Finding You

by Carla Neggers

  “But I had to make sure she wasn’t on board, didn’t I?”

  “I suppose so,” Cozie said quietly. They were so close to the edge of the woods.

  “Seth was going with her. I sabotaged the helicopter with the express purpose of trying to kill him. It really was a simple matter. Everyone was racing around getting ready for the fire, and I managed to slip into the helicopter and do my thing.” She chuckled, smug. “Amazing what one remembers from one’s childhood.”

  “Did Julia know you’d sabotaged Daniel’s helicopter?”

  “Not at the time, no. She’s since figured it out.” Her tone sharpened. “Move along, Cozie. Dawdling won’t stop me from doing what I must do.”

  Cozie picked up her pace only slightly as they started down a gradual slope, only a few feet before they reached the path through the woods. Julia Vanackern, Cozie realized, had known about her mother’s calls when they were the work of a troubled but, at that point, still harmless woman. If she’d spoken up, the helicopter crash and everything else might have been prevented. Instead she’d stood by, willing to sacrifice Seth to shield her mother, whom she’d known—not guessed but known—was guilty.

  “When Daniel came to Vermont,” Cozie said, “you realized Seth was in a position to take the blame for everything. The thefts—”

  “They were to prove he was desperate enough to steal. The money and valuables gave the police something concrete to find.”

  “And you could plant the detonator caps.”

  “Precisely. I’d hoped to kill him and claim self-defense when I saw him prancing through the woods, but I’m not as good a shot as I used to be. He was a ways off, not at point-blank range the way you are now, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  Cozie wasn’t. “Were you the one who pushed me at the monk hut?”

  Frances sighed. “That was Julia. Meddling again. I think she wanted to warn Seth, try to explain, I don’t know. I have a feeling Seth believed Julia responsible for everything and was trying to protect her in his usual inept way. When Julia saw you at the monk hut, she couldn’t very well explain her presence, not if she were to protect her crazy mumma.”

  “You don’t have much respect for Julia, do you?”

  “I love my daughter!”

  Cozie stepped into the shade of a yellow-leafed maple at the edge of the field and, knowing she was taking a chance, looked around at Frances Vanackern. The revolver was still leveled at her. “Seth is at the house with Daniel Foxworth. There’s no way you can pin this on him.”

  Frances’s smile was underlined with hate. “You of all people should know: where there’s a will, there’s a way. This revolver belonged to your Grandpa Willard. It’s not registered, but it has his name engraved on the handle. The story will be that you armed yourself while under increasing pressure from your caller and met with an unfortunate accident.”

  “It won’t work,” Cozie said.

  “It will work. I will make it work.”

  Daniel and Seth intercepted a stumbling, running, sobbing Julia Vanackern before she reached the back terrace. “Mum has Cozie,” she cried. “I thought I could make her stop…. I thought everything would work out.” She spoke between gulps for air. “They wouldn’t have enough to convict Seth, and Dad and I could get Mum the help she needs.”

  Seth, exhausted and in pain, hung back, squinting out at the picturesque Vermont landscape.

  Thad Vanackern had emerged from the house, showered and in fresh clothes. He was still buttoning a sleeve. “Julia, you’re hysterical.”

  Julia wailed and slammed her fist into his chest. “I am not hysterical! Don’t you see? Are you blind? Mum hates Cozie!”

  Thad looked stricken. “But Seth here…”

  She groaned and turned away from him.

  “There they are,” Seth said, and bullet wound or not, sprinted off the stone terrace and down the sloping lawn toward a small field.

  “Frances?” Thad finished buttoning his sleeve, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Julia, perhaps you should explain.”

  Daniel didn’t stick around to listen. He ran after Seth, catching up with him easily as they headed across the field. Seth’s breathing was labored, the creases of his eyes and corners of his mouth were caked with soot, and he reeked of smoke and sweat. Daniel knew he didn’t look much better, but no one had shot him in the past twenty-four hours.

  “I know the path they’re on,” Seth said. “There’s a shortcut.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can make it.”

  “Seth—”

  He kept running, but he said, “Between those two hemlocks, straight down a hill, then up again. It’s steep. You’ll come to the path. It winds around to avoid the hill.”

  Daniel pushed ahead, running at full speed until he came to the hemlocks. Then caution, silence became as vital as speed, but the howling wind would cover much of the noise he made. He slipped between the two trees and skidded down a steep hill covered with pine needles, dead leaves, wilted ferns, rocks, and fallen tree limbs. There was a narrow stream at the bottom. He ran through it and used his momentum to carry him part of the way up the hill on the other side.

  He could hear Seth not far behind him.

  Clambering up the hill against the wind, he felt the cold and his own fear burning in his lungs. Only years of discipline kept him focused.

  Seth crept up the hill beside him. “Voices,” he whispered.

  Daniel stopped, listening. Above him, he, too, heard voices above the wind, any words indistinguishable. He and Seth were just two yards below the crest of the hill. They crept up a yard, hidden among a stand of young pines struggling to survive.

  Seth held up a hand. They went very still. Through the pine branches they could see Cozie and Frances Vanackern. They were facing each other about three yards up the road. Frances was in back, nearer Daniel and Seth, and Cozie in front.

  The two men looked at each other, nodded, and crawled up the last yard out onto the path.

  Cozie saw them. She gave no indication of it, but Daniel knew she did.

  “I believe I’m satisfied with the way things are turning out,” Frances Vanackern was saying. “You’ve suffered, Cozie Cornelia, and now you’ll die.”

  That was enough for Daniel.

  He lunged the last few feet and tackled Frances Vanackern from behind, catching her by surprise. He knocked her flat on her face and Cozie grabbed the hand with the gun, removed it from the older woman’s grasp, and fell back, cursing a blue streak.

  For a second Daniel thought she’d shoot him and her brother both. “Geez—what the hell were you two doing, diving in here like a couple of goddamned crazy men?”

  Daniel stood up. Frances Vanackern, motionless and silent on the ground, wasn’t going anywhere. Seth stood over her. Cozie was white-faced and shaking. The woman, Daniel thought, had to learn a little gratitude. “You were about to be killed. If we hadn’t intervened—”

  “I had everything under control.”

  “What were you going to do, duck when she shot you?”

  “No, I was going to kick her down the ravine, but I saw you two idiots and figured I’d better wait before you got yourselves killed and me along with you! You two ever hear of thinking before you act?”

  Her body—and her mouth—were running on pure adrenaline. Daniel could have scooped her up right then. “You’re one to talk, sweetheart.”

  She raked a hand through her hair, and Daniel took the revolver. He couldn’t wait any longer and pulled her into his arms, holding her close.

  It was a tough call who was angrier: Will Rubeno or Meg Hawthorne Strout. They were waiting at the Vanackern house when Cozie, Seth, Daniel, and Frances Vanackern emerged from the woods. Rubeno threatened to lock up the whole damned lot of them. He wanted statements, he wanted them now, no more bullshit, no more playing cop, no more nothing. Cozie told him he should be glad he didn’t have to go off in the woods at gunpoint with a crazy woman who hated his guts.

>   “That’s it,” he said. “I’m getting the cuffs out.”

  But Meg—Meg was truly fit to be tied. “Just what I need, my little brother and sister scaring the living daylights out of me. Our goddamned house about burns down, they disappear, Frances Vanackern turns into a wild-eyed lunatic, and I’ve got a bunch of pissed-off rich Texans in my dining room. Here I am stuck with a slew of pre-schoolers who want snack, trying to explain to some goddamned general that his grandson is off in the woods like goddamned Davy Crockett.” She took a breath and grabbed her sister by the shoulders. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Cozie nodded. “I’m sure. It’s over, Meg.”

  But Daniel had surged forward. “My grandfather’s here?”

  “Austin Foxworth, retired general of the United States Air Force and chairman of Fox Oil?”

  “That would be him.”

  “He’s here. So is Stephen Foxworth, CEO of Fox Oil, and his wife Joan, and their daughter Susanna, vice president of Fox Oil, who says her brother Daniel will never learn, they all gave up trying years ago. I put them to work serving snack and hope to hell the kids’ parents don’t have a heart attack when some Texan hands them their kid.”

  Daniel was looking mystified.

  “Obviously,” Meg said, disgusted, “they’re worried about you. Bet that never occurred to you when you went charging off into the woods. Things like that don’t occur to my brother and sister.”

  Tom’s truck pulled up alongside the dirt road. Cozie burst into tears when she saw her mother in the front seat. How could she explain? How could she possibly explain?

  Meg calmed down. “That’s the other thing. Turns out Aunt Ethel’s been snitching to Mother all along. She got into Burlington airport a couple hours ago. Tom went and picked her up; he left me a note, which I didn’t see until I was already up to my eyeballs in Foxworths. She says she leaves the country for the first time and her family goes to hell.”

  “Say hello,” Will Rubeno said, still in no mood. “Then get your butts down to the police station.”

  The Foxworths vacated the Strout farm, despite the seemingly sincere invitations for them to stay, for rooms at the Woodstock Inn & Resort. Daniel remembered watching Cozie arrive for the Vanackern dinner in her Ingrid Bergman dress. Had he already been in love with her then?

  His grandfather insisted they all go downstairs for a drink, but first Daniel had to call J.D. Maguire.

  He was doing okay. But he didn’t take to the idea that Frances Vanackern had sabotaged their helicopter to stop her daughter from confessing to Seth Hawthorne about her mother’s little calls to his big sister.

  “Shit at and missed and by an old lady to boot. Hell. When you coming home?”

  “Soon,” Daniel said.

  J.D. grunted. “You’re in bad shape, Danny Boy.”

  He didn’t argue.

  Downstairs, his grandfather had managed to get a bourbon to his liking. “First time I’ve ever been in Vermont,” he said. He was a tall man, as tall as Daniel, and fit for his age.

  Susanna, also tall and gray-eyed, said, “I came here skiing once, to Stratton. It was nice.”

  But Stephen and Joan Foxworth weren’t going to tolerate small talk. They wanted every detail of what Daniel had been through in the past weeks. He told them what he could, leaving out only his impressions of Cozie Hawthorne’s green eyes, of the feel of her trim little body under his hands. She was with her family now, as, he thought, it should be.

  And he was with his, and he could see, as he never really had before, that as much as they went their separate ways and disagreed and pressured each other to give more, be more, they’d always been there for him, even when he was feeling at his most alone. As he was now, knowing Cozie would need space, time, a chance to decide who and what she was now that she could no longer pretend that fame and fortune hadn’t changed the direction of her life.

  “I think I’m in love with you,” she’d told him on their way to the police station. She wasn’t looking at him when she said it. “But I don’t trust myself right now. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  Daniel had simply held onto her hand. He was sure about how he felt. Very sure.

  He was in love with Cozie Hawthorne.

  His grandfather leaned forward after Daniel’s rendition of the past days. “Cozie Hawthorne the one who yelled at the chief of police for putting out a warrant for her brother’s arrest?”

  Daniel smiled. “She’s the one.”

  “She’s pretty for a Yankee,” Austin Foxworth said, settling back in his chair. “But I’d bet the ranch that mouth gets her into a lot of trouble.”

  Chapter

  19

  After a few weeks of pensive commentaries, Cozie Hawthorne, in her new role as a columnist for a major national syndicate, decided to take on the state of Texas.

  Daniel figured it was her way of sorting out whether she really was in love with him or still just thought it. Or maybe just of getting him back to Vermont.

  Texas, she started out, was too big. In the time it would take her to get to Virginia from her home in Vermont, she’d only be halfway across Texas. The people couldn’t get to know their political leaders on a personal basis. The average Vermonter, she claimed, could easily meet the state’s two senators and lone congressman.

  That didn’t get her into too much trouble. Texans didn’t mind outsiders telling them their state was big, and they didn’t much care if they met their politicians.

  But she had to point out that Vermont had declared itself an independent republic a full fifty years before Texas did. It lasted four years longer, until 1791, when it became the fourteenth state.

  A Vermonter, she reminded everyone, had died at the Alamo.

  Then she got on tumbleweed, tornadoes, and—Daniel had known it was coming—Texas snakes.

  Texans said it was obvious that she’d never been to their beautiful state. She countered that she had, too. She’d had a two-hour layover at the Dallas airport. What an area sold for souvenirs, she maintained, was highly instructional: a replica of an Old West pistol set complete with holster said a lot about Texas. She’d bought three sets for her niece and nephews.

  She also claimed to have been served chili on Fritos and said anyone wanting quality, authentic Mexican food should come to Vermont and try a little restaurant she knew over in Quechee.

  Within weeks she was the most popular columnist in Texas.

  Daniel hoped her popularity stemmed not just from Texans’ love of a good fight but their understanding, deep down, of her point: that the United States was a nation of outsiders, and Texans and Vermonters had more in common than they didn’t. Underlying her smart-ass comments was an affection for a place she’d never really seen.

  J.D. Maguire didn’t see it that way. Sprung from the hospital, gaunt but on the mend, he joined Daniel at his dilapidated ranch on a warm and beautiful November evening. “You ought to go on up to Vermont,” he said, “and drag her down here by her ear and show her the real Texas.”

  “J.D., she doesn’t want the life I lead.”

  “Hell, neither do you. You never have. I’ve decided.” He adjusted his outstretched leg, still bandaged but healing. “I’m buying you out.”

  “You can’t afford to buy me out.”

  His black eyes leveled on Daniel. “I didn’t say I’d pay a fair price and I didn’t say I’d pay it right away. It’ll take some time. But I’m buying you out. Doctors say I’ll be fighting fires again in six months. I give me four. It’ll take that long to sort things out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. You have to move on, Danny Boy. So do I.”

  The next day, they got a call: a well fire in Oklahoma. An ugly one. It about killed J.D. not to be able to go. But Daniel got the team together, and the equipment, and went. Their work over the next three days helped restore his reputation and satisfy lingering doubts about the trustworthiness of his and J.D.’s small fire-fighting compa
ny.

  When he got back to his ranch, he poured himself a bourbon and sank into his bathtub, a sturdy old thing up on legs. His body ached. His mind was numb.

  “I don’t want to hear any more about me not locking my doors.”

  He was sure he was imagining her voice. Then he opened his eyes, and she was there, at the edge of the tub. She’d cut about four inches off her reddish blond hair and it hung in waves, framing her face.

  “Whiskey and a hot bath?”

  “One has to make do with what’s at hand.”

  “They’re a bad combination when you’re tired.” She scooped up a handful of water and let it run through her fingers. “You could go right down the drain.”

  “The way I look at it,” he drawled, his body already responding to the sight of her, “I’m just missing a woman.”

  “Any woman would do?”

  “No. Not any.”

  She smiled.

  “How’d you make it out of the airport without someone stringing you up?”

  “Well, J.D. is an effective deterrent. Even on crutches he’s an impressive individual, isn’t he?”

  Daniel arched a brow. “He picked you up?”

  “He can’t drive yet. He got some buddy of his to drive. They brought me here. Daniel?” She peered at him; his eyes were half-closed. “Are you going to sleep?”

  “Uh-uh. No, ma’am. I’m just thinking about whether to haul you into this tub with me clothed or unclothed.”

  “Do I have a say?”

  “You want one?”

  She licked her lips. “Surprise me.”

  She stayed for five days, went back to Vermont, and hit back with a smart-assed column about Texas having unreliable weather. This from a New Englander.

  “Didn’t you take that woman to bed while she was down here?” J.D. asked, disgusted, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

  Night and day, Daniel thought. Remembered. He showed her Texas, his life. And the wench—it was the only word for her—had gone home and written about the goddamned weather. “Cozie Hawthorne will do what she will do.”