The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  He held up a hand at his shoulder as the woman nodded. “We don’t get many faces in here I don’t know right off. Sure, she’s in the resource room, just in the back there.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her a wink and headed off.

  As far as he could see, the library was empty but for the old woman, himself and Callie, whom he saw running a microfiche at a table.

  She had her legs crossed on the chair, which told him she’d been at it at least twenty minutes. She always ended up sitting like that when she worked at a desk longer than twenty minutes.

  He walked up behind her, read over her shoulder.

  The fingers of her left hand were tapping lightly on the table, another sign she’d been at it awhile.

  “Why are you looking through thirty-year-old local papers?”

  She nearly jumped out of the chair and sprang up high and hard enough to rap her head against his chin.

  “Goddamnit,” they said in unison.

  “What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me that way?” she demanded.

  “What the hell are you doing not coming to the site?” Even as he countered, he grabbed her hand before she could switch off the machine.

  “What’s your interest in a kidnapping in 1974?”

  “Back off, Graystone.”

  “Cullen.” He simply kept her hand firm in his, continued to read. “Jay and Suzanne Cullen. Suzanne Cullen—something familiar about that name. ‘Three-month-old Jessica Lynn Cullen was taken from her stroller at the Hagerstown Mall yesterday,’ ” he read. “Christ, people suck, don’t they? They ever find her?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Too bad, because you know I’m not going to let up until you tell me why this business has you so upset. You’re on the verge of tears here, Callie, and you don’t cry easy.”

  “I’m just tired.” She rubbed at her eyes like a child. “I’m just so fucking tired.”

  “Okay.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, kneaded at the tension. He wouldn’t have to make her angry, he realized. Good thing, as he didn’t have the heart for it.

  If she was fighting tears, she was as open as she’d ever be. And still, he didn’t have the heart to exploit the weakness.

  “I’ll take you back to the motel. You can get some sack time.”

  “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go there yet. God. God. I need a drink.”

  “Fine. We’ll dump your car back at the motel, then we’ll go find a drink.”

  “Why do you want to be nice to me, Graystone? We don’t even like each other.”

  “One question at a time, babe. Come on. We’ll go find us a bar.”

  Six

  The Blue Mountain Hideaway was a spruced-up roadhouse tucked back from the road several miles outside of the town proper. It served what the laminated single-sheet menu called EATS along with DRINKS.

  There were three booths ranged down one wall like soldiers, and a half dozen tables with folding chairs were grouped in the center of the room as if someone had shoved them there, then forgotten about it.

  The bar was black with age, and the floor a beige linoleum speckled with gray. The lone waitress was young and bird-thin. Travis Tritt was singing on the juke.

  Some men Callie took to be locals sat at the bar having an after-work brew. From the work boots, gimme caps and sweaty T-shirts, she pegged them as laborers. Maybe part of Dolan’s construction crew.

  Their heads swiveled around when Callie and Jake walked in, and she noted they weren’t particularly subtle in sizing up the female.

  She slid into a booth and immediately wondered why she’d come. She’d be better off flat out on the motel room bed, shooting for oblivion.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” She looked at Jake, really looked. But she couldn’t read him. That had been one of the problems, she thought. She’d never been quite sure what he was thinking. “What the hell is this?”

  “Food and drink.” He pushed the menu across the table. “And right up your alley.”

  She glanced down. If it wasn’t fried, it wasn’t EATS, she decided. “Just a beer.”

  “Never known you to turn down food, especially when it’s covered with grease.” He laid a finger on the menu, inched it back as the waitress came over. “A couple of burgers, well, with fries, and two of whatever you’ve got on draft.”

  Callie started to protest, then just shrugged and went back to brooding.

  And that worried him. If she wasn’t up to flaying his ass for making a decision—any decision—for her, she was in bad shape.

  She didn’t just look tired, he’d seen her look tired before. She looked worn. He wanted to take her hand, close it in his and tell her that whatever was wrong, they’d find a way to fix it.

  And that was a surefire way to get his hand chopped off at the wrist.

  Instead he leaned toward her. “This place remind you of anything?”

  She stirred herself enough to glance around. Travis Tritt had moved on to Faith Hill. The guys at the bar were sucking down beers and shooting over belligerent stares. The air smelled like the bottom of a deep-fat fryer when the oil hadn’t been changed in recent memory.

  “No.”

  “Come on. That dive in Spain, when we were working the El Aculadero dig.”

  “What, are you stupid? This place is nothing like that. That had some weird-ass music going, and there were black flies all over the damn place. The waiter was a three-hundred-pound guy with hair down to his butt and no front teeth.”

  “Yeah, but we had a beer there. Just like this.”

  She shot him a dry look. “Where didn’t we have a beer?”

  “We had wine in Veneto, which is entirely different.”

  That got a laugh out of her. “What, do you remember all the alcoholic beverages we’ve managed to consume?”

  “You’d be surprised at what I remember.” The laugh had loosened the knot in his stomach. “I remember you toss off all the covers at night and insist on sleeping in the middle of the bed. And how a foot rub makes you purr like a kitten.”

  She said nothing as their beers were served. Nothing until she’d taken the first cold gulp. “And I remember you puking up your guts after some bad clams in Mozambique.”

  “You always were a romantic fool, Cal.”

  “Yeah.” She lifted her glass, drank again. “Ain’t it the truth.” He was trying to cheer her up. She couldn’t figure why he’d bother. “How come you’re not bitching at me for being away from the field today?”

  “I was going to get to it. I just wanted a beer first.” He grinned at her. “Want me to start bitching now, or wait until we eat?”

  “I had something I had to do. It couldn’t wait. And since you’re not my boss, you’ve got no authority to bitch and moan if I have to take a day off. I’m just as committed to this project as you. More, because I was here first.”

  He eased back as the waitress brought out their burgers. “Wow. I guess that told me.”

  “Oh, stuff it, Graystone. I don’t have to—” She broke off as the men who’d been at the bar swaggered up to the table.

  “You two with those assholes digging around by Simon’s Hole?”

  Jake squeezed bright yellow mustard on his burger. “That’s right. In fact, we’re the head assholes. What can we do for you?”

  “You can get the hell out, quit fucking around with a bunch of old bones and shit and keeping decent men from making a living.”

  Callie took the mustard from Jake, sizing up the men as she dumped it on her burger. The one doing the talking was fat, but it was hard fat. He’d be solid as a tank. The other had that alcohol-induced mean in his eyes.

  “Excuse me?” She set down the mustard, opened the ketchup. “I’m going to have to ask you to watch your language. My associate here is very sensitive.”

  “Well, fuck him.”

  “I have, actually, and it’s not bad. But regardless. So,” she continued in a con
versational tone, “you guys work for Dolan?”

  “That’s right. And we don’t need a buncha flatlanders coming in and telling us what to do.”

  “There we disagree.” Jake dumped salt on his fries, passed the shaker to Callie.

  The pleasant tone, the casual moves gave the impression of a man not in the least interested in a fight, or prepared for one.

  Those who believed that impression, Callie knew, did so at their peril.

  Jake dashed some pepper on the burger, dropped the top of the bun in place. “Since it’s unlikely either of you know dick about archaeological investigation or anthropological study, or any of the associated fields such as dendrochronology or stratigraphy, we’re here to take care of that for you. And happy to do it. Want another beer?” he asked Callie.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “You think throwing around twenty-dollar words is gonna keep us from kicking you out of town, you better think again. Asshole.”

  Jake merely sighed, but Callie recognized the ice-cold gleam in his eye.

  The guys still had a chance, Callie calculated, as long as Jake wanted to eat in peace more than he wanted the entertainment of a bar fight.

  “I guess you figure since we’re academic assholes, twenty-dollar words is all we’ve got to throw around.” He shrugged, picked up a fry. “The fact is, my associate here has a black belt in karate and is mean as a snake. I should know. She’s my wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” Callie corrected. “But he’s right. I’m mean as a snake.”

  “Which one do you want?” Jake asked her.

  “I want the big one.” She looked up at the men with a cheerful, wide grin.

  “Okay, but I want you to hold back,” Jake warned her. “Last time—that big Mexican? He was in a coma for five days. We don’t want that kind of trouble again.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who broke that guy’s jaw and dislocated his retina. In Oklahoma.”

  “I didn’t think a cowboy’d go down so easy. Live and learn.” Jake nudged his plate away. “You guys all right with doing this outside? I hate having to shell out for damages every time we bust ass in a bar.”

  They shifted their feet, bunched and released fists. Then the big one sneered. “We’re telling you the way it is. We don’t fight with pussies and girls.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jake waved a hand at the waitress. “Can we get another round here?” He lifted his burger, bit in with every appearance of enjoyment as the men, muttering insults, stalked to the door. “Told you it was like that place in Spain.”

  “They don’t mean anything.” The waitress set fresh beers on the table, scooped up the empties. “Austin and Jimmy, they’re just stupid is all, but they don’t mean anything.”

  “No problem,” Jake told her.

  “Mostly, people are real excited about the doings out there by Simon’s Hole. But there’s some’s got a problem with it. Dolan hired extra crew, and they got laid off when the work stopped. It can make you mean when it pinches your pocketbook. Those burgers all right for you?”

  “They’re great. Thanks,” Callie said.

  “Y’all just let me know if you need anything. And don’t you worry about Austin and Jimmy. It was mostly the beer talking.”

  “Beer talks loud enough,” Jake said when the waitress left them alone, “it can be a problem. Digger’s camped out on the site, but we may want to think about adding a little more security.”

  “We need more hands as it is. I’ll talk to Leo. I was going to swing by the site after . . . I was going to swing by and see what you did today.”

  “We’ve got the field plotted, and the segments are logged into the computer. We started removing the overburden.”

  She winced at that. She’d wanted to be there when the team removed the topsoil. “You got the college kids doing the sieving?”

  “Yeah. I sent today’s report to your computer. We can go over it all now, but you’re just going to read it anyway. Callie, tell me what’s wrong. Tell me why instead of being in the field you were in a library reading about a kidnapping that happened in 1974. The same year you were born.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about it. I came to have a beer.”

  “Fine, I’ll talk about it. I come by your room last night and there are photographs on your bed. You’re upset. You say they’re not family photos, but there’s a strong resemblance. Today, you’re gone, and I find you searching through the archives of the local paper covering the kidnapping of a baby girl same age as you. What makes you think you might have been that baby?”

  She didn’t speak, merely put her elbows on the table and lowered her head to her hands. She’d known he would put it together. Give the man a hatful of jumbled details and he’d make them into a cohesive picture in less time than most people could solve the daily crossword puzzle.

  And she’d known she’d tell him. The minute he’d found her in the library she’d known he was the one person she would tell.

  She just wasn’t ready to analyze why.

  “Suzanne Cullen came to my room,” Callie began. And told him everything.

  He didn’t interrupt, nor did he take his eyes off her face.

  He knew the moods of it so well. He couldn’t always decipher the cause of them, but he knew the moods. She was still dealing with shock, and along with the shock was guilt.

  “So . . . there will have to be tests,” she finished. “To verify identity. But, well, science is full of suppositions. Especially our field. And given the current data and events, it’s reasonable to make the supposition that Suzanne Cullen is correct.”

  “You’ll need to track down the lawyer, the doctor, anyone else involved in the adoption and placement.”

  She looked at him then. This, she realized, was one solid reason she could tell him. He’d never burden her with the weight of sympathy or outrage on her behalf. He’d understand that to get through it, she’d need to pursue the practical.

  “I’ve started that. My father’s tracking down the OB. I ran into a block on the lawyer, so I hired one of my own to dig there. Lana Campbell, she’s the one representing the preservation people. I met her the other day. She strikes me as smart and thorough, and like someone who doesn’t give up easily. I guess you could say I need to start removing the overburden so I can find out what’s underneath all this.”

  “The lawyer had to know.”

  “Yeah.” Callie’s lips tightened. “He had to know.”

  “So he’s your datum point. Everything spreads out from him. I want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re both good at puzzles, babe. But together, we’re the best out there.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “It was always tough to slide something by you.” He pushed his plate aside, reached over and took her hand. His fingers tightened when she tried to jerk it free. “Don’t be so damn prickly. Christ, Dunbrook, I’ve had my hands on every inch of your body and you get jumpy because I’ve got your fingers.”

  “I’m not jumpy, and they’re my fingers.”

  “You think you stopped mattering to me because you cut me loose?”

  “I didn’t cut you loose,” she said furiously. “You—”

  “Let’s just save that for another day.”

  “You know one of the things about you that pissed me off?”

  “I’ve got a list of them on a data bank.”

  “The way you interrupt me whenever you know I’m right.”

  “I’ll add that one. It occurs to me that we got to be a lot of things to each other, but we never got to be friends. I’d like to take a shot at it, that’s all.”

  If he’d told her he’d decided to ditch science and sell Avon products door-to-door, she’d have been no more surprised. “You want us to be friends?”

  “I’m offering to be your friend, you blockhead. I want to help you find out what happened.”

  “Calling me a blockhead isn’t very friendly.”
>
  “It’s friendlier than the alternate word that came to mind.”

  “Okay, points for you. There’s a lot of garbage between us, Jake.”

  “Maybe we’ll sift through it one of these days. But for now we’ve got two priorities.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. He couldn’t help himself. “The dig, and your puzzle. We’ve got no choice but to work with each other on the first. Why not do the same on the second?”

  “We’ll fight.”

  “We’ll fight anyway.”

  “True, very true.” That didn’t bother her nearly as much as the urge she was resisting to curl her fingers into his. “I appreciate it, Jake. I really do. Now let go of my hand. I’m starting to feel goofy.”

  He released her, dug out his wallet. “We can go back to your room. I’ll give you a foot rub.”

  “Those days are over, Jake.”

  “Too bad. I always liked your feet.”

  He paid the check, and kept his hands in his pockets as they walked outside.

  She blinked, in some surprise, against the strength of the sun. It seemed they’d been inside that bar for hours. But there was plenty of daylight left, she calculated. Enough to drive to the site and take a look, if she could drum up the energy.

  She pulled out her sunglasses, then pursed her lips when Jake yanked a sheet of paper from under his windshield.

  “ ‘Go back to Baltimore or you’ll pay,’ ” Jake read. He balled up the note, tossed it into the car. “I think I’ll run out and check on Digger.”

  “We’ll go out and check on Digger.”

  “Fine.” He climbed in, waited for her to slide into the seat beside him. “Heard you playing for a while last night,” he commented. “I’m right next door. Walls are thin.”

  “Then I’ll try to keep it down when I have Austin and Jimmy over for a party.”

  “See how considerate you are now that we’re friends?”

  Even as she laughed, he leaned over, pressed his lips to hers.

  She had an instant of pure shock. How could all that heat still be there? How could it? And cutting through the shock was a quick primal urge to move in, wrap around him and burn alive.

  Before she could, he was easing back, turning the key in the ignition. “Seat belt,” he said casually.