He climbed out and joined her on the other side. “That was noisy.”
She began to hurry up the sidewalk. “Good.”
Taking her arm, he stopped her. “Hold on there, Neytiri. We can’t go through the front door.”
Now he compared her to a brave fictional character? She found that rather endearing and felt a tickle spark in her abdomen despite his frustrating distance. Did he picture her beautiful and lithe, carrying a bow and moving acrobatically into danger? Right through the front door? Something she supposed Scarlett O’Hara would do?
Her frustration returned when she realized how easily he aroused her. Why couldn’t she shut off her reactions?
“Ever since you gave Vanessa back to her parents, you’ve been difficult. Snapping at me. Not saying much. I would think finding her alive would make you happy.”
Surprise and confusion moved across his eyes. “I am happy.”
What? “This is happy?” She swept her hand down his body.
Seeing where this topic was headed, he turned abruptly and strode onto the lawn toward the back of the house. She kept up beside him.
“You’ll never be satisfied,” she accused, talking her thoughts. As they reached the back patio and he went to work on the back garage door, she added, “No matter how many you save, they’ll never be enough.”
He sent a warning look back at her before entering the garage.
She followed him into the dark house. The new threat of discovery changed her focus. Before coming here, Penny had called Dane’s assistant and gotten chummy enough with her to find out her boss had a dinner meeting tonight and his wife was visiting family out of state.
The house was more of an estate, a big, modern structure with a cut roofline, beige stone accents and several arched, three-pane casement windows.
“What if he has security cameras?” Penny asked.
“I already checked for them. He only has an interior system, which I disabled remotely.”
He’d done all that from the car? “How did you do that?”
“I jammed the signal to keep them from reaching the control box.”
“Wow. You can hack, too?”
He didn’t respond as he found Dane’s office and searched in there for a while, including his computer, not the laptop Dane took to work every day. If he had anything to hide, he wouldn’t use his work computer. They searched for almost an hour, ending in the basement. They came up empty. No emails. No rope matching what had been found in Jax’s Park City house. No items that could be used in arson. No compulsive collections of damning information, like photos or details of Jax’s whereabouts.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kadin finally said.
He began climbing up the stairs from the basement and Penny followed.
They’d head back to her apartment, where she’d have to put up with his mood again. She wasn’t looking forward to that.
“If you don’t face what happened, you’ll never heal, Kadin.”
“Do we have to talk about that now?”
Before she had his baby would be preferable. “You get annoyed every time someone brings up your loss.”
“That’s because I don’t want to talk about it. You wouldn’t, either.” He reached the top of the stairs and emerged into a short hall.
Just then the sound of a door closing alerted them both.
Penny sucked in a startled breath and Kadin took her hand and pulled her back into the stairway. He peered out into the hall. The stair where they stood creaked.
Penny heard Dane put keys down and then he must have gone still with the sound.
Kadin put a finger to his lips, then pointed down the stairs. Penny stepped softly back down the staircase. At the bottom, they moved around the wall and waited.
She heard Dane coming down just before Kadin took her hand and tugged her through the lower level family room to a spare bedroom. Silence stretched on, Penny aware of every breath she took and the heavy pulse of her heart.
Kadin slid out a pistol and held it aimed up beside the door. When Dane didn’t appear, he moved his head for a quick bob out into the family room. Then, with the sound of the stairs creaking, he took her hand again and led her slowly into the family room.
Checking the stairway, Kadin led her with his gun raised up the stairs, pausing to point at one of the steps and then showing her to skip it. How had he known that was the one that had creaked?
In stealthy silence, they made it to the top of the stairs. Penny heard Dane doing something in the kitchen. They had to cross the living room to get to the garage.
Penny peeked out into the living room around Kadin. Dane had his back to them, removing items from the refrigerator.
Kadin took her hand again and crouched, moving to the back of a sofa with a long table with a piece of art and a lamp along the back. He looked over the back and crouched again, shaking his head at Penny. Dane must be facing the living room. Penny listened to him mix a drink and then move out of the kitchen.
She shot a glance at Kadin. Would Dane walk by them? What would they do if he saw them? She looked at Kadin’s gun. This could get bad.
The television went on and Dane sighed as he sat on a chair.
Great. How long would they be stuck here?
Several minutes passed before a ringing phone brought Dane to his feet. With a quick look, Kadin led Penny to the entry to the garage. Penny glanced back before going into the garage. Dane didn’t appear as she feared and they left the house, running around the side toward the street.
Once on the sidewalk, they slowed to a walk and Penny caught her breath. “That was close.”
“Yeah. You should have waited in the car.”
Did he think she’d slowed him down? “We were in there too long.”
He glanced at her, his surly self again.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said, still not finished with their earlier confrontation.
“Wrong about what?” he almost snapped, glancing behind them toward Dane’s house.
“That I wouldn’t want to talk about losing two people I loved more than any other on the planet. I would. Maybe not at first, but after a few months or a year, I’d start to get pretty tired of myself.”
“I’m not tired of myself.” His strides lengthened.
“No?” She pictured herself losing what he had lost and feeling miserable all the time. “I would be. I’d be sick of feeling depressed and alone and irritated every time someone tried to help out by offering their support.” She had to jog a few steps to keep up with him. “Look, I know it’s hard, but you need to talk about what happened, Kadin.”
He stopped at the car and turned on her. “Why? What would I say? My daughter is dead. There’s nothing anyone can do about that, and sorry doesn’t change anything.”
“That’s a good start,” she said softly.
“What?” He stomped around to the driver’s side.
She got into the car. “Saying that sorry doesn’t change anything,” she said. “You’re right—it doesn’t. It’s just a lame thing for people to say when there is nothing that can be said to ease the pain of loss.” Just as she said that she didn’t understand why she felt so compelled to help him. Only that the desire came from her heart. Maybe the impending day when he’d become the father of her living and breathing baby had something to do with that.
“They all mean well, though,” she added.
He just shook his head and Penny sensed he’d taken all he could.
“Just know I’m here if you ever want to talk about it. I won’t ask questions. I won’t say I’m sorry. I’ll just listen.”
His rigid face told her how hard he tried to control the firestorm inside him. She sat back and looked ahead, just then seeing that they were following Dane.
“He left?”
“About the time you said you’d start to get pretty tired of yourself.”
He’d just methodically gotten into the car and taken up a covert chase with her going on and on about his loss. She contemplated his rugged profile, thick black hair just messy enough, clean-shaven but strong-featured face, bright gray eyes reflecting light. She pictured him in an office somewhere, the leader of a corporation, and the image disintegrated into open space, a wild stream, mountains in the distance. But just as driven and smart as the corporate version. Maybe more so.
Passing a sign for Cottonwood Canyon, Penny wondered why Dane headed into the mountains. Where was he going? Shadows grew long and Kadin kept as much distance as he could on the winding highway.
When he slowed, she saw Dane turn onto a side road, this one unpaved. Dust billowed up and lowered visibility, but provided a trail for them to follow. Around a hairpin curve, they passed his car. He’d pulled off the side of the road.
“Did he see us?” she asked.
“Seems that way.” He drove farther up the road, reaching a driveway. Kadin turned there.
The mountain home with a barn and corral at the end of the driveway struck her as familiar. Had she seen this place before? Yes, Jax’s boarded-up house and barn. This did have a resemblance, only this one appeared in better shape. Slightly more maintained. And no boarded windows. As Kadin turned the car around, she noticed more details, and some differences between the two properties. Architecturally, this one leaned more toward Victorian, the roof having more angles and the windows less symmetrical.
“Something wrong?” Kadin asked.
“No. I just wish I knew where Dane was going.”
“That makes two of us.”
As they reached the pull-off where Dane had gone, Penny didn’t see him. Had he gone back down the mountain?
“We have company.”
Penny twisted and saw a black Jeep Wrangler come up behind them. Hoodie Man. Fading light and dust kept Penny from seeing him clearly, but she did see him move to lift a weapon.
“He has a gun!” she shouted.
Kadin reacted immediately. He stepped on the gas and drove wildly around the next turn just as a bullet hit the passenger-side mirror.
“He’s shooting at us!”
“Get down,” Kadin ordered, maneuvering into the next curve.
Penny bent forward and braced herself against the console and grabbed hold of the door handle. A rapid succession of bullets pinged the outside of the car. One shattered the rear window.
Penny made sure Kadin hadn’t been hit and then stole a quick look back. The driver reloaded.
“Take this.” Penny saw the pistol Kadin handed her. “It’s ready to fire.” She took it from him and saw him retrieve his second gun, driving one-handed into another dusty turn. They were almost to the highway.
Twisting, she stayed as low as she could and aimed through the rear window. She’d fired guns before, but not often and certainly not enough to give her confidence. She got lucky enough to get close, though. The driver had to duck and veer to throw her off.
He finished reloading and started firing back.
Penny crouched low on her seat. A bullet hit the windshield and a spiderweb of cracks spread. Kadin skidded into the last curve on the dirt road, giving him an angle to shoot.
Penny looked back and saw the driver of the Jeep hold his shoulder and slow down. She fired the last of her bullets as Kadin reached the highway and swung the car out into traffic. A car honked as it passed, missing them by about twenty feet. Another car approaching the other direction had to slam on their brakes but couldn’t stop in time. The car rear-ended them. Hard.
Penny felt the whiplash and could see little of what happened next as Kadin lost control and the car slid into a three-sixty and then rolled once. Disoriented, she blinked and shook her head and searched through the broken windows.
Kadin had already gotten out of the car. He yelled at the driver who’d rear-ended them to keep moving. Seeing his drawn gun, the driver of that car complied, squealing tires as he sped off.
Searching for the black Jeep, Penny spotted it still on the dirt road, door open and no sign of the driver. She opened the glove compartment and found two more clips there. Knowing Kadin, he probably had ammunition stored in many other places. She took one for him and got out of the passenger’s side. The car had stopped upright and facing the right direction but it was in the gentle ditch along the road. A few feet off the road, rocks rose a few hundred feet. They were lucky not to have hit that.
Crouching low, she didn’t hear Kadin firing anymore and, in the next instant, the Jeep driver fired back at him. Where was he firing from? She spotted movement on her side of the road. The gunman jogged in the trees, toward her.
Oh no. Was he coming after her?
She scrambled to the front of the car for cover and fired toward the man. He stopped his movement toward her and went behind a tree, peeking out to check Kadin’s position.
Using the hood of Kadin’s car, she aimed and fired, hitting the tree trunk and forcing the Jeep driver to duck.
As soon as he did, she stood up and threw the extra clip across the road. Kadin saw her. The clip dropped off the side of the road. Kadin pointed toward the other man with his gun.
She resumed her position over the hood and shot. Kadin retrieved the clip and reloaded his gun.
The Jeep driver fired, missing by far. He wasn’t a good shot.
Penny fired back as he tried to make his way to her. He made it to the rock face, taking shelter behind a jutting boulder.
Fear threatened to overtake her adrenaline. He had good cover from Kadin now. Kadin must realize that, because he tried to leave his tree and come back to her. The Jeep driver shot his gun each time he tried.
Penny waited until the Jeep driver left the boulder and ran for the car. A bullet hit the fender as she went down.
Looking across the street, she met Kadin’s intent face before hearing the other man shoot across the highway as he tried to reach her. Why was he coming after her? To use her to draw Kadin out and then kill them both?
She crawled to the rear of the car. Not hearing the man, she moved toward the other side of the car at the rear.
“Penny, no!” Kadin shouted.
Too late, she learned why. The Jeep driver had gone there, too, and now intercepted her. He aimed his gun at her. Up close, she saw that he wore a mask of a famous football quarterback. She wasn’t into football and only recognized the face. His shoulder wound had soaked his light blue sweatshirt with blood but hadn’t slowed him down much.
“Come here,” he said.
She crawled with the barrel of his pistol to her forehead.
“Stand up.”
When she did, he held her in front of him, a barrier between him and Kadin. He sidestepped up the road, toward the Jeep. Penny watched Kadin try to step out from the tree.
Her captor fired at him.
Kadin moved to the other side of the tree and fired back, then came out from behind the tree and spent a second more to aim. The next time he shot, he hit the Jeep driver, who grunted and stumbled back. Penny rammed her elbow into his sternum. He fell onto his rear, holding his cheek where the bullet had grazed him, looking up at her and then at Kadin, who strode toward him. He stood up and started to raise his gun.
Penny kicked his arm, and the gun went sailing. Watching that instead of him, Penny wasn’t ready for the blow the Jeep driver delivered to her head. She fell hard onto the gravelly side of the road. Her vision blurred and her head spun. She propped herself up with her hands, seeing the Jeep driver run past the rock outcrop and up into the trees.
Kadin fired several times, but when he reached her, he kneeled and grasped her shoulders, helping her sit upright.
“Are you okay?”
Holding her swimming head, she barely saw him clearly. Her head couldn’t take any more blows.
“Go after him,” she rasped, certain she’d almost been captured by Sara Wolfe’s killer.
“He’s gone and I’m out of bullets. Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
He looked up the highway. There was a line of three cars stopped. The first car moved forward, going slowly.
The driver looked dazed and frightened, an older man. He rolled his window down next to them.
“I called the police,” he said.
As Penny wondered how he’d managed to get reception, Kadin lifted her onto his lap. She rested her head on his shoulder, wishing she could do this all the time—without the danger.
* * *
Kadin wouldn’t let Penny up off the couch the next day. She reclined with her laptop and a glass of iced tea on the coffee table, the television playing a documentary about Yellowstone at a low volume. He’d picked out the program and Penny concentrated on keeping Mark calm and having a chat session with Jax on the next phase of the ad campaign. Her ex hadn’t mentioned anything about Dane, so she didn’t think he knew what had happened. He also behaved neutrally, very businesslike, professional. No personal feelings coming through or any mention of her taking rope fibers from his house. Well, she hadn’t; Kadin had. But she wasn’t going to enlighten him.
Is Dane in the office? she typed. They’d reached the end of their discussion.
No, why?
How are things between you?
He hasn’t spoken with me. Why do you ask?
Detective Cohen is looking into him.
Several minutes went by before Jax responded. Anything Dane says is probably a lie. Detective Cohen will have to catch him doing something wrong.
As in, kidnapping another girl? Has he gone anywhere lately?
Not that I know of.
Has he been at work all week?
Is this where I tell you to talk to my attorney?
Penny expected him to back off as soon as the topic veered off work.
A Wanted Man (Cold Case Detectives Book 1) Page 19