“If you can’t make it to the cab, Marc, I’m going to call for a wheelchair right now.”
He had made it. Barely. Then must have passed out in the cab.
This was his fault. He’d been weaning himself off all the pills, even the muscle relaxers. He had needed to think clearly, had been trying to take back his life. A joke.
“This is why I’m not working.” His voice ground out like jagged glass in the quiet dark, broken like the rest of him.
She glanced up, startled. “I’m so sorry, Marc.”
He couldn’t walk across an airport to get on a plane, and she was sorry. The joke was on him. He glanced around, away from the gaze he couldn’t see, but could feel in the dark. Clear gray eyes that saw everything.
She had set his cane against the bedside table. Probably to be considerate, so he could easily get up. He had the absurd urge to kick that cane under the bed. If he couldn’t see the damned thing, maybe he wouldn’t feel the way he felt right now. As if he wanted to be anywhere in the world but here in a hotel room with this woman who knew what a mess he had become.
“I am sorry,” she said again, her gentle whisper tore at the quiet, tore through him.
“Don’t be.”
She had only asked him to do something he had once been capable of doing.
“We made it, Marc. There wasn’t a problem.”
Wrong. There was a problem. A big one.
She couldn’t let it go. “Are you feeling any better?”
If she wasn’t paying a lot of money for the services of someone who couldn’t do his damned job anymore, he might feel better. If he had a crystal ball, maybe. If he could see what came next, if he knew when life would get back to normal, he could wait it out. But every time something monumental happened, something humiliating, he couldn’t be sure life ever would.
“Have the spasms stopped?”
He nodded, and silence settled between them again, drawing his attention to the fact that they were alone in a dark suite, even smaller than the cottage, without the possibility of her escaping across the yard to her big house.
He couldn’t get away without her help, couldn’t get home, even if he knew where that was anymore. Colorado? New Orleans? This woman knew so much more about him than he wanted her to know. And Courtney, with her bleeding heart, felt sorry.
For him.
All he had needed to do was get to the plane, sit in a seat then get back out again. Not a big deal.
Glancing at the bedside table, he noted the time glowing on a digital green display from the clock. Almost ten.
“I didn’t mean to waste the day.” He was sorry for that, too. She was shelling out cash left and right, and he wasn’t worth it.
Apologies should have been coming easier nowadays. He should be getting used to making excuses for not towing his own weight and burdening everyone who crossed his path.
“The day wasn’t a waste.” She stood and headed toward him, slim curves backlit by the computer’s glow as she crossed the distance between them.
He resisted the urge to reach for his cane and get up, to meet her on common ground in the living room, or at least standing. But the earlier muscle spasms, though faint, were still there, and he would probably fall on his ass. So he cut his losses and lay in bed, as helpless as he could ever remember feeling.
She moved fluidly without making a sound, her lean body graceful in motion. She bypassed the chair near a dresser and sat on the bed. He could make out the worry on her beautiful face, even in the dark.
She handed him a water bottle. “The hotel has room service. Are you hungry?”
“No.” Cracking the lid, he took a swig that went a long way toward easing the fuzz in his throat. Now he needed a toothbrush. “What did you do while I was sleeping?”
“Picked up the rental car.”
“Great.” They could have done that at the airport if he hadn’t overdosed on the plane.
“And we know Araceli was enrolled in the Atlanta Public Schools system within a month of the evacuations, but she never attended school the first year she was here.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “I spoke with the school and found out a Declaration of Intent form was filed within weeks of when Araceli enrolled.”
He did not want to ask, didn’t really want an answer. “How do we know all this?”
“I didn’t want to waste the day, either.”
Such a simple reply. There was no rebuke, no emotion at all. Maybe it was the lack of emotion that felt like a kick to the gut. Courtney didn’t want to make him feel bad.
Could he feel any worse?
Setting the water bottle on the bedside table, he mentally braced himself. He had only two choices here—table this conversation because he was too damned pathetic to deal with reality or move past the way he felt. He’d screwed up. Simple. He needed to let it go. Courtney had.
The seconds ticked by in time with the throb of his heart. Finally, he asked, “What’s a Declaration of Intent?”
Another simple question, but this one cost.
“Documentation that Araceli’s guardians had to file with the Department of Education so they could homeschool her.”
“I don’t remember reading anything about homeschooling.”
She shook her head. “That’s because there wasn’t anything about it. Not in the court documents. Not in Nanette’s notes. In fact, Nanette remarked at the conclusion of each semester that she’d spoken with Mrs. Aguilar and received a progress report about how Araceli was settling into school, her grades, those kinds of things.”
The weirdness between them was over. Their conversation moved on, all business again, and somehow the transition felt monumental. Marc didn’t understand why, but he ran with it. “Do you think the Aguilars didn’t file paperwork with the court, or that Araceli didn’t attend school because she couldn’t?”
“Only the Aguilars can answer that. I don’t think it’s possible to confirm anything from our end because we were rebuilding our system all that year and well into the next. And to complicate matters, so was the family court. They lost a good bit of their hard-copy storage in the flooding, too.”
“Brava, Courtney. You have narrowed down the time frame a lot more.”
His eyes had acclimated to the barely there light. Her features were a study of shifting shadows, but he could make out the nuances. The dip of her head as she acknowledged his praise. The quick glimmer of white as a smile played around her mouth.
At least one of them was proud of their actions today.
“That’s what I thought, too,” she said almost breathlessly. “So I took a page from our compliance officer’s book and contacted the photography company. They have no record of Araceli for the first year she was enrolled in Atlanta, which could support that she was homeschooled. But they did have her on file for the second year.”
He could hear the breathlessness of her voice, knew whatever she’d learned was big. “And?”
“They faxed me a proof. Not Araceli. Jane Doe.”
“Bingo.”
Her smiled widened, a quick slice of dazzling whiteness in the dark. “Bingo.”
Marc was impressed by her resourcefulness. But there was anger, too. She’d left him to sleep off a drugged drunk while she’d done the job she was paying him to do.
Anger at himself for being so stupid.
She was being completely decent about his screw-up, as if slacking on the job was totally understandable and expected given his physical limitations.
Marc faced another choice. Shut down this conversation because his pride stung. She hadn’t waited around for him, but had simply moved on without him. She’d known what to look for and gone after it. But this had nothing to do with him, and on some level he knew it. She hadn�
��t intended to make him feel bad with her competence. Knowing Courtney, she had just wanted to help so he wouldn’t feel bad for wasting their time.
“Looks like you’ve got the time frame down to the year after the hurricane,” he said, managing his anger, dismissing it because his anger was his. Courtney didn’t deserve it. To do anything else would have wiped the smile from her face. She was proud of her discoveries today and had every right to be. He was not, but that was on him. “You’ve given us something to work with. We’ll go after the Aguilars and the family they stayed with tomorrow. Any thoughts on the school situation?”
He didn’t reach for a light, found the darkness consoling, as if light would only reveal his defects and showcase the bed where they sat together. He didn’t need those reminders right now, either. Not when he’d proven himself so unable, so incapable of doing the job he’d once excelled at.
Shrugging lightly, she drew her legs around and tucked them beneath her. “I think the time frame is strange. The Aguilars enrolled all their foster kids in school, then decided not to send Araceli. Something must have happened within those few weeks to make them change their minds.”
“Speculate.” She’d earned that right.
“I was just going through Nanette’s remarks again to see if anything stood out in light of all this new information. Mrs. Aguilar said the same thing that Mrs. Perea had about Araceli—she was having a hard time adjusting.”
“Is that unusual?”
“No. On the contrary. Kids pulled from difficult situations can transition easier at first because they’re ending some sort of violence or abuse. Those kids tend to feel relieved. Araceli was pulled from a loving home, and that’s a whole different ball game. Her situation would be much harder to accept.”
“So she only reacted the way most kids would?”
Courtney nodded. “Given the circumstances, I would have made the same call Nanette did and filed the documentation with the court to allow Araceli to stay in Atlanta. She hadn’t yet had time to bond with the Pereas, so staying with the Aguilars made sense considering what awaited her in New Orleans. Temporary housing wasn’t pretty. That’s exactly why the Aguilars decided not to return. They were going to have to start from scratch no matter where they were. They had family here, so it was easier to put down new roots where they landed.”
“What were the chances of Family Services and the judge allowing Araceli to be homeschooled?” Marc tried to wrap his brain around potential motives, to start working again. “Could that be the reason the Aguilars didn’t go through the normal channels—because they thought they might be denied?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so. Mrs. Aguilar had been certified to teach in Puerto Rico. Even though she can’t teach here, her education would have been factored into the judge’s decision. Mrs. Perea wouldn’t have had that much instant credibility. Given Araceli’s circumstances, I can’t see why a judge would have denied the recommendation. Or at least allowed a specific time period to see how homeschooling would work out. Her progress would have been easily monitored.”
“Who does the monitoring?”
“The virtual schoolteacher and Nanette mostly. The judge would review, too.”
“So the Aguilars would have been more closely monitored if Araceli had attended virtual school, not less.”
“You think they just used homeschooling as an excuse?”
“A lot easier to forge a few report cards than it would be to keep up with online work that teachers and social workers and judges are overseeing.”
She faced him, eyes glinting in the dark. “That makes total sense. The Aguilars told the school they were homeschooling Araceli and they told Nanette that Araceli was going to school. The school would have been satisfied with the explanation they had been given, and so would Nanette. The chance of them making contact and catching the fact that they were both operating under different assumptions was pretty slim during those first months after the hurricane.”
“And by the time the next school year started, Araceli was back as far as everyone knew.” The scenario was not only plausible, but manipulative, using Mrs. Aguilar’s background as a teacher. Clever. “What do we know about the Aguilars?”
“I don’t know them personally. Neither did Nanette. But they were foster parents for quite a number of years, so their performance had to be adequate at the minimum.”
“Were? Past tense?”
Courtney nodded. “They never came back to New Orleans. Their kids were placed in new homes as they became available. In Araceli’s case, she came home once the Pereas were able to inhabit their house again. Or was supposed to.”
Marc couldn’t fathom why anyone would become a foster parent for any reason. From what he’d read, the money wasn’t enough to seriously attract anyone, especially in light of the potential behavior problems.
Why would a person become a foster parent then?
He looked at the woman beside him, hair sluicing over one shoulder, long silky hairs snagged on her arm, barely noticeable in the shadows. No question that people took in kids for too many shitty reasons, but there were probably more who took in kids because, like Courtney, they cared. Special people. The kind of people the media didn’t report about because stories about caring, decent people didn’t sell newspapers. Courtney was a special kind of person, he decided.
A woman who believed in others, the way she had believed in Nanette. He’d read the documentation himself, had become acquainted with the woman who’d originally written the reports, a woman who by all accounts appeared thorough and competent.
But the FBI had assumed otherwise. They had considered her a weak link in the chain and the most obvious target.
Marc understood why the FBI would start their investigation there, why finding Jane Doe seemed more urgent than tracking down Araceli. It was the obvious strategy.
Courtney hadn’t been willing to settle for obvious.
Marc had read through Nanette’s account of tracking down Araceli through the chaos of a natural disaster and ensuing evacuations. He had a decent read on the situation. New Orleans was his hometown, and watching the aftershock affect his family... The FEMA trailers. Insurance nightmares. Money hadn’t made a difference when there had been a shortage of contractors to repair the damage to a city crippled by the storm. Marc and his brothers had all helped his mother put the house back together.
But Marc hadn’t understood. Not from the perspective of kids and their caregivers. Kids lost who were too young to know who they were, let alone the names and addresses of their guardians. Kids plucked off rooftops and highways by helicopters. Kids carted off in opposite directions from their parents and guardians, sometimes shipped states away with total strangers.
He could guess what Courtney’s life had been like afterward. Her stories probably weren’t much different than Nanette’s. Courtney would have detailed her efforts as meticulously, the way she had moved heaven and earth to track down her kids.
She was still tracking down those kids. No matter what the cost, no matter what the risk.
Because she cared so much.
Enough even to make concessions for him.
* * *
COURTNEY REPLAYED THE voice mail. She listened to Giselle relay the information the FBI had discovered about Jane Doe. A solid connection to the Aguilars, Marc would say. Motive even. Courtney saved the message and stood in front of the window, staring out at the city. Dawn faded, the sun washing the mirrored windows of a nearby office building in silver.
Reality kept chiseling away all her hope at finding Araceli alive. Marc would likely redirect their efforts in the light of this new information. She hoped that redirection wouldn’t involve returning to New Orleans immediately.
After witnessing the effects of travel on him yesterday, she had felt terrible, had been convinced Mama
and Vince had been wrong about pushing Marc. How could she think forcing him to work, to physically struggle the way he had during that flight, was the answer to anything?
Guilt had been what prompted her into the rental car to go off in search of answers without Marc. Guilt and the hope of accomplishing something that would bring the speedy end to this search. That was the only way Marc’s obligation would end. He certainly wouldn’t give up until they had discovered the truth, even if it killed him. And after witnessing the physical effects of Marc’s injury yesterday, Courtney feared it might kill something important inside him—his will to keep fighting.
The only thing that had ever been important was finding Araceli. But now, as she stared out at Atlanta in the morning, a city she’d always liked, Courtney had to face another reality.
Marc mattered, too.
Not only for his abilities, but for making her feel as if she wasn’t all alone in a situation that felt much bigger than she was. And she had been alone, cut off from her life—Giselle, her coworkers, her kids.
That was her life.
But now she had Marc.
With his matter-of-fact common sense, he’d reminded her that she couldn’t control the outcome, shouldn’t get ahead of herself. He helped her refocus on the facts and acknowledge that sometimes things weren’t fair.
And he kept tackling his own limitations.
She watched him struggle, watched him face down his pride every time he was forced into a situation he couldn’t easily maneuver, every time they were forced to make accommodations to deal with his injury.
Courtney knew he would much rather disconnect from life the way she had and not be forced to test himself until he felt ready. But he had been bullied into helping her, and he did, working impossibly long hours when he could have been taking painkillers and resting, sitting in front of a computer or on the phone when he might have been keeping up with his physical therapy.
Love In Plain Sight Page 15