The cop got his jacket. “Come on, you two can take me out to this monk hut. Maybe there’ll be something you missed.”
Under the circumstances, Daniel thought Rubeno was being remarkably restrained. Then again, he lived in Woodstock. He’d known the Hawthornes all his life. As much as they might annoy him, he couldn’t take any pleasure in seeing them under this kind of strain.
Not that Cozie was letting it show. The optimism and energy that had put her on the best-seller lists was standing her in good stead. She refused—at least on the surface—to believe that her brother could have committed any of the crimes for which he was under suspicion. He was being framed. Period.
But Daniel wondered if she had her doubts.
Ethel Hawthorne and Meg Hawthorne Strout were up at the house when he and Cozie returned from the monk hut, where nothing had changed since that morning. The police were combing through Seth’s abandoned camping gear.
“We haven’t turned up any new leads,” Meg said as the three Hawthorne women gathered at the kitchen table. “We’ve looked everywhere we can think of. Tom’s checking with Seth’s friends.” She hesitated, her own worry plain. “Cozie, maybe you should sit tight for a while. You’re involved in this thing in a different way from the rest of us. No need to make yourself a tempting target.”
Cozie’s tension was evident in her pale skin, tight expression, even the super-concentrated way she was staring out at the birds. “I’m doing the best I can, Meg.”
“I know. That stuff you found in Seth’s Land Rover—”
“It’s a set-up. He wouldn’t be so stupid as to hide stolen goods in his own Rover—especially when he knew we’d be looking all over the place for him.”
“What if he had no choice? He could have stuck the stuff in there in a hurry, figuring it’d only be temporary.” Meg threw up her hands, snorting in disgust. “Listen to me!”
“I know, you feel so disloyal when—”
“No point in borrowing trouble,” their aunt cut in, climbing to her feet. “We’ll know soon enough what Seth’s done and hasn’t done, and why. If I know Seth Hawthorne, the ‘why’ will involve putting his neck on the block in place of somebody else’s. Most of the trouble he’s been in was for that very reason—always had to jump in and protect somebody he felt was out-numbered.”
It was a point Daniel had only vaguely considered, being a newcomer among Hawthornes. But was it possible Seth was trying to protect someone?
“High time the stupid bastard looked after himself,” Meg muttered. “I’ve got to get back home. You all keep me posted.”
“You do the same,” Cozie said.
Ethel Hawthorne reluctantly left with the older of her two nieces, who’d driven her up from town. Cozie walked out to the porch with them. When she returned to the back room, she flopped down on the couch and shut her eyes, more to combat tension, Daniel guessed, than in any serious attempt to sleep. But her fatigue was obvious.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
She shook her head, not opening her eyes. “No. Thanks.”
He left her alone and used the phone in the living room to call Houston for an update on J.D. He was in stable condition. He still had his leg. There was nothing more anyone could tell him.
But a heaviness settled over Daniel as he rejoined Cozie in the back room. She hadn’t moved, but she hadn’t fallen asleep, either. The scratch on her forehead was outlined in harsh detail in the fading sunlight. J.D. Maguire, Daniel reminded himself, was his reason for coming to Vermont. His only reason. If Seth Hawthorne had brought down their helicopter in an impulsive act born of jealousy or desperation, he would be held to accounts. Daniel would see to it, no matter how hard and deep Cozie had bored into his soul.
“What are you doing?” Cozie asked, her eyes still closed.
“Just sitting here. You?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Mostly I’m trying to talk myself out of worrying about what comes next.”
“If I weren’t here, you’d be with your sister or your aunt. The three of you could take some of the edge off your worries.”
But she opened one eye and looked around at him. “That’s not what I meant.”
He knew it wasn’t. What she’d meant, he could tell from her hesitant tone, was what came next between them. Cozie Hawthorne wasn’t the sort for a nostrings-attached toss in the hay. He’d known that last night when she’d climbed into his bed.
“I never in my wildest dreams,” she said, sliding off the couch, obviously stiff and sore, “imagined I’d fall for a Texas oil firefighter. I never even imagined meeting one.”
“Life sometimes brings the unexpected.”
She kept her back to him as she rooted around in her collection of old movies, as if searching for one in particular. But she gave up and turned around, empty-handed. Her eyes were as vivid a green as he’d ever seen. “Tell me something, Daniel. Do you already know you’re going to go back to Texas and pick up where you left off?”
He watched her standing in the middle of the bowed pineboard floor, her arms hanging at her sides, her hair as red-gold in the fading afternoon light, it seemed to him, as the autumn leaves. She seemed ready to take whatever he threw at her. But he said, truthfully, “I’m beginning to realize I can’t go back to Texas and pick up where I left off. That’s just not a possibility.”
“Because of J.D.?”
“Because of a lot of things. Being up here, regardless of what happens or why I came, has made me realize I need to make some changes in my life. J.D. could probably go on until he’s eighty the way he has been—if his body holds up. I’m not so sure I can. I don’t think I was sure even before our copter went down. I just wasn’t ready to admit it. I’d bought a ranch. It’s not much of a place—it needs work. But in the spring there’s a field of bluebonnets….” He smiled, not wanting to burden her with his own demons. “Well, you’ll have to come to Texas some spring. There’s nothing like a field of bluebonnets in full bloom.”
She sat on the edge of the couch, dark circles, he noticed, under her eyes. “Your family has a daunting history. Oil, the military, Texas. Has it been tough finding a place for yourself within the Foxworth traditions?”
He didn’t turn away from the question, as he had so often in the past. And he could see that she needed for them to talk about him, about his world. “I guess I’ve tried to make a place for myself rather than find a place. I want to honor the good those who’ve come before me have done without being trapped by it—without letting it determine my life for me. It hasn’t always been easy. My idea of being responsible to Foxworth traditions isn’t necessarily the same as my father’s or grandfather’s idea.”
“You didn’t join Fox Oil, and you didn’t become a general—at least yet.”
He laughed. “Honey, I’ll never become a general.”
“What about Fox Oil?”
“I don’t know. It’s a more diversified company these days—it has to be. And I’m not your basic suit-and-tie business type. I’m not sure what good I’d do there. I do know I’ve felt more of a need than my grandfather or my father to right the wrongs my great-grandfather committed.”
“The one who founded Fox Oil.”
Daniel nodded. “Stephen Foxworth. He was a hard-driving, competitive man. He swindled J.D.’s grandfather, James Maguire. It’s a commonly known fact in my part of the country. James Maguire was a lot younger, and naive, and he trusted my great-grandfather to look after his interests. Instead he got James to surrender the oil rights to his land for next to nothing. Eventually the Maguires lost everything, even their land. James died at forty of tuberculosis. His son—J.D.’s father—went to work as a roustabout for Fox Oil, and J.D. followed in his footsteps. The Maguires have always had a hard life.”
“And so you feel responsible for J.D.,” Cozie said.
“I felt I owed him a chance, that’s all. I don’t believe in sons paying for the sins of their fathers, never mind their great-
grandfathers. But when I decided to get into fire fighting, I needed his expertise, and I knew he wanted his own company—he’d been working fires for years. I offered him a partnership. He knew what I was doing. He was tempted to say no.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t. Now maybe he wishes he had. He’s done more for me than I ever have for him.”
“I think I understand,” she said quietly, coming to him, “why you have to know what happened that day over the gulf.”
His clothes were scattered with hers on the hand-hooked rug under her dormer as they explored each other in the darkness. Coming upstairs together had been totally natural. Maybe, Daniel thought, too natural.
But there was nowhere else he wanted to be, needed to be.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.
She let a palm skim up his arm, across one of his own more recent wounds. “You won’t.”
But he was careful of her scrapes and bruises even as she shuddered with sensual desire under his touch. Feeling the soft, smooth skin of her body, feeling his own rising desire, Daniel throbbed with a need he’d never known. It wasn’t just physical. It went beyond that. Way beyond. As he tasted her mouth, her throat, her breasts, he tried to imagine leaving Vermont without her. He tried to imagine life without her smart mouth and changeable green eyes, without that blend of toughness and vulnerability that made her so intriguing, so maddening and fun and endlessly interesting to be around.
She gave a small cry, and he thought he’d hurt her although he wasn’t anywhere near a bruise. Then he realized he hadn’t. Her smile came to him even in the darkness. “We’d better get on with it, Major Foxworth. I don’t think I’m going to last.”
He smiled back, not stopping his stroking of her wet heat. “Going to fall asleep, are you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Cozie…”
“I’m so glad we have tonight, Daniel.”
And she moved his hand away and guided him into her, and everything they were together became as sparklingly clear to him as the Vermont night sky above him. His eyes focused momentarily on a single, bright star, then shut as he let himself be absorbed by the smell and feel and taste of her, by his own hot, hard need for her…for no one, he thought, but her. Not ever again.
Afterward she fell asleep in his arms, and he watched her in the moonlight and tried so very hard not to think.
The call came just before dawn.
Cozie bolted upright, almost dumping Daniel onto the floor. “Oh,” she said, feeling his hard, naked body next to hers, “I forgot you were here.”
But he was instantly awake. “Don’t answer it.”
“I have to.” She was already reaching across him to the extension. “It could be Meg or Aunt Ethel about Seth.”
“Then let me—”
She looked at him, his face silhouetted in the muted predawn light. The phone was on its third ring, but she gazed long enough for him to know that she had no regrets about their lovemaking. To the contrary. But that didn’t mean she was going to let him do all the hard things for her, not, she thought, if she expected to retain not only her own self-respect but his respect as well. He was a man with an identity strong enough not to demand that people around him seek his approval, re-cast themselves to his desires.
“No,” she said. “I need to make my own decisions, do my own dirty work. I think we’re alike in that regard.”
He grimaced, then gave a reluctant nod. “We are.”
She picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Cozie Cornelia…”
And even as she shut her eyes, even as the fear and the disgust rolled through her, she realized it wasn’t as bad getting an anonymous call in the middle of the night with Daniel right beside her.
“Are you having fun with Daniel Foxworth tonight?”
“What? Wait a minute—”
Click.
She slammed down the receiver. “Bastard. Bitch. Whatever you are, whoever you are…” But the tears were already hot on her cheeks, and Daniel pulled the comforter up over her. “Hold me, Daniel. Don’t say anything. Just hold me.”
Cozie was out refilling the birdfeeders when Julia Vanackern’s Austin Healey sped up her driveway, parking in the loop toward the front of the house. She jumped out, leaving her door open, and ran across the lawn. Cozie dumped a handful of thistle into a feeder. Daniel was inside taking a shower. They’d agreed to spend the morning looking for Seth together.
But she tensed when she saw Julia’s expression. “Cozie—I’m glad I caught you,” Julia said, her voice hoarse as she blinked back tears. “I wanted you to hear this from me.”
Fear surged through Cozie as she clenched her hands. “Seth…he hasn’t…he’s not…”
Julia guessed what she was thinking and quickly reassured her. “No—no, he hasn’t been found that I know of. It’s nothing like that. Cozie, the police went through Seth’s phone records. They didn’t find anything on his summer bills, but on his most recent bill there were calls to cities you stayed in while on this last road trip.”
Cozie stared at Julia, mute, numb. There was a soft breeze out of the south, surprisingly warm for October. Not Seth. It can’t be Seth…
“I’m sorry,” Julia said weakly. “I know how hard this is for you.”
“Thank you for the information.” Cozie made herself focus on Julia Vanackern, see her pale hair and face, without makeup, shaken as well by what was happening. “But it still doesn’t have to be Seth. He doesn’t keep his doors locked. Anyone could have gone in and used his phone when he wasn’t around.”
“Cozie…”
“Please don’t argue with me, Julia.”
Julia took her hand, squeezed it gently. “I won’t. I hope you’re right. I know—somehow this will all work out.”
“Daniel’s inside.” Someone else seemed to be speaking; she dipped one hand into the bag of thistle. “Could you go in and tell him? He’s in the shower, but you can just give him a yell, tell him you’ve got news. I want to finish feeding the birds.”
“Sure,” Julia said, and took the front door into the dining room.
Cozie threw down the bag of thistle.
Her brother as her anonymous caller…as the disembodied voice of last night, of so many nights.
She wouldn’t believe it.
She found herself running. Her legs were moving as if by some outside force. She could feel the wind in her face and smell the clean autumn air, see the golden leaves all around her, and somewhere deep within her came a calm, centered voice telling her Seth was innocent, he was being set up. Framed. Used.
By whom?
She was in her Jeep, digging her spare key from inside the driver’s door. In another minute she was swooping out onto Hawthorne Orchard Road. She turned up the dirt road, swallowing hard as she passed the red farmhouse, her eyes pinned straight ahead. It was warm enough to open a window. The feel of the air, its fresh smell, helped calm her.
About a half-mile past Seth’s place, she pulled to the side of the road and climbed out, taking a path down a gentle, grassy slope to a small graveyard enclosed in a dilapidated wrought-iron fence. She went through an opening, among the rows of flat, rectangular headstones from the last three centuries, most inscribed with the name Hawthorne. Several graves were marked with black cast-iron stars honoring service in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the War Between the States, the Great War.
Cozie paused in front of a dark granite stone, its lettering worn by time and weather: ELIJAH HAWTHORNE, 1752–1833. There were a few lines from the Bible, and one of the Revolutionary War stars.
The wind gusted, warm, out of the south.
But she heard an engine up on the road, squinted in the sun, and saw Daniel making his way toward her. She turned back to her ancestor’s grave.
Daniel came beside her, but he said nothing.
“I wonder what Elijah would think if he could see his descendants now,” Cozie said without loo
king up. “Seth wanted by the police for stealing, maybe even attempted murder. Me driven to suspecting my own brother of resenting me enough to terrorize me. The Citizen in Vanackern hands.”
“Coming out here must make you feel the weight of your family history.”
“Not just coming out here. Being in Vermont. People outside the state—no one’s ever heard of Elijah Hawthorne.” Her eyes reached his, and she realized she was in no danger of crying. Not now. It was time to face reality, the changes that had occurred in her life. “I noticed that when I was on the road. It was sort of liberating.”
He nodded. “I can understand that.”
She thought he could. “It was interesting those few days being Daniel Forrest, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
A silence fell between them. There was something about the quiet graveyard, the autumn wind, the bright-leafed trees around them that she found reassuring. “I used to come out here often when I was a kid, especially as a teenager. I did charcoal rubbings of each of the stones. Seems kind of morbid, but I was in my American history phase at the time.”
“What did you do with them?”
“Hung them on my wall, then stored them somewhere. Rubbings wear out the stones faster, so we don’t do them any longer.” She touched Elijah’s name, not looking at Daniel. “Julia told you about the phone records?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying to reserve judgment.” She breathed out. “I’ve got to find him. If he’s hurt—”
She stopped herself, abruptly threading her way back through the gravestones. Daniel followed, not too close. She opened the door to her Jeep and looked around at him. “Back to the world of the living. I guess you’re going to follow me?”
He managed a tight smile. “Good guessing.”
Cozie had her hand on the phone in the sawmill kitchen, where she’d led Daniel if only because it was closer, when it rang. She automatically picked it up. “Cozie Hawthorne speaking.”
“You again.” J.D. Maguire didn’t sound too happy. “Danny Boy’s not letting you out of his sight, I hope.”
Finding You Page 26