BRINGING BENJY HOME

by Kylie Brant

  Trey watched her. "Tony Franken."

  She blinked once. That was all. Her eyes remained on him, but she faded away. She wasn't seeing him anymore. She wasn't seeing anything.

  "Oh, God," she whispered, her voice raw with anguish. She began to rock in her seat, faster and faster in rhythm with her mindless litany. "OhGodohGodohGod…"

  He grasped both her shoulders in his hands. "Lauren," he said urgently. "Do you know this guy? Who is he? How the hell do you know him?"

  Her lips were trembling. "Oh, Trey, oh, Trey, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? He'll find us—I know he will—I've always known it—"

  "Tell me!" Trey ordered her. "Who is Tony Franken, Lauren?"

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, as if to still the trembling there. "He works for William. Ever since I met him, Tony was one of the men who followed us everywhere." She gave a big gasp for air. "He was the one guarding the house the night you helped me escape."

  Trey folded his sister's shaking body into his arms, calming her with his strength.

  "You know what this means, Trey. William has found us. Just like I always feared he would. We'll never be safe again, never, never…"

  "Yes," Trey promised tersely, "you will." The words were a vow. "Calm down and listen to me. Lauren?"

  Taking a few deep gasps of air, she eventually pulled away and faced him.

  "Good," he said soothingly. He took one of her hands and squeezed it reassuringly. "According to Maria Kasem, Franken didn't talk much about his past, and apparently she's not the type to ask questions. But when she met him, he wasn't working for Penning—he was a baggage handler at O'Hare. They lived together for about eight months in Chicago. One day about two months ago he never came home from his job. She didn't see him for about a week, and when he did return he was all excited about a plan he claimed was going to make them rich."

  Lauren closed her eyes tightly, as if to shut out Trey's next words. "Oh, no."

  "I'm afraid so, honey," he said grimly.

  "He must have seen me returning from a business meeting with Jack." Jack Saunders was a former client of Trey's, and Lauren's boss. After Benjy's birth, she'd wanted a place of her own. Jack offered her a job and the use of the guest house on his property. She'd accepted both. He ran his computer-analysis business from his home. Her duties as his personal assistant ranged from the secretarial to the very occasional business trip.

  "He saw you and recognized you immediately, I'm sure," Trey agreed. "And why not? You very likely cost him his job with Penning."

  Lauren's eyes met his and she nodded slowly. "When William found out I was gone, he must have been … enraged." Not a very descriptive word really for her husband's probable reaction. She shivered. Even now, years later, it was hard not to react when she thought of her husband.

  "The fact that Franken is walking around on two good legs leads me to believe that he didn't stick around for Penning to find out you were gone. He must have been so scared that Penning would blame him—"

  "He would have," Lauren asserted.

  Trey nodded. "So he took off before Penning could take his rage out on him."

  "People who disappointed William were punished," she whispered.

  "At any rate," Trey continued grimly, "it was sheer bad luck that had him working at an airport you were passing through. He followed you to L.A., probably hoping to get into Penning's good graces again by finding out where you lived and letting him know."

  "This doesn't make sense, Trey," Lauren cried softly. "If he wanted to make an impression on William, he'd have taken me and never mentioned Benjy. With all the time he spent with William, he would surely have known how he felt about children."

  "And he would just as surely have known about how your in-laws felt about them."

  Lauren stared at her brother. "Oh, my Lord." Her voice was almost soundless.

  "Kasem said finding out about Benjy delighted Franken. He hadn't been eager to contact William again, even with the news of your whereabouts. He couldn't predict his reaction, especially when Penning found out about Benjy. But it probably didn't take him long at all to figure out how to turn the situation to his advantage. Everyone knew how desperately William's parents wanted grandchildren. Leo Penning could be counted on to pay big bucks to get his hands on his only grandchild."

  "And Franken is still out there." Lauren raised her visage to his, dry eyed. "We're not safe while he's free," she said simply. "What's to stop him from telling Leo or William about us? What's to stop him from searching for us? We'll have to hide the rest of our lives, living in fear…"

  "No," Trey said firmly. "I won't let that happen. Since Franken is the guard who let you escape William in the first place, he's got no credibility with the Penning family. He probably fears for his life at the thought of contacting them right now, because without Benjy, he's got nothing.

  "Don't worry," he reassured her softly, tightening his arm around her. "I'm going to make sure we never have to worry about Franken again. Or your bastard of a husband." He didn't ask himself how he was going to accomplish that feat. His mind was already working overtime on the problem, and he didn't doubt that he'd find a solution to this mess.

  The lives of his sister and his nephew depended on it.

  * * *

  A couple of days spent with Granny had kept Jaida's loneliness at bay for a time, but the cabin seemed no less empty when she returned. She made a trip back into Little Rock, because Dixon Falls didn't have something as elaborate as a courthouse and she needed to get her missing driver's license replaced. The woman in the picture on the front of the new one looked as forlorn as she felt. It would be an unwelcome reminder for the next five years of just what, or who, had put that despair in her eyes. While she was there she went to the pharmacy and had her prescription for the pain medication refilled. Then she returned home.

  She spent the afternoon completing every task she could think of in the cabin, before starting on Granny's garden out back. Weeding was a chore that kept her body, if not her mind, occupied.

  She hadn't attempted to return to her songwriting. It was too soon, her separation from Trey too raw. Right now she feared that if she even tried to set pencil to paper, the emotions would spill forth like water from a levee. And that was something she definitely wasn't ready for.

  She'd thought she'd been prepared for their parting, thought she'd known what to expect in his absence. But this… God, this felt as if a giant vacuum had gone through her and removed every bit of feeling, every scrap of anything that mattered, leaving nothing in its wake but a giant void. But no, that wasn't quite right, either. Because a void was an absence of feeling. And the pain of being alone was too intense, too sharp for that.

  She knew she'd done the right thing, though. Trey was an intensely private man. He'd spent his whole life building walls around his emotions. How could she expect him to be comfortable with her, with someone who could read him through a casual touch?

  She made dinner, and surprised herself by finishing the entire meal she'd prepared. She took the return of her appetite as a good sign. Perhaps she had underestimated the soothing impact of seeing her grandmother again.

  The knock on the door came while she was lingering over washing the few dishes she'd dirtied. Peering out the window, she noticed a stranger standing on the porch. She used an unfamiliar caution when she opened the door, leaving the chain on. She might not be a security expert, but she had a normal amount of sense. The cabin was isolated enough to warrant being careful at any time.

  "How ya doin'?" The man on the other side of her door greeted her with a half smile. "I been having some car trouble. Left it down at the bottom of your lane there." He jerked his head to indicate the area behind him. "You don't happen to know of any good mechanics nearby, would ya?"

  Jaida looked at the man carefully, but he seemed harmless enough. The frustration in his voice was reflected on his blunt features. He was solidly built, although only a few inches taller th
an she was, with hair the color of walnuts, slicked back from a square forehead.

  "I'm sorry." She shook her head. "But the nearest mechanic is Ernie, in Dixon Falls, and he usually closes late afternoon and goes fishing. There's no telling when he'll be back."

  The man checked his watch and grimaced. "Just my luck," he mumbled. Squinting back at her he asked, "And how far to the nearest town of any decent size?"

  Jaida's eyes followed his to the gold watch on his wrist and remained glued there. The face of the watch was black, with a small diamond indicating where the twelve would be. It wasn't the watch's face she was focused on, however; it was the thick gold band encircling his wide wrist. It glinted as a ray of fading sunlight strayed across it. Her attention caught, she noted the large bones in his hand and arm and the black hairs that curled over the watchband.

  After a moment she said, "That would be Little Rock. I could make some calls there if you want. Surely someplace has a tow truck."

  His smile this time looked more like a grimace. "How far's that? Fifty miles or so?"

  Jaida felt a spark of sympathy for the man's plight. "I'm afraid it's more like sixty-five."

  "Well … shoot. That'd be one heck of a bill, now wouldn't it?" He scratched his head. "I guess I'll take my chances a while longer and see if I can get a bit farther down the road. The car's been cutting out on me while I'm driving, but it always starts again. I was just thinking about getting it seen to before it decides to quit for good. But it looks like I'm going to have to keep going and hope it gets me another sixty-five miles."

  Jaida eyed him doubtfully. "It's going to be dark in a couple hours. Maybe you should have me call that tow truck after all."

  The man began to back away from the porch. "Naw, I think I'll chance it. Unless I get to the car and find it don't start at all. Then I'll be back. Thanks for your time." He edged away.

  Jaida watched him for several minutes, until he disappeared around a bend into the trees. She closed the door, troubled. There was something about the man that bothered her. Something about his appearance. She leaned her back against the door. Something hovered in her consciousness, just out of reach. She tried, and failed, to summon it. Her feeling of unease increased.

  Shaking her head wryly, she pushed away from the door and headed for the kitchen to finish the dishes. The solitude was certainly telling on her if she was going to obsess over a poor guy with car problems.

  She washed up her dishes quickly. The cabin had been fitted with most modern appliances at her insistence years ago, but Granny had resisted putting in a dishwasher. She claimed she enjoyed washing the dishes, and Jaida hadn't pushed the point. It would have taken quite a bit of remodeling to fit the appliance into the old kitchen anyway, and even at the time she'd understood the importance of immersing oneself in small tasks that calmed.

  She picked up the towel and began to dry the utensils she'd cleaned. The dinner knife gleamed brightly, reflecting her features, and in an odd association she abruptly remembered the light glinting off the stranger's gold watch. Her movements stilled. While she'd tried to summon the memory that teased her about that sight earlier, now it was flashing across her mind without invitation. And it left goose bumps rising on her arms.

  The wide gold watchband encircling a thick wrist … the forearm lightly dusted with black hair … the fingers clutching the back of Benjy's shirt, yanking him back up on a bed…

  Jaida gasped and the knife clattered as it dropped to the floor. That was why the sight of that watch had teased at something familiar to her. The slightest flick of imagery she'd had about the other kidnapper had been brief and not very helpful. She'd never seen the kidnapper's face. Only his arm.

  His wrist encircled by a wide gold-banded watch.

  For one fleeting moment she wondered if she was losing her mind. Why else would she insist on linking a hapless stranger with car trouble with Benjy's kidnapper, based on a watchband?

  Feeling foolish and no less nervy, she moved to the front window of the cabin. The familiar scenery was like a balm. Her truck was parked where she'd left it, at the top of the lane. It could never pass for a driveway, or anything other than what it was … a narrow path through a heavily wooded area, leading unexpectedly to the clearing where their cabin sat. Every spring the rains would turn the lane into a muddy, rutted mess. The summer months would bake the ruts deep and solid, and they would provide a bone-numbing jar each time she hit one.

  But her mind wasn't on the condition of the lane right now. She was peering into the trees, trying vainly to discern whether a stranger's car sat on the road half a mile in the distance. It was ridiculous, she knew. The lane took a sharp bend a hundred yards from the cabin and disappeared into the trees, the first of four curves it would take before leading to the road. The dense foliage provided the cabin with a natural privacy barrier and shielded it from the intrusive sounds of civilization. It would be impossible to see what lay beyond that first bend, and yet still her eyes strained.

  After several minutes Jaida turned away from the window, feeling foolish. There was nothing to see out there but dogwoods gathering shadows in the approaching dusk. There was no movement out of the ordinary. The solitude must be working on her more strenuously than she knew. That was ironic, really. There had been a time in her life, after the ill-fated concert in Phoenix, that this same solitude and privacy had beckoned her, soothed her. Since she'd returned alone it seemed to underscore her loneliness.

  And now it was seeming a bit sinister.

  Impatiently, she shook off her uncustomary nerves. She wasn't going to stand at the window and obsess over what was likely an unfortunate incident for a guy who just wanted to get home. For a swift moment she allowed herself to yearn to hear Trey's voice. She got as far as the phone, her hand reaching for the receiver, where it hovered and then dropped. She forced herself to go to the kitchen and start cleaning out cupboards that didn't need to be straightened.

  The one element of pride she'd managed to hang on to when she and Trey parted was that she hadn't begged and she hadn't asked him to stay. Calling him now would seem contrived, a mere excuse to hear his voice, and there was a grain of truth to that, as well.

  But she wouldn't allow herself to wallow in her misery, and she wouldn't let herself try to force Trey into admitting feelings for her that just didn't exist. She had no doubt that she could make him feel something; she hadn't misread the pure masculine possessiveness that had shone in his eyes each time he'd looked at her in their last days together. She knew well that a deep streak of protectiveness ran in him, too. He felt it for Lauren and for Benjy. But she wanted more, much more, for herself.

  And she wasn't likely to get it from him.

  That knowledge sent pain lacing through her heart. It seemed like life's cruelest ironies that she had spent her life avoiding physical contact and avoiding intimacy. She'd doubted her ability to respond as a woman as her mind grappled with the thoughts and emotions that would rush to her from her partner's touch.

  Trey had been different. From the beginning there had been an awareness between them that she couldn't fight and hadn't known how to deny. At first she'd been dismayed by the unexpected sparks that flared at their most casual touch. She'd been even more dismayed at how easily he could make her respond to him as a woman. Jaida had been half-fearful that if she ever responded to him physically, the combination of her psychic gift and that awareness would combust and literally destroy her.

  Instead, for the first time she'd found a man who could still her intaking stimuli and immerse her totally, completely, in him and in her own responses as a woman. The first time that happened she hadn't known whether to be glad or frightened. She still didn't.

  The last cupboard was straightened, and she contemplated whether she should spend the next hour scrubbing the woodwork to an even greater shine. She rubbed at her aching spine, wishing it were just as easy to rub away the feeling of impending doom that still hovered over her. Unconsciously, she moved
to the front window again.

  There was nothing to see out front, and it was growing too dark even to try. She turned away from the window, a frown on her face. She'd never been afraid to stay alone at the cabin before, and she wasn't afraid now … exactly. The source of her unease was probably already in little Rock, happily ensconced in a motel room while an all-night garage worked on his car. But as ridiculous as it seemed, she'd be a lot more comfortable if she knew that for a fact.

  Her gaze landed on the telephone. It wouldn't hurt to call Granny and tell her she'd arrived home safely. She picked up the phone and started to dial. When it didn't respond, she disconnected, ready to try again. Only when she failed to get a dial tone the second time did the realization hit her.

  The phone was dead.

  A long moment passed while Jaida held the receiver to her ear, listening to its silence. That silence seemed to grow into something else, something much more malign. It oozed out of the dead receiver and encompassed Jaida in a blanket of dread.

  Her fingers clutching the phone seemed suddenly numb, and she was unaware of her actions as she replaced it on the table. Without thought she went to the front door and turned the dead bolt, checking to make sure the chain was still on. Then she moved from window to window like an automaton. She made sure each was secured, and pulled the rarely used blinds and curtains. The kitchen door didn't open to the outside. Instead, it led down to the cellar, where Granny kept the vegetables she canned each year. There was another set of stairs leading from the cellar to the outside, but they were covered with thick double doors, secured from the inside with a solid wooden bar.

  She returned to the living room, her arms clutching her middle. She attempted to reassure herself. Phones went dead sometimes. This one had a few years ago. That had been in a windstorm, however, and right now there wasn't even a breeze rustling the leaves on the trees shrouding the lane. The night air was completely still, as if, like her, it was waiting for something.

  The logical, reasonable voice in her mind was warring with the part that seemed, for the moment, to be paralyzed with fear. Her ears picked up a sound outside, and all her senses strained, as though to transmit energy to her hearing. But the sound wasn't repeated. This cabin was surrounded by wildlife, and at night it wasn't unusual for a raccoon, possum or skunk to come sauntering close to the cabin looking for food.