer I get, I’m taking. And when I move, the girls are going with me. You’re not a fit mother,” he finished, flatly.
“You can’t—” Washed with tears, her face contorted.
“I can,” he said, and walked out on her. It was like ripping away a body part. Excruciatingly painful, and yet...freeing.
They had been married for nine years, and she was a stranger.
He left ICU, his steps hastening until he was almost running. Bree was safe. He would soon be able to hold her.
Miracles happened.
* * *
SEVERAL EXHAUSTING HOURS LATER, night had fallen when Clay walked Jane to her SUV, which had been moved by a deputy from the neighbor’s property to the long driveway of the Taylor house.
Things would have gone much worse, she was convinced, if Alec Raynor hadn’t arrived to support Jane by his mere presence and to assure Clay’s lieutenant that, yes, he had loaned Lieutenant Vahalik to a joint operation. He kept repeating that he knew it was unusual to allow her to participate in an investigation on a matter pertaining to her own family, but he had felt confident she would maintain her professionalism. He’d explained that, in conjunction with Sergeant Renner and Lieutenant Vahalik’s recent actions, Captain McAllister and a team had moved on Stillwell Trucking and Glenn Arnett’s home, using already secured search warrants. He had added that he understood Mr. Arnett’s laptop computer was providing a wealth of information that suggested illegal activities, or, at the very least, evidence that considerable income had been hidden from Internal Revenue Service scrutiny. Word had gone out to the state patrol in five states suggesting that any trucks belonging to the company be stopped and thoroughly searched, preferably using drug-sniffing dogs.
She and Clay had been asked to explain every move they had made over the past several days, every decision made, every thought, then had to repeat themselves. And do it again. She had a suspicion they would both have been in deep shit were it not for the obviously successful result of their impromptu rescue operation. Bree was safe with her father. After the length of time she’d been missing, nobody had really believed she would be recovered alive.
It helped, too, that all three men she and Clay had brought down were vociferously blaming each other and James Stillwell. Or that Jane and Clay both had heard one of the men insist he wanted no part in hurting Bree, while Arnett had retorted, “You sure she hasn’t seen your face?”
Stillwell had been picked up and, of course, was proclaiming ignorance of all activities concerning Melissa Wilson, her missing child and the evidence that his company’s trucks had been moving unnamed cargo on a regular basis. He insisted Mrs. Wilson was lying, that the checks he had written to her were loans, as he had described to Sergeant Renner. Nobody was very interested in his denials. How much of the extra income had made its way into his own bank accounts would be uncovered by forensic accountants.
Arnett’s wife was reportedly in shock.
Thank God, Jane and Clay had finally been allowed to leave. She didn’t remember ever having been so exhausted. Her knees were actually wobbly. Alec Raynor had walked partway out with them, bent his head in what looked like respect and said, “Good work tonight, Jane, Clay,” after which he’d gotten into his SUV and departed.
Clay had asked her for a lift to his Jeep, which was still tucked away somewhere down the road. Thus Jane turned right out of the driveway rather than toward town. A moment later, her headlights picked out the glint of metal, where his vehicle was pulled into a mostly overgrown track that went nowhere.
She pulled in behind it.
Clay looked at her, the dashboard lights doing little to illuminate the craggy planes of his face. “Will you come home with me, Jane?”
“I promised Bree—”
“You can’t tell me she isn’t tucked into bed by now.”
“And there’s Lissa,” she said weakly.
Clay didn’t say anything.
Somehow she hadn’t expected the moment of truth to arrive so soon. She’d dimly thought Clay would call tomorrow and ask her out. But her truth was that she wanted nothing else in the world right now so much as to go home with him. To climb into bed with him, make love with him, wake in the morning with him.
“Let me call Drew,” she said, then waited a suspicious moment to find out whether Clay would get bullish and possessive.
He only nodded.
Drew answered right away. “Bree’s asleep,” he reported. “She asked Alexis to sleep with her. They’r
e all cuddled up together.”
“She’s really all right.”
“Yeah.” He sounded as bemused and jubilant both as she felt. “According to the doctor, there’s no sign she was molested or that anyone hit her. She lost some weight. Sounds like they only fed her once a day. Given that she was in a bathroom, she did a pretty good job keeping herself clean. She even found a toothbrush. No hairbrush or comb, though. It took me a while to work the knots out of her hair.”
“Did Lissa get to see her?”
“It was quite a reunion.” He was quiet for a moment. “Our marriage is over, Jane.”
Understanding tangled with grief. “I thought it might be.”
“I told her she can expect to be arrested. I’ll do my best to help with legal expenses, but otherwise I’m done.”
Despite everything, tears stung Jane’s eyes. “I don’t blame you.”
“I expected to hear from you sooner. You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she admitted. “But I don’t think so. Clay might be in more trouble for letting me get involved the way he did.”
“Tell him thank you,” her brother-in-law said, voice husky. “If not for him—”
“I’ll tell him.” Her decision wasn’t all that hard to make. “I’m spending the night at his place.”
“I thought you might be.” She heard resignation in Drew’s voice. “Bree’ll want to see you in the morning.”
“I want to see her, too. Um...you know she’ll probably have nightmares.”
“They’re both tucked into my bed. I wanted them close tonight.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“I owe you thanks, too, Jane.”
“No. I love Bree, you know that.”
“I do know.” His voice had softened. “See you.”
She ended the call and looked at Clay. “Okay.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Follow me?”
She nodded dumbly, even as she wondered what had happened to all her doubts about him. Did she really believe he’d changed so much from the man who’d stood in the bull pen summing up the size of her breasts with his hands while verbally reducing her to nothing but a sex object?
He leaned over, kissed her cheek and got out, striding into the deeper shadows where he had parked.
Yes. Yes, she trusted him.
Jane didn’t even want to think about how much he could hurt her if it turned out she was wrong.
* * *
“IS IT CRASS of me to tell you I’m starved?” Clay asked, as soon as he let them in his front door. He wanted her desperately, but something told him they both needed to decompress.
“I gave thought to detouring through a fast-food place. Lunch is a distant memory.”
“Let me see what I’ve got.” He led the way to the kitchen, conscious of a deep sense of satisfaction that she was here and apparently prepared to stay the night.
Was it too soon to ask if she’d stay every night from here on out?
Was he sure that was what he wanted?
Stupid question; he was pretty sure he’d been a goner from his first sight of her face. Look how long he’d been celibate, waiting for her.
They decided on a lasagna from the grocery store freezer case, agreeing that the speed it could be heated in the microwave trumped all other considerations. Jane made a salad while he sliced a loaf of sourdough bread, buttered it and rubbed it with a clove of garlic he’d crushed.
Watching him, she smiled impishly, that small dimple appearing. “And here I thought you were the kind of man who’d use garlic salt.”
“Gourmet all the way, that’s me.”
She made a face at him. “Is this the moment to confess that, ninety percent of the time, I eat microwaveable meals?”
“Too late. I know you can cook.”
“You know...? Oh, the spaghetti.”
“Gave yourself away.” The microwave dinged and he slid the lasagna in its disposable plastic container onto a cork-backed tile and carried it to the table.
A minute later, they were both dishing up and diving in. Clay kept an eye on her, glad to see the stress falling away as she ate and also sipped cautiously at the merlot he’d opened.
She’d eaten only half the food on her plate when she suddenly set down her fork. “I can’t believe we found her. I wouldn’t let myself consciously think it, but—”
Even now, she couldn’t say it.
“You thought she was dead. That we were too late.”
“Didn’t you?”
Clay shook his head. “No. You put your finger on it when you pointed out that Stillwell and Arnett were amateurs, in a way. They were committing a crime, but bloodlessly, from a distance. Add some extra truck runs, turn a blind eye, put the money through some gymnastics so its origins weren’t obvious. Your sister didn’t use her head when she thought she could manipulate them, though. They only had three choices at that point—pay her, potentially forever, shut down the illegal part of the business and lose that really nice extra money, or shut her up. Even then, I’m betting they were too squeamish to talk about killing her. ‘Take care of her’ was probably as blunt as their vocabulary got.”
“It was Arnett who was supposed to do it, wasn’t it?”
“That’s my guess,” he agreed. “Don’t know if anybody has found a gun yet, or whether he had something else in mind. Maybe figured he could make her death look like an accident. When she didn’t keep the rendezvous and instead kept right on going, he probably panicked. Seeing her go off the road, that must have looked like providence. Given just a minute, he could have smashed her head a little harder against the glass, broken her neck, who knows.”
Jane shuddered. “But instead, he discovered she hadn’t come alone.”
“Worse yet, Bree must have jumped out when she saw her mom unconscious and bleeding and scrambled up to the road. He might have killed her, too, tossed her down the bank, then finished off your sister. Only instead, he’s suddenly got these hikers popping out down the road and running along the shoulder toward him. Another car’s coming. All he can think to do is grab Bree, stuff her in the trunk and take off. He’s sweating and praying Lissa is dead.”
“But then they find out she’s not.”
“Right. They deluded themselves that Bree was insurance, until reality sank in and they realized there was no way they could ever let this kid go. Bree probably did see Arnett before he grabbed her, and she might even have recognized him from one of those company picnics.”
“I’m assuming somebody has asked her questions by now.”
“It doesn’t really matter whether she recognized him or not. How could he be sure? What if he’d screwed up and there was something in the bathroom, like an old prescription bottle with his mother-in-law’s name on it? As frantic as he was by then, I doubt he did much but toss her in there, figure out how to keep her from getting out and then call his boss to confess to a disaster in the making.”
One thing they had learned this evening: Lois Arnett said her parents had been gone for much of the summer on their dream trip, driving their RV to Alaska and back. Glenn had told her he’d gone by the Taylors’ house to check on it and that the yard looked like hell. He’d fired the landscapers and promised her he’d get the lawn and flower beds back in shape before her parents returned toward the end of September.
Reportedly, she had sounded shell-shocked when she said, “He wouldn’t let me help. He said Mom and Dad had been good to him, and this was something he could do as payback.”
The detective who had interviewed her believed she’d been genuinely ignorant of her husband’s activities. Clay felt a little sorry for her and for their kids. He wondered if the daughter was going to be able to stay at her expensive private college.
> Clay pushed his chair back from the table now and held out a hand to Jane. “Hey. Come here.”
She’d regained enough spirit to eye him suspiciously. “Is that an order?”
He chuckled. “I figure I’m too big to sit on your lap.”
Her chin came back down. “You’d squish me.” She went to him, wriggling a couple of times to settle herself comfortably on his thighs, then leaning against him with a long sigh.
He rubbed his cheek against her hair and wrapped both arms around her. He was aroused, and she must know he was, but for the moment he didn’t feel any sense of urgency. Just having her here was enough. Holding her. He felt a sense of rightness, of peace, and guessed from the almost boneless way she curled into him she felt something similar.
They sat there for a couple of minutes before he tipped his head so he could see her face. “Better?”
“Yes. Although it’s all... I don’t even know. Overwhelming. I mean, I’m relieved, but—” her shoulders moved “—Lissa has totally screwed up her life. And...and I want to fix it for her, but I can’t.”
“Do you really want to?”
Jane was quiet for a bit. “No,” she admitted finally, her voice soft and sad. “I always made excuses for her. You know? But this time...I can’t.”
“No,” he murmured, hurting for her.
“I wonder—”
A spark of temper had him lifting his head. “Don’t say you wonder whether this is your fault in some way.”
Jane pushed away from him, one hand planted on his chest. “I wasn’t going to! Although, shouldn’t I? I mean, I mostly raised her.”
“And did your damnedest to fix everything that was wrong.” He knew he sounded hard, but how else to stamp down on her guilt?
Instead of getting mad, she sagged. “I did. I tried so hard.”
“Damn it.” He gathered her close again, nuzzling aside hair so he could kiss her temple. “I don’t think I can stand to see you beat yourself up.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to,” she said with dignity. “What I was really going to say was that I wonder how much I blinded myself to. I wanted to believe there was just tension between the two of us. But I was mostly satisfied. I mean, look at her, she has a great marriage, fantastic kids, likes her job. So what if she resents me?”
