by Dana Mentink
Pickford’s eyes blazed. “I’m not turning my back on anything. We will follow up that lead, like every possible lead, methodically and thoroughly, even if the timeline isn’t to your satisfaction.”
“Then I’ll ask my father to investigate. It’s what he does, after all.”
“If your father puts his nose in this case, I’ll have him arrested, too.”
“A reporter could do it,” Cooper snapped. “We could go to the press.”
“Harold?” Pickford laughed. “He writes for a rag mag and he’s not interested in the facts, only the splashy headlines. If you want to waste your time with him, be my guest, but don’t blame me when it blows up in your faces. Now, I’ve got to get back to work.” He trudged off, leaving them standing at the counter as the police business hummed along around them.
Ruby shook her head. “If they delay, we might never find her again. Maybe I should ask Dad.”
Cooper mulled it over. “Let’s try another way first.”
“Do you think we should call Harold?”
“I’ve got a better idea. What about Heather?”
“Heather?”
“I’ll bet she’s got a source who could trace that number.”
Ruby’s stomach tightened. “Heather will be glad to see my brother put away. I don’t want her help. I’d rather ask my father.”
“You heard what Pickford said. Anything he comes up with will be discounted as Perry trying to protect his son.”
Cooper remembered the wild note in Perry’s tone when he had called looking for his daughter. It was not the time to send him chasing the elusive Jane Brown.
Ruby’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”
“Heather is the best chance. She said she wants closure for Josephine, and that’s not going to come until...”
Cooper had not realized until then how loud he was speaking. There were several people seated on the dingy upholstered chairs in the waiting room. Fortunately, most were engrossed in their cell phones and one was hidden behind a two-day-old newspaper.
She stepped closer to him. “Until Alice’s body is found. Isn’t that what you were going to say?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
She swallowed hard. “Do you think she would do it? I don’t know if I trust her. She’d do anything to help Peter.”
“If we ask, and she says no, then we’ll have the answer about whether or not she really wants to dig up the truth.”
Cooper watched Ruby’s eyes shift as she thought it over. What did she have to lose? Her brother had been arrested for abducting Alice Walker. If Heather got them nowhere, her next move would be to put it before her father.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Let’s call her.”
Cooper looked at his phone. “My phone’s dead. We’ll have to call from the cabin.”
He held out a hand for Ruby. “Are you ready to go?” He waited to see if she would take his hand, to accept his crazy idea that might get them to a truth that would truly rip them apart forever. If his brother had been lying all along...
If Mick had deceived his family...
Cooper’s mind spun with dizzying doubts until he pushed them away. The truth is that God’s in charge and you’re here for Ruby. Hang on to that and get moving. But would she go with him, after so much hurt and so many years of seeing the dark side of the world around her?
After a moment of hesitation, she put her small, cold fingers in his. “Okay. Let’s go.”
His heart leaped as they left the police station behind them.
TWENTY-ONE
Cooper kept to the speed limit by sheer force of will. A strong feeling took hold of him that Heather was the one who could unlock the mystery. She was skilled at digging, tenacious as an eagle after a trout. He knew he could convince her to do it if she felt it would not harm Peter in any way.
As soon as they reached the cabin, he ushered Ruby inside and went for the charging cord, breathing new life into his cell phone. He called Heather’s cell phone twice with no answer so he sent a text message. Then he searched out her work number on the internet and left a voice mail. Short and sweet. “We need you to use your contacts to find Jane Brown. Pronto. She knows the truth about Alice.” He added her cell phone number.
A buzz startled him.
“Ruby, it’s a text from Heather.”
She blinked. “Did she get your messages?”
His heart thudded. “It says, ‘Doesn’t matter anymore. At lake.’” He stared at Ruby. “‘Found Alice.’”
Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “How? Where? Is it... Is she...?”
Cooper texted follow-up questions as fast as his thumbs would move. There was no answer from Heather. He paced the floor, riveted on the maddening gadget. No answer but lengthening silence. “I’m going to go meet her at the lake.”
“We’re going to go,” Ruby fired back.
He stopped pacing. “There’s something weird about this text. It doesn’t feel right. You go home and I’ll call you when I know something.”
Ruby folded her arms; a flicker of fire danced through her expression. “Uh-uh. You said ‘we’ and ‘You’re not alone’ and all that. Was that just talk or did you mean it?”
Her steely-eyed determination did something to his insides, made his pulse beat up-tempo like a silvery jazz song. It was a more intense version of the feeling he got when he saw the perfect flower—rare, precious, exhilarating. She was perfection, angry perfection. “I meant it, but...”
“But only when things were going well and there was no risk involved?”
He gave her his most ferocious frown. “Be sensible. Rock slides. A knife to your throat. Gunshots. Nearly being run down. Isn’t that enough to convince you to stay back? I know it would convince your father,” he added quietly, “and your brother.”
It was three words too many.
She glared, chin up, head tossed back and copper strands flying loose from her ponytail. “My brother is in jail. So is yours. It’s now or never, and it’s getting late so accept your fate and quit dillydallying.”
He sighed, hiding a smile. “All right, ma’am, if you’re sure.”
“Completely sure.”
“Then let’s fly.”
* * *
“I don’t see her car.” Ruby peered through the windshield into the dusk. The lake was quiet, the birds settled into their leafy hideaways, or resting on the banks. The water rippled in the moonlight, as the spring breeze set the lake and the branches of the massive pines all around them dancing.
“She might have hiked up,” Cooper said, tucking a flashlight into his pocket and handing her another. He’d managed to charge his phone a bit in the car as they drove.
They got out and he texted her again. The reply was quick.
At trailhead.
“There,” Ruby cried out, pointing to a faint light shining at the base of the cliff.
Cooper texted again. What did you find?
The truth. Police on their way. Taking photos.
He texted again, but there was no further response so he pocketed it and turned toward the path that circled the lake.
“Cooper,” her arm shot out and stopped him.
He turned curious eyes on her, hopeful, maybe, that she had changed her mind about the clandestine meeting. “Do you want to wait here for the police?”
“No, I want to be there, if it really is Alice.” The moonlight painted her face in luminous beauty, catching the tenderness and the grief etched there. “I think this is it. After all these years. Alice, little Alice.” She wanted to continue but her throat thickened. A need nearly overwhelmed her. “Can you, could you please pray that whatever we find will bring Josephine some peace?” Tears rolled down her face. “She’s been tortu
red,” she stopped, gulping back tears. “There’s nothing in this world that can make that right.”
Cooper gathered her in his arms, wrapped her in a tight embrace and poured out a prayer for peace, for closure, for Josephine and Ruby, Peter and Mick, and all of the people who had been hurt. The soft syllables rolled through her.
“And God,” she found herself gasping in Cooper’s chest, “please let us heal, all of us.”
* * *
He kept her there after the amen, allowing her to soak him with her grief and somehow in the space of a moment, it was bearable. The anguish lifted off her shoulders and up to God, and here was Cooper to comfort and bear the remainder with her. In the space of a moment, her life was changed.
She tipped her wet face up to his and kissed him, gently, tentatively asking with the softness of her lips for forgiveness from this man, whom she had wronged.
He kissed her back, stroking her hair, covering her in a gentle sweetness that whispered through her with the cool refreshment of the spring breeze. When they ran out of breath, she looked at him, and traced a finger down his temple and his strong jaw. “You are a good man, Cooper.”
His smile dazzled her as he stroked her shoulders. “Takes a good man to keep up with an incredible lady.”
She did not understand how he could possibly think her incredible, after everything that had happened. Rather than trying to puzzle her way through it, she simply gave him her hand and they walked along the moonlit trail, heading side by side toward the truth.
* * *
Cooper marveled at the fact that the human heart could feel both joy and grief at the same time. His soul was light, buoyed by the prayer he’d shared with Ruby, awed at his tender feeling for her, and at the same time weighed down with the heavy mass of what lay ahead.
He kept tight hold of her hand and by some unspoken agreement, they walked in silence. When the path became too narrow, he eased in front, making sure if there was some way to shield her from the pain of discovery, he would be able to do so.
It was cold now, his shirtsleeves did not protect him from the chill, but at least Ruby had acquiesced to wearing the sweatshirt. The light in the distance became sharper and clearer until they came to the ragged pile of rock at the cliff bottom and found the flashlight wedged there.
“Heather?” Cooper called.
“Not Heather,” a voice said, and Hank Bradford appeared from behind a boulder.
“Hank?” Ruby said, peering around Cooper’s shoulders. “Where’s Heather?”
“Driving all over town looking for her cell phone, I’d imagine.” Hank wiggled the pink device between his fingers.
Cooper’s nerves fired to life. “You were at the sheriff’s office, the guy behind the newspaper. You sent us those texts pretending to be Heather.”
Hank nodded gravely. “Had to be done.”
“Why?” Ruby said, eyes wide. “What do you have to do with Alice Walker.”
“Everything, I’m afraid,” he said, taking a gun from his pocket.
* * *
Ruby tried to force the reality into her brain as Hank urged them up the trail, gun trained steadily at their backs.
“I couldn’t let you contact Heather to trace that cell number.”
“Why?” Cooper said. She marveled at the steadiness in his voice. “Because she’d figure out Jane Brown’s real identity?”
“She already knows the woman. Jane Brown is Diane Leonard, Diane Victoria Leonard.”
Ruby stopped breathing because she knew whatever was going to come next was a game changer.
“She’s Heather’s mother.”
Something dark and cold slithered along Ruby’s spine as she heard the rest.
“Or the woman Heather thinks is her mother. I paid her. Gave her a story about my wife leaving and how the poor kid needed to believe she had a mom. Jane is not a rocket scientist, but I guess she finally figured out the truth.”
Cooper sighed. “The woman you were speaking to on the phone, the one I thought was Molly. It was Diane.”
Ruby remembered Heather’s earlier lament about the woman who hardly had time for Heather, who had supposedly walked away because of Hank’s infidelity.
“Why would you...?” She thought about the article that Jane had seen. The picture that had rattled her. There were two pictures included, one of Alice as a little girl, and the other...
Ruby stopped dead. “Jane realized that Alice and Heather are the same person when she saw those pictures together.” She turned on her heel, heedless of the gun pointed at her. “You took Alice.” Her body went numb. “You took her all those years ago. Why?”
Hank’s face went from remorseful to rage filled. “I wanted to punish your father for ruining my reputation in this town. After he outed me as Molly’s lover and a thief, I was finished here. I had to move away, I lost everything.”
“But how did taking Alice fix any of that?” she gasped.
“I didn’t mean to take her.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at her with a look that turned the blood in her veins to ice. “I meant to take you.”
* * *
Cooper could not put all the pieces together, but he figured he had the big picture. “Lester found you, somehow knew you took his daughter. What were you going to do? Kill her?”
“No. I was just going to hang on to her for a while. Make Perry suffer. I was gonna skip town and drop her somewhere in the middle of nowhere on my way to some foreign country where no one would ever find me.”
“But your plan didn’t work,” Ruby whispered.
Hank nodded. “After I snatched her, I stuck her in the trunk of my car and drove to my place. Didn’t take long to figure out I got the wrong kid.”
He leveled a hateful glare at Ruby.
“Why didn’t you let her go? Just leave her in the woods where she could be found?” Ruby said.
“Because she was old enough to tell the police who I was.” He sighed. “I wasn’t sure what to do. I locked her in the bathroom and joined in the search to keep suspicion away, but I found her locket in my car. I decided to toss it in the lake so maybe people would think she drowned. Lester saw me with it. He went bananas. I tried to fend him off, hit him in the head with a rock a little too hard. Had to put him in the cave and hope nobody found him. I had no idea he was carrying Mick’s wallet.” Hank flashed a smile. “If I had known that, I’d never have started a rockfall to keep you away from the cave.” He grinned.
“Or planted the clothes in Mick’s room,” Cooper added. “Why frame Mick now? All these years you were happy to let the suspicion rest on Peter.” Cooper tamped down on the anger in his belly at the thought of what Hank had done to his family, to Ruby’s, to the Walkers. All in the name of revenge.
Hank gestured with the gun. “I’m not a bad guy. I felt terrible that Peter was blamed. I tried to make it up to him by giving him a job when he came back to town. Heather grew fond of him, unfortunately. She contacted him initially because, as much as I dissuaded her, she wanted to solve the Alice Walker mystery.” He shook his head. “Ironic. She was trying to solve her own disappearance, and she didn’t even know it. I could not talk her out of it, so I came along, to keep her from finding out the truth. Everything started unraveling when that locket turned up and Jane threatened to tell what she knew. I had to try and quiet her, so I tried to run her down.”
“You stole a child. You brainwashed her into thinking she was yours,” Cooper said. “How did you do it?”
“She was young,” Hank said, almost wistfully. I told her her parents were gone. I just kept telling her and telling her. My place is remote, so there wasn’t a chance anybody would guess. After a while, she just accepted as truth, what I told her.”
“You took her away from her real mother and father,” Ruby said.
“Shut up,” Hank snarled. “This is because of your father, don’t forget. He deserved to be punished and now he will be. I thought I got over that need for revenge. I’ve been a good father to Heather and I was content to be her dad and run my little café, but since it’s all blown up again, I have no choice. I can work out a happy ending for both of us.”
“Happy ending?” Ruby said. “How so?”
“Mick goes to jail. Peter is cleared.” He smiled. “Perry loses one son to prison and his daughter and her boyfriend to a terrible accident.”
Accident. Cooper’s insides quivered with desperation. Hank couldn’t win. It wasn’t going to happen. He needed to find a way out.
“Heather’s going to figure it out. One day, she’ll know the truth.”
Hank grunted. “I’ll deal with that when it comes up. By some twist of fate, I took the wrong kid, but Heather is mine, my child, just as if she’d been born that way.”
Cooper marveled at the twisted thinking. “Why’d you shoot at us that day at the mill?”
“I slipped into the hospital and Josephine thought I was Lester. She explained where she hid the locket. I wanted to destroy it, before Heather got a look. I was afraid it might jog her memory. I tried to get it earlier at Josephine’s, but I couldn’t find it. Went after you with a box cutter, Ruby. You were both stupid enough to think it was Lester.” He kept them moving up the steep trail. “I’ll bury the locket when I have the time. No chance that it will resurface again.”
“Where are we going?” Ruby said. She stumbled, and Cooper turned to help her over a log that crossed the trail. Her voice was calm, but he could see the fear in her face. He squeezed her fingers reassuringly.
“Just over this peak and down into a little gulley. The police have cleared out. You came up here for some reason. To be alone, maybe?” He laughed. “You two seem to be getting along like peas in the pod.”
Cooper’s hands twitched.
“Or maybe to see if you could find some evidence that the cops couldn’t, to try to clear your brothers’ names.” Hank told them to turn down a narrow sliver of trail. He remained at the top, gun pointed at them.