by Lisa Jackson
“The guy who set the fire was most likely the creep who burned the birth certificate.” He remembered the dark figure he’d seen at the fire. “I think I saw the perp that night.”
“What?” she whispered, eyes rounding.
“I already told the police.” Travis turned his gaze to Shea. “When the two detectives, Janowitz and Rossi, questioned me, I told them about the guy. And by the way, I’m sure that either one of them or some undercover cop is tailing me. Silver Taurus, parked across the street? Pretty damned obvious.”
A muscle worked in Shea Flannery’s jaw.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Shannon demanded, her fury ricocheting to her brother as she glared at him.
“We’re still processing everything. You were the one hell-bent to meet Settler.”
“So what else aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing,” Shea said quickly.
Too quickly, in Travis’s estimation. What the hell was the cop hiding? And what about the other brothers? Though tight-lipped, they, too, appeared to know a whole lot more than they were saying.
“You saw the man who lit the fire?” Shannon asked, turning the conversation back to Travis.
“I witnessed a man who was hanging out around the buildings just before the explosion, but no, I didn’t see who he was or what he looked like,” Travis said, anticipating her next question. “I had night goggles with me but didn’t have time to put them on before all hell broke loose.”
“But you actually witnessed another man on my property that night?” she asked again as if she hadn’t heard right.
Travis nodded. “He looked about my size, dressed in black. I didn’t notice any vehicles or anything that made this guy stand out, and no, I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup,” he said, repeating what he’d told the two skeptical detectives.
“Damn,” she muttered, shoving her hair from her eyes.
He noticed the bruises on her cheek again, the redness in the whites of her eyes.
“Could have been Santana,” the fireman brother suggested, eyebrows raised, urging Travis to condemn the man.
“It wasn’t Nate!” Shannon said angrily, her indignant face flushing. “Get off that, okay? I already told you he would never do anything to hurt me or the animals!” She blew out an angry breath and despite her wounds appeared as if she wanted to strangle each of her brothers in turn.
Travis silently applauded her. But the fact that she was so quick to Santana’s defense was something else, something that bothered him. A lot. Far more than it should.
“What about you?” Shea asked. “You think it was Santana? According to your statement you met him when you found Shannon in the stable.”
Shannon turned those damning green eyes on him. They narrowed along with her lips as if she was almost daring him to speak the sacrilege.
“Maybe,” he allowed, taking another drink from his bottle and watching her as he swallowed. “I couldn’t tell.”
Irritation flashed in her eyes. “It wasn’t Nate,” she insisted. “Let’s get that straight and we’ll all be on the same page.”
“Got no alibi,” Aaron offered.
“Enough!” she ordered.
Travis, surprised he’d slid off the hot seat of suspicion so easily, was secretly pleased that Shannon’s obviously overprotective brothers had no use for Santana. He saw an opening to ask a question that had been on his mind from the get-go. “What about Dani’s father…her biological father?”
Shannon visibly stiffened. Her voice was calm but she seemed as if she was restraining herself. “He left soon after I told him I was pregnant, before my daughter…Dani…was born. No one, not even his parents, knows what happened to him.”
“Or so they say,” Robert interjected as he drained his beer.
“Actually, Brendan might be back.” Aaron had stopped eating peanuts.
“What?” Shannon’s head whipped around. She skewered Aaron with a furious green gaze. “Brendan’s back?”
“Hey, slow down. I heard a rumor. That’s all,” Aaron said, backtracking. “Some people in town have seen someone they think could be him. No one knows for certain and it’s been so long, his looks could have changed significantly. After you asked me to look into the burned birth certificate, I did some digging. As far as I can tell no one has reentered the country using Brendan Giles’s passport, but I’m still checking.”
“You knew this and didn’t tell me?” she whispered, obviously incredulous. She cut a quick, hard glance at Shea. “And you knew, too? Don’t deny it.”
“Okay.”
“Hell!” she whispered.
Aaron sighed. “I just didn’t want to get you upset. Not until I knew for certain.”
“Damn it, Aaron, this is my life, my child, my…” her voice trailed off and she looked back at Travis again. She picked up her glass and her hand shook so badly that some of the clear liquid sloshed over the side as she lifted it to her lips.
“Dear God,” she muttered as she took a sip, then set down the glass. “So everyone’s keeping secrets, either to protect someone or because they don’t trust anyone or…Geez, this is just such a damned circus!”
“Shannon—” Shea started.
“Don’t. Okay?” Her nostrils flared in indignation. “Don’t placate me, don’t pity me, don’t big-brother me and for God’s sake, don’t lie to me.”
Before he could argue, she turned to Travis, her mouth set, her eyes determined. “I wasn’t certain I wanted to do this, that’s why I didn’t say anything earlier. But now…Now, I know I have to see her.” She let out a long, shuddering breath and closed her eyes for a second, as if to calm herself, to make herself clear. “I mean, I hope you have a picture with you. Of my daughter, I mean your daughter…of Dani.”
He nodded. “Just happen to.”
“May I see it?”
“Shannon, this isn’t a great idea,” Aaron said.
“He’s right,” Shea interjected. “It’s better for you to think of her in abstract terms.”
“Show it to me,” she urged Travis. “Please.”
Travis also wondered if this was a smart move, but he’d be damned if he’d say so now. Deep inside he felt it was inevitable anyway. Of course she’d want to see her child. Of course her curiosity and latent maternal instinct would get the better of her.
Shifting, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open. Encased in clear plastic was last year’s school photo. As he spied the picture, he felt a new pang of distress. This year Dani would probably miss picture day, he thought, along with a lot of other events. Something deep inside him ripped painfully. God, he had to get her back and soon. He knew the odds, realized that each hour a person was missing, it became more likely the clues would go cold, the person was less likely to be found.
Jesus, he couldn’t think like that. He had to stay positive. Focused. He’d find her. Somehow…he just would.
Tentatively, Shannon drew his wallet closer, sliding it over the smooth surface of the table.
“That one, the school shot, was taken last October. It’s about a year old,” he told her. When she flipped the picture over, to the snapshot of him and Dani sitting on a boulder, proudly holding up their “catch of the day,” two silvery twelve-inch trout, he had to swallow hard. He remembered that fall morning. They’d been up before dawn, with stars winking high over the tops of the fir trees and the mountain stream bubbling and gurgling past their campsite. They’d used salmon flies and had each caught his limit. His throat closed and he pushed the memory back into a far corner of his mind.
There were other pictures as well, other school photos, a picture of Dani in a softball uniform that was about three sizes too big, taken when she’d been in the sixth grade. Shannon stared at the posed picture, her lips folding over her teeth, then she traced the edge of Dani’s jaw with one slim finger.
As if suddenly realizing what she was doing, she quickly flipped to the next picture, a wallet size of a family
portrait that had been posed and snapped when his daughter had been somewhere between five and six. Dani, wearing an impossibly frilly dress that Ella loved and she hated, was sitting on her mother’s lap. Travis standing stiffly in a dark suit he barely remembered now, had been told by the photographer to place one hand over his wife’s shoulder, so there he stood in a ludicrous pose as Ella forced a smile and Dani lit up the shot. Even through the plastic and even though the photo had aged, Dani’s bright eyes, curly strawberry-blond hair, and smile missing a few teeth, showed her impish, tomboy personality in full form. Travis felt his heart clutch and was hit by a sudden thought that it was good that Ella wasn’t alive, that his wife didn’t have to suffer the heartache, despair and fear that had been his constant companions since the discovery of Blanche Johnson’s bloody corpse and the heart-stopping realization that Dani was missing.
Payback Time.
He inwardly cringed. Jesus, what could it mean? What did it have to do with Shannon Flannery and that damned birth certificate?
Fear was an icy snake crawling through his veins.
Shannon studied each picture, almost devoured them with her intent gaze, as if she’d been starved for some kind of information, some mental image of the child she’d offered up for adoption. She clenched her jaw and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, causing her to blink. Reaching for a napkin on the table she swiped at her nose as she sniffled, and dabbed at her eyes to staunch the flow of tears. Swallowing, she finally slid the wallet across the table. “If…If you don’t mind,” she said and cleared her throat, “I would like a copy or two.”
She looked so damned miserable that he forgot all of his resentment, all of his fear, all of his out-and-out paranoia.
“You might want to rethink that,” Robert cut in, his own face showing signs of strain. “I, um, I’ve got kids and I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like and…It might just be better if you don’t know.”
“Too late,” she said, then looked up at Travis. “If you don’t mind.”
He couldn’t deny her. With her arm in a sling, her face battered, her eyes pleading with a quiet desperation he couldn’t refuse. “I’ll see what I can do about a copy. In the meantime…” Again he reached into his back pocket and, his insides aching, pulled out a folded piece of paper that he handed to her.
“Dear God,” she whispered as she unfolded the poster he’d had made. It was a color photograph of Dani. Travis stared down at the image of his daughter with her riot of curls, big green-gold eyes that twinkled above a straight little freckled nose. Her chin was pointed, her mouth wide and smiling in the shot. Above the face in bold letters was the word MISSING. Beside the picture was a description and contact information including his name.
Shannon closed her eyes, touched a trembling hand to her forehead. How often had she seen posters such as this? How many pairs of worried, fearful eyes of parents had she witnessed?
“You can keep it, if you want.”
“Thanks.”
“Jesus Christ, Shannon, don’t even go there!” Aaron cut in. “I think you’d better remember why we’re all here.”
Good point, Travis thought grudgingly. He didn’t like the smarmy bastard, but he had to keep his distance from this woman; she was still a threat. Not an ally. Yet, he couldn’t help wonder about her and though he hardened himself toward her, he didn’t think the tears that had sprung to her eyes were faked. He imagined that every day over the past thirteen years she’d regretted giving up her baby. And somehow she was entangled in this same mess that included him and his daughter. Why else was the burned birth certificate left on the porch on the night of Dani’s birthday?
Shannon stared at the poster as if she couldn’t get enough of it, then finally refolded the page and stuck it into her own pocket. He finished his beer, and decided that since he was treading on tenuous territory already, there was no reason not to go a step or two farther.
Motioning with his finger toward her sling, he asked, “So how’re you feeling?”
“What?” she asked as if lost in thought. “Oh.” A faint smile. “How do you think?”
“Like you’ve been flattened by a semi.”
She cleared her throat. “Close enough.”
He nodded. Scraping his chair back, he signaled to the waitress. “I think we’ve covered about everything tonight.” He glanced at her. “Any other questions?”
“Just one more thing.” She met his gaze levelly. “I might be more help than you think. I train search and rescue dogs, train them to find people. I want to help. With the dogs.”
“If you think it would help.”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t taken from here, but if you saw that man…if she’s with him…Do you have anything of hers with you? Clothing? Hairbrush? Anything she handled a lot.”
He thought of Dani’s sweatshirt stuffed behind the seat of his truck. Could he trust her? What did he have to lose? Maybe it was a mistake to let Shannon Flannery in, but she seemed sincere and he was rapidly running out of options. “Yeah, I think.”
She pushed back her chair. “Let’s get it.”
As if on cue, the waitress came with the check. Shannon tried to snap it up. He beat her to it. “I offered,” he said, slapping his credit card onto the small tray. She didn’t object and her brothers finished what was left of their beers, then pushed away from the table and stood.
Within two minutes it was over. He signed for the drinks, then started for the door. The Flannery entourage was on his heels as he stepped into the parking lot. The heat of the simmering night hit him full force.
A woman was waiting by a BMW.
“Okay, Robert,” she said, venom in her smile. “Where the hell is your whore?”
Travis’s gaze swung to the Flannerys. What the hell was this?
Chapter 13
Shannon stopped dead in her tracks.
The night was hot.
Sultry.
The near-empty parking lot radiating leftover heat. Two sedans, a minivan and an SUV were parked in front of the low-lying units of the motel. A few others were scattered in the spots closer to the restaurant. One woman stood waiting.
Mary Beth, her face a mask of scorned fury, was leaning a hip against the fender of Robert’s new BMW. Petite, with a killer figure and short, straight black hair highlighted to a shimmering midnight blue, she bristled slightly at the sight of the Flannery family. Dangling from one finger, winking in the bluish lights of the parking lot, was a single key. Mary Beth held the silvery piece of metal and pursed her lips, her threat evident: she intended to scratch the hell out of the Beemer’s glossy silver exterior.
Twenty feet away, standing near his own vehicle, was her brother Liam. Everything about him—his stance, his glare, the set of his jaw—suggested he was looking for a fight.
And he’d found one.
Shannon couldn’t believe it. This was like some weird, surreal movie, a bad knockoff of a street-fighting scene in West Side Story.
And she wanted no part of it.
“Hold on,” Robert said to his siblings. He crossed the parking lot at a jog while traffic rushed past and the night, beneath the security lamps, closed in. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded, ripping the key from Mary Beth’s fingers and pulling her away from his car.
“Looking for you.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Like you care!” she feigned shock, throwing her free hand over her chest while he held her other wrist in a death grip.
“Where the hell are Elizabeth and RJ?” he demanded in a low whisper.
“With my sister. Margaret’s looking after them.”
“So you could hunt me down?”
“That’s right.” Mary Beth played the part of the wounded martyr to the hilt. Except for Liam lurking in the background, a tall, menacing shadow, as if he was her “muscle.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Robert demanded.
“No, honey,” she said, sarcasm dripping fr
om her words, “that’s you. Now, where the hell is your goddamned whore? In one of these primo, deluxe units?” Her nose wrinkled in disdain as she waved her hand at the bank of doors to the rooms of the cheap motel. “I want to talk to her.”
“Cynthia’s not here.”
“Cynthia,” she repeated, hissing the word as if she were a snake. “You sure?” Again, she made a gesture toward the motel where Travis Settler had taken up residence. “I’m supposed to believe that she isn’t holed up in one of these rooms?”
“No, damn it,” Robert insisted. “Now go home, Mary Beth. Get the kids. You’re making a scene and a fool of yourself.”
“Me? Honey, you did enough of that for both of us.” There was pain in her eyes.
“Mary Beth, please, this isn’t the place,” Shannon said and took a step forward, but Shea’s hand clamped over her good arm, restraining her.
“Yeah, as if you would know about that!” she sneered. Mary Beth was on a roll, almost as if she enjoyed the audience. Her eyes returned to her husband. “Don’t pretend to care about family pride or reputation or any of that shit. Who’s the one driving all around town in a flashy new sports car that he can’t afford? Who’s been sleeping with a known slut? Ignoring his marriage vows? Ignoring his kids? Moving into a bachelor pad when he’s got a family at home?” she demanded. “Jesus, Robert, you don’t give a rat’s ass about making scenes!”
Robert bristled. “Mary Beth, stop it!”
“You stop it. You’re the one who’s acting like an idiot!” she lashed out. On the far side of Robert’s BMW, Liam moved in closer.
Shannon wanted to drop through the pocked asphalt. This was so over-the-top, so much a part of Mary Beth, who was ever the drama queen. As much as she empathized with her sister-in-law, Shannon despised public displays. She’d had enough to last a lifetime and she was furious with her brother for being such an idiot. Either stay married and faithful to his wife, or get a divorce, but don’t flaunt his current mistress in Mary Beth’s face.
“This is getting way out of hand,” Shea muttered under his breath. Releasing Shannon’s arm, he strode across the lot and said to his brother, “Can’t you get her out of here?” He hitched his chin in Mary Beth’s direction as a car pulled into the parking lot, headlights washing over the group.