Crime and Passion

by Marie Ferrarella

  Clay rang off. But before he could start punching in his brother’s cell phone number, Ilene placed her hand on his wrist. “Why do you need decoys?”

  He saw the heightened state of alert in her eyes. Despite her protest, maybe she was finally beginning to see how really serious the situation was.

  “Because if I’m right, they might still be watching the house, waiting for me to leave. If I leave with you, they’re going to follow.” He saw her brow furrow. “But not if they think we’ve already left.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He didn’t have time to go over the particulars. There were things left to do. “Just leave it all to me.” He flashed her a smile. “Think of it as your tax dollars at work.”

  She dropped her hand from his wrist. Like an arrow with a homing device, the smile he’d flashed at her had gone right through her. She doubted that he knew the effect he still had on her, and there was no way in hell she was ever going to let him even guess. But having him in charge of the situation did make her feel better.

  “Why don’t you go and throw a few things together for you and the boy? Take some of his favorite toys so he doesn’t feel so uprooted,” he added.

  “I’m whisking him out of his bed in the middle of the night. How can’t he feel uprooted?” she challenged. She stared at the drawing he’d taken down from her window. Clay was right, even if this was just a warning, it had spooked her. And it could only escalate from here.

  “Because you’re whisking him away to another home. Trust me, he won’t be traumatized. My father’s very good with kids.”

  “Your father?”

  “I thought you and the boy could stay with him. Dad’s good with kids,” he repeated before he turned away to call his brother.

  Within a few minutes he had everything arranged.

  “Is this really necessary?”

  Ilene left the question open to anyone who wanted to answer it. Clay had just admitted two people into her house via the patio door. From what she could ascertain, the man and woman had entered via the backyard. Which meant that they had to climb over the fence, coming from one of her neighbor’s yards. How could they have done that without being detected?

  The same way whoever had left that warning had, she told herself. He’d been in her backyard before she’d heard him.

  Nothing seemed safe anymore.

  “This is all so cloak-and-dagger,” she protested when no one answered her question.

  The woman was the first to speak. Her eyes were kind and her smile looked as if it had been lifted directly from Clay’s face.

  “A lot more cloak, a lot less dagger,” she laughed. Extending her hand, she took Ilene’s in hers. “Hi, I’m Teri. Clay and I are twins,” she said in response to the quizzical look creasing Ilene’s brow. Then winked. “But I’m the pretty one.”

  The man standing next to her looked as if he could be another twin, as well, except that he appeared to be a little older. “Shaw Cavanaugh.” He nodded his head toward his siblings. “They’re both homely enough to stop clocks,” he interjected. “We all know the family looks ran out after me.”

  This wasn’t the time for an exchange of vague pleasantries, even though Clay did want to see the tension leave Ilene’s shoulders. Right now, she looked like a woman doing a tightrope crossing over an open cage of hungry lions.

  “We’ll do introductions and snappy patter later,” Clay told them crisply. “You bring the doll?”

  Teri nodded, producing it out of the backpack she’d brought with her. “Took a little digging.”

  Clay’s eyebrows drew together as he looked at the doll in question. “That looks like Miss Betsy.” Miss Betsy had been his youngest sister, Rayne’s, cherished first doll. She and the doll had been inseparable, and she’d carried it around until the clothes that had come with the doll had all but disintegrated. Callie had sewn her a new outfit.

  “First one I could find in the garage,” Teri answered glibly. “You said you were in a hurry and that it needed to be about the size of a four-year-old,” she reminded him. There was only one way the doll could remotely pass the test. Teri turned to Ilene. “Do you have a blanket handy?”

  Ilene looked around before she spotted the light crocheted afghan she kept on the sofa. Alex liked to cuddle up beneath it early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons. Fetching it, she brought it back. “Is this what you have in mind?”

  Teri quickly wrapped the throw around the doll.

  “Perfect,” Teri pronounced, laying the doll on the table. She scrutinized Ilene quickly, then glanced down to see that the other woman was wearing high heels. “We’re probably about the same height,” Teri judged. “I’m going to need to borrow one of your coats. Preferably with a hood if you have one.”

  Ilene went to the hall closet where she kept her outerwear. She took out a parka that she favored, as well as a jacket for Alex. All the while, Ilene felt as if she was moving through water, as if she was sleepwalking, trapped in someone else’s dream.

  Or someone else’s nightmare.

  Ilene held out the parka to the other woman. “This do?”

  Teri nodded. “It’ll do fine.” Shedding her own jacket, Teri quickly put on the one Ilene had brought to her as Clay and Shaw conferred on the side. The buzz of lowered voices was obviously getting their star performer edgy, she thought. “It’s going to be all right,” she promised Ilene.

  And then Teri looked past the woman and toward the living room. There, his head drooping over to one side as he sat where he’d been placed on the sofa, was a little dark-haired boy, sound asleep amid all the activity.

  Teri’s expression softened to the consistency of margarine left out on the kitchen counter way after breakfast was over. “That him?”

  Ilene nodded. “Alex.”

  “Nice name.” Teri quickly buttoned up the jacket and looked back to the woman whose life was getting tossed upside down. They had no details, not even a name for the woman. Only that Clay needed a favor. That was enough for any of them. “Don’t worry, it’ll all be over with soon.”

  Ilene tried to smile. The shaky sigh escaped before she could stop it. “Not soon enough for me.”

  “Are you about set?” Clay directed the question to his sister as he handed Shaw the keys to the car he’d left parked out front.

  Shaw gave him his own. “My car’s parked in front of the house diagonally behind this one. It’s the one with the California pepper tree out in front.” He looked at his sister. Teri slipped the parka over her head and picked up the bundled doll, then nodded. “Give us about ten minutes,” Shaw told Clay.

  A sliver of impatience clawed at Clay. “I know how to do this. I’m the one who called you.”

  Shaw looked from his brother to Ilene. He then gave Clay’s hair a playful tousle, the way he had when they were younger and he was establishing order. Except now they were equals. “Just imparting a little wisdom, little brother,” Shaw told him with a grin.

  “Well, that’ll fill a thimble or two,” Teri cracked. “C’mon, let’s go. I want to get back to the party. My beer’s getting warm.”

  “Ah, the flower of youth,” Shaw commented with a shake of his head.

  Lowering her head, Teri tightened her arms around the bundle, holding it against her with all the care a mother would give to her sleeping child. Shaw was right beside her, his arm wrapped around her protectively as he guided mother and child out.

  Just before he closed the door, he shut off the last of the lights.

  The darkness bathed them. Straining her eyes against it, Ilene looked toward the sofa where her son was still dozing. She didn’t want him suddenly waking up and panicking. Alex was afraid of the dark.

  For a moment there was nothing, only darkness and the sound of Ilene breathing. Clay tried not to remember the last time that sound had wafted to him in the stillness of the night. Tried not to remember making love with Ilene until the sun began to slowly slip its fingers into the room, poking in
to the corners, coaxing away the shadows.

  He tried but he failed. The memories came, anyway.

  Maybe, he thought, when you made love with the right woman, it was a little like riding a bicycle. No matter how much time actually went by, when you come into the proximity of a bicycle, you can’t help but recall the feeling.

  The same went for the woman.

  Along with her breathing, he could feel her tension fill the air. Inbred instincts made him want to comfort her. “You all right?”

  She ran her tongue along dry lips. It didn’t help. “I’ve been better,” she confessed. “I’m just worried about Alex.”

  Kids could handle anything, as long as they had love, he thought. He’d learned that firsthand. “Don’t be. He’s going to think of this as one big adventure,” Clay promised.

  “Right.”

  She stiffened as she felt Clay’s arm slip around her shoulder. He was still wearing that same cologne, the one she’d given him so long ago. The scent stirred memories she wanted to forget. She couldn’t handle them and this, too.

  She was as stiff as a lightning rod. “Just me,” Clay told her softly, “offering moral support.”

  She didn’t want him offering moral support. She didn’t want him offering anything at all. She didn’t want him back in her life, no matter how professionally. Because she couldn’t think of him that way.

  Ilene clenched her hands at her sides. “I should have never done this,” she said regretfully. If there was a way to click her heels and undo everything, she would have. “All I was supposed to do was just sign off on the report, not start going into the figures myself.”

  He knew her, knew she didn’t sweep things under the rug or do things by half measures. If something bore her name, she had to make sure it was right. She had integrity and that meant something to her. He wanted her to be proud of herself, not angry. “Why did you start going into the figures yourself?”

  “Because they didn’t look right.” She sighed. When was she going to learn she couldn’t be a crusader? Not anymore. She had a son, a life that had been entrusted to her, she couldn’t just think of herself anymore. “Because I didn’t want anyone buying stock under false pretenses.”

  She heard him laugh softly and the sound wound its way to her belly, upsetting it even further. “You always did worry about everyone else.”

  “And look where it got me.”

  He didn’t like the fatalistic tone in her voice. That wasn’t like her. He remembered her as being feisty. She needed to draw on that now. “It’s not over.”

  She covered her face for a second as a myriad of regrets assaulted her. She struggled for high ground. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “What happened to all that optimism you used to have?”

  She turned to him and could just about make out his eyes. “It got dried up along the way.”

  And he had been the one who’d dried it, he thought suddenly. Or was at least responsible for some of it drying up.

  He was reading too much into it, Clay told himself. The man who had fathered her child had to be at least partially responsible for her attitude, as well.

  Where was he?

  Who was he? Had she loved him? Did she still love him?

  Clay shut down his mind. There was no sense in going that route, in torturing himself with questions that might never be answered, questions he had no right to ask in the first place. He’d given her up. Willingly. That meant he had no claim to her now, and certainly not the time they’d been apart.

  “That’s too bad,” he finally responded. Glancing down at his watch, he angled it so that the thin beam of moonlight struggling into the room highlighted the golden face. “We’d better get going. You ready?”

  She nodded, her mouth suddenly twice as dry as it had been a moment ago. Going over to the sofa, she scooped Alex up in her arms.

  Rousing, the small weight shifted against her, like a little monkey seeking a bit of comfort. “Mama?” he mumbled against her chest.

  She stroked his head. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if she’d put even one hair of his head in danger, she thought.

  “It’s okay honey, we’re going on a little trip.” It had been what she’d told him when he’d looked up at her with sleepy eyes as she’d hurriedly dressed him less than half an hour ago.

  “De-neyland?”

  “Not yet—” she laughed softly, pressing her to him, drawing comfort from the warmth of his little body against hers “—but soon.”

  Clay was beside her. “Disneyland a big deal with him?”

  She turned her head, whispering even though she knew the boy was asleep again. Bless him, he could sleep through an earthquake once he was in the right mode. “He’s never been,” she explained. “But he’s seen the commercials and he’s determined to go.”

  Something stirred within him, something apart from his sense of duty and the odd nostalgia that pushed its way forward. Something that had to do with children and families and a life on its way to being misspent.

  “Maybe when this is all behind you, I’ll take the two of you to Disneyland.”

  No, she wasn’t going to allow Clay to seduce her with words, with images that flashed temptingly through her mind. She didn’t need or want anything from him beyond protection for her son. “That’s okay,” she replied crisply. “When this is all behind me, I’ll take my son to Disneyland myself.”

  Clay shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  He didn’t like her defensive tone, the one that was holding up and waving the No Trespassing sign in front of him, even though he knew that he had at least partly earned it.

  “Yes,” she replied tersely, “whatever I say.”

  He first picked up the laptop she insisted on taking with her and then the suitcase she had hurriedly packed for the two of them. Inside was the note he’d taken down from her dining room window. With any luck, there might be a print on it. At least he could hope.

  Taking her arm, he directed her to the rear of the house. “Let’s get going.”

  He didn’t have to tell her again.

  Chapter 5

  If the tension were any thicker within Shaw’s four-door, unmarked vehicle, it would have been a solid entity. Clay searched for a way to distract the woman on his right who sat staring straight ahead, as rigid as the principles of right and wrong that had brought her to this juncture.

  He glanced again in the rearview mirror. His line of vision shifted from the vacant area beyond the rear of the car to the small figure in the back seat. Alex was secured in place with a seat belt, but the boy was still of an age where car seats were the norm. He’d seen the look of concern on Ilene’s face when she’d strapped her son in.

  “My father has an old car seat in the garage.” Clay remembered stumbling across it not that long ago, wondering if his father was saving it for his first grandchild. “I think it was Rayne’s.”

  For a second, she didn’t realize that Clay was talking to her. Lost in her own thoughts, in fears that she was struggling to make sense of, it took Ilene a moment to replay the words that had been directed toward her. “What?”

  Watching the car in the rearview mirror as he made a left-hand turn, Clay waited until it continued straight before answering. The car hadn’t been following him. Better paranoid than sorry later.

  “A car seat. For your son.” Glancing at her, he saw no indication that she was following him. “We didn’t exactly have time to switch the one from your car to Shaw’s,” he reminded her.

  Ilene’s complexion looked almost translucent, he thought, even factoring in the limited light from the passing streetlamps. She looked pale and drawn and worried. Not that he could blame her. He knew what it was like, having a world you thought secure suddenly upended. For him it had been his mother’s death. It was all you could do to keep from going under.

  Ilene shook her head. What was he doing, talking about car seats and the weather? “Rain?”

  “Rayne. Lor-r
ayne,” he enunciated slowly. “My youngest sister. We call her Rayne because when Teri was a little girl, she couldn’t say Lorrayne. She wasn’t as advanced as I was.” His joke fell flat, not even coaxing a smile from Ilene. He hated seeing her like this. She didn’t deserve to be frightened, to feel like a fugitive for doing the right thing. “If you ask me,” he continued in an easy voice, “Dad should have found a way to keep her strapped into it until she was about nineteen. She gave him a lot of grief.”

  Ilene tried to keep her mind on the conversation and not on the huge knot that had formed in her stomach. “But not anymore?”

  Clay felt himself smiling. There was a bet he would have lost. He had figured that nothing would ever get the youngest Cavanaugh to fly right, much less actually join the police department. Showed what he knew.

  “She straightened out.” The amber light turned red before he could get into the intersection. He raised his eyes to the rearview again. Nothing. Good. “We all did. Fine, upstanding citizens, the lot of us.”

  Beside him, he heard Ilene laugh softly under her breath. He’d forgotten how much he liked that sound, how it bathed over him, making him want more. “What’s so funny?”

  She shook her head. Wisps of strawberry-blond hair brushed against either cheek. She combed them away with her fingers. “I don’t see you as that.”

  “Oh?” The light turned green and he took his foot from the brake. “And what do you see me as?”

  Not with me, for one thing. “Free.” She thought a minute, then added, “Unencumbered.”

  He saw no contradiction. “Free spirits can be upstanding.” His mouth curved. The term was one that always came to mind when he thought of his youngest sister. “Matter of fact, that probably best describes Rayne. I don’t think she’s ever going to settle down.” She was too independent, too bullheaded for that matter. “Much to my father’s dismay. I’ve got this feeling he sees himself at the head of this overpopulated dynasty, having all of us turn up at the table with our assorted spouses and a gaggle of kids.”