Does she put her trust in him…again?

Lieutenant Jane Vahalik is done with Sergeant Clay Renner. He messed up their romance when he dished out too much male swagger. She gets enough of that on the job to put up with it in her personal life—regardless of how hot Clay may be.

Then her niece is kidnapped, and suddenly he is the only cop Jane trusts to lead the search. The rush of attraction sizzling between them surprises her. So does his determination to prove she’s wrong about him. It could be just the tense situation—or it could be Clay—but Jane’s feelings for him are growing. Maybe they deserve a second chance….

“If you trust me, Jane, you’ve got to help me find the answers I need.”

Clay paused, watching her closely, not wanting to give her another reason to despise him. But the case took priority over their personal situation, so he said the hard thing anyway. “Don’t let your sympathy for your brother-in-law blind you.”

Her expression changed, and he felt like a ruthless bastard. He didn’t take back what he’d said, though. His first priority had to be that missing little girl. In the absence of cooperation from her father, Drew Wilson, Clay needed Jane’s. It was that simple. This wasn’t some kind of competition, with him needing to prove she was on his side.

He didn’t like that he had to wonder if he was lying to himself.

He softened his tone. “Help me, Jane.”

She took what seemed to be an angry swipe at her eyes, and after a moment gave a nod. “For my niece,” she said tightly. “What is it you want to know?”

Was it that easy? Was she surrendering because she really did trust him—or because her loyalty to her niece was more powerful than her also steadfast loyalty to her brother-in-law? Clay suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that.

Dear Reader,

I really, truly never meant to make The Mysteries of Angel Butte series more than a trilogy. But I was grabbed by a character who didn’t stay in her secondary role. Jane Vahalik intrigued me from her appearance in the first book (Bringing Maddie Home, November 2013)—a woman succeeding in a primarily male field, and, at that, a woman whose very womanly appearance contradicts her seeming toughness. What made her the woman she became? Is she really as confident as she appears? And what kind of man would have enough confidence himself to love a woman who handles a gun as well as he does, participates in dangerous raids and supervises police detectives?

I’ve found in the past that, in most books, the focus is sharpest on hero or heroine, but not both. Partly, it’s tough to balance two people trying to overcome significant emotional or life challenges—especially if, as in many of my books, there’s a suspense subplot as well. I think when I started this book, I expected Jane to be at the center. I fell in love with Clay Renner right away, though. This is a guy who fell in love, head over heels, for the first time in his life when he met Jane. But he was raised to believe in quite differing male/female roles, and assuming that he’d love a woman who was content to support him and stay home to raise their children. Only a few dates into their relationship, he blows it badly and loses Jane.

When this book opens, months later, the two of them are participating in a police raid. Jane will be one of the first officers to go in, and Clay can’t deal with it. And yet...he aches to become a man worthy of her love and trust. He has a heck of a dilemma! Meantime, I’ve undermined all Jane’s hard-won confidence by endangering her family, exposing her vulnerability when she most wants to be strong.

I hope you love these two people as much as I came to. And to understand why, well, I’m writing yet one more book set in Angel Butte, Oregon. That under-the-radar runaway-youth shelter kept calling my name. I imagined an alum whose life was saved by the shelter—a deeply wounded boy grown up to be a very controlled man who has returned to Angel Butte to protect the shelter and the people running it. Look for that to come out later in 2014.

That will be the last book! I swear. I’m pretty sure.... Really.

Good reading,

Janice Kay Johnson

Cop by Her Side

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Mills & Boon Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

For Pat (aka Alexis Morgan), the best of friends and a fantastic plotting partner

Contents

Dear Reader

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

LIEUTENANT JANE VAHALIK’S skin prickled from her awareness that she was being watched. She didn’t have to look around to know who had his eyes on her.

It seemed an excellent time to fade away into the early-evening darkness, circling behind her big black SUV to change clothes in preparation for tonight’s assault. Others had been taking turns to do the same; earlier, two designated officers had returned to town to collect the additional weaponry the group would need, as well as body armor and black clothing. Much as Jane had hated the idea of a fellow law enforcement officer—male, of course—letting himself into her apartment and pawing through her drawers, there hadn’t seemed to be a good alternative. Her GMC Yukon was one of the more conspicuous vehicles collected out here, and going and returning unnoticed was essential. Besides, any of the guys might have hated having her in his home as much as she did the other way around. And did she want to know that a detective under her command had an impressive porn collection or decorated his living room with a beer-can pyramid or had a kitchen or bathroom so filthy it would turn her stomach? Really, really, no. At least her place was clean.

The Yukon was currently backed into a dirt turnaround, shielded from the main road by a thicket of scrubby trees and blackberries. Rusting barbed wire, only a few feet away, marked the beginning of a pasture holding a couple of horses, one obviously elderly and swaybacked, and, of all things, a donkey. Now she heard a few far-off rustles, followed by a whuffle from the darkness. Animals. They would be supremely uninterested in seeing her seminaked.

Knowing how brief her privacy might be and listening for human footsteps, Jane hastily shed the clothes she had been wearing for two days now, since she’d learned that police chief Raynor’s nephew was being held hostage. Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she bundled them up. She’d managed a shower this morning at Raynor’s house, but had had to put the same clothes back on. Even if she’d been comfortable asking, she couldn’t have borrowed from Julia Raynor, the police chief’s sister-in-law and the boy’s mother; Julia had a slender dancer’s body, while Jane...did not.

She had stepped into the black trousers first and was tugging down the hem of a long-sleeved black T-shirt when she heard the crunch of a footstep.

“Jane.”

She closed her eyes for a moment in resignation. “Sergeant.”

There was a brief second of silence. She had no doubt Clay Renner’s jaw was clenching in annoyance. An attempt to distance herself, her formality was bound to irritate him, and he surely wouldn’t like any reminder that she outranked him, even if they were from different law enforcement agencies.

He stepped around the fender of the Yukon. The night wasn’t quite ink dark yet, but getting there. The moon, only a sliver in the sky, was their friend. Given virtually no cover during the approach, getting half a dozen people in place around the barn where they believed the thirteen-year-old boy was being held hostage would have been a heck of a lot more challenging under the bright silver light of a full moon.

Jane could make Clay out, barely. He was really just a darker bulk against the indistinct background, but she didn’t need to see him to picture him. She’d dated Clay Renner half a dozen times almost a year ago. He was big, athletic and surprisingly light and agile on his feet given his impressive muscles, with a roughcast, angular face that was very male without being handsome. Blue eyes that were too observant. His light brown, sun-streaked hair always looked as if it was in need of a haircut, but felt like the heaviest of silk slipping through her fingers. At thirty-six, he was two years older than she. Idiot that she was, she still remembered his birth date.

“Are you trying to prove something?” he asked, voice low and intense. “That you can do anything the rest of us can do?”

This was why she’d quit seeing Clay.

“I can do anything the rest of you can do,” she said levelly. “And damn well, too.”

He made an exasperated sound in his throat. “You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, she did. “No, I don’t,” she said perversely, reaching for the vest.

The weight settled on her shoulders. Of course, the blasted thing didn’t fit the way it was supposed to. Tactical vests and body armor that actually fit women’s bodies were being manufactured. Unfortunately, the Angel Butte Police Department had yet to purchase any. Of course, a vest that accommodated her inconveniently large breasts was otherwise way too large and too long. She consoled herself that her abdomen was covered.

“You’re going to get stuck going through that goddamn window,” Clay snapped. “That’s what I mean.”

“I’m smaller than the rest of you.”

“Except for your, uh, chest.”

The mealymouthed description surprised her. “Don’t you mean tits?” she said, the heat of anger searing her cheeks. “Or— No, it’s a rack, isn’t it?”

She was pretty sure she heard his molars grinding this time.

“I told you it was nothing but stupid male posturing and I was sorry.”

Like she could forget the way she’d overheard him talking about her to some of his buddies, all fellow cops.

The anger disappeared as fast as it had risen, leaving her feeling...hollow. She shook her head, even though he probably couldn’t see her. “The fact that you’re given to stupid male posturing is enough in itself, Clay. Let’s drop it. I’m a cop. I have breasts. Get over it.”

“You don’t give anyone a second chance, do you, Jane?” His voice was rough.

“You know what I heard was just the icing on the cake. The fact is, you’d never be comfortable having a relationship with a woman cop. I don’t suppose you raised a champagne glass to me when you heard I’d been promoted, did you?”

Silence.

“Didn’t think so.” She tossed her discarded clothing into the back of the SUV, holstered her .38 Ruger and closed the rear door as quietly as possible. “You’d better get changed, too. Your white shirt kind of stands out.”

That wasn’t a lie, even if mostly she was trying to get rid of him. Earlier she’d seen he had on well-worn jeans and a snug-fitting white T-shirt that revealed powerful biceps and pecs. The better to advertise, she’d thought cynically.

“Listen to sense, will you? You being there will distract the rest of us. We’ll all be worried about keeping you safe.”

Was she supposed to be touched? she wondered wearily. “No, Clay, you won’t all be distracted. Astonishingly enough, Captain McAllister and Chief Raynor, at least, respect my abilities. And you know what? I’d really like it if you wouldn’t worry about me.”

He made an inarticulate sound of frustration, snapped, “On your head be it,” and stomped away.

Jane didn’t move to follow him immediately. Instead she gazed toward the dark pasture and struggled to center herself. Pictured the small window she had studied earlier through binoculars. Began to walk herself step-by-step through what she had to do. Shatter the glass. Toss in a flash bang. Sweep the shards off the frame. Hoist herself—

“Is Sergeant Renner going to be a problem?” asked Captain Colin McAllister from only a few feet away.

She gasped and swung to face him. “Damn. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I can see why,” he said drily.

It was Colin who last year had promoted her to lieutenant, heading the investigative division directly beneath him. Colin, a man who bore some physical resemblance to Clay Renner, enough to, on occasion, push her buttons.

Well, he’d never looked twice at her, not that way. The upside was he treated her with unwavering respect for her abilities. Downside? She was thirty-four years old and had yet to meet a man who treated her with respect and wanted her as a woman. She’d begun to suspect it wasn’t happening.

And was that so bad? She loved her job, and the relationships she’d tried to have had left her pretty sour on men anyway.

“Did you hear all that?” she asked.

“Afraid so. I didn’t want to interrupt. Sorry. When you recommended Sergeant Renner for this team, I didn’t realize you had a history.”

“Not much of one.” She shrugged to suggest how little she cared. “Impulse on both our parts. As you may have gathered, he’s a sexist pig.”

Colin chuckled. “Or intensely protective of you.”

She felt like a cap had been pulled out of a bottle of champagne—or a bottle rocket. “So protective,” she said fiercely, “I walked into the squad room to hear him describing my, er, attributes and telling everyone in earshot what he intended to do to me.”

She could make out his grimace. “Yeah, that would do it.”

Feeling sick, Jane said, “Now, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“I assumed you took some guff, being a woman in a field that’s still primarily male and testosterone driven. Let’s say I’m not surprised. Disappointed in Sergeant Renner, though.” He shook his head. “He’s been strictly professional here.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested we call him if I hadn’t been confident he would be.”

Colin pushed a button on his watch and it briefly lit up. “Less than an hour. You okay with your role?”

“You mean, going in the window? Sure.”

“Good enough.” He nodded and melted away, leaving her with a whole lot of regrets involving both men. Why couldn’t there be one man who both wanted and respected her?

* * *

CLAY WISHED HE’D been feeding Jane a load of crap, but the truth was, he didn’t think he was going to be able to turn off his awareness that she was one of the first members of the assault team in. Maybe the first member.

Jane Vahalik, no more than five foot four. Jane, with a sweet face and an incredibly lush body. A centerfold body, not a tough-as-nails cop body.

And, goddamn it, he knew she was good. She’d spent time on the multijurisdictional drug enforcement team, so this sure as hell wasn’t the first raid she’d participated in. From what he’d heard, she had played a solid part in the ugly stuff that had gone down last year in Angel Butte that had resulted in the police chief resigning in disgrace and a succession of reputedly crooked officers getting the ax. There was no way she’d earned the promotion to lieutenant by sleeping with her boss, as he’d heard suggested. If nothing else, Colin McAllister had the reputation as a straight arrow. Plus, he’d been living with another woman, one whom he had since married.

Knowing all of that didn’t help. Clay had been raised to believe in traditional gender roles. His father was a domineering man, his mother gentle and clearly subservient. Clay supported equal rights and never had any trouble working with women. But he’d tended to date women who didn’t challenge him in any meaningful way, and in his hazy view of the future, he saw a wife who’d stay at home with the kids, making her life about him.

He still didn’t know why he found Jane, a woman who’d excelled in a macho profession, so compelling. But, damn it, she’d gotten to him from the first time he’d met her. He’d liked her. He’d been living for the chance to get her into his bed. The really shitty part was, he’d deserved to be dumped. He still winced at the memory of having let himself be goaded into talking about her as if she was nothing but another piece of ass while bragging about his own sexual prowess. That moment—when he’d turned and seen her face—was one of the worst of his life.

That was it. She turned and walked out. He’d left groveling messages on her voice mail. She hadn’t returned them. Pride and his own awareness that the wrongdoing was his kept him from leaning on her doorbell. Also, as a cop, he was especially sensitive to any behavior that would smack of stalking.

He’d spotted her from a distance a few times, but when she’d seen him, she’d turned in the other direction. The closest had been one day in the corridor at the courthouse. The way her expression had gone blank when their eyes met had hit him hard.

And yes, he knew he should have kept his mouth shut tonight. He had kept his mouth shut while he, Raynor, McAllister and Jane, as the ranking officers, had planned the assault. He wouldn’t embarrass her like that.

But if he had to see her go down—

Clay swore softly under his breath as he ripped off his white T-shirt and pulled on a black one followed by the vest, which he topped with a black windbreaker that said POLICE across the back.

It might kill him if he saw her reeling back, blood blossoming. If he had to watch as the light went out of her hazel eyes.

He swore again, more savagely this time. He might really die if he couldn’t keep his head in the game.

And he didn’t know if he could do it.

Clay never liked waiting. This time was worse than usual. Jane was at the top of his list of reasons he hated everything about this operation, but she wasn’t the only thing. He had worn, with pride, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department uniform every day for years. He might not wear a uniform to work anymore, but he still clipped the badge to his belt nearly every morning. Finding out at least two of the kidnappers were Butte County deputies eroded everything he’d believed about the men with whom he worked. The one that really got him was Bart Witten, a detective in the major crimes unit, a man Clay had worked closely with in the past. Not a friend, but Clay had trusted him. And now it was looking as though the son of a bitch had been willing to participate in the kidnapping of a kid to put pressure on a witness in the trial of a drug lord.

It sucked to know he might have to shoot either of the men who wore the same uniform he did, but he couldn’t afford to hesitate. He knew that.

This operation was high risk for a lot of other reasons, too. They weren’t sure how many men were inside the barn. They’d seen four, but there might be more. Getting close without being spotted would be tricky. Three different entry points for his team meant a real possibility they’d shoot each other by accident.

The fact that Jane was lead on one of those entry points made his head swell with fury and frustration and fear.

To make it all perfect, the creeps inside were holding a kid. A vulnerable boy who could get hit by cross fire even if someone didn’t try to take him out on purpose.

And, oh, yeah, Chief Alec Raynor, in charge of this whole freaking operation, loved that kid, his nephew.

“Just the way I want to make a living,” Clay muttered, to nobody, but another shape near him turned.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he growled, identifying Abe Cherney, who was with ABPD rather than the sheriff’s department. Cherney was a big guy who, with Carson Tucker, a sheriff’s deputy, would be using the battering ram to break down the double doors into the barn. “You ready to go?” he asked, and Cherney gave him a thumbs-up.

* * *

EVERY SENSE HEIGHTENED, Clay stood in the darkness, intensely disliking his role. Hovering in back, command central, he would make the final decision. Although they had a warrant based on a tentative witness identification of Tim Hansen as the deputy who’d picked up thirteen-year-old Matt Raynor at his house, everyone here would be happier if they had confirmation the kid really was being held inside the barn before they went in with guns blazing. Some skinny ABPD officer who looked about sixteen—Ryan Dunlap—and Jane were the two who were taking a huge risk to try for that confirmation.

And goddamn—Clay wanted to be one of the first in the door, not the last. But there was no way he could get his shoulders through either of the windows, and Raynor and McAllister had claimed prime entry positions.

It was Dunlap’s voice Clay heard first through the radio, next thing to soundless.

“Can’t see much. Back of someone’s head sitting at a table, a corner of an interior wall. Sorry.”

Then Jane’s whisper, chilling him. “Two—no, three guys at a table. Playing cards. There’s a door— Wait.”

Oh, shit. Oh, hell. All one of them had to do was turn his head and he’d see her face in the window. Clay’s jaw hurt and the tendons strained in his neck.

She’d told him not to worry about her. She couldn’t have made it any clearer that there was no do-over for him.

Didn’t matter. The need to keep her safe raged in him.

Head in the game, he reminded himself, trying to take slow, deep breaths. He wouldn’t do her or Raynor’s kid in there any good if he didn’t get in the zone that would let him shutter the emotion and do what had to be done.

“It’s opening,” Jane continued. “Man coming out. That makes four—” She stopped abruptly. “Kid on a cot.” Soft as her voice was, he heard the triumph. “Looks like tape over his mouth.”

Clay closed his eyes. But he thumbed his radio and said it. “Go.”

* * *

GLASS SHATTERED. FLASH BANGS. Oh, Jesus, gunshots. Jane. The motion-activated light above the barn doors came on as Cherney and Tucker charged forward and smashed the battering ram into the doors. McAllister and Raynor were poised to enter.

Wait, Jane. Goddamn it, wait until there’s some confusion. Don’t play heroine.

At the next rush, the doors cracked and fell open. Already running, Clay was only steps behind McAllister.

Inside the barn was chaos. Trapped in stalls, horses kicked and screamed. Men were shouting. A couple of voices yelled, “This is the police! Hands in the air.” The light was unnaturally bright. Clay made himself slow down in his head, see that the broad aisle opened into a space probably designed for a veterinarian or farrier to work. He saw only one room separate from the stalls—a tack room? Smells were sharp in his nostrils: hay, manure, beer and burgers, gunpowder, fear. As reported, a group had been sitting around a card table, already kicked over. Clay saw Raynor vault it. Metal folding chairs were flying, tangling underfoot.

Nearly in front of him, Carson Tucker went down, clutching his belly and screaming something. No time to stop.

There was Jane—alive, yes!—but someone swung a chair at her. As she ducked away, it connected with her shoulder and knocked her to her knees. Even as Clay fired, he saw her gun bark, too, and the guy collapsed, sprawling hideously over the chair. She didn’t even look at Clay, only swung in a circle with her weapon held ready.

A burst of gunfire from the small room brought Clay’s head around and an expletive escaped him. That was where she’d seen the kid.

Don’t be stupid. Make sure it’s secured in here first.

They all had assignments. Raynor had gone after the boy.

Like Jane, Clay was turning carefully, looking for targets. All four were being cuffed or lay still on the floor. Clay checked to be sure the guy he’d shot no longer held a weapon, then crouched by him. His eyes were open and sightless. Dead. And no wonder—his body was riddled with bullet holes.

Clay was the closest to the open door that led into the tack room. He spun in, weapon extended, and found two more bad guys down, one dead, the other bleeding and cuffed. The kid was alive but bloody. Chief Raynor was trying to yank the boy’s T-shirt off, hampered by the duct tape binding his hands and ankles. Clay had forgotten the poor kid wore a cast on one arm already.

“Where are you hurt?” Raynor was saying in a voice Clay hadn’t heard from him before.

“I’m okay.” The boy’s voice was thin and high. “I’m okay.” And, damn, the skin where the duct tape had been ripped off his face was painfully red.

Clay saw the moment relief hit Raynor. “I need a knife,” he said hoarsely.

“I’ve got one,” Clay said. He’d worn a backup .38 on one ankle and a knife sheathed on the other. He pushed up his pant leg, took out the knife and sliced the duct tape, freeing the boy’s ankles and then his hands.

Matt Raynor leaped into his uncle’s arms, clutching on with his one good arm while the chief grabbed tight and bowed his head over the boy’s.

Clay backed away, feeling an unfamiliar sting behind his eyelids.

It was all over but the mop-up.

* * *

WITH THE TAILGATE of her Yukon open again, Jane peeled off the vest. She felt...weird.

She was in the here and now, but every blink brought a miniflashback. The effect was like a strobe light.

Dark, slow shapes moving in the pasture—horses.

Diving in the window, shards of glass ripping at her vest and clothing. Fear.

Blue, white and red lights swirling atop aide cars.

Knowing she couldn’t totally evade the chair swung at her. Dodging, feeling it connect.

She gingerly fingered her shoulder and upper arm and knew there’d be a bruise. A whopper.

The weapon jumping in her hand. Blood. Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall.

Men’s voices on the other side of her SUV, a rumble that might be comprehensible if she could bring herself out of this fugue state.

The slackness of death. Death she had caused.

Jane heard herself make a sound. Either she had killed a man tonight—or Clay Renner had. Or both of them.

“You okay?”

Of course it was his voice. Of course she hadn’t heard him coming.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said sharply.

“You ever shot anybody before?”

The angle at which she thrust her jaw forward made her neck hurt. Pride was a powerful force. Even so, she hesitated. “No,” she admitted, grudgingly.

He swung the back door of the Yukon wider open and half sat on the back, one booted foot braced on the ground. “I have,” he said, tone flat, reminding her of his military service. “This is the first time as a cop I’ve killed a man.”

“You sure you did? I thought I killed a man.” The words were no sooner out than she cringed at the hostility in her voice. What? Was she turning this into a competition?

And what did that make her?

Clay didn’t say anything for a minute, only watched her. Uneasily, she wondered how much he could see.

Finally he stirred. “The M.E. will let us know eventually. My guess is, we killed him a couple of times over.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and saw it all over again.

Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall. She swallowed and opened her eyes.

“We all hope we’ll never have to do that,” Clay said, in a tone so gentle she didn’t recognize it coming from him.

Jane was suddenly horrified at how terribly she was behaving. If he could be decent, she could, too.

“No,” she said. “Or yes. I never wanted—” At the taste of bile, she had to swallow again. She turned her back on Clay.

The faint sound of the Yukon sighing made her realize he’d risen to his feet and stood behind her.

“Jane.”

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered.

A pause. “Why?” His voice, too, was so soft he wouldn’t have been heard by anyone more than a foot or two away.

“Because—I can’t talk to you.”

“You don’t trust me.” Now he sounded harsh.

“No.” She steadied. “I can’t.”

“You can, but you’ll never believe it, will you?”

She held herself together by pure force of will. “No.”

It was as if they were in a bubble of silence. Everything around them seemed far away. Jane didn’t move, wasn’t sure she breathed.

Then the bubble popped and she heard him walking away. One of the aide cars was pulling out, accelerating. She realized she should have been out there while the wounded were loaded, not hiding here in the darkness.

Following Clay, she reached a second aide car and saw that Ryan Dunlap had been hoisted aboard on a gurney. He was swearing, an impressive litany that made her smile despite everything. Thank God he’d regained consciousness. Apparently the bullet had only grazed his skull.

She leaned into the back of the ambulance. “Headache?”

“Like I got slammed with a two-by-four.” He swore a little more. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” Then, “Is it true? The kid’s okay?”

“It’s true. He’s safe. We did our job.”

One of the EMTs hopped to the ground. “Lieutenant, we have to go.”

“See you at the hospital,” she told Ryan, and stepped back as the doors were slammed and, a moment later, the aide car pulled away.

She watched it drive away for a minute, then trudged toward the barn, wishing Sergeant Clay Renner wasn’t sure to be there.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAY WAS SITTING behind the desk in the captain’s office frowning over a weekly report he’d been too busy yesterday to study, the reason he’d come in on a Saturday he’d intended to take off, when he heard raised voices and a scuffle in the squad room. Nothing unusual in that, but he glanced out the open doorway of the office anyway in case someone needed a hand.

“What are you doing? Why are you grabbing me?” A man was trying to explode upward as one of the detectives pressed him into a chair.

He wasn’t the usual lowlife being hauled in. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, thin and maybe earnest when he wasn’t distraught. More like a computer geek than anything. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had dark, curly hair poking out every which way.

There wasn’t a lot of help to be had out there right now in case this guy went off the deep end, so Clay headed toward the disturbance, cutting his way between desks. “What’s going on?” he asked, when he got close.

“I just want to report my wife and kid missing, and nobody will listen!” the computer nerd said frantically. “We need an Amber Alert or—I don’t know. Something.”

“We’ll listen,” Clay said, “but you’ve got to calm down so we can understand what happened.”

Wild eyes pinned Clay for a couple of heartbeats, and then the guy sagged. Bent forward with a moan until his elbows were braced on his knees and his head hung.

The detective, Steve Atwood, cautiously removed his hands and, when the guy didn’t erupt into motion, stepped back. After a moment, he took his own seat behind the desk. He was nearing retirement, solid but not imaginative and not real big on empathy, in Clay’s opinion.

“All right, sir,” Atwood said. “Let’s start with your name.”

It looked like he could handle it now, and Clay turned to leave them to it.

“Andrew Wilson,” he heard the guy say. “Drew Wilson. My wife is Melissa.”

Garden-variety names, but Clay stopped where he was. He’d heard those names before.

“It’s my daughter Brianna.” The name rode a dry sob. “She’s only seven. She’s with Lissa.”

Lissa. Drew. Bree...and Alexis.

Stunned, Clay turned around, taking in this man’s face. He was Jane Vahalik’s brother-in-law. Had to be. She’d talked about him and her sister and the nieces she loved.

Drew Wilson looked up and saw Clay’s stare. He didn’t even seem to question it. “Where can they be?”

“Your other daughter,” Clay said. “Alexis. Where’s she?”

“Alexis.” He tore at his hair. “She’s... A neighbor has her.” Confusion altered his features, and Clay realized Atwood was looking at him in puzzlement, too. “You know her?” the guy said.

“I know Lieutenant Vahalik. She’s talked about all of you.”

The softening he saw rubbed Clay the wrong way. He had a sister-in-law who was a nice enough woman, but he knew his face didn’t look like that when someone mentioned her.

“I would have gone to her, but we don’t live in Angel Butte.”

“Okay,” Clay said, shoving down a reaction he knew to be irrational. He had a hell of a lot of feelings for Jane Vahalik that fell on the hopeless to downright crazy spectrum. Seeing her again two weeks ago for the joint operation had stirred up too much. “Tell us why you think your wife and daughter are missing.”

The story poured out. They’d gone for a brief errand, to Rite Aid in town. Melissa really hadn’t wanted to take Brianna because the store had a whole aisle of toys, not to mention the candy, and Bree would beg, but his wife had finally succumbed and let her go along. Alexis was still napping, so she’d stayed home with her dad.

“Lissa called me on the way back. I’d asked her to pick up some stuff for athlete’s foot.” He started to lift one foot as if he was going to take off his shoe and show them his problem, but his thoughts moved on and his foot thumped back down. “She’d forgotten it and she wanted to know if it was important enough to go back for. I said no, I could pick some up the next time I went out. She said okay and then she—” He struggled for words. “She yelled. And I heard Bree screaming something like, ‘Mommy, what are you doing?’ or ‘What are they doing?’ And then the phone went dead.”

Breath shuddered in and out a few times before he resumed his story. He’d tried calling his wife back, but the phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. He tried again; same thing. Although alarmed, he figured she’d pull in any minute. Melissa had probably dropped the phone and couldn’t reach it.

Only, she hadn’t shown up. He’d waited for a bit, although it wasn’t clear whether that was ten minutes or thirty. Finally, he got his younger kid up, put her in the family’s second car and took her to the neighbor’s. “We’re on an acreage,” he explained. Clay knew, pretty close, where the address he gave was. It was an area of nice, modern homes that were each on two-and-a-half or five-acre lots. Clay couldn’t have afforded any of them on his salary from the county. He tried to remember what Jane had said the brother-in-law did for a living, but failed and didn’t want to interrupt him now.

Drew went on to explain he’d then gone home again to be sure Melissa hadn’t showed up, after which he’d driven her logical route to the outskirts of Angel Butte where the Rite Aid was located. He didn’t spot her Toyota Venza anywhere.

Clay made another mental note. If he wasn’t mistaken, the Venza, a crossover, had been new in 2013. It wasn’t the most expensive vehicle on the road, but it didn’t come cheap, either. The Wilsons must have money. He wondered what Drew drove.

Drew had called his wife’s mobile phone half a dozen more times. He’d driven alternate routes. He’d gone home again to find she still hadn’t returned. Scared, he’d come to the sheriff’s department, from which, ironically, the Rite Aid could be seen.

“Let’s back up here,” Atwood said. “Any chance your wife is prone to impulse shopping expeditions? Say she remembered Target is having a back-to-school sale, and since she had your daughter with you she decided to stop?”

“What about the last thing I heard on the phone?”

“Maybe another driver cut her off.”

Drew shook his head and kept shaking it. He seemed to have forgotten Clay had propped himself against a nearby vacant desk and was listening without intruding himself. He didn’t kid himself that Atwood had also forgotten he was there.

“Maybe she didn’t call you back because she was annoyed at you,” the detective suggested in a tone of “it happens to all of us.” “She as good at sulking as my wife is?”

“No!” Drew scowled. “She’s—” He seemed to fumble with how to describe his wife. “She’s...”

“Fiery, huh?” Atwood’s eyebrows rose. “Say, you didn’t have an argument before she left, did you? Maybe she’s pissed because you expected her to buy something like athlete’s foot powder? Or because you pressed her to take the kid when she didn’t want to?”

An expression crossed Wilson’s face so fast, Clay couldn’t quite pin it down. “She didn’t want to take her,” he admitted, sounding as if he wished he didn’t have to. “I told you. But...it wasn’t like that. Anyway, she wouldn’t disappear if she was mad at me. Especially not with Brianna.”

Clay was getting a bad feeling about this. He excused himself to check on recently reported vehicular accidents, abandoned cars and the like while Atwood nailed down more details, especially a more precise time frame. Exactly when had Melissa called? Three hours ago or forty-five minutes ago?

The bad feeling got a hell of a lot worse when he reached the desk officer, who immediately said, “Yeah, there’s been one possible fatality accident.”

Jane’s sister, dead? Shaken, Clay learned that Melissa Wilson had suffered a head injury and had been transported to the hospital in critical condition. Deputies were investigating the cause of the accident.

Clay called a deputy who was actually at the accident site.

“A kid?” He sounded appalled. “There was no kid in the vehicle when it was spotted.” He swore. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Clay said grimly. “Unless there’s another explanation—or we’re being fed a line of bull by the father.”

He strode across the squad room to where Drew Wilson sat with his head buried in his hands.

“Mr. Wilson,” Clay said formally, “do you have a home phone?”

Jane’s brother-in-law straightened, having aged even in the past five minutes. “Sure, but Lissa wouldn’t have called it.”

“I’m afraid,” Clay told him, “there was an accident involving a Toyota Venza registered to you and your wife. The woman driver has been taken to the hospital. Last we know, she was unconscious. A police deputy has been trying to reach you, but unfortunately would have used your home phone rather than a cell number.”

“The hospital?” Drew repeated numbly. But then his face changed and he lunged to his feet. “Bree. Is she okay?”

Clay didn’t like saying this, but there was no alternative. “Your daughter wasn’t in the vehicle, Mr. Wilson.” Seeing the horror in a father’s eyes, he raised his hand. “It’s likeliest that your wife dropped her off somewhere before the accident. At a friend’s house, perhaps?” He hesitated. “Especially given that the Venza wasn’t found between your home and Rite Aid.”

“But...I heard Bree when she called.” His wild glance swung between Clay and Detective Atwood. “I know I heard her!”

* * *

JANE WAS CHEWING the hide off two detectives who had allowed half the citizens of Angel Butte to tromp through a crime scene when her desk phone rang. She gave it an irritated glance. She’d asked not to be interrupted and decided to let it go.

“And what about the log?” She stabbed the document in question with her forefinger. “I know for a fact that patrol officer Gwen Schneider walked through the house. Perhaps you can explain what she contributed to the investigation.”

Kyle Griffin’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times.

She leaned forward. They’d get back to the reason why a pretty young patrol officer had been given a tour of a nasty home-invasion scene. Now, though, she turned the log around so they could see the list of names with times of arrival and departure. Both sets of eyes were drawn irresistibly to it. “Perhaps,” she said with silky menace, “you can point out to me where her name is.”

“How did you know—?” Phil Henry was stupid enough to blurt.

Her cell phone began to ring. She shot it an exasperated glance, having already ignored a call from her brother-in-law, then felt a weird clench in her chest when she saw the displayed name. Clay Renner. Somehow she’d never deleted his phone number from her address book. Why would he be calling in the middle of the afternoon?

She wanted to mute the damn phone and ignore him—but he was one of her counterparts at the sheriff’s department.

Jane blistered the two detectives sitting across from her with a stare, said, “Excuse me, I need to take this,” and picked up the phone. “Vahalik.”

“Jane, Clay Renner here.”

Conscious of her audience, she said stiffly, “Sergeant.”

“This is about your sister.” He hesitated. “Your brother-in-law came in to report her and their daughter Brianna missing. Melissa’s vehicle was located in a ditch. I’m at the scene. She suffered a head injury, Jane. She’s in ICU, still unconscious. I’m afraid I don’t know more. I’m focusing on another problem. The girl is missing.”

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Drew... Is he all right? What about Alexis?”

“Alexis is safe with a neighbor.”

“Did anyone see the accident?”

“No. A young couple on a day hike popped out of the woods just down the road from the SUV. They say another car had stopped. When the man called, ‘Hey, is anybody hurt?’ they heard a car door slam and the vehicle sped off. Fortunately, they were carrying a cell phone. They didn’t try to move your sister once they realized she was unresponsive.”

“If the other car caused the accident and the driver freaked...?” Even in shock, she knew that was stupid.

“A logical assumption, except that we’ve so far been unable to locate Brianna. Your brother-in-law went home to get his wife’s address book and lists of names and phone numbers for Brianna’s summer day camp and her first-grade classroom. Mr. Wilson started with the kids he thought she might be friends with, but so far no one has heard from her or Melissa today. We still haven’t given up hope that your sister dropped her off somewhere—a friend’s mother might have called to see if they could take her on a picnic or something that means they’re not answering their phone. But at this point—”

“You have no idea where she is.” Oh, God. She sounded so harsh.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lieutenant.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“Working on the assumption that she was a passenger when the accident occurred, we’re organizing a search. Volunteers are already arriving.”

“I don’t know whether to help or to go to the hospital.”

“Your brother-in-law is now at the hospital.”

She swallowed, trying to think. “Then I’ll come help search. If Bree’s hurt or hiding for some reason, she’d recognize my voice.”

“All right,” Clay said. He told her where the SUV had gone off the road, and when she asked what Melissa could have been doing there, he said only, “At this point, we don’t know. You okay to drive?”

“Of course I am!”

“Then I’ll look for you.” He disconnected.

Jane pushed her chair back and rose, looking at the two men in front of her. “You disgraced your shields today. Straight out of the academy, you should have known how to secure a crime scene. You are both on suspension until we can discuss this further.”

They argued. She told them to go home, then detoured by Captain McAllister’s office, found him there—another workaholic—and told him what she’d done and why, and where she was going.

He listened and shook his head. “Family comes first,” he said, and asked if she should be driving.

She stared at him. He was serious. Colin McAllister was more like Clay Renner than she’d wanted to admit. She couldn’t imagine either man would have asked that question if she’d been male.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, and left.

* * *

EVEN AS SHE DROVE, Jane puzzled over what Lissa had been doing out on 253rd, a little-traveled back road that would, heading west as Lissa had apparently been, have ultimately bisected a somewhat busier road that meandered between Angel Butte and Sun River far to the north. If she’d wanted to go to Sun River, though, it would have made a lot more sense to backtrack east to Highway 97, the major north-south route. And there were way more logical ways to return home or even to go into Angel Butte.

Okay, people did live along 253rd, so she might have taken Bree to some friend’s house out there. But then, if she’d already dropped Bree off, why wasn’t she heading back toward home? And—there weren’t that many houses out here. Probably fortunately, as Jane was ignoring posted speed limits.

Bear Creek ran on the right of the road, which was several miles outside the Angel Butte city limits; she vaguely recalled a picnic area that shut down in the winter. She passed the decrepit sign for a long-since-closed resort and recalled a shooting that had happened there last December involving Colin’s wife, Nell. Maybe this stretch of woods had some kind of bad karma.

Slowing at the sight of a dozen vehicles ahead parked along the shoulder, she shook off thoughts of Lissa’s motives. Lissa would open her eyes anytime and tell them what she was doing here. Jane loved her sister fiercely even though she didn’t always like her. She refused to even consider the possibility the head injury was severe enough that Lissa wouldn’t be opening her eyes.

She parked at the end of the long line of cars, pickups and SUVs, then locked her vehicle and hurried forward. The burble of the creek, running low in late summer, and voices calling from the woods drifted to her ears as she rushed along the pavement toward the closer sound of other voices ahead.

Several men stood just outside the yellow tape surrounding her sister’s red Toyota. Aware one of those men was Clay and that he’d turned when he heard her hurried footsteps, Jane initially ignored them to gape at her sister’s Venza, a sporty crossover. Ditch had been a misnomer. Really, it was more of a bank that dropped toward the creek. It appeared as if a cluster of small alders and shrubbery was all that had kept the Venza from plunging another ten feet down into Bear Creek.

Clay separated himself from the group and approached her, his blue eyes intent on her face. He wore chinos and a polo shirt. She wondered if he’d been working today anyway, or if he had been called in. But no, she realized right away—that made no sense. Like her, he worked major crimes, not traffic accidents. In fact...what was he doing here?

“Jane,” he said with a nod.

As always, she reacted to his physical presence in a way that aggravated her. Even his stride was so blasted male.

“Have you learned anything?” she asked, although she knew better. He’d have called if her sister had regained consciousness or a search-and-rescue volunteer had found her niece.

“I’m afraid not.” He sounded regretful. “We’ve been going over the ground around the vehicle without finding a damn thing.” Lines furrowed his forehead. “We need to find the driver of the other car that stopped. I’d hoped for a tire impression that would give us something to go on to locate it.”

“Can’t the hikers you said called tell you a make and color?”

He grimaced. “They think it was a car rather than a pickup or SUV. But it was apparently parked in front of your sister’s SUV, which blocked their view. They were standing—” he turned and pointed back the way she’d come “—probably fifty yards away. They were aiming to come out at the picnic ground where they’d left their car, but they heard the sound of what they thought was a small waterfall and cut through the woods.”

“Is there a falls here?” Jane asked, puzzled.

“No. Not enough elevation change. We’re thinking they heard an engine.”

She nodded. “What can I do?”

He led her to a man who appeared to be the organizer of the volunteers here to hunt for Bree. They had initially concentrated their efforts on the creek side of the road, in part because a child getting out of the vehicle would have had to scramble up to the road, while sliding down to the creek would have been easier.

Jane met Clay’s eyes and knew what he was thinking. If Brianna had been scared and running away. But why would she have been?

Please, please let her be safe with some friend and her family.

Not hiding for some reason in the woods. Or—worse.

Her mind slammed shut on even the possibility of worse. No, no. Worse would mean somebody had snatched her, and that was ridiculously unlikely.

“What about that old resort?” Jane asked. “It has a bunch of cabins.”

“A couple of deputies went over there,” Clay said. “Talked to the people who own it. They run some kind of group home and use the cabins that are in better repair for teenage boys. Some of the boys helped scour the place. The deputy I talked to said they even got down and checked beneath porches.” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“I wish there was more I could do,” she said helplessly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d rather be here.”

“Yes.” She made herself say, “Thank you for calling me. I’ll, um...” She gestured toward the search-and-rescue guy.

“Wait.”

Surprised, she looked up at him.

“Your sister and her husband. Were they having any kind of problems?”

Jane grappled with the question. “You’re not thinking—”

“I’m not thinking anything yet. Just asking questions.”

“They’ve been having to tighten the belt,” she said after a moment. “If that’s what you mean by problems. Drew lost his job, oh, probably four months ago and hasn’t been able to find anything comparable. Being out of work is upsetting for him. I don’t know any man who would like the idea of his wife supporting the family. He’s started looking farther afield, and I know Lissa isn’t happy about that, but I wouldn’t say they were fighting about it or anything.”

“Would she tell you if they were?”

“One of them probably would.” She couldn’t say Drew would have, because then she’d have to explain that he was more than just her sister’s husband, that it was because of her he’d met Lissa, and that she and her sister had a tense relationship at the best of times—and that these recent months had not qualified as the best of times.

If she wasn’t imagining it, Clay’s eyes had narrowed slightly. He’d heard something in her voice, even if it was only restraint.

“How much do you see of them?”

She looked away from him, watching as more volunteers arrived and were dispatched across the road into the dry woods. From each direction, she heard voices calling her niece’s name. “Oh, you know. Dinner probably once a week. Sometimes I take the girls somewhere.” She watched a middle-aged man in hiking boots and camo pants accepting instruction, nodding, and starting across the road. “I should be with them.”

“You can join them if you want, but you’ll do more good helping me understand if there’s anything going on here besides a woman running off the road by accident in broad daylight and a kid either being misplaced or taking off.”

“Bree wouldn’t.” Despite herself, she couldn’t help looking into Clay’s face again, hoping for... She didn’t know. Reassurance? As angry as she still was at him, she knew he was a smart cop and a strong man. It disturbed her now that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His expression was kind, but also detached. “Why would she?” she asked him, even knowing she was pleading. She hated how small her voice sounded.

His gaze turned from hers to move restlessly over the woods. “If she’s out there, it’s because she’s scared. My first thought was that she’d gone for help. She’s old enough to think to do that. But surely she’d have headed for one of the houses.”

“Bree is really mature for her age—” She didn’t even want to say this, but had to. “Unless she stopped a car and...and got unlucky. The driver was some kind of creep.”

A pedophile. Please, God, no. Brianna was a beautiful child. She’d taken after Melissa, who’d always stopped traffic. Melissa, who used her beauty as a way to handle people.

Clay’s gaze had locked on her face again. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Then where is she?” she cried.

His jaw tightened. “I don’t know. If we have to seriously start considering this an abduction, though, we need to look at family first. You know that.”

It took a minute for the implications to sink in. “Me?”

“Of course not you!” he snapped.

“Then who? It’s only Jane and me.”

“What happened to your parents?”

She couldn’t not answer, but she also couldn’t look at him while she said any of this. Instead she fixed her gaze on the trees across the road. “My mother walked out on us,” she said, ignoring his close scrutiny. “I was eleven, Lissa eight, so it’s ancient history.” She did her best to sound matter-of-fact. “I have no idea if she’s even still alive. My father died when I was twenty.”

Maybe she was wrong in fearing that Clay heard things she wasn’t saying. After all, look what an insensitive jerk he’d turned out to be. But no matter what, she didn’t like telling him stuff that was so personal. She never talked about her childhood. If she had one desperate need in life, it was to be invulnerable. Why else had she gone into a male-dominated profession where she could hold the authority?

If she’d made him curious, he didn’t comment. “What about your brother-in-law’s side?”

“His parents are in Florida. They were out here for Christmas. They seem like nice people.” She shrugged. “Drew has a brother and a sister. They came, too, with their families. Um, I think the brother may work for Boeing. His dad did, too, before he retired. That’s where Drew grew up, near Seattle. The sister... I don’t remember where she lives, but not locally. She’s married and has kids, somewhere around the same ages as Bree and Alexis.”

“Your sister get along with his family?”

Lissa had bitched for weeks about having to host Drew’s whole damn family. That was how she’d put it. “The house is going to be stuffed, and we’ll be lucky if any of them even offer to pay for any groceries,” she had groused. “Or help with cooking and housework. They’ll probably be happy to have me providing maid service. And I can’t stand Kelsey. You know that.”

Jane did know. Lissa didn’t like Kelsey because she thought Drew’s parents did more for the baby of the family than they did for Drew and his brother. Kelsey’s husband taught English at the middle school level and they’d agreed that Kelsey wouldn’t work outside the home at least until their youngest reached first grade, so they did make a whole lot less money than Drew and Lissa. Or at least, than Drew and Lissa had at the time, when he’d still had a job. Drew’s parents had wanted Kelsey to have a safe vehicle to drive their grandchildren around in, so they’d bought her a Dodge Caravan at about the same time Lissa had insisted on trading in her four-year-old Rav4 for something newer. She had been bitterly resentful that they hadn’t even offered to help with the cost. “Our income doesn’t have anything to do with it!” she’d snapped, when Jane was unwise enough to try to reason with her.

“They didn’t see that much of them,” Jane said now. “Things seemed fine at Christmas.”

He looked at her thoughtfully, and she knew—knew—that he had noticed how uncomfortable she was.

“All right, Jane.” His phone rang and he answered it immediately. “Renner here.”

He’d half turned from her as if to shut her out, but he didn’t walk away, so she couldn’t help hearing his side of the conversation.

“No change?” Pause. “Uh-huh.” He frowned, listening. “Yeah, we’re out beating the bushes for the kid. We’re going to feel like idiots if it turns out she’s at the public swimming pool or, I don’t know what little girls do, a toenail-painting party.” A grunt. “Tell him to keep trying.” Whoever had called talked some more. “What about that last clerk at Rite Aid?” Clay asked. Something changed on his face at the answer and he turned to look at Jane. “Okay. Let me know.” He returned his phone to his belt.

She didn’t like his expression. “What?”

“We’ve now talked to everyone working at Rite Aid today, including the pharmacists. Not one of them remember seeing your sister or the girl. It’s looking a lot like they never went there at all.”

“But—” Jane stuttered “—she told Drew...”

“I know what he claims she told him.” The emphasis on claims was subtle, but unmistakable.

“Why would Drew lie? This was an accident!”

“Was it?” Clay’s angular face was hard now, all cop. “I’m starting to wonder.”

CHAPTER THREE

RICH BALDWIN, A sergeant in the patrol division, crossed his arms atop the open driver’s-side door of his unit and eyed Clay. “I’ve got to admit, I wondered why you were there early on.”

He paused, eyebrows raised, but Clay didn’t rise to the bait. Damned if he was going to admit to having a thing for a woman who despised him.

The eyebrows flickered, but Baldwin gave up and finished his thought. “I’m glad now you were. It’s looking more like your baby all the time.”

Clay grunted his agreement, although he could not freakin’ believe he was dealing with the second kidnapping of a child within a matter of weeks. Except for the everyday domestic blow-up variety where Dad didn’t bring the kids home when he should just to spite the ex-wife, kidnapping almost never happened around here. He kept telling himself the girl was going to turn up anytime, that there was a reasonable explanation for her disappearance.

But as the hours passed, the odds that seven-year-old Brianna Wilson would turn out to have spent the afternoon with a friend were looking longer by the minute. At 7:30 in the evening, your average family’s dinnertime had come and gone and the sun was dropping low in the sky. Kids that age did overnights, but according to her dad, Bree hadn’t taken pajamas, toothbrush or anything else with her.

A deputy had stayed at the Wilson house to answer the phone, mostly in hopes some mother would call and say, “Was I confused? Weren’t you going to pick Brianna up by six?”

Clay almost wished he could anticipate a ransom call. That would have been better than the far uglier alternative. But though the Wilsons’ house was nice, even before Drew lost his job, they didn’t have the kind of money that would make a scenario of that kind probable.

Ankles crossed, Clay leaned against the fender of Baldwin’s squad car, parked not far from the emergency room entrance. Clay was arriving, Rich departing from the hospital.

“I don’t like that we couldn’t find Mrs. Wilson’s phone,” Clay said.

“Or that it’s dead to the world.”

Destroyed, he meant. If she’d given it to the kid to take with her, they should have been able to triangulate its location even if Brianna had somehow turned it off.

Yeah, the completely missing phone was a puzzle piece slotting into an increasingly ugly picture in Clay’s mind. He just wished there weren’t so damn many missing pieces still.

A missing kid was what he really meant. Clay had seen Brianna Wilson’s first-grade school picture now, as well as a formal family portrait of the whole family taken just before Christmas. Bree, as Jane called her, was a doll, Clay hadn’t been able to help thinking, on her way to being a stunner. Her hair was the same chestnut-brown as Jane’s, highlighted with red, and wavy like hers, too. And, damn, but Clay did love Jane’s hair. Little Bree had just enough freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose to be cute. In both photos her untroubled grin showed missing front teeth. Unlike Jane’s, the kid’s eyes were a warm brown.

Clay was ashamed in retrospect at how closely he had studied that family photo, fascinated to see how the sisters resembled each other and yet...didn’t. He guessed most people would have said Melissa had gotten the looks, but nothing about her face stirred him. Yeah, she had finely sculpted cheekbones, a pouty mouth that made him wonder about collagen and a perfect arch of eyebrows shaped by a master hand, but she looked hard to him. As if she’d summoned that smile when the photographer said, “Cheese!” but didn’t really mean it.

Or maybe he was prejudiced because he liked everything about Jane’s looks, including her round, gentle face and curving forehead that was almost too high, the tiny dimple that formed in one cheek when she was trying to hide amusement, the pretty mouth, the eyebrows that—well, she was a girl, so she probably did some plucking now and again, but not often.

Jane would never believe him if he told her he’d been drawn to her face even before he’d noticed her generous breasts or well-rounded hips. She seemed convinced now that he’d never lifted his eyes above chest level.

Not relevant, he told himself for about the dozenth time today. This wasn’t about Jane. It especially wasn’t about Jane and him.

“Baldwin, I’m keeping you from leaving,” he said, slapping a hand on the hood of the car and pushed himself away from it.

Baldwin nodded and lowered himself behind the wheel, but didn’t immediately pull the door closed. “Lieutenant Vahalik says search and rescue was called off?”

“An hour ago. I take it she isn’t happy?”

“I think she’s mostly scared. Doesn’t matter that she’s a cop. This is her family.”

“Can’t blame her,” Clay agreed, lifted a hand and strode toward the hospital entrance.

He knew his way to the ICU. From well down the hall, he saw Jane alone in the small waiting area outside it. She was staring fixedly at the double doors that kept her out. It struck him that he’d never seen her so absolutely still before. Jane was too full of life to waste time sitting still.

Whether she heard his footsteps or not, she didn’t react. He had almost reached her when her head finally turned. He was shocked at the sight of her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her mane of curly hair slipping from its usual ponytail and, for one unguarded moment, he saw all her stress and fear before she managed to mostly blank her expression.

She rose to her feet in a single jerky motion. “Have you found—?” The answer must have been apparent on his face, because she dropped back down as if she were a puppet whose strings had been cut. “Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry.” He took the chair next to her and reached for her hand. It felt so small, too delicate to hold a heavy handgun, never mind to fire it. To kill.

Damn it. If he couldn’t get past thinking things like that— Oh, who was he kidding? He’d had his chance and blown it. And...did he want to change his thinking so drastically?

Yeah. For Jane, he did.

“Any word on your sister?” he asked.

Her eyes, puffy and desperate, never left his. Her hand held tight to his, too. “There’s no change. They’re letting Drew sit with her. Every so often he comes out to give me a report, or...or he takes a break and I go in. They’re calling it a coma now, Clay. They drilled a hole in her skull to relieve the pressure. The doctor isn’t saying what he thinks the prognosis is. Or else he told Drew, who is lying to me.”

“She’s your only family.”

“Her and the kids.” Her shoulders moved a little. “And Drew.”

“Damn, Jane.” He cleared his throat. “I wish you weren’t having to go through this.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes, but she blinked furiously, not letting them fall. “Shit happens, right? Who knows that better than we do?”

He couldn’t argue.

“Where’s Bree?”

The way she looked at him, as if he was capable of miracles, made his sinuses burn. Produce the kid and redeem himself.

He’d give damn near anything to be up to this particular miracle.

“I don’t like what I’m thinking,” he said gruffly. He couldn’t lie to her. Jane wasn’t most women. She was tough. He knew that. “Did Sergeant Baldwin tell you Melissa’s cell phone is missing?”

“He says it might have been destroyed.”

Clay’s thumb circled on the back of her hand. “Yeah. And we both know that’s not good.”

Her head bobbed. Either she hadn’t noticed they were still holding hands or she needed the contact too much to let go no matter how much she detested him.

“The phone at your sister’s place hasn’t rang once. Home phone numbers are on those lists handed out by the day camp and the school, so we know the odds are any of her friends’ parents would have it, not just Melissa’s cell number.

“We’ve got an Amber Alert up,” he told her. “That may or may not lead to FBI involvement. At this point, with no unexpected dents or scrapes on the vehicle, we don’t have any evidence to suggest your sister was forced off the road. It’s still entirely possible Brianna is with a friend, and has maybe spent the night before so the mom or dad figures Melissa had some crisis but will call tomorrow.”

Despite the fear in her eyes, a tiny hint of hope sparked. “It is possible, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He wished he believed it, but didn’t see how it would hurt if she did, at least for a little while.

“Okay.” She ducked her head suddenly, probably to hide tears. “Thank you.”

He bent over her and kissed the top of her head, letting himself inhale the scent that was uniquely Jane. For a moment she seemed to sway toward him, as if she was going to let herself lean, but then she squared her shoulders and straightened, tugging her hand free at the same time.

“You probably have things you need to be doing—”

“I wanted to talk to you some more, and then to your brother-in-law.”

She visibly armored up. “To me?” she said, polite but surprised.

“Yeah. You. You know your sister. You know your niece.”

A cautious nod.

“I expected Drew to have a better idea who his daughter’s best friends are.”

Tiny lines puckered that high forehead. “I think that’s because Bree’s two best friends are both gone. The summer hasn’t been a very good one for her.”

“Gone,” Clay echoed. It had to be a reflection of his job that he equated gone with dead.

“Moved. Well, Poppy’s family moved, and to Texas, no less, which means no visits. They’d been friends since preschool. And then Bree’s other best friend, Schuyler, was in a foster home, but Lissa said the courts finally terminated the mother’s parental rights and they’re trying Schuyler in a potential adoptive home. Which unfortunately is in... I forget. Bend or someplace. Close enough for sleepovers, but not to be in the same school, which means they’ll forget each other by October, probably.”

“Sleepovers,” he repeated.

Her hope brightened. “Schuyler would have been on that class list, but the phone number would have been for the foster parents who don’t have her anymore. It could have been impulsive....”

He was already shaking his head, even though he hated to dim the light in her eyes. “I’ll check. You can count on that. But if your sister was going to take Brianna to a friend’s house, why wouldn’t she have stopped at home first to let her pack a bag? Plus, it doesn’t explain why the accident happened where it did.”

Her shoulders sagged. “You’re right.” Then she cried, “Oh, why doesn’t she wake up and tell us what happened?”

She sounded as if she was angry at her sister, which might be natural, or might not.

“Melissa,” he said, pursuing the thought. “The two of you close?”

Jane’s gaze slid from his in what he recognized as evasion. “Yes.” She hesitated. “I mean, we have our moments. Don’t most siblings?”

“Sure,” Clay said easily. “My brother and I beat the crap out of each other every now and again just for the hell of it.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I can safely say that Lissa and I never get violent. We just, um, have stretches where we don’t talk very often. You know.”

No, he didn’t, but he wanted to. “What about lately? Have you been talking? Would you know if anything was going on with her?”

“Anything?”

“Say, trouble with her husband.”

Some anger fired up on her face. “The husband who is in ICU right now holding her hand and praying for all he’s worth?”

“Two people can fight and still care about each other.”

“But you’re suggesting something a lot worse than fighting.”

Yeah, now that she mentioned it, he was. He couldn’t help thinking of a couple of moments where something had been really off with Drew Wilson. It was a gut feeling more than anything else, but Clay trusted his gut.

“I’m trying to get a complete picture, that’s all. You’d be doing the same if you were in my shoes.”

She slanted a suddenly suspicious look at him. “Why were you at the accident site so early on? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Clay shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

“Then why?”

He moved his shoulders, trying without success to ease the new tension. “I’d come in for a few hours to catch up on reading reports.”

She nodded. She’d been at work on a sunny Saturday, too.

“One of my detectives was taking a report from Drew. He’d given his name, and then I heard him talking about Melissa and Brianna. It clicked that he had to be your brother-in-law and that it was your sister who was missing.” He grimaced. “I was curious.”

Jane studied him, long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Her pupils dilated slightly, as if...he didn’t know. Finally she gave a funny little nod. “Thank you.”

Which meant she knew he’d stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong because he was worried about her. “If it had been the other way around...”

“You’re right.” Now she didn’t want to meet his eyes. “I’d have been curious, too.”

There was a bump in his chest, as if his heart had maybe skipped a beat. Was she implying...? Something else he didn’t know.

Damn. Focus. Do your goddamn job.

“You didn’t really answer my question. Was Melissa speaking to you lately? For some reason you want me to think everything was sweetness and light between her and Drew, but I need to know if it wasn’t.”

She averted her face. He sat through the silence while she struggled with herself. When she finally looked back at him, her expression was guarded.

“No, we haven’t been getting along well lately. Like I said, we have...tensions. There’s three years between us, and after Mom took off I sort of stepped in as a mother figure. Then Lissa was only seventeen when Dad died and she lived with me until she graduated from high school. Especially once she hit about thirteen, she resented me having any authority over her. Her favorite line was, ‘You’re not my mother and you can’t tell me what to do.’” Jane shrugged. No biggie, she was trying to convince him. What had she said? Ancient history.

Too bad he didn’t buy it.

“Rivalry for your dad’s attention?”

Her expression shut down with the finality of a steel door. He didn’t have to hear the lock to know it had slid into place.

“No,” she said, and that was all.

Oh, man, he wanted to pursue the subject, but had an uneasy feeling he was straying into personal territory. Yes, he wanted to know Jane, but right now, the people he needed to know were her sister, her brother-in-law and the missing niece.

“Drew and I are friends.” Jane didn’t sound as if she wanted to tell him, but felt compelled to. “If they were really having problems, he would have told me. Like I said, there was the job thing and the question of whether they’d move if he found a good enough one, but he hadn’t yet, so—” She lifted one shoulder.

“Is he good with the kids?” Clay made his tone casual.

“Drew?” Jane looked genuinely surprised. “Sure. Hey, right now, he’s the one who’s home with them. That’s probably why Lissa took Bree with her. Especially with her two friends having moved away, Bree probably needed some exclusive mom time.”

She didn’t know that Drew had implied Melissa had felt extreme reluctance to take her daughter along. Because she’d been cranky and wanted some peace and quiet? Or because she’d never intended to run the errand that was her ostensible reason for leaving the house?

Or—and this was the big or in Clay’s book—was the whole story fiction? Melissa Wilson’s supposed trip to Rite Aid, the possibility she and her husband had squabbled about whether she was going to take Brianna, the later phone call... It all came from the same man.

Not the phone call; Clay had verified that there was a call lasting just under one minute from Melissa’s phone to Drew’s. But what was said, who’d actually dialed the call, that was all in question as far as Clay was concerned.

His least favorite scenario involved the pedophile who got lucky and happened on a really pretty little girl trying to flag down a passing motorist.

But he had some others that would keep him awake, too, and they involved Drew Wilson.

What if he and his wife had done more than squabble? What if they’d had a nasty fight? If she fled, he might have pursued and been responsible for running her off the road. He could have Brianna stashed somewhere so she couldn’t tell what had really happened. He might figure he could brainwash her, then have her miraculously restored to him.

Or what if he was sexually molesting his eldest daughter, and he really couldn’t afford it if either she or his wife talked?

Jesus. What if he’d killed his daughter and then chased down his wife to shut her mouth? So far, Clay hadn’t found a witness to confirm anything beyond the fact that Drew had dropped his younger daughter off at the neighbor’s without saying anything but that he thought maybe his wife’s car had broken down and he needed to go check on her. His frantic appearance at the police station could be a con job.

And Clay didn’t like being conned.

He was honest enough with himself to admit that he also didn’t like the idea that Jane had a closer relationship with her brother-in-law than she did with her sister.

Once he finished talking to Jane, he was going to have a chat with the nurses in ICU and make sure they kept at least half an eye on Melissa Wilson and her so-devoted husband.

“You said you take the girls alone sometimes. I’ll bet you tried to keep Brianna from feeling too sad this summer.”

“I’ve tried to do something fun with her every week. Sometimes both girls, but Alexis is happier at the day camp than Bree is this year. I know Drew lets her stay home some days even when he takes Alexis.”

A father should want to spend individual time with his kids. Unfortunately, in his job, Clay had seen too many cases where a father liked being alone with one of his kids for a sick reason.

“I’ve mostly been working Tuesday through Saturday,” Jane continued. “So I’ve devoted a lot of Mondays this summer to the girls. Sometimes they spend Sunday at my place. In July I took just Bree over to that really cool water park in McMinnville.”

He decided he had to be direct. “Does she talk to you? Would she tell you if something was weighing on her?”

Jane’s uncomprehending stare slowly altered to one of outraged understanding. “You’re suggesting that...that Drew or Lissa was abusing her?”

“I’m asking if the possibility exists.”

“No!”

He held her gaze with a steady one of his own. “Jane, you’re not that naive. I know this is your family. Nobody ever wants to think a person she loves could do something like that. But it happens. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot more common than most people have any idea.”

She visibly choked on it, but she had been a cop too long to deny what he said was the truth. “No,” she repeated, but more moderately. “I really don’t think so. The girls are both cheerful and affectionate and—” Jane scowled. “If I could imagine it with either of their parents, it wouldn’t be—” She stopped again, unhappy.

“Your sister,” Clay said slowly.

Her mouth tightened. “Actually, I was going to say Drew. He’s a really nice guy. I think Alexis and Bree are more comfortable with him than they are with Lissa. She’s, I don’t know, uptight and—” something else she didn’t want to say “—self-centered, I guess.”

An unpleasant suspicion had entered Clay’s mind as she talked. Clay remembered the way Drew’s face and tone had softened when the subject of Jane came up. Now listen to the warmth in her tone. Was there any chance something was going on there? Even the idea enraged him.

But, truth was, he couldn’t think how a flirtation or even an affair between Jane and Drew could have played into today’s events, unless it had been a catalyst for a monumental fight between husband and wife. And then how did that involve the kid?

No.

He didn’t believe it anyway, he discovered. He thought Jane’s sense of integrity was too unbending to allow her to sleep with her sister’s husband.

But he also found he hated almost as much the possibility that she wanted to. That the two of them looked at each other sometimes with the knowledge between them that they might have been happy together.

And yeah, what grated maybe most of all was the way she’d described Drew. He was a really nice guy—while Clay Renner was scum of the earth.

Like acid in his belly, it ate at him knowing he’d given her damn good reason to believe exactly that.

And...maybe she’d be right to believe it. A self-confident man, Clay had taken a serious hit that day. Since she’d walked away, he’d looked hard at a lot of crap he’d grown up taking for granted. What shook him most was discovering how much contempt for women had been embedded in his father’s “traditional” views of male/female roles.

Yeah, well, too little, too late.

He stood abruptly. “I’m going in to see how your sister is doing. Then I want you to switch places with your brother-in-law so I can talk to him.”

By her narrowed eyes, he could tell she thought he really intended to bully poor, nice Drew, which upped his pissed quotient. But by God, he was too good at his job to let personal feelings influence an investigation.

He nodded at Jane, probably nothing too friendly showing on his face, and left her alone there.

* * *

DREW SAT IN the hard plastic chair beside Lissa’s bed in ICU, listening to the hum and beep of monitors and the squeak of shoes as a nurse walked past. Farther away were voices. Somebody else getting bad news? he wondered with a jab of pain.

Sometimes he tilted his head back and stared at the pattern of Lissa’s heart beating in jagged green lines across a monitor. Mostly he gazed at her face, so ominously still and unlike her. He sat on her good side, so he didn’t have to see the horrible swelling and bruising. Not that he could forget doctors had actually drilled into her skull.

He squeezed the lax, cool hand that lay in his. “Liss,” he murmured, “can you hear me? I really need you to open your eyes. You’re scaring me. I can’t believe you of all people—” He broke off with a harsh breath.

Melissa had been a revelation to him when he’d met her, filled with a vitality that made her stand out from everyone else he’d ever met. Enthralled, he hadn’t been able to resist her. He hadn’t wanted to resist her, even though he’d known he was hurting Jane.

The terrible thing was that sometimes he thought he’d been an idiot, that Lissa was all surface and flash, and he should have been able to see beneath it. He’d begun to wonder if she really loved him at all. Lately—

But he didn’t want to think about the suspicions that nibbled at him like mosquitoes raising welts. If only she’d open her eyes, they could talk. She would convince him that she had nothing to do with whatever had happened to Bree, and these doubts churning in his belly would go away. If only he could have Bree back, have Melissa back, he could forgive almost anything.

He leaned toward her, resting his elbows on his knees. “I need you to talk to me. Please, Liss. Please.”

But her face stayed still and sunken, and on a surge of anguish he tried to imagine never seeing her laugh again, or whirl on him in a fury, or light with some new enthusiasm. What if he had to plod on without her?

But on a clench of dread and fear, he knew: if he could somehow, magically, save either his wife or his daughter, but not both, he would have to choose Bree.

“That’s what you’d want, isn’t it?” he whispered.

She didn’t answer, of course.

CHAPTER FOUR

“AUNTIE JANE?” HUDDLED in a tiny ball beneath the covers, Alexis peered out. “Will you...will you stay till I fall asleep? And maybe even lie down with me?”

Jane’s heart squeezed painfully. “Oh, pumpkin. Of course I will.”

She untied her athletic shoes and dropped them on the floor, then turned off the bedside lamp before lying down atop the covers so that her head shared her five-year-old niece’s pillow and she could kiss her on the nose. The little girl wriggled a few times to fit into the curve of Jane’s body. Then she gave a small sniff.

“Auntie Jane, will you find Bree tomorrow?” The question floated, only a wistful thread.

Jane gave her a squeeze. “You know I’ll try, with all my might. But Sergeant Renner is really the one in charge of finding her. The good thing is, I know he’ll try with all his might, too.”

“’Cuz I miss her.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Jane squeezed her eyes shut in hopes of damming the tears and leaned her forehead against her niece’s. “I know,” she said huskily.

“Where’s Daddy? I mean, is he with Mommy?”

“Yeah. He’s with Mommy.”

The silence was so long, Jane began to hope Alexis had fallen asleep. Somehow she doubted it, though; even through the covers, she could feel the tension in the slight body.

“Why won’t Mommy wake up?”

“Mommy had a really bad bump on her head. You remember the time Bree fell off her bike and she had that great big lump that looked like an egg and we had to take her to the hospital?”

Alexis nodded slightly.

“Well, this is a bump way worse than that. Sergeant Renner thinks your mom’s car was going really fast when it went off the road.”

“Mommy always said if she was in a...a accident, this humongous balloon would puff up so nobody was hurt.” She sounded indignant.

“The balloon is called an air bag. And they work really well, except they only puff up in certain kinds of accidents. Like if your mom’s car had hit a tree. But the way the car tilted kept the air bag from puffing up.”

The “oh” was sad. After a minute, “When will Daddy come home?”

“I think he might be here when you get up in the morning. He misses you, pumpkin.”

“Okay.”

Feeling Alexis slowly relax until, finally, her breathing became deep and regular, Jane thought about Drew’s terrible dilemma. Did he stay at Melissa’s side, willing her to open her eyes? Or did he go home to comfort his youngest daughter, so terrified because, in her perception, almost everyone in her family had disappeared?

Jane was only glad she could be here. She’d already decided that if they didn’t find Bree tomorrow, she would pack a bag and come to stay. She’d take days off from work, too, as much as she had to. That way she could offer Alexis some stability and Drew the relief of knowing she was being taken care of. She could take care of him, too. Cook dinners, that kind of thing, even though she wasn’t exactly Susie Homemaker.

Once she was sure Alexis was sleeping soundly, Jane slipped off the bed and out of the room, leaving the door half ajar so she’d be able to hear the little girl if she awakened. The twin bed was way too small for the two of them to share, and Jane’s adrenaline ran too high for her to be sleepy yet anyway.

What she wanted was to be hunting for Bree, but she knew she was lucky that Clay had involved her as much as he had so far. He didn’t have any obligation to. And as much as she hated it, he was right that family members were always the first suspects when an act of violence or an apparent abduction happened. And what had she done but told him, so brilliantly, that she and her sister weren’t getting along very well. If she hadn’t been at work when the accident occurred, he’d have had to consider her; she knew that. Considering that she didn’t like him, she was disconcerted by the sting she felt at the idea that he’d readily suspect her of hurting her own sister, or her niece.

He’d said he didn’t as if the idea was ludicrous, but...she didn’t know whether to believe him.

He’d seemed angry at her when she’d last seen him at the hospital. Was that because she’d been too honest about Lissa, and he’d realized he had discounted her possible involvement too quickly?

I don’t care what he thinks about me as long as he does his job, she thought fiercely. As long as he finds Bree.

But...she knew that wasn’t true. She did care. She could have cared a whole lot, if only he had turned out to be the man she’d believed he was.

That thought felt like grief, heavy in her chest, not so different from her fear for Lissa and Bree and her sadness for Alexis.

Something she so didn’t need.

* * *

IT WAS PROBABLY too late to call Jane. Clay didn’t even know why he wanted to. He’d seen plenty of her today, God knows. But after he’d left the hospital, as the evening and then the night had crawled on, he kept thinking about her. Wondering whether she was still there, or had gone home, or...?

He reached his own place, a log cabin on the outskirts of Little Elk, a town too small even to have a post office. He loved the quiet and the peace here, and had looked forward to showing Jane his home.

Yeah, well, that wasn’t happening.

He parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee in the carport attached to one side of the cabin and got out. The moon was heading toward full now, and the silver illumination cast shadows from the tall pines. He’d never installed a motion-activated light; there was enough wildlife around here that it would have been popping on all the time. As he walked toward the front door, he heard a soft hoot. A welcome home, or a complaint because he’d disturbed the night?

He let himself in, not bothering to turn on the porch light or a light in the main room. Instead he made his way by habit to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of milk and downed it in a few swallows, hoping it would soothe the acid in his stomach. Too many cups of coffee today. Had to be that, and not the gut-churning emotions he’d felt every time he looked at Jane or thought of her.

The clock on the stove told him it was 11:19 p.m. Maybe not too late to call? As scared as she was, would Jane really have dropped into a peaceful sleep by now?

Clay didn’t know why he felt such a hunger to talk to her. He didn’t have anything that qualified as real news to share, but...he wanted to hear her voice, to know she was okay.

He was dialing before he could have second thoughts.

Jane answered on the second ring. “Clay?” Her voice rang with anxiety.

“Nothing new,” he told her hastily. “I just, uh, thought I’d check in. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“No. Of course not.” She hesitated. “I’m at Lissa’s with Alexis. So Drew could stay at the hospital.”

“He’s planning to stay all night?”

“I don’t know. He shouldn’t. He has to get some rest sometime. But I offered to pick up Alexis and tuck her in. She’d already had dinner with the neighbor.”

“Did you have dinner?” he asked, leaning back against the knotty pine kitchen cabinets.

There was a moment of silence. “I’m not hungry.”

“I know it’s hard when you’re scared, but you should have something.”

“Maybe.”

He sought for something else to say. “Alexis okay?”

“Not really. It was—” She broke off, or maybe her voice had broken. “Um, she wanted to talk about why her mommy hadn’t opened her eyes, and she was hoping I’d promise to bring Bree home tomorrow.”

“She’s five, right?”

“Right. She’s supposed to start kindergarten in...wow, not much over a week.”

“Bad enough at that age having something scary happen to one member of your family. But two...” He shook his head, remembering something he hadn’t thought of in years. His mother had had breast cancer when she was in her forties. Really scary shit, even if he was an adult. Sort of an adult, he amended, doing some mental arithmetic to decide he’d been...nineteen? Twenty? Anyway.

“What are you thinking about?” Jane asked. “You’ve gotten really quiet.”

So he told her. “All they did was remove a lump. They were confident they’d caught it early. But we all watched her like a hawk for years. I don’t even know when I quit getting this sinking feeling every time I saw her and thinking, what if it comes back?”

“Maybe after the magic five years?”

“Maybe.” What did this have to do with anything? He wasn’t sure. But he said, “My dad’s a hard-ass. You know? That’s the only time I can ever remember seeing him emotional. Scared. And gentle with Mom. That’s not his style.”

He’d never actually thought of his parents and the word love connected until that scare. Then he’d known. His father might not be good showing it, but he loved Clay’s mom. It was plain he’d have been lost without her.

Clay had liked his father a little better after that.

His mouth twisted. A little summed it up. Increasingly, he felt distaste for a man he’d once admired. A man who’d loved his sons and always had time for them while he taught them everything he believed a man should be.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”

“Maybe because it came out all right?” Jane suggested. “Your mom is fine?”

Was that why? He’d wanted to remind her that, yes, scary shit did happen and most often everyone came out safe on the other side?

If so—that was dumb as hell. Jane and he were both in a good position to know how often when things went to shit they stayed that way. Faces flashed through his memory, too many to catch one and stop it—the faces of accident victims, battered wives, kids who did something stupid and paid the ultimate penalty. Murder victims.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

What could he say but “You’re welcome.”

“Have you gone home?”

“Just got here.” He kneaded the back of his neck. “With the Amber Alert out there, a bunch of phone calls came in from people who thought they might have seen Bree. You know how it is. We had to follow up on all of them, but nothing panned out.”

She made a sound that might have been an “oh.”

“Didn’t really expect they would,” he continued, “but you never know.”

“No. Maybe tomorrow. I mean, she can’t have just vanished from the face of the earth.”

Thinking of the miles of empty country around Angel Butte, Clay knew she was wrong. A little girl’s body could go undiscovered for a long time. Even forever. But he wasn’t about to say anything like that to Jane. Didn’t have to, he realized; she knew. But she was trying for hope, too, and that was okay.

“You should get some sleep,” he told her gently. “Don’t wait up for your brother-in-law. You know he’ll call if anything changes.”

“You will, too, won’t you?” she said with sudden urgency. “This is really hard, being on the sidelines. I don’t care if you wake me up. If you hear anything. Anything at all.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I swear.”

“Okay.” There was a pause. “I’m glad you called. Thank you, Clay.”

“You’re welcome,” he said again. “Go on. Hit the sack.”

“You, too.”

They said good-night and his phone went dead. Clay checked to be sure he’d put the milk back in the fridge, then flicked off the overhead light and made his way through the dark to the stairs. He thought he might be able to sleep now. Talking to Jane had...settled him. No real reason, but he felt better knowing she was hanging in there. He liked the softness in her voice when she said his name, too.

He hoped she went to bed before Drew came home wanting to weep on her shoulder.

* * *

JANE WOKE TO the sound of voices down the hall. She grabbed the second pillow and slapped it over her head. She wanted desperately to sink back into sleep. An uninterrupted hour or two. That was all she asked.

But of course it was hopeless. The light slipping through the blinds in this guest bedroom told her it was morning. Anyway, once she was really awake, she was awake.

She dragged herself to the bathroom and groaned at the sight of herself in the mirror. Given that she had no change of clothes, without borrowing something from Lissa—and she shuddered at the very thought—there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about her appearance. She did use the girls’ hairbrush—with a sparkly pink handle, no less—to try to restore order to her wild locks. Her mouth felt gummy, but a brief search of the drawers for a spare toothbrush came up empty. She really had to make it home today to pack that bag.

Drew sat slumped at the kitchen table. Alexis had scraped her chair as close to the corner of the table as she could get it. As close to her daddy as she could get.

“Can I have ’nother waffle, Daddy?” she begged in her piercing little voice. “I think I want jam on this one.”

“What? Oh...sure,” he agreed, voice dragging. He started to push his chair back, and she bounced out of hers to follow him. Drew saw Jane then. “Hey. I’m sorry if we made too much noise.”

He was hardly recognizable. His brown eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Deep lines had somehow carved themselves between his nose and mouth and across his forehead. Jane would have sworn he’d aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. Twenty years.

Of course, she didn’t look so sharp this morning, either.

“I’ll put her waffle in the toaster,” she offered, having seen the box on the counter. Thank goodness Drew hadn’t felt obligated to make some from scratch, not after the night he must have had. “Did you get any sleep at all?” she asked.

He sank heavily back into the chair. “Couple hours. How about you?”

Jane bent down to hug Alexis. “Your daughter had nightmares.” Lots of nightmares. “But we survived, didn’t we, pumpkin?”

“Uh-huh. I didn’t want to be alone last night.” Alexis and Bree had their own bedrooms now, but they’d shared a room until about a year ago. “So finally I went to bed with Auntie Jane.”

Drew gave her a wry smile. “Lucky Auntie Jane.”

“She said she couldn’t sleep, either.” Alexis followed Jane. “I can have jam, right?”

“You bet. Can I have some of those waffles, too?”

The little girl nodded. “But what if they’re all gone?”

“Then we’ll grocery shop today.”

“Or you’ll eat cereal for breakfast tomorrow,” her father said, giving her an admonitory look.

She looked mulish. “I only like waffles.”

While the waffles toasted, Jane asked what the plan was for today.

“I think I’ll take Alexis to her day camp,” he said.

His daughter let out a wail, threw herself from her chair and ran to him. Her arms clamped around his waist and she buried her face in his torso. “No! I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go, Daddy. Please. I want to be with you.”

The look he cast Jane was so hopeless, she felt an anguished pang.

He smoothed his hand over his daughter’s hair, the same brown as his. “I have to go back to the hospital. And Jane has a job.”

“I can go to the hospital, too, can’t I?” Alexis pleaded. “I’ll be good. Really, really, really good.”

The waffles popped up and Jane began buttering. “Lots of jam or a little?” she asked.

Alexis ignored her. “Please, Daddy.”

Jane slapped huckleberry jam on both waffles, stuck two more in the toaster, then carried the plates to the table.

Alexis had lost interest in the second course of her breakfast. She kept weeping and pleading. Drew kept explaining that he couldn’t take her, that she wouldn’t be allowed back where Mommy was and she couldn’t stay by herself in the waiting room.

Jane wanted to do something truly useful today. Scour the woods around the accident site again. Knock on doors. Go on TV with a plea. Something. “You can stay with me today, Alexis,” she offered instead.

Her niece sobbed wildly. “I want to go with Daddy!”

He rose abruptly, pulled her arms from around him and almost ran from the room.

Alexis dropped to the floor and began to drum her heels while she cried. Wow. Jane hadn’t ever seen a kid actually do that. She knew how her father would have reacted if she or Lissa had ever tried it.

Jane looked after Drew, wanting to follow him, but what he needed most from her was for her to take care of Alexis.

Which did not necessarily mean rewarding a temper tantrum with sympathy, no matter how well Jane understood a little girl’s terror and need to cling to her one remaining parent.

The two waffles in the toaster popped up, and Jane hadn’t even taken a bite of her first one. She had an attack of guilt for being such a pig. Poor Drew probably hadn’t had a bite, and here she was wanting to stuff her face to make up for missing dinner.

“I’m going to eat your waffle, too, if you don’t want it,” she said, pitching her voice above the wails.

Alexis cried harder.

Jane sat down, staring at her breakfast and discovering suddenly that her stomach was churning. Sighing, she pushed the plate away and stood, going to Alexis and picking her up.

* * *

DÉJÀ VU.

With no windows in the small room where Clay assumed family members were brought when the news wasn’t good, day could just as well be night. He had used this same room to interview Drew yesterday evening. Now they were at it again.

Seeing his ravaged face, Clay felt some sympathy for the guy. But not so much that he wasn’t going to push today, and push hard. Clay couldn’t get the missing little girl out of his mind. If Drew Wilson had a secret, he was, by God, going to spill it.

“Let’s talk again about what your wife said before she left. Had she told you in advance that she needed to do an errand? Say, the evening before, or that morning?”

The chair scraped as Drew lurched back. “I’ve told you and told you!”

“Tell me again.”

“No! Why would she give me a lot of notice that, oh, gee, she needed some hair gel and tampons and she was going to run to the pharmacy?”

“Is that what she said she needed?” Clay asked thoughtfully. “Was it that time of month for her?”

The other man let out a hoarse sound. “How would I know? She didn’t say, I didn’t ask. We didn’t—”

Clay watched for every twitch on that face. “Did you sleep together the night before?”

“Yes!” A flush spread on his cheeks. “We just didn’t—”

Was the embarrassment because this guy was too repressed to talk about sex, or had he and his wife not had sex in so long, he’d lost track of anything like monthly cycles? If it was the second, that had a whole lot to say about the state of the marriage.

Clay made a point of relaxing in his chair, letting that subject go, if only temporarily. “Okay. So when did she tell you she needed to run an errand?”

“Five minutes before she went.” A nerve twitched beside his eye. “Longer than that, I guess,” he said reluctantly. “She and Bree went at it for a while.”

Clay walked him through the scene. Melissa had already had her purse over her shoulder and her keys in her hand when she announced that she was going out for a few things. Drew had asked where. Rite Aid, she said. Had she asked if he needed anything? Drew claimed not to remember, which meant no. He’d been the one to say, “Will you buy me some athlete’s foot powder?” Right after that discussion, their daughter had pounced. She wanted to go. Mom said no. Bree pleaded. Drew had finally asked his wife why she couldn’t take Bree since it was just a short errand. Clay saw the way his face tightened. His answers became more and more terse. Something about that squabble had bothered Drew, or the whole thing had blown up into a major fight. But the more Clay drilled, the more evasive Drew got.

Clay circled back with more questions about the guy’s job hunt, his wife’s job, how she felt about the possibility of selling their home and moving. Had all this created some tension in the marriage?

Jane’s brother-in-law conceded that there had been some tension. Lissa loved her job and didn’t want to give it up. He didn’t like knowing she was having to carry the financial burden right now. The kids might have overheard enough to guess their parents weren’t happy.

When had he lost his job? April. Since he was home daytimes anyway, and their budget had to be a little tighter, had they considered not putting their daughters in the summer day camp? Of course they’d talked about it, but both of them were sure Drew would be getting a job any day, and then it might be too late to find quality day care. Besides, Lissa had been sure the girls needed the socialization with other kids their age. How much did it cost? Clay winced at the answer. It was a major chunk of change, in his opinion.

They went on and on, Drew’s answers terse while his eyes got wilder, until he suddenly jumped to his feet. “None of this has anything to do with where my daughter is! Why are you here instead of doing your job?”

“Mr. Wilson, I understand it’s distressing having to answer these kinds of questions, but I am doing my job in asking them.” Clay kept his tone deliberately soothing. “Part of any investigation is making sure family members don’t play a part. We are looking hard for your daughter, I promise you. Finding Bree is the first priority of the entire sheriff’s department.”

Drew stared sullenly at him. “Well, I’m done.” He pushed the chair away and walked out. By the time Clay followed, all he saw was Drew’s back as he disappeared through the double doors into ICU.

Clay leaned a shoulder against the door frame and mulled over the conversation. None of the answers had been surprising in any way, but he still felt a tingle that told him there was something there. Drew Wilson knew or suspected more about his wife’s errand than he was letting on. And maybe he had deliberately pushed her to take their daughter because he thought having her along would mean Melissa indeed went to Rite Aid instead of wherever she’d intended.

An affair?

That could be interesting, Clay thought. But if so—why hadn’t Melissa changed her plans and done the routine errand instead? Maybe called her lover and said, “Sorry, can’t make it?”

Clay didn’t know, but he was wondering. He was wondering about a lot of things.

For instance, her job. She was a bookkeeper. Nothing fancy like an accountant. Nonetheless, bookkeepers up on QuickBooks and whatever other software they used nowadays were surely in demand enough that she could get another job easily. Drew, on the other hand, was a mechanical engineer. His skills had required considerably more training, and were more specialized. There wasn’t a lot of the kind of manufacturing that required mechanical engineers in these parts. He’d be bound to earn a hell of a lot more than his wife when he was working, too. How could they not move so that he could find a job in his profession?

This time the tingle was tantalizing enough, it seemed to raise fine hairs on the back of Clay’s neck.

Visiting Melissa Wilson’s workplace had just risen to the top of his list of priorities.

* * *

CLAY DIDN’T MUCH like James Stillwell, Melissa’s boss and the owner of Stillwell Trucking. Of course, there were a lot of people he didn’t like, yet who were nevertheless law-abiding citizens.

Stillwell was a little older than he’d expected, at least if Melissa was sleeping with him. Fifty, maybe, although not bad looking for his age and if a woman liked the type. Five foot nine or so, he was lean and fit. Tanned as if he spent time out on a boat. Silver threaded his salon-cut hair and shone at his temples. His eyes were as blue as Clay’s, but projected sincerity in a way Clay didn’t trust.

“Heartbreaking,” he declared, shaking his head. With a surprisingly resonant voice, he’d have made a hell of a disc jockey. “I’ve stopped by the hospital twice now, but they won’t let me in to see her.”

That would be on Clay’s orders, even assuming Intensive Care staff would otherwise have been willing to allow people who weren’t family to troop through.

“Sit, sit,” Stillwell said, waving expansively at the conversation area on one side of his sizable office.

Could be it was the office he didn’t like, Clay reflected. A trucking company should be utilitarian, shouldn’t it? The exterior of the building was. A long row of loading bays dominated it. He shouldn’t have been surprised at how extensive the facility was, because the trucks, displaying a logo of a stylistic elk head circled by the name of the company, were a common sight on the highways in Oregon. It hadn’t really clicked, though, until he’d noticed the logo on the cab of a semi backed up to one of the bays.

Once he’d stepped through a steel door, he’d found the reception area to be fancier than he’d expected. Ditto the receptionist, a twenty-something beautiful blonde who looked as slick as her boss.

Other offices opened from the hall extending behind the receptionist’s desk. Stillwell’s was at the end, which put it on the corner of the building and allowed two large windows, in one of which Angel Butte, a small volcanic cinder cone, was framed. The deep blue carpet was so thick, his footsteps were silent on it. Clay wouldn’t have liked that. When he was absorbed working on his computer, he wanted to hear anyone approaching.

Call it paranoia.

The desk was a huge slab of wood from some ancient tree. He kind of thought ponderosa pines didn’t get that big. A sequoia? The chair behind the desk was scaled to make the man sitting in it look more imposing than he was.

Clay let himself be directed to the set of four leather chairs surrounding a low table topped with a matching slab of wood.

“Nice office,” he commented.

Stillwell couldn’t hide his gratification, although he tried. “The appearance of success breeds success,” he murmured.

Could be. In Clay’s world, success didn’t look quite like this. It was often the sweet click of handcuffs closing on a pair of wrists.

“I’m getting the feeling Stillwell Trucking is a much bigger company than I’d imagined. Doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m here about, but I admit I’m curious. Are you entirely regional?”

When he began the company, James Stillwell said, he’d had only a couple of trucks. Used ones, but with shiny new coats of paint and the logo that had now become well known. “Mostly we operated within the state,” he explained. “There were runs between Portland and Bend, The Dalles and Klamath Falls. Ten years ago, we expanded to encompass the Northwest. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana. Now we cover the entire west coast.” He chuckled. “San Diego to Vancouver, B.C. We’ve kept the original business, of course. We have long-haul trucks and short-haul ones. There’s scarcely a business of any significance in the tri-county area that doesn’t turn to Stillwell Trucking for their transportation needs.”

That was the brochure version, but Clay couldn’t really blame him.

“So, Ms. Wilson. I gather she’s in your bookkeeping department?”

Department, it developed, was a misnomer. There were only three people in Finance—Stillwell laid it on heavy when he corrected Clay—including, yes, a CPA as well as Ms. Wilson and a Betty Jean Bitterman. Betty Jean had been with the company the longest, but Stillwell implied that, as much as he valued her for her loyalty, she hadn’t caught on to new software well. He couldn’t imagine functioning without Melissa. He shook his head in dismay and repeated, “I just can’t imagine.”

Clay asked a few polite questions. Did Mr. Stillwell have the sense anything had been troubling Ms. Wilson? Did he socialize with the Wilsons? Was he aware that a move out of the area was a possibility?

Troubling her? He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Not at all. But of course he didn’t see that much of her on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps Sergeant Renner would care to speak to the people who did...? Delicate pause. Yes, Sergeant Renner would.

Stillwell claimed he’d never been to the Wilsons’ home, but naturally had met Melissa’s husband at Christmas parties, company picnics and the like. The children, too. He’d found them delightful. Delightful.

He did love to repeat himself.

“Yes,” he agreed, frowning enough to make plain that he had been concerned, “she did tell me that her husband’s job hunt hadn’t borne fruit. We would hate to lose her, but certainly will understand if she and Drew have to make that choice.”

What else could he say?

Clay was ushered to the finance department, where utilitarian made a reappearance. Walls were white, floors vinyl, desks nothing fancy. Betty Jean, who at a guess was in her early sixties, expressed her deep emotions and assured Clay she had been praying for Melissa and that poor, poor child. As for troubled, on the contrary, she’d had the impression Melissa had been feeling especially pleased about something. Betty Jean, too, had known that a move was a possibility, but didn’t recall Melissa saying anything about it in some time. Perhaps as much as a couple of months? she said hesitantly.

Clay had to wonder how friendly these two very disparate women really were.

The CPA was fortyish and gave the impression that the interruption wasn’t welcome. Glenn Arnett had his own office, so although he surely interacted on a regular basis with the two women, he wouldn’t be spending the day listening to their chatter. Clay got the feeling he’d hardly known Melissa Wilson had children or a life outside Stillwell Trucking. If in fact, he had a closer relationship with her, he was a damn good actor.

Clay thanked them all, thought about detouring back by James Stillwell’s office but decided not to. He hadn’t learned anything especially useful. It was possible Stillwell knew all his employees intimately, but his enthusiasm for Melissa, his insistence that he relied on her, had pinged on Clay’s radar. She was a lowly bookkeeper. Why would she have any special significance to him?

Unless...

Damn it, he thought, shaking his head as he walked to his department-issue Explorer, how could Jane not know what her sister had been up to? Was there any chance she was shielding her?

He unlocked the vehicle and got in behind the wheel, mulling over his next step. After a moment he grimaced.

Somehow, all he could think about was Jane.

CHAPTER FIVE

STEAMING FROM HAVING to run a gauntlet of reporters outside, Jane held on tight to Alexis’s hand. Couldn’t they see they were scaring a little girl? Thank God the hospital administration was refusing to let them inside even as far as the lobby.

She hated thinking that the two of them might appear on the evening news. Thank God she’d taken Alexis by her house so she could change clothes and pack. Viewers would have really loved the sight of her in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes.

A day or two and the vultures will lose interest, she told herself. No, better yet, they’d lose interest as soon as Bree was found. It was the missing child that had them all thinking this was a gripping, front-page, top-of-the-hour story.

Walking down the broad hospital corridor, her steps shortened to accommodate her niece’s, Jane was startled to see Drew sitting on one of the chairs clustered in the open alcove in front of ICU. Even from a distance, she saw despair in his posture. He was bent over, both of his hands fisted in his hair.

Fear shot through her like an electric shock. Oh, dear God—had Lissa died?

“There’s Daddy!” Alexis cried. “Daddy!” she called.

For an instant, he didn’t respond at all. At last he slowly, painfully straightened and Jane saw his face. He’d aged yet another ten years. Oh, no.

“Drew?” She didn’t realize she was whispering until Alexis looked up at her.

“What’s wrong, Auntie Jane?”

“I... Nothing.”

Drew had risen to his feet. “Lexie.”

She ran to her daddy, and he swung her up into his arms and held her as if she was a glimpse of heaven. Eyes closed, he laid his cheek against her head.

Jane walked as slowly as she dared, fighting the desperate desire to turn and run away. She didn’t want to know. Her chest ached. My sister.

But Drew was looking at her now and holding out an arm. Jane walked into the circle of it and, for a moment, laid her head on his chest, feeling the comfort of an embrace that also contained Alexis’s small bony body.

But finally, she had to know. She straightened and stepped back, and his arm dropped away. “What’s happened?” Jane was horribly conscious of the way Alexis’s head came up and her alarmed stare, but how could she not ask?

He only shook his head. “Nothing’s changed. It’s just...getting to me. Here, sweetheart.” He bent to set his daughter down. “Look, they have some toys over in the corner.”

She hesitated, obviously reluctant to leave her father, but temptation sent her trotting to the play corner, where there was a child-size plastic table and pair of chairs, coloring books and crayons, and toys that looked designed to keep little hands busy. She took the seat that allowed her to keep an eye on her father and aunt, however.

“Something’s wrong,” Jane said with certainty, keeping her voice low.

“That cop.” The kindest, most easy-going of men, he snarled the two words. “He thinks I did something to hurt Lissa, and God knows what he thinks I did to Bree. He asked if we have life insurance on each other or the kids.”

Despite herself, Jane was shocked. “Sergeant Renner?”

“Who the hell else?” Drew never swore, either.

“Do you?” she blurted.

He stared at her without comprehension for a moment. “Life insurance? Oh, I had some through my job, but it’s probably expired now. I guess Liss might have it as part of her benefits at work. I don’t know. But on the kids? Why would we buy something like that?”

Jane decided she had to divert him. “What else did Sergeant Renner say?”

Nearly black with despair, Drew’s eyes met hers. “He didn’t say anything. He asked questions. He kept finding more to ask. Did Lissa and I sleep together? Have sex? Have we been fighting? Why do I think she didn’t want to take Bree with her? Why did I want her to take Bree? He thinks—” Looking shattered, he stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. His knuckles turned white. Jane watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed. At last he was able to look at her again, and this time tears glazed his eyes. “He thinks I wanted to hurt her. And Bree!” His voice held even more horror. “You know how much I love her!”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.