by SUE FINEMAN
“Pack the food. There are two ice chests on the top shelf in the pantry.”
Chance took the stairs two at a time. He had nearly everything packed when Baylee came upstairs. “Where are we going?”
“To the mountains near Snoqualmie Pass. McBride’s ski cabin. When they catch that son-of-a-bitch, I’ll bring you back to Tacoma.”
“Okay.” She leaned back against the dresser. “I packed almost everything in the refrigerator. Do you want me to get anything else?”
“Did you check the pantry and freezer in the laundry room? Bring whatever you want. I left some boxes in the dining room.”
Chance closed and zipped one suitcase and started packing the other one. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
She walked toward the door. Funny how she’d stopped complaining about leaving town. “Baylee? Did something else happen?”
She turned back. “Yeah. He left a present for me in my apartment, a knife in my pillow. Creeped me out.”
“Do you carry a gun?”
She screwed up her face. “I hate guns.”
An opinionated woman who didn’t like guns. With a killer after them, they needed a way to defend themselves, if it came to that. Could Baylee defend herself without a gun? She probably couldn’t defend herself with one.
Baylee disappeared downstairs with his full suitcase and he finished packing the other one. Time to get moving.
Minutes later, with the SUV packed, Chance locked the house and backed out of the garage into a downpour. Jacobs followed them for a few miles and then flashed his lights and pulled off the highway. “There goes our police escort,” Chance said to Baylee. She’d been quiet since they’d left the house.
He took I-5 to Highway 18. By the time he turned onto I-90 toward the pass, the rain had turned into a drizzle. At least he didn’t have to worry about snow on the roadway.
McBride’s directions took them to an A-frame ski cabin nestled in the woods near the summit. Chance pulled in the driveway and turned off the engine. “This is it.”
Baylee unsnapped her seatbelt. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.” It looked worse than it had the last time he’d been up here. Packed dirt with a few hardy weeds here and there surrounded the cabin. Moss coated the roof and streaked the brown plank siding. It was probably all McBride could afford on a cop’s pay. If Chance hadn’t been a cop’s son, if his father hadn’t worked with McBride years ago, they wouldn’t be here right now.
Inside, the combination living room and dining room ran across the front of the cabin, with the kitchen and only bathroom tucked under the loft. Two tiny bedrooms in the back were scarcely big enough to hold the beds.
Baylee propped the front door open and, without a word, rolled in a suitcase.
Outside the kitchen door, an enclosed porch had several pairs of skis propped in the corner. Ski boots sat under a bench on the other side of the small room. Too bad there wasn’t any snow. Chance loved to ski.
“Which room do you want, Chance?”
“I don’t care. Just pick one.”
The run-down cabin reminded him of the little house he grew up in. They had three dinky bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, and so many kids it reminded him of that nursery rhyme. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. He and Bo and Greg shared a small bedroom, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Mom never turned away a kid in need. It said a lot about the kind of person she was, but he resented having to share his room. It reminded him too much of the orphanage, where they put two or three babies in one crib. Crying did no good, since they were so understaffed, so he’d huddled in the corner, humming to calm himself.
He was the oldest in the family, but not the first to be adopted. His parents got Mia as a newborn, and then Chance came from Korea. His natural mother was Korean, father American. He wasn’t a year old when his mother left him at the overcrowded orphanage, and he spent at least three years there before being adopted. Brothers Bo and Greg joined the family a couple years later. The four of them were all close in age, but Chance had never felt like one of them. He was the quiet kid, the solemn one who seldom smiled. The one who didn’t fit in.
While Baylee settled in, he carried in the ice chests and boxes of food. Watching her unpack the food and fill the refrigerator, he wondered where he’d find the strength to keep his hands off her. Blond curls bounced around her shoulders and dark blue eyes took in everything. Every time he looked away and glanced back, he caught her staring at him. He could almost taste the sexual tension in the air.
When his marriage ended, he thought his life was over, but that night in the Twilight Zone, Baylee reminded him that he was still very much alive. He’d like nothing more than to continue what they’d started two years ago, but he had three kids who’d been traumatized by their mother’s murder. They had to come first. As soon as he got through this crisis, he had to go to Texas and take care of them. He couldn’t expect his family to do it forever. The kids were his responsibility.
Baylee’s safety was his responsibility, too. Whatever happened between them in this cabin, protecting her was primary. Identifying Emma’s battered body had made a lasting impression.
Chance baked a turkey breast that evening and fixed fresh green beans and a package of stuffing mix to go with it.
Baylee picked at her food. “Eat,” he told her.
“When did you learn to cook?”
“My mother taught us all to cook.”
“Are your parents still living?”
“My father was a cop killed in the line of duty when I was in high school. He and McBride were good friends.”
She nodded. “Ah, that explains why we’re here. What about your mother?”
“She lives in Texas with the rest of the family. My kids are staying with her right now. After Steven and Sarah get out of school in the afternoons, she takes them all out to Bo’s ranch. He raises horses and has three kids of his own. They swim in the pool with Bo, and Bo’s wife is teaching them to ride. They love it there.”
She swallowed another bite. “Sounds like a nice place to grow up.”
“It would be if they were there with their mother.”
“She’s there, Chance. She’s watching over them from the other side.”
“Do you really believe that?”
She cocked her head. “Don’t you?”
He took a long drink of water. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Emma’s murder had shaken him and undermined his belief system. How could a loving God allow this to happen?
Baylee finished her dinner and leaned back. “It must be nice to have a real family. My mother gave me to my grandparents when I was a baby. I don’t remember her.”
“My birth mother gave me to an orphanage. Do you have brothers, sisters?”
“Nope. All I have left is an aunt in Houston. I always felt a little sorry for her because she was alone, but that was her choice. Grandma said Bay didn’t want to be married, didn’t want kids.”
Chance should have stayed single himself. He’d never intended to be a father, but Emma wanted kids so much, and in the beginning he wanted nothing more than to make her happy. Then Steven came along, his beautiful little boy, and the trust and love in his son’s eyes made him feel like the luckiest man on earth. Two years later, they had Sarah, his shy little girl. He wanted to stop there and offered to take care of the birth control problem himself, but Emma begged him not to do anything permanent. Then she got pregnant on purpose, even though he’d told her he didn’t want more kids. After that, he had no reservations about getting himself fixed so there wouldn’t be any more little surprises.
Emma was livid when he told her what he’d done, but seeing his youngest child’s round little face tore at his heart. His older children lacked Korean traits, but his little Susie resembled the babies in the orphanage. How could he not love her? Yet he had a hard time showing it.
He’d
tried to hold his marriage together for the sake of the kids, but it was too little, too late. By the time his divorce was final, he no longer loved Emma, but he still felt like a failure because she didn’t want to stay married. She was right about his relationship with the kids, though. He’d learned more about them during their every other weekend visits than he had when he’d lived with them full time.
Now Emma was gone. Dead. Murdered two months, three weeks, and four days ago.
How could he explain murder to kids as young as his? How could he help them cope with Mommy’s death when he couldn’t deal with it himself?
If he’d been a better husband, if he hadn’t gotten so involved in Melissa Blackburn’s life, Emma might still be home with her children, where she belonged.
Melissa wasn’t just a typical battered wife who stayed with her husband because she thought he would change or because she was afraid to leave. She left her husband the first time he hit her. She bought a gun and warned him to stay away or she’d shoot him, and he did stay away for a time, long enough for her to let down her guard.
A neighbor noticed her apartment door standing open one morning and called the police. They found her in the bedroom, brutally raped and beaten senseless, with his initials carved into her breasts.
After Melissa was released from the hospital, Chance met with her in the shelter. Shocked by her appearance—black eyes, teeth knocked out, stitches, and the big white bandage her shirt couldn’t hide—he vowed to do everything he could to help her get a divorce and have her husband imprisoned, so she could get on with her life. Now she had no life to get on with.
Her ex-husband had beaten it out of her.
<>
While Chance made phone calls, Baylee washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. There was no dishwasher, but she didn’t expect one in this little cabin.
She’d just finished up when Chance wandered into the kitchen. “Need some help?”
“No, I’m finished. Kids okay?”
“They miss their mother, especially Susie. She’s too little to understand what happened, and I don’t want to scare her. She asked when Mommy was going to come home, and will Mommy find her in Texas. Sarah keeps asking if the bad man who hurt Mommy is going to come after her, and Steven is too traumatized to talk about his mother. I don’t know what it’ll do to them if that monster kills me, too. They might never get past it.”
“They’ll get through it, Chance, and so will we. I don’t intend to let that bastard kill me.”
He didn’t know how lucky he was to have a family. All Baylee ever had were her grandparents, two old people who didn’t want to have to raise another child, but who stepped up to the responsibility because they felt obligated. Now they were both gone. She’d only seen Bay three or four times. Her aunt probably didn’t even remember who she was, even though Baylee was named for her.
After Chance turned on the television in the living room, Baylee sat on her bed and worked on her laptop for an hour or so, writing about what it was like to run away from a killer. Then she wandered out to the living room. Chance had the television on, volume turned down low. He’d leaned back in an old recliner and closed his eyes. She turned the TV off and flipped off the lamp. He didn’t move.
She stood there watching him for several seconds. He had a strong face, even in sleep, and she couldn’t help staring at his lips. That mouth had once done amazing things to her lips and body.
His breathing changed a little, but he still didn’t move. “What are you doing?” he finally asked.
“Watching you sleep.” And thinking about jumping your bones.
“I’m just resting my eyes.”
“Sure you are. Am I supposed to take the first watch or what?”
“I’ll do it.”
“With your eyes closed?”
A slow smile curled one side of his mouth before his eyes opened. “Point taken.”
His smile disappeared and his gaze locked on hers in an unmistakable look of longing. Surely he didn’t think they could take up where they’d left off two years ago. Chance was feeling low that day he’d come to the neighborhood bar. Baylee was supposed to have met a guy there after work, but he didn’t show or even call.
She’d made the first move that night. She slid onto the barstool beside Chance and said, “Bad day in court, counselor?”
He turned to face her. “Do I know you?”
She stuck out her hand and he took it. “Baylee Patterson. I’m a reporter with the Tacoma Tribune. I’ve watched you in the courtroom. You’re good.”
“That’s why I make the big bucks,” he said jokingly. “But most of it goes to my wife, or should I say ex-wife. The divorce became final today.”
“Well, then, let me buy you a drink.” One drink led to another, and—
Chance cleared his throat. “Baylee, where are you?”
She shook off memories of the past and realized Chance was staring at her.
“You look like you’re in a different time zone.”
“I was in the Twilight Zone.” It was the name of an old TV show, but it was also the name of the bar where they’d celebrated his divorce. Or started their celebration.
He pushed the lever on the chair and sat up. “Baylee,” he said as he walked to her side.
“It’s all right, Chance. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it matters. You helped me through a hard time, and I never even said thank you.”
“Thank you? That’s all I meant to you was thanks for helping me through a hard time?”
He reached for her and she slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.” She started back toward the bedroom and then whipped around to say, “I don’t do one-night stands. I made an exception in your case because I thought you wanted more than one lousy night.”
She stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door. She had her shirt unbuttoned and shoes kicked off when Chance tapped on the door and opened it. “It wasn’t a lousy night to me, Baylee.”
Ignoring him, she jerked off her shirt and unzipped her jeans. “This is my room.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I was wallowing in self-pity that night, and you pulled me out of it.” He dropped his hands and glanced down at her breasts and then up at her face. “If you hadn’t been willing, I wouldn’t have touched you.“
Yes, she was willing that night, but she couldn’t let it happen again no matter how much she wanted to feel his hands on her body and his lips on hers.
“Did you think I forgot you?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Honey, no man could ever forget you.”
His soft words left her speechless. She turned away so he couldn’t see the hurt in her eyes. That one night with Chance meant more to her than months with any other man, but it obviously didn’t mean much to him or he would have called her.
His arms came around her shoulders and he nuzzled into her neck. “I’m sorry, Baylee. I never meant to hurt you. If I didn’t have—”
“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Chance. And for God’s sake, don’t make any promises.”
He dropped his arms, but he didn’t move away. She felt the heat from his body on her back. “I can’t make promises, and I can’t get involved with any woman right now. I have to put my kids first.”
“What about two years ago?”
“I was in no shape to jump into another relationship then. I’m still not.”
She couldn’t imagine this vital man living his life without a woman to love him. “No more women for you?”
“You can do better than me. I’m damaged goods.”
“Because Jack Blackburn killed Emma?”
“Because I screwed up my marriage.” He blurted out the angry words.
Stunned by his admission, she turned to face him. The look of anguish on his face tore at her heart. “How did you screw up your marriage?”
It took him a few seconds to respond, and she didn’t get t
he answer she expected. “It doesn’t matter. I was a lousy husband, and I’m a lousy father, but I have to set my priorities. I have to put my kids first.”
She blew out a shaky breath. “I know.”
They stood quietly for a few seconds. Baylee said, “I’ll call a friend in the morning. He can come and get me, and you can go on to Texas to be with your kids.”
“No, I’ll take you where you want to go. I should get a few more things from the house before I move on, and I need to call a real estate agent to list my house.” He sank to the side of the bed. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you in Tacoma. Isn’t there somewhere else you can go?”
She sat beside him. “No, not without putting my friends at risk. Don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” She wasn’t sure how, but she couldn’t stay with Chance. Being this close to him again set off all kinds of warning bells. If they stayed together like this, they’d end up making love again, and she knew once wouldn’t be enough. Not with him.
Having an affair with Chance was out of the question. They had a killer after them, and if they didn’t stay alert, one or both of them could end up dead.
His cell phone rang, and he rushed into the other room to grab it off the nightstand beside his bed. “Gregory.”
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Gook Lawyer himself.”
“Blackburn?”
“I know where your kids are.”
Chance turned cold. “Where are they?”
“They’re in Caledonia, Texas, on Elm Street, with Mrs. Carol Gregory. Is that your mother? I’ll take care of the little one first. Or maybe I’ll do your mother first and take my time with the kids, show them the pictures I took of their mother after I killed her.”
Shaking that image out of his head, Chance asked, “Where are you?” And how did he know the kids were in Texas with his mother?
“In your house, in the study. You left addresses and phone numbers and a couple pictures for me, or maybe that was your pretty wife who left it all for me.”
“You son-of-a—”
“Yeah, that’s me. I’ll make a deal with you. Your life for the kids.”