Kelsey didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
“You’re right, you know. It takes time to build bridges back, but Ethan has. The relationships he has with his family are strong.” Gracie picked up the knife and started slicing the pepper again. “They’ll be fine.”
Kelsey walked to the kitchen sink and wet a paper towel, not that a single paper towel was really going to make a dent in the flour on Janie’s face. “What was Ethan’s wife like?”
“I didn’t meet Tyler until after she died, but according to Tyler she was your normal average suburban housewife, trying to make things work with a husband in a demanding field. Ethan was planning to get out of undercover work, but then Charlie and Amy were killed and he got out altogether.”
“Except Charlie wasn’t really killed, he was kidnapped.”
“I can’t even wrap my mind around that. Ethan must be going crazy.” Gracie poured a plastic bag of mushrooms onto the cutting board and began chopping.
“Keeping Charlie and Janie safe is the driving force behind his wanting to solve this case.” She was sure of it. Just like she was sure of one other thing. “And I think maybe he feels like solving the case might resolve some of the guilt he feels over Amy’s death.”
Gracie gestured in the air with the knife. “When someone dies by violence, it’s natural to want to make sense of it. And most of the time, violence can’t be explained by normal standards of behavior.”
“Is that the counselor speaking?” Kelsey smiled as she wiped at the flour on Janie’s face while she squirmed away. A futile gesture.
Gracie just smiled, her lake-blue eyes slightly sheepish. “Sorry. Can’t turn it off. Most of the time, the best you can do is find a way to make peace in your own heart.”
“I found that carrying on my parents’ work in my own way has helped me.”
“The work you do with the kids?” Gracie wasn’t looking at her, but at the mushrooms on her plate.
Kelsey nodded and lifted Janie into her arms, giving her a kiss on her sticky cheek. “Yes. It’s not for the money, that’s for sure. But if I can speak love into a kid’s life who has never heard it before, I figure it’s worth it. And maybe my parents would be proud.”
She shrugged, a little embarrassed. The work she did and the reasons she did it were close to her heart. “I hope Ethan finds what he’s looking for today. Maybe he can get some closure.”
“What is he looking for?”
“We did a little exercise that I use sometimes with kids who have a hard time remembering a traumatic event. Ethan remembered that Amy had a pen she used to record things. She had it that day. Whether she recorded anything on it … well, it’s a long shot.”
Nolan poked his head inside the door, coming closer when Janie pointed and squealed at him. “Hey, munchkin … tickle, tickle, tickle.”
Their private game sent Janie into fits of giggles again. Nolan lifted her into his arms. “There’s someone at the gate asking for Ethan. I didn’t confirm that he was staying here, but this guy says he’s Ethan’s old partner, Booth Bridges?”
Kelsey’s quick indrawn breath drew a sharp look from Nolan.
“Ethan suspects he might have something to do with the trafficking. And worse, with Charlie’s kidnapping and Amy’s death. How did he even know Ethan was here?”
The three of them looked at each other.
Nolan said it first: “We have to let him in.”
“Yes, if we don’t, he might get suspicious that we’re on to him and that could be worse.” Kelsey wished for Ethan. He would know what to do.
Gracie walked to a painting on the wall and pulled it aside, revealing a wall safe. She put her thumb over a small plate and the lock released. Pulling out a stun gun, she tossed it to Nolan. “Don’t let the baby get hold of that.”
The next thing out of the safe was a Glock handgun and the clip, which she slammed into place. She tucked the weapon in between her hipbone and the edge of her jeans, where she could easily reach it, and dropped her blouse over it.
She looked from Kelsey to Nolan. “What are you waiting for? He’s the FBI. Go let him in.”
Ethan punched in the code to unlock the door to the storage shed—the street number of the first house they’d lived in when they were children—and rolled up the door. Here were things collected over a lifetime. Baby cribs and rocking chairs, outdated artwork. And along one wall, the boxes from his old life, neatly labeled in his mother’s hand.
He rubbed sweaty palms down the side of his jeans. It shouldn’t be this hard to open a few boxes. It was just stuff.
A footstep echoed down the breezeway outside. He reached behind to the small of his back where he’d secreted his handgun.
“Ethan?”
He knew that voice. And it wasn’t the voice of danger, unless you counted the dozens of times he’d gotten grounded for the stuff his brothers got him into. He tucked his weapon back into the waistband of his jeans and dropped his shirt over it.
“In here, Tyler,” he called, as he walked deeper into the recesses of the storage unit, keeping an eye on the door.
The light from outside was blocked by two men, standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. His brothers. Tyler and Matt.
“So, Tyler roped you into coming along?”
“Well, Lara had me staining and weatherproofing the back deck, so it seemed like a good idea. What can we do?” Matt, in paint-stained jeans and an old fire department T-shirt, looked at the stack of boxes with a wary eye.
Ethan had been prepared to do this alone. Had even wanted to prove that he could do it alone. But seeing his brothers standing there, ready to lend support, warmed a place in him that he hadn’t known had grown cold.
No, that wasn’t fair. He’d let the relationships grow cold. His brothers hadn’t gone anywhere. Case in point, they were standing here ready to dig through the remains of a life with him.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I’m looking for a writing pen that had a micro-recorder in it. Amy used it to record little messages to herself. I’m hoping she recorded something the day Charlie went missing.”
Tyler looked at Matt.
Ethan dropped his hands. “Go ahead and say it out loud. It’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. And if by some miracle we find the pen, there’s no guarantee she recorded anything at all.”
Tyler grinned. “Hmm. You said it better than I could’ve. Where do you want to start?”
“Amy kept all the bills and paperwork on one end of the kitchen counter in a big pile. So there’s a possibility that it could be in one of the kitchen boxes, but Mom packed everything up, so—”
“It’s probably completely reorganized to be neat and orderly,” Matt finished his sentence for him.
“Exactly.”
Tyler pointed to a box. “This one says Odds & Ends—Kitchen. I’ll start with it.”
“I’m going to go with the idea that Mom rearranged and look in the one labeled Office.” Matt hefted a box off the top of a stack and laid it on a table that had seen better days.
Ethan opened the top of the box and took a step back. Even the scent of the items in the box smelled like home to him. He rubbed a hand over his mouth as he realized these boxes held memories. It wasn’t just kitchen tools, it was the lopsided potholders that Amy made when she decided to learn how to crochet.
A zippered bag held not just a scattered selection of cheap magnets, but the magnetic growth chart where they’d recorded Charlie’s first six months of doctor’s visits.
They weren’t things, they were memories. Of a wife he had loved, a child he had cherished. He didn’t want to forget them. He wanted to remember.
He took a deep, shaky breath.
It was harder to remember than it was to forget.
“Ethan.” Tension laced Matt’s voice. “I think I may have something.” From the bottom of the box he’d sorted through, he pulled another zippered bag, this one full of pens and pencils. He held it out to Ethan
.
Ethan scraped the kitchen utensils back into the box they’d come from and shoved the stack of photos and kitchen magnets to the side. He looked at each of his brothers and dumped the bag on the table, spreading them out with the flat of his hand.
“There.” In the middle of the stack sat the pen, a rather nondescript stainless steel writing utensil with a tiny black button on the side.
He picked it up. His wife had held this in her hand, clicked the pen open and closed while they’d had the last conversation they would ever have. He clicked it. Open. Closed.
Matt, the youngest and most impatient, nudged his shoulder. “Are you gonna play it or what?”
Tyler shoved Matt. “Give him some time. I thought marriage would make you more sensitive. Sheesh.”
“Me? You’re the one who thought we were coming on a fool’s errand.” As Matt realized what he’d said, his face fell. “Oh, man, Ethan—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
Ethan gave them a skeptical look and let out a kind of half-laugh-half-sigh. His brothers were just being brothers, and in a way it was reassuring, the fact that one part of his life hadn’t changed. His brothers would always poke at each other and they would always call a spade a spade.
And they would always be there for each other. Just like they were standing with him right now.
“It’s fine. I know it’s a long shot. It may just be the grocery list.” Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button.
Whirring nothingness.
ELEVEN
Well, it had been a good idea. Ethan’s thumb hovered over the button to turn it off, when he heard his wife’s voice, thick with tears. “If you had anything to do with this, Ethan will hunt you down.”
He heard his brothers gasp.
The next voice made his blood run cold. It was his partner, Bridges. “If you want to see Charlie again, bring ten thousand dollars to Ristorante Giorgio in Destin. Put the money in the stroller and walk in the front door of the restaurant at exactly 9:00 p.m.”
When Amy’s voice came again, he could hear the venom. “I called you to help me get in touch with Ethan. Because he trusts you. I trusted you. How could you do this to us?”
“Just be at the restaurant, Amy. And if, by some chance, you were to manage to get in touch with Ethan, keep your mouth shut. You tell Ethan, Charlie dies.”
“Nine p.m. Ristorante Giorgio in Destin. You better have my baby there.”
The phone clicked and all he heard was Amy, nearly hyperventilating before it ended abruptly. Ethan took a breath, his first since the playback began.
Then he heard his wife’s voice again. “Ethan, it’s Amy.” The bravado he’d heard when she’d been on the phone with Bridges was gone. “I’m about to go meet Bridges. I pray that this goes down the way he said it would. I didn’t tell you and I’m afraid I made the wrong choice. What if you could’ve saved our baby and I didn’t tell you?”
The tears were thick in her voice again. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t know what else to do. I could tell on the phone this afternoon that things are wrapping up in your case. I don’t want anything to keep you from coming home to us and I pray—oh God, I pray—that we’ll all be together soon.”
Ethan sank to the dusty floor, his head in his hands.
“Whatever happens, I love you.”
Matt sat down on the floor facing him, all brotherly teasing gone. “Ethan, I’m so sorry.”
“She knew it was Bridges. When she talked to me, she knew. And she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to distract me from closing the case.”
Tyler leaned against the table opposite him. “Are you going to be okay?”
With a sort of detached certainty, Ethan nodded. “Yeah, I think I am. It’s weird but I almost feel better. Not knowing what she was doing in Destin and how she knew to go there at that exact time was one of the things that drove me crazy.”
Tyler reached down and grasped Ethan’s hand to pull him up. “Come on. Let’s go back to the Cove. We can get Nolan to make a digital recording of that so we can get a voiceprint.”
Ethan paused on his way out the door. “Amy was right about one thing. I am going to hunt him down.”
Gracie served him tea in the parlor. “So nice of you to stop by to see Ethan, Agent Bridges. Please excuse my appearance. We don’t have any guests at the moment, so my friend Kelsey and I were having a fun day in the kitchen.”
Bridges shifted uncomfortably on one of the lady chairs. He was a big man, one who probably used to lift weights before letting his muscle turn to bulk. His eyes had deep circles underneath them. He’d been burning the midnight oil.
Kelsey tilted her head, studying him. “Did you drive over from the field office in Jacksonville today?”
Bridges’s eyes darted up to meet hers.
She smiled sweetly. “Of course we checked your credentials before we let you in.”
The agent cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Yes, I did drive over this morning. I couldn’t get Ethan on his cell phone, and since I had business in the area I thought I’d stop by.”
Gracie sipped her tea, taking her time before asking, “I’m curious. How did you know to come here?”
“Ethan told me about this place when it opened. When I couldn’t reach him I figured he might be here.”
Kelsey knew that wasn’t true but didn’t argue. “If you’d like to leave a message, we could tell Ethan. You said you tried his cell phone?”
Bridges didn’t answer, instead lifted the small cup, which looked fragile in his big hand. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been checking into Crimes Against Children like Ethan asked me to. He wondered if there was any connection between children being sold for profit and the trafficking ring that we were going after. I ran similarities in the two cases to see if I could get any hits.”
He caught the look that passed between Kelsey and Gracie because he took a sip of his tea and made a face. “I’ll just cut to the chase then. I got absolutely nothing. No hits, no nibbles of interest from the agents.”
Gracie stirred sugar into her own cup of tea, her flour-covered, jean-clad legs tucked underneath her like the lady of the manor. “It was certainly nice of you to come all the way from Jacksonville to tell Ethan that in person.”
He met her eyes over the top of his cup. “Like I said, I was gonna be in the area. And Ethan and I share a lot of history.”
Gracie nodded, blond curls bouncing. “Oh, I bet you do have some stories to tell. If I remember, you were there when Ethan’s wife died, weren’t you?”
Kelsey watched Gracie and realized why the police department kept her on retainer. She would be a real weapon in an interrogation, all cute curls and big, blue eyes. The wicked intelligence slipped under their defenses.
The day was disappearing fast, and the light came in the windows in long yellow strips. His eyes, dark already, looked black in the waning light. “I’ll never forget that night.”
“It must’ve been very traumatic for all of you. I know how much agents and officers who work in stressful situations depend on each other.” Gracie’s lake-blue eyes were guileless. Tension wound tightly in Kelsey as she waited for his response.
He didn’t answer, instead sliding a folder onto the coffee table. “The FBI in Mobile tracked the numbers on Ethan’s cell phone from the texts that led Ethan to the abandoned baby. They were from a throwaway phone. Virtually untraceable, except for one number registered to the woman in this folder.” He flipped it open to show a photograph of Viktoria Arsov with blond hair. “She’s a person of interest wanted by the FBI in a number of child trafficking cases. If you see her, do not approach. You can call me and I’ll get in touch with the proper authorities.”
Nolan stuck his head in the door. Kelsey could hear Janie whining and crying. “Kelsey, I’m sorry to interrupt, but she’s getting kind of fussy.”
Bridges’s head whipped around. “Wait, is that the—How did—I know you.” He looked at Kelsey, who had taken Janie
and stood in the door, then back at Nolan, his eyes narrowing in concentration.
Kelsey stepped in front of Nolan. “I’m a social worker for Emerald County and I have custody of this baby, the baby that Ethan found in the ocean.”
But Bridges was still looking over her shoulder at Nolan, who looked behind him and back again. “Oh, me? No, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m in school at ECJC, but I’m kinda good with kids, so when Kelsey put out the call for a temporary nanny, I answered.”
“Why don’t you go get started on her dinner and I’ll be there in just a minute? Agent Bridges is leaving.” Kelsey looked pointedly at Nolan.
“Sure thing, Kels. See you later, um, Agent. Nice meeting you.” He left, whistling a popular tune that had been all over the radio lately.
Janie squirmed in Kelsey’s arms and grabbed her hair. Gracie stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Kelsey, patting Janie on the back. “Agent Bridges, I’m sorry, it’s getting close to dinnertime. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
He looked at the stairs like he was planning to bolt up them and search the space. “No. Thanks. I’ll be going. Let Ethan know I came by, will you?”
“Of course, and we’ll be sure to give him the file you left for him.” Gracie closed the door behind him, stared at Kelsey and whispered, “That was weird.”
Nolan came around the corner. “For a second there, I thought he was gonna pull a gun on me. I could’ve taken him, though.” He grinned.
“What’s your professional opinion, Gracie?” Kelsey bounced Janie, trying to calm her down before she threw a full-blown fit.
Gracie looked out the window as the agent’s car cruised down the driveway. “That man is hiding something. And that is my professional opinion. The way he looked at the baby, I don’t think he has her best interests at heart.” She shivered.
Janie laid her head down on Kelsey’s shoulder. Kelsey looked down at her. “I guess I better get her fed before she goes to sleep for good.”
Nolan stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to call in some favors, look into Bridges’s recent cases.”
The cell phone in Gracie’s back pocket rang. “Hey, babe. You’ll never guess who came for a visit.” She listened for a second and hung up. “They’re pulling in now.”
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