“Nope, I’m not making it up. You can ask Royal if you want.”
“Oh, sure, count on it.”
Daniel noticed Cozie’s pace slowing as her house came into view, as if she knew she was about to leave some fantasy world and re-enter reality.
“Are you going to call the police yourself?” he asked.
She pushed back her hair with both hands. “Let me get cleaned up first. Then I’ll decide.”
Nothing in her tone or expression suggested she believed for one second her brother could have pushed her down that hill. Daniel kept silent as they walked down the field to the house, side by side now. Cozie grimaced with every step. He wondered if she’d been doing that the entire way. But he thought he understood: she was a woman accustomed to carrying on without self-pity, counting on herself and her family. He thought about the work and determination her ancestors had required to clear and cultivate these fields with their thin, rocky soil, to endure the harsh, mercurial Vermont climate. Cozie Hawthorne needed, right now, to know she was a part of that gritty tradition—that she could walk through a field no matter her bruises, her fatigue, her mounting fears for her brother, even for herself.
He saw her stiffen and followed her gaze down to the toolshed, where Thad Vanackern waved to them. Cozie didn’t wave back. Julia and Frances were behind him, their Mercedes parked in the loop of the driveway.
“Good morning,” Thad called.
Cozie gave him a polite nod as she and Daniel came around the shed. “Good morning.”
Thad got right to the point. “Cozie, Frances and I have decided to go to the police about the thefts. We wanted you to know.”
She had no obvious reaction. “I see. Thank you for telling me. I’m sure it’s best for all concerned.”
“Have you seen Seth?” Julia asked, coming up beside her father. She had on slim tan jeans and an oversized Vermont sweatshirt, her hair gleaming in the morning sun.
Cozie picked bits of dead leaves from her tangled hair. “I think I’ll save my comments for the police, should they decide to question me or my brother.”
Thad gave a low hiss of exasperation. “Cozie, there’s no need to be so stubborn. You can’t possibly think our loyalty to you and your family would extend to covering up criminal acts.”
She balled up her hands into tight fists, and Daniel figured she was just in the mood to take a swing at the snotty bastard. But she held her fire. “I’m quite sure I’ve never asked you to do anything for me or my family—for any reason.”
Frances Vanackern touched her husband’s arm. She was dressed in charcoal gray wool pants and a white cashmere turtleneck, a simple, elegant outfit that contributed to her regal bearing. She had an immediate calming effect on Thad. “Cozie, you know how sorry we are about what’s been happening. We’re all trying to keep an open mind.”
“I hope so,” Cozie said.
“I want you to know that I understand how difficult this must be for all of you. When I married Thad, my family and many of my friends had a hard time. They projected all their feelings of envy, all their inadequacies, onto me. Seth—”
Cozie’s eyes flashed with anger as Frances’s words sank in. “No, you don’t understand. Seth doesn’t care if I sell ten books or ten million books. It’s just not an issue for him.”
Thad looked as if he wished he could beam himself to a quiet golf course somewhere. “If it’s any consolation, Cozie, I believe Seth wants to be caught. Why else would he be so obvious?”
“Obvious! Yeah, you’re keeping an open mind all right.”
“Your brother is a troubled young man.” Thad’s tone had hardened. “It’s time you saw that.”
Cozie swallowed, trembling, holding on to what remained of her self-control. Daniel longed to touch her, to hold her. But this, he knew, was her show. She said through clenched teeth, “My resignation will be faxed to Vanackern Media headquarters in the morning.”
Frances gasped, but Thad made a face, impatient. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” But he frowned suddenly, searching her face as if seeing her for the first time. “What in God’s name happened to you?”
“I fell.”
She brushed past him to the back porch, tore open the door, and went inside.
Thad sighed and turned to Daniel. “She doesn’t make life easy on anybody who cares about her. She knows where Seth is, doesn’t she?”
“Not anymore.”
“You mean he—”
“He wasn’t in the woods.” Daniel saw no need to be more specific. “I didn’t see him.”
“What a terrible dilemma we’re facing,” Thad said. “If only we knew for certain what the right course of action is. Seth clearly has his troubles. He’s had them for years. His family’s just never wanted to see it.”
Frances nodded in pained agreement. “He was never interested in the paper, and yet he never carried through with any of his plans for the land or anything else. He had those scrapes with the law a few years back. I’m afraid Duncan—his father—saw him as aimless and unambitious and was trying to force him into taking some responsibility for his life when he died.”
“His death was a tremendous blow to everyone,” Thad said, softening, and Daniel sensed a genuine affection for the departed Duncan Hawthorne. “If you look around this place, you can see the entire family struggled with finances for years. It was a terrible strain. I tend to believe Seth just became overwhelmed. His father’s death, his sister’s success, his failed romance with Julia—they were all too much for him. I think he just cracked.”
“Cozie’s going to need proof before she believes that,” Daniel said, keeping his tone neutral.
“I know. And I believe I owe you an apology, Daniel. You came here thinking Seth might have sabotaged your helicopter, didn’t you?”
“I just wanted to know why my partner and I ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. It had to make sense to me before I could move on.”
“I hope you find out,” Frances cut in softly. “Come, Thad, we should be going.”
Thad, in a formal gesture, inclined his head slightly toward Daniel. “Please let us know if we can be of assistance. Say good-bye to Cozie for us.”
Daniel nodded. “I will.”
As they left, his eyes met Julia’s, and she hung back as her parents climbed into their car. “Is Seth all right?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. I really haven’t seen him.”
“But Cozie did.”
“I’m not speaking for her.”
Julia compressed her lips in a knowing expression, and inhaled through her nostrils. “Well, I can see there’s definitely something going on between you two. God, who’d have ever thought. But it’s none of my business. If you do see Seth, I hope…” She faltered, her eyes shining. “Just tell him I care about what happens to him.”
“When are you going to tell your parents the whole story about your relationship with him?”
She smiled coolly. “You mean that I slept with him?”
“It could come out in the police investigation.”
“That,” she said, waltzing off to the car, “is my worry.”
She tossed him a half-sultry, half-defiant look. “I can handle the police—and my parents.” And, her eyes, the set of her mouth, said, I can handle you, too. Just try me.
Daniel didn’t rise to her challenge, and she sauntered off to her parents’ car.
Chapter
15
Stripped to her underwear, Cozie sat on the edge of the bathtub, prepared to disinfect and, if necessary, bandage her various scratches and scrapes. She had the first-aid kit opened up on the floor. It was in a black metal case about dictionary size, a haphazard collection of Band-Aids, adhesive tape, gauze, sterile cotton, hydrogen peroxide, and Aunt Ethel’s miracle ointment, a thick goo that looked like motor oil and smelled a lot worse. Cozie hadn’t touched the kit since she’d sliced open a knuckle planting tulips with her father the autumn before his death.
She turned on the hot water and let the tub fill. She would just soak her wounds clean. If she did a hurry-up job, as she’d intended, she would have to face Daniel and decide whether to go to the police about what had happened—and what they’d found—at the monk hut.
She peeled off her underwear and eased into the hot, unscented water, biting back a yell when it hit her various scrapes. But the stinging abated, and the heat seeped into her, relaxing her tensed muscles.
After a while, a soft knock sounded on the door. “You okay in there?” Daniel asked.
“Fine.”
But the sound of his voice broke the spell, and she groaned, prying herself from the tub. There was no point putting off the inevitable any longer. She slathered on some of Aunt Ethel’s goo and put her clothes back on. She combed out her hair, leaving it hanging. Her body ached right up to her eyelids. Daniel would only say it served her right.
She returned to the back room, where he was drinking a cup of coffee on the couch. He watched as she held her hands over the woodstove, as if to warm them. In reality, she just wasn’t sure what else to do with herself.
“You were awake the whole time I was sneaking out this morning, weren’t you?”
“Yep,” he said, coming beside her.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Because I didn’t think you’d get yourself up to anything devious after what we did last night. I thought you’d trust me more.”
“I wasn’t being devious.”
“Just didn’t want to wake me, huh?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Because that’s not how you think, and because it’s a flat-out lie.” He stood very still beside her. “Don’t tell me anything if you feel you can’t, but don’t lie to me.”
His words stung. “I hate lying.”
“I know. Cozie…”
She knew she was lost. There was a tenderness, a need, in the way he said her name. Cold and damp, suddenly sleepy from her bath and the heat of the woodstove, yet instantly aroused, she was a mass of contradictory sensations. Thad Vanackern was probably at the police station. She should find Seth. She needed to drink her coffee, find something to eat.
But she was sinking against Daniel’s hard, warm chest, welcoming the feel of his arms around her, the strength of his body. If he let go, she would drop to the floor.
She made herself look up at him, into those steely eyes, but his mouth covered hers, seized hers with a hunger, a fierceness she’d already discovered lay within him. He immediately lifted her up and pulled her against him, leaving her with nowhere to put her legs except around his hips. His hardness thrust against her, boldly, as if he needed her to know just how much he wanted her.
His tongue plunged into her mouth, taking away her breath. She gasped for air, but he didn’t let up, just pressed her more firmly against him, probed more deeply with his tongue. Desire surged through her like a wild fire. They might as well have been naked, making love.
“Sweet Cozie,” he murmured, “if only you knew what you do to me.”
“I’ve a fair idea.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t have any idea.”
His hands slid under her sweater, and she moaned at the feel of his fingers on her skin. They moved up her back and slipped beneath the damp, filmy fabric of her bra, deftly unclasping it. Then he found the naked flesh of one breast. His tongue thrust into her mouth again and again, in an erotic rhythm, and he lifted her shirt higher, kissing her throat, taking her nipple between his fingers. The sensations were blending—tongue, hands, throat, breast—until his mouth was on her breast and he was licking, tasting, and she cried out.
She thought she heard him moan.
“Take me upstairs,” she whispered. “Carry me because I don’t think I can walk.”
But he pulled her sweater down. She could feel the shudder go through him as he lowered her to the floor, steadying her before he released her. His eyes were dark, hot coals, and the swelling in his jeans betrayed every millimeter of his own arousal. “I guess there won’t be any pretending between us from here on out. You know what I want.”
“I want the same thing.”
“Do you?”
He walked out through the back porch, and she jumped when the door shut behind him. She didn’t move until she heard his truck start. Maybe he’d decided to throw in his nickel’s worth with the police. It’s possible Seth Hawthorne tried to kill me and my partner in Texas.
“The hell with him,” she said, ignoring the tears burning her eyes as she shoved another log on the fire. What did he want from her if not sex? She grabbed her coffee and headed upstairs for fresh clothes. Aunt Ethel and Meg would want their updates, and she had work to do. Let Daniel Foxworth do whatever he needed to do.
Daniel got cleaned up and changed at the sawmill and put Cozie Hawthorne if not out of his mind at least under a trap door somewhere at the back of it. But as he dialed the phone in the kitchen, he could still taste her. Could still feel her skin under his hands. Not a good sign. He needed to keep his wits about him. He—and Cozie—needed to find her brother and get some straight answers from him.
He contacted the salvage crew directly, and the head of it told him they expected to bring up the helicopter today. Then the experts would have a look at it. He added, “Your grandfather was down last night asking.”
That didn’t sit well with Daniel. He hung up and called Austin Foxworth on his private line at Fox Oil headquarters. “Thanks,” Daniel said, “but I don’t need your help.”
His grandfather didn’t agree. “What the hell do you think you’re going to accomplish bringing up that helicopter?”
“I have to know.”
“What for? Since when do you care what people think?”
“It’s not what people think. It’s what I think.” He didn’t bother telling his grandfather about the detonator caps in Seth’s hiding place. It was too complicated, too circumstantial, and it wouldn’t change the old man’s mind. He wanted Daniel back in Texas and the incident forgotten—or used to get him out of fire fighting and aboard at Fox Oil.
“The press is sniffing around,” his grandfather said brusquely. “They get wind of what you’re up to, it’ll be all over the local papers. You want to take that risk?”
“I already have,” Daniel said, starting to hang up.
“You haven’t talked to the hospital yet, have you?” Austin Foxworth said. “Maguire’s in surgery. They’re after the infection. They’ll keep the leg if they can. You hop a plane now, you might could see him when he comes to.”
A trio of grackles landed on the sawmill’s front porch as Daniel dully thanked his grandfather for the information and hung up. He tried calling the hospital but they only told him what he already knew: J.D. was in surgery and they would know more in a few hours.
The grackles departed. Apparently there was nothing to keep them. Daniel wondered if he should follow their lead. But he filled the woodbox, stoked up the fire, and finally headed out, knowing he couldn’t stay there watching the leaves fall and the birds fly.
Aunt Ethel was at her desk when Cozie arrived. In all her time at the paper, she’d never beaten her aunt to the office and doubted her father and grandfather had before her either.
“What in blue blazes happened to you?” her aunt demanded. “You been climbing trees again?”
“No, I went out to the monk hut—”
But Aunt Ethel pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. “It’ll have to wait. Will Rubeno’s in your office. He wants to talk to you.”
Cozie had no stomach for lying to the police. “I’ll sneak out the back.”
“No, you won’t,” Will said behind her.
She whirled around, feigning surprise. “Will, I didn’t realize you were here.” Technically it wasn’t a lie: she could claim by “here” she meant right behind her, not in
the building. “What’s up? Do you have a suspect for the break-in?”
“You know why I’m here, Cozie. Thad Vanackern said he told you he was reporting the thefts. He should never have waited, but that’s water over the dam.” Will gave her one of his grim cop looks. “I’ve got to question Seth.”
So Thad hadn’t simply reported the money and valuables missing: he’d fingered her brother as a suspect. Sure, they were just trying to help. Then why not let the police investigate with an open mind? “Where’s your probable cause?” she demanded.
Will made a sound of disgust mixed with disbelief, one he’d perfected since they were in the eighth grade together. “Probable cause? What the hell are you talking about? I just want to talk to him.”
“Dammit, Will, you know Seth’s not a thief!”
“We’re not talking about what I know and don’t know,” he said sternly. “Where is he?”
It was a direct question from an officer of the law. “What makes you think I’d know?”
“Because you wouldn’t rest until you did. Never mind. I won’t tempt you to lie. I already know about the monk hut.”
“How—”
Then she saw Daniel coming in from the center hall, behind Will. So that was how. His gray eyes met hers without any hint of his guilt or innocence. Had he told Will about the detonator caps, his belief his helicopter had been sabotaged?
“Tell me about these calls you’ve been receiving,” Will said, but he didn’t wait for her to make a denial. He held up a hand, silencing her. “Now don’t get your back up: Meg told me that one. Said you’d have gotten around to it yourself if you didn’t have so much else on your mind.” He sounded highly dubious. “You have any evidence of these calls?”
“I did, but it disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“That’s right.” She glanced at Aunt Ethel, who was busying herself at her desk but clearly listening to every word—and not about to rise to her niece’s defense against an officer of the law, even Will Rubeno. “That was what the break-in here was about. Someone—presumably the caller or someone he or she hired—wanted to find any evidence I’d collected, didn’t find anything here, then went up to the house and tried there.”
Finding You Page 23