Exposed

by Rhonda Pollero

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said with a smile.

  Somehow he managed to stand up and keep her in his arms at the same time. He kissed her partially open mouth as he carried her down the hallway to the master bedroom. Once they were on the bed, their frustration evolved into impatience. They became a tangle of arms, legs, hands, fingers…

  Darby loved the feel of his body. He was beautifully built with just the right amount of muscle. And he was patient. Too patient. Darby was already nearing the edge when his mouth closed over her breast. She groaned and grabbed his head, half-tempted to push him away so that they could move on to the next step. But Jack was having none of it. He touched her and toyed with her until her brain was flooded with passion.

  When she couldn’t take it another minute, Darby surprised him by quickly changing their positions. She was now on top and in control.

  In one smooth motion, he was inside of her. Jack moaned at the sensations coursing through him. He’d never been so patient and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could contain himself. But he knew this had to be at her pace. After everything she’d been through, she had to feel safe with him. And based upon her actions, she was just fine in that department. She was kissing his nipples as she slowly increased the rhythm of their bodies.

  Jack knew he couldn’t wait forever, so he reached between them and smiled when she made this sexy little sound. Touching her until she could no longer hold back, Jack waited until she was at the crest of the wave before he allowed his release. Hers came a second later.

  They lay there, a tangle of body parts, breathing heavy and each wearing a sheen of perspiration. Darby was making a tiny circle with her fingertip around his nipple as she cuddled against him.

  Jack rolled onto his side and met her gaze. Darby’s heart stopped when she saw the flicker of regret in his eyes. She stopped touching him, suddenly feeling naked and vulnerable.

  “That shouldn’t have happened,” Jack said apologetically.

  Darby’s emotions twisted in her gut. Anger won out and she snapped, “You didn’t seem to mind when it was happening.” Yanking the sheet off the bed, she wrapped it around herself and started to get up.

  Jack grabbed her arm. “Wait, please?”

  She did, but she didn’t turn and look at him. She was on the verge of tears. Several uncomfortable seconds ticked by, and with each one she felt more and more like a fool. Had this been pity sex for him? She didn’t need or want any man’s pity. Not after everything she’d been through. When he didn’t speak, she asked, “What?”

  “I think you need a lawyer and a friend more than you need a lover.”

  “Fine.”

  “Darby? Look at me.”

  Pride stiffened her spine. She turned halfway. “You’re absolutely right. It shouldn’t have happened and it won’t happen again.”

  “You sound hurt,” he said.

  “I’m angry.” It felt good to be able to vocalize her emotions without fear of repercussions.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not at you,” she insisted as she tucked the sheet tighter. “I’m mad at me for allowing myself to get caught up in the moment. The last time I did that I ended up married to a psycho killer husband. Who”—her voice was growing louder—“I am technically still married to, which is another reason why this…this won’t happen again.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Jack warned. “Remember, I saw the DVDs. I’ll bet you’ve just been going through the motions of being married for almost a year. And just because you had a whirlwind relationship with Sean that didn’t work doesn’t mean you have to cut yourself off from men in general.”

  “No, right now my only focus is on finding my daughter. Nothing is more important than that.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “That was the point I was trying to make.”

  “Well, you did a crappy job of making it.”

  “All I’m trying to say is that you and I should probably put this part of our relationship on hold until after you have Mia back.”

  “Trust me, it’s on hold.”

  “See? You’re pissed. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”

  “You should have thought about that an hour ago before we ended up here.” Darby stubbornly stood her ground. She was not going to allow him to make her feel guilty.

  “I did,” he defended. “But I’m not Superman. You touched me and all I could think about was making love to you. You were the aggressor, not me.” His voice rose an octave.

  Darcy felt her cheeks grow warm and she turned away so he wouldn’t see the humiliation on her face. “Let’s just agree that it won’t happen again.” When would she learn how to read a man?

  “For now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means that once we get your life in order, all bets are off.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Darby?”

  She felt a gentle shaking and it took her a second to acclimate herself. She opened her eyes to find Jack standing over her bed.

  “You have to wake up,” he said.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “A few minutes before nine.”

  She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then shoved her hair off her face. “I fell asleep?” she mumbled.

  “You needed it,” Jack said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you but you need to get on the phone with your credit card companies.”

  She looked at him and realized he had showered and was wearing fresh clothing. “Did you go home?”

  He nodded. “Declan was here. I had to make arrangements for my neighbor to take care of the dog. I hope you don’t mind, but I packed a bag just in case we have to go to Charleston.”

  Just the thought of her daughter propelled her from the bed. She quickly showered and grabbed a pair of slacks and a blouse. Darby used the dryer just long enough so that her hair wouldn’t soak the back of her shirt. For the first time in days, she stood in front of the mirror and applied a small amount of makeup. The few hours of rest had done wonders. She didn’t have that brain fog from sleep deprivation anymore.

  She hesitated for a minute, her mind replaying the passionate encounter with Jack. He was right, she acknowledged with a twinge of sadness. The sex may have been great, but it couldn’t keep happening. She needed him to help her find Mia, and sleeping with him had made her feel like a woman for the first time in a very long time, but it was too soon. Hell, she was still married to a murderer.

  Darby shook her head. She did full background checks on all her employees, and yet she had managed to marry a man with a dangerous and checkered past. She thought about the women in Sean’s past, especially the one who was still missing. Darby knew nothing of the case save for what the state’s attorney had told her, but she knew in her gut that Sean had probably killed her. Just as he had killed her parents. “And now he has Mia,” she whispered as tears threatened her recently applied mascara.

  Darby made her way back to the kitchen area by following the scent of coffee. She acknowledged Declan, who was seated at the table working on his laptop. Jack was next to him, reading the newspaper pages Sean had given her on his visit to the jail.

  After pouring herself a cup of coffee, Darby took her credit cards out of her purse and dialed the first customer service line, finding herself in the maze of automatic routing. She was vaguely aware of the music playing in her ear as she waited for a representative. She was more aware of the man with his back to her. The knit polo shirt he was wearing was a pale green and complimented his black hair and dark eyes. A shiver of desire danced along her spine as she thought about having sex with him only hours before. It was a warmth that started in her groin, then moved to her belly before finally forming a knot of desire that seemed to capture her whole body.

  She realized that Declan was staring at her and immediately felt her cheeks burn. His only response was a slightly crooked smile, then he went back to the computer.

  “…May I help you?” />
  “Yes, thank you. I need to know about the recent activity on my card,” she explained.

  “Has the card been lost or stolen?”

  “No,” Darby answered.

  “Before I can do that I’ll need to get some information from you.”

  Darby provided her name, address, birthdate, and then answered the special security question before the rep asked, “What transactions are you concerned about?”

  “I need everything from the last four days.” Darby grabbed the pad and pen she kept on the counter. Pen poised, she waited impatiently for the representative.

  “I’m showing a charge in the amount of one-thousand-fifty-seven dollars to Jet Blue. I have a second charge to Extraordinary car rentals in the amount of four-hundred-thirty-nine dollars.”

  “Where was that charge made?” Darby asked.

  “All I have is the billing memo from the home office in Atlanta, Georgia.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, I have a charge in the amount of two-hundred-fifteen dollars and seventy-one cents to Babies-R-Us.”

  “Do you know where that purchase was made?”

  “Vero Beach, Florida,” she answered.

  “And when was it made?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A cash advance in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars.”

  Darby sighed, thanked the woman, then hung up and turned to the Kavanaghs. She recounted the conversation.

  “You two go to Vero,” Declan suggested. “It’s only about an hour north. They might have video, or maybe a clerk will remember him. I’ll stay here and try to pick up a lead on Lyssa.”

  Darby grabbed up her purse and shoved her wallet back inside. She felt nervous, jittery—feelings that only got worse when Jack placed his hand at the small of her back on the way out the garage door. His fingers splayed and she felt warmth spread from the epicenter of his touch out along every one of her nerve endings. Stop! she silently chided herself.

  As they drove north on I-95, Darby tried the disposable phone again. Still it went directly to voicemail. She was frustrated beyond belief. “I’m sure Sean is enjoying this to no end,” she said, then blew out a breath.

  Jack patted her knee and said, “Hang in there. Declan has the cell phone number and as soon as Sean turns it on, he thinks he can get a GPS location on it.”

  “I hope so,” Darby said. “It terrifies me to think he’s alone with my baby.”

  “Hey,” Jack squeezed her knee. “I know this is hard but you have to hang in there. Sean can’t hide forever, especially now that he’s the number one suspect in Consuela’s death.”

  “I can’t believe I married him,” Darby mused. “I know it sounds naive but I really didn’t see it. Not in the beginning. He literally swept me off my feet. He was kind and attentive and sweet. It wasn’t until after our honeymoon that things went south. Little stuff at first. Like I used to have dinner with my parents every Friday night. Sean came up with all sorts of excuses to nix that. He had me believing that he couldn’t bear to be away from me and he even solicited some sympathy from me by claiming he was intimidated by my father.

  “Slowly he cut me off from my friends and before I realized it was happening, I was completely isolated. That’s when the abuse really started. Verbal at first. Ugly. But not as bad as when he got physical. By the time that happened, I was too embarrassed to tell my parents and I was pregnant and…well, I just felt stuck.”

  “That’s how men like Sean operate. They start out charming as hell and then slowly alienate the woman from her friends and family. Then the violence begins and escalates, and it’s basically all about control.”

  “But what happens if Mia gets on his last nerve?” Darby asked. “She’s barely seven weeks old. She’s totally helpless.”

  “She is part of him,” Jack reminded her. “That will probably prevent him from harming her.”

  “Probably isn’t very reassuring.”

  The GPS in Jack’s SUV told them where to get off the highway and then announced they had reached their destination. The baby store anchored a strip mall on the busy street.

  They parked and went inside the massive store. Darby was reminded of her many trips to the same chain store in West Palm as she put together Mia’s nursery. The place was quiet save for the sound of a baby crying nearby. Darby longed to hear the cry of her own sweet daughter but she had to keep her act together.

  “May I help you?” a young girl asked when they were just steps inside.

  Jack handed her his business card and asked, “May we see the manager?”

  “I’ll get her for you,” the girl said before she went to the back of the store.

  Darby stepped over to the car seats and found the deluxe Peg Perego Primo car seat she’d purchased for Mia. She ran her fingers over the soft cushion and smiled as she remembered how she had struggled to put the seat in the car. She was torn. The police had taken Mia’s car seat after she’d falsely admitted to killing her daughter and transporting the body to the nearby canal. Given that they had cut up her car, she assumed she’d get the car seat back in similar shape.

  “May I help you?” a middle-aged woman in an attractive Lilly Pulitzer shift dress said as she extended her hand in greeting. “I’m Karen Jennings, the manager.”

  Jack explained the situation. “So we’re hoping you have some sort of record of the sale and hopefully some videotape?”

  Karen smiled. “We have video and I can pull the sales receipt if you have a transaction number.”

  “I do,” Darby said. “And thank you.”

  The woman reached out and gave Darby’s hand a squeeze. “I can’t imagine how worried you must be. My ex-husband and I had a pretty ugly divorce but thankfully we kept the kids out of it. How old is your baby?”

  “She’ll be seven weeks tomorrow,” Darby replied.

  “You poor dear. Follow me.”

  Following Karen, they went back through the warehouse section of the store, then into a small, cluttered office that smelled of coffee and a sandalwood air freshener.

  Darby reached into her purse and pulled out the notes she had taken when she’d spoke to the representative from American Express earlier. Karen sat at her computer terminal and in a matter of seconds, she had an invoice on the screen. “Let me print this,” she said. “Now, using the time stamp on the invoice, I can pull up surveillance video from that date and time. You’re lucky, by the way. Our system tapes over itself every seven days. If you hadn’t discovered the charge in time, there’s nothing I could’ve done to help you.”

  The video was remarkably clear. Darby glanced over one of Karen’s shoulders while Jack watched over the other. Maybe two minutes later one of the cameras captured Sean and Roxanne walking into the store.

  Darby’s heart ached when she saw no trace of Mia. Had they left her alone in a hot car? She fumed silently as she watched Sean and Roxanne fill a cart with baby items. From the invoice she realized that Sean had to have left the jail, collected Roxanne and gone to the baby store. Which meant he had somehow figured out where Lyssa had taken the baby. But how? Surely not from the phone call he’d made Peggy make the night before he’d come to the jail.

  “So what did he find out?” Darby thought aloud.

  “There has to be something that led him to Lyssa. Are you sure nothing comes to mind?” Jack asked.

  No matter how hard she tried, Darby couldn’t think of how Sean had located Lyssa. “I don’t even know where to look.”

  “Maybe Declan has had better luck.”

  They drove back to Sewell’s Point. Declan was still at the computer when they arrived with food. “Anything?” Jack asked as he handed his brother a sub.

  “Maybe,” Declan said.

  Jack asked, “What?”

  “Sean rented a Mercedes in West Palm Beach three days ago.”

  Darby felt a surge of excitement. “Don’t they put GPS trackers in pricey rentals
?”

  Declan nodded. “In this case they didn’t have to. The car was found abandoned in Kiawah Island, South Carolina yesterday.”

  “Should I call my credit card company to see if he’s rented a new car?” Darby asked.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  Darby quickly made the call, but after a five-minute wait, she was informed that no new transactions had been billed to the card.

  Jack stroked his chin for a moment, then asked, “Did Lyssa know Consuela?”

  “They met a few times,” Darby said. “Lyssa would come by here on the weekends so I could give her cat its shots.”

  “Would Lyssa trust her?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe,” Darby vacillated. “I warned Lyssa not to talk to anyone but I can’t be sure.”

  “Does Consuela have a cell phone?” Declan asked.

  Darby told him the number from memory. He entered some information into his laptop and asked, “Did Consuela have any friends or family in South Carolina?”

  “No,” Darby said. “She just has two daughters and one lives in Stuart, I think.”

  “I found one daughter,” Declan said. “Maria Ruiz. According to my friend on the police force, she took the news of her mother’s death hard.”

  “I can imagine,” Darby said, still feeling the loss of her own mother and father. “Do you think she might talk to me?”

  “I think she might know something,” Declan said. “Consuela made a call to South Carolina on her cell. Then five minutes later she made a forty-second call to her daughter. That was the last time her phone was used.”

  “You think Consuela told her daughter where to find my baby?”

  “It’s worth asking her.”

  “Great. I’ll head over there now.”

  “No,” Jack contradicted. “You’ll eat first. You have to stay healthy if you want to find your daughter. Declan can keep digging around his databases and you and I can go talk to the daughter. After you have some lunch.”

  Darby picked at her sandwich but ate enough to get Jack off her back.

  “What if she slams the door in my face?” Darby asked as they neared the front entrance of her community. She was about to duck down but for some reason the press was no longer camped on the roadside.