Harlequin Intrigue January 2021 - Box Set 2 of 2

by Elle James, Nichole Severn

  “He’s—” Alanna choked on a sob, then took a deep breath to get control of herself. Focusing on all the mistakes she’d made, worrying about all the worst-case scenarios for her niece wasn’t going to help right now. She needed to focus on what had happened to turn Johnny into a kidnapper. Maybe that would help them figure out where he was now and how to stop him.

  “He was the first one the Altiers kidnapped,” Alanna said, trying to work it out in her mind at the same time she tried to explain to everyone else. “He was five years old. As we grew up, he remembered his family, but barely.”

  “He refused to talk to you once you came to Chicago. He…” Lines appeared between Kensie’s eyebrows as she squinted into the distance, into a memory. “He’s the one who shot at me and Colter at the cabin five years ago, isn’t he? That was him with the gun?”

  Alanna nodded, wishing she could make it untrue. Wishing she could have gotten through to Darcy enough to get her to admit that Johnny was involved.

  “He won’t hurt Elysia,” she blurted. Whatever Johnny had become, he’d never harm a child. Right now it felt like the only thing in her life she knew for certain.

  “Alanna,” Colter said, judgment and barely contained anger in his voice. “I know he was your big brother for a long time, but—”

  “I’m not trying to make excuses for him.” She cut Colter off, even though the thought of Johnny doing any of this made her chest hurt so bad she wanted to double over. He might not be her blood, but he was still her big brother. When she’d first been kidnapped, feeling terrified and alone, he had comforted her. He’d promised to always look out for her, look after her. He’d said they were brother and sister now and that would never change.

  Except if he’d kidnapped Elysia, it had changed. There was nothing random about it. While the idea of Darcy grabbing Alanna’s niece for revenge had seemed out of character, Alanna could imagine Johnny doing it far too easily.

  The truth was, everything between them had changed five years ago. From the moment she’d left that note and brought the scrutiny of the FBI, Johnny’s brotherly love had turned into confusion and then hate. When Kensie and Colter had tried to rescue her, Johnny had seen Darcy pick up a weapon, so he’d done the same. He hadn’t spoken to her since that moment when the Altiers had been arrested, and he’d barely spoken to the rest of their “siblings,” either.

  “Drew’s and Valerie’s parents won’t let them talk to any of us. Johnny won’t talk to me, so he’s only been in contact with Sydney since that day. Sydney said…”

  Alanna frowned, wishing she’d tried harder to reach out to Johnny, found a way to get through to him. But every phone call had gone unanswered. Even her emails and letters had never gotten a response. Over the years, she’d all but stopped trying, reducing her attempts to a few letters a year she knew he’d never read.

  If she hadn’t given up on him, would it have come to this?

  “What?” Kensie pushed, tears and anger mixing in her voice.

  Alanna tried to focus. “Sydney said Johnny moved back to Alaska. When his birth family came to get him, he was already twenty-three. Initially, he went home with them to Colorado, but apparently it never felt like home to him. The last time Sydney and I talked about Johnny, she said he barely spoke to his birth family anymore. I think they gave up trying to build a relationship with him, because he didn’t want one.”

  For Johnny, the Altiers had become his only family. When she’d left the note to tell the world she was still alive, she’d destroyed that family. From then on, he’d essentially been all alone.

  “So this kid—man, since he’s twenty-eight now—learned Julian had been killed. He was devastated, but saw it as his opportunity to help Darcy escape,” Peter said, thinking quickly. “He went to Oregon for the burial, but also to create a distraction and help Darcy get free. They traveled to Alaska together and presumably hatched a plan to kidnap kids along the way. Or maybe they planned the kidnappings before that, when he wrote to her in prison, as soon as they learned Darcy was granted furlough for the burial.”

  “I think the recent kidnappings were spur-of-the-moment,” Alanna said, remembering how Darcy had spoken of seeing her as a child and just knowing. She pictured those two kids in the cabin, so similar to the way she and Johnny had once looked. “I think Darcy saw a kid and felt a connection, felt like the child should have been hers. Then Johnny made it happen, like Julian used to do.”

  She flushed, realizing the one piece of information she’d held back five years ago suddenly mattered now. “Johnny knew how to do it because…” She squeezed her eyes shut, hating that her “brother” had been involved at all, wondering if he’d ever really had a chance to return to a normal life. Wishing she’d tried harder to help him.

  “Why?” Colter asked, stepping closer. His dog, Rebel, who’d been in war zones with him as a Combat Tracker Dog, stuck close to his side, knowing when Colter needed him.

  “When they kidnapped me and Johnny, they saw an opportunity and took it. But with all the other kids, they created opportunities. Darcy and Julian saw Sydney at a playground and they had Johnny lure her around a corner from where her parents were sitting, so they could grab her.”

  “What?” Kensie blurted, looking horrified but also distrustful, as if she wondered what else Alanna had kept from her. “You never told me that.”

  “It wasn’t in the police reports, either,” Tate said, his narrowed gaze on her.

  To his credit, Peter kept holding her hand. She was afraid to look at his expression as she tried to explain. “Johnny was only thirteen when that happened. Did he really have a choice? I didn’t want Johnny to get in trouble because he did what the people he’d called his parents since he was five told him to do. I didn’t want him to get charged.”

  “He was a minor,” Peter said softly. “He wouldn’t have been charged.” When she looked at him, her misery probably clear in her eyes, he asked, “That’s not all he did, is it? What about Valerie and Drew?”

  She could feel all eyes on her again, and she forced herself to look at Kensie and Colter. “For those abductions, Julian asked Johnny to distract the parents, pretend he needed help while Julian grabbed the kids.” She ducked her head as Kensie and Colter stared back at her, disappointment and disbelief all over their faces. “I didn’t know about it until after the fact,” she added as if it mattered.

  Ultimately, when she’d known anything related to kidnappings didn’t really matter, did it? It’s what Peter had been getting at the first time he’d met her. Yes, she’d been a kid, but she’d had fourteen long years when she could have spoken up, when she could have stopped this.

  “He was older then,” Tate said when she went quiet. “He would have been seventeen with Drew and twenty-one with Valerie. An adult.”

  “Yes,” Alanna admitted. “But he was a victim, too. They took him when he was five years old and raised him with love, but also raised him to be theirs. He reacted to it differently than the rest of us, maybe because when they kidnapped him, he didn’t have anyone to reassure him, like the rest of us did.” It had been Johnny who’d first gotten through to her, comforted her, made her feel safe when her whole world was turned upside down. He’d done the same for Sydney, Drew and Valerie.

  “None of this was ever his choice. Drew and Valerie, they didn’t remember their families, but the rest of us—we felt torn between these lives we sort of remembered and the life we had, the family who loved us.” She swiped more tears away, begging Kensie to understand. “I’m so sorry. If I’d ever thought—”

  “You were trying to protect someone you loved. I understand why you didn’t tell.” Kensie’s voice sounded understanding, but her hands were fisted, betrayal in the depths of her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alanna repeated, but it felt like she was talking into a void, like it was already far too late. She’d tried so hard to do right by ev
eryone and in the end, maybe she’d done right by no one.

  Peter squeezed her hand, but she didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see the judgment there, too.

  “So, what’s the dynamic now?” Tate asked when the silence dragged on too long. “Who’s in charge? Darcy? Now that she’s behind bars again, Johnny is after revenge, right?” His gaze skipped to Colter and Kensie and he grimaced as he looked back at her. “What does that mean for Elysia? You said he’d never hurt her, didn’t you? So what’s his endgame?”

  Alanna looked around the room, at four pairs of eyes all staring at her, waiting for an answer. It was an answer she didn’t have.

  * * *

  HE’D BEEN RIGHT from the beginning.

  Peter stared at Alanna, who was trying so hard to hold it together, and remembered the distrust and suspicion he’d felt when he’d realized who she was. Had that only been six days ago?

  Despite everything that had happened since then, he’d been right. He just hadn’t been right about Alanna.

  When this all started, he would have felt vindicated that his theory wasn’t illogical. He’d believed from the very beginning that the kidnapper could be someone who’d been kidnapped and raised by the Altiers, who’d bonded so closely to them, he was now willing to do whatever it took to protect them. It wasn’t unusual. Feigning loyalty to stay safe in the beginning could easily shift over time into a warped need to protect the very people who’d kidnapped you. But Alanna hadn’t been the one afflicted. Her “brother” had been.

  Alanna remembered Johnny as a vulnerable and confused boy, and it was messing with her perception. Peter saw the truth: Johnny was dangerous to them all.

  Peter should have felt sorry for him, but instead, it took him back to that war zone, covered in blood and sand and knowing everything he’d worked for as a reporter was over in an instant. He could feel his hand twitching, a strong desire to touch his bad ear. Ignoring it, he tried to focus on what he’d just learned and what it meant for the investigation.

  Johnny had been the one kidnapping kids all along. Regardless of Darcy’s involvement—which was identifying a kid she wanted—Johnny had actually taken action. What else was he capable of? And how far would he go to get back at Alanna for what he perceived as the ways she’d done him wrong?

  He squeezed Alanna’s hand tighter, not wanting her to get close enough to Johnny to ever find out.

  Across the room, Tate’s gaze dropped to their linked hands, then up to Peter’s face. Tate’s lips pursed slightly—assessing or judging, Peter couldn’t be sure. Right now, as much as he liked his partner and valued his opinion, Peter didn’t really care. His job was already in jeopardy. The fact that they’d called him at all, that they were letting him in on the investigation, probably had more to do with his proximity to Alanna than their belief in him as an officer.

  After the debacle at the cabin, the chief had told him to take a few days off. He’d only been at the station yesterday because the chief had called him in to give him a serious dressing-down. He was lucky she hadn’t immediately demanded he hand over his badge and gun. But he knew that wasn’t the end of it. She’d all but told him she was still deciding if he had a future on the force.

  He had a reckoning coming at the Desparre PD. He didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t afford the distraction of worrying what it meant for his future, for the very way he’d come to identify himself. Right now, his sole focus had to be on finding Alanna’s niece. And on keeping Alanna safe in the process.

  It was his job, but it had become more than that. Whatever his connection to Alanna meant, however long it was destined to last, he couldn’t let her down now. Not with so much of her happiness at stake. Because if her niece wasn’t okay, Alanna would never be okay again, either.

  “What do you think Johnny was trying to do?” he asked Alanna, tugging on her hand until she turned to face him, forcing her to shut out the stress of her family’s reactions and focus on what she knew about her so-called brother. “When he was grabbing those kids Darcy pointed out, are you sure that’s how it happened?”

  Alanna squinted at him questioningly, her free hand absently stroking Chance’s fur. Her loyal dog scooted closer, lending support, as she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you say that you decided to reach out with that note five years ago because Johnny had met someone, started talking about getting married? Is there any chance he was grabbing these kids for himself, that maybe Darcy being there just gave him the courage to do it? What about this woman he wanted to marry? Who was she?”

  Alanna shrugged. “I barely remember her. Darcy and Julian trusted Johnny more than the rest of us, gave him more freedom because they said he’d earned it. He met a woman when he was in town and thought it was love at first sight. Darcy and Julian were skeptical and warned him about keeping the family’s secrets, but he started dating her. Once the truth came out and our faces were all over the papers, she wanted nothing to do with him.”

  “So, you don’t think he’s trying to build his own family? That grabbing Elysia was just a way to do it and get revenge at the same time?” It might be the best option, the version of events that made it most likely Johnny would take care of Elysia rather than kill her.

  “No.” Alanna’s near-tears of a few minutes ago had turned into something hard and determined. “I think he wanted to re-create the family he had.”

  “But that was never going to happen,” Peter said.

  “No. He won’t talk to me. Drew’s and Valerie’s parents won’t let him talk to them—and from what I’ve heard in news reports, they’re always watched over. That just leaves Sydney. She talks to him every few months, but growing up, she was the one who remembered her birth family best. The Altiers grabbed her when she was six—older than the rest of us were when we were kidnapped. She’s the one that Darcy and Julian always worried would say something and put the ‘family’ in danger. Besides, she’s twenty-one now. She’s going to college. She has her own life. It’s pretty different from our isolated existence in Desparre. She told me more than once that she’d never come back here. I’m sure she said the same to Johnny.”

  “So, he decided to find new siblings?” Tate asked, getting Alanna back on track.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “And then you showed up,” Tate said. “You ruined his plan, so he snatched Elysia.”

  Peter frowned, wondering if his partner was right. Maybe it was enough for Johnny to know Alanna was suffering. But his gut told him otherwise. Everything Alanna had said about Johnny suggested he’d been deeply damaged by his experience growing up, that he had the psychology of someone who would misdirect all their anger and rage at the easiest available target. What good was rage like that if the target didn’t know who was hurting her?

  Peter looked at Colter and Kensie. “Did you see Johnny at the cabin? Did he leave any indication that it was him? Some kind of message for Alanna?”

  “Elysia was in her crib in the back room,” Colter said. “Kensie and I had fallen asleep by the fire. We woke up because Rebel was going wild, trying to get into the bedroom. She might technically be a senior dog, but she still thinks like she’s military. We ran back there and found it was locked. I was scared to kick the door in with Elysia in there, so I ran around outside. I found the window open.” His jaw tightened, his lips turning inward. “Our daughter was gone.”

  “You didn’t see anything? Not in the backyard or in the room? No note?” Tate pressed.

  “If we had, don’t you think we would have told you by now?” Colter snapped. He ran a hand through his dark blond hair, making it stick up. “Sorry. My daughter is five months old. We’ve just—” He choked on a sob, then finished, “I’m trying to hold it together here, but we have to find her.”

  Tate nodded, his expression saying he’d been in this room before with scared parents. He looked back at
Alanna, and Peter was suddenly glad of Tate’s extra years on the force, of his background as a police officer in a bigger city before he’d come to Desparre. “Are we waiting for a ransom note here, Alanna?”

  Alanna shook her head, frustration and exhaustion on her face. “I don’t know.” Then that frustration morphed into angry determination. “But I know who does. I want to talk to Darcy.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I don’t understand you at all,” Darcy said, staring at her from across the table inside the Desparre PD’s claustrophobic interrogation room.

  Tate and Peter had brought Alanna here, insisted that Darcy had to remain cuffed and then left them alone to talk. Of course, alone was a relative term. Alanna’s gaze darted to the camera mounted in the corner. Whatever was said in here, Peter and Tate were watching. She didn’t know who else from the department was with them.

  Darcy looked even worse than she had at the cabin. Her shoulders were slumped inward and the lines pulling at the edges of her mouth and eyes seemed even more pronounced.

  “I’m not sure I understand you, either,” Alanna said, clutching her hands tightly together underneath the table, trying to keep her tone even, keep the anger and blame out of her voice. Darcy knew her better than most people on the planet; it was unlikely she’d be fooled.

  “You let me go at the cabin,” Darcy said, real confusion in her eyes. “You stood in front of me, gave me an opportunity to escape.”

  Alanna tensed, resisted the urge to glance at the camera surely recording every word spoken in this room. That hadn’t been her reasoning at all, but she clamped her lips together, let Darcy continue. She’d rather fight an accomplice charge than risk angering Darcy, risk losing the chance to find out where Johnny had taken Elysia.

  “So, why did you bring police in the first place? Why did you turn us in all those years ago? It’s like you’re two different people, Alanna.” A humorless smile flitted across her face, before morphing into a scowl. “I should have realized it sooner, I guess. You’re torn between two worlds. I saw it over the years when you were growing up, this far off look you’d get on your face, like you were dreaming about the family you’d been born to, instead of the one you were meant to be a part of. I thought you’d grown out of it before you wrote that note. After all those years, we thought we could trust you.”