by Mallory Kane
“Anything that might give us a clue.” He faced her. “What’s missing?”
A numbing shock froze her. “I didn’t think about that. I should have checked.” She went over to the closet, running her hands across the hangers. Katie’s clothes were so tiny.
“She’s so little, so helpless.” She reluctantly let go of Katie’s favorite Sunday dress, a red plaid one with a little black bow at the neck.
“When I left she had on jeans and a New Orleans Saints T-shirt,” she said, thinking back to earlier that evening, as she was getting ready to go out. Her memory of it was bright and clear and happy. Everything since seemed dull and colorless.
She picked up the sheets and shook them, then tossed them onto the bed. “She usually leaves her clothes on the floor or on top of the cedar chest.” She pointed to the chest at the end of Katie’s bed.
“They’re gone.” She picked up the bedspread, then looked around. “So are her tennis shoes. And of course Ugly Afghan.” She suppressed a horrific vision of big faceless men wrapping her child in the afghan and carrying her away.
Johnny bent down and picked up something off the floor. He handed it to her.
“Her sock.” Paige squeezed the little sock in her fist and sat back down on the edge of the bed. “She only has one sock. She’s so particular about her socks. They have to be just right. No wrinkles, no twists.”
She felt like she was about to come undone. “Do you think they’ll buy her some socks? They won’t, will they?”
She looked up at Johnny, and caught an odd expression on his face.
“She has her afghan,” he said softly.
Paige nodded, holding on to control with every bit of strength she had. “She named it Ugly Afghan. It’s orange and green. She loves to wrap up in it.” She swallowed against the lump that kept growing in her throat and took a deep breath. She wiped her face and pushed at stray tendrils of hair.
“You were telling me about Sally showing you the drawing,” Johnny said quietly. “What happened after that?”
She forced her brain to focus on the party, rather than on Katie. She closed her eyes, reliving the instant when she’d first seen the picture.
“Everything faded into the background except the picture. I felt like I was going to faint when I saw your signature and the date. I thought you were dead.”
He glanced over at her, his mouth twisted wryly. “Apparently somebody else did too, until something happened to let them know I wasn’t. Tante Yvette told me a redhead in a man’s hat and jacket bought the drawing.”
Paige had to smile. “That’s Sally. She’s always roaming around little dusty shops looking for new artists.”
“Who all was at the party?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know those people. We could probably get a guest list from Sally.”
“If you didn’t know anyone, then what was she doing parading you and the drawing in front of them?”
“You’d have to know Sally. This was a benefit. The guests were there to buy art. The whole evening was about unveiling the drawing and presenting me right there beside it. It creates excitement and people tend to spend more.”
Johnny looked thoughtful. “How do you know someone didn’t put her up to it?”
“No one puts Sally up to anything.”
“But for all you know she could be involved.”
“Involved in kidnapping Katie?” Paige was shocked. “No! Sally loves Katie.”
“Did she say anything?” He walked over to the window, examined the casement and peered out through the curtains.
Paige shook her head. “We didn’t talk much. She mentioned the idea of having a showing of children’s art so Katie could come with me next time.”
“You talked about Katie? Did anyone overhear you?”
A sick dread enveloped Paige. She closed her eyes, trying to remember if anyone had been standing close to them.
“There were a lot of people there. It was crowded.” Paige stood, too agitated and worried to sit any longer. “I suppose anyone could have heard us.”
“Did anyone remark about the resemblance between you and the drawing?”
“Yes, almost everybody did.”
“Okay. Who didn’t say anything to you?” He picked up the comforter and shook it carefully.
“I told you, I only knew a very few people there. There were several who didn’t say anything. The woman in the Dalmatian wrap for one.”
He stopped, the multicolored material draped over his hands. “Dalmatian?”
Paige smiled. “She had black hair with a white streak, and she looked just like a cartoon villainess.”
He stared at her.
She laughed shakily. “There was a Penguin who didn’t speak to me either. A little round man with a monocle.”
Talking about the characters she’d seen made her remember how excited she’d been about sharing them with Katie.
“Katie would have loved to see them. 101 Dalmatians is her favorite movie.”
Suddenly, the grief and fear were too much. They washed over her in punishing waves. She hiccoughed, then gasped. She felt as if she was suffocating. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air in gulping sobs, but it didn’t help. She covered her mouth with her hands, trying to stop her out-of-control breathing.
A strong, sheltering warmth enveloped her as Johnny pulled her into his embrace and pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
She huddled there, surrounded by his strength. Her labored breathing slowed as she inhaled his warm, faintly soapy scent.
Comforted by his solid bulk, her body relaxed, molding naturally against his, drawing hope from his presence. “Oh, Johnny, I missed you so.”
JAY HAD INTENDED TO comfort Paige and stop her from hyperventilating, but as her frantic breaths calmed, she moved closer to him.
Too close for comfort.
He felt his body reacting and gritted his teeth. It had been a long time since he’d held a woman. He didn’t like impersonal coupling for a few minutes relief, and it wasn’t easy to connect with someone else when you didn’t know who you were.
But this small woman seemed to fit perfectly with him, not only physically, but in other, less easily explained ways. His brain didn’t remember her, but his body recognized the shape, the feel, of hers.
It was pure torture, holding her like this, trying to comfort her when he could barely control his male response to her supple skin and her smooth, silky hair.
He felt her pulling away. He let her.
Clamping his jaw, keeping control of his baser instincts by sheer force of will, he stepped backward, placing his hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length.
If he was going to be able to find her daughter—their daughter—he needed to focus.
He was convinced that someone at that party other than Paige had been surprised to see his drawing and discover that he wasn’t dead. He had to figure out who that person was, and how they’d managed to formulate a kidnapping plan so quickly.
Paige’s face was pale, her eyes haunted, but she’d stopped gasping for each breath. As he watched, she straightened and seemed to gather determination from somewhere inside herself.
She was strong. She had to be, to have borne and raised a child alone, to have made this life for herself and her child.
Jay felt a measure of anger and disgust for the boy he had been. He’d give anything to know why he’d left her, but at the same time, the answer scared him to death. Surely he’d loved and admired her strength as much then as he did now.
She brushed strands of blond hair from her face and blinked. “I kept trying to leave the party, but I couldn’t get away for over an hour. Everybody was talking to me, asking me about the drawing. I finally worked my way over to the door and slipped out. I took a cab home and found Dawn sitting outside in her boyfriend’s car.”
“Dawn is your baby-sitter?”
“Not my regular sitter. She was new.”
“Did
you talk to her?”
“No. I was furious. I told her you never leave a child alone—”
Her voice broke as another little sob escaped. “I sent her home and told her I’d be talking to her mother.”
“Could she have been in on it?” He doubted it, but he needed Paige to consider every possibility.
Paige frowned. “I don’t think so. She’s only fifteen. My regular sitter couldn’t make it and she suggested her friend Dawn. Sally’s invitation was last-minute.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to her. She might have seen something.”
A look of wary hope crossed her face. “Maybe she did! I’ve got her telephone number somewhere.”
“Good. We’ll talk to her as soon as we’re through here.”
He stepped out into the hall. “Is that your bedroom?”
When he entered the other bedroom the first thing he noticed was Paige’s bed. Neat, untouched, it was a symbol of her ordeal. It hadn’t been slept in.
The bedroom phone lay on the floor, its wires ripped from the wall just like the one in the living room.
As he checked the windows and the carpet, looking for a footprint, a mark, anything that might yield a clue about the kidnappers, his gaze fell on a small, framed picture on Paige’s nightstand.
His heart turned upside down in his chest. He could hardly catch a breath. A throbbing ache began in his temple.
He stepped closer, unable to take his eyes off the photo.
A little girl with long blond hair and his own startling blue eyes gazed back at him. She was grinning, revealing a missing tooth.
“This is Katie.” His voice cracked on her name. This was his daughter. A daughter he hadn’t known he had. Conceived in a time he didn’t remember with a woman whose face was only familiar to him as a bright vision amongst nightmares.
He picked up the picture with unsteady hands. “She’s beautiful,” he whispered. “Just like you.”
His fingers tightened reflexively. He had a child.
Those four words were like a sunrise, pulling his world out of darkness.
A child. A connection to his past. A thread that stretched through the lonely world he’d inhabited for three years.
His eyes misted over. After all this time, he was no longer alone and nameless. This child was proof of that.
But something about him, something in his past had placed his beautiful, innocent daughter in danger. Tightening his grip on the picture, Jay silently vowed to save his child or die trying.
He looked at Paige, whose gaze was glued to the picture. She took it from his hands.
The gesture hurt him, deep inside. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked at him, but her condemnation was loud and clear.
He didn’t have a right to Katie’s picture. He wasn’t to be trusted any more than absolutely necessary for Paige to find her daughter.
She would trade him for Katie if she had to.
“Paige?”
She lifted her chin determinedly. When her gaze met his, her eyes were dark with sadness and fear.
“I don’t remember you, except as a dream. I don’t know why any of this has happened. But I do know Katie is my daughter. I will not let anyone hurt her, I swear to you.”
Paige’s eyes widened, filled with a look he couldn’t read.
“I’ll offer myself for her.”
She looked down at the picture, touching the glass, then back up at him. Something changed in her eyes. A hint of wary trust replaced a bit of the desolation there.
He wasn’t sure if he was worthy of that trust, but he knew, for his daughter’s sake, that he would die rather than betray it.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” she whispered.
THEY SAT IN THE LIVING room of Dawn’s parents’ house, waiting for Dawn’s boyfriend to get there.
Dawn looked pale and nervous, fiddling with her short black hair and playing with the belt buckle on her low-rise jeans.
When her boyfriend arrived and sat beside Dawn, his hair longer than hers and his Tulane University T-shirt hanging loosely over his baggy pants, Paige asked them what they’d seen that night.
“Katie’s okay, isn’t she, Ms. Reynolds? I mean, I was only outside for a minute.”
Paige tried to speak, but her throat closed up. Desperate, hurting, wanting to lash out at this irresponsible teen who had left her child alone, she met Johnny’s gaze, pleading silently with him to help her.
“Everything’s fine, Dawn,” he said curtly. “It’s just that the back door was open and something is missing.”
Paige bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain at his words. Something.
“We didn’t take anything, honest,” Dawn said.
“Hey, wait a minute.” Her boyfriend sat up from his slouched position on the couch. “I never even went inside.”
“We’re not accusing you. Either of you. We just need to know if you noticed anything.”
“Nah,” the boyfriend said.
“Like what?” Dawn asked at the same time.
Paige swallowed hard, doing her best to keep her emotions in check. Dawn was watching her with a fearful expression, and Paige knew her grief and panic must be clearly visible.
Johnny stood, towering over the two teens. “Anything at all. Was there a sound, a strange vehicle, somebody running?” He leaned just slightly toward the boyfriend and looked him in the eye. “This is very important, if you get my meaning. Did I understand Ms. Reynolds to say that Dawn is just fifteen? So you’re what? Eighteen?”
The boyfriend looked at him guiltily. “Whoa, man. We weren’t doing nothing. Just talking.”
“Then you don’t have a problem. Now think.”
Paige heard the menace in Johnny’s voice. These glimpses of his new hardness, his increased physical strength, sometimes took her by surprise. A tiny flame of hope flared inside her. This man was capable of things the boy she’d known could never have done.
“There was this one thing.”
Paige’s attention jerked back to the boyfriend. “What?” she cried.
Johnny’s hand touched her arm, sending her a reassuring signal.
“Yeah?” he said. “What one thing?”
“Well, man, right after she—Ms. Reynolds—went inside her apartment, this van comes from out of nowhere. It squealed out from behind us and almost hit my car.”
Paige’s hands gripped each other tightly. “Oh my God! I was there.” Had Katie been in that van?
“What kind of van?” Johnny stood over the two, looking at them with a menacing frown.
Dawn shrank back into the couch.
Her boyfriend swallowed audibly, then spoke. “White. Dirty. Old.”
“It just had one taillight,” Dawn said. “I remember.” She turned to her boyfriend. “You cursed at it.”
“And this was right after Ms. Reynolds got home?”
The boyfriend nodded. “The cab almost hit it pulling away from the curb.”
Johnny held out his hand to Paige. “Okay,” he said to the kids. “Thanks.”
As Johnny took Paige’s arm and guided her toward the door, Dawn spoke.
“Ms. Reynolds, I’m really sorry. I’m glad Katie is all right.”
Paige turned back to look at her. Johnny’s hand on her arm gave her the strength to walk out of the house.
Paige put her hands over her mouth and took slow, calm breaths. “She’s glad Katie is all right,” she gasped, almost laughing. “She’s glad—”
Johnny’s gentle hands guided her toward the street-car stop. “It’s probably a good thing Dawn chose that moment to go outside,” he said.
At his words, Paige stopped in her tracks. “What are you talking about? She let Katie be kidnapped. She left my child alone!”
Johnny turned to face her. “If she had been inside, they might have killed her.”
Chapter Six
“I am sick of your excuses,” Serena said, lighting another cigarette with the crystal lighter on her d
esk. “Why do I keep you on my payroll?”
“Watch it, sis. You need me, and I’m cheap at the price.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t need you at all Leonard. Now what is the problem this time?”
“Maybe you don’t understand how GPS works, but—”
“I understand exactly how global positioning satellite systems work, you nitwit. What you obviously don’t understand is that when I said minute by minute surveillance, that’s precisely what I meant.”
Serena blew smoke out in agitated puffs as she paced in front of the glass wall of her executive suite on the top floor of the Yarbrough Industries Corporate Offices.
She was tired of her brother and his incompetent hirelings, tired of waiting, tired of having to be sure Johnny’s brat was taken care of.
“I’ve got a man watching the screen twenty-four-seven.”
“Then how did you lose them?” Serena said through clenched teeth. “Never mind. Just remember that you don’t get anything until the targets are taken care of. I hope I don’t have to end up handling this. Do I make myself clear?”
“Oh, you’re clear, Sue Ann.”
“Never call me that. You have twenty-four hours. She’s beginning to ask why I haven’t set up a meeting place.”
“And you don’t care how it’s done?”
Serena felt like screaming. “Of course I don’t care how it’s done. Now quit bothering me. If you can’t get a fix on them, they’re obviously inside a building or the phone is shielded by metal. Send your men back to her apartment to wait until the signal pops up again.”
“What a great idea,” her brother said sarcastically.
“Just make sure they don’t forget to retrieve that damn cell phone. I want nothing pointing back to me. Is that clear?”
“Oh, clear as a bell, sis. Are you going to see the little brat today?”
“Is Martin watching her?”
“Yeah. That old softy’s probably brought her more movies.”
“Then no. I trust Martin. He won’t let anything happen to her.”
