Peter frowned, scooting to the edge of his seat, wanting to reach for her hand across the coffee table and assure her that none of it was her fault. But he’d done that once before in his life as a war reporter, and it was amazing he’d come out of that situation with only lost hearing.
She squeezed her eyes briefly shut, then continued, “I know what they did was wrong. I think they know what they did was wrong. But I lived almost my whole childhood with that family. They were the ones who held me when I cried, who made me laugh with their silly jokes, who cheered for me when I accomplished something. The only thing they ever did to hurt me was take me from my family.”
“Isn’t that enough?” Peter asked, straining to keep his voice neutral.
“That’s how my family feels,” Alanna said, her hands clasping together so tightly that her knuckles went white. “But how much do you remember from before you were five? If you’d gone to live with someone else for most of your childhood, how many memories would you have of your family before that?”
Probably sensing her distress, Chance stood and went to her, plopping his big head in her lap and making a brief smile spread across her lips. It faded as soon as Peter spoke.
“You’re telling me you hardly remembered your family?” He tried to imagine that, being ripped from his family as a kindergartener by two people who then called themselves his parents, who treated him well and raised him with love. An ache twisted in his heart at the idea. Worse, he could suddenly picture it, could understand why she’d grown to love them and probably forgot more and more of life with her real family as the years went on.
“I remembered enough,” Alanna answered, her voice softer now, as if she knew she was getting through to him. “But sometimes, love is irrational. And sometimes years of good actions start to outweigh one bad one, no matter how terrible that moment was.”
“And still, you turned them in. Why?” What had changed after fourteen years to make her write that note?
“I didn’t want to go the rest of my life without ever knowing the parents I vaguely remembered, the sister and brother I’d had.”
Something passed over her face, a wave of sadness that told him she’d sacrificed a lot to fulfill that wish. More than just the loss of two people who’d acted like her parents most of her childhood, but also four other kids she’d loved as siblings. Four other kids who, from all accounts, had also felt loved in that household. Who probably missed Alanna as much as she missed them.
“Have you seen Darcy and Julian since they went to jail?”
She stiffened, straightened in a way that made his internal lie detector go off.
“No.”
“But you’ve talked to them?” he guessed.
“No.”
Was she lying? He couldn’t tell. But if she wasn’t... “Alanna, you need to be careful. I know Darcy and Julian loved you once. But you did turn them in. You said what Darcy’s doing now makes no sense. Maybe she changed in prison.”
He frowned, knowing that in terms of the investigation, it was a mistake to say any more, but he needed her to recognize the threat against her, to keep herself safe, too. She’d agreed to work with him, but theirs was a tentative truce, at best. She didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her, even if he was beginning to sympathize with her. Even if he was starting to like her as a person.
That was a mistake, too, but one he couldn’t seem to help. These days, it was his job to risk his life to protect others, even if they put him in danger.
He touched his bad ear again, watched her gaze narrow as she followed his movement.
“Darcy would never hurt me,” Alanna said, but her voice lacked confidence.
“You can’t know that,” Peter insisted. “So, let’s make a deal. You want to work together to find those kids? I’m in. But I’m law enforcement, so you’re going to let me keep you safe. No more going off on your own to search for her. We stick together from here on out. Deal?”
She looked ready to argue, but after a long moment, she simply nodded.
“Now, where were you going today?”
“I think I have some ideas about where Darcy might go. Julian had backup hiding spots.”
Anger flooded through him at the realization that she’d kept this to herself. She’d been gunning for one of those hiding spots and if he hadn’t been following her, that information would have been lost. Those kids might have been lost. Maybe for fourteen long years, like she had been. Maybe longer.
This time, he held his anger inside and asked, “Where are these hiding spots?”
Panic rushed over her face and she leaped to her feet, making Chance jump up, too. The pair of them ran to his garage, and Alanna yanked open the back door of his truck, climbing inside as he caught up to them.
When Chance tried to climb in with her, Alanna put up a hand. “Stay, Chance.”
The St. Bernard promptly sat, but he looked back at Peter as if to say, Can’t I go, too?
“We’re not going anywhere, Chance,” Peter told him as Alanna climbed back out, unzipping an interior pocket of her bright red coat.
The coat was still sopping wet and so was the small piece of paper she pulled out of the pocket.
She unfolded it with infinite care, then swore as she looked back up at him, dismay in her eyes. “It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“The list of locations I found at the house. All the places Darcy might be hiding.”
Chapter Seven
“I can’t believe it’s gone,” Alanna said, staring at the little scrap of paper. She hadn’t been able to toss it in the trash, even after putting it under a blow-dryer confirmed that all the pencil marks were lost.
Peter sat next to her, taking the smaller spot on the couch to her left instead of the bigger space to her right. “You read the list, right? Maybe if you think about it, you can recall some of the places?”
The heat from his body warmed her still-cold legs and she tried not to fixate on his closeness. It was just residual embarrassment from stripping out of her clothes in his car. Even covered by a blanket, it had been awkward. She’d had to use a lot of willpower not to glance his way as he’d stripped off his clothes—thank goodness he’d eventually wrapped a blanket around himself.
The memory made her hyperaware of the shocking blue of his eyes, the sharp lines of his face and the lean power of his build. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, but there was something compelling about him. Maybe it was part of what had made him a good war reporter, the ability to project such intensity that it made it hard to look away.
“Alanna?” Peter pressed.
“I read the list. But it was coordinates, latitude and longitude, and it was in code.”
“Code? Are you serious?”
“A silly code. My sis—the other kids and I made it up one winter when we had a bad storm and we were stuck inside. It was just a game, but we left codes for each other all over the house for a week.” She shrugged at the interest in his gaze, remembering how much fun they’d had running around the house to find coded clues like a scavenger hunt. “My par—the Altiers got in on the game, too. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw this list.”
“It sounds like a good time.”
His tone was hesitant, speculative, and Alanna held in a sigh. Reporters—at least reporters actively chasing a story—got right to the point. But once anyone else would realize her history, they’d just pick at the edges. They’d ask sideways questions, looking for insight and pretending to understand, before they announced, “But these people kidnapped you.” As if she didn’t know.
Usually, for Alanna, that was the beginning of the end. It was too awkward to try to convince people that she’d been loved, that she’d loved in return. More awkward still to feel like she had to justify it. It was easier to break ties, keep to herself.
When sh
e’d gone back to Chicago, she’d ventured outside her comfort zone with school and volunteer work. But after an initial burst of interest by anyone with the remotest connection to the Morgans, she’d found herself becoming more and more isolated socially. Kensie and Colter, Alanna’s new brother-in-law, had decided something had to be done. Alanna had connected with Colter’s dog, Rebel, a former Marine Combat Tracker Dog who had been as good for Alanna’s anxiety as Colter’s PTSD. So they’d found her a dog of her own, rescuing Chance to give to her.
She smiled at the St. Bernard who’d been so little two years ago, a victim of such cruelty that the vets weren’t even sure he would survive. Now, still small for his breed, he was a total gentle giant. And he’d definitely rescued her as much as she’d rescued him.
At her smile, Chance pushed his way between the couch and the coffee table to drop his head in her lap. She stroked his head as she told Peter, “Drew and Valerie, the youngest kids, didn’t remember their real families at all. They had no idea they were kidnapped. And we—Johnny, Sydney, and I—didn’t tell them because they were so young and because honestly, we hardly remembered our own families. How do you break that to someone? Especially when they’re happy?”
“Sydney was the one who remembered her family best, right? She was a few years younger than you?”
Alanna eyed him. “You’ve done your research.”
He flinched, actually looking a little ashamed. “I read up on it when I came back home—to what used to be my home—two years ago. I lived on the other side of the mountain, in Luna, where you were reunited with your sister. When you showed up in Desparre this week...”
“You read through all the news reports again?”
He nodded, not quite meeting her gaze.
The coverage in Desparre hadn’t been the most flattering, especially after time went on and reporters looked for a new angle to keep the story alive. They’d all seen her as that new angle. She might have turned the Altiers in, but the real story was how she hadn’t spoken up for fourteen years.
“No wonder you acted like you already knew and disliked me as soon as you heard my name.”
The Morgans had tried to keep the negative coverage from her at first. She’d been getting her GED and applying to college then, trying to get out into the world and reenter her life from fourteen years earlier. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself from seeking out the news coverage on herself and the rest of the “family” she’d left behind.
“Hey.” Peter’s voice was soft, his eyebrows lowered as he put his hand over her free one.
She froze, her other hand stalling in Chance’s fur, as his long fingers threaded through hers. The unexpected contact made her skin tingle.
“I didn’t dislike you as soon as I knew who you were. I just—”
“Distrusted me?”
“Yes.”
She hadn’t expected him to admit it. Even though she’d already known it was true, the quiet word seemed to leave a physical mark on her chest. She slid her hand free and glanced away, hoping he hadn’t seen that he’d hurt her.
She looked back just as quickly, tired of having to explain herself, tired of being judged by what people read in newspapers about her past instead of by who she was or her actions now. “Everyone thinks they would have gotten help right away, that they would have spent all those years hating the people who’d raised them. But if you haven’t lived it—”
“I’m not judging you.”
“No?”
Chance lifted his head from her lap at her sarcastic tone.
“Do you know why my fa...Julian was killed in jail?”
Peter frowned, gave a brief shake of his head.
“He was protecting a twenty-year-old kid who was being preyed on sexually. The predator stabbed Julian in the chest sixteen times for it.” She choked on the last words, imagining the man who’d raised her being cornered, brutally attacked and dying on a filthy prison floor.
Peter reached for her and his intent to pull her into a hug was as clear as the confusion in his eyes. He was struggling to reconcile his idea of a child kidnapper with a man who’d risk his life to protect someone he barely knew.
She blocked his hug with a hand to his chest, resisting the urge to fist her hand into his sweatshirt and yank him toward her. To accept his hug along with the friendship he offered. Friendship she still couldn’t tell was real or fake.
Standing, she swallowed back the tears that threatened every time she thought about the report the prison had issued. “I think I should go.”
He stood, too, but slowly, caution in his expression. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I have no idea what your life was like. All I know about the Altiers is what I’ve read in the papers or a law enforcement bulletin. I know better than anyone how those things can spin a story. But I spent years in war zones and I also know this—no one is one hundred percent good or bad. Everyone lives in gray areas, making right decisions one day and wrong ones the next. Sometimes the way we think of people is based on what side of the line the majority of those decisions lie. Sometimes, it’s based on a single, dramatic incident.”
His hand twitched upward, the way she’d seen it do before, and she had a sudden realization. He had his own single, dramatic incident. “What happened?”
He stared at her a long moment, not even pretending to misunderstand, before he nodded and sank back onto the couch.
Chance moved his head to Peter’s leg, offering his quiet support in a way Alanna had seen him do hundreds of times at the nonprofit where she worked. From the very beginning, when she’d had him certified as a therapy dog so she could bring him to work with her, he’d had a sense of who needed him most.
“I was a war reporter,” Peter said, and she nodded, having seen his bylines a time or two. Mostly, she remembered his name from an incident a few years ago, with a picture that had made national headlines: Peter, less fit than he was now, wearing a helmet and covered in sand and blood, one hand to his ear and an expression of horror and disbelief etched on his face.
“You were covering some kind of hostage release,” she said, realizing that must have been the incident.
“It was supposed to be smooth and simple. I’d been in far more dangerous situations. The military had brought the ransom money. We were just tagging along—my camera guy and me—to catch the exchange. The hostage-takers hadn’t covered their faces—they didn’t think they could be identified or they didn’t care. The CIA sent one of their officers to make the exchange. She was supposed to walk halfway and leave the money. Then the hostage would walk to us and the hostage-takers would pick up the money and leave. Well, they did take the money and leave.”
Peter’s hand went halfway to his left ear, then he set it on Chance’s head instead, slowly petting the big dog.
“The hostage had been captive for almost six months. She’d watched the other two people who’d been kidnapped with her get killed. We thought she’d be running toward us. But the closer she got, I could see...”
He trailed off, his brows furrowed and his gaze on the wall of photographs across the room.
“What?” Alanna prompted softly.
“I’ve been to a few hostage exchanges before, where they’re expected to go smoothly and our country wants a little good press. Sometimes, the hostages look terrified that something is going to go wrong at any second and they’ll be yanked back into the hell they’d been living. Other times, they’re crying with relief that it’s finally over. And occasionally, they seem like they’re not even aware of what’s happening. Not this hostage. She was...calm, focused. Stoic, even.”
His hand stalled on Chance’s head and Alanna set her hand carefully on top of his, offering silent support the way he had for her. The same way she might at work with a survivor or a family member she’d gotten to know over months of visits.
He met her gaze briefly,
a hint of a smile twitching on the edge of his lips. Then he looked back at his photos. “I was standing closest when the explosion went off.”
Even though she’d seen the photos, had known he’d been close to an explosion, she still gasped at the idea of him being nearest to a bomb. Her fingers clenched reflexively over his. Chance’s head tipped up, his attention bouncing to her, then back to Peter.
Alanna tried to remember the details of the article she’d read two years ago, but all she could recall were the details of the photo. Of Peter’s face, dripping with blood. Back then, it had been a horrible sight, but now, knowing Peter made every detail more painful. She felt an ache in her chest thinking about what he’d experienced. “What happened? The hostage-takers threw a bomb during the rescue?”
He gave a humorless laugh, his gaze focused on her once more, all his intensity and cynicism directed at her. “They didn’t throw anything. It was strapped to the hostage. She set it off herself when she got close to us.”
Tension bloomed between them as she stared back at him. Suddenly, it all made sense. His instant distrust of her, his insistence that she must be working with Darcy. He thought she was just like the hostage who’d almost killed him: willing to do whatever it took to help someone she should have wanted behind bars, at the expense of anyone else. As that realization dawned, Peter said softly, “I quit my job after that. I’d wanted to be a reporter my whole life, but after that moment, I never wanted to go into another war zone. I sat around for a good six months, then saw a job posting for a police officer. This hostage almost destroyed that dream, too. The police have strict fitness and health requirements, and with the extent of my hearing loss... They only took me because they were desperate for officers.”
His hand went up again, and this time, he did touch his left ear. “I lost most of the hearing in this ear in the explosion.”
Alanna’s heart gave a sudden, painful ache. He thought she was the same as that woman who, in the face of rescue, had destroyed herself and tried to take out everyone around her in the process. No wonder Peter didn’t trust her.
Alaska Mountain Rescue Page 7
