by Karen Rose
‘Same person that kidnapped Ford.’
Cooper flinched. ‘My mind can’t accept that he’s being held against his will. I’ve known that boy since before he was born. I taught him to ride. To shoot. I gave him his first razor.’ He looked up at the sky, his throat working as he fought back tears. ‘First box of condoms too. Don’t tell Daphne.’
‘Our secret,’ Joseph said. ‘I think you’re right. I think there’s a good chance he’s going to want to watch. Where would he get the best view?’
‘A few places. I know this land. If it would help, I can take you or your investigators to those places. A man stands in one place long enough, he’ll leave something behind.’
‘I’ve got a CSU team on the way. Thank you. Now about your generator.’
‘I sent my son back to the house for the maintenance books. He should be back in thirty minutes if you can wait.’
‘I can. Excuse me.’ The cell phone in Joseph’s hand had begun to buzz, the number on the caller ID unfamiliar. The hair on the back of his neck lifted. ‘This is Agent Carter.’
‘Carter, this is Agent Kerr in the Pittsburgh Field Office. We got a hit on your BOLO.’
Joseph didn’t breathe. ‘Which one?’
Wednesday, December 4, 8.00 A.M.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Daphne murmured. She’d come out of the stall just as Joseph took a phone call, his body going statue still, his face blank.
Maggie tugged on her shoulders. ‘Come on. Scott brought a thermos of coffee.’
‘No.’ She pulled free, not wanting to watch, but unable to turn away. Joseph had stopped breathing. He was listening to his phone, his chest frozen. Daphne’s heart began to pound, hard and fast. He turned then, as if feeling her watching him. His mouth curved into a smile, but his eye were still blank.
‘I’ll be just a minute,’ he called. ‘Don’t worry.’
Daphne closed her eyes. ‘All right.’ Exhale, inhale. Rinse and repeat. ‘I’m going to sit in the office, Maggie. Can you ask Joseph to come talk to me when he’s ready?’
‘Of course.’ Maggie cupped her neck loosely, bringing her head close until their foreheads touched. ‘Whatever happens, we will do this. Together. You and me and your mama. Just like we’ve done everything else.’
‘I know. But for now I’d like to be alone.’ She left Maggie with a hug and made it to the office and sank into a chair, trembling so hard her legs were jelly. She twined her fingers together in her lap. Fixed her gaze to the clock. And waited. Four and a half times the second hand swept around. And finally the door behind her opened.
‘It’s me,’ Joseph said. He came around the chair to crouch at her feet. His warm hands covered hers. But all she could see was the clock. She couldn’t look at him. Because then it would be real.
‘Daphne, honey. Look at me.’ He gently pinched her chin and tugged her face down until she had no choice but to look into his eyes.
Kind. Not blank anymore. Still can’t breathe.
‘He’s alive. Did you hear me? Ford is alive.’
Her chest imploded. ‘What? I thought . . .’
He smiled at her, so gently. ‘I needed to be sure before I gave you news again.’
‘Where? Where is he?’
‘In a hospital in West Virginia just past the Pennsylvania state line.’
Hospital. ‘West Virginia? How did he get all the way out there?’
‘They don’t know yet. He’s not conscious.’
The room tilted. ‘Joseph.’
‘The cop I spoke to said the doctors were saying mild hypothermia, exhaustion, and dehydration. Maybe some frostbite, but not severe. No major injuries, Daphne.’
Her face was wet. And she still couldn’t breathe. Boneless, she slid from the chair to her knees, collapsing against him. He was there, warm. So warm.
His arms came around her, bringing her close, cradling her head against his chest, kneeling with her while the sobs wracked her body. ‘It’s okay, cry it out,’ he murmured.
She had no choice. The floodgates had opened and she couldn’t seem to make it stop. She just held on to Joseph, sobbing and gripping his shirt like a life preserver.
The door opened behind her. ‘Daphne?’ It was Maggie. ‘Honey?’
Daphne sucked in a lungful of air and gritted her teeth. The tears didn’t stop, but the noise did. Her fingers tightened their grip on Joseph’s shirt.
‘She’s okay,’ Joseph said, rubbing her back. He dipped his head to murmur in her ear. ‘I told them the news. Because they had pitchforks and wouldn’t let me pass.’
Daphne hiccupped a watery laugh and nodded against his chest.
‘I brought her some things,’ Maggie said.
Keeping Daphne’s head cradled against him, he reached forward and one at a time dropped a box of tissues, a bottle of water, and her bottle of headache pills on the floor beside them. ‘You’re a good nanny, Maggie. Does Daphne have any extra clothes or toiletries up at your house? We’re going to get Ford.’
‘I’ll pack her a bag.’ There was a pause, then Maggie’s hand was stroking her hair. ‘I called your mama. She’s crying too.’
Then she was gone and Daphne plucked a handful of tissues from the box. ‘So stupid . . . so stupid to cry. He’s alive. Why can’t I stop crying?’
‘This is normal, Daphne. So much emotion, all bottled up. Let it out.’
‘Tell me again,’ she whispered. ‘Please. Say it again. I need to hear it.’
‘Your son is alive,’ he said. ‘Ford is alive and he is safe. And I’m going to take you to him as fast as I can drive.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Triple verified,’ he said wryly. ‘I had Bo call the Pittsburgh field office, then I called the local cops and the hospital. He’s there, honey. He was brought in five hours ago, but he didn’t have ID on him. One of the nurses had seen the TV reports on the shootings yesterday. When Hyatt and Bo gave their press conference after the shooting, they included photos of Ford and Kimberly. The nurse notified the locals who called the Bureau’s field office. They got patched through to me.’
Finally the tears had slowed enough for her to think. ‘Who brought him in?’
‘Local PD. They responded to a 911 call from an elderly lady who discovered him on her property after her dog wouldn’t stop barking. Ford was unconscious by then.’
‘Why was he there to start with?’
‘That’s what we have to figure out. Hopefully he’ll be awake by the time we get there and he can tell us.’
She let go of his shirt and inanely tried to smooth the fabric. ‘I keep messing up your shirts.’
‘I don’t mind.’ He lifted her chin, brushed his thumb over her lip. ‘Better now?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
His dark eyes changed, heating. ‘I haven’t done anything yet.’
Last night. The solarium door. Not until I give you something to be thankful for. Her emotions swung again and the relief that had so overwhelmed her disappeared like mist in sunshine. Rising to take its place was lust, simple yet potent.
She framed his face with her hands. ‘You’re here,’ she said fiercely. ‘Right now, that’s a lot. More than I’ve ever had. And right now, what I need.’
‘And later?’
The way he looked at her gave her the courage to speak when she might otherwise have faltered. ‘You make me greedy, Joseph,’ she whispered. ‘You make me want more than I need.’
His eyes flashed, hungry, but his movements were slow. Precise. He bent his head, kissing the pulse point of her left wrist, then her right, never taking his gaze from hers. It was simple. And very potent. He took her breath away.
‘I think we need to work on your definition of “want” and “need”. And “greed”.’ His voice dipped, each word a feather-light caress that made her skin feel way too tight. ‘And we will. Later.’ He rose in a single powerful movement, capturing her hands in his and tugging her to her feet. ‘Now, we drive.’
&nbs
p; Wednesday, December 4, 8.20 A.M.
Finally. The Fed was driving Miss Daphne away in his Escalade, another Fed covering his back, while the others waved goodbye. Mitch took one last look at his handiwork on the barn wall before lowering his binoculars.
He’d expected the message to be discovered by whoever did the morning feeding. He never expected it would be discovered by Daphne herself. Amazing luck, fantastic show, and well worth the loss of one cow.
The Fed’s black Escalade should be passing this way soon. Once it had, the coast would be clear for him to head back home. Any time now he’d be getting a frantic call from his brother Mutt about the guns that were found in the houses Millhouse and Odum had purchased with Reggie’s defense fund. Mutt and his daddy would soon be very unhappy because they’d do a check on the books and see that somebody had been skimming guns from the deliveries.
Mutt’s father would be blamed and Mitch doubted his stepfather’s Russian boss would leave the old man alive.
Mitch would pay good money to see the old man’s face once he realized he’d been set up. He’ll blame me, like he does for everything. Only this time, he’ll be right.
Of course, what Mitch most wanted to see would be Daphne’s face when Ford gave her his message. I’m back. Did you miss me?
He heard the low roar of the Fed’s Escalade as it passed by, followed by the quieter unmarked sedan. I’m good to go.
He walked through the woods to where he’d left his black van. He’d have to retire it now. He’d only planned to store it for a while, once the Feds found the Millhouses’ gun stash. But after that woman he’d had to kill in the parking garage . . .
Shit. He did hate waste. It was a perfectly good vehicle.
Hagerstown, Maryland, Wednesday, December 4, 9.55 A.M.
It was at times like this that Joseph was very happy to have an SUV with four-wheel drive. Western Maryland had received four inches of snow the night before and the roads were slick. It would be even worse once they got to the higher elevations.
Flying Daphne to West Virginia would have been faster and safer from a security standpoint, but after she hit her head the day before, her doctor friend at the ER had nixed air travel for another twenty-four hours.
At least he had them covered. Hector drove behind them, watching for any speeding vehicles that came too close. Kate Coppola was leading the investigation at Daphne’s farm, checking out Cooper’s medicine cabinet. When she was done, she would follow them up to West Virginia with Daphne’s mother and Maggie and the dog. Joseph felt better when Daphne had Tasha around.
He himself was well armed and he’d had the SUV outfitted with bullet-resistant glass when he’d bought the thing. Still, he’d felt nervous until they’d reached the more open road west of Baltimore. Now he wasn’t so much nervous as watchful.
He’d spent the last hour touching base with each member of his team. He’d started by informing Ciccotelli that Ford had been found and where. Ciccotelli had informed him that the MacGregors had still received no word, no calls, no communication regarding their missing daughters. A search of MacGregor’s veterinary hospital had shown several boxes of missing fentanyl and injectable ketamine, as well as other controlled substances.
Joseph had called Deacon to West Virginia. He wanted him coordinating with the Pittsburgh office in the investigation. He wanted to know where the hell Ford had been for a day and how he had magically shown up on some lady’s snow-covered lawn.
He had called Bo Lamar next. The FBI/ATF task force formed to track the source of the assault rifles recovered from yesterday’s raid was moving rapidly. The assault rifles had a connection to organized crime. Specifically a Russian ‘businessman’ named Fyodor Antonov.
The Bureau had been watching Antonov for a year now, but had never been able to put their hands on the goods to connect with him. Bo would spend most of his morning arranging a warrant and planning a raid on Antonov’s warehouse.
JD Fitzpatrick had spent the entire night checking out the properties he’d found belonging to Dougs, Douglases, or MacDougals within a two-hour radius of Baltimore. Two hours was how long Doug would have had between coming home from Philly with Pamela and arriving at the alley to attack Isaac Zacharias and Ford Elkhart. It was tedious and time-consuming work, but that’s what detective work was usually like.
Joseph had told JD about his conversation with Holly the night before, that Kim had told Doug about a possible job, but that he’d need a ‘GC’ to do it. JD was adding that to his rapidly overflowing plate.
Daphne had called everyone in her world to give them the good news. She’d smiled and laughed and sometimes cried with her family and friends.
When she’d finished her last call, she’d become abruptly quiet, as if she’d expended all her energy being happy. For the last half hour she’d stared out of her window, deep in thought. He let her have her space, well aware that for the last twenty-four hours she’d had precious little time to herself.
When she finally did speak, she took him by surprise.
‘It was stage one. I was twenty-seven years old.’
He looked right so hard and fast that he nearly hit a tractor trailer. The trucker blew his horn but Joseph barely heard it. He got back in his lane and drew a breath.
She hadn’t looked at him, still staring at the passing countryside that he didn’t think she saw at all.
Stage one. That’s . . . the least bad, right? But he couldn’t ask that question.
Twenty-seven? He hadn’t done the math for some reason. ‘That’s not . . . usual, is it?’ He’d caught himself before ‘normal’ left his mouth. ‘To be diagnosed so young.’
‘It’s rare and I certainly wasn’t expecting it. I figured it was something innocent, like a cyst. When he said “cancer” I went into a state of shock.’
So much so that she’d wandered to her ex-husband’s office. ‘How did you find it?’
‘Monthly self-exam . . . that I didn’t do every month because I was twenty-seven. “Old women” in their forties and fifties got breast cancer. But women in their twenties do get it, and when they do it’s usually a lot more aggressive.’
His heart stuttered at the word. Aggressive. ‘Was yours?’
She lifted a shoulder. ‘Could have been a lot worse. I’m still here. I come with an awful lot of baggage, Joseph. I think you need to know that.’
‘We all have baggage.’
‘Mine still hovers over my head. Anyone who wants to be with me needs to understand that. I’m seven years clear and with every year my chances of dying from something else get better and better. I sometimes get paranoid over the smallest sniffle or bruise, worrying that it’s come back, because if it does . . . that would be very bad.’
He took a minute to think, to use the logic that normally served him well. But at the moment the fear clawing at his gut was kicking logic out the door. She waited for him to speak, still not looking at him.
‘I’ve got a million different thoughts running through my head right now and I’m terrified I’m going to say the wrong one,’ he confessed.
‘I don’t think there is a wrong one, Joseph.’
‘Yeah, there probably are several wrong ones. The wrong ones would be ones that hurt you. A right one would be one that makes us both feel better.’
‘What makes you feel better?’
‘That numbers don’t lie. Statistically speaking, I’m more likely to get hurt because I have a dangerous job.’
She grimaced. ‘That doesn’t make me feel better at all.’
‘I just mean that anyone who wants to be with me needs to understand that my job comes with certain risks.’ He cast her a sideways glance and caught her peeking at him from the corner of her eye. ‘Although lately, your job is a helluva lot more dangerous than mine.’
‘That’s fair.’
‘My dangerous job could end me with less warning than cancer would end you.’
‘That’s true. But while it’s the end that scares peo
ple, it’s the getting there that puts the strain on a relationship.’
He reached across the console and tugged her left hand free of the choke hold the right had it in. He threaded their fingers together and kissed her hand as he had the day before. ‘I’m thirty-seven years old and not getting any younger, so I’m going to be blunt, okay?’
She sifted in her seat so that she could look at him. ‘Okay.’
‘I like you. I think you’re beautiful and smart and . . . colorful.’
She’d looked happy until the last word. ‘Colorful?’
‘Yeah. Full of color and . . . life. And that’s a good thing for me.’
‘Okay,’ she said warily. ‘I’ll let you have that one.’
‘No, I want you to understand. For a long time I’ve felt like my life is Dorothy in Kansas. All gray. You are . . . color.’
Her smile had bloomed. ‘Thank you, Joseph.’
‘You’re welcome. I’m still in blunt mode, okay?’
‘I’ll try to keep up,’ she said dryly.
He smiled. ‘There are things I want and there are things I need. I want a challenging job, but I need someone to come home to when I’m done with that job. I need that somebody to need the same thing. That might be you. It might not. But I’m tired of wasting time and I get the impression you are, too.’
She nodded, her eyes wide.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘if it does turn out to be you and you come with baggage, it becomes my baggage too. Same goes the opposite way, but we’re talking about your baggage now. If you got sick again, I wouldn’t run away. I’m not made that way.’
‘I know you’re not,’ she said softly.
‘I’m about to get blunter,’ he warned. ‘I want you. Any which way I can have you. And some ways I haven’t even thought of yet. I’ve wanted you for nine months and I’ve . . . thought about how it would be between us. Often.’ He glanced over, saw her cheeks had pinked. ‘And since I’m not getting any younger, I’d really like to find out sooner versus later. Much sooner.’
‘In the spirit of bluntness, that scares me more than anything else. I’m . . . different now. Almost certainly different from any other woman you’ve been with. You can say that it doesn’t matter, but if it does when the time comes . . . that will be hard.’