Mission--Colton Justice

by Jennifer Morey

  He wasn’t sure about starting anything with Adeline—with any woman. That wasn’t fair to Adeline any more than it was to Jamie or Tess. To make matters worse, while Jamie was being held captive, he’d allowed carnal needs to take over. Upon reflection, he could see how he’d lost control, but now he’d have to deal with consequences.

  He may have entertained some fanciful notions about Adeline being Jamie’s biological mother, but he hadn’t intended to start up anything. He’d thought having her around for a while would be good for Jamie, with the added bonus that she’d donated her eggs and served as his and Tess’s surrogate. Everybody benefited for a few weeks. Had he spent too much time convincing himself of that?

  How would he go about handling this? Everything in him recoiled when he considered going with whatever had begun, with making love with Adeline. Not when he thought of her and the amazing chemistry they shared. Just what the future would bring. That, and guilt. He intended to resolve all his questions and suspicions surrounding Tess’s death.

  He still felt...what did he feel? Responsibility? Moral obligation?

  Yes, and more. When he and Tess talked about having a child, they’d agreed both of them had to be sure they’d raise him or her as their own. Tess had had major reservations about having a baby that wasn’t hers. A certain amount of selfishness yearned for one of her own. Tess couldn’t have kids. That had always bothered her. Although she had never said so, she was jealous of Adeline. He’d seen how she watched her sometimes. Adeline often put her hand on her growing belly. She also let Tess feel the baby move or kick. Tess had been in awe every time but, afterward, Jeremy would see her eyes sadden and she’d either look away or watch Adeline in that envious way. But her desire to be a mother overruled any insecurity she may have felt.

  Tess had wanted Jamie with all her heart. The fact he wasn’t theirs biologically might have bothered Tess but she loved Jamie.

  “Everything okay?”

  He straightened from the sink, realizing he’d turned on the water and had been just standing there. Adeline eyed him warily.

  “Troubling thoughts?” she asked with a bit of bite to her tone.

  “No...” He couldn’t be dishonest with her. “I...last night kind of threw me.”

  She folded her arms, growing more and more distant. “It threw me, too.”

  “I’m not sure the timing was right.”

  “Because Jamie is still missing?”

  “We have no choice other than to wait for another call.” He didn’t want to delve into more. He walked out of the bathroom to get some clothes. “Let’s just take it a day at a time, okay?” Today he’d take some time away from thoughts of what had happened.

  “That’s all I get? Not even a ‘good morning’?” She followed him. “Just, ‘Last night threw me—can we take it a day at a time’?”

  He dropped the jeans he would have brought into the bathroom for after his shower back into the drawer. Adeline stood with one hand on her hip—a very sexy hip, one he had run his hands over many times. She exuded a need for him to go to her and reassure her, but he couldn’t even reassure himself right now. He began to feel cornered. What did she expect from him?

  “I just need some time to process,” he said. “Do you have an issue with that?”

  She stood there several seconds, eyes exuding emotional turmoil that likely resembled that in his gaze, but for some reason she refused acceptance.

  “Were you ready for that?” he asked.

  She averted her eyes briefly and then finally said, “No. I’m not even sure I can trust you.”

  “Me?” Why did she feel she couldn’t trust him? Even if ultimately they didn’t end up in a relationship, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. He wasn’t discounting a relationship. He still felt beholden to Tess. And with Adeline being Jamie’s biological mother, he felt...strange...awkward. He couldn’t explain why.

  She turned, her nightgown flowing out. “I’ll let you take your shower.”

  “Adeline.”

  Stopping, she looked back, expression blank now. She’d erected a swift wall as though she’d practiced it many times.

  “Why don’t you trust me?”

  “Let’s just take it a day at a time,” she answered, and then left.

  * * *

  After handing over the note to Knox for evidence, Adeline agreed with Jeremy to ignore the sheriff’s advice to leave the investigation up to him and his team. He would go talk to Emily Stanton, but Adeline could not wait any longer.

  The ride to see Emily was tense, the silence weighty and speaking volumes. Adeline didn’t care. She still fumed over Jeremy’s easy dismissal. Typical man. She hadn’t decided if he’d descended to the ranks of her ex-boyfriend. Probably not, since she didn’t think she’d have to get a restraining order to get rid of him, and he made his own money. His selfishness might be right in the ball park, however. He placed Jamie as a top priority—which he should. She didn’t dock him points for that, but he elevated Tess out of guilt. Moving on entailed coming to terms with Tess’s death and he hadn’t done that yet. If he knew he wasn’t ready for last night, then he shouldn’t have allowed anything to happen.

  While she tried to put the blame on him, deep down she knew she couldn’t, not all of it. She’d succumbed to their chemistry equally. If she examined her feelings enough, she’d acknowledge her past failures had tainted her quite a bit. Her ex-boyfriend wasn’t the first, either. Before him, she’d gone through several relationships that hadn’t progressed. All of the men had one thing in common—none of them were mature enough to commit.

  Had she found another man like them in Jeremy? Why did she gravitate to them? What about them drew her?

  Except... Jeremy was nothing like any of those men. He was successful, sure of himself and a grieving widower. He didn’t depend on anyone. Maybe that was her downfall, her mistake. She’d been attracted to those other men because they’d seemed to care; they had warm hearts, but what she failed to consider was their inability to take care of themselves. That intensified her reaction to what she could only call Jeremy’s rejection. Who liked rejection, anyway?

  In retrospect, she’d never experienced it before. She’d always been the one to end a bad relationship. If she were completely honest with herself, she’d acknowledge that maybe she chose badly because she had no fatherly role model. No man in her life taught her what a good man should be like. She’d only had her mother.

  Now that she’d had time to analyze everything, she regretted allowing herself to react the way she had. She wouldn’t allow that to happen again. Given the uncontrollable passion that had led to their making love, she couldn’t be certain she could prevent a repeat encounter. But she could control her reaction afterward. If this was only a fling, then she’d look back on her time with Jeremy and Jamie with fond memories. She had a choice on how she reacted and she chose not to lament over what-ifs and losses.

  And why was she hashing over all of that now? She should be thinking of Jamie.

  “Everything okay?”

  She turned when Jeremy spoke and then looking ahead through the windshield, she saw he’d parked along the street in front of Emily Stanton’s house.

  Without responding, she opened the door and got out.

  Time to go to work. Time to be a detective, the only thing in her life that gave her structure, surety and a sense of purpose. Another epiphany. She’d found her calling in life professionally. No problem. But when it came to men, that was another matter completely.

  She went to the front door and rang the bell, a few seconds before Jeremy appeared beside her. In jeans and a white Oxford shirt with no jacket on this unseasonably warm, sunny Texas day, he called to her femininity far too much.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Ignoring him, she rang the bell again. Feeli
ng him eye her, she rang the bell once more and then leaned to peer through the narrow side window. No one seemed to be home.

  Without saying anything she walked to the driveway and then to the side of the house. In the back, she tested the garage door and found it unlocked. As she went inside, she found the inner door also had been left unlocked. Someone was either forgetful or distracted.

  As she began to turn the knob, Jeremy clamped his hand on her wrist.

  “Let me go first,” he said, close to her ear.

  “Just because we had sex doesn’t mean you need to protect me.” Knowing she’d responded rashly, she amended, “I’m the detective. You hired me for this.” She met his eyes from across her shoulder.

  He released her.

  She took out her gun and entered the house. Nothing stirred. In the silence, their footsteps resonated through the kitchen and living room. Emily lived on a small ranch house. The garage door was off the kitchen. Items cluttered the counters and dishes filled the sink. The light above the round table had been left on. Around the alcove of the kitchen, the living room wasn’t in much better shape. A throw was strewn on the floor. Drinking glasses and plates had been left forgotten.

  A mantel full of haphazardly arranged framed photos drew Adeline. She hadn’t seen a picture of Emily until now. Emily smiled from a picture of herself with what must be her mother. She had the same build as the woman she’d seen getting into the vehicle the night of the drop. Plus, she wore the same jacket.

  “That’s her,” Adeline said. “Look at the jacket.”

  “Yeah. It looks the same.”

  Jeremy moved on to the three bedrooms and bathroom down a single, straight hallway. A guest room was the neatest and most untouched. In the master bedroom, a ten-by-fourteen room with a small walk-in closet and a half bath, clothes lay in a pile on the floor and covered a wicker chair. Emily wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Adeline went through the lower dresser and he went through a taller one, finding nothing of significance to Jamie’s kidnapping.

  “No computer,” she said.

  “No desk,” Jeremy said.

  “If she doesn’t have a laptop, she must use her phone for everything.” Adeline stepped over more clothes on the floor of the walk-in closet.

  He went to the doorway and leaned against the door frame. Top shelves held more crumpled shirts and pants, but on the far right corner he spotted two boxes. Adeline must have seen them, too. Crouching, she lifted the first and put it down, opening the lid; sifting through tax documents, she then put that box aside. The second box held bank statements and used duplicate checkbooks. She looked at the most recent bank statements.

  “Anything unusual?” Jeremy asked from behind her.

  She glanced back and took in his folded arms and posture against the doorframe, as though the sight of him magnetized her.

  “Typical expenditures. Grocery store. Superstore. Gas. Consistent deposits.”

  “No one’s paying her to kidnap Jamie,” Jeremy said.

  “If she is being paid, she didn’t deposit it into her account.”

  “Smart? Or just no time?”

  “Exactly.” Adeline stood and followed him out of the bedroom and through the house. Back through the garage door, she headed toward the street.

  * * *

  He followed, seeing her stiff gait and having registered her equally stony face. He wasn’t good at talking about emotions, but he owed her something. Or maybe not owed. She needed him to talk to her.

  “I’m sorry about this morning,” he said. “I should have talked to you then.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.” Her aloofness made its way into her tone.

  “I don’t think you do. For Jamie’s sake, I need to be sure if I get involved with someone, and I’m not. It’s not that I don’t feel anything for you. I do.” He glanced down her sexy body and then realized he’d done so automatically. Together, they triggered uncontrollable chemistry. “I don’t think falling into a passionate affair would be healthy for him right now and I don’t want to hide anything from him.”

  She stopped walking and turned to him. “We’re good, Jeremy. I don’t trust you anyway. I don’t trust any man who has unfinished personal business in his past.”

  Fair enough. While he disliked her lack of trust in him, he did have unfinished business where Tess was concerned.

  “I think you’re reaching for a way to come to terms with Tess’s death,” Adeline added.

  “Reaching?” All he wanted was definitive answers surrounding her accident so he could put her death behind him and move on.

  “Do you feel guilty about anything?” she asked.

  “Why would I feel guilty?” Had her skepticism over whether Livia had anything to do with Tess’s accident made her say that?

  He watched her contemplate him awhile. “I don’t know. Maybe you never completely trusted Tess as a recovering alcoholic and you feel bad for not doing something to help her after you discovered she had fallen back into her addiction.”

  Why did that feel so accurate? He felt a jab right through his chest, as though what she said seemed so reasonable. Of course he wished he would have done more, and sometimes wondered if he hadn’t cared, at least not enough. He hadn’t considered that he’d need to vindicate Tess in some way, and that his quest to pin her death on Livia might give him that.

  “Let’s stick to finding Jamie.” He started walking toward the car again.

  She came into step beside him. “I must be right, then.”

  “You keep discounting the possibility that Livia could be responsible somehow.”

  “What if Livia is dead, Jeremy?”

  He refused to argue with her. She hadn’t believed from the beginning. She might have agreed with him on some occasions but she still wasn’t completely convinced.

  “Even if she did kill Tess, if she is dead, will you move on? Will it be enough?” she asked, stopping at the car.

  He wasn’t ready to give in to her assertion that he felt guilty just yet. “All I wanted to say is, I’m sorry for not talking to you about last night. I don’t want to hurt you.” And especially Jamie. He had to tread carefully with her.

  * * *

  According to what Adeline had found out, after Jeremy had fired Emily, she’d taken a job as a janitor for a microchip manufacturing company. She and Jeremy had met with Knox and together devised a plan to move the kidnapping investigation forward. Knox would continue to push his team in the search for Jamie and she and Jeremy would question Emily. She might feel less threatened if someone not wearing a law enforcement uniform approached her.

  Her boss was a short, balding man with a clear self-image problem. They’d introduced themselves and asked about Emily and he’d gone on a long diatribe over her betrayal.

  “Nobody walks out on me like that,” he’d said, as though he’d seek revenge when—or if—he ever saw the woman again. “I gave her a chance after she’d been fired from her last job and this is the way she thanks me.” He mentioned he’d heard Emily had called him a midget once. For a manager he sure was immature. He’d also sized Adeline up as though threatened by her, as though all women threatened his manliness or his ability to maintain control of everything and everyone.

  “You say she called in sick?” Adeline asked. Emily had done so on the day Jamie was taken.

  “Yes. She left me a message early. I haven’t seen her since. I can’t wait to fire her.”

  Emily had to know she no longer had a job, but then, if she received ransom money she must have believed she wouldn’t have to.

  “Was she friends with anyone here?”

  “She and my administrative assistant sometimes went to lunch together. They talked a lot during work. Too much, if you ask me.”

  He didn’t seem very nice to work for. �
�Can we have a word with her?”

  “Sure.” He pointed outside his office door. “She sits in that cubicle.”

  Adeline thanked him and went to the cubicle, where a thin woman, with long, dark, silk hair, typed on her keyboard. She looked over and up as they appeared in the opening.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m Adeline Winters and this is Jeremy Kincaid. We’re here to talk to you about Emily Stanton.”

  “You two are cops?” She swiveled on her chair with a smile, seemingly intrigued to be involved in a police questioning.

  “I’m a private investigator. We’re trying to locate Emily. When is the last time you saw or spoke with her?”

  The woman sobered, concern for her friend taking over. “The day before she called in sick. Nobody here has seen or heard from her since.”

  “Were the two of you close?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘close.’ We were coworkers. We didn’t do anything outside of work together.”

  “Did she have other friends? Did she ever mention them to you? What about family?”

  “Emily didn’t have any family. Her mom died when she was young and she didn’t know her dad. She talked about her neighbor. I don’t know if she had any other friends.”

  “Did she ever say anything you thought was unusual?” Adeline asked.

  The woman thought a moment. “No. ’Course, she didn’t work here long. She used to be a nanny. The guy fired her. She said he was a real jerk. He’s got lots of money and held his kid up on a pedestal.”

  Amused, Adeline glanced at Jeremy. Clearly Emily hadn’t mentioned who she’d worked for as a nanny. This woman didn’t recognize Jeremy’s name.

  “Why did he fire her?” Jeremy asked, playing along.

  “Emily said he accused her of taking his wife’s jewelry but she didn’t. His wife died and he was obsessed with the loss.”