by B. J Daniels
He looked at Amanda as if he didn’t know what to say.
“We’re friends of the family and just wanted to stop by,” Amanda said into the speaker.
Silence. Then the crackle of the speaker. “Come on up, then,” the woman said and buzzed them in.
Jesse shot her a look of gratitude and Amanda smiled, wanting to touch his face, hold him in her arms. She’d never felt like this about a man before. Safe. Protected. Cared for. And yet part of her held back, afraid. Afraid of the future. Some things were just too good to be true. And Jesse McCall was one of them.
At 2A, Jesse knocked. Inside the apartment came the sound of a radio. Jesse knocked again.
The door swung open. A small, white-haired woman appeared wiping her hands on the apron she wore. The apron was a bright, multicolored fruit pattern and each time she wiped her hands, she left a white flour handprint on the cloth.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear your knock,” she said and smiled cheerfully as she pushed open the door.
“Come on in. I was just baking a pie.” She turned on her heel and led them inside.
Amanda shot Jesse a look, taken aback by the woman’s friendliness as they followed her into the kitchen.
“It’s going to be a scorcher,” the woman commented as they trailed her into the large homey kitchen where she picked up the rolling pin she had discarded and began to work at the golden dough on the floured board. The room felt warm and smelled of apples. “And it’s only spring.”
The apartment was surprisingly nice inside with a feeling that the people who lived here had no intention of ever moving again.
Amanda had never lived in a home like this. It tugged at something deep inside her. She spotted a photograph on the top of a buffet and glanced over at Jesse.
* * *
JESSE HAD SEEN the photo the moment he walked into the room. It was a young girl. He wondered if it was Roxie Pickett or some other little girl, maybe a sister.
“We’re sorry to bother you—” Jesse began.
“Oh, it’s no bother at all.” The elderly woman looked up then, meeting his gaze. “You say you’re a friend of the family?”
He’d hoped, he realized, that she would recognize him. She didn’t seem to. “Possibly even a distant relative. That’s why we’re here. To find out.”
Molly seemed fine with that. “Everyone just calls me Molly,” she said. “Nice to have a little company. Hardly ever see anyone. I’m sorry I don’t have the pie done or I would offer you a piece.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Jesse managed to say.
“But it is a nice offer.”
For a moment, he watched her work the crust, rolling it with practiced expertise until it was thin and smooth, the edges round. He had so many questions, he didn’t know where to begin.
“I need to ask you about your side of the family,” he said.
She smiled. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
He took a breath. “You’re married to Frank Pickett, right?”
She nodded. “Have been for more than forty years,” she said proudly.
“And your children?” he asked and immediately regretted it.
Her face clouded over for a moment, then cleared. “Had one daughter, but she died. Just had the one.”
“And her name was Roxie?”
Molly looked up and appeared surprised.
“That’s right. Roxanna Lynn but everyone called her Roxie.”
Jesse felt his heart pounding. “I suppose you have some pictures of her?”
Molly studied him as she wiped her hands again on her apron. “You want to see her?”
“Very much so,” he said.
She seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment.
“I have a photo of her on the buffet, but some more recent ones are in here.” Jesse and Amanda followed the woman into a bedroom. “This was taken not long before—” she looked up “—when she was sixteen.”
Jesse took the photograph in the tarnished frame and felt his heart hammer against his ribs. His mother. She took his breath way. Beautiful dark eyes, long dark hair. The face of an angel. Tears filled his eyes.
Noticing his reaction, Molly took the framed photo from him. “Will you tell me what this is about?” she asked, her voice sounding weak, scared.
His throat seemed to close. All he could do was stare at the other photographs on the wall. Many of Roxie. One when she was about eleven, standing holding up a fish for the camera, her eyes bright, a smile on her face.
Amanda saved him. “Mrs. Pickett—”
“Molly.”
“Molly, your daughter had a baby just before she died,” Amanda said.
Molly’s gaze swung to Amanda’s, but she said nothing.
“We need to know about the baby,” Amanda said.
“There is nothing to tell,” Molly said. “The baby died.”
Fishing. Jesse realized most all of the photographs on the wall were of fish. Roxie at varying ages. Alone and with a man, a man who looked like her. Roxie’s father. Frank Pickett. Jesse stepped closer to study the man in the snapshot, asking himself what he’d come here for. He knew now who his birth parents had been. Even his grandfather, he thought studying the picture.
Jesse only half listened to Amanda trying to talk to Molly about the baby as he dragged his gaze from the man’s face to the cabin behind him and the weathered sign over the cabin door. He was trying to read the words, when something else drew his attention. Off to his right was a photograph of Roxie in her teens. Around her neck she wore a gold chain. The unusual heart dangled from the end.
“We know the baby didn’t die,” he heard Amanda say and turned his attention back to the room and the elderly woman wringing her hands in her apron.
Molly dropped into a chair. “You’re wrong. The baby was born dead.” She began to cry. “Frank was there. He said it was God’s will, a baby conceived in sin, by a man like that.”
“A man like that? You knew the father then? The man she was dating?”
Molly shook her head looking confused. “Roxie was only sixteen. She wasn’t allowed to date. She met him secretly. Frank saw the heart around her neck—” She began to cry again. “He found out who’d had the heart made, then he knew who the father was, the father of this child born before its time.”
“The baby came early?” Amanda asked in surprise. “Then the baby was born here in the house?”
Molly shook her head. “At Roxie’s friend’s next door.” She got to her feet. “I have to finish dinner. My husband will be home from fishing soon. None of this matters anymore.”
“I’m that baby,” Jesse said, finally finding the words.
Molly swung around to face him, her eyes wide. Slowly she lowered herself into a chair again. “That isn’t possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” he said. Couldn’t she see her daughter in him? Something around the eyes? He reached into his pocket and withdrew the heart. He held it out to her.
Molly gasped and put her hands over her mouth, her eyes huge above her fingers.
“The night he was born, someone wrapped him in a blanket and put him in a cardboard box,” Amanda said, kneeling before the woman. “Roxie had just enough time to write a note and put it and the heart into the baby blanket. Then someone took the child away and left him in the box beside a dirt road north of here near Red River. Only, he was found before he could die.”
Molly seemed to be gasping for breath. “Please go,” she whimpered. “I don’t want you upsetting my husband with all this.”
“Let’s go,” Jesse said and took Amanda’s arm to help her to her feet. “She doesn’t want to hear this. And it doesn’t matter who left me there. I found out what I needed to know.”
“But Jesse—”
“Please,” he said meeting Amanda’s gaze.
“Let’s just get out of here.”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. For a woman who didn’t care about justice, she’d certainly tried hard to at least ge
t at the truth for him.
He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her and thank her and make love to her again. And again. She was in his system now and he wondered how he could ever get her out. If he could bear to even try.
As he and Amanda came out of the apartment, Jesse felt numb. He’d gotten what he’d come for. Almost. He still didn’t know who had left him beside the road. But what did it matter really? Maybe whoever had delivered him really did believe he was dead. Or maybe not.
He put his arm around Amanda as they descended the steps into the hot, horrible-smelling street. They’d found one baby. Now they had to find hers. Jesse promised himself that he could at least give Amanda the justice she deserved. He would get her daughter back and bring the kidnapper in. No matter who he was.
The van was still there. The young man was sitting guard on the steps halfway down. He didn’t say a word, just held out his hand. Jesse put the fifty into his open palm as he and Amanda passed.
The feeling came out of the blue. That distinct prickle at the back of his neck. His feet had just touched the sidewalk, when he heard the screech of tires and a familiar engine knock.
“Get down!” he yelled as he dragged Amanda to the concrete behind the van. The sound of gunfire echoed off the buildings as the car sped past.
Jesse got off two shots. One took out the back window of the dark-green car. The other made a hollow sound as it pierced the trunk lid. Behind him, he heard the young man on the steps take off at a dead run.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Amanda rose slowly from the ground. “That was Mickie’s men again, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jesse agreed, opening the van door. The side of the van was riddled with holes. “Get in and stay down.”
She slid in with him close behind.
He started the van and flipped around to go in the opposite direction. “They have some way of tracking us. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Sheriff Wilson might have called in the plates on the van, alerting those cops who tried to arrest us the other night. Somehow they got to this van.”
He drove a few miles, then pulled over. “You have a way of checking for a bug, right?”
She nodded, opened the glove box and pulled out her gear. She found the bug within a few minutes. “Someone would have had to put it on while we were in the Corral Bar talking to Huey. I should have checked the van again.”
She tore the bug from the under carriage of the van and smashed it, then climbed back in. Suddenly a thought hit her. “What if Mickie Ferraro has a very good reason for not wanting me to make the trade?” she asked when Jesse got back in.
He glanced over at her. “The ledger. You think there is something in there that incriminates him as well as your father?”
Her heart began to beat a little faster. “There has to be. But how does Mickie know about the ledger and the trade?”
“Those cops who tried to bust us last night,” Jesse said. “They might work for Gage. Or they might also be on Mickie’s payroll if the money is right. One of them could have spilled the beans about a ledger they were supposed to get from you—and where.”
That would explain how Mickie’s men had found her and almost run her down. “You don’t think Gage—”
“Is hoping to get rid of both J.B. and his father and take over their territory?” Jesse asked sarcastically.
She leaned back in her seat, trying to figure all of the angles as Jesse drove toward the old Ballantine Bridge and the trade with the kidnapper.
“The only way it makes sense is if Kincaid is behind the kidnapping,” she pointed out. “Kincaid could bust my father and Mickie and clear the way for Gage.”
“Unless Gage is behind the kidnapping,” Jesse said quietly.
She looked over at him, her heart pounding. Better than anyone, she knew what Gage was capable of. But not the kidnapping of his own child.
“He might want the ledger as insurance,” Jesse said. “With it, he would control both J.B. and his father.”
That was one possibility she didn’t want to even consider. She would rather have believed Kincaid was behind the kidnapping. But she had to admit he’d confused her earlier when they’d talked to him. He didn’t seem the kind of man who could kidnap an infant, but then her father didn’t seem like the kind of man who could steal babies and sell them in the black market, either.
She tried not to think of Susannah. Or babies left in cardboard boxes beside dirt roads or sold on the black market. She’d convinced herself that Susannah’s kidnapper would take good care of her daughter. That any kidnapper who took J. B. Crowe’s granddaughter knew better than to harm the child.
But at the same time, she couldn’t imagine any one arrogant enough to mess with her mobster father and his family. That was another reason she was convinced the kidnapper had to be Kincaid. As governor, Kincaid might feel bulletproof.
But Gage had been furious at being exiled to Chicago. And equally furious with her.
Gage could be behind Susannah’s kidnapping as much as she didn’t want to believe it.
“You might be right,” she said. “We might be dealing with Gage.”
“Better than Mickie and friends. We’re almost to the bridge.”
“I’m frightened, Jesse,” she admitted.
He smiled over at her, reaching out to cup her cheek in his hand. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
Now more than ever, he was convinced Gage had to be behind the kidnapping. It was the only thing that made any sense.
He drove toward the old bridge, anything but calm about the trade. Amanda had repeated the instructions Gage had given her earlier. Jesse had little option but to follow them.
It was her daughter’s life at risk. He would do everything he could to protect her and Susannah, but without police backup. Alone. He had no other choice. He’d be afraid to involve the police even if she’d have let him. He no longer knew who he could trust.
And he desperately wanted the kidnapper. Wanted to nail the bastard. No matter what Amanda said about not caring if the man was brought to justice. Would she change her mind if the man was Gage Ferraro?
He looked over at her, wishing there was something more to say. It didn’t help the ache in his chest at just the sight of her.
The Trinity River was running full from spring runoff. Water rushed between its banks, dark waves hurling tree limbs and debris downstream.
Ballantine Bridge was an old county bridge about twenty miles out of Dallas, a long span of steel covered with rotting boards over the Trinity River. The bridge had been closed to the public for years. A metal crossbar over each end allowed only pedestrian traffic—mostly fishermen.
Jesse stopped a good mile from the bridge, pulling the van off the road into a stand of dense trees. He could see the river through the branches, the water brown with silt and moving fast. He took one of the weapons, checked the clip on the other and handed it to her.
She stared down at the gun. “I’m not going to need this.”
“Better safe than sorry. Put it in the waistband of your jeans in the back. Your jacket will cover it.”
“I told you, Jesse, I don’t care about the kidnapper,” she repeated. “I just want my daughter.”
“That’s what I want too, sweetheart,” he assured her. “But sometimes things go wrong.”
“Nothing better go wrong.”
He nodded at her warning and handed her the ledger from his jacket pocket.
She took it, her hands trembling.
“If it came down to catching the kidnapper or saving Susannah, you know I would let the kidnapper get away, don’t you?” he asked.
She looked into his eyes and nodded, then leaned over to kiss his lips. He pulled her to him, holding her tightly as he deepened the kiss, overpowered by the taste and feel of her. A live wire of desire shot through him. Lord, how he wanted her. Reluctantly, he let her go.
“We’ll get your baby back,” he said to her, his palm cupping her cheek.
He wanted to tell her what he was feeling, but he couldn’t even put it into coherent thoughts for himself, let alone words for her.
“Jesse—” She seemed to stop herself. “Be careful.”
He nodded. “You, too. I’ll be there when you need me.” But even as he said the words, he knew that wouldn’t always be true. He was a cop. She was a mobster’s daughter. Once Amanda got her daughter back, she planned to skip the country. Jesse had no intention of spending the rest of his life on the run. After tonight, it would be over between them.
His heart ached at the mere thought, but he only had himself to blame. He’d done the worst thing he could have: he’d made love to her. And now the memory of their lovemaking would haunt him forever. He couldn’t imagine the day he wouldn’t want her, wouldn’t remember her scent or the feel of her skin.
He climbed out of the van, stuffed the weapon into his waistband and waited for her to slide behind the wheel before he closed the door. “Give me twenty minutes.”
She nodded, and he turned and hurried off into the woods, telling himself that the next time he saw her, she would have her baby back.
* * *
AMANDA WAITED, counting off the minutes with the steady thump of her heart. Finally she would get to see her daughter. To hold her baby in her arms again. To put all of this behind them.
But she didn’t kid herself. She knew she would also be putting Jesse behind her. He wouldn’t be going with her and Susannah. It shocked her how much that realization hurt. She had fallen so hard, so fast for a man who was all wrong for her. A cop. It was almost laughable. She couldn’t have done worse. Even Gage would have been preferable in the world she’d grown up in.
But Jesse McCall was exactly the kind of man she wanted as a father for Susannah. Exactly the kind of man she’d dreamed of for herself, although she’d never imagined that such passion could exist between two people. Nor did she kid herself that she could ever find a man like Jesse or that kind of passion again.
The waiting was torture. When twenty minutes had gone by, she started the van and drove down the narrow gravel road. The river ran entwined in the trees off to her left. She followed it, approaching the bridge slowly, her heart in her throat. A half-dozen fears clouded her thoughts, fears for Susannah. Fears for Jesse. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing either of them. But then she reminded herself, Jesse wasn’t hers to lose.