“I don’t want to talk about it.” Pride was all she could depend on. “If you’ll please open the garage door, I can go. Daniel’s waiting.”
“Hannah—”
“No!” she snapped. “No. I know what it’s like to be—” Second best. Never again. Except…it had happened. She’d let it happen, despite knowing she didn’t measure up to this man. How had she been stupid enough to think for a minute…
Ian. All her hopes had to be for Ian.
Elias’s focus sharpened. “What it’s like to be what?”
Hannah shook her head. “I need to go.”
“We need to go. I’ll be right behind you.” Seeing the look on her face, he shook his head. “Not negotiable.”
Her chest hurt, but she nodded.
Neither had coffee or or a toasted bagel. Within a couple of minutes, they headed out, Elias’s Land Rover right behind her. Even on the highway, he never allowed enough space for another car to pass him and edge between them.
Of course he wouldn’t abandon her, she thought bitterly. That wouldn’t be in his nature. It just didn’t have anything to do with her.
Once she was home, she could call someone else. Not Sophie – she had barely survived one madman, and now with her pregnant… No. And Michelle was Sophie’s mother besides. Right now, that would bother Hannah.
Emily, maybe. Emily, who had lost a young son, would understand what Hannah was going through better than anyone. And if she came, Sean would be around, too. He was as protective as Elias and Daniel.
A lump in Hannah’s throat told her she couldn’t call Emily, either. Emily’s little boy had died. Just seeing her would remind Hannah of the worst of all possible outcomes. Plus, she’d force Emily to remember too much.
The not-so-secret truth was that Hannah wanted Elias at her side. Only Elias.
A Cape Trouble P.D. squad car was parked at the curb in front of Hannah’s house when they arrived. She had barely braked when she erupted out of her Highlander and ran toward the porch, where Daniel waited on an Adirondack chair.
“He said no police,” she cried, gesturing toward the car with its rack of lights. “Why did you drive that?”
The slam of a door signaled Elias’s arrival. The duffel bag full of money slung over a shoulder, he crossed the lawn.
Daniel waited until Elias reached Hannah’s side and laid a hand on her back before saying, “This scumbag left a message taped to the door of Ian’s daycare center. He’s smart enough to know that would worry Mrs. Voight enough she’d likely call me. Everyone in town knows Ian was abducted. I think this—” he nodded at the white, letter-size envelope that lay on the porch floorboards “—is his way of saying he doesn’t care who knows.”
Still she trembled, trying to reason it out. “If he’s watching…it’s too late.”
“He may be out there right now—“” Daniel’s gaze flicked to the street and back to her house “—but it’s unlikely. This man has a regular life. Disappearing from it right now would draw attention he can’t afford. He needs to go to work, follow his usual routine. Getting away to watch you can only be occasional. This morning…” He shrugged. “How could he know for sure where we’d meet? I might have had you come to the police station, or driven out to Elias’s.”
“Hannah,” Elias said quietly, “you need to find out what’s in there. And I’d suggest you not look until we’re inside.”
In case it was horrible, he meant. So she didn’t give that monster any satisfaction if he was in a position to see her reaction.
She nodded and let Elias take her keys to let them in.
Inside, she went straight to the kitchen and sank down on one of the hard wooden chairs. Elias chose the closest to hers. Daniel, she saw, held the envelope by one corner.
“Let me slit it open,” he said. “I doubt we’ll find fingerprints, but everyone gets careless eventually.” Taking her acquiescence for granted, he used a paring knife from a drawer to slice open the top, after which he was able to shake out what appeared to be a single sheet of white copy paper. Except…something fluttered with it. Dirt?
Hannah leaned forward, peering at the fine filaments As they settled on the table top, they glinted coppery-red, and she knew.
“Ian’s hair,” she whispered. “That’s his hair.”
Staring, too, Elias said, “He shaved Ian’s head.”
Expression hard, Daniel used the tip of the knife to open the sheet of paper, one flap, then the other. Inside was more hair, pooled at the fold, clinging to the paper.
There were only two lines of print, typed in a large, dark font:
A FINGER NEXT, SO DON’T SCREW UP AGAIN.
TRUST ME – I WILL GET WHAT I WANT.
Trust him. Everyone wanted Hannah’s trust. The monster. Daniel. Elias.
Elias most of all.
She kept staring at the message, dusted with Ian’s hair. “That’s everything?”
Daniel lifted the envelope by that same corner and shook it over the table. More hair fluttered out. “Apparently.”
Elias took Hannah’s hand. She didn’t – couldn’t – resist the comforting clasp. “No lice,” he said, just for her.
A hysterical laugh bubbled from her. “He so didn’t want me shaving his head.”
“I’ll remind him I went to school bald, too. Convinced everyone I was a badass.”
Her laugh ended in a sob, although her eyes stayed dry. All she could think was, now what?
“I’m taking this,” Daniel said. “I don’t have to tell you to keep the phones close by.”
No. He didn’t.
“What will you be doing?” Elias asked.
“I’m still digging into the finances and pasts of the men in Hannah’s life. Oh – Arlo Castaneda spent all day yesterday in Newport and Yachats meeting with restaurant owners. Safe to say he wouldn’t have set up a ransom pickup and then not been available.”
Elias shrugged. “He always was unlikely.”
Daniel said, “We’re searching everyplace that seems remotely possible. You know we went through Bresler’s resort, top to bottom. Sean checked out the lighthouse, too. It’s been deserted for years.”
“He could have Ian stashed in his closet or a shed in his backyard.”
“He could.” Daniel ran a hand tiredly over his face.
“Do you know a real estate agent you trust?” Elias asked suddenly.
Daniel stared at him. “You’re thinking Fletcher?”
“No more than anyone else. But I get an itch every time I look at that house for sale across the street. It would be a perfect place to lurk if you wanted to watch Hannah. There have to be a lot of houses for sale in the area. How many of them are empty?”
“But they typically have keys outside in lockboxes,” Daniel argued. “A Realtor could decide to show a house without warning.”
“Aren’t they supposed to call the listing agent?”
Patrick Fletcher? Hannah gaped at the two men. Fletch?
“They are,” Daniel said after a minute. Hannah could tell he was thinking hard. “I do know a woman. Works for Windermere. She could separate out the occupied houses from the unoccupied. And she wouldn’t need a warrant to show a house to a man who just happens to be a cop, would she?”
“No, she wouldn’t.”
“Good idea.” Daniel unfolded a paper bag from a pocket and carefully lifted envelope and piece of paper into it using the knife. Then he nodded at Elias. “Keep thinking.”
*****
Elias pushed back the chair, too restless to sit. He prowled the kitchen, pausing to look out the window over the sink and then the sliding glass door.
Words Daniel had hesitated to say in Hannah’s hearing rang in Elias’s ears. This is all about you. Could he live with it if that were true – if this sick SOB killed Ian?
To have earned hate so vicious, so unrelenting, he had to have done something terrible. Not in his eyes, or he would remember, but in someone else’s eyes.
He c
ould talk to his friends…but that could be dangerous. What if he chose the wrong friend? And, without revealing details Daniel wanted held close, how did he explain his questions?
Mom. If it happened in high school, she might have noticed something he hadn’t. He’d call her, but not yet. First, he had to try to talk to Hannah, hope she could get past his idiocy.
He turned back to her, to see that she hadn’t moved. She gazed toward the view of the backyard framed by the sliding glass door, but not as if she saw it. Frowning, he opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents, deciding again on scrambled eggs. She hadn’t eaten any he’d made yet – but he was hungry, too, and the choices were limited. He would have to either grocery shop himself today, or give a list to someone else. She might do better with sliced cantelope or watermelon, or something as easy to eat as applesauce.
She paid no attention to him moving around in her kitchen, banging cupboard doors and opening and closing drawers. Even the smell of sizzling bacon had no effect. Not until he set a plate in front of her did she blink and look up.
“Oh! I’m not really—”
He interrupted without compunction, refusing to let her neglect herself any longer. “You have to eat whether you feel like it or not, Hannah. Maybe not everything I put on the plate, but something.”
She nodded and, wonder of wonders, picked up her fork. Clumsily, as if unsure what to do with it, but still a first step.
He ate, watching as she hesitantly took a first bite, then another. Elias waited until she’d cleared half her plate and seemed to lose interest before he said, “I have a past, Hannah.” A more eventful one than he had realized. And maybe he should let this go until Ian was safe at home, but he couldn’t. “Why did it upset you so much to see a painting of a woman whom I imagined I was in love with when I was a teenager? That was one hell of a long time ago.”
Her brown eyes, duller than they should be, met his. “If it’s been so long, why is your whole house built around that one portrait?”
“Because she was a fantasy.” Not just daylight infused the painting. Like a filmmaker, he’d used a color filter to suggest the golden, dreamlike quality of the time. “My heart was breaking as I worshipped from afar.” He’d been so damn young. “Only then I heard the gunshot in the fog. I found her body. I saw the bloody mess of her head, had to carry her screaming little girl away. I think…it all flipped a switch in me. I was left…emotionally retarded, I guess is one way to put it.”
“Convinced that love was the greatest of your life.”
“Yeah.” He shifted in his chair, embarrassment making up a good part of his discomfort. “I guess that’s it.” He had figured out this much of the convoluted reasoning his subconscious had given rise to. He could share some of it, but Elias wasn’t about to tell Hannah he had apparently set out to find his one, true love, as if convinced she’d been reincarnated. Easy to convince himself he liked pretty, slender, blonde women. So what? Most men had a type. Except, he hadn’t until the tragic end of that summer. His girlfriend the year before was a lushly built brunette whose mother was Cuban. Laurel, she’d been the first he had used as a substitute. And I never saw it.
Hannah’s eyes glittered with anger. “You’d resigned yourself to not having her, so with me you thought you’d find out what happens with a woman who had no resemblance whatsoever to your ideal?” She leaned forward. “Say a freckled redhead who is probably six inches taller and twice her weight?” She was yelling by the end.
“That’s bullshit!” Elias yelled back.
The anger vanished and she gave her head a quick, dismissive shake. “It doesn’t matter. We had dinner once. You’ve been…really great. I shouldn’t take out my insecurities on you.”
Caught by surprise, he said, “You really are insecure about your looks.”
“No.” Her gaze slid away. “I like myself fine. I’m just…realistic.”
His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t believe I could possibly think you’re beautiful.”
“It’s not…”
“It is.” He waited until her gaze reluctantly returned to his. “Who did this to you, Hannah? Was it Grady?”
She nibbled on her lip, seemingly debating how much to tell him. Outwardly patient, he simmered.
He’d feel bad about pushing her if he didn’t feel sure anything was better than leaving her sunken in grief and fear for Ian.
“I’m not exactly your average high school boy’s dream.”
Would she have been his if he’d never set eyes on Michelle Thomsen? No way to know.
“I had a couple relationships in college, but still. Men might like big breasts, but they want them on a slender frame. If a woman is tall, she’d supposed to be shaped like a super model.”
“So it’s not your ex,” Elias said thoughtfully.
“No, it is.” Her shoulders sagged. “We’d been seeing each other for a while before he told me he’d been engaged before we met. She took a really great job and moved to Atlanta. Told him she had realized she wasn’t ready to tie herself down so he shouldn’t follow her. It was something like eight or ten months later when we met. I thought we were really in love.”
Until she found out she was only a sub. Knowing how much he’d screwed up himself didn’t lessen Elias’s desire to punch the creep.
“I was eager to start a family. He was more hesitant, but finally said, ‘Might as well.’ Should have been my first – or maybe the twentieth or hundredth – clue. Another big one was the expression on his face at the hospital when he saw that Ian’s hair was red. Oh, and later when he sounded so disappointed that he couldn’t see himself in Ian. Seeing me in our son obviously didn’t inspire any joy.” Hannah bent her head so she was addressing the tabletop. “Then his former fianceé moved back to Portland. I…didn’t know for a couple of months. Until he told me he’d never quit loving her. She knew she’d made a mistake and had begged his forgiveness. He wanted a divorce. Just like that.”
“She’s his current wife. The one you spoke to on the phone.”
“That would be Nicole.” Hannah lifted her head, trying for a wry smile that didn’t come off. “She’s five foot three. Probably doesn’t weigh a hundred and ten pounds. Pretty, not a single freckle.” She tilted her chin in a way that served as warning. “And, of course, blonde.”
Oh, hell, was all he could think. The portrait had been, for Hannah, the equivalent of a trip wire that set off a land mine.
She kept talking. “Second place – and trailing so far back I have to squint to see the leader – is not an experience I want to repeat. I’m sure you understand.”
“You’re not second best, not for me.” Her expression told him he was wasting his breath, but he had to say this anyway. “The other women I’ve been involved with, they were second best even though I didn’t let myself realize it. I hope none of them ever guessed.”
“If they saw the portrait…”
Elias shook his head. “I had a bunch of sketches and some amateurish paintings of Michelle I’d done that summer, but it was about ten years ago I painted the one you saw. Imbued it with a lot that probably was never true. You may not believe me, but I didn’t hang that portrait only because Michelle was the subject. It was partly satisfaction. I have a way of deciding something I’ve spent days on is crap. Most portraits aren’t of interest to anyone who doesn’t know the subject. I think that painting would be an exception.”
There was his arrogance again, but he genuinely thought the portrait was among his best work. However things turned out with Hannah, he would never look at it with any pleasure again, however.
Sophie had only been ten when she lost her mother. Soon, there would be a grandson or granddaughter, too. Elias liked the idea that he had created an heirloom to be treasured by her family. Why had he even hesitated?
Hannah was shaking her head. She’d come to her own conclusions. “I don’t know how old you are…”
His shoulders tightened. “Thirty-nine in May.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said harshly, “that you’re the first woman I’ve been honestly attracted to since Michelle?”
She stared at him with those wounded eyes. “No. No.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “How can I?”
He might have given in to frustration had it not been tempered with determination and understanding of how much she hurt right now. There was time. Once Ian was home, safe, Elias would go back to being a regular customer at Sweet Ideas, if that’s what it took. Knocking lightly on the glass door in the early morning, anticipating the moment when Hannah saw him and her face lit with the smile that warmed him for hours.
He’d do whatever he had to.
*****
“Sophie mentioned her husband is a cop,” said the man who’d just taken Daniel’s call. “Police chief?”
“I am. Cape Trouble P.D.”
“Right. Pretty little town,” Brian Almgren said, with the air of a man who had his finger on the pulse of a larger, more important place. Lincoln City, to be exact.
Sophie had suggested Daniel call Almgren. She’d gotten to know him in her part-time work facilitating charity auctions and other events. She had gained a reputation here on the coast from her success at raising huge amounts of money to save Misty Beach. Since then, she’d selectively taken jobs up and down the coast, choosing which causes to support. Almgren was a contractor whose daughter had Type 1 diabetes. Apparently, he was involved in a huge, annual online auction to raise money in search of a cure. The event Sophie had helped with was to fund a new wing on the hospital in Lincoln City.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked now.
“Sophie says you know everyone in town.” He hesitated. “That if a business is near to going under, you’d have likely heard.”
“This to do with an investigation?” Almgren sounded cautious now.
“It is.” No point in not being frank. “I think it’s unlikely the man in question is involved – obviously, I’m nowhere close to being able to get a warrant – but his name came up and I have to look into his circumstances. Nobody will know where I got the information.”
Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) Page 18