Dangerous Reunion Page 13

  Could they forgive her? Could she forgive herself?

  “Yashi.”

  She glanced at Ben’s hand, big and strong like the rest of him. He’d removed his gloves, letting her feel skin and calluses and heat where her shoulder was bare. Trembling, she raised her hand to touch his, and his thumb shifted to rub against hers. More heat swept over her as he moved closer, and with it came a sense of security, an offer of hope, reassurance that she desperately needed.

  “We don’t know much more.” His voice was quiet, its cadence calm and even. “That’s the first thing Theo’s said other than my name since Miz Brown found him by the Christmas tree Friday night. We’ve called an ambulance, and after he’s been checked out, Morwenna’s mum is going to talk to him. She’s a psychiatrist, and she works with us a lot.”

  When he paused, the faint wail of a siren drifted on the air, growing steadily louder. Abruptly, it switched off, the silence startling, and an ambulance pulled into the driveway.

  “He’ll be all right. They all will.”

  His fingers tightened briefly, then he gently pulled away. Lord, how could she feel so alone after such minimal contact?

  She wiped her eyes, stinging from the sweat on her face, and gave herself a mental shake before joining everyone else on the porch. The paramedics began examining Theo while Brit held his hand in both of hers. Poor kid, she looked equal parts relieved and terrified. So thankful to have her brother back and now doubly scared for her parents.

  When Theo caught sight of Yashi, his entire little body tensed as if he might launch himself at her again. Brit slid her arm around his shoulders, whispering assurances to him, and he slowly sagged back as if he might collapse without her assistance.

  Yashi’s heart hurt as she moved away from them. She waited around front instead, thanking Dusty, petting Booger, until the paramedics brought Theo around, strapped to a gurney, his hand still tightly clenching Brit’s. Ben and Quint stopped at the steps while they headed on out to the ambulance.

  “Dusty, Quint is taking Brit to the hospital,” Ben said. “He’s offered to give you and Booger a ride home on the way.”

  “I appreciate it. If you need any help getting Daniel back out of the woods, just give a holler. Yashi, I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”

  Yashi shook her hand. “You brought Theo home. It can’t get much better than that.”

  Within a few moments, they were gone, leaving Yashi and Ben alone on the porch. She wished he would touch her again—nothing intimate or personal, just her hand. If he held her hand and told her once more that her family would be all right, she would believe him and would feel better at least for a moment.

  But when he did finally do something, it wasn’t reach out to her. He heaved a weary sigh and said, “Let’s get something to drink. Then we need to talk.”

  Chapter 7

  Ben invited Yashi inside. She hesitated, then lifted the thin, peachy fabric of her shirt away from her body, and it fell back, damp enough to cling to her breasts and middle, and she walked through the door. Immediately, she shivered, goose bumps rising on her skin. His, too, even though it was only seventy-five degrees inside the house.

  Granted, his goose bumps might not have anything at all to do with temperature.

  He expected her to take a seat in the living room, but her flip-flops slapped across the floor and into the kitchen. Of course she wouldn’t choose to sit on the good furniture when she was soaked with sweat and he was a whole lot worse. His clothes were dirty and stained, he smelled of bug spray, and he had a rip in his sleeve from a slide into dewberry brambles and a tear in his pants, dotted with blood, from a run-in with a barbed-wire fence on the shortcut back from Miz Brown’s.

  She slid into a chair at the dining table next to windows that looked out on his own few acres of woods. Light coming in made her hair look more gold than blond, and highlighted the tension and the guilt in her eyes, the set of her mouth, even the rounding of her shoulders.

  He washed his hands before getting two bottles of water from the refrigerator and grabbing the container of leftover cookies. As he set them down on the table, she said, “Thank you for bringing Theo back.”

  It hadn’t been the reunion she’d been hoping for. In her head, she was smart enough to understand trauma, but it must have broken her heart when he reacted the way he did. Ben hadn’t expected physical violence, but he hadn’t been surprised by it, either. Miz Brown said he hadn’t spoken a word the entire time he’d been with her, and he’d done nothing but cling to Ben all the way home—wouldn’t even let go so Ben could climb the fence, then lift him over. Ben hadn’t seen him speak to Brit, either. He was guessing it might be some time before Theo felt safe enough to talk again.

  “Daniel is still with Sweetness Brown, getting a statement,” Ben said at last. “She took a liking to him. He’s going to stay there until Sam shows up. He wants to talk to her, too.”

  “He won’t make her leave, will he?”

  Ben scratched a place where a thorn from a black locust tree had scraped the back of his neck. “Some people might say it’s not an appropriate way for a woman her age to live.”

  Yashi met his gaze directly, reminding him for a moment of the ambitious, confident prosecutor he’d seen in court so many times. “Maybe it’s not some people’s business.”

  “These days everything is someone else’s business.” Even things a man said to the woman he loved in confidence could be taken out of context and used against him in court.

  Having neither time nor the desire to let his thoughts go off in old directions, he took a cookie from the container and ate half of it in one bite. “Sam’s a good guy. He’ll do what’s right. But he can’t just ignore the situation.”

  Her mouth, thinned in a line, suggested she wanted to argue further, but she didn’t. She took a napkin from the holder on the table—a few pieces of wood nailed together crookedly and slathered with red paint, a gift from one of his nieces—and chose her own cookie. “So...we misinterpreted the message spray-painted on the door. It’s not Brit the guy is after. It’s me.”

  She sounded grim and bleak and regretful. It would be a tough revelation for anyone to handle, but especially Yashi. She wasn’t obsessive about her family, but she valued everything about them—every visit, every conversation, every laugh. She understood loss too well and was deeply grateful for what she had. She didn’t take them for granted. It would hurt deeply that she was in any way responsible for what had happened to them, even if it was just drawing the bastard’s attention to them.

  “The pictures the kidnapper stole of Brit...you were also in them. His note and his text didn’t reference her. We just assumed because she’d sneaked out of the house that night, it was her he wanted.” He finished off the cookie and reached for another. “We’ll still talk to the people on our lists that are involved with Lolly and Will, but just to cover the bases. It’s your life we’re going to look into now.”

  If he hadn’t already felt grim, that statement would have made him so. It was a simple fact, but that didn’t stop it from sounding ominous. Odds were, the kidnapper had met Yashi in court when she was with the DA’s office. Her practice in the years since then had been civil cases—adoptions, wills, divorces and so forth. And looking at her time in the DA’s office would certainly include checking out her personal life. Ben and Yashi had been together a year and kept it hidden from everyone. They’d been broken up for five years, and still kept it hidden. And now, in a day or two or three, it would be common knowledge in his world.

  Apparently, her mind had wandered the same direction. Meticulously smoothing the paper napkin in front of her, she remarked, “They’ll ask about my sex life now and then. They’ll want to know if there’s a crazy ex-boyfriend stalking me. I can’t lie, Ben. Not with Will and Lolly’s lives on the line.”

  “Good thing I’m not crazy.” Hi
s attempt at humor falling flat, he met her gaze. “I wouldn’t ask you to lie. Even if their lives weren’t on the line.” Choosing not to let their coworkers and friends know they had been a couple was one thing. Given the nature of their jobs and how often they were thrown together, it had been easier to separate professional from personal. It had given them breathing room to let things go the way fate wanted. But lying in a criminal investigation? Nothing from their shared past was worth withholding information.

  She sighed heavily. “What do we do now?”

  He took a deep breath, and the rankness of his own odor wrinkled his nose. Standing, he picked up his water. “First, I’m going to shower and change. If Daniel and Ben aren’t back by the time I finish, you and I will go into town—” Hearing a grumble from her stomach, he went on. “Get some lunch and go to your office. Since I assume there isn’t a crazy ex-boyfriend stalking you, or you would have filed a report already, we’ll start looking at the people you sent to prison.”

  The reference to her cases made a serious mood darker. He didn’t need to ask who she would put at the top of her list, just as she didn’t need to hear him doubt it. Lloyd Wind wasn’t a bad guy, despite being arrested for—and prosecuted for, and wrongfully convicted of—murder. According to the media, he was free, life was good and he held no grudges against the good people of Cedar County.

  Though, murderer or not, Ben conceded that four years in prison might make a good, innocent man dream of vengeance. But to actually put a plan like that into play? To hurt other innocent people and terrify a little boy? Not likely.

  “I can meet you at my office. I need to clean up, too.” Her voice was stiff, her gaze settled somewhere out the window.

  He took the steps needed to bring him even with her. His height gave him an advantage in the intimidation game even when the other person was standing straight. Seated in a chair, Yashi couldn’t help but think he was looming over her. You always loom, she used to tease. “We just figured out that you’re the real target here. You don’t get to climb into your bright yellow car and take off on country roads alone. Brit has been in protective custody, and she’ll stay there. Theo will have a guard at the hospital. As of this moment, your liberties are greatly restricted as well. Don’t leave this house without me.”

  Her brows rose and her eyes widened as if her hair was about to catch fire, but the offense faded as quickly as it flared. One of the things he’d always admired about her was that her independence was tempered with a healthy dose of common sense. Everyone loved to think they could take care of themselves if need be, but truth was, most needed help. Victims weren’t generally a threat to an attacker; that was part of what made them victims.

  “All right.” She picked up another cookie, flashed a weak smile and bit into it. “Make it quick, would you? I feel the sweat drying and cracking on my skin as I speak.”

  He couldn’t help it. His gaze slid down her face, following the curve of her throat to where the rounded neck of the orange top started. It slid across the strip of fabric that crossed her shoulder, to her left arm, golden, not muscular but not slack, either. He still remembered the incredible pleasure of exploring her skin for the first time, of finding it was that same golden shade everywhere, that it was soft and sensitive to his slightest touch, his lightest kisses. If he touched her right now, he was sure his fingers would recognize her very cells, as if their memory was imprinted in his very cells.

  A surge of heat rushed through him, literally knocking him a step off balance. He needed that shower more than ever—and colder than he’d intended—but he was hesitant to walk away.

  After a moment of his hovering, she shooed him off. “I won’t leave. I won’t open the door to anyone but Daniel or Sam. I’ll sit here and stuff myself with your mother’s cookies and wait. Go.”

  And he went, because he knew she would keep her word. He’d always known that about her, right up to the very second on the witness stand when, in the middle of a major trial, she’d looked him straight in the eye and given him his first clue how wrong he’d been.

  Detective Little Bear, how long have you been friends with Lloyd Wind?

  He’d trusted her, and it had almost killed him. Was he really going to repeat that mistake?

  His answer came as he walked out of the kitchen and turned toward his bedroom. He really was, but only professionally. If anyone knew how to keep his personal and professional lives separate, it was him. He would never trust her personally again.

  * * *

  There’d been no sign of Daniel and Sam by the time Ben came out of the bedroom again, dressed in a fresh uniform, his black hair falling in damp strands over his forehead. He smelled of soap and cologne, something earthy and spicy, reminding Yashi on the surface of warm sun, clear skies and new flowers. Underneath those top notes, though, the scent brought feelings rather than images: springtime, life, renewal, hope.

  Feeling doubly sweaty and stinky in comparison, she followed him out of the house and across the road to his truck. She avoided looking at the side yard, where her sweet Theo had punched her, and at the porch where he’d clung so helplessly and angrily to Brit. She avoided the house, too, as much as was possible, leaving little besides the woods and her Bug to focus on.

  Ben’s truck was four-wheel drive, giving her a step up onto the running board. She was about to slide inside when her gaze narrowed on the Bug’s hood. Slowly she lowered one foot back to the ground, then the other. She circled the front end of the truck and started toward her car but stopped ten feet away.

  “What—” Ben stopped beside her. She felt his gaze connect with her face, then he tracked what she was staring at. “Damn.”

  He said the word very quietly, with very little emotion, which amped up her tension exponentially. When Ben was quietest, he was angriest or most alarmed. If he wasn’t standing right there beside her, she would be running for safety—jumping into her car and locking the doors, taking off like a wild woman down the road, tearing back to his house and hiding in the darkest corner of his bedroom closet.

  “Stay here.”

  She didn’t need to be told. She was being a good victim—standing utterly still, saying nothing—not because she wanted to but because her body was ignoring her brain’s commands to flee. Her emotional side wanted to rush to the car, grab what she could now clearly see was a cell phone, glaringly out of place on the dusty yellow hood, and toss it hard enough into the woods to land in the creek. The only other option her emotions offered was to pretend she hadn’t seen it, pretend it didn’t look like some deadly black electronic omen, to climb into Ben’s truck and demand that he take her home.

  Her brain kept her frozen and still.

  Ben radioed in, requesting assistance, then took some pictures of the scene with his cell phone. He studied the ground for footprints, tire prints, and walked close to the car to stare at the phone for a moment. She watched him do these things, registered them in her rational mind, but didn’t really grasp them. She was too numb.

  The kidnapper had been here—after the ambulance had left, after Quint had taken Brit and Dusty and Booger away, after she and Ben had walked right past the vehicles on their way to his house. The man had walked right up to her car, left the phone, and they hadn’t seen him, heard him or known he was there.

  Oh God.

  Her stomach roiled, the cookies threatening to put in a reappearance. She had felt a lot of things while in Ben’s house, and chief among them was safe. The cottage was the house version of its owner: strong and sturdy, damn near unassailable. It had stood through drought, ice storms, blizzards and tornadoes and never lost so much as a shingle. One time a wildfire had wiped out every tree and blade of grass on the property, but the house hadn’t even blistered.

  And while she had been sitting comfortably within the protection of its walls, with the added security of Ben across the table from her, the man who had kidnapped Wi
ll and Lolly and so badly traumatized Theo had walked right up to her car across the road and left his little gift. Was he a freaking ghost? Would he ever leave them a clue?

  She squared her shoulders. She hated being clueless and helpless, but no way was she going to give in to hopelessness as well. The son of a bitch might get off on tormenting her, or he really might want to trade Will and Lolly for her, which, of course, she would agree to.

  Even though the idea terrified her.

  A vehicle approaching jerked her gaze to the road an instant before Sam’s truck rounded the curve. When it turned into the drive, Daniel was out of the passenger seat before the truck came to a complete stop. “What the hell, Ben?”

  Ben looked at both men. “I figured you’d be coming back this way.” He nodded toward the woods behind the house.

  “There’s a trail from Kenneth Brown’s place,” Sam replied.

  “Three bent blades of grass don’t make a trail.” Daniel’s appearance had suffered most from the trek through the woods. His hair stood on end, his cheeks were red with heat, and his normally neat uniform looked as if he’d slept the last three nights on a hard slab of ground while being poked with sticks. “So this guy just drives right up to the scene of the crime in the middle of the day with a detective unit parked in the driveway and drops off a phone?”

  At the same time, Yashi and Ben said, “No.” She nodded for him to go on.

  “There were no cars. We talked in the kitchen, then I cleaned up, and there weren’t any cars.”

  “Maybe you didn’t notice?” Sam made it a question, but Yashi knew he understood how very little in life escaped Ben’s attention.

  “As close to the road as the house sits, I notice every car. Whoever left the phone had to be on foot.”

  They all turned as one to look at the wood to the east. There was no fence separating it from the road, just an incline that was gentle here beside the driveway, then climbed steeply all the way to the railroad underpass. Not so steeply, though, especially with all the exposed rock face providing handholds, that a person in average shape couldn’t manage it. Then it would be a simple matter of hiking through the trees, the growth far less pervasive than behind the house.