by Gayle Wilson
“Flashbacks.”
“Does it matter?”
She shook her head, which despite the coffee had begun to ache. Too little sleep and too much anxiety. And either could lead her to make the kind of misjudgment that would cost Raine Nolan her life.
If she is still alive, she silently amended. And the reality was that was becoming less likely by the second.
Chapter Nine
Jake didn’t know what had changed with Eden since last night, but if he were a betting man, he’d have put money on that sarcastic deputy having something to do with it. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d made a fool of himself by taking a woman at her word, but he swore it would be the last time he’d open himself up to ridicule by the Waverly Police Department. And that included their chief.
Still seething, he had almost reached his truck when he became aware he was being followed down the main drag of town. Such a loss of focus might in other circumstances have cost him his life. Here it meant only that the confrontation that was to occur wouldn’t take place on his terms.
He opened the door to his truck, more than willing to get in it and leave. Considering all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, he didn’t expect that he would be allowed to do that. He was right.
“Seen any more little girls in your dreams, Major?”
The voice was strongly Southern. Not the educated Southern the deputy spoke or the quasi-Southern of the chief. This was the backwater dialect that owed its twang to both African and Cajun influences.
Jake ignored the comment, putting his left foot on the wide running board in preparation for climbing up into the high seat. Before he could do that, someone grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled.
With most of his weight on his bad leg, it buckled, throwing him backward and onto his assailant. They both went down, but the other man jumped quickly to his feet. Before Jake could get his good leg under him, the toe of his opponent’s boot caught him under the chin.
If his reflexes had been a fraction slower, the blow would probably have knocked him out. Instead, he managed to jerk his head and torso to the side, avoiding the brunt of the kick.
His defensive move pitched his upper body back onto his elbows and forearms. Relatively stabilized, he raised both feet and caught the redneck’s still uplifted leg between them. Twisting his lower body to the right, he threw his assailant, off-balanced by the kick, to the ground.
The side of the bastard’s head struck the curb with a thud. Before he could rise, Jake was on him. His right arm suffered from the same weakness that affected his leg, but he’d always had a good left cross. He used it now. This time it was the back of the man’s skull that made contact with the pavement, but the hollow sound when it struck was the same.
Before Jake could follow up with a second blow, several sets of hands grabbed his upper arms, pulling him backward and to his feet. Once they had him upright, they didn’t let go.
He struggled to free himself, using the tricks of a trade he’d practiced for almost twenty years. Even as he felt one pair of hands lose their grip, however, others replaced them. Engaged in employing elbows and feet and even his head against the men who held him, he watched as the one he’d downed pushed himself to his feet.
His attacker looked at the blood he had wiped from his mouth, and then, using that same hand, drove his fist into Jake’s face with every ounce of strength in his body. And held from behind, there wasn’t a hell of a lot Jake could do to avoid the blow.
The scene around him blackened as he fought to retain consciousness. With a mob like this, he knew that if he went down, they would finish him off with their feet.
They might not set out to kill him, but they could. Despite the brutal beatings portrayed in movies, where the hero gets up and walks away without a bruise or a broken bone, the reality of that kind of pummeling was usually very different.
As his initial attacker followed up with a left to his stomach, Jake allowed his body to sag back against the men who were holding him. That movement allowed him to go with the direction of the punch rather than absorb its full force. It also caused them to tighten their grip on his arms in order to hold him erect.
Once they had secured their hold, Jake swung his left leg up, the toe of his boot catching his attacker at the most vulnerable place on his body. As the man screamed and doubled over in agony, Jake twisted free from the stunned group behind him.
He pushed the keening man back with his left arm before he spun to face the crowd. Knees bent, legs slightly apart for balance, he prepared for the next redneck who wanted a piece of him.
None of the men who had come to the aid of his assailant looked eager to take his place. And since he was still making that same high-pitched keening sound, Jake began to straighten, preparing to get into his truck.
Eden’s voice stopped him. “That’s enough,” she ordered. “What the hell are you doing?”
For a moment Jake thought the question had been directed at him. Only when the men between them began to part to make way for their chief of police did he understand she was talking to the crowd.
“What’s wrong with you? Have you lost every shred of common sense and decency you ever possessed?”
By that time she was standing in front of him. Her cornflower-blue eyes widened when she saw his face. Her mouth opened and then closed with a snap. She turned to the crowd. “Get out of here. Now. And take him with you.”
With her head she indicated the man Jake had kicked. The noise he’d been making had softened into a series of moans.
“I’m ashamed of y’all,” Eden said. “This isn’t the way we handle things in this town.”
“He knows more than he’s tellin’ you,” someone accused.
“Major Underwood was wounded in the service of our country.” There was a mutter of disapproval or derision, but Eden continued to speak over it. “And he passed a lie-detector test given by the FBI. We have no reason to believe he is in any way connected with Raine Nolan’s disappearance.”
“Except he claims he knows where she is. That he’s seen her. Something’s not right about that, Chief.”
Jake couldn’t tell who had spoken, but there was a chorus of agreement.
“Major Underwood suffers from flashbacks. Perhaps because the kidnapping has been on all our minds—” Once more Eden was interrupted by jeers. When she began again, her voice was stronger, filled with emotion. “We go to bed at night and get up in the morning besieged by the media coverage of this kidnapping. I dream about that little girl every night, and I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only one here who’s done that. She’s on all our hearts and minds. If you can’t understand how someone—” She stopped, as if suddenly seeming to realize the direction her argument had taken.
There were no catcalls from the crowd that had at some point during her impassioned speech grown quiet. In that unexpected silence, Eden looked at him.
Jake didn’t wait to hear whatever else she intended to say. He turned instead and limped toward his truck. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself into the driver’s seat and then slammed the door. Nobody tried to stop him as he turned the key and put the vehicle into gear. Why would they interfere? he mocked himself. After all, their chief of police had explained the whole thing to them. Just some crazy-ass ex-soldier, so brain-damaged that the voices in his television made him think he could see that little girl.
Don’t attack him, she’d urged them. Pity the poor screwed-up bastard instead.
Just like she did.
WHEN HE GOT home, he discovered his injuries were less extensive than he’d expected. After a hot shower and a couple of the pain pills from the prescription the Army docs had given him, he began to feel almost human again.
Part of that was because he felt he’d acquitted himself fairly well, given the odds. The sense of satisfaction he’d gotten from listening to that mouth-breather scream had gone a long way toward soothing his injured pride, even if it hadn’t done much f
or his bruised ribs or swollen jaw.
It hadn’t been the fight that had driven him to take his battered body out to his grandmother’s woodpile, however. The ax he’d bought to replace the one he’d found rusting in the stump where his grandfather had once split logs felt satisfyingly right in his hands. As did the sound the wood made when the blade hit solidly.
Intent on what he was doing, he didn’t hear the police cruiser pull up in front. Only when he stopped to wipe sweat out of his eyes did he become aware that Eden was standing in the side yard watching him.
“Don’t you have anything else to do?” he asked, before he turned his attention to the next piece of oak.
“One of the search teams found bones out at the old McCoy place.”
Jake’s heart stopped. He lowered the ax, turning to look at her.
He had believed he would know. That his connection to Raine was strong enough that he’d be aware if she were no longer alive. Apparently he’d been wrong.
“They belonged to a calf,” Eden went on, her voice emotionless. “Or a big dog. Not human anyway. I’m on my way back to the station to file a report.”
“And you just couldn’t resist coming by here to say hello.” He raised the ax again, bringing it down hard enough to cleave the log with one blow.
“Can we talk?”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.” He refused to look at her.
“Then could you please stop doing that?”
“Why?” He placed the next log on the stump, taking his time to position it. “I’m sorry.”
He raised the ax to the full reach of his arms and then brought it down on the wood. The result wasn’t as dramatic as the last had been, but at least it gave him something to do other than remember what he’d felt standing out on that street this morning. Exposed for what he was to every yokel in town.
“I needed to calm them down,” Eden went on. “I didn’t think… I thought that was something they could all relate to.”
“Being crazy? Good plan.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Well, that’s what they heard.”
“That’s what you heard. It wasn’t what I meant.”
He lowered the ax, finally turning to look at her. The shadows under her eyes were like bruises, her face almost gaunt. The sun-touched hair had been slicked back into a ponytail. Paradoxically, the style made her appear younger, despite the physical toll the kidnapping had clearly taken.
“What did you mean?”
“I’ve lived with this for four days. I think about her every waking minute. And it seems like half of the other minutes, too. She’s inside my head when I’m awake and when I sleep. It’s all-consuming. I meant to suggest this morning that hearing about the kidnapping endlessly is bound to…” She stopped, shaking her head.
“I didn’t know who Raine Nolan was when I had that first flashback.”
She took a breath, deep enough that it lifted her shoulders. Her breasts moved under the uniform shirt, forcing Jake to turn back to the stump and the waiting log.
“I had to tell them something.”
“Yeah? Well, tell me something. Have you just been humoring me all along? Pretending to believe that there might be something to what I’m seeing and then dismissing it during the actual investigation.” The memory of her chief deputy’s disdain was another humiliation.
“Maybe. At first. But I went out to the caves, remember. And I told the search-team leaders to alert everybody to the possibility that the kidnapper might have constructed an in-ground bunker to hide her.”
“Not exactly a novel concept.”
“No,” she admitted. “There are certainly precedents for that.”
“But deep down inside, you didn’t really believe that what I saw had anything to do with that child’s abduction?”
She hesitated, seeming to think about her answer. Maybe trying for honesty.
“I don’t know,” she said finally.
“You tell anybody?”
“What you said?” She shook her head.
“So how did everybody in town come to know about it?”
“If you didn’t mention it—”
“Do I strike you as stupid enough to go around spreading the word that I’d seen that little girl in a flashback?”
“Then obviously someone in the department leaked the information. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I know you’re resistant to the suggestion, but I’d like to put an officer out here. Maybe just at night—”
“I thought your resources were spread too thin to guard me.” He made no effort to hide his sarcasm.
“They were. They are. But after what happened today—”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. I don’t want anybody out here at night. Or in the day. Whatever manpower you’ve got needs to be used to find that kid.”
He raised the ax again, sighting on the wood before he struck, successfully splitting this one into two pieces. He bent to pick them up and tossed them onto the growing pile.
“You think she’s still alive?”
He took a second to school his features before he looked up, but despite his attempt at control, fury bubbled dangerously near the surface. Screw her. She had ridiculed what he had told her in front of an audience of hillbillies out for his blood, and now she was looking for reassurance that she still had a hope in hell of finding that little girl before—
He swallowed his rage at the reminder of what this was really about. The reason he’d been willing to risk exactly what had happened this morning.
“For what it’s worth…yeah, I think she’s still alive.”
Another deep breath, again lifting her breasts. This time he deliberately allowed his gaze to focus on the movement. When he met her eyes again, a flush of color stained her cheeks. “Thank you.”
She sounded as if she meant it, but he was too angry to care anymore. “Don’t thank me, lady. Just do your damn job for a change and find that kid.”
If he had expected her to react with outrage to that unfair accusation, he was disappointed. Maybe the flush on her cheeks deepened, but she didn’t dispute what he’d said. She nodded instead and then turned to walk back to the patrol car, her head down.
Bothered by the dejection in the set of her narrow shoulders, Jake went back to the stacked logs to select his next victim. It had been a hell of a lot easier to hang on to his anger before she’d asked that final question.
He had told her what she wanted to hear because it was the truth. And he no longer gave a tinker’s damn what she did with the information, he told himself, as he positioned the wood on the stump.
She could make it into the punch line of jokes in her department. Or broadcast it to the vultures in town who wanted his blood. Or tell it to the scavengers who made their living reporting on the sufferings of victims like the Nolans.
All he knew was what he had seen this morning. And that if anybody was going to locate that little girl based on the connection he had to her, it was going to have to be him.
Chapter Ten
Eden had put off calling the office until she was turning into her own drive. If there had been any new developments while she was out on this latest wild-goose chase, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about them. Because, based on the brief meeting she’d had this afternoon with the special agents from Jackson, at this point in the investigation she shouldn’t expect anything but bad news.
“What’s going on?” she asked when her chief deputy answered.
They had begun using their cell phones for conversations like this after the leak about Underwood’s flashbacks. Not only did that method insure that what they said wouldn’t be spread all over town, it allowed them the freedom to do something they both needed to do—to be completely honest about the investigation and about what they were feeling.
“Nothing. Where are you?” Dean sounded distracted, but then, he’d been dealing with the med
ia most of the day. Even the street fight this morning had made the five-o’clock news.
“In my driveway. If I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to be a liability to everybody else on the highway.”
“Don’t set an alarm.”
She laughed. “I haven’t needed one since this started.”
Between department business, the media and townspeople who felt perfectly free to dial her home number for updates, she had been awakened every day by the phone. On the nights she’d managed to sleep at all.
“So the idiots out at the McCoys’ couldn’t tell the difference between a cow and a little girl.”
She blocked that unwanted image from her mind. Something she’d had a lot of practice with lately. “It wasn’t as easy as you’d think.”
“You all right? You sound…”
Dean’s pause could have been filled with any number of appropriate adjectives. Exhausted. Discouraged. As low as she could remember feeling since her mother’s death. All of them applied.
“I’m okay,” she lied. “I stopped by on the way home to apologize to Underwood.”
Another pause. This one longer than the last.
“You felt that was necessary?”
“It was to me. No matter what we believe about the flashbacks, he came to us in a genuine attempt to help. Somebody in the department leaked what he told us, putting him in danger. And then I publicly humiliated him today.”
“Underwood’s a big boy, Eden. And he’s got to know he’s got problems. You tell him that he needs to come in tomorrow and press charges?”
“Sorry. I didn’t think about it. I was so relieved when Dr. Murphy said that what they’d found wasn’t a child—”
“I understand,” Dean interrupted. “But Underwood needs to know that we can’t hold Porter longer than forty-eight hours if he doesn’t fill out the paperwork.”
Dave Porter, the man who had pulled Jake out of his truck and thrown the first punch, was the only one they’d arrested, and the charge had been disorderly conduct and causing a public disturbance. They’d done that in an attempt to warn anybody else who might think attacking the major was a good idea. If Jake pressed assault charges, it might create a stronger deterrent and solve a problem the department didn’t need right now.