High-Risk Affair

by RaeAnne Thayne

"You could say that."

  He pulled his hand away from hers. Even now, twenty-four years later, if he gave rein to his emotions, he would be consumed with rage and fury, all directed at one man.

  Silas Davis.

  "It was so senseless. Jerusha was a sweet girl, kind and gentle. I wouldn't say she was simple but she had a gentle spirit. She just looked at the world and tried to see the good in everyone, no matter how despicable they were."

  She used to hold him after the rantings and the beatings and tell him their father wasn't a bad man, that he was hurting and mad and missed their mama.

  Cale had known, even at ten, that Silas was pure evil.

  He let out a breath, hating this part and wondering why telling it never seemed to get easier. "When she was thirteen, my father gave her into marriage to a fellow elder in his fundamentalist church. He was fifty-six and Jerusha was his fourth wife. She endured six months of it before she escaped by swallowing a bottle of painkillers."

  Jerusha might have taken her life, but Cale had never blamed her. He knew exactly who was responsible. Silas killed his own daughter just as surely as if he'd forced the pills down her throat.

  He had never experienced such all-consuming grief and rage as he had the day he had heard of his sister's suicide. Silas hadn't even deigned to tell him, as if it were some pesky little detail he couldn't be bothered about.

  Cale had to hear the whispers at the Sunday service he was always forced to attend, had to endure the sidelong looks, until finally the murmurs grew loud enough for him to hear and finally to understand.

  When he realized what had happened, he had wanted to puke, to scream and rage and howl.

  All their lives, Jerusha had tried to stand between Caleb and their father. They had both endured Silas's wrath, his frequent diatribes about how they were both destined for the fires of hell. They were spawns of Satan, Silas was fond of reminding both of them, because their mother had been a whore and a jezebel.

  Caleb seemed to inspire more of his father's wrath. He was never sure exactly why, maybe because he looked more like the slender, dark-haired mother he vaguely remembered, or maybe just because he was the younger and weaker of the two siblings.

  Jerusha did her best to deflect Silas's attention. She had tried to distract him, or failing that, she had turned his wrath toward her and taken the beating meant for him.

  When she couldn't—or didn't dare, for fear of making things worse—she had comforted him and tended to the blisters on his back and legs.

  She had been his protector, his confidante and his best friend. Yet he had been completely helpless to protect her, just a twelve-year-old boy, while she was victimized over and over again.

  Knowing he had failed to help her escape, that she had chosen to take the only way out available to her, had sparked a primal, visceral rage inside him.

  He hadn't taken time to think it through, had reacted completely out of raw emotion. He had reached into his pocket of his scratchy wool Sunday pants that were already three inches too short for him and his fingers encountered cold metal, the pocketknife Jerusha had given him for his twelfth birthday.

  With a wild, frantic bloodlust, he had gone after the bastard who had sired him. He would have gone for his throat if he could have reached it. Instead, he had struck blindly, over and over.

  He had no doubt he would have killed his father if he'd had the chance. God surely knew how much he'd wanted to.

  He didn't realize his hand had curled into a fist now until Megan covered it again with her own fingers, cool and small and soft.

  His throat ached. In that instant, something hard and tight in his chest—something that seemed to have expanded since that horrible day two weeks earlier, until he could barely breathe around it—seemed to shake loose.

  For several long moments, he could only focus on laking one breath and then another, shocked to his core at how close he was to the breaking point. This was insane.

  What the hell was he doing, burdening her with this when she was living through every parent's worst nightmare? He should stop right now, run as fast and far away from Megan Vance as he could.

  He rose, desperate for distance between them. "You don't want to hear all this."

  "What did you do?" she asked quietly, ignoring his statement.

  He had come this far, he might as well tell her the rest of it. He sighed and sat back down.

  "You could say I didn't take the news well. I attacked my father with a pocketknife and stabbed him several times before others in the congregation pulled me off."

  Megan digested his matter-of-fact words, her mind caught on the stark image of a skinny, dark-haired boy acting out of rage and pain. She probably should have been shocked by his words but all she could manage was a deep satisfaction.

  "Good," she said. "Any father who would do such a hideous thing to his own daughter deserves no less."

  Cale blinked in surprise at her words and she thought she saw some of the shadows in his eyes lift a little.

  "I didn't do much damage," he said. "It was only a pocketknife, and not a very sharp one at that."

  "What happened to you?"

  What had turned that grieving boy into the hardened man sitting beside her? she wondered. She was genuinely interested, she realized, and even grateful for the temporary distraction from her all-consuming fear over Cameron.

  There was an odd intimacy to sitting beside him in her quiet house after midnight while most of the world slept. Out of habit, she reached for her knitting bag from the table next to the couch and put her hands to work as she waited for him to decide if he wanted to share any more pieces of his life with her.

  "I spent a year in juvenile detention. Would have been longer except the family court judge considered the extenuating circumstances. I think by the time my father had finished his diatribe against the evils of our flawed system of justice and the heretics who dared to pass judgment in God's stead, the judge would have liked to take a pocketknife to him, as well."

  She couldn't begin to imagine such an upbringing. She thought of her own father, how patient and atten-tive he had been through her mother's long illness, how he had worked so hard to provide for his family.

  Even though he was a tough Boston cop, Paul Kincaid had been a gentle, kind man at home, always willing to pull his daughter onto his lap for a story or spend time in the backyard with Kevin throwing baseballs.

  "You didn't go back home after your release, did you?"

  His laugh was harsh and abrupt. She yearned to touch him in comfort again, but she hadn't missed the way he had pulled away when she had tried before.

  She sensed he wasn't a man easy with softness and compassion. She also sensed he didn't offer the details ol'his past to many people, and she couldn't help feeling a little honored that he seemed willing to share them with her now.

  "The court system decided that probably wasn't such a great idea, especially after I told the judge I would stab him all over again if I ever had to spend another minute in his company. Silas wouldn't have taken me back anyway. I was as dead to him as Jerusha. Breaking the fifth commandment, you know. The one about honoring your father, even when he's a zealous, self-righteous son of a bitch."

  Through the cotton of the FBI T-shirt, he rubbed his shoulder absently, a gesture she suspected was completely unconscious. She wondered again if he was the injured agent Molly had heard about on the news but didn't know how to ask.

  "No, I didn't go back," he said after a moment. "1 was put into foster care and bounced around between group homes until 1 went to college a few years later."

  Surviving such a troubled adolescence must have had a profound impact on his life and the choices he made since.

  "Is what happened to your sister the reason you turned to law enforcement?" she asked. "Why you work to protect children?"

  He stiffened beside her and she immediately regretted the personal question. "I'm sorry. Forget I asked that."

  "No. It's, uh, just no
t something I spend much time thinking about. I suppose you're right. After Quantico, I gravitated directly to the CAC unit—Crimes Against Children—though it's not an assignment many agents actively seek."

  "It can't always be an easy line of work."

  Something dark and almost tortured flickered in his gaze before he looked away. "Not always, no."

  She sensed he wanted to say more, but he let his words linger between them. He must see horrible things, things she couldn't even conceive of. She knew the depth of her own fear and uncertainty over her son. How could he walk in the midst of this pain all the time?

  She imagined it would be immensely satisfying to put child predators behind bars but the process of inves-ligating them and gathering evidence must be both unhealthy and heartbreaking.

  She wanted to ask him how he coped with it, what kind of survival methods he used to separate himself from all that emotion. But she before she could find the words, she heard the thud of boots on the porch and a moment later, Daniel Galvez walked into the great room.

  If the sheriff considered it odd to find her sitting in a dimly lit room with the FBI agent, her knitting in her lap and a scrapbook open on the table before them, he didn't indicate it by any alteration of expression. His handsome features remained as hard and remote as ever.

  He looked tired, she thought, and she was once more filled with an overwhelming gratitude for all the men and women who had put their lives on hold to look for her son.

  "Megan, you shouldn't be here all night. What can I say to convince you to go on back to Scott and Molly's place to sleep for a few hours?"

  "Nothing. I need to be here."

  "You're a stubborn woman."

  She shook her head. "I'm just a mother."

  His smile looked ragged around the edges. "Which makes you about the most formidable creature on earth, in my book."

  He turned to the FBI agent. "I'm gathering the incident team for an update and a strategy session in about fifteen minutes out in the command center if you're interested."

  "I'll be there."

  Megan desperately wanted to go, but she knew she wouldn't be welcome.

  "I'll see you in a few minutes," Daniel said, then walked out of the house again, leaving a sudden awkward silence in his wake.

  For some strange reason, after the sheriff left, she found herself keenly aware that she and Cale were alone in the house, something that hadn't truly registered before. The sheriff's presence had somehow put an end to any shared confidences.

  Cale seemed to sense it to. He rose. "1 should go."

  "Right."

  She didn't want him to go, she realized with some surprise. She wouldn't have expected it and she didn't quite understand it, but when she was with him, she somehow didn't feel so afraid.

  "I hate to play the same old song here since I'm pretty fond of my eyeballs,, but you need to get some rest," he said. "You're not going to be any good to Cameron or to your daughter if you wear yourself to the bone. It would be better if you went to your sister's house for a few hours. Will you at least think about it?"

  "I'll think about it." She just wouldn't do it, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "Agent Davis..."

  He turned at the door. "Yes?"

  "I know my presence is not really welcome at these briefings. I accept that. Sheriff Galvez made it clear earlier, as gently as possible, that the information in the briefings is raw and unfiltered, and many leads will turn out to be erroneous. I understand that. I do. But this is my son. Please. I need to know what's happening. Could you...could you keep me as informed as possible? I hate not knowing what's going on. I know it's probably not.. .not strictly procedure. But I need to know."

  A muscle tightened his jaw. "I'll tell you what I can, Megan," he said after a moment. "That's all I can promise."

  She mustered a shaky smile. "Thank you."

  He gazed at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Get some rest," he urged again, his voice gruff, before he walked outside.

  Chapter 8

  7:00 a.m., Day Two

  Nobody would ever know what happened to him.

  Cameron lay on his side in the dark, his arms curled up around his drawn-up knees and fought down terrified, lonely tears. His mom would be going crazy with worry by now and he felt terrible about it.

  He was so stupid. He should never have come in here. It had all been a dumb game, just a stupid game. How had everything turned out to be so awful?

  He was so thirsty. He had finished the last of his water a couple hours ago, and he hadn't eaten since the night before.

  He would give just about anything right now for a big bowl of Froot Loops and milk, and a giant glass of ice-cold orange juice to go with it.

  Cameron sniffled a little and made himself sit up, even though he was so tired, more tired than the time he got to have his best friend Jason sleep over back in San Diego before they moved. They stayed up until way late, playing Nintendo and watching DVDs, and had an awesome time, but the next day he had been so tired he just lay around all day.

  He had tried to sleep in the night but he wasn't sure how much rest he'd had. He had been too uncomfortable lying on the ground, and he hated the dark.

  He was tired and cold. If that wasn't enough, he had a weird, jittery feeling in his stomach, and his head was pounding like a whole cave full of rocks had fallen on it.

  Was this his second day since he snuck out of his room and saw the shooting? Or was it the third? He couldn't seem to keep track of time.

  He cried out suddenly when he heard another rumble somewhere in the cave and the clatter of rocks. He was so scared and didn't know what to do. He had used up the last flashlight batteries an hour ago and now all he had was the face of his watch, and that was getting dimmer and dimmer all the time.

  He didn't dare move without a light, not after he fell down that shaft. All he could do was curl up here with the darkness pressing in on him.

  Was this what it was like in a coffin?

  He whimpered at that image. He didn't want to die. But at least he would be with his dad now. Cam was scared about dying, but he found some comfort that he would at least have his dad around in heaven to show him around and stuff.

  He was sure going to miss his mom and Hailey, though. He wiped the tears trickling down his cheek with his grimy T-shirt.

  "I'm sorry, Mommy," he whispered, wishing with all his heart she could somehow hear him. "I'm really sorry. I was wrong to sneak out. Don't be too sad, okay?"

  He rolled over, wishing this pounding in his head would just stop.

  This was hell. Worse than hell. It was the deepest, darkest, most terrible purgatory any parent should have to endure.

  Megan sat dry-eyed at the kitchen table, her millionth cup of lousy coffee cooling in her hands. She had been awake for about thirty hours now, except for the few minutes she had drifted off out of sheer exhaustion.

  She had awakened a half hour or so later to find someone had covered her with one of the legion of afghans she had knitted in the long hours of the night during those horrible days after Rick's death.

  She wasn't sure who it was who had covered her, but she suspected the man sitting across from her at the kitchen table.

  "Are you sure nothing has changed?" she asked Agent Davis, as if repeating the same question a dozen times might change his answer.

  "The search in the mountains is expanding, with more volunteer searchers expected to show up today."

  He made a face at the terrible coffee and set it away from him. He looked alert and competent, though she knew he hadn't slept any more than she. He couldn't have, since he had spent much of the night in the house with her, except for the occasional briefings with Sheriff Galvez.

  She had no idea how he pulled off seeming so composed when she felt as if she had been dragged behind a tractor for two or three days, but she was grateful for it.

  Though she didn't understand exactly why, somehow she felt a little better whenever she was with A
gent Davis. The world seemed a little brighter, a little more hopeful.

  He wouldn't rest until her son was found. She knew at with complete certainty, especially after learning the bits of his past he had shared with her the night before.

  "The hotline is still flooded with tips," he went on. "But I'm afraid not many of them are going anywhere. It's a new day, though. Anything can happen."

  She didn't necessarily consider that a good thing. "I know I don't have to tell you the urgency. Cameron has now missed three doses of his seizure meds. If we don't find him soon, there's a real risk of him going into a prolonged epileptic state. Status epilepticus."

  "I'm assuming by the sound of that, it's a bad thing."

  "Terrible! It can cause respiratory distress, sustained loss of consciousness. Even death."

  His mouth tightened and she saw her own frustration reflected in the polar blue of his eyes. "We're missing something. I can feel it. I just don't know where else to go."

  He sighed. "Gage should be here in a few minutes. Maybe he'll have a fresh take on things."

  The back door opened before she could answer and a little red-haired dynamo burst through. Megan's spirits lifted at the sight of her daughter, her hair in fresh braids and her doll tucked tight under her arm.

  Hailey rushed to her and Megan held her close, feeling some of the tightness around ner heart ease.

  "Hi, Mommy!" Hailey chirped. "We brought you breakfast. Aunt Molly said you would forget to eat, so we made you muffins. They're chocolate chip and banana. I had three already and they are good."

  "They sound good. I'll have one in a minute, honey." For now, she only wanted to sit here and hold her child.

  "It's a madhouse out between your house and ours," Molly exclaimed. "I thought we had a lot of media interest yesterday, but now you can't even move through the media vans and mobile uplink units out there."

  The story had hit the national news with a vengeance the night before. She could only pray the extra media attention would help and not hinder the search.

  "Hi, Caleb Davis." Hailey smiled across the table at the FBI agent.

  Megan met his gaze and saw the same strained look in his eyes she had seen the day before when he had first seen her daughter. Was it something about Hailey? she wondered.