Elle tamped down her curiosity. She wanted to know who Norah was, and what she meant to Noah, and why the name made the stranger on the other end sound so surprised. But now wasn’t the time.
“Why did you want to know if he was messing with you?” she asked instead.
“He asked me to track a car,” Spud replied. “You know about that?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Well, I found it. Helped that the car has a permanent tracker on it, and I was able to—” He cut himself off with a throat clear. “Never mind. You don’t need to know all that. My point is, I was able to get a clear visual of the car’s route. I pinged that off Noah’s location—he asks me to keep tabs, so don’t freak out—and I noticed something weird. The location where you are now? The car was there about twenty minutes ago. And it just rerouted to head back in that direction.”
Elle’s breath stuck in her throat. “He’s coming back?”
“So that answers my question about whether or not it’s a planned meeting.”
“Definitely not.”
“Damn.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Pulled the U-turn three minutes ago,” Spud said. “So if he’s going the speed limit…”
“Seventeen minutes,” Elle filled in.
“And I’d be willing to bet that he’s putting the pedal to the floor whenever he can.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell Noah right away.” Her hand was already on the unlock button.
“Wait!” Spud almost yelled.
Elle paused. “What?”
“Tell that son-of-a-you-know-what to call me when you guys are safe and sound.”
“I will,” she promised.
Then she tapped the phone off, stuffed it into her shorts pocket and clambered out of the car. In the back of her mind, she knew she should be exercising caution. But her fear of the man chasing them overruled it. He’d already killed Dez. He’d kill Noah, too, if he caught up to them. And God only knew what his plans for Elle herself were. So she ran up the driveway, thumped over the front porch and rushed through the shattered door and into the house. Then froze.
The scene in front of her was macabre.
Crimson darkened the cream-colored area rug in the living room. A man’s leg jutted out from behind a brown leather sofa. Blood spatter dotted the wall between the piece of furniture and the partially hidden body.
Oh, God.
Sickness swirled in Elle’s stomach, and she turned away in an attempt to stop it from rising up. Her spin brought her sight in line with something else. An enormous desk, a half dozen wall-mounted computer screens, and reams and reams of printed paper and magazines and cut-out articles. Pens covered every surface. And Noah was there, too. He stood between an oversized, well-worn office chair and the desk. In his fingers, he held a single, partially crumpled piece of computer paper. His eyes were on Elle. His expression was dark, and for no good reason that made her feel worse than the murdered man on the floor.
“What?” she breathed, her intention to break the news of the imminent arrival of an unwanted guest completely swept to the wayside. “What’s wrong?”
“You told me this wasn’t a custody issue,” he said.
Elle’s heart dropped impossibly low. “It’s not.” Her eyes flicked to the paper in his hand—she could just see an official-looking letterhead—and she swallowed nervously. “What’s that?”
“A photocopy of a birth certificate. Do you want to see it?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Her name is Kaitlyn Marie Charger.”
“I know that.”
“A coincidental last name, Elle?” he asked, his tone suggesting he knew it was anything but.
“No,” she admitted.
She could tell he was waiting for an explanation. A denial of Katie’s parentage. But the words stuck in her throat. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t defend herself. She wanted to think it was because she didn’t owe Noah—or anyone—an explanation. But she knew that wasn’t the truth. Maybe it was shame, for what she’d let herself endure for so many years. Maybe it was that he knew she’d broken laws and done bad things in the name of the greater good. Either way, she stood still, her mouth shut, her voice silent.
Speak, she ordered herself. Tell him that it’s not what he thinks.
But as her tongue refused to cooperate, the vaguest, farthest-away rumble of an engine carried through the air. And the reason for her sudden burst into the room came back.
“Spud called,” she gasped, finally finding something she was capable of saying aloud. “The car you had him track is on its way here.”
Noah let out a curse, turned and dropped the partially crumpled birth certificate onto the crowded desk, then grabbed a file off the desk before he spun back.
“Let’s go,” he said, his tone urgent. “This is chock-full of info that should help us get another step closer to your kid, and the last thing we need is to lose what little ground we’ve gained.”
Elle was a little surprised when he followed the statement with an offer of his hand. Hadn’t she just given him every reason to retract any extra show of kindness or familiarity? But she wasn’t going to question it too hard. She slid her fingers into his, and together, they bolted back out the way they’d come in.
CHAPTER 10
Trey Charger was Katie’s father.
Noah knew he didn’t have time to dwell on that particular reality. He didn’t have time to think about the fact that Elle hadn’t been honest about there being a custody issue. He sure as hell didn’t have time to think about which thing bothered him most—the custody, the parentage or the fact that she’d out-and-out lied. Yet as they bounced down the steps, tore across the dirt driveway, then jumped back into the car, his thoughts refused to still. Instead, they ground along with the roar of the engine. They rumbled with the tires. The crunched like the gravel-marked path under the car.
Noah could understand the why of her end of it. Really. After all, he’d flat-out told her he didn’t do custody-related cases. On top of that, Trey Charger wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who’d earn a father-of-the-year medal. But why did it make his jaw clench hard enough to ache? Why couldn’t he shake the sensation that he’d been betrayed? It was beyond stupid. Elle was a stranger. A client.
A stranger and client who you kissed.
That was true. A spontaneous move, and maybe a bit ill-advised. If he was being honest, though, it was also a move he’d been craving since the second he spied her. He’d immediately noticed her beauty. Been unable to ignore it, really, in spite of the situation. But did a kiss and that magnetic attraction really justify the all-over disappointment he felt at the revelation? Did it explain why he felt like that birth certificate was a personal affront? Noah somehow doubted it.
He hit the gas pedal hard, willing the bumps and thumps to drive away the churning of his mind, but it was Elle’s voice—hesitant and soft—that finally pulled him from the anger-tinged musings.
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered.
“It matters to me.”
He swiveled a quick look her way. Her blue eyes were on him, her expression sincere. It made him feel that much worse, and he exhaled a sigh.
“Which part wasn’t a lie?” he asked.
“You didn’t ask me if Trey was her father,” she replied.
“Kind of what I meant when I asked about custody.”
“Look… I know it’s a fine line, but there’s a difference.”
“Explain it.”
She didn’t say anything right away, and he glanced in her direction again. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead, her gaze was on her hands, and he could see that tears had started to flow.
Dammit.
Even factoring in their time c
onstraints, he couldn’t let her cry. He couldn’t be the source of her sadness. So he slammed—too roughly, probably—on the brakes. The car jerked to an immediate halt, and Elle bounced against her seatbelt, but she didn’t lift her eyes. Guiltily, Noah reached a hand out to clasp hers. She let him take it. When he squeezed, though, she didn’t tighten her fingers back around his in the way he would’ve liked.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine, Elle.”
“I know you might classify it as a lie of omission, but that’s only because you don’t understand.”
“I want to understand,” he said gently. “But only if you want to tell me.”
Her breath hitched like she was holding in a sob. “Trey might be Katie’s biological father, but he has no right to claim that he’s any kind of parent. He’s the kind of man who locks a little girl in the basement and tells her she can fight her way out because it will build character. Or who will stuff her into a closet, so she can listen while he works out the finer details of how to violently end a man’s life. Who thinks his daughter is a bargaining chip, and who doesn’t think twice about selling her. Literally. Selling her for some kind of payoff. He’s the kind of man that will force a woman who’s barely more than a girl herself to get married.” Her eyes came up, and they were full of pain. “I don’t know if you would call that a custody issue, but I sure as hell don’t.”
A wave a revulsion coursed through Noah, and his reply was roughened by it. “I call that a police issue.”
Elle shook her head, and her reply was small and sad. “You say that because you don’t know Trey. What he’s capable of. Who he’s connected to. The stuff I just mentioned… It’s only the tip of one enormous iceberg for him. How do you think he managed to get away with murder and then thrive afterward? And on top of that—” She cut herself off and swallowed, then spoke again in a way that made Noah think she’d changed her mind about what she’d been planning on saying. “On top of that…some things are better not repeated aloud.”
He waited another second to see if she’d add anything else. When she didn’t, he nodded his acceptance of the partial explanation. He wanted to know more. Not because he liked to hear about her suffering. He hated it. He hated the man he’d never met, too, and it made him sick to think that a kid had been treated that way. But he wanted to know it all, so that he could offer comfort for every bit of it. Except he could tell that it hurt her to talk about the finer details, and he suspected more time and a different environment would be necessary for her to share everything.
Not to mention getting her kid back.
Realizing that was the thing he needed to do before any of the rest of it—and that he was wasting time on self-centered thoughts rather than propelling them forward in their search—he cleared his throat and answered her in an emotion-tinged voice. “Okay, sweetheart. Let’s get Katie back, then let’s find a way to keep her as far away from Trey Charger as humanly possible.”
She shot him one of the most grateful looks he’d ever seen, and his heart tightened, then expanded so hard that he had to bring a hand to his chest to give his breastplate a rub. As he put the car back into Drive, he wondered how he’d ever considered not helping her. What would’ve happened to her if he hadn’t? His mind strayed to Dez, and to the dead man—a guy known none too fondly as Spider—back at the house they’d just left. He’d barely processed the former, and the latter had been shoved to the back of his mind for later. Even with the compartmentalization, the loss of life saddened him. But the idea that the same could’ve happened to the woman sitting in the passenger seat…that filled him with an entirely unreasonable sorrow.
He stared out the window, his throat burning. He felt like he should say something more. Tell her a bit about what he’d seen on Spider’s computer, and what was in the file that he’d tossed onto the back seat. Hell. He could just tell her where they were headed. Except he didn’t trust himself to speak. Which was why he was almost glad when a flash in the distance caught his attention.
He held still, tipped his head and listened. And sure enough, the engine noise was far too close for comfort. It made him realize that if he kept going straight, they’d likely encounter the man who was hunting Elle. In fact, if they hadn’t stopped for the last two minutes, the run-in would’ve been inevitable. At least now they had a chance to get away.
Noah cast a look back and forth. They couldn’t go back. The couldn’t go forward. So they had only one choice left.
“Hang on tight,” he growled.
Then he spun the steering wheel and drove the car over the shoulder and straight into the head-high grass on the side of the road.
* * *
Elle clutched tightly to the seatbelt with her right hand, and with her left, she held on to the seat with a death grip. The car was sleek. Well crafted. And nowhere near designed for the off-road trek it was currently undertaking. The wheels bounced like crazy. Every bump made the undercarriage shudder.
She wanted to close her eyes to block out the unreasonable slap of tall grass against the windshield. But she forced herself to keep looking. She was afraid that if she didn’t, she’d never know what foreign object they slammed into right before they died. But after a minute—that felt like ten—the wildly tall, crazily thick grass gave way to a few thinner patches. Then a few more. Then visibility improved, and Elle could see that they’d made their way across a large patch of farmland and were now headed back toward the road. More specifically, it looked like they were about to jump onto the highway.
Elle finally let herself breathe. “Do you think we avoided him?”
“For now.”
There was more than a hint of grimness in Noah’s two-word reply, and Elle wanted to shiver. She fought it, though, and turned her thoughts to Katie. She hated that the hours were starting to feel like days, and even more than that, she hated the sinking feeling that they were getting farther away instead of closer. Her eyes stung, and she willed herself not to cry. The tears had come more times today than they had for the last six years altogether. It made her wonder if she was truly as strong as she’d believed. How could she be, if the second Trey was back in her life, she fell apart?
Her hands tried to tighten into fists, and she forcibly made them stay relaxed. She’d bested the cruel man once before, and she’d do it again.
Then—as if he could sense her mounting need to act—Noah reached into the back seat. And without looking, he retrieved the folder that sat on the leather, then held it out.
“Here,” he said. “Have a look through the first three pages.”
Elle took the file from his hand and opened it. On top, there was a picture of Dez. A mugshot, to be more accurate. Her heart squeezed with sadness, and she made herself flip to the next page. It was the photocopied and enlarged driver’s license of a different man.
“Klause, Henry James,” read the words beside his picture.
He was gray haired, and craggy-looking—probably old enough to be her grandfather—but with a ring through one of his eyebrows, and a tattoo peeking out from under his T-shirt sleeve that lent him a little bit more of punk rock vibe than any senior citizen she’d ever met. Elle stared at the photo for a few seconds, then moved on. The third sheet was another mug shot, this one for a man named Beldon Shields. He appeared to have an affinity for breaking and entering.
“Aside from Dez,” she said, “should these mean something to me?”
Noah shook his head. “Not to you. But to me they do. The second dude there goes by the name King Henry, and he’s a two-bit crook who does some retrieval on the side.”
“Another bounty hunter?”
“Sort of. I wouldn’t put him in the same category as me, or even as Dez. King Henry is more of an enforcer. Collections. Watched too many gangster movies as a kid and likes to break fingers.”
“And this other guy? Is he
the same?”
“Yeah. He’s not from around here, though. Somewhere back East. The only reason I know who he is at all is that he did an interview on some news piece a few years back. Ticked off a lot of people in the business.”
Elle flipped through the sheets again. “You think these will help us find Katie somehow?”
“Not at all,” he replied.
She wasn’t she sure she’d heard right. “What?”
“Look at the fourth page.”
Frowning, she did as he’d suggested. It was an outgoing email, the same message sent to two people. The language was nonsensical, though. Sentences joined together that seemed utterly unconnected. Almost gibberish. The replies were there, too. Each only a single word. Aborted. After another second of rereading, Elle gave up.
“I don’t understand,” she said, looking back up at Noah.
“It’s coded,” he told her. “Did I mention that the man who owned that house back there was named Spider?”
She tried not to picture the too-still leg and all the blood, and she made herself answer in as smooth a voice as she could manage. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Not even sure what his real name is. Was, I mean.” He paused, strummed a thumb on the wheel like he was still processing the other man’s death, then sighed and went on. “He earned the nickname because of his affinity for creating webs of connection between people and things. Based on that email there, I’d say the three men—Dez, the King and Beldon—were each other’s competition. Spider must’ve figured out that it wasn’t going to go well, and he warned them. The King and Beldon heeded the warning.”
Elle glanced down at the four sheets of paper again. “I don’t understand why you’re showing me—”
She cut herself off as she clued in; Noah wanted her to know that no one else was going to die on her behalf. Not based on hunting her down, anyway. Her heart expanded with appreciation. But then sank again right away.
“Two people are still dead,” she said.
Noah’s hand came out to give her elbow a quick, reassuring squeeze. “You need to remember that it’s not your fault.”
Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2021 Page 79