She smelled something burning and jumped up and ran into the kitchen.
“Are you still going to the gun range?” he asked.
“I had a little incident with my gun a couple days ago,” she said, pulling the skillet off the burner, “and promised Maxwell I wouldn’t use it until further notice.” The sandwich looked pretty dark.
“You know, Mia,” Ned said, “You don’t have to do this private eye thing. I’m sure there are a lot of things you could do.”
“Yes, well, maybe you could be thinking about what those might be and let me know when I see you. Tomorrow, midday, at the barn?”
“You got it. Remember, sweetie. Chin up. It’s all about balance when you ride.”
“If you say I have to get right back up on the horse I’m hanging up.”
“See? I didn’t have to. See you tomorrow.”
After they’d disconnected, Mia sliced her burnt grilled cheese sandwich in half and brought it and a glass of slightly-off milk into the living room to cycle through the cable channels until she finished her dinner. She decided the sandwich wasn’t totally terrible and the melted cheese inside was still good. Even so, she pushed the plate away with most of the sandwich uneaten—after all, she’d had a big breakfast at Jessie’s—and decided what she really needed was a nice, hot bubble bath. Both for body and soul.
She brought her plate to the kitchen and stopped herself from thinking how pleased Jack would be by her cleaning up after herself and went into her bedroom and gathered up bath crystals and a loofa. The bathtub was in the master bedroom, which was Jack’s bedroom since it had been her brother’s and Mia preferred not to spend much time there—especially since that was where she’d found Dave’s body.
She passed through Jack’s bedroom, the scent of him—lemons and leather—seeming to lilt in the air as if he’d just been there. She knew not to touch anything. Nothing good was going to come of that. If anything, it would just remind her of what she’d lost.
And I only had it about ten seconds before I lost it.
She turned on the bath water and poured the fragrant lavender bath crystals in watching them foam up, then stripped her clothes off and left them in a pile on Jack’s spotless bathroom floor. Just before she stepped into the bath, she saw a small flag football trophy she’d never seen before on the bathroom sink. She frowned. He must have brought it up from Valdosta. But why is it in the bathroom? Maybe he set it here when he came to pack his bag?
Without thinking, she reached over and picked up the trophy. The minute she did she felt a throb of electricity tremble up her arm from her fingers as they were wrapped around the base of it. She was so shocked she nearly dropped it. What she felt coming out of the trophy was a panoply of fear and gut-wrenching anxiety. She placed it back down on the bathroom counter and rubbed her arm.
What the hell is going on? That is not the reaction of someone who has just reignited with his ladylove. That is not the feeling of someone in the throes of new love.
What Mia felt when she touched the item Jack had last touched was the helpless horror of a man wrestling with a living nightmare—and losing.
*****
Jack could hear the wailing from the street.
As he pulled into the driveway, he saw the front door to Sandy’s house was wide open. The screams were coming from inside. Keening, high-pitched moans. A death wail.
Sandy stood in the doorway, waiting for him. Even from the drive he could see her face was wet with tears and his stomach clenched.
And he still hadn’t called the police.
She ran down the paved path that led from the front door to the driveway, her arms outstretched. He dropped the book bag of money on the lawn and caught her in his arms.
“It’s not over yet,” he said, trying to get her to hear him over her sobs. “We’re not done yet.”
“My baby, my baby,” Sandy wept. “She’s so afraid. Where is she? What has he done with her?”
Jack had no answers. The drive back to Buckhead from the drop site had been an agonizing one of questions and confusion.
It didn’t make sense. Why would Eugene not go for the money? Unless it had never been about the money. Unless it had always been about hurting Sandy—by hurting Twyla.
And if that was the case, they just lost all their bargaining chips. The bastard had Twyla and Sandy was falling apart. The bastard was getting what he wanted.
Jack grabbed the bag on the ground and then hesitated before scooping Sandy up in his arms. If she still had any hope of keeping the kidnapping a secret, they needed to move inside. Although it occurred to him that if Eugene was watching the house, Sandy might be trying to give him what he wanted: a full-color demonstration of just how successful his ploy was. Jack saw Vernetta in the doorway, a dark silhouette of dejection and melancholy.
“We’re not done yet,” he repeated as he approached the house, hoping to God he sounded more believable than he felt.
*****
Sandy huddled under the blanket on the couch. She refused to go to her room. She didn’t want to sleep, to miss a single thing. A cooling mug of tea sat on the coffee table and she heard Jack moving about in the kitchen. So different from any man she’d ever been with, Jack Burton. Why hadn’t she seen it was him all along?
She shook her head. No, she’d seen it. She just hadn’t wanted it then. Why do some women just naturally shy away from the good ones? She knew Jack was the kind of man who wanted to fix her problems. Fix all her problems. A good man.
“Where’s Vernetta?” Jack asked as he came into the living room. She could see he was worried, could see his helplessness riffing off him like fumes.
He doesn’t know what to do now.
“She took a sleeping pill,” Sandy said. She was glad her mother was at least temporarily out of the picture. Let her sleep. Please God, let her sleep through as much of this as she can.
She watched Jack nod and glance up the stairs.
“This is a bad sign, isn’t it?” she said quietly. After her breakdown on the lawn, she wanted him to know how hard she was trying to be strong. She didn’t want him to start handling things on his own without her. As horrible as everything was, he needed to know she could be trusted not to fall apart.
He eyed her carefully, as if making up his mind about whether to be honest with her.
“Tell me, Jack. I can handle it.”
He sat down next to her and took her hand in his. She loved the feel of his hands, big and rough, as if he did some kind of outdoor work. Did he work in a garden? Chop wood for his fireplace? An image of Jack in a flannel shirt sitting in front of a roaring fire came to mind. She tried to imagine what his girlfriend looked like. Did she look like Sandy? Did Jack have a type?
She realized her thoughts had ricocheted around to so many images and areas. She wondered if her face gave away her distraction.
“We need him to call us,” Jack said. “We don’t have any way of contacting him.”
“Do you think he will?”
“There’s no point in taking Twyla unless he uses her as a gambit to get what he wants.”
“Or unless what he wants is to hurt her.”
“Then why contact you in the first place?”
“To hurt me, too.” She looked at him. “He knows you’re the father, Jack.”
“I figured,” he said. They sat quietly for several long minutes. “Have you tried calling Eugene’s number?”
She nodded, not looking at him. “Just goes to voice mail.”
“He still employed at Summer Auto Parts?”
Sandy looked at him with a hopeful look on her face. “As far as I know.”
Jack glanced at his watch. “Too early to call. I’ll try them in a few hours.”
“What are you hoping to find out?”
“If Eugene is in Valdosta, he’s probably not our kidnapper,” he said.
“But he admitted it to me!”
“He might have been lying just to ring your bell,” Jac
k said, putting his phone back on the coffee table. “Every little bit of information we can uncover will help us. You sure you don’t want to try to rest? You know I’ll call you as soon as anything happens.”
She was exhausted. Every bone and every muscle she had ached. A hot bath and a nap sounded like exactly what she needed. A needle of guilt pierced her at the thought of trying to rest. Had Twyla slept? Would she ever recover from this? How can I sleep knowing she’s going through this right now?
“I have to think we’ll get her back,” she said firmly, clenching the hem of her silk tunic in her hands. “I’ve decided that’s the only way to think. Otherwise, I’ll go mad.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said, nodding. “Believe it.”
Until proven otherwise. That’s what he was going to say.
“How about you?” she said. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you close your eyes for a few hours?”
He frowned and looked back up the stairs. “If you’ll be okay down here,” he said, “I think I’ll take a shower.”
“That’s a good idea, Jack,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his hand. “We don’t know what the rest of the day will have in store for us. Let’s greet it with resolve and strength. Together.”
He seemed pleased at her words. Even she had to admit she sounded grounded and sane. Hopefully, she could continue to. What is it they say? Fake it ’til you make it? She glanced at their cellphones on the coffee table. Hers was waiting for the phone call from Eugene—their lifeline, their one chance at redemption, at getting their child back. His was there to record the call when Eugene called. She wondered if Jack called his girlfriend much. Sandy knew he’d run back to the condo he shared with her to get the gun and some clothes. When he returned, Sandy could tell he was upset by the visit.
It occurred to Sandy that the last thing she needed was Jack distracted from what they had to do right now in this crucial moment of their lives.
*****
Mia sat wrapped in a towel on the floor of Jack’s bathroom, staring at the trophy on the floor with her. Something was wrong. Jack was in trouble. There was no other reason why Mia was picking up such fear and anxiety from the trophy. She got up and moved into his bedroom. Now she wasn’t afraid of what she would feel. She wasn’t afraid of feeling too much Jack. She went to his bed, but he hadn’t slept in it in nearly three weeks. There was nothing to feel there.
She turned to his dresser. He’d packed a few things in a bag so she knew he’d touched the dresser recently. She pulled the top drawer open and got a repeat of the sensation from the trophy. Anger, fear, insecurity all leapt off the knob into her hands, pulsating as if challenging her to ignore them.
He was upset when he came here. She touched the top of the dresser, but felt nothing. She pulled open the other drawers, and again, nothing. She stood in the room for a moment, thinking, then turned and went to his closet. The minute she touched the doorknob her arm ached with the fury that shot up to her shoulder. She wrenched the door open and stared into his hanging shirts and slacks.
Her eyes went to the top shelf in the closet, where he kept his holster and guns. She flipped on the closet light so she could be sure of what she was seeing.
The gun was gone—the little one that you could hide in your pants. The one Jack said he used when he was in deep cover.
Mia put her hand to her mouth to stifle the groan. Of course. It all made sense now. Him being so evasive, so secretive. He wasn’t having an affair—he was in trouble. Of course he couldn’t tell her. Whatever he was in to, he wouldn’t want her endangered.
But what was it? Was his girlfriend holding him hostage? No, that didn’t make sense. He can obviously come and go as he wants. She touched the doorknob again and felt the vibrating shock of fear and anger vying with each other to create an unmistakable testimony of grief and pain.
She hurried into the living room to dig her phone out from between the couch cushions.
He doesn’t have to pick up. I’ll just leave a message. In fact, this’ll work better, Jack, if you don’t have any speaking parts.
“This is Jack’s phone,” a woman’s voice said.
Mia started. She had not been expecting someone to answer, especially a female someone.
“I…is…is Jack there?” Mia asked.
“He is busy at the moment,” the woman said. “If this is his ex-girlfriend, I’m afraid I have to ask you to stop calling him.”
“Ex…?”
“He told me all about you, and harassing him like this is not going to get him back. He’s with me now.”
A cold knot formed in the pit of Mia’s stomach. She felt like throwing up. “And you are?”
“I’m Sandy, as I’m sure you know very well. We want to be left in peace. Please respect our wishes.”
The phone disconnected and Mia sat, naked except for her towel, staring at her phone as if what just happened couldn’t possibly have just happened.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Morning in Atlantic Station broke foggy and cold. Autumn had finally come to Atlanta. Mia stumbled out of bed and made her way to the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker. She would have to drink it black. She’d forgotten again to go to the grocery store.
It was a miracle she’d been able to sleep at all last night after her phone conversation with Sandy. Mia congratulated herself for not totally flipping out afterward.
Plenty of time for that this morning. She took her coffee to Jack’s bedroom and stood in the hallway looking in.
I don’t care what she says. Something is going on and it is not renewed love. Besides, if it is true, the bastard can tell me to my face, by God.
Mia drank her coffee then showered and dressed for the day. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew what she was going to do, had known it ever since she touched the trophy and discovered Jack was in trouble. If she’d been able to reach his voice mail last night she might not have felt the necessity to do it, but after talking to his girlfriend…his ex-girlfriend…she was already pointed in the direction of a visit to Buckhead.
What am I going to do? Walk up to the front door and have the happy couple tell me in tandem?
No, if her fight with Jack the day before had told her anything, it told her he wasn’t open to the direct approach. He was keeping something from Mia for a reason, and whatever that reason was it wouldn’t change just because she was standing on his doorstep.
If anything, with Sandy by his side Mia knew Jack’s resolve to keep his secrets would be greater than ever. She turned on the television to hear the morning news, hoping something would come to her in the way of a strategy.
She had to work consciously to shove away the memory of her conversation with Sandy. The woman had sounded so confident and her Southern accent lilted in a way Mia was sure most men found very alluring. She must be pretty. If she used to date Jack, she was probably blonde and athletic. For sure she was a cheerleader. That was so Jack’s type.
At least back then. And now? Had his romp in the sack with Mia reminded him of what he was missing? Was it sophistication? An experienced lover? Someone who wasn’t a complete pain in the ass, as he was relentlessly telling Mia she was?
He always says I go off half-cocked. Well, here’s me trying to lay out the facts of the situation and analyze them carefully first. She flipped through the cable channels until she landed on CNN and then lowered the volume so the day’s news events wouldn’t compete with her thoughts. Just when she decided she’d probably need to go to the store to at least sort out lunch for the day—tackling one problem at a time—she heard the thump at her front door of a package delivery.
Probably one of Jack’s mail-order pots or something, she thought, tossing the remote control on the couch and going to the door.
The box was large and she recognized it instantly as the camera equipment the two of them had ordered a month earlier. It had been on backorder and Mia had forgotten it was coming until this moment. She dragged the box into the li
ving room and opened it. Inside was a GPS tracker and two cameras.
An hour later, Mia sat in her parked car a half block from Sandy’s house. She couldn’t remember why they’d ordered another still camera in addition to a video camera. She remembered Jack saying something about the fact they could mount the video camera for remote recording and that had made sense, but why did they get another still camera? She brought the GPS tracker and the new camera with her. It seemed downright providential the surveillance equipment would arrive right at the moment she was trying to figure out her next move.
She pointed their old digital SLR that she’d attached a telephoto lens to at Sandy’s street. The houses were so big and the lawns that led up to them so extensive it was difficult to get a picture of anything except the road and flanking trees. The leaves had started to turn and the effect was dramatic.
Rich people sure like to live in pretty places. She shot several pictures of the street, the houses on the street and the corner of Sandy’s house. She was too far away to shoot Sandy’s house but she had a good view of her driveway. Mia could see anybody coming or going. Short of climbing the wall and peeking in one of the windows, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get a glimpse of Sandy, which she had to admit was at least eighty percent of the reason she was sitting in her car with ten thousand dollars worth of surveillance equipment in her lap.
While she waited, she worked hard not to think about the hour she and Jack had spent in each other’s arms. Even after four days of angst and disappointment, it was still the hardest thing she had to force herself to do every single day. She tried not to think of the way he looked into her eyes as his hands—rough and sure—stroked her naked hip and pushed himself into—
Stop that! It’s not helping. She shook her head violently to dispel the image.
She aimed the camera at the driveway. This is where he goes every day. This is where he backs out, being watchful of the curve in the drive because it’s lined with azalea bushes. And this is where he hesitates at the end of the drive so he doesn’t run into a neighbor’s Lexus or Infinity barreling down the street after lunch at the club or whatever useless crap people in this neighborhood do.
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