Hidden Witness

by Beverly Long

  He saw the man. Catalogued his dirty blue jeans and dark sweatshirt and the greasy hair that hung to his shoulders.

  Saw all that but what Chase focused on was the knife that the man held. It had a shiny six-inch blade and was raised and pointed.

  At Raney.

  Still in her pajamas, she had her back pressed up against the sink. Her face was pale and her eyes were big.

  The man leaped toward her. Chase pulled his gun but knew that he was going to be too late.

  Chapter Four

  Raney twisted, brought a knee up, connected with something and used every bit of strength in her arms to push the man backward.

  It was enough to buy a few seconds and give Chase a chance to leap across the space that separated them. She saw the knife go flying and within moments, Chase had the man on the ground, his knee in his chest and his gun pointed at his head.

  He turned to look at her. “Are you hurt?” he asked. His eyes were dark, flashing with anger.

  She managed to shake her head.

  Chase looked down at the man. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice hard.

  The man squinted his eyes. “Get off me,” he said. “You’re heavy.”

  Raney took a closer look at the man. He’d surprised the heck out of her. She’d just gotten a drink of water when she’d heard a noise behind her. She’d turned, seen the man and the still-open back door, and realized that she was in a world of trouble.

  Chase had walked in just in the nick of time.

  Chase used the palm of one hand to knock the man’s head back against the dirty kitchen linoleum. “Start talking.”

  “You need to get out of here,” the man said. “You need to get out of my house right now.”

  Raney saw the change in Chase’s eyes and realized that he’d figured something out. Good, because she didn’t have a clue what was going on.

  Chase let up on some of the pressure on the man’s chest but he didn’t let him get up. “Lloyd?” he asked.

  “How do you know my name?” the man asked.

  “I’m Chase. Chase Hollister.”

  “I know you,” the man said. He smiled.

  Chase looked up at Raney. “This is Lloyd Doogan. He’s my stepfather’s biological son.”

  “So you’re sort of related?”

  “I don’t generally think of it that way.” He looked back down at the man. “Lloyd, I’m going to let you get up. I’m not giving you back your knife. You need to sit, so that we can have a conversation.”

  Chase was speaking deliberately and didn’t move until the man nodded his understanding.

  Lloyd got up and sat. He looked at Raney. “Who are you?”

  “Her name is Raney,” Chase said, jumping in. “My wife.”

  Lloyd seemed to consider this. “I thought you were one of those teenagers from town. The ones who are always causing trouble.”

  Teenager. Granted, she wasn’t dressed for success in her shorts and tank top, but she surely didn’t look sixteen. Chase turned his head but not before she caught a glimpse of a smile.

  “Hey!” she challenged.

  “I think it’s a compliment,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. He turned back to Lloyd. “This house never belonged to Brick. He was just living here after my mom died. This house doesn’t belong to you now. It belongs to my brothers and me.”

  Lloyd didn’t answer. But he was frowning.

  “Do you understand, Lloyd?” Chase pushed.

  “He told me I could live here,” Lloyd said. “A couple years ago. Said he bought me a bed and everything. But then he got mad about something, I don’t even know what. All I know is that he stopped talking to me, told me I couldn’t come here no more. That ain’t no way to treat a son.”

  Chase didn’t say anything.

  “I hated him. I really did,” Lloyd added.

  “I imagine so,” Chase said quietly.

  Even Raney was tracking now. They might not be blood but these two men shared something.

  Chase looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with her. “Lloyd,” he said, his eyes still locked on her. “I need to talk to Raney. I need you to stay in your chair.”

  Chase pulled her to the side, keeping her back to Lloyd, which allowed him to keep his eyes on his stepbrother.

  “I don’t know Lloyd well,” he whispered. “But I’m sure he really did think you were trespassing in his house. Now, that didn’t give him a right to go at you with a knife,” Chase said, his tone hard, “and if he’d managed to hurt you, we’d be having a very different conversation.” He paused, looking back at Lloyd, then at her again. “We have a choice to make. We can call the police or we can pretend this never happened.”

  Calling the police would attract attention to them, which was what they didn’t want to do. Plus, Chase would likely be putting his stepbrother in jail. By the looks of him, she thought it might be possible that the man wouldn’t have the resources to post bail.

  “I’m not hurt,” she said. “No harm done, right? Although we may want to make sure that we confiscate his key to the back door,” she said, nodding at the silver key on the floor near Lloyd’s feet. “Let him go,” she added.

  “You’re sure?” Chase asked, his eyes searching her face.

  She nodded.

  “Thank you,” Chase said simply.

  He moved around her and sat down across from his stepbrother. “Lloyd, do you understand that I could call the police? That you would be the one in trouble because we belong here?”

  Lloyd nodded.

  “Do you understand that you can’t come back to this house?”

  Lloyd nodded again.

  “I need to hear you say it,” Chase prodded.

  “I won’t come back,” Lloyd said. He shifted his gaze to Raney. “I’m sorry, ma’am, if I scared you.”

  Ma’am? She liked it better when he thought she was a teenager. “Raney,” she corrected.

  Chase picked up the key. “Lloyd, is this your only key to the house?”

  “Yes. He never knew I had it,” Lloyd said. “I sneaked into the house one day about a year ago and took it off his dresser.”

  She saw Chase swallow hard. “Lloyd, I’m not going to call the police. I’m going to give you back your knife and you’re going to leave the property and you’re not coming back. And if you happen to see Raney again, you’re going to treat her nicely, right?” Chase picked up the knife and laid it on the table, near enough for Lloyd to reach. He was watching the man closely and Raney was confident that he was still conflicted about letting him go.

  “Goodbye, Lloyd,” she said, hoping to give the man a hint.

  Lloyd stood and picked up his knife. He kept the blade down. “Bye, ma’am.” He didn’t say anything to Chase. Just walked out the back door.

  She and Chase went to the door. Lloyd had an old motorcycle. He got on, started it and left without giving them another look. From the back of the house, they couldn’t see him after he rounded the corner but they could hear the acceleration as he turned out of the lane and headed down the highway. Then the noise faded.

  The kitchen was very quiet.

  “Did you know him as a boy?” she asked.

  “I met him once,” he said, not looking at her. “He lived with his mother. Brick didn’t have anything to do with him. I’m not sure whether that was his choice or maybe his ex-wife had told him to stay away. The one time he did come around, he and Brick had a big fight. I remember my mom yelling at Brick, telling him that Lloyd didn’t understand whatever Brick was trying to tell him.”

  “Does he live nearby?”

  Chase shrugged. “I don’t know.” He turned, walked over to the counter, grabbed a towel from a drawer and walked back down the hallway. “I’ll do some research on him, figure out where he lives and if he works. He won’t surprise us again.”

  “I’m not worried,” Raney said, following him.

  Chase looked over his shoulder. “Maybe I should be. You were pretty qu
ick with that knee. And you had good aim.”

  She shrugged. “You weren’t so bad yourself.” She looked past Chase, at the floor. “Was that coffee?” she asked, trying hard not to whine.

  Chase picked up the two cups that he’d dropped. All the liquid had spilled out onto the floor. Some of it had seeped toward the bakery sack. He picked it up and opened it. “The ones on top still look fine,” he said, holding out the sack.

  She reached for one of the doughnuts and took a big bite. “I need coffee,” she said.

  “Put some different clothes on,” he said. “We’ll have breakfast in town.”

  * * *

  CHASE HOPED TO hell that he’d done the right thing in letting Lloyd go. The man truly seemed to think he had a right to be in the house. And he probably had no idea that he was real lucky to still be walking and talking because Chase had been this close to wringing his neck once he’d had him subdued on the floor. All he’d been able to think about was how close the man had gotten to harming Raney.

  At first, he’d given him the chance to talk because he’d wanted to know if somehow, someway, Harry Malone had managed to find them and send another goon after Raney.

  Then the pieces of the puzzle had started to fit together. And when Lloyd had admitted to hating Brick, his head had started to roar. No doubt Lloyd had suffered at the man’s hand, too.

  He recalled his mother saying something after that one time Lloyd had been in their house, that it was a shame to be a grown man with the smarts of an eighth grader. Chase had been close to finishing high school at the time and remembered that even knowing the man had some limitations, he’d been damn jealous of him because at least he wasn’t still living with Brick Doogan.

  He was rubbing his injured thigh muscle when he heard Raney’s footsteps on the stairs. He moved his hand quickly. His leg had taken the brunt of it when he’d tackled Lloyd and it was letting him know that it didn’t appreciate it.

  He looked up. She was wearing a tan-and-turquoise skirt and a sleeveless turquoise shirt. It brought out the color of her eyes. She was a beautiful woman and pretty damn brave, too. He’d known that at some level—after all, she’d managed to escape from a madman. And she’d survived another attempt on her life. But this morning, seeing her in action, seeing her willingness to fight back, had made him realize it in spades.

  While she’d been upstairs, he’d sent a text to Dawson, asking him to find out everything there was to know about Lloyd Doogan. He figured he’d hear something by late afternoon.

  They got in his SUV and drove the short distance into town. He took the one empty parking space that was in front of the Wright Here, Wright Now Café. Today the street was bustling with activity. People walking to their cars, into shops, chatting on the corners. There were no traffic lights, just a series of four-way-stop signs at the end of each block. It would have been a traffic nightmare in a larger city but here it was manageable.

  Near the café, there was a table that hadn’t been there last night. Behind it were two teenage girls in cheerleading outfits waving pom-poms. The table was covered with candy bars with a big sign indicating they were two dollars a bar. He saw that Raney was staring at it. No one walked past without stopping and buying a candy bar. She opened her purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

  “You don’t have to buy anything,” he said.

  “Are you crazy? That’s chocolate.”

  When they got up to the table, he saw that it was actually chocolate with caramel inside. Which must have been even better because she pulled out another one-dollar bill so that she could buy three of them. She handed one to Chase.

  “In Missouri, if you’re married, everything is owned fifty-fifty,” he said, just low enough that she could hear.

  “Oh, please. They weren’t thinking about chocolate when that law passed.”

  Chase was smiling when he opened the door. As they walked in, he recalled what Trish had said the night before. Summer works the day shift. He had absolutely no difficulty identifying the woman his brother had almost married. She was at the cash register, giving change back to a customer.

  “She looks so much like Trish,” Raney whispered.

  “She should. They’re twins.” They’d looked just alike in high school and there was still a great resemblance except that Summer wore her red hair shorter than Trish, just to her shoulders. He led Raney toward a booth and took the side that gave him a clear view of the door. Raney put her candy bars off to the side. He made a point of putting his in his pocket, as if he might be afraid that she’d steal it if he put it on the table.

  While they were waiting to order, an older woman passed by their booth. She was carrying two candy bars. She stopped at the table and looked at Raney. “Good morning. I noticed you bought some chocolate outside.”

  Raney nodded.

  The woman put the bars on the table. “Do take these, then. I can’t eat it. But we do like to support the schools, isn’t that right? You two have a good day.”

  “But...” Raney said.

  The woman kept walking. Either she didn’t hear Raney or she was ignoring her.

  Chase reached for the candy bars.

  Raney tapped his knuckles with her fork. “She was talking to me.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Fine.” She took one and pushed the other in his direction.

  Summer had finished up at the cash register and was walking toward their booth. She smiled at Raney and leaned in to give Chase a hug. “Trish told me you were back,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too,” he said. “This is my wife, Raney.”

  Summer extended her hand. “Welcome to Ravesville.”

  “Thank you,” Raney said. “It smells wonderful in here.”

  “We bake all our own breads and muffins. Would you like to start with some coffee?”

  “We’d both be eternally grateful,” Chase said. He motioned to the full restaurant. “You and Trish have quite a business here.”

  “We love it.”

  Chase heard the door open and Summer must have, as well. She turned to look and her posture stiffened. Chase looked a little closer. The man was in his late thirties, balding and wore a police uniform.

  “He looks familiar,” Chase said quietly.

  “That’s Gary Blake, my ex. Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Do you know him?” Raney asked, once Summer was out of hearing distance.

  Chase shook his head. “I’ve seen him before but it’s been a long time. He was a couple years older than me.”

  “So he’s the one that Summer married after your older brother enlisted?”

  “Yeah. Guess that didn’t work out so well for her,” he said. “Too bad. She was always a real nice person.” He picked up his menu. “What are you having?”

  Raney leaned across the table. “Is your brother married?”

  Chase shook his head. “Bray never married.”

  “Maybe you should call him. You know, tell him that you ran into Summer and she’s single.”

  Chase closed his menu. He was glad to see the sparkle back in Raney’s eyes. “Don’t tell me that you’re the matchmaking type.”

  Raney waved a hand. “I’m just saying that maybe he’d want to know.”

  “You’re just like my partner, Dawson. He’s happily married and I don’t think he’ll be content until the rest of the world is just like that.”

  “You sound like a cynic,” she whispered.

  “A realist. What we have is about as close to married as I plan on getting,” he added.

  Raney didn’t say anything else because Summer returned, with two big cups of steaming coffee. The woman’s cheeks were flushed. Chase had been watching her conversation with her ex. It hadn’t lasted more than thirty seconds.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “As good as ever,” she said cryptically. She pulled a pad from her smock pocket. “What can I bring you?” she ask
ed, clearly not wanting to share.

  Chase ordered pancakes, eggs and bacon. Raney went for the vegetarian omelet. Summer wrote it down and stepped to the next table to take their order, too.

  “What’s the plan for today?” Raney asked.

  “We probably need to take care of the basics,” Chase said, sipping his coffee. “Get some groceries, some cleaning products, new sheets for your bed, and paint.”

  “We can do that in Ravesville?”

  “First two can probably be had from the supermarket at the edge of town. Sheets and paint, no. We’ll have to drive to Hamerton, twenty miles west. It’s got a downtown that looks a lot like Ravesville but it sits close enough to the highway to have a mall and a couple big-box stores. Maybe has a couple thousand people.”

  Raney stared off into the distance. “When I lived in New York, there’d probably be a couple thousand people within a few blocks.”

  “Sounds horrific,” Chase said honestly.

  She shrugged. “You settled for something in the middle. St. Louis isn’t New York but it’s certainly not Ravesville.”

  He nodded. “I guess I did. It’s okay for now.”

  “Are you thinking of leaving?” she asked, as if she expected him to bolt for the door.

  He smiled. “Well, not in the middle of this assignment. But I like to keep my options open.”

  He’d gotten a few calls as recently as last month from headhunters who specialized in recruiting law enforcement. There had been a head of security position open for a large hotel in Chicago and his name had been recommended by someone. He’d listened to the voice mail from the recruiter but hadn’t returned the call. Maybe the next one he would. Anything was possible.

  She sipped her coffee. “You’re lucky to have options,” she said. “Many people don’t. I suppose that’s especially true in small towns like Ravesville.”

  He nodded.

  She was silent for several minutes. “I guess my best hope is Ravesville is so small that whoever is behind all the crazy things that have happened doesn’t know about it.”

  “You’re safe here. I guarantee it.”

  At that moment, Summer delivered their food. It looked amazing and he smiled when he heard Raney’s stomach growl.