by Nora Roberts
He stepped toward her then and she saw what she’d known she would see. Anger, black waves of it. So she shut her eyes.
“For God’s sake, Tory.” His hand brushed over her cheek, back into the wet tangle of her hair. “Has everyone always let you down?”
She didn’t speak, couldn’t. A tear slid down her cheek and lay glistening on his thumb. She went, biddable as a child, as he led her to the bed, lifted her onto his lap.
“Just rest,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She pressed her face into his shoulder. Here was comfort, and strength, and above all the solidity no one had ever offered her. He asked no questions, so neither would she. Instead she curled into him, lifted her mouth to his.
“Touch me. Please. I need to feel.”
Gently, so gently, he ran his hands over her. He could give her the comfort of his body, take his own in hers. Trembling she reached for him, her lips parting under his and going warm.
Slowly, so slowly, he loosened the tie of the robe, slipped it from her. Laid his hand on her heart. It beat frantically, and her breathing still caught on sobs she fought back.
“Think of me,” he murmured, and lay her on the bed. “Look at me.”
He touched his lips to her throat, her shoulders, skimming his hands through her hair when she reached up to unbutton his shirt.
“I need to feel,” she repeated. “I need to feel you.” She put her palms against his chest. “You’re warm. You’re real. Make me real, Cade.”
She sank into him when his mouth came back to hers, sank deep into the tenderness of it, the kindness that erased the horror she’d seen. The calm came first, the understanding that this brush and slide of flesh, this meeting of bodies, had nothing to do with pain or fear.
His mouth on her breast, feeding, arousing, sped the beat of her blood. His hands, strong, patient, washed her mind clear of everything but the need to join.
She sighed out his name as he danced over the first peak.
She was fluid, and open, rising toward him, sliding against him. When she rolled, he found her mouth again, then let her set the pace. She rose over him, her hair like wet ropes gleaming over her shoulders. Her face was flushed with life, damp with tears.
She took him into her, bowing back, her breath catching, releasing, her fingers locking with his as she began to move.
There was nothing in his world now but her, the heat of her surrounding him, the steady rise and fall of her hips as she rode him. The dark smoke of her eyes stayed wide and fixed on his even as her breath began to tear.
He saw her come, watched the force of it ripple through her.
“God.” She brought their joined hands to her breasts. “More. Again. Touch me, touch me, touch me.”
He took her breasts in his hands, reared up, and took them into his mouth so that she arched back. When she gripped his hair, he drove deeper. Filling her, taking her. Taking himself.
They stayed wrapped around each other. Even when he shifted to lie with her, they remained tangled and close. She breathed him in.
“You should sleep now,” he murmured.
“I’m afraid to sleep.”
“I’ll be right here.”
“I thought you would go.”
“I know.”
“You were so angry. I thought…” No, she needed another minute. Courage didn’t come without effort. “Would you get me some water?”
“All right.” He shifted, and rising, pulled on his jeans before he went out into the kitchen.
She heard him open a cupboard for a glass, close it again. And when he came back she was sitting on the side of the bed in her robe. “Thank you.”
“Tory, are you always sick afterward?”
“No.” Her hand tightened on the glass. “I’ve never done anything like … I can’t talk about that yet. But I need to talk. I need to tell you about something else. About when I was in New York.”
“I know what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You only know parts and pieces. What you heard in the news. I need to explain.”
Because she’d tightened up again, he combed his fingers through her hair. “You wore your hair differently there. You’d lightened it, cut it shorter.”
She managed a laugh. “My attempt at a new me.”
“I like it better this way.”
“I changed a lot more than my hair when I went there. Escaped there. I was only eighteen. Terrified but exhilarated. They couldn’t make me go back, and even if he came after me, he couldn’t make me go back. I was free. I’d saved some money. I’ve always been good at saving money, and Gran gave me two thousand dollars. I suppose it saved my life. I was able to afford a little apartment. Well, a room. It was on the West Side, this cramped little space. I loved it. It was all mine.”
She could remember, could bring back inside her, the sheer joy of standing in that empty box of a room, of hugging herself as she stared out the window at the dour brick face of the next building. She could hear the riot of noise from the street below as New York shoved its way toward the business of the day.
She could remember the absolute bliss of being free.
“I got a job at a souvenir shop, sold a lot of Empire State Building paperweights and T-shirts. After a couple of months, I found a better job, at a classy gift shop. It was a longer commute, but the pay was a little better and it was so nice to be around all those lovely things. I was good at it.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“The first year, I was so happy. I was promoted to assistant manager, and I made some friends. Dated. It was so blessedly normal. I’d forget for long periods that I hadn’t always lived there, then someone would comment on my accent and it would bring me back here. But that was all right. I’d gotten away. I was exactly where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be.”
She looked at him then. “I didn’t think of Hope. I didn’t let myself think of her.”
“You had a right to your own life, Tory.”
“That’s what I told myself. God knows that’s what I wanted more than anything else in the world. My own. I’d gone back to see my parents during that period, partly out of obligation. Partly, too, because things never seem as bad as they were when you’re away from them. I suppose I thought that since I felt so … normal, that I could have a normal relationship with them.”
She paused, shut her eyes. “But mostly I went back because I wanted to show them what I’d made of myself despite them. Look at me: I have nice clothes, a good job, a happy life. So there.” She gave a weak laugh. “I failed on all three levels.”
“No, they did.”
“Doesn’t matter. I guess I was a little off balance because of the visit even after I got back to New York. Then one day after work, not long after that, I went by the market. Picked up a few things. I don’t even remember exactly. But I took my bag home and started to put everything away.”
She looked down at her water, clear water in a clear glass. “Then I was standing there in that tiny kitchen, with the refrigerator open and a carton of milk in my hand. A carton of milk,” she repeated, her voice hardly a whisper. “With a picture of a little girl on the side. Karen Anne Wilcox, age four. Missing. But I wasn’t seeing the picture, I was seeing her. Little Karen, only she didn’t have blond hair like in the picture. It was brown and cut nearly short as a boy’s. She was sitting in a room by herself playing with dolls. It was February, but I could see the sky out her window. Pretty blue sky, and I could hear the water. The sea. Why, Karen Anne’s in Florida, I thought. She’s at the beach. And when I came back to myself, the milk carton was on the floor with the milk spilling out of it.”
She drank again, then set the glass aside. “I was so angry. What business of it was mine? I didn’t know this girl, or her parents. I didn’t want to know them. How dare they interfere with my life that way? Why should I have to be involved? Then I thought of Hope.”
She rose, walked to the window. “I couldn’t stop t
hinking about her, about the little girl. I went to the police. They thought I was just one more lunatic, passed me off, rolled their eyes while they spoke very slowly, as if I were stupid as well as crazy. I was embarrassed and angry, but I couldn’t get the child out of my head. While two of the detectives were interviewing me, I lost my temper. I said something to one of them about how if he weren’t so damned closed-minded he’d listen instead of worrying how much the mechanic was going to hose him for over the transmission job.
“That got their attention. Turned out the older one, Detective Michaels, had his car in the shop. They still didn’t believe me, but now I worried them. The interview turned into more of a grilling. They kept pushing and pushing, and my nerves were fraying. The younger one, I guess he was playing good cop, he went out and got me a Coke. He brought back this plastic bag. Evidence bag. Inside were mittens. Bright red mittens. They’d found them on the floor of Macy’s, where she’d been snatched while her mother was shopping. At Christmas. She’d been missing since December. He tossed them on the table, like a dare.”
She remembered his eyes. Jack’s eyes. The hardness in the beautiful green brilliance of Jack’s eyes.
“I wasn’t going to pick them up. I was so angry and ashamed. But I couldn’t help it. I picked up the bag, and I saw her so clear, in her little red coat. All the people crowded in, trying to buy presents. The noise. Her mama was right there at the counter, working on picking out a sweater. But she wasn’t paying attention, and the little girl wandered off. Just a few feet. Then the woman came and scooped her right up. She bundled her close, so close and tight, and pushed through people and right out the door. No one paid any attention. Everyone was busy. She told Karen to be very quiet because she was taking her to see Santa Claus, and she walked very fast, down the avenue very fast, and there was a car waiting. A white Chevrolet with a dented right fender and New York plates.”
She let out a sigh, shook her head. “I even had the plate number. God, it was all so clear. I could feel the bite of the wind as it whipped down the street. I told them all that, told them what the woman looked like after she took off the black wig. She had light brown hair and pale blue eyes and she was slim. She’d worn a big, bulky coat with padding under it.”
Tory glanced over her shoulder. Cade sat on the bed, watching, listening. “She’d planned this for weeks. She wanted a little girl, a pretty little girl, and she’d picked Karen out when she’d seen her mama walk her to day care. So she took her, that’s all. And she and her husband drove straight through to Florida. They cut her hair and dyed it, and didn’t let her go outside. They said she was a little boy named Robbie.”
She blinked, turned back. “They found her. It took a while because I couldn’t see just where. But they worked with the police in Florida, and within a couple of weeks, they found her in a trailer park in Fort Lauderdale. The people who had her didn’t hurt her. They bought her toys and fed her. They were sure she’d just forget. People think children forget, but they don’t.”
She sighed. Outside an owl began to hoot in long bass notes that echoed through the marsh and into the room where she stood.
“So Karen was the first for me. Her parents came to see me after to thank me. They cried. Both of them. I thought, maybe this is a gift. Maybe I’m meant to help people like this. I began to open myself to it, to explore it, even celebrate it. I read everything I could, I submitted to tests. And I began to see Jack—Detective Jack Krentz, the younger of the two cops who’d investigated the kidnapping. I fell in love with him.”
She came back for the water, drained the glass. “There were others after Karen. I thought I’d found the reason I was what I was. I thought I had everything. I was wildly in love with a man I believed loved me, and considered me a kind of partner. Now and again he’d bring something home, ask me to hold it. I was thrilled to be able to help in his work. We did it quietly. I didn’t want any credit or any notoriety. But my work with missing children leaked, so I began to get both in that area. And with it, the letters, the calls, the pleas that haunt you night and day. Still I wanted so much to help.”
She set the empty glass aside, wandered away toward the window. “I didn’t notice the way Jack was starting to watch me. That cool-eyed stare of his. I thought it was just his way. He was the first man I’d been with, and we were together—we were lovers—for over a year when it started to fall apart.
“He was seeing someone else. She was there in his mind, her smell in his senses when he came to me. I was betrayed and furious and I confronted him. Well, he was more betrayed, more furious, and much better at it. I had spied on his thoughts. I was worse than a freak. How could he have a relationship with a woman who couldn’t respect his privacy, who invaded his mind?”
“He managed to turn that one around on you. He cheats, and you’re wrong.” Cade shook his head. “You didn’t buy that?”
“I wasn’t quite twenty-two years old. He was my first and only lover. More, I loved him. And I had, however unintentionally, spied on his thoughts. So I took the blame, but it wasn’t enough. He began to berate me, to accuse me of trying to take the credit for the good, hard work he put into cases. Whatever he’d felt for me in the beginning had turned into something else and it hurt both of us. And as things were falling apart between us, there was Jonah. Jonah Mansfield.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, squeezed her eyes shut a minute. “Oh, it still breaks my heart. He was eight and had been kidnapped by his parents’ former housekeeper. The police knew that, there was a ransom demand of two million dollars. Jack was assigned to the team working the case. He didn’t bring it to me. The Mansfields did. They asked me for help, I told them what I could. The boy was being held in some sort of basement. I didn’t know if it was a home or a building, but it was across the river. Jack was furious I’d gone around him, behind his back. He wouldn’t listen to me. They hadn’t hurt the boy, and they were prepared to give him back if the ransom was paid, and if it was delivered exactly as they’d outlined. Was I willing to risk a child’s life so I could prove what a wonder I was? That’s what he asked me, and he had so eroded my confidence that I wasn’t sure.”
She let out a shaky breath. “I’m still not really sure what the answer to that question is. But I could see the boy, and I could see the woman. She was going to let him go. It was only money to her, and petty revenge against the Mansfields for firing her. I told them he was being treated well. He was scared, but he was all right. I told them to pay the ransom, to do what she said and get their son back safe. Really, no more or less than what the police wanted them to do. But what I didn’t see, what I didn’t see because I was so devastated by Jack, was that the men working with her weren’t as coolheaded as she.”
Her voice cracked. Oh yes, she thought. It still breaks the heart. “I told Jack there were two men, but the investigation indicated there was only one. The woman, and one accomplice. I was muddying the waters, getting in the way. When the money was paid, they did what they’d planned to do, what I hadn’t seen, all along. They killed Jonah, and the woman.”
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t know about it till I heard it on the news, until the reporters started calling me. I’d pulled back, curled up in my own little ball of misery because Jack had turned away from me.
“I don’t know how they expected to get away. They had a van, and it seemed they planned to just drive off. But they hadn’t really planned anything. It was the woman who’d laid it all out, who’d calculated the steps. But in the end, they didn’t want to share the money with her. They figured they’d just drive west, but the police had trailed the money and were waiting for them.
“Two police officers were shot, and one of the kidnappers was fatally wounded. I hadn’t seen any of that. What I’d persuaded the parents to do resulted in the death of their child.”
“No, the kidnapping resulted in the death of their child. Circumstances, greed, fear.”
“I couldn’t have saved him. I’ve learn
ed to live with that. The same way I’ve learned to live with not saving Hope. But it left me broken. I spent weeks in the hospital, years in therapy, but I never really got it all back. Not all. Some of the blame was mine, Cade, because I was so distracted, so distraught about Jack that I didn’t focus, I didn’t pay enough attention. My life was falling apart and I was desperate to keep him part of it. Part of me. Even when he denounced me, helped smear me in the press, I didn’t blame him. For a long, long time, I didn’t blame him. Part of me still doesn’t.”
“He was more concerned about his ego than you. More concerned about his ego than that child.”
“I don’t know that. It was a difficult time. He was unhappy in our relationship and wary of me.”
“So he left you twisting in the wind on a rope he helped make. Is that what you expect from me, Tory?”
“It’s what I expected,” she said calmly. “At this point, I don’t know what to expect from you. I just want you to know I understand what it’s like for you.”
“No, I don’t think you understand anything. He wasn’t in love with you. I am.”
She made a sound, part gasp, part sob, but stayed exactly where she was.
“So.” He got to his feet. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I—” Her throat closed. Not fear, she realized as she stared at him. It wasn’t fear filling her. It was hope. Flying on it, she leaped into his arms.
23
As horrible as murder was, it was still interesting. A night’s distance from it made it more like a movie than real life. Faith wasn’t about to stay cooped up at Beaux Reves, when she could poke around in town and be in the center of the reel.
Lilah had seen through her, of course, and loaded her down with errands. If she was going to gossip, Lilah told her when she’d handed over her list, she might as well be productive, too.
And she shouldn’t forget to report all the details when she got home again.
There was plenty of gossip to be found.