Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Caleb. I think he might be my brother. Caleb Sawyer.” Christ. He wasn’t having to fake anything—not the tremors, not the ragged voice, not the expression that had the doctor staring. “They’re runaways. Diego—this boy—says Caleb was looking for his brother. That’s why they came to Angel Butte. I need to see him.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head, not in refusal, but in shock. “Yes. All right, come this way.”

  He barely recognized the figure surrounded by medical personnel. Caleb’s face was raw and grotesquely swollen. He’d been intubated and was being given oxygen. There was no life at all in him beyond the faint rise and fall of his chest.

  Life support.

  Despite having known what he would see, Reid staggered, barely righting himself. “It’s him,” he managed to get out. “Caleb.”

  * * *

  IF IT HADN’T been his number on her screen, Anna wasn’t sure she’d have recognized Reid’s voice.

  “Your brother?” she said, stunned. “He’s here? In town? And injured?”

  “They’re working on him right now. He’s unconscious. He doesn’t look good, Anna.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll find you, Reid.”

  She’d been at the health club when her phone rang, getting dressed after a workout. It had been cleansing after the funeral and the strain of trying to comfort the Lunds when she felt such grief herself. Although she was dressed, she hadn’t yet dried her hair, but she didn’t care. She hastily stuffed workout gear into her duffel, slammed the locker and all but ran out. The drive to the hospital couldn’t have taken five minutes, but it seemed like forever. Every red light, every flicker of a brake light in front of her, made her want to scream.

  She parked at the hospital and raced into the emergency room. “Captain Reid Sawyer,” she snapped to the receptionist. “He’s in back with his brother. Caleb Sawyer.”

  The woman frowned and perused her computer. “I’m afraid I don’t have a Caleb—”

  “It was a hit-and-run.”

  “Oh. Yes. Why don’t you take a seat? It’ll be a minute.”

  “He asked me to come.” That was a lie, she realized with sudden shock. She hadn’t even given him a chance to ask. What if he’d been about to say, I don’t need you, but I wanted to let you know what was happening? Oh, dear God. What was his brother doing in town?

  Looking for Reid, of course. What else could it be?

  What if he died?

  Pacing in an agitated circle right in front of the double doors leading to the back, Anna tried to blank her mind to the possibility. She’d seen the pain he bore already. A loss like this— What would it do to him?

  But she knew. Oh, God, she knew.

  The door burst open and he was there. His expression was terrible. She’d wanted to see naked emotion on his face, but nothing like this.

  “Reid.” Anna flew to him. His arms closed hard around her even as she held on to him with everything she had. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Reid. How is he?”

  “They...don’t know yet. He’s unconscious. There’s swelling in his brain. Some broken bones, too, maybe some internal bleeding. They aren’t sure yet. He looks really bad, Anna.”

  She pulled back enough to look up at him. “He must have told them his name.”

  Reid shook his head. “No. He’s with another boy. Diego Ramirez. They were traveling together. I haven’t figured out yet where they were staying or where they got the bikes they were riding, but he says Caleb wanted to see me.” A shudder ripped through him. “I let him down. He wasn’t safe.”

  “No.” She tightened her arms again, laying her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Reid. You’d have done anything for him. I know you would. He wouldn’t have been looking for you if he hadn’t decided to trust you.”

  This shudder was worse than the last. Or was it a sob? Shocked anew, she saw tears running down his hard cheeks. She held him while he cried, trying to protect him from curious stares as he’d done for her that day on the sidewalk in front of the café. Anna heard herself talking but didn’t even know what she was saying. Just a mishmash.

  I’m so sorry. He may be fine. Just because he was knocked on the head doesn’t mean he won’t come out of it. It’s okay, Reid. Let it out. It’ll help. It will.

  She didn’t know if any of it was true. Please don’t let this boy die. It would destroy Reid. She knew that much.

  He pulled himself together fast, retreating from her physically and emotionally. He used the wool sleeve of the fine suit coat he’d worn to the funeral to wipe his face. She stared at the now-closed double doors, giving him the space he obviously wanted to resume his usual facade.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said after a minute, his voice only a little gravelly.

  “Of course I did.” She shot him a fierce look.

  He gave a broken laugh. “Of course you did.” Then his gaze went past her and she turned to see that he was looking at an older man who looked upset, too. There was blood on his flannel shirt, she saw, and the knees of his canvas carpenter’s pants were dirty, with bits of grit clinging to the fabric. His gray-streaked dark hair looked as if he’d been wrenching at it, and maybe he’d been pulling at his beard, too.

  Reid kept an arm around Anna and led her over to the other man. “Anna, I’ve told you about my friends here in Angel Butte. This is Roger Hale. The boys were hit on the road not far from his place. He was one of the first on scene.”

  “You must have recognized Caleb,” she said.

  “I—” His eyes met Reid’s. “No,” he said after a minute. “He was bloody, and...it didn’t occur to me. I called Reid because the driver who hit the boys didn’t even stop.”

  “Unfortunately, the accident scene is out of my jurisdiction,” Reid put in.

  She gaped at him. “But it’s your own brother. You wouldn’t have wanted to investigate anyway, would you?”

  The ferocity of the look he turned on her made her quail. “Want to? Yeah, I want to.” The vulnerable man he had let her see earlier was gone. “In fact,” he continued in a hard voice, “I’m going to call my father right this minute.”

  She pressed her fingers to her mouth. He couldn’t think— Could he? But obviously he did. He had his phone out and was scrolling for a number. He found it and pushed Send. She and Reid’s friend—Roger—both waited. Anna could hear the rings, but with the phone pressed to Reid’s ear, she couldn’t make out the voice that answered.

  Like a knife, Reid’s voice sliced. “All right, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Where are you?”

  * * *

  “HERE’S THE OTHER kid’s story,” Reid told Anna. He called up Diego’s court records on his smartphone. After explaining what Diego had told him—you mean, lied to her, don’t you?—he handed her the phone and said, “Take a look.”

  She read in silence for a minute, scrolling down. When she finally looked up, he would have been reassured by the fiery light in her eyes if his fear and his guilt hadn’t been so bottomless.

  “First thing I’ll do is call in a Child Protective Services worker,” she announced. “I need to talk to Diego myself.”

  After being told the boy was moving upstairs to a regular hospital room, Anna decided to accompany him. “I think I can block any immediate attempt to return him to his father. That’ll give us time to work.”

  They both knew that by now Hector Ramirez, yet another winner in the parental stakes, had been called and might be on his way from the Portland area to Angel Butte. They were in a race.

  Reid nodded. Being able to talk at all was getting harder for him.

  Eyes soft again, Anna hugged him, rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his cheek. “I’ll be back,” she murmured. “Hang in there.”

  He couldn’t even nod this time. He’d never been so
scared in his life. He expected to be summoned any minute and told the worst.

  Instead, the outside doors glided open and a man entered. Reid knew a cop when he saw one, even if he wore a suit and tie. The guy walking toward him was powerfully built with an angular, rough-cast face. It was the walk that gave him away—had to be cop or ex-military. The way he scanned everyone in the waiting area and then zeroed in on Reid was familiar, too.

  When he got close, Reid saw the badge on his belt. He held out his hand. “Sergeant Renner?”

  “You’re Captain Sawyer. Jane has described you.”

  “I won’t ask what she said.”

  The grin was quick and then gone. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  Reid hadn’t been sure until now how much he wanted to say. Before agreeing to go home, Roger had said the decision would be Reid’s. “We’re at a crossroads,” he said bleakly. “Too many people know we’re here now. Maybe it’s time to give it up.”

  Reid felt the same, yet couldn’t forget his own desperation when he came to the Hales. He thought of all the kids since, the ones who’d stayed safe, earned their GEDs, gone on to good lives thanks to Roger and Paula.

  But his conscience wouldn’t let him forget the others, too. The ones he never let himself think about. The girls murdered by a serial killer given access to them by the Hales. The ones who’d run away even from this sanctuary, any safety net lost to them.

  He drew a deep breath and said, “Yeah. I asked for you because the Hales tell me you’re aware of their operation.”

  Comprehension was immediate. “The hit-and-run was on 253rd, wasn’t it? Well, shit.” Renner looked around. “Let’s find someplace private. The cafeteria?”

  “I need to stay here.”

  Clay Renner nodded. They ended up choosing a couple of chairs in a corner. Reid braced his elbows on his knees and let his head hang for a minute. “It’s a mess,” he warned.

  “It almost has to be.”

  He straightened, unwilling to evade those sharp blue eyes, and started talking. Talked until he was hoarse. “I owe them my life,” he said finally. “We can still leave them out of this, if you’re willing. Right now, I don’t know what’s right or wrong. I will tell you, I think this was deliberate. A murder attempt.”

  “Aimed at your brother.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. The boy who was riding behind Caleb is a possibility. It sounds like he’d have been hit first if he hadn’t dived for the ditch. It’s also possible whoever this is didn’t care which boys he killed. He hates the Hales and this was just part of his campaign of terror.”

  Furrows had long since formed on Sergeant Renner’s forehead. “I wish you’d come to me sooner.”

  “I did talk to your boss.”

  “My boss?”

  “The sheriff. Until today, nobody had gotten hurt. The incidents were no more than taunts. Nasty, but there was no attempt to harm anyone.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Renner sighed. “Forward me everything you’ve got on these kids and their parents or guardians. The first thing we need to do is pin down where everyone is.”

  “I’m pretty damn sure my father—Caleb’s father—is here in Angel Butte.” Reid’s voice had thickened.

  “Ah. Have you tried to get in touch?”

  “I called. He claimed he’d just crossed the Oregon border, that he didn’t leave Spokane until midmorning. I don’t believe him. No matter what, he’s on his way here. Like I told you, he was here last week when the tires were slashed. He has weekends off and could have been here when the fires were set, too.”

  “Would he do this? Try to kill his own boy?”

  “He killed my mother. It was in the middle of a fight. He hit her, she fell against the corner of a kitchen cabinet. But he was cold-blooded enough to set it up as an accident. I saw him pour some water on the floor to make it look like she slipped.”

  Renner’s harsh features hardened. “Then he’s at the top of my list.”

  “The Hales?” Reid had to ask.

  Renner let out a huff of air. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to them and the other boy. Let me think about this, okay?”

  Reid only nodded. He’d been doing a lot of that. It occurred to him then that his career was over if this all came out. He’d been breaking the law. He probably hadn’t done anything he’d be charged for, although Roger and Paula would be, however fine their intentions and however much good they’d done. Reid would hate to see that. At the moment, he couldn’t seem to make himself care about the fallout for himself personally.

  Renner left then, and Reid stood watching until he went through the door and was out of sight. He not only had never been so scared before, he’d never felt so helpless.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  REID HAD JUST finished forwarding everything he’d gotten from Phil to Renner—with Phil’s name and email address wiped out—when someone came out from the back to tell him Caleb was being moved to Intensive Care, and would he care to go to that waiting room instead.

  Once he’d arrived there, a different doctor emerged to say they didn’t believe Caleb had any internal bleeding, which meant surgery wasn’t currently necessary. He did have multiple broken bones in his shoulder and upper arm, as well as his collarbone. They were attempting to immobilize much of his upper body.

  “Of course, it’s the head trauma that has us worried,” the doctor said unnecessarily. “The damage to his shoulder may be good news, in a way. Clearly it took a significant amount of the impact when he hit the road.”

  Instead of his head. Or, Instead of only his head.

  “I wish I could give you a prognosis,” he continued, “but it’s too soon for me even to speculate. I know how hard this is, but all we can do is wait and see.”

  Right now, Reid wouldn’t let himself think about the possibility of brain damage. He just wanted his brother to open his eyes. Squeeze his hand.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Perhaps you should go home,” the doctor suggested. “I feel sure he won’t regain consciousness before morning at the very least.”

  “Not yet. I’d like to sit with him as much as possible.”

  His expression kind, the doctor said they couldn’t have him back there all the time, but would give him a few minutes perhaps every half hour.

  Another nod.

  Left alone, Reid paced. Despite near numbness, fury was a hot spark waiting to be lit by his father’s arrival.

  * * *

  ANNA WAS TROUBLED by the time she left Diego to sleep. The caseworker from DHS had come and gone earlier, but Anna had stayed to try to mine more details from the boy. There was too much wrong with his story.

  He and Caleb had “borrowed” the bikes, he said. They planned to return them later, after they’d ridden into town and found Caleb’s brother. He claimed not to remember exactly where they’d borrowed them from. When she asked how the boys intended to return them, he mumbled, “Maybe we could find the place. Or leave them in front of the police station.”

  Where Caleb’s brother worked. Genius plan.

  Diego was vague about where he’d been living since he disappeared over a year ago from his own home. Another mumble. “You know. On the streets.” He’d met Caleb in Portland, he said. Anna guessed it was possible that was where Reid’s friends who’d taken in his brother lived. But how had he come to meet a street kid and become good enough friends for them to take off together? Why, since he was in regular communication with Reid, hadn’t he just called him? Borrowed the money for a Greyhound bus ticket instead of hitching over here with some street kid? What did he expect from Reid?

  And why the lousy memory? Was it an effect of trauma...or was there a whole lot Diego didn’t want to tell her?

  Once he was snoring softly, she’d taken the bag contain
ing his clothes and everything he’d had on him out of the closet and dug through it. No wallet, no money, no keepsakes. There was absolutely zilch in his pockets. The clothes had gotten dirty and bloody in the accident, but otherwise appeared almost new, and she’d bet they had been freshly cleaned before he put them on this morning.

  “We were sort of camping in the woods,” he’d said. “We left stuff there.”

  Where was that? She offered to pick up their things to keep them safe. He’d pretended to fall asleep, a pretense that did, a few minutes later, become reality.

  Wondering if he’d told Reid any more, Anna headed for the elevators. Last time she’d talked to Reid, he’d said there hadn’t been any change in Caleb’s condition. She could find him either in ICU with his brother or right outside. He told her a Sergeant Clay Renner from the sheriff’s department was investigating the accident.

  He sounded so remote, she ached for him. And, selfishly, for herself. Sometime during this wretched day, she had accepted that she was deeply in love with Reid. Hopelessly came to mind, especially if his brother died.

  The moment she stepped out of the elevator, she saw Reid just outside the doors leading into ICU. He was talking to two men, one who, from the scrubs and a mask pulled down around his throat, must be a doctor. The other one was about Reid’s age, also wearing a suit. He stood with his hands on his hips, which pulled the suit coat back, allowing her to see a holstered pistol. Maybe he was the sergeant Reid had mentioned?

  She heard her heels clicking on the floor as she walked toward him. The other cop glanced her way, but instead of turning toward her, Reid looked down the broad corridor leading from the E.R. She had almost reached him when she saw the man approaching.

  Oh, dear heaven. It could only be Reid’s father. He was...not as tall as his son, she thought, and had thickened around the waist and acquired the beginnings of jowls. Something about his face made her think he was a heavy drinker. But otherwise...the resemblance was shocking.

  In fact, the other two men were staring now, too. Reid stood absolutely still. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing.