by Dale Mayer
She looked up with a smile, only to have it fall away. “Do you think something’s happened to her?” Her fingers clenched and unclenched the pen in her hand.
“Yes, I do. And, if it hasn’t happened yet, it’ll happen soon. I’m hoping she’s holed up somewhere safe.” Corey sat down, reached across the table and clasped her hand in his. He covered it, warming it up. “Bridget, you need to tell me where she would run to. Her place has been trashed, but there’s no sign she has been there since.”
Bridget took a deep breath. “The only place I could even begin to think of is a cabin where she spent a lot of time during the summers. I was there once, and it was a place to remember.”
Corey frowned. “Is that when you went out to the lake for a couple weeks? When was that, eleventh grade?”
She nodded. “I think it was somewhere around then. We spent two weeks with her aunt.”
“Any idea how to contact the aunt?”
Bridget started clicking away on her laptop. “I set up a file for all my friends at one point.”
Warrick laughed. “You set up a file on your friends?”
She shot him a look. “I forget things easily,” she confessed, “so this file has their addresses, phone numbers, family contacts, things like that.”
“Did the police ask you for it?”
She looked up, and her gaze widened. “No. And I didn’t even think about it.”
“Well, they’ll probably ask you soon. Now, if you’ve got a printer, you want to hand that off to us or at least bring it up on the screen, and we’ll take pictures. Then we’ll head to the cabin.”
“It’s a four-hour drive from here,” she said worriedly. “You shouldn’t be leaving right now.”
The two men looked at each other, then at their watches. “We could pull out at three in the morning and get there at dawn,” Corey said. He looked over at Warrick for his agreement.
Warrick nodded. “That works. We can catch a few hours of sleep and hopefully still get there before she’s up and panicking.”
“You think I should let her know you’re coming?” Bridget asked.
“If she’s smart, she’ll have ditched that phone a long time ago.”
Bridget picked up her phone and sent a text. “She hasn’t responded to any phone contact, but maybe she’ll get it in an email. Or a text. I just told her that you are both on the way, and you will be there very early in the morning.” She sat back down and looked at her brother. “Please help her out. I hate knowing she’s in trouble. I know she was struggling to adapt to being a single mom, but I’ve been so buried in my schooling that I just didn’t realize something bad was going on. She was looking for a private investigator, but I never really asked why. I should have.”
Warrick’s phone went off. He excused himself and stepped out into the hallway.
Corey hugged his sister but inside he was reeling. Why hadn’t Bridget mentioned Angela’s husband and child? “Why?” he asked in a strangled voice. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She winced. “I was afraid she still mattered and that her marriage and family would be a blow to you all over again.”
Chapter 3
Her phone kept buzzing throughout the night. She ended up pulling a pillow over her head and burying underneath it. When she fell asleep, she slept the sleep of the exhausted and woke up the next morning feeling like dried bread that had been ground into bread crumbs. Splintered. Rough. She didn’t know how to pull it all together.
Sleep was supposed to be refreshing. Supposed to make her feel better. Instead, it made her feel like she couldn’t get her mind back on track. She got up, dressed and headed into the kitchen. Coffee would help. There was only instant, but she’d take it. Desperate times and all that.
She pulled out her phone to see several texts from Bridget. In all of them, there was a note saying, Corey and Warrick are on their way.
That even failed to impress her. She’d met Corey and had walked away. What did he think she would do this time? Still, she needed help; she just didn’t know where to get it. They might be able to give her a name.
Bridget also said she was supposed to contact the detective to let him know she was alive. Everybody was worried about her. And the last message really made her heart jump into her throat.
I don’t even know if I should tell you this, but I don’t think you should come home. At least not to your place. Come to my place. Your place has been broken into, and it’s in shambles.
At that, she stuffed the cell phone back into her pocket, poured hot water over the coffee crystals, stirred it and took her cup as stepped out onto the verandah. It was really beautiful here. She should seriously talk to her aunt about maybe renting it for a year. Apparently her apartment was no longer an option. She didn’t know if she was safe here or not. But she had to live someplace. And, at the end of all this, this little piece of heaven would at least help heal her soul a bit. Joshua would have a blast living here. He was into bugs and water and stones and every other outdoor thing imaginable.
Well, he was a little boy and very true to form. But he was also the kind who would pick up a spider and drop it in a safe place. She wasn’t of the same ilk regarding spiders but understood that was who he was. When he had asked her if she wanted the spider to crawl on her, she had shaken her head politely and said, “No, sweetie. He likes you best.”
It was all she could do to stop the cringe reaction when the spider came closer. She’d gotten a lot better about bugs, but she still had a lot of room to grow. Joshua was a good boy.
She patiently brushed away tears and anger at herself for constantly succumbing to them. There was a time to cry, and there was a time to straighten her spine and do what needed to be done. In the back of her mind was always that thought that maybe she could hire somebody to steal her son back. She could run to Mexico and hide from the authorities until he grew up. She had read numerous stories in the news about people doing just that. Sure, eventually they got caught. She didn’t give a damn as long as she got time to spend with her son. To consider a future without him was just too unthinkable.
She walked down the verandah steps, her thin sandals making a light clacking sound as she took each riser. It was early; nobody was here; and, with any luck, they would get lost the same as she had. She had mixed feelings about having no one to help her. It’d be nice to not be alone. But the last thing she wanted was to involve two men she didn’t know—at least she didn’t know any longer.
She’d never seen this behavior in Greg before. But then she’d never crossed him. She would have left a hell of a lot earlier if she had realized how illegal his dealings were. Had he married the other woman too? For a moment she indulged in the thought of not being legally married to Greg. Wouldn’t that be great? Although he was too canny to do something he could be caught in so easily.
She shook her head and tried not to spill her coffee as she walked down the thirty feet of the rough path to the lake’s edge. An old dock sat off to the side, looking worse for wear and desperately in need of a hammer to get some of the nails pounded flat once more. Some pretty good storms were common in this area, so the cabin could leak. She’d love to spend some time here and do some house repairs. Bring it back to the way she remembered it. Her aunt was getting on in years now. Angela imagined her aunt would go stay with one of her kids, never returning to the cabin. Angela wanted to rent it, unless the family wanted to sell it.
She gave a broken laugh. “Who am I kidding? I’ll be lucky if I have enough money to put food on the table when this is over.”
The lawyers had pretty well wiped her out. Her husband had mountains of money, all from his own business ventures, but he certainly wasn’t into sharing. If he refused her access to her son, he sure as hell wouldn’t let her have access to his money either.
A duck swam by, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, cutting a wide circle around her to make sure she couldn’t catch him.
“Go ahead, little one. K
eep on floating. I have no designs on you.”
She wanted to sit on the edge of the dock, though her body was too stiff and sore after the long drive and her rough night. She slipped her feet out of the sandals and stepped into the water from the shoreline. She dabbled her toes in the cool water. Even though it was summertime, it was a little on the chilly side. That probably had as much to do with her fatigue as anything.
She stood here, feeling a little better as she sipped her coffee and stared at her peaceful surroundings. This was the right decision. She needed this. Something inside her soul ached to be here. Hidden away, safe, not having to worry about real life intruding … Greg didn’t know about this place, thank heavens.
After wading for a few minutes, she put her sandals back on and walked out onto the dock. She remembered a ladder used to be here into the lake.
It was much deeper at the end of the dock, and they used to jump and dive off it. They had this big floatable raft thing they swam out to and played on. She had such great memories here of lots of family barbecues and late evenings sitting around a campfire roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.
She hugged her arms to her chest, feeling a chill now. She should have brought a sweater. The sun was up, but just barely. And the cabin was tucked into the trees, so the rays of warmth hadn’t reached her yet. It would soon, but, for the next fifteen to twenty minutes, she’d be standing in the shadows.
In many ways, this was how she’d felt for most of her marriage. It had been much less than she had hoped for. Greg had been a big man; she had been bowled over by everything he’d promised. She thought at the time she loved him. She just hadn’t realized she’d mistaken love for security. And she’d sure found out fast how security came with bars.
She’d never been allowed to do anything on her own. Greg controlled what she did with her time. He picked out her clothing, ordered her to take various courses so she’d look better, act better—even voice classes. Nothing was wrong with her voice, but he had this arrogance about him that thought she didn’t sound as upper class as she could. Rolling her Rs and elongating her Os was supposed to do that.
She thought back to how naive and stupid she’d been. And how quickly he’d formed her into what he wanted. She still didn’t understand how it had happened. It wasn’t who she was. But she had been desperate to get married and to start a family. After losing the baby way back when, it seemed she had spent years trying to get back to that stage of life again. But she hadn’t wanted it to be with just anybody. She certainly didn’t want a casual one-night stand. She’d wanted a long-term relationship. She’d wanted it all.
The house, the two kids, the holidays at the lake. Instead, she got a controlling, lying cheat of a husband, an absolutely adorable son, and a lifestyle where she’d felt caged. Freedom from Greg had been bliss. With her son, she hadn’t even regretted walking away from the lifestyle. As long as she had Joshua, she didn’t bother about anything else. Joshua was perfect.
He was perfect in every way. And yet she had no way to get him back. Her husband wouldn’t let go of his control.
She sat on the edge of the dock, dangling her feet above the water. She tried to organize her thoughts as to what the day would bring. If and when the men arrived, what were her chances of getting rid of them? And how much had Bridget told them?
Not that she had told Bridget everything either. Angela hadn’t wanted to get her into trouble. It was bad enough that Joshua’s life was impacted. The last thing Angela wanted was to create any more stress for Bridget. This was too important a crunch time for her. Law school had been brutal. Angela had watched her friend crumble under the stress and workload, along with a job and everything else. Bridget had shunned all men, making room for only those things she could handle.
That had been a great idea, but there had also been repercussions. And some of them had been that Bridget could not see exactly what was going on in Angela’s world, and Angela had deliberately not brought Bridget in on all the details. Angela didn’t want Bridget to worry. But Angela wished that she’d had someone to share this nightmare with. Being on the run was one thing. Being on the run and trying to get her son back, that was a whole different story.
Hearing an odd sound, she twisted, spilling the last of her coffee on the boards, to see a man walking toward her. She hopped to her feet, looking for a place to run. But she was at the end of the dock. The only other place she could go was into the water. Then she heard a shout.
“Angela, it’s me. I’m here with Warrick.”
To the left of where the stranger stood, she saw Corey striding toward her. He still had that long, loose-limbed walk. But instead of the young man she’d known, it was the man she’d met in the coffee shop. Powerful and in control. He just looked so damn different.
She’d been stunned when she saw him again. She’d carried the idealistic young man he had been in her heart for so long. And now, after all this time, to see him grown up, and not just grown up but somebody to be respected and be proud of, she was sad she hadn’t followed up on their relationship way back when. But she’d been too young, and it was too early and too … He hadn’t been right for her back then.
Hell. She hadn’t been right for anybody back then. She’d been such a mess. She hadn’t treated him as well as she should have. For that, she was sorry. But to see this powerful male walking toward her as if he knew exactly what was in her mind and understood where she was coming from made it incredibly difficult to even break her gaze free. He was mesmerizing. He stepped up to the edge of the dock and held out his hand. “I’m coming toward you,” he said. “This will be okay. We will get to the bottom of it.”
She widened her gaze and then realized she was standing with one foot at the edge of the dock as if she were going to fling herself into the water. She took a deep breath and let herself relax, then turned and walked toward him casually. “Hi.” Her gaze drifted past him to the man standing behind him. “You must be Warrick.”
The big man smiled and nodded. There was something so damn compassionate in his gaze that she wondered what he possibly did for a living. She knew what Corey did. Bridget had told her of his accomplishments along the way. But Warrick had a gentler countenance. Whereas Corey had hardened planes on his face, Warrick was more of a big teddy bear.
She glanced at Corey. “Why did you come?”
He smiled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’d be nice if you said hi first before you try to send me away again.”
“I did say hi.” She frowned at him. “Answer the question.” Her voice rang clearly across the lake.
He studied her for a long moment and tilted his head slightly. “I came to help.”
She crossed her arms, her fingers tapping aimlessly on her coffee mug. “What do you think you can do?”
He leaned forward. “You must have thought there’s something I could do, or you wouldn’t have contacted me in the first place. The fact that you got scared and ran means you really need me.”
“Nobody else has been able to help me.” She was surprised to hear how much bitterness was in her tone. “I don’t see that you can do anything different.”
“Come back to the cabin, and let’s talk,” he said quietly. “You don’t know what I can do because you don’t know who I am anymore.”
“And you don’t know what kind of trouble you might have just gotten yourself into,” she countered him. “For all you know, when we walk back to that cabin, somebody’ll be there with a gun.”
He gave her a smile and let her see his teeth. “Good,” he said in a low tone. “I hope that asshole is waiting for us.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and, for whatever reason, she believed him. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Warrick said, “Take another few breaths, try to step back from the panic, and then you’ll be able to explain it that much easier.”
Standing where she was, she deliberately took several more deep inhales and then walked up the last
bit of distance to Corey and Warrick. She reached out, shook Warrick’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He enclosed her small hands in his huge ones. “Likewise.”
She glanced at Corey, flashed a smile and said, “Let’s head back to the cabin.” She led the way. She could hear them talking behind her. She slowed to walk beside them.
Warrick nudged Corey. “Wow. There’s history here.”
“You have no idea,” Corey said sadly. “But it was a long time ago.”
“Some things just never end. And some things end so damn fast you have no idea what hit you.”
“I heard about Sandra, dude. I’m really sorry about that.”
“It hurts,” Warrick said. “What do you do? Sandra made a decision, and it’s one that doesn’t include me in her life anymore.”
Listening to him, Angela was surprised. He looked like such a sweet and loving man that she couldn’t imagine anybody not wanting him. But then, just like her husband had been an asshole, there were women equally bad, and they didn’t always know or recognize the good in the people around them.
She stepped into the cabin, stoked the fire again and put the teakettle back on. She had almost no food. As they walked in, she announced, “I don’t have anything to feed you.”
“We didn’t come here to get fed,” Corey returned.
She cast him a glance. “Maybe not, but I’m starved.”
Warrick laughed, a deep rumble that eased up his chest in a way that made her look at him in surprise.
“That sounded like thunder.”
He grinned. “We stopped and picked up a bunch of sandwiches. Do you want one?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Yes, please.”
Warrick reached out, smacking Corey on the arm. “I’ll grab our bags.”
She frowned as soon as he left. “Your friend is taking a lot on himself. I didn’t invite you to stay.”
“If we feed you, we get to stay for a bit.” He sat down at the kitchen table. “Are you making tea or coffee?”