“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that.”
Even while she smiled, a knot formed in her stomach. Maybe she shouldn’t have called. “I think I have an idea,” she said with a chuckle, one that was only a little bit forced. Shane was a very attractive man. Gorgeous, in fact. It wouldn’t be a hardship to sleep with him.
“Have you made any decisions?”
“Maybe.” She wanted to tell him yes, right then and there. That was why she’d called—to lock herself safely in with Shane once and for all. But she wasn’t sure it would be for the right reasons.
She wasn’t sure how she felt at that moment—except betrayed and confused.
And very, very scared.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT HAD BEEN A WEEK. Maureen Cooper woke up Saturday morning with a heavy heart. When a child went missing, five hours was the mark after which officials started to consider abduction a possibility. One week of William Byrd missing was more than enough for Maureen to know that something was dreadfully wrong.
All of the rooms were rented for that weekend, with more bookings than they could handle coming in. But they’d had a couple of cancellations, too, after the article that got out about William’s disappearance.
If something wasn’t resolved soon, or if it was and the news was bad, the future of Twin Oaks was going to be in serious jeopardy.
But that was down the list of Maureen’s concern. If any harm had come to William through Carl Nevil or his brother Owen, she was responsible.
And it wasn’t just William. Cecilia Hamilton and Leslie Renwick were missing, too. And what about their other guests? And the twins? And Clint and Keegan?
Maureen had to pull herself out of bed. At times during the past week, she’d wondered if she was losing her mind. She couldn’t focus. Couldn’t do any of the things she normally just took for granted.
She thought she’d found the solution by leaving New York. Changing her name. Having her records sealed. Quitting the profession she’d loved.
Instead she’d become a sitting duck. And she wasn’t sitting alone. She’d pulled a whole lot of innocent people up on the roost with her.
Maureen wasn’t sure how long she was going to be able to keep still. She couldn’t just wait around to be prey for Owen and Carl Nevil. She was a cop. A damn good one. She knew how to ferret out even the most obscure information.
If something didn’t break soon, she was going to have to go back to work.
* * *
LAUREL DID WELL at keeping up appearances—she’d had a lifetime of practice. Hiding from Scott was another matter entirely.
How could she pretend that what he’d told her didn’t matter? How did she convince him that losing the image of the family unit she’d imagined herself a part of wasn’t a big deal to her? How did she go back to not being vulnerable when he alone knew how vulnerable she really was?
Pulling on the undies and blouse she’d brought from Twin Oaks the evening before, zipping up the jeans, she felt completely naked. Exposed. She needed to hide from Scott. Yet he knew right where to find her. Literally and figuratively.
The Saturday newspaper was her solution for breakfast. Sitting across from him at the little coffee shop they’d found a couple of blocks from the motel, Laurel applied herself to the fact-filled print. She’d been a voracious reader of the news even back in high school, and since becoming an investigative reporter, she needed a newspaper in the morning more than she needed breakfast or coffee. Usually it helped her feel as though she was in control of all that was going on around her in her community, her state, her world. From weather to politics, she wanted a handle on it all.
But today the paper was also a hiding place.
“There’s another West Nile virus scare,” she read. “A couple more people have been infected.”
“It can generally be treated, though,” he said. Laurel heard his coffee cup land back on the table. He was on his second cup, but his bagel was sitting right where the waitress had left it.
He shared a few facts about the mosquitoes that carried the disease, but for once Laurel wasn’t fascinated by his wealth of information. She was too busy trying to figure out how to act around him. She took a bite of her own poppy-seed bagel, though swallowing it past her dry throat almost choked her. She was going to keep up appearances, though. They were all she had at the moment.
“Did you sleep well last night?”
Laurel’s skin burned. She couldn’t talk about last night. She was barely able to think about it.
Lowering the paper a couple of inches, she peered at him over the top of it. His gaze was direct.
And lifeless.
Scott was asking for nothing. As far as he was concerned, everything was over.
She found she couldn’t look away, but neither did she know what to say.
“Not too bad,” she finally said.
She raised the paper. Now was the time for her to ask him how he’d slept. But she couldn’t.
“I didn’t get much sleep, either,” he told her anyway.
She focused on her paper. Was he ever going to finish that coffee so they could get on with the business they were there to do?
To fill the awkward silence, she read him part of a story from the crime desk. A young man had killed his pregnant wife because she was leaving him.
“It’s a shame, you know?” she said, folding the paper and, dropping it on top of her unfinished bagel. “He not only killed his wife, but his baby, too. It’s strange what people do supposedly out of love.”
“Like winding up in a drunken stupor and getting your brother killed?”
She met his gaze. There was such suffering in those rich blue eyes, but all she could do was sit there while tears gathered in her own eyes and spilled over.
She didn’t want to know that he’d been in love with her, or that he and Paul had broken their word to her.
She didn’t want to know that he’d been blaming himself for his brother’s death for three and a half years. Or what that guilt had done to him.
She didn’t want any of it to be true. She didn’t want him to be hurting and she didn’t want to be hurting so much herself.
Yet she couldn’t find any words to help either of them.
“We’d better go,” Scott said. As he rose to his feet, his phone rang. Scott answered and pulled out his notebook. “Let me get that down,” he said, scribbling what looked like a phone number to Laurel.
Laurel felt ashamed at the relief she felt when, judging by the rest of Scott’s conversation, she knew they were going back to work.
* * *
“THAT WAS MURPHY,” Scott told Laurel, pulling out his keys and donning sunglasses as he held the door for her and walked beside her to the Blazer.
“Has he heard from Dennis?”
“No.” Scott’s jaw was set. “Nor has Arnett shown up for work. At this point, when he does, he’s fired.”
“So what do you think our chances are of having him show up for his appointment with Murphy this afternoon?”
“Slim.”
He wasn’t surprised that she’d been thinking the same thing he had. But it made him damned uncomfortable. After unlocking her door, Scott walked around to his side of the Blazer. She shouldn’t still be so much a part of him. Thinking like him. Touching him without ever lifting a finger.
“Murphy won’t do anything officially until Arnett doesn’t show, but he’s checking hospitals for me,” Scott told her after he’d climbed in and shut his door. He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t stand to see the vacancy where once there’d been love in her eyes. Brotherly love, of course. “Arnett better hope he was in some kind of accident.” Staring out the windshield, Scott tried to think like a con man would. “Or he better hope he never gets found.”
Scott might not have grown up getting into trouble, being cared for by a rich older sister and brother-in-law, but he was pretty certain he could slip into Arnett’s mind-set enough to know one thing.
The man was up to no good.
“I have to make another call before we start our rounds of the houses again,” he said, beginning to dial. He had a hunch. And for once, it wasn’t one Laurel would be sharing with him. The thought brought a mixture of relief and sorrow.
He was going to be spending the rest of his life not sharing with Laurel.
“Who are you calling?” she asked. “Does it have anything to do with that number you wrote down?”
He nodded, and then remembered that she wasn’t looking at him, either. “Murphy had someone search Arnett’s phone records for me. There were a couple of numbers he couldn’t easily identify.” One had made the hair on the back of Scott’s neck stand up. It was for a call last Saturday.
“Can’t he get in trouble for that?”
“If he gets caught, maybe.”
“So what’s noteworthy about this particular number?”
“It has a New York exchange.”
He pulled out his notebook, checked to make sure he had Frank Quigg’s number right and hit Send. “I might be way off, but I have a hunch...”
“And another favor to call in?”
Not this time. But Laurel didn’t know about the connection between Dennis’s prison friend and Maureen Cooper.
He gave her an apologetic look, which she missed, staring straight out the windshield as she was, and then said, “Yeah, maybe.”
He’d only spoken with Maureen’s old boss once, but the man remembered him immediately.
“I have an entire sheet of numbers in the Nevil file,” Quigg told Scott when he explained his reason for calling. “You want to hang on while I check, or have me call you back?”
“I’ll hang on.”
“Wasn’t Arnett’s prison friend from New York?” Laurel asked in the pause that followed.
Though he wasn’t the least bit surprised she’d put things together so quickly, Scott was impressed. “Yeah,” he said, watching a woman park a pickup truck in a compact space.
He wished he could discuss his real concern about the Nevils with Laurel. And then was almost glad that he couldn’t. Visions of William and Cecilia in the hands of either Nevil—even indirectly—were making him tense. He’d hate to think what it would do to her.
He glanced over at her, and she turned at the same time. “So you think there’s a connection.”
Their eyes met. And held.
Scott looked away first. “I’m just checking all bases.”
He hated to lie to her again, even by omission.
Quigg came back on the line. “I’ve got a match.”
Scott froze. It wasn’t the answer he’d been prepared to hear. His lungs growing tighter by the second, he listened.
“It’s the number of a woman Owen Nevil—Carl’s brother—knows out on Long Island.”
He’d hoped he was wrong.
“She’s listed?” He could feel Laurel looking at him and braced himself for the conversation with her that was going to follow his phone call.
“No. Owen’s been staying with the woman on and off since his release from prison. Several months ago she came to us asking for protection for her kid. She’s got some rich uncle and Nevil wanted her to do a con job on the old guy to the tune of more than a million bucks. The jerk threatened to hurt her daughter if the woman didn’t do as he asked. She begged us to take her kid someplace safe.”
“Let me guess,” Scott said, rubbing a taut hand across his forehead. “She wasn’t willing to testify, right?”
“You got it.”
“But you helped her get free of him. Watched out for her after she kicked him out.”
“Yep.”
“And then she let him move back in.”
“You ever think about working for NYPD?” Quigg asked.
“Nope. Never...”
The day just kept getting better and better—and it was only morning.
* * *
“THERE’S A CONNECTION, isn’t there?” Laurel broke the silence that fell after he ended the call. Though her seat belt was buckled, she’d slumped down so that her head barely rose above the dash. As though she were trying to hide from the truth.
“On the night that William and Cecilia disappeared, Dennis called a number where the brother of his prison friend was staying. Doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any connection between them and the disappearance of William and Cecilia.”
“And Leslie.”
“Right.” Scott started the car, planning to do their daily drive-bys. He pulled onto the highway to head out to Dennis’s place first. Leslie’s was closer to town and he wanted to try to time their visit with Katy so that her daughters were down for their nap.
“The brother of Carl Nevil?”
Scott could feel her frustration almost as though it were his own. Hers seemed to be mixed with a bit of desperation, too.
Was it just the fate of William and Cecilia that concerned her? Or was something else sending her over the edge. Like him, maybe. Was it painful for her to spend time with him now that she knew the truth?
“Yeah—it’s him.” He told her about Owen’s attempted blackmail of the woman he’d been living with.
She put one foot up on the dash, her arms wrapped around her middle. “That gives more weight to our theory that Dennis is blackmailing his sister, right? Maybe he took his cues from Owen.” Her voice sounded strained.
Glancing over at Laurel, Scott worried about how much this was taking out of her.
And then told himself to get a grip. Laurel was an investigative reporter. She did this kind of stuff every day.
“Likely Dennis was nervous and checking in with the brother of his mentor for support for his own setup.”
Whether Arnett or Nevil was behind this whole thing or not, Scott was becoming increasingly concerned for the fate of the three missing people.
* * *
LOOKING OUT HER WINDOW at the green-and-golden fields rushing by, Laurel tried to draw from nature’s beauty to combat the dread flowing through her, but with no success.
You didn’t work in New York news without knowing of the Nevil brothers. And while Laurel hadn’t been in the business all that long, she’d been there long enough to know that if they were in any way connected to the three disappearances, their chances of finding William, Cecilia and Leslie alive were much slimmer. Especially since Cecilia had already given up the money.
Of course, she had a lot more to give, and Leslie apparently had an inheritance as well.
But it was unlikely Dennis was doing this job on his own. Arnett had never attempted a crime with such a high price tag either in dividend or penalty.
“Do you know any of the Nevils’ history?” she asked Scott when her thoughts were growing too loud for her to keep them inside.
“Some.” He sounded hesitant. Was he trying to protect her? “I know Murphy said they’re big in the New York crime scene.”
“Carl was one of the biggest until a little over a year ago. This female detective and her partner finally managed to nail him on more than minor charges. He’s up for life. I followed Maureen Maguire’s case from the beginning,” she told him. “She was an incredible detective.”
“How so?” Scott asked.
“She was strong, confident, capable. And truly courageous to testify against him herself.”
“You’re all of those things, you know,” he said, slowing down because of traffic.
“I’m not any of those things.” She’d been a coward her entire life. She would just sit quietly, melt into the background, make herself fit
in.
“Laurel.”
She’d been staring out the side window, but turned at the commanding tone in his voice.
“You are strong,” he told her. “Your life has been extremely difficult but you’ve made the best of it—made a success of it. You’re confident enough to know that you can do what you set your mind to. And, you are the most courageous woman I know.”
Maureen Maguire was courageous. She’d risked her life so that people she’d never even met could live more safely. Laurel lived her life in a little cubbyhole so no one could hurt her.
“You never had the security and unconditional love that most kids take for granted,” Scott continued. “You never had anyone believe in you, love you, simply because you were theirs, yet that didn’t stop you from believing in love. In spite of a lifetime of rejection, you reached out when love came your way. You embraced it with everything you had. Most people would never have dared take that risk.”
Laurel could have argued with him, but he’d just made her feel good in a day that had been nothing but bad.
* * *
EVEN THOUGH THEY’D knocked and found no one home at Dennis Arnett’s house, neither Scott nor Laurel returned to the Blazer. Instead, they walked slowly around the premises, searching for anything they might have overlooked on their first visit.
“Let’s go over here,” Laurel said, heading toward the abandoned side of the building.
“Be careful, it’s probably not safe.” Scott followed her, though. It was unlikely they’d find anything; chances were good that Dennis Arnett had never even ventured over there, the place was in such bad shape.
Just as Scott suspected, the only thing they discovered was that the house was in sore need of renovation. Even the grass was dead. If he closed his eyes he could follow Laurel’s progress around the yard by the sound of the dried grass crunching beneath her feet.
He saw her bend over and pick up something.
“What’d you find?” He walked over and peered over her shoulder. It was the closest he’d been to her all morning.
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