by Mallory Kane
“Data Sentinel?” Paige repeated. “What kind of company is that?”
Johnny didn’t answer. He took the hardware store bag out of his pocket. “Let me see the cell phone,” he said, holding out his hand.
Paige frowned at him, but he gazed at her steadily and she could read nothing in his eyes. “Why?”
“I want to take a look at it.” The scar at his hairline lifted his left brow just enough to make his expression faintly sardonic.
“No.” Paige looked at the hardware store bag, a faint sense of panic beginning to stir inside her. “I won’t let you tear up my phone.”
“I promise it’ll be okay. Just let me look at it.”
“It’s my only link to Katie.” She put her hand in her pocket and held on to the phone. “She has to be able to talk to me.”
He nodded solemnly. “I know.”
Paige’s pulse was pounding so loudly she was sure everyone in the restaurant could hear it. He was lying. She knew it. And by the look on his face, he knew she knew.
She didn’t want to let go of the phone. It would kill her to lose the only link she had with her child, the only proof she had that Katie was still alive.
But Johnny was sure that somehow, the phone was betraying them. It was the reason the killers kept finding them. It was only a matter of time before they succeeded in killing them.
“You’re lying to me. You’re going to destroy it.”
He just looked at her, his incredible dark-blue eyes mirroring her own pain.
Paige had never cried. Not since her mother died. Not when she’d read that everyone had given Johnny up for dead. Not even when she’d found Katie gone.
But now her very soul ached. Her heart felt shattered. The emptiness inside her throbbed, and tears welled up in her eyes.
She took out the phone and held it against her heart. She hadn’t let go of it once since this nightmare had begun. It was her connection to her daughter.
Jay thought he heard his heart crack as Paige’s eyes glittered with tears. She’d been so brave, not breaking down once.
Now he had to do the hardest thing he could ever remember doing. If his suspicion was correct, it was the only thing that would save them. He reached across the space between them and without a word, took the phone from her.
Her hand stayed over her heart and her tear-filled eyes stayed on him.
“I can’t let go,” she whispered in a small, pitiful voice.
In that instant, Jay knew two things. He knew without a doubt that he had loved her, and he knew he could never make up to her for what he was about to do.
He dragged his gaze away from hers to study the phone. He ran his fingers over the whole case, finding all the droplets of glue. He inserted a fingernail into the seam in the side of the plastic case, but nothing gave. Reaching into the hardware store bag he pulled out a tiny screwdriver.
Paige moaned under her breath.
He slid the thin blade between the front and the back of the case. He twisted his wrist, and with a crack that sounded like a gunshot, the back of the cell phone came off.
“No,” Paige whispered. “Oh, God! Katie—”
Jay stared at the two halves of the phone, his gut twisting. He was right.
He looked up. Paige hadn’t moved, but a tear had slid down her cheek, leaving a shiny path. Her frightened green eyes searched his face.
He shook his head sadly. “According to the article, Data Sentinel was working on a GPS tracking device that could be installed in a digital phone.”
Another tear slipped over the edge of her eyelid and clung to her lower lashes.
“We’ve got to ditch the phone, Paige. If they’re using global positioning satellite technology, they can find us anywhere.”
He pulled some bills out of his pocket and tossed them onto the table. “Let’s go. They’re probably already on their way.”
As they stood, Paige gasped and caught his arm. “Johnny, look, it’s them.”
He looked out the window. The dirty white van had pulled into the parking lot. He could see the twin white bandages on the faces in the van’s dark interior.
“Come on.” He scooped up the bag and the phone and headed toward the back of the restaurant. They walked through a door labeled Employees Only, past incurious kitchen workers and out the back door.
“Give me the keys and you wait here.”
“No,” Paige said hoarsely. “I’m fine.”
When Jay glanced at her she lifted her chin. “I’m fine.”
He crept along the side of the building until he could see around the corner. The van was empty. Their pursuers had already gone inside. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize he and Paige weren’t in the restaurant. They only had a few seconds.
“We’re going to run for the car. You ready?”
Paige nodded.
“Now.”
They made a dash for the rental car. Paige clicked the remote door-locking device and they jumped in and took off.
“Which way?”
Jay was watching the door of the restaurant. “Toward I-10,” he said, rolling down his window.
As they passed a pickup truck, he put the phone back together and tossed it into its bed.
“With any luck that guy will be heading back downtown.”
PAIGE FOLLOWED THE SIGNS toward Interstate 10, away from New Orleans. She was numb, as if all the feeling had been drained out of her.
Her rational mind knew that Johnny had done the only thing he could do. Keeping the phone would be signing their death warrant. But her heart cried out that there was no reason to keep living if she lost her child.
A sob erupted from her breast.
“Paige, are you all right? Do you want me to drive?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.” She couldn’t look at him. She was too close to the breaking point. And she wasn’t quite sure what would happen if she reached it.
She took a deep breath, trying not to let any more sobs escape. “I assume you want to find your family home.”
Johnny nodded.
Her only hope of staying sane was to put distance between herself and her emotions by focusing on the facts she’d gleaned from the archives. “The Yarbrough house is located between Bay St. Louis and Gulfport, Mississippi, and sits across the road from the beach,” she said woodenly, gripping the steering wheel so hard her hands ached. But she had to hold on to something.
“Paige, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t!” She wanted to stay in the safe area of reciting what she’d learned. She couldn’t bear it if he apologized.
“If there had been any other—”
“I’m not sure exactly where the house is.” She interrupted him. “We may have to stop and ask directions.”
She knew Johnny was staring at her, but she just kept driving, not looking anywhere but at the road. She thought about the house. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go there?”
He didn’t answer.
“I suppose seeing where you grew up might help you remember something, but what if someone is there?”
He still didn’t speak.
“Johnny?” She glanced over and caught his gaze. The look he gave her was somber and guarded.
“Oh my God. You think they might be holding Katie there.” She put her hand over her mouth, but a tiny moan still escaped.
“Paige, it’s a long shot.”
She tilted her head in a brief nod and pressed her lips together. “But she might be there. We have to hurry!”
“Hey, slow down. You’ll get us picked up by the police.”
She tried to drive responsibly, but the idea that her daughter might be waiting for her only a few miles away pulled at her like a net.
They drove for a while in tense silence.
“Take this exit and get on Highway 90,” he said. “It’ll put us right on the beach.”
Paige took the exit and followed the signs to U.S. Highway 90. Johnny was frowning, rubbing his temp
le.
“Does any of this look familiar?” she asked.
He shook his head without answering. He’d grown distant, remote, as if he were concentrating on something she had no part of.
She drove quietly, thinking of Katie. The numbness faded and her heart pounded and her jaw ached with tension as doubts assailed her.
“Johnny? Do you think we should stop and call the police? I mean if they’re holding Katie there, and we go barging in—”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I keep asking myself the same question. But two things bother me. First, this has to be someone connected with the Yarbrough fortune. That’s the only explanation for them kidnapping my daughter and forcing you to find me. That means we’re up against all that prestige. All that money. And I have nothing that proves who I am. As far as the police are concerned, I’m dead.”
Paige’s easy compassion was stirred by Johnny’s flat tone. She was certain he was hiding a lot of pain under that matter-of-fact exterior.
She nodded. “And the other thing?”
“Whoever is after us is not trying to lure us to them. They’re trying to kill us. If we go to the police, we place the kidnapper in a dangerous dilemma. Do they let Katie go or do they get rid of her?”
Paige listened to Johnny put her worst fears into words. If they made the wrong decision, she would never see her child again.
“If the kidnappers are the same ones who kidnapped me, and if my stepmother is behind it, I think it would be a mistake to involve the police before we know where they’re holding Katie. Our primary objective has got to be to stay alive and free, so we can find our daughter.”
Paige swallowed against the fear that tried to burst out through her throat. What Johnny said made ominous sense. She just hoped they could hold out long enough to find Katie and keep her safe.
Paige opened her mouth to ask him what he thought their chances were, but he was staring out the car window, his face a dark mask. He’d withdrawn to that remote place inside him where she wasn’t welcome.
Panic spiraled upward within her. When he cut himself off from her like that, it was as if a huge chasm gaped between her and the rest of the world. Between her and Katie.
She gripped the steering wheel until her fingers cramped. Blinking rapidly, she concentrated on the road.
I’ll be there, Katie, she silently promised her daughter. You know I’ll find you.
“Stop here,” Johnny commanded.
Startled, Paige pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. Her pulse quickened. “Did you recognize something?”
He was staring out the window at the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Paige followed his gaze, trying to see what had caught his eye. There was a decrepit bait shop and dock with a few boats tied up to it. It must have been there for years, an eyesore among the new bright buildings that had sprung up on the Gulf Coast since the advent of the casinos.
The bait shop sported a battered sign that was almost too faded to read.
“Lime’s Bait and Tackle?” Paige guessed.
“Limey’s,” Johnny corrected her.
Paige grabbed his arm, renewed hope springing to life inside her. “Did you remember that?”
He shrugged off her grasp. “It’s there, on the sign.” He got out of the car.
Paige got out and squinted at the sign again. “Well, I don’t see a Y. Why did we stop here?”
Johnny looked around, his eyes narrowed against the bright sun. He walked closer to the shop and stood there for a long time, staring out over the Gulf. Paige heard a low wail off in the distance and noticed that clouds were gathering on the horizon.
Johnny turned around and looked across the highway.
Paige turned with him. Set back from the road, away from other buildings, was a house. It was large, two stories, with square columns and a big laurel tree shading the front lawn. Plywood covered some of the windows. The large front yard had obviously been meticulously landscaped at one time, but now it was overgrown and shaggy.
“Johnny, is that your house?” Paige whispered.
Jay stared across the highway at the big neglected house as cars zoomed by. It was so much like the fragments from his dreams. Only the fragments had pierced his dreams with hints of blinding white columns, beautiful gardens and the scent of gardenias.
When had everything gotten so gray and rundown? When had everything beautiful in his mind turned ugly? He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
A voice called to him, like a siren song drifting through the dark muddle in his brain. Cool hands brushed his away from his eyes. He heard soothing words as a small, soft body pressed against his and the cool fingers stroked his face.
He blinked and saw the one thing that was still beautiful. The girl from his visions.
“Johnny?”
He reached out and pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. For three years, he’d dreamed of touching his vision. He didn’t want to ever let her go.
“It’s okay, Johnny. I’m right here with you.”
The words sounded familiar. He pulled his head back and looked at her.
“Paige,” he whispered. She wasn’t the girl in his visions, she was the woman who had appeared at his door two days ago. The woman who had borne his child.
And he was still Jay Wellcome, nobody.
Sadness engulfed him. He banished it by filling his senses with the real woman he held in his arms.
Her green eyes, soft and full of concern, searched his face. Without thinking of the consequences, he bent his head. She raised hers.
Their lips touched and her gasp mingled with his as desire streaked like a lightning bolt through him. He grew rock hard against her softness.
He kissed her again, urging her lips to open beneath his, urging her body closer. He felt her surrender, felt the tension leave her, felt her body mold perfectly against his.
He didn’t remember ever kissing her before, but it was as if they’d been made to fit together. Nothing he’d encountered yet had felt as right as this one moment, holding her, kissing her.
He shifted, cautiously revealing to her the fullness of his desire as he deepened the kiss. Her mouth opened to him, letting him in.
Paige almost sobbed aloud as the currents of arousal swirled through her. She melted into Johnny’s strength, letting him take her, mold her, mesmerize her with his kiss.
She had never forgotten the taste of him. His tongue and lips threatened to drive her wild. He had always surrounded her with his strength, his safety, his passion.
She reached up to pull him closer, to more completely enfold herself in his promise of protection and love.
A car zoomed by, honking its horn.
Johnny pushed away.
Paige swayed, shocked by the suddenness of his withdrawal.
He wiped his face and looked around quickly. “I’m sorry, Paige. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Johnny—”
He held up his hand. “I know. It won’t happen again.”
Paige’s empty arms ached, as did her heart.
“Get in,” he said gruffly. “We need to check out that house, just in case. Turn around and pull into the driveway.” He was frowning, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple.
Paige quickly did as he said, and discovered that the driveway circled around the back of the house. She pulled up close to the back door.
Johnny was already out of the car by the time she’d cut the engine. “Stay in the car.” He efficiently surveyed the back of the house, then quickly and cautiously rounded to the front.
Paige sat there for a couple of minutes, looking at the white clapboard house with the long building attached to the back of it. Boards covered most of the downstairs windows in the back, just like they did on the front. The house looked closed up, deserted.
But if this was the Yarbrough house, there was a possibility Katie was inside.
Paige jumped out of the car and ran around to the
front in time to see Johnny step up onto the porch.
“I told you to stay in the car,” he said shortly.
She ignored him, stepping up beside him.
“Watch out. There are some loose boards.”
“Do you think this is your house?”
He didn’t answer, he just stood with his hands in his pockets and looked back out over the Gulf, a bemused expression on his face.
“Johnny? Are you okay?”
He looked down at her, his blue eyes dark and unreadable. He nodded. “I’m going in. You need to go back to the car.”
“No.”
He studied her face. “Then stay behind me.”
He examined a window where the plywood had fallen off. Paige stayed right with him, following his every move. Curtains prevented them from seeing inside, so he stepped over to the door.
A brass mail slot and worn, rubbed-brass hardware spoke to the age of the house.
Paige waited, every muscle screaming for action as Johnny examined the bricks that surrounded the thick wooden door.
Standing close to him, Paige felt the new, increased tension that emanated from him like heat from a New Orleans sidewalk in summer. His brow was furrowed in concentration, his left hand kept straying to rub his temple, and his mouth was set and his jaw clenched. It was obvious this house stirred something inside him.
Her heart felt like it was about to jump out of her throat. “Johnny, hurry. Katie might be in there.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. The place feels empty. But if she’s in there, then someone is guarding her. We have to be careful.”
She hugged herself. Her eyes stung. Please, God, let her be here, she prayed silently.
Jay rubbed his temple, trying to massage away the pain that seemed to get worse and harder to bear with each moment that passed. He debated whether to break down the door and burst in, or to continue exploring the white bricks around the entrance in hopes of finding a key.
