Bringing Benjy Home (Security Ops)

by Brant, Kylie

  The cool breeze kissed her face and the sun sent dancing rays of light across Jaida’s tinted sunglasses. She leaned her head back and smiled, smug at winning this latest skirmish with Trey. He’d been opposed to renting a convertible, but, she’d argued, if they were going to investigate the coastal areas with beaches, they might as well enjoy the view. He’d given in gracelessly, but at least his ill-temper was a genuine emotion. She’d take that over his phony charm any day.

  “So, let me get this straight.” His voice was a frustrated rasp. “We’re just going to hunt beaches? Any particular direction in mind, or should I just circle aimlessly?”

  “South,” Jaida answered. “They’ve left the immediate area.” She was unable to explain to him how she knew that for a certainty, but the feeling was too strong to ignore. “We’ll need to focus on the public beaches.”

  “Why?” he challenged her. “What makes you think Benjy isn’t at some posh resort on the Cape? Or on a beach at any one of hundreds of private homes? For that matter, what makes you think he’s still in the state?”

  “From their last selection of a motel, it didn’t exactly look like the kidnappers were spending money lavishly. So that rules out resorts and expensive beachfront property. And I don’t know whether they’ve left the state.”

  He waited, but when she said nothing else, he snapped, “Massachusetts alone has almost two hundred miles of coastline. You couldn’t narrow it down a little, could you?”

  “No,” she replied honestly, “I can’t. All I can do is follow my instincts, and my instincts say to head south.”

  “And will your instincts—” he gave the word a sardonic inflection “—also tell us where to stop, or will we drive right by my nephew on our scenic tour?”

  “I’ll know the place when we get there,” Jaida said. “I’ll be able to feel it.”

  He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse. “Well, I’m feeling something already, and we’ve just started driving.”

  “At least you’re feeling, Trey.” Jaida smiled serenely and looked at the scenery whizzing by. “Somehow I think that’s rather new for you.”

  He glanced at her sharply, but her attention remained on the sights they were passing. Her pithy remarks were starting to make him edgy. She was starting to make him edgy. There was a distinct disadvantage in the feeling that she was somehow able to guess more about him than he knew about her.

  “Were you born and raised in Arkansas?” he asked abruptly.

  “I was born in New York City,” came her surprising answer.

  He waited, but she didn’t elaborate. That was new for her. Usually she was full of conversation. But now, when he wanted information, she wasn’t offering any. He decided the woman had a patent on obstinance.

  “How long did you live there?” he prodded.

  She yawned. The sunshine and fresh air were not as invigorating as the twelve-hour nap her body craved after summoning another vision. She wondered how long they would have to travel before he’d stop so she could eat. “Long enough for my parents to split up and for my mother to dump me on Granny for the first time. About three months.”

  “You’ve lived with your grandmother since you were three months old?”

  He sounded interested, and a little appalled. She cast him a sidelong glance. It was unusual for him to make idle conversation. Which meant he was after something, although she couldn’t imagine why he’d be seeking information on her. An idea occurred to her then, and she deliberately turned away without answering.

  She waited several moments, then heard him say impatiently, “Well?”

  Grinning to herself, she replied, “I’ll make you a deal, Trey.” She paused a heartbeat. “For every question I answer of yours, you’ll answer one of mine.”

  He didn’t like the suggestion. She could read that, despite the dark-framed sunglasses he was wearing.

  “What kind of questions?” His voice was filled with reluctance.

  She lifted a shoulder lazily. “No conditions. And no lying,” she added swiftly. “You . . . we . . . have to answer truthfully.”

  He was silent for so long she thought he’d reverted to his earlier taciturn manner.

  Then he said, “Why didn’t your mother raise you?”

  Jaida gave a sigh and settled back into her seat. He had a lot to learn about following rules. But they had miles ahead of them in which she could teach him the rudiments.

  “You’re not going to answer?”

  “It’s my turn to ask you a question,” she responded patiently. “Remember?”

  “But I asked you before . . . Ah, damn,” he sputtered out frustratedly. “What do you want to ask?”

  Better start out with something easy, she thought. He really wasn’t much for reciprocal arrangements. Smooth coercion was much more his style, or outright demands. And finding himself thwarted hadn’t done much for his mood.

  “Where did you and Lauren grow up?”

  “Kansas City. Now tell me why your mother let your grandmother raise you.”

  It was easy to see that his capitulation was merely to further his own end. He was as tenacious as a pit bull when it came to getting what he wanted. “She was only eighteen, and her husband had deserted her. She had nowhere to go, no money and no way to get a job and care for me at the same time. Not,” she added wryly, “that caring for me was high on her list. Anyway, she called Granny, who wired her money, and she went back home. But it wasn’t long before she started looking for a way out again. She’d spent her whole life dreaming of leaving Dixon Falls. She wasn’t about to let a baby put an end to her aspirations.”

  “So she dumped you and took off again?”

  “Ah-ah-ah, Garrison. That’s two questions. It’s my turn again. Do you have any other family?”

  “No. What happened to you when your mother took off again?”

  Jaida paused to consider the inequities in their answers. His were unsatisfyingly brief, to the point of rudeness. The trick seemed to be in the way their questions were worded, but she was annoyed nonetheless.

  “I was left with my grandmother while my mother went to Savannah to find work. I joined her occasionally over the years, in Savannah, Mobile, wherever she was calling home at the time. Things never worked out.” That was the understatement of the world, Jaida thought. She’d spent her first few years wishing fiercely for her mother to send for her, not for a visit, but to live with her for good. And then later, when it became clear just how Marilee felt about her, Jaida had wished just as fiercely to stay with Granny forever.

  “What were your parents like?” She asked the question after a great deal of thought, attempting to word it in a way that would prevent a monosyllabic answer. But the silence that followed was filled with tension. She turned to look at him, puzzled.

  A grim smile played across his lips. It hadn’t taken her long to catch on to the little game, and somehow she’d managed to stumble onto his least favorite subject. “My mother was . . . fragile,” he answered with irony.

  Weak. That was the word to describe Patricia Garrison. Too weak to stand up to her husband, to protect herself or her children. Trey had taken many a beating trying to intervene on her behalf. She’d been too weak to stay alive long enough to be any kind of mother. The only thing she’d ever done for Trey was give him Lauren. And when Patricia Garrison died, he’d eventually even lost his sister. “My father . . . used his hands a lot.” He turned off the old memories, focused on the map showing on the GPS screen. “Take a look at that map. We’re getting close to Scusset State Beach. Does that sound familiar at all to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter if it sounds familiar,” she retorted. “It will have to feel familiar. And I won’t know until we get there. I’ve told you that before.”

  But she leaned to trace the path the on screen map showed at the same time he jabbed his finger at the beach’s destination point on the screen. The now-familiar current sparked to life at the inadvertent touch and th
en a scene flashed into her mind, so quick and ugly that she caught her breath. It vanished as suddenly as it had come, swirling away like mists of fog.

  She sat back in her seat quickly, curling her fingers into her palms. She had to be more careful. She couldn’t afford to touch him, even by accident. Each time set off too many disturbing reactions, on too many levels.

  My father used his hands a lot. She shivered, still responding to the short violent scene she’d experienced at their brief brushing of hands. An interesting way to describe a man who had used his fists on his family and drunk with indiscriminate fervor.

  The inadvertent peek into his past left her with the need to reassure him. “Benjy is still okay,” she told him softly. “He hasn’t been . . .” Hurt, she was going to say, and then stopped when she remembered the stinging slap to the toddler’s cheek. She bit her lip. She would never relay that information to Trey, especially in light of what she’d just learned about him.

  “He’s safe. They have plans for him, though. This wasn’t a random snatching.”

  Her words snared his attention. “Why do you say that?”

  “You said Lauren was drugged so that the kidnappers could grab Benjy. People don’t normally just walk around armed with drug-filled syringes in their pockets. The kidnappers were prepared to snatch him that day.”

  “Yes, but that still doesn’t mean that Benjy had been singled out. A sicko could have gone to the park that day with the intention of picking out a child, any child. There’s no way to be certain whether he’d been specifically targeted.”

  “Oh, he was specifically targeted,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I know it.”

  “But if you’re right, and Penning isn’t involved . . .” he started, dubiously.

  “He isn’t,” she said surely. She shivered suddenly. “I’m certain he isn’t.”

  “Then we’re still no closer to the answer than we were before. Benjy could have become the target once the kidnapper saw him. He’s a cute little guy . . .” There was a pause, and when he continued, Trey’s voice was gruff. “There are any number of reasons someone would pick him out of a crowd if he was looking for a kid.”

  Habit had him dodging the emotions that threatened to well up and choke him. He’d come a long way from the explosive teenager he’d been to the man he was today. In humid jungles and searing deserts he’d learned to practice patience, to be as still as his surroundings while waiting for his prey. His stint in the army had seemed peculiarly suited to his nature. A childhood spent growing up on the streets had taught him survival skills and cunning, natural tools for the work he’d done in covert operations. There had been a time when he’d wondered if he would be suited for anything else.

  But something had irrevocably changed inside him the day he’d dragged Mac from that bombed hotel, sure that his friend was dying at his feet. He’d started to envision himself suffering such a fate, half a world away from the only family he had in the world. He’d kept his past tightly sealed away, rarely allowing himself to think about it. But once he allowed the vault door of those memories to crack open, their power was impossible to deny.

  Once Mac had left the military, it really hadn’t taken much to coax Trey into joining him in his security company. It had presented Trey with the opportunity to search for the only family he had left.

  It had taken him better than two years, but when he’d found Lauren again, a part deep inside him, a part he would have thought was dead, had come back to life. And Benjy’s birth had nurtured that element. He couldn’t bear to think that Benjy had entered their lives, only to be snatched away so quickly, so completely.

  He glanced at the woman next to him, who was quietly humming along with the radio. Anyone seeing the two of them would think they were just another vacationing couple. They’d never guess the desperation behind their search. Or the tenuous hold Jaida was exerting over him, despite every effort he made to fight it.

  The fragile bond of hope.

  “I trust I didn’t rush you.” Trey’s voice was a little too polite when Jaida finally strolled out of the truck stop, carrying a grocery bag.

  “Not at all,” she answered airily. “While you were getting gas and checking our location again, I had time to grab a sandwich and a few things for us to munch on.”

  He eyed the stuffed bag before pulling out of the truck-stop parking lot. “A few things?”

  Jaida rummaged through the sack. “I convinced them to make you a hot roast beef to go.” She held it out to him.

  He took it from her, peeling the wrapping back and eating with one hand while he drove with the other. He made short work of the sandwich, then reached for the soda she’d put in the container holder next to him. After a few minutes he glanced over at her. “What else do you have in that bag?”

  Jaida peered inside it, drawing out one item after another. “Cheese popcorn, pretzels, red licorice and a couple packages of sandwich cookies.”

  “I see you’re not concerned with the current low-fat craze.”

  “Not really,” she replied, opening the bag of licorice and selecting some. She offered the bag to him, and he shook his head. “My mother thinks my appetite is quite unladylike. I guess she thinks I should hide in a corner to eat when I’m hungry.”

  “You’d have to spend most of your time there,” Trey observed blandly. He held out his hand. “Give me a few cookies, will you?” He watched with sharp interest the way she opened the package and held it out to him, rather than take some cookies out to drop in his hand. It could have been fastidiousness on her part, but he didn’t think so. Jaida seemed to go to extreme lengths to avoid touching people, although he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching her so closely in the past few days.

  As a matter of fact, he tried to recall whether he had ever seen her touch someone voluntarily, and couldn’t recall that he had. He vividly remembered the times she’d been unable to avoid his touch, however. The shocking connection that had leaped to life each of those times was fascinating and hard to forget. An unbidden thought flashed across his mind then, and he wondered if the current would fade or intensify under a more intimate touch.

  “Where does your mother live now?” he asked a few miles later.

  “She lives in New Orleans with her fifth or is it sixth,” she wondered aloud, “husband.”

  “Do you visit her frequently?”

  She cast him an amused look. Was he resurrecting their “game” from this morning or merely bored? “As infrequently as possible, at her request. I’m a major source of embarrassment to Marilee, you see.”

  “Embarrassment?” His tone was sharp. He well knew that all mothers weren’t blessed with a nurturing instinct, but the thought that Jaida had been as unwanted as he and Lauren had been was curiously disturbing.

  “I did the unacceptable and grew up. It became very hard to explain to her high-society friends and potential husbands that she had a daughter only a few years younger than she was pretending to be.” She shrugged. Her mother’s shallowness had long ceased to be a source of pain for her. “The best thing she ever did was let Granny raise me. I had a normal childhood, as normal as possible. The worst times I remember are the experiences when I did live with Marilee, or went for a prolonged visit.”

  “Why, what happened then?”

  Jaida paused to rip open the bag of cheese popcorn. “I wasn’t the easiest child to have around. Even when she could keep me cleaned up long enough to introduce to her friends, I had an unfortunate penchant for blurting out personal remarks about them after shaking their hands.” She smiled in vague amusement as she remembered a few of the choice tidbits that had transferred to her at a casual touch. She’d been too young to guard her tongue and too naive to realize the embarrassing nature of some of the information she’d innocently revealed— information that ranged from the price of a woman’s dress to an indiscreet disclosure of a lover’s name. She shook her head in silent sympathy for the young, confused girl she’d b
een. It had been a painful period in her life; she’d tried as hard as she could to fit in and be the kind of daughter that Marilee would be proud of, one she would finally love.

  A fierce scowl came over Trey’s face. A picture was forming in his mind of Jaida’s childhood, and he didn’t like what he was hearing. In a perfect world children should be protected, sheltered and loved. He knew better than most that the world some children lived in was far from perfect. He never would have dreamed that he had an idealistic side to him, but Benjy’s birth had shown him otherwise. He’d vowed that his nephew would grow up never knowing what it meant to be hungry, afraid or unwanted. It should mean nothing to him that Jaida West had grown up with problems. Problems were, after all, what people were best at manufacturing. But the realization was troubling nonetheless.

  He glanced at her then, but her revelations hadn’t seemed to upset her. She was lounging next to him, with her feet up on the dash in front of her, her head tilted back to catch the breeze. She’d braided her long hair into a loose plait that reached below her shoulders, to keep it from becoming tangled in the wind. He decided swiftly that he didn’t like the style. It might be practical, but he would much prefer her hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders or whipping past her profile at the capricious mercy of the wind.

  He returned his attention to the road, irritated at his mental wanderings. Jaida West was only a tool in the search for Benjy, and he’d do well to remember that. No useful purpose would be served by learning more about her or by beginning to understand her.

  And there was no purpose at all in wanting her.

  “Don’t be such a grouch,” Jaida snapped hours later as she struggled to get her luggage out of the trunk. “I was ready to stop hours ago. You’re the one who insisted on driving farther.”

  Trey slammed down the trunk lid with barely restrained force. “I thought that the point of this little excursion was to drive until you felt something.” His voice was mocking. “I’m beginning to believe that the only thing you’re capable of feeling is constant hunger and the overwhelming urge to drive me crazy.”