by Lee Taylor
The police chief looked at him with narrowed eyes. “That’s a leading question.”
“Like I said, at least two girls have gone missing in the last year and never turned up. Magdalina Sawicki and Andrea Dvorak.”
“There are lots of swampy places around here and scores of rural square miles. I’d say you’d be looking for a needle in a haystack. And they wouldn’t necessarily have to bury anyone. They could toss the body into the bay.”
“I guess you’re right,” Ben conceded. He hadn’t asked because he thought he’d get an answer. He’d been yanking the chief’s chain, emphasizing that he had the names of girls who’d disappeared. His lack of subtlety was probably a bad idea, but his frustration level had led to the question.
And he’d seen something in the chief’s eyes during the interview. Like maybe the guy was questioning his own motivation, although that could simply have been wishful thinking on Ben’s part.
After leaving the station house, he drove downtown, found a space in one of the tourist lots and headed for the docks. When he didn’t see Sage, his chest tightened. Had she changed her mind? Or was she already in some kind of trouble?
Cursing himself for letting her go off alone because he was embarrassed about the dream—and his behavior before that—he scanned the area. Finally he spotted her returning along one of the small piers that jutted into the harbor. From the way she walked with her shoulders slumped, he gathered that she hadn’t picked up any information about Laurel.
He hadn’t expected her to get any leads down here. The only reason he’d given in was because he’d seen that she needed some time alone after the incident last night.
He snorted. The incident.
At least he’d been able to stop before they both went too far. And that hadn’t been easy. He’d wanted her, and they’d both known it.
She reached the main pedestrian sidewalk along the waterfront and turned right, heading for the piers at the other end of the harbor area. He was still fifty yards away when he saw a man on a bike come speeding down the walkway, hunched over the handlebars, a sun hat pulled down over his face.
People scrambled out of the way, but Sage didn’t see him because he was behind her, and she was probably in the same shape as when she’d first crossed the parking lot at Decorah Security. She was thinking about her sister and not paying close enough attention to her surroundings. Like the day before with the truck in the parking lot. And now it was happening again.
As Ben stared at the bike speeding toward her like a heat-seeking missile, his anger and his fear flared.
“Watch out,” he shouted as he started to run, but he was already too late. The biker came even with her, swerved in her direction and reached out his arm, knocking her off her feet and into the water.
Chapter Eight
As Sage disappeared from sight, Ben kept running toward the dock, dodging around pedestrians to get to the quayside.
He sensed a crowd gathering around him, heard people talking, but he ignored everything else as he scanned the water for Sage.
When he didn’t see her, he kicked off his shoes and dived in, plunging downward.
It was almost impossible to see anything in the murky water of the harbor, but he forced himself downward, scanning the area, finding nothing but floating trash.
Panic drove him toward the bottom, but lack of oxygen finally forced him to the surface. He shot upward, his lungs bursting. When he broke the surface, he gasped in air and prepared to go down again.
“Ben.”
It was Sage’s voice, and he looked around frantically trying to locate her. Finally he spotted her at the side of the quay amid floating paper cups and other debris.
“Thank God,” he gasped as he struck out toward her.
Movement caught his eye, and he glanced up to see that the dockside was lined with people, all peering down at them.
“What happened?” someone shouted. “Are you all okay?”
“A guy on a bike knocked her in,” another onlooker answered.
Ben saw a ladder a few yards down the quay. “Over there,” he gestured. Sage swam toward the metal rungs.
As she started to climb, a man reached over the side. “Give me your hand.”
She did, and he helped haul her up.
Ben followed under his own power, water dripping off of him as he climbed.
“You okay?” he asked as he looked Sage up and down. She was waterlogged, but she didn’t seem injured.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yeah.”
As they both stood dripping on the paved walkway, someone handed them beach towels which they used to wipe off their faces and dry their hair. Then they wrapped the towels around their shoulders.
“It looked like that guy on the bike deliberately pushed you,” a man called out.
“I didn’t see him,” Sage answered as she scanned the crowd. Ben saw her react, but he didn’t ask who she’d seen that made her tense.
“You want to call the cops?” another voice asked.
“No,” Ben answered. Why bother? Chief Judd would hear about it soon enough. Or maybe shoving Sage into the harbor had been his idea.
Ben retrieved his shoes, pulling off his wet socks and jamming them into his pocket before stuffing his bare feet back into the shoes.
“Come on,” he said to Sage as he led the way back to where he’d parked the car. They both shifted the towels to the seats before climbing inside. In the confines of the car, he could smell the dirty water, diesel fuel and fish.
“Sorry about your car,” she muttered.
“The seats will dry.”
She fumbled in her fanny pack and pulled out the picture of Laurel that she’d brought along.
“It’s ruined.”
“I’ve got another one. We can get a copy made.”
“Thanks.” She hitched in a breath and let it out. “I thought I’d be okay in the middle of town in broad daylight. I guess going down there on my own was a bad idea,” she murmured.
“Unfortunately. The question is, are they trying to get us to stop looking for Laurel because they know what happened to her? Or are they worried about something else, and she’s collateral damage?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to believe that this is just about protecting the tourist trade in Doncaster. How good could it be for the tourist scene if a guy on a bike deliberately pushes a pedestrian into the harbor?”
She shook her head.
“I saw you react to some of the faces in the crowd.”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten until you asked.”
“Who did you see?”
“Craig Fellows, the guy I told you owns the hardware store. Martin Kendley, the town banker.” Her vision turned inward. “And William Hinton.”
“The mayor.” Ben cast a look in the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the gawkers. How did they look?”
She thought again. “I guess Craig Fellows looked unhappy. The other two looked satisfied.”
“So maybe somebody set you up, only Fellows didn’t agree with the plan. Or didn’t know about it in advance.”
“Maybe he did, then thought it looked bad when it actually went down.”
“That’s possible.”
When they arrived at the motel, Ben was glad to see that the maid had already made up the room, leaving a supply of towels.
“You can take a shower first,” he told her.
“I’ll be quick.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, and he paced back and forth across the carpet, leaving a wet trail. He would have gone outside if he’d been willing to leave Sage alone.
He was thinking that the longer they stayed in Doncaster, the more likely it was that one of them was going to get seriously hurt.
But what was the alternative? Convincing Sage to leave and carrying on by himself? He was pretty sure she was here for the duration.
She came out of the bathroom we
aring clean jeans and a tee shirt, and he grabbed fresh, dry clothes before stepping inside and closing the door. After discarding his wet clothing atop hers, he showered quickly. Then he took the pile of wet clothing into the tub and added some soap, turning everything with his feet, getting all the pieces washed. His foot encountered her bra and panties, but he tried to ignore them.
“What are you doing?” she called out.
“Washing the clothes.”
“How?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He finished, then rinsed and wrung out each of the garments before stepping out of the shower, drying himself and quickly getting dressed. Finally he draped all the clothing over the shower rod.
When he opened the door, he found Sage standing a few feet away.
The look on her face undid him.
“I should have listened to you,” she said.
“Nobody wants to think they’re being stalked.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“For want of a better term.”
He reached for her, and she came into his arms, holding tight. As he clasped her to him, he let himself release the emotions he’d put on hold while he’d gotten them back to the Beach Breeze and they’d cleaned up.
They clung together, and when she lifted her head, he lowered his. They hadn’t kissed in the dream. They kissed now, their lips meeting and holding, the pressure telling him they were both skating on the edge of emotional stability.
He couldn’t tell her about the dream, but he could tell her how glad he was that she was safe.
He moved his lips over hers, the kiss feeling tender and needy and sexy all at the same time.
His only focus was the woman he held in his arms. Last night he’d been trying to distance himself because he knew it was the right thing to do, even as he’d held her, kissed her. Then he’d been catapulted into a dream about her, a dream he still couldn’t accept.
Today was reality. All his senses went into overdrive. He reveled in the taste of her. The smell of the soap on her just-washed skin. The texture of her lips. The pressure of her body against his. And when her arms crept up to circle his neck, he felt his heart leap. In response, he gathered her closer as he turned his head first one way and then the other to change the angle of the kiss, exploring the taste of her.
Doubts flickered in his mind. She shouldn’t be in his arms. He shouldn’t be kissing her. But it was impossible to hold on to that conviction when every instinct urged him to do what they both wanted.
Sage was the only woman he had held since before his journey through hell on the Windward. There had been no one because he hadn’t allowed himself to get close to anyone.
He convinced himself he didn’t deserve sex or contentment or any of the normal things that made people happy because he’d been forced to operate outside the normal in ways that horrified him.
But as Sage nestled in his embrace, he imagined what it would be like to share more than this kiss. Not just a sexual encounter but all the emotions he’d kept bottled up for long, lonely months of penitence.
His tongue played with the seam of her lips, wordlessly asking her to open for him, and she did, so that he could explore the line of her teeth, then stroke the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips.
He heard her make a small sound deep in her throat, telling him she liked what he was doing. When his tongue dipped further into her mouth, it sent hot, needy sensations curling through him.
His hands stroked her midriff, gliding upward to find her breasts. He felt a jolt of heat when her nipples tightened for him.
She tangled her hands in his hair, holding his mouth to hers. He loved her touch, and he knew he’d love anything else she wanted to do.
Still kissing him, she eased a little away so that she could slip her hands under his tee shirt and stroke his chest, burrowing through the springy hair, tracing the scar where the doctors had opened up his chest.
“This is where you were hurt?” she murmured against his lips.
“Yes.”
She moved her hand along the scar, then abandoned it for his nipples, circling them with her fingers, making them tighten.
Outside, the sound of a car horn made them both jump.
Jerking away from him, she looked wildly around, coming back to reality.
He moved to the window, pulling the curtains to the side the way he had the night before, wondering if he was going to see a blue pickup truck or a black sedan.
No, of course not. Those guys wouldn’t honk. They’d simply burst in.
In fact, it wasn’t either of the vehicles that had given them problems. Instead a woman rushed out of one of the rooms and climbed into a mid-sized Toyota, which drove away.
Ben turned back to Sage. “Sorry. We’re both on edge. And we keep reaching for each other.”
“Is that bad?” she asked in a thin voice.
“You don’t want to get mixed up with me.”
“Why not?”
He felt his features harden. “I’ve done things that would make your hair curl.”
“Like what?”
Maybe if he spelled it out for her, it would be a dash of cold water for both of them.
“I told you my sister took a job where she had no business going. She was always into rough sex, and she saw an ad where people could sign up to be slaves for a year. The idea turned her on, so she investigated further and found out the job was on a cruise ship that a rich bastard named Bruno Del Conte owned. He had it set up like a floating S and M pleasure palace—where the rich and kinky could do anything they wanted to the poor jerks who had signed up as slaves.”
When Sage started to speak, he shook his head. “This isn’t easy for me to talk about. Let me finish.”
She answered with a little nod.
“I advised my sister not to take the job. I told her it could be dangerous, but she was young and reckless. For a few months I got e-mails from her, telling me how much fun she was having—getting paid for stuff she’d like to do anyway. Then the e-mails stopped. When I made some inquiries, I hit a blank wall. I was still on leave from the police department after getting shot. I resigned and applied for a job on the Windward, and I was accepted."
He made a face. “The first thing I had to do was lie—pretend I was interested in kinky sex. Once I got to the ship, I found out pretty quick that the atmosphere there was deadly. I learned that my sister had probably died during a sex session that got too rough. Around that time, the security chief was killed when some of the sex slaves rebelled. The owner of the ship liked my police background and promoted me to head of the security force.
“While I was chief, a couple more slaves were killed. I sneaked into the morgue and touched them. Which is how I found out what had happened to them. But I also knew that directly attacking the owner, Bruno Del Conte, was a suicide mission, because there were too many of the security forces who were completely loyal to him.
“About that time, Cole Marshall and Emma Richards, two Decorah agents, came on board. They were looking for a Baltimore woman who’d been kidnapped and brought to the Windward. When I found out what was going on with them, I figured we could help each other out. The four of us escaped together, and Del Conte got killed when he was trying to gun us down. Which is how I ended up working for Decorah.”
He kept his gaze fixed on her, looking for signs of revulsion.
“You did what you had to,” she said in a low voice.
“I let people die rather than give myself away!” he answered.
“You’re not responsible for their deaths.”
“I saw that some of the guests might go too far if given the chance.”
“But you couldn’t know for sure.”
“Not for sure.”
“And if you’d interfered, what would have happened?”
He heaved in a breath and let it out. “I could have been executed.”
“So you used your best judgment—in order to save a lot m
ore lives.” She kept her gaze fixed on him. “The operation’s shut down, right? Thanks to you.”
He shrugged.
“It’s like in a war,” she continued. “You had to make some hard choices, but you don’t have to keep punishing yourself for what happened on the ship.”
“You weren’t there,” he clipped out.
“Right. I’m here. Feeling guilty about letting my sister down by not coming back to Doncaster. And the only way I can wipe out that guilt is to find out what happened to her.”
“And if we can’t?”
“I’m not giving in to that possibility. Not yet.”
“You may have to face it.”
She gave Ben a steady look. “Not until I give it everything I’ve got. Starting with confronting my mother.”
“All right, but do you think she’s going to tell us anything?”
“I hope so.”
oOo
As they drove in silence to her mom’s house, Sage slid him a sidewise glance, seeing the grim set of his jaw.
She knew he’d been trying to shock her by talking about his experiences on that ship, the Windward. She was shocked, but what he’d said had given her some important insights. He’d been deeply affected by the months he’d spent on that ship. He’d done things he considered immoral. Ironically, she knew it was because of his strong sense of morality.
The first thing Sage noticed when they arrived at Angel Baker’s house was that her car was missing from the driveway, and when Sage knocked, there was no answer.
“She could be at work,” Ben said.
“She could be, but I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
She unlocked the door and they both went in.
“Mom,” Sage called.
There was no answer.
“Mom?”
As they both started moving rapidly through the house, Sage’s heart was in her throat. She kept picturing herself stumbling over her mother’s body, but when she got to the master bedroom, she stopped short. The closet door and some dresser drawers were open. And the suitcase that Angel kept under the bed was missing.
Sage breathed out a sigh. Now that her worst fears hadn’t come to pass, she felt her anger rising. “She’s gone.”