by Lisa Jackson
She heard the crunch of tires on gravel before she saw the nose of a maroon minivan pull in behind the Jeep. A tall, lean man climbed from behind the wheel, and she had the vague sensation she’d seen him somewhere before. His hair was a little long and shot with the same gray that silvered his short-cropped beard and mustache. Dark glasses covered his eyes, and the bill of a baseball cap shaded his forehead.
“Are you Katie Kinkaid?”
“Yes.”
He grinned and showed off white teeth that seemed in contrast to his disheveled appearance. He wore brown coveralls that had a few oil spills on them, and a faded red rag, streaked with grease, poked out of his back pocket.
“Hi.” His hand shot out, and she noticed his fingernails were dirty as she offered her palm and felt the strength of his clasp. “Benjamin Francis.” He nodded toward the house. “This is a nice place, looks like it might work for me and my wife. I work at a gas station in Ashland, and she teaches preschool.”
That explained his work clothes, though she wondered why there wasn’t a logo for the station or his name embroidered on his coveralls. There was something about him that didn’t ring true, made her ill at ease, though she couldn’t explain why.
“Can you give me a look at the inside?”
“Sure.” She told herself her case of nerves was unjustified and unlocked the back door. The heat of the day had settled into the house, leaving it sweltering. As she reached for the latch of the window, she said, “I have a few repairs that will be made before anyone moves in. I plan to paint, clean the carpets, wax the floors and—”
She heard him walk in behind her, close the door and turn the lock. “Don’t bother with the window.” His voice was low, the command sharp.
She froze. “But it’s beastly in here, and there’s a good cross breeze—” Turning, she found him leaning against the door, blocking her way out, and his expression had turned from friendly to hard and calculating.
“I have a confession to make,” he said.
But she already understood as she mentally scraped off his beard and removed his hat. She swallowed back her fear as she recognized him. Her blood turned to ice.
“I’m not Ben Francis.”
“I know.”
His eyes glinted with a malevolent light. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“We didn’t have to,” she said, fighting a feeling damned close to terror climbing up her spine. “I know who you are, Ray Dean. I just don’t understand what you want from me.”
* * *
Luke yanked a clean pair of jeans on to his wet body. His muscles ached, and his mind thundered with the accusations that Katie had thrown his way. She was right. Though he hadn’t set out to use her, he hadn’t been completely honest about his intentions.
“Damn.” He snapped his jeans closed and silently cursed himself to as many levels of hell as there were, then added a few more for good measure.
If only Ralph had held his patience in check; if only he’d let Luke talk to Katie himself, explain what he’d been doing, try to let her understand his position. “And what good would that have done?” he wondered aloud. Angry at the world in general and specifically at himself, he jerked a towel from the rack and wiped away the condensation that fogged the mirror.
His reflection glowered back at him through the tiny droplets, and he felt as if he were about to explode. He didn’t bother combing his hair, just raked his fingers through the wet strands. Muttering under his breath about hardheaded women and the stupid men involved with them, he threw on a pair of old sneakers and a T-shirt that had seen better days, then buckled the worn leather strap of his watch.
He was outside and down the stairs before the door slammed shut behind him. Crossing the yard in swift, ground-eating strides that led him straight to the back door, he ignored the low rumble of a growl old Blue gave him.
Banging loudly with his fist, he waited until Katie’s kid, eyeing him with unmasked suspicion, stood on the other side of the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Your mom here?” He knew better. The Jeep was still missing in action, but he thought he’d start at the beginning with Josh.
“Naw.”
A wealth of information, this kid. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
Josh’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Yeah.”
Luke’s patience was wearing thin. “And when is that?”
“Later.” He gave a lift of one shoulder. “She said about an hour.”
Luke calculated that she’d already been gone twenty minutes or so. He was going to ask Josh where she’d gone even if it wasn’t any of his business, but at that moment Tiffany’s car pulled into the drive. She was out of the car in a second. Her son, Stephen, who’d been in the passenger seat, was right behind her.
“Is Katie here?” Tiffany asked, climbing the steps.
“At the other house.”
Bingo.
Josh opened the door for his aunt and cousin. “Someone’s looking at it.”
“Good. I need to talk to her, so Stephen and I’ll wait if that’s okay.”
“Great. Where’s Christina?”
“She wouldn’t get up from her nap, so J.D. stayed with her.” Tiffany rolled her palms to the air and winked at her nephew, as if they shared some private joke. “So, I guess it’s just you and Stephen.”
“Too bad,” Stephen said sarcastically. He didn’t seem inclined to hide the fact that he was sick to his back teeth of a sister who was little more than a toddler. “She’s a pain.”
“She is not. You’re lucky to have her.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Stephen,” Tiffany warned, about to say more when her eyes met Luke’s. “You’d think that with all the years that separate them, they’d get along.”
Josh grinned from ear to ear, eager, Luke supposed, to hang out with his older cousin. He opened the door, and Stephen bolted through, followed by his mother, who took over the duties of keeping the screen door from shutting by using her body as a wedge. The boys were already up the stairs. Tiffany smiled at Luke. “Why don’t you come in and keep me company while I wait? I’m sure Katie won’t mind. That way you can tell me what’s happening with the ranch you’re fixing up.”
“You know about that?”
“Katie happened to mention that you were going to open it up to the public and take in guests sometime next spring.”
“That’s the plan,” Luke allowed as the boys, eating red licorice, ran through the kitchen again, grabbed a couple of skateboards that had been propped on the porch and took off toward the front of the house.
“Hey, wait. Where’re you going?” Tiffany asked.
“Just to the store.” Josh was already around the corner.
“Be careful and come right back!” Tiffany yelled; then, when Stephen threw her a look that silently told her he wasn’t a baby anymore, she turned back to Luke. “Moms are really just pains in the neck for teenage boys.”
“Is that right?” He wouldn’t know, of course, since he hadn’t been raised by his own mother, but there was no reason to confide in her. “He’ll grow out of it.”
“I hope.” She sighed, and he saw a glimmer of the worry she’d carried with her as a single mother, a grieving widow. He decided it was a good thing that she’d linked up with J.D. She glanced around the kitchen. “It’s starting to come together, isn’t it?” Shaking her head, she admitted, “I never thought I’d move out of here. Never planned to remarry.” A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth. “I guess that just goes to show you that you never know what’s around the next corner.”
“Nope.”
“So—” she motioned to a chair “—just for the record, I think a working dude ranch is a great idea. Why don’t you tell me all the details?”
“You sound like your sister.”
“I’m not a reporter, but I’m interested. Besides, it looks like we both have a little time to kill before Katie gets back.” She offered him a b
rilliant smile. “I feel kind of strange about sitting in her house waiting for her, but knowing Katie, she wouldn’t want it any other way.”
She heated coffee on the stove as Luke explained his plans. He was hesitant at first, didn’t know if he wanted his entire life exposed to a woman he barely knew, but Tiffany, like her dynamo of a half sister, was easy to talk to. The difference was that this woman was calm and chuckled softly as she cradled her cup in her hands. Katie, on the other hand, was a bundle of energy and would have dominated the conversation while doing a dozen other things.
Tiffany asked questions, made a few jokes and generally kept the conversation rolling as the minutes ticked by. The boys returned, the wheels of their skateboards grinding on the concrete. Hastily they constructed a jump out of some two-by-fours and plywood, and immediately took to their boards to practice, becoming airborne.
“I hope they don’t break their necks,” Tiffany said, looking worried.
“They’ll be fine.”
“But Josh is still recovering from spraining his ankle.” She started to yell something out the window, thought better of it and held her tongue. “Once a mother, always a mother.”
“I hear it’s a hard habit to break.”
“The hardest.” They laughed and watched the boys through the window, and Luke checked his watch for the dozenth time. He was starting to feel antsy, though he had no reason. His talk with Katie could wait.
“So, I wonder what’s keeping her?” Tiffany finally asked as Luke finished his second cup of coffee. He’d been in the house nearly an hour. “It’s odd that she’d leave Josh alone so long.” She sighed and lifted a shoulder. “Maybe she had to go to the store.” She scraped back her chair, walked to the sink and placed her cup under the faucet. “If Katie doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to leave her a note.”
“I could take a message,” Luke said automatically, but he was starting to get that same damned feeling of anxiety he’d had before when she lived in the other place and she’d been receiving the crank phone calls. Don’t overreact, he told himself, but found it impossible whenever Katie was concerned. He couldn’t do anything but wait.
The phone jangled, and they both jumped. “It could be Katie,” Tiffany said, glancing to the backyard. “She might be calling Josh to explain why she’s late.”
For some reason he couldn’t explain, the muscles in Luke’s back tightened, and he snagged the receiver before it had time to ring again. “Kinkaid residence.”
“Who’s this?” a male voice demanded. Luke’s fingers tightened over the mouthpiece in a death grip.
“Luke Gates. I’m a neighbor. Ms. Kinkaid isn’t in right now.”
“Where is she?”
Luke’s eyes narrowed, and he thought of all the hang-ups Katie had received. “Who’re you?”
“This is Jarrod Smith, Gates,” the voice said with more than a trace of irritation. “I’m looking for my sister.”
He relaxed a bit. The voice fit. He’d only talked to Jarrod a couple of times, but he was convinced that Katie Kinkaid’s oldest half brother was on the other end of the line. “She’s not here right now.”
“So where is she?”
Leaning a shoulder against the door and meeting the questions in Tiffany’s eyes, he said, “According to Josh, Katie went over to her old place to meet a potential renter.”
“When?”
“Over an hour ago.”
“Damn!” Jarrod let fly a blue streak, and Luke’s momentary feeling of calm vanished into thin air. “Let’s hope it’s legit.”
“What do you mean?” Luke demanded.
“It’s probably just a coincidence, but Isaac Wells, with his lawyer, walked into the police station not two hours ago. He seems to think he’s in some kind of danger from Ray Dean, an excon. He also thought maybe because Katie’s shown so much interest in the story that Ray might want to talk to her.”
Luke didn’t like what he was hearing, and he’d never put much stock in coincidence; the fact that Katie was late at the same time Isaac Wells had suddenly turned up made him anxious. Still…no reason to panic. Not yet. “How do you know all this?”
“I have connections with a friend on the force. We used to be partners. He keeps me informed because I’ve been working on this from the outside. I’d been checking with lawyers in Eureka, where that letter Katie received was postmarked, widened the circle to include Oregon as I figured Wells would want an in-state attorney. I was on the right track, only hadn’t located the guy. Anyway, he and Isaac strolled into the police station this afternoon.” Frustration edged Jarrod’s voice, and Luke decided Katie’s oldest half brother wasn’t used to having his quarry elude him. “Katie wanted to know the minute he came into town, so I thought I’d pass on the information.”
“I’ll let her know,” Luke promised.
Jarrod hesitated, as if weighing whether he should confide in Luke, as if there was something more.
“Anything else?” Luke prodded.
“I don’t know.”
Luke could almost hear the wheels of suspicion turning in Jarrod’s mind. Tiffany was standing by this time, her eyes fixed on Luke’s face, her expression growing more concerned by the second.
“Maybe I’m just borrowing trouble,” Jarrod allowed, “but Wells is starting to claim that Ray Dean has been involved in a lot of crimes the police couldn’t pin on him.”
“How does Wells know?”
“Wells?” Tiffany repeated, her eyebrows shooting up. “Isaac Wells?”
“Because Wells is claiming that he was his silent partner,” Jarrod said. “Says he helped mastermind the crimes and case the places Ray would rob. He left town because Ray was getting out of prison, and he was afraid for his life, or something. Anyway, now he’s willing to turn state’s evidence against Ray Dean in return for immunity from prosecution.”
Luke’s mind was racing ahead. He didn’t give a hoot about Isaac Wells or Ray Dean or how they were involved in crime together. But he sure as hell was concerned about Katie, and it looked as if, because of her articles and the letter Isaac sent her that she published, she might be a link between the two thieves. “Did Isaac Wells write the letter to Katie?”
“That, I don’t know. But if he did, he didn’t contact her again because his attorney wanted him to deal directly with the police.”
Luke’s throat felt like sandpaper. He thought about the crank calls she’d received, about the feeling he’d had that someone had been watching her, waiting in the shadows at the hotel and at her home. Even after she’d moved this close to him, he’d spent more hours than he’d like to admit, sitting in the dark, staring out his window, watching the main house, scouring the darkness for any hint of a prowler. But he wasn’t convinced. “Do you think Katie’s in any danger?”
“I don’t know. Hell, I hope not” But there was a note of apprehension in Jarrod’s voice that Luke couldn’t ignore. “Just let her know what’s going on. When she gets in, have her give me a call.”
“I will,” Luke promised and promptly hung up.
Tiffany motioned toward the phone. “What was that all about?” she demanded. “You said something about danger.”
“Isaac Wells is back in town.” He gave her a quick rundown as he reached for the handle of the door. “If you want more details, call Jarrod back. There’s probably nothing wrong,” he said, disturbed and telling himself that he was being a dozen kinds of fool. “I’m going to check on Katie.”
“I’ll stay here with the kids,” Tiffany said, her usually dark skin turning an ashen shade.
“Do that.” He ran to his pickup and climbed inside as the two boys stopped their jumps for a second. The way Luke figured it, he could be at the cottage in less than ten minutes. He reminded himself this was probably just a wild-goose chase. Katie was probably safe. She might not even be at the cottage, but he wasn’t going to rest until he found her. He backed his truck into the street, flung it into first gear and roared down the street.
He didn’t give a damn if he looked like a fool; he wasn’t about to take a chance with the life of the woman he loved.
* * *
“I think you and I should go for a ride,” Ray said, and Katie, rooted to the floor of the cottage, tried to maintain her rapidly escaping wits.
She shook her head.
“Whatever it is you have to tell me, you can say it right here.” It would certainly be more dangerous to leave with him. At least she was in an environment she knew, with neighbors just across the fence.
“We could be interrupted.”
“So what?” She was thinking fast, trying to get her bearings. If she could get over her fear and if Ray meant her no harm, she might have stumbled on the answer to the Isaac Wells mystery. But what if he did intend to hurt her? What then? Her legs threatened to give out on her, and for the first time since her interest in the Isaac Wells disappearance began, she questioned whether or not she wanted to be involved. “You’re not in trouble with the police, are you?”
“Always.” He lifted a shoulder, and she tried to determine if he was carrying a weapon. There were no bulges in the pockets of his coveralls, but a knife would be easy to conceal. Even a small handgun could be hidden somewhere on his body. Not that it made a huge difference—not when there was the size of him to consider. At over six feet and two hundred pounds, he was way too strong for her to try to overpower him. No, she’d have to use her brains.
“Do you know where Isaac Wells is?” she asked Ray.
“No.”
“Is he alive?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
He studied her carefully, as if, now that he had her full attention, he wasn’t sure how much of his story to divulge. “I have connections.”
“Connections? Who? What?”
“Someone trustworthy.”
Her mind was racing, her skin prickling with dread. “A snitch? A trustworthy snitch?” She tried to keep the disbelief out of her voice.