Dangerous Reunion Read online

  “Whoo!” Dusty’s boots connected with concrete in a solid thunk as she jumped the last few feet to the ground.

  The trail had taken them directly to the north end of the two tunnels. The creek flowed through only one, and even with recent rains, it was hardly a trickle. Insects darted about on the surface of the pool at the tunnel’s mouth, and Ben thought he saw a mudbug scurrying through the silt.

  Boomer went into the tunnel a few yards, sat and regarded his handler with his sweet, sad-looking face. She pulled a contraption from her own backpack, something that turned a bottle of water into a pooch fountain, and he drank heavily before walking the extent of his lead and looking back at her.

  “We’ve had this talk,” Dusty said as she opened her own bottle. “I need rest more often than you do.”

  Booger didn’t look happy, but he turned back to studying the other side of the tunnel.

  As soaked as the rest of them, Daniel leaned against the wall while guzzling his water. “I don’t suppose we could be lucky enough to walk out the other end and see Mrs. Brown sitting on her porch offering iced tea and a fan.”

  “Stranger things have happened.” Like Daniel’s fiancée coming back five years after she dumped him. Like Yashi showing up once again in Ben’s life and him not running away. He knew his reputation as stoic and strong, but sometimes a man could be too strong for his own good. Dealing with her even in the performance of his duties wasn’t a wise move, not given their past. That he’d loved her. Missed her. Still found it far too easy to want her if he let himself.

  And he might be tempted to let himself. He spent a lot of time with Daniel, who’d also been loved and betrayed by a woman. Who’d gotten a second chance and was now happily married with a baby due anytime. Exactly where Ben had thought he would be at about this age.

  Did he believe in second chances?

  Before he had to consider the question, Booger lifted his head, scenting the air, and tugged on his lead. His nose was light-years more sensitive than humans’; was his hearing also that much better? Because the air still smelled the same—moist, stinky of human sweat and decay—and no unusual sounds had reached Ben’s ears.

  The tunnels opened into more tangled wood, though at least it was level on this side. The stream went quietly on its way, deeper but narrow enough to cross on flat stones that stood a few inches above the surface. Ben expected them to teeter under his weight, but they were surprisingly stable. There went the great-aunts’ ideas of Mrs. Brown’s true nature. What need did spirits, fairies or leprechauns have for stepping-stones when they could magically traverse any obstacles?

  The sun overhead heated the air but left them mostly in shade, unable to penetrate much of the tree canopy. They were definitely on Brown land now; the railroad right-of-way served as boundary. As far as Ben could guess, they were pretty equidistant from both houses and the Pickerings’, though he couldn’t see anything but trees to confirm it.

  Booger surged forward, dragging Dusty behind, scattering leaves with each touch of his giant paws and floppy ears. His tongue was still hanging out, but it was excitement now rather than thirst. Whatever scents he’d picked up from that chunk of uneaten tomato must be heavier on the air over here.

  Their surroundings changed drastically within a few yards. One minute they were stumbling through dead leaves and overgrowth; the next they scuffed into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood a shack that didn’t appear to have been repaired beyond the urgent in the decades it had stood there, and in an old rocker in front of the door sat Sweetness Brown. No spirit or fairy, just a round gray-haired woman wearing oversize clothes. Her scowl created lines across her forehead, and her hands clenched the chair arms tightly.

  Booger closed half the distance between them, sat down, bayed and looked at Dusty. She joined him, rubbing him all over and murmuring compliments before slipping a toy from her pack to him.

  Ben and Daniel exchanged looks, then Ben approached her. Though she appeared unarmed, a sufficiently disturbed person didn’t need a weapon to be dangerous. Not even a round gray-haired grandmotherly sort. “Mrs. Brown, I’m Ben Little Bear. I’m a detective with the Cedar Creek Police Department.”

  Her gaze was brown with a haze that made him think of cataracts. It slid across his face, and something there sharpened. As a kid, Ben had heard his elders describe people saying, The lights are on, but no one’s home. Sweetness Brown might not be home, but she wasn’t entirely gone, either. More like standing outside the back door looking in. She studied him for a moment, her head tilted to one side, then she smoothed out her pink cotton shirt and brushed the knees of her green polyester pants.

  “Little Bear. I know that name.” Her voice was rusty but held soft undertones. “You’re one of Weezer’s boys, aren’t you?”

  He crouched so she didn’t have to look up so far. “You know Great-Aunt Weezer?”

  “Of course. She used to live across the road with her sisters. Where you live now. She used to come visit with me sometimes. Brought me Indian tacos and apricot turnovers. Back when I lived in the other house.” Mention of the other house brought fleeting sadness to her face. Longing for the days when she’d lived there with her husband?

  Ben rarely needed confirmation that Great-Aunt was a sly old woman, but once again he got it anyway. Telling her sisters Mrs. Brown was an alcohol-fueled hallucination when she knew for a fact who—and what—the woman was. He would like to think it was for Mrs. Brown’s protection rather than because of Great-Aunt’s pure orneriness.

  Mrs. Brown gazed past him. “Who’s the pretty boy?”

  Ben glanced at his companions, still standing ten feet away. “That’s Booger,” he replied, and the old woman smiled.

  “Gee, thanks,” Daniel said drily. “I’m Detective Daniel Harper, and this is Dusty Smith. She owns the dog.”

  “I’ve had dogs before. He owns her. I seen the way she chased after him. I don’t blame her. He’s beautiful. Smells a little ripe, though.”

  She must have a nose like a bloodhound herself, Ben thought, if she could separate Booger’s distinctive aroma from the sweat-soaked people he’d brought along. None of them were fit to be in polite company.

  She rocked a few times, the bare old wood creaking pleasantly. “I guess you’ve come about the boy.”

  Ben and Daniel exchanged looks again, and Daniel moved closer as he gently asked, “Do you know what happened to the Muellers, Mrs. Brown?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, then nodding, then shaking it again. Evasion or just confusion?

  “But you know the Muellers.”

  “I know Lolly. Nice girl. Sweet as her name.” Her smile this time was vacant. “That’s what my Frank used to say about me. Sweet as my name. ’Cause my name is Sweetness. Not made up nor nothing. It’s right there on my birth certificate. My mama was happy to have a girl after so many boys. Seven of them. The youngest was twelve when I was borned. She thought she was all done with having babies, and here I came.” She laughed with delight, softening the lines of her face, but the emotion faded too soon. “She’s gone now. And Daddy and the boys and Frank. I sure miss them.”

  Ben gave her a moment to grieve, feeling a little of it himself. Outliving everyone she’d loved had certainly never been her goal. It was unfair, God taking her parents, brothers, in-laws and her husband, and leaving her nothing but an obnoxious son who didn’t give a damn about her. Life wasn’t fair, people always preached, but Ben had spent a long time wondering why not. It was the best model humanity could ask for: a person did good and benefited; a person did bad and suffered. They got what they deserved. After enough suffering, people would stop doing bad, and life would be better all around.

  But he wasn’t here to solve the problems of the world. Just his own little corner of it. “Miz Brown, when did you last see Lolly?”

  Sweetness rocked a few more times before sh
aking her head. “Lord, I don’t ever know what day it is. Two days ago. Maybe. I kind of lose track of time.” She waved a hand around them. “No newspaper delivery, no television, none of them computers or phones. I don’t have guests or appointments or any need to go anywhere else. I’m a free spirit. Frank used to say that, too.”

  And that was exactly the way she wanted it. Knowing what he did of Kenneth Brown, Ben couldn’t blame her. When he’d moved back home—most likely uninvited—after his father’s death, this little cabin deep in the woods, probably built by the first settlers to claim this land, must have been the only place she could find peace and tranquility. Her son was too lazy to tramp through the woods to bother her here. As she’d implied, there were no luxuries, but a spring bubbled nearby. There was a fireplace and enough wood to heat the cabin through several winters, and an outhouse sat at the far edge of the trees.

  A hard but simple life for a woman who couldn’t cope with change.

  “What do you know about the Mueller boy, Mrs. Brown?” Daniel asked.

  “Poor kid.” She shook her head regretfully. “Oh, he was crying awful. Scared me something fierce. I don’t usually run into crying little boys on my midnight rambles. That’s what Frank called my little walks in the woods. He’d say, ‘Sweetness, you’re gonna get hurt out there,’ and I’d tell him there’s nothing in the woods to hurt me. Hurtin’ comes from people, not nature.”

  “So you saw Theo Mueller when you were out walking?” Now Daniel crouched near Ben. “Do you remember when that was? Do you know why he was crying?”

  “Theo. That’s a nice name. You don’t meet many Theos these days.” She focused on him after a moment. “He was crying because he was scared, of course. Let the bogeyman drag you out of your house in your pajamas in the middle of the night and see if you don’t cry, too. I cheered to myself, all quiet-like, when Lolly’s boy kicked him right square in the shin and ran away. I prayed God to send him to me, and He did, he came running straight at me, and I hid him from the bogeyman. Oh, that man cussed until he finally gave up and got in his van and drove away.”

  His muscles knotted, Ben straightened and walked to the cabin. Daniel’s voice was quiet behind him, kindly with his questions, but Ben’s focus was narrowed ahead. The door stood open, a broken screen door laid over the opening in an attempt to keep out the insects. He carefully lifted it to one side and stepped into the doorway. The cabin was one room, the furnishings sparse: another rocker, a battered lawn chair, a wooden table with one short leg fixed by a rock, two wooden chairs, an aluminum camp cot in one corner and another corner making up the kitchen. Open shelves on the wall showed the kind of dried goods he’d expected—beans, rice, flour—along with a supply of canned and boxed foods. Lolly gave the woman fresh vegetables; was she also the one who’d supplied the soup, macaroni and cheese, peaches and tuna and Kool-Aid?

  The only other items in the cabin were two cases holding books and magazines, a bureau and an old-fashioned steamer trunk. When Ben spotted two small feet in two small tennis shoes missing their laces sticking out behind the trunk, he swallowed hard, a chill rushing through him. “Theo. It’s Officer Bear. You can come out now.”

  For a long moment, the feet didn’t move. Couldn’t move? Please, God, no. Sweetness was harmless, Lois had said. She wouldn’t hurt a little boy. She had no history of violence. She liked Lolly. Surely she couldn’t have done a thing to hurt Theo.

  Ben felt movement behind him and shifted slightly to see Sweetness, with Daniel giving her a hand. She eased into the crowded doorway, unaware of the sweat that had broken out on Ben’s forehead. Daniel noticed, though. His gaze swept across the room, stopped on the feet, and he blanched.

  “It’s okay, Lolly’s boy,” Sweetness said in a cooing, coaxing voice. “You can come out. These police officers are here to take care of you.”

  Seconds ticked past, and still those little feet didn’t move. Then slowly, one disappeared behind the trunk, followed by the other, and just as slowly Theo’s head appeared over it. First his hair, standing in a dozen directions, then his pale, tearstained face, then his worse-for-wear ninja pajamas.

  “Officer Bear,” he whimpered, and he jumped to his feet, ran around the trunk and flung himself into Ben’s arms.

  * * *

  Sweat trickled down Yashi’s spine as she tried to calculate how long it would take them to find Mrs. Brown’s cabin, talk to her and come back again, but she knew enough about scent hounds and searching and woods to know she didn’t have a clue. Ben and the others were covering rugged ground, led by a dog who had to separate his particular target from all the other thousands of smells out there. It was miserably hot and humid, putting extra demands on their bodies. The place Mrs. Brown called home might be well hidden, or she might not be there, or she might be too frightened to cooperate. There were snakes, spiders, scorpions and an abundance of biting, stinging insects, to say nothing of rocks to fall off, holes to fall into and scrubby brush to scrape raw any skin it touched.

  She’d been rocking but had stopped, tired of mistaking the slight creak of the wood for something important. She’d heard a dog a while ago, like the baying she’d heard on television and movies, but she hadn’t been able to pinpoint where it came from. It just seemed to echo off the trees, and it had made her heart race at the same time her stomach knotted.

  Now she was pacing the length of the side porch, pivoting at the north end, when a sound caught her attention. It was soft, rustly, not stealthy. A heavy layer of leaves muffling the sound of feet?

  She hustled to the back steps, and the noise expanded to include panting, the slap of branches and a distinctly female grunt. Slowly she started down the steps, reaching the bottom just as the branches of the red cedar swayed, pushed out of the way two feet above the ground by a big tan head with ears dragging and jowls swaying. Fifteen feet behind Booger came Dusty, her appearance confirming this had been no walk in the park, and behind her...

  Yashi’s breath caught. Her heart rate increased so quickly that she got light-headed, and it seemed a balloon was about to burst in her chest. Ben cleared the cedar, lowered his head to speak to the boy he was carrying, then set him on the grass.

  “Oh Theo.” Tears welled. Yashi had been praying, but she’d lacked faith that God was listening, that her pleas were eloquent enough to get her little cousin back, and oh, thank You, Jesus, here he was in his favorite pajamas and his favorite outgrown sneakers that Brit had cut out the toes so he could wear them as house shoes.

  A cry catching in her throat, she started toward him, and he began running, too. But when she would have swept him into her arms and swung him around, holding him tightly enough to feel his heart beating safely all the way through her own heart, he skidded to a stop, and his small determined fist made contact with her jaw.

  Yashi stood frozen. He was a little boy without much power to put into a punch, so the throb in her jaw was minimal, but the fact that he’d hit her at all... She’d seen it, felt it, but couldn’t believe it. Theo didn’t hit people, not even Brit when she pestered him out of his mind. He was a sweet, gentle boy.

  Who’d been through God knows what kind of trauma. She swallowed back her hurt, her shock, and said, “Theo, sweetie, I’ve been so worried about you—”

  Before she could finish, he drew back and hit her again, this time in the stomach. Her breath caught, and the rushing in her ears dampened the sounds around her—his name called sharply by Ben, and even more sharply by Brit, her steps thundering. The censure in her voice was enough to make Theo burst into tears.

  “I hate her, I hate her! This is all her fault! The man took Mama and Daddy, and he hurt them, and he tried to hurt me, too, and it’s all her fault! He said so—he said, ‘You can blame your cousin Yashi for this.’”

  By then, Brit had jumped down the steps and run to join them. She gathered Theo in her arms but turned an anguished look on Yashi. “Are you
okay? Did he hurt you?”

  Her heart more than anything, but Yashi pretended otherwise, smiled tightly and shook her head. She was in shock. Her fault? Was it true? Was the kidnapper putting her family through all this horror because of something she had done? Oh God, she couldn’t bear that. She’d made enemies, sure. What prosecutor didn’t? But a defendant who hated her so much that he would hurt her family?

  With Theo sobbing in Brit’s arms, they headed for the porch. Dusty busied herself with Booger, and Quint, who must have received a heads-up from Ben to bring Brit to the house, stood quietly near the rocker, his gaze directed toward the road out front. Yashi felt isolated, standing in the bright sun and frozen hard inside. She hugged herself tightly, unable to think of anything to do but breathe, and even that hurt.

  The quaking in her muscles was spreading outward, making her nerves tremble, prickling her skin and her eyes. She wouldn’t fall apart. Couldn’t. Not here. Not now. If she did, how would she ever put herself back together enough to help Will and Lolly?

  Ben moved stealthily, as he so often did, and laid his hand on her shoulder from behind. “He didn’t mean it.”

  Theo was terrified for his mom and dad, but he probably did believe she was to blame. After all, the man who’d hurt them had said so, and what eight-year-old boy could overcome his fear to argue with that?

  Despite her best efforts, a little sob escaped her. Her whole life, she had treasured Will, all that was left of the innocent part of her childhood, and she loved his wife and children as well. She would have done anything, given up anything, for them, and instead she’d brought danger right inside their home, the one place they should be safest.