The abruptness of her tone took him by surprise, as did the chill suddenly creeping across her blue eyes like a quick frost covering a flower garden.
Why such a testy subject? he wondered. Had somebody in her past implied otherwise? The husband, maybe? No. She seemed to genuinely grieve for the man, whoever he might have been. Gage couldn’t imagine a woman as devoted to her children as Lisa Connors would have much patience with a husband who raised questions about her ability to care for them.
“I never said you didn’t,” he said mildly. He should have left it at that, but some streak of curiosity made him push the issue. “Still, I’m sure you must be worried about your daughters and their future if something should happen to you. Especially with their father gone.”
He immediately regretted the comment when the coolness in her eyes was replaced with fiery-hot fear.
“Of course I worry! Sometimes I can’t sleep for the worry eating me up inside. How could I not worry, when I saw my own mother die by inches in front of my eyes? I can’t bear the thought of putting my own girls through that.”
“Lisa…”
She went on as if she didn’t hear him. “I work hard to keep my diabetes under control, mostly for them. For Gaby and Anna. I exercise, I eat what I’m supposed to, I check my blood sugar obsessively. I won’t let it win, damn it. I’m a good mother. The incidental fact that I have diabetes has nothing to do with that. Nothing!”
Man, somebody sure did a number on her. Was her passionate response a result of her own father’s cruelty, he wondered, or something else? She had scars, deep ones.
With no motive other than comforting her, he instinctively reached for her hand. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to imply you’re not a good mother. I’m sorry I brought it up,” he murmured.
Her hand fluttered in his and her cheeks colored. She made an embarrassed sound. “It’s not your fault,” she said after a pause. “You just happened to push one of my buttons. The big red one that launches me on a full-fledged tirade. I’m sorry I went off like that.”
He recognized the emotion in her eyes for what it was—fear that she couldn’t protect the ones she loved. Since he knew all too well the raw guilt that came from failing in that department, he had nothing but sympathy for her.
“If it makes any difference, I’ve seen a lot of rotten parents in my years with the FBI and you definitely don’t qualify. From what little I’ve seen of them, your girls are smart and happy and well-adjusted. You must be doing something right.”
She gazed at him for a moment, her high color fading a little, then she gifted him with a radiant smile. “I think beneath that cranky exterior lives a very kind man, Mr. McKinnon.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
She laughed and squeezed his fingers. Her hand was a small, warm weight in his. Subtly, slowly, the mood between them slid into something else. Something glittery and bright and charged with tension.
Despite his best attempts at willpower, his gaze landed on her mouth, those sensual lips that gave him far too many ideas he knew he had no business entertaining. As he watched, her lips parted slightly and she sucked in a small breath, awareness blooming to life in her eyes.
He wasn’t conscious of leaning forward to kiss her until he was inches away from her mouth.
He couldn’t think about all the million reasons why kissing her was a lousy idea. Her girls, the secrets he sensed in her eyes, the fact that he didn’t need a complication like Lisa Connors in his life right now. None of that mattered. All he could focus on was stealing a taste of that soft, inviting mouth.
She watched him with wide-eyed shock but made no move to back away. Instead, her lips parted slightly and she breathed in a little sigh that sent heat sizzling through him.
His heart pounding, he crossed the last few inches between them, but before he could kiss her, the sharp, watchful part of his psyche that could never seem to go off alert heard footsteps on the wooden slats of the front porch. An instant later the melodious chime of the doorbell rang through the small house.
* * *
Allie swallowed hard as she watched firm control slip back over Gage’s features. He quickly eased back into his chair and she swallowed again, not sure if that thick lump in her throat was shock or regret.
He had almost kissed her!
Somehow she managed to force a quick breath into lungs that suddenly seemed oxygen starved.
Still, when she spoke, her voice sounded thin, ragged, like she’d just hiked to the top of Soldier Summit. “That’s probably Anna and Gaby back from the park. A…a neighbor girl took them. I told them to come here when they returned. I hope that’s all right with you. I can send them over to my house with Jessica, though. She’s the neighbor girl. She’s sixteen and a really great baby-sitter. The girls already love her.”
She snapped her jaws shut before she could spew out more inane chatter. How was she supposed to react, though? She had a perfect right to act a little disconcerted.
The man acted like a wounded grizzly bear most of the time who couldn’t stand having her around. But in the last half hour he’d shown her more kindness and compassion than she had received in a long time and then had complicated everything by nearly kissing her.
And she regretted fiercely that he hadn’t had the chance, she realized with chagrin.
“You don’t need to send them home. I’m going back to my room.” He didn’t look at her as he started to wheel away from the table.
What must he think of her? Did he know that her body had craved his kiss, that it was still humming in reaction to something that hadn’t even happened?
He probably figured she was some kind of desperate creature who made a habit of kissing anybody who showed her kindness.
She forced herself to swallow her embarrassment. “Did you want to lie down? After I answer the door, I can help you transfer from the wheelchair to the bed.”
“No. I can handle it on my own.”
His tone was so abrupt that she blinked at him. She didn’t know what to say to him and was almost grateful when the doorbell rang through the house again.
“I’d better get that,” she mumbled. Allie took her time heading for the door, desperate for a moment alone to absorb what had just happened.
Mr. Sexy FBI Man had nearly kissed her. Her insides shivered as she relived that stunning moment when he had lowered his mouth to within a heartbeat of hers.
Those long dark lashes had slid nearly closed, hiding the intensity of his gray eyes, and she could smell the leathery scent of his aftershave.
She paused in front of the door, one hand splayed across her still-racing heart.
What was worse? That Gage McKinnon had nearly kissed her? Or that she had wanted him to, with a hunger that terrified her?
She didn’t want to be so attracted to him. Working here was complicated enough without her entertaining silly fantasies about what it would have been like if he’d followed through on his intent.
Now wasn’t the time to think about this, though. Not with the girls back. Putting thoughts of that almost-kiss behind her, she pasted on a smile for her daughters’ sake and swung open the door.
To her shock, it wasn’t the girls after all. It was one of the men who had brought Gage home from the hospital. Agent Davis, she thought she remembered, and he was giving her a stunning smile that would have completely flustered her if her nerves weren’t already churning like a hive full of wet bumblebees.
“Hello,” he said cheerfully.
“I…come in. Gage didn’t say anything about expecting you.”
“That’s because he didn’t know I was coming. I had another errand to run up this way. Since he asked me to drop by some paperwork when I had the chance, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to check up on him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to have a visitor,” she said, not sure of any such thing. “He was just heading to his room.”
Wet hair, sexy mouth and all.
&nb
sp; “He’s getting around okay, then?”
“Relatively. It’s not easy for him to squeeze through doorways and around furniture, but he’s beginning to manage.”
She led him back to the bedroom and knocked on the closed door. “Gage? You have company.”
Silence met her statement, then she thought she heard him sigh. “Yeah? Who is it.”
Agent Davis grinned at her. “Doesn’t sound like two weeks off work has softened his disposition any.”
She smiled back at him, then felt a trifle disloyal, for some strange reason. “He’s still in a lot of pain.”
“Oh, is that it?”
She didn’t answer him, just opened the door. “Your friend Agent Davis is here. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”
Before she walked down the hall, she heard Davis greet him. “I brought those files you asked for. Personally I think you’re crazy. Why not take the six-week vacation the Bureau gave you instead of spending your sick leave working cold cases?”
“I can’t stand just staring at the walls all day,” Gage answered. “With a phone and Internet access I can at least pretend to stay busy.”
They closed the door after that and Allie couldn’t hear more. It was enough, though. What she had heard left her cold.
Internet access. She’d never even thought about that. She wasn’t sure just how the FBI worked, but she thought they probably disseminated information across the Net. What if her case file was already out there somewhere? Her picture, pictures of the girls?
Gage could probably access it right now if he wanted to.
She blew out a shaky breath. She should leave. Just grab the girls from the park and drive out of town.
Oh, she didn’t want to. She had two weeks’ wages coming to her in just a few days that she would forfeit if she disappeared, and she hadn’t yet paid off the balance on the car repair Ruth’s son had performed for her.
Besides that, she hated the idea of fleeing again. Not yet. She just wasn’t ready, mentally or physically, to uproot the girls and herself and head for a strange town where she knew no one.
Could she take the chance that even if the FBI had posted her picture somewhere on-line, Gage wouldn’t have any reason to go looking for it? Even if he stumbled upon it, she had created an effective disguise. There was no reason why he should connect blond nurse Alicia DeBarillas with gawky, glasses-wearing Lisa Connors.
Surely she was safe for a few more weeks, just long enough to pay Ruth’s son and to make plans for the future.
That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
CHAPTER 8
“Care to tell me why you have such an interest in these particular case files?” With all the appearance of a man who looked like he was taking up residence, Davis settled into the recliner Lisa had dragged in from the living room earlier in the week.
Gage was so preoccupied with that almost kiss his words didn’t register at first.
Where the hell had he stored his brain during that little interlude? He certainly hadn’t been thinking about the ramifications of starting something with her, that was for sure.
If he had possessed one ounce of common sense, he would have hurried back to his room the moment she finished washing his hair. He didn’t need to know all that personal history about her, about her diabetes and her father’s rejection and her worries of not being able to care for her daughters if her disease progressed.
That was the problem with getting to know someone. Once you learned private details like that about people, it was almost impossible to treat them like polite strangers.
Now he was afraid he had lost any chance to be able to continue viewing Lisa Connors with the cool distance he had carefully maintained this past week.
“McKinnon? Hello?”
He blinked away thoughts of her and turned his attention to Davis. “What was that?”
“The files. What’s your interest in these particular cases?”
He glanced at the small stack his partner had placed on the table next to his laptop. “Why not? What else do I have to do but sit here all day and track down cold cases?”
“These aren’t just cold, they’re in a deep-freeze, man. Six unsolved kidnappings of young girls that happened twenty to twenty-five years ago. Are you thinking they might be linked?”
Gage scanned the folders, copies of files he had been slowly earmarking as long as he’d been with the FBI. “I’m just playing a hunch. There are certain similarities between them.”
But plenty of disparities, too, he had to admit.
“What connection did you see? I’ll admit I didn’t go through every single page, I just looked at the case summaries. The only thing that jumped out at me was that they all happened in a four-state region—Idaho, Montana, Utah and Nevada.”
“They have a few other links. All were taken in the afternoon from either their own yards or from a park close to their homes. And all the girls were blond, between the ages of three and twelve.”
He pictured Charley, blond curls gleaming in the sun and her dimples winking at everyone she met.
“That’s a wide age span if you’re looking to profile a pedophile. Usually they favor a more specific age range.”
He hated even considering the idea that his sweet baby sister might have ended up in the hands of somebody sick and twisted like that, but he had long ago accepted the odds were good that was exactly the kind of person who had taken her.
“I’m not looking to do anything other than study some old case files and see if I can find any fresh leads.”
“Why these particular cases?”
“Their families deserve to know what happened to them. It’s never too late for justice.”
Davis cocked his head, and Gage had a feeling the man wasn’t fooled. He should have realized Davis wouldn’t settle for some superficial explanation. The other agent was a brilliant investigator with a reputation that rivaled Gage’s own for stubborn determination. They had been roommates at Quantico and Gage figured the other man probably knew him better than anyone else alive.
He had few friends, so he tended to treasure the ones he had. Cale Davis was among the best.
“Any relation?” the agent finally asked.
He couldn’t pretend ignorance. Not with Davis. He should have known the other agent would pick up on the last name on the tab of one of the files and manage to connect the dots. It was right there in black marker. Charlotte McKinnon. All that he had left of her was this slim manila folder full of a motley, pitifully slim assortment of facts.
“My sister.”
He hoped that would be the end of it, but Davis met his abrupt statement with a glare. “How long have we known each other?”
“I don’t know. A dozen years, maybe.”
“And not once in all that time have you ever bothered to mention you even had a sister or any of the rest of this.” He gestured to the case files with a jerky movement, and to his surprise, Gage realized the other man wasn’t merely annoyed, he was angry.
“What would be the point?”
“Well, for one thing, it explains a whole hell of a lot about you.”
“Like what? Why I’m such a son of a bitch most of the time?”
Cale grinned. “That, too.”
Just as quickly as it flashed over his features, the grin disappeared and he sobered. “Maybe it helps explain why you do what you do. The Crimes Against Children assignment you fought so hard to get and won’t let anybody take away. Why you make sure you’re assigned to all the cases involving missing kids. The whole ‘bloodhound’ nickname, why you work like a dog until your cases are put to bed.”
Gage shifted, uncomfortable with the whole discussion. So he had become a crusader of sorts at finding missing and abused children. What difference did that make when he was no closer to finding the one child who meant the most to him?
“You should have told me, McKinnon.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I could have helped somehow.
I’m assuming you’ve been working the case on your own time. If I know anything about the bloodhound, you’ve probably been working it on the side as long as you’ve been with the Bureau, am I right?”
“Yeah.” Gage thought about the fruitless leads he’d followed up over the years, the clues that always led him exactly nowhere. The idea of sharing the investigation seemed foreign. This was a burden he carried alone and it was tough to think about sharing it.
“Made any progress?”
He thought of the leads he’d accumulated, a pitifully slim collection despite years of digging. Davis was right. Charlotte’s case was stuck in a deep, dark freeze.
“Not much. I’ve mostly been going back over what’s in the file to see if anything was missed by the original task force. A couple months ago I followed up on a possible sighting reported in Texas a few months after Charlotte disappeared. I reinterviewed the eyewitness, a convenience store clerk who reported twenty years ago that she thought she saw a girl resembling Charley come into her store with a woman.”
“She remember anything new?”
“She’s pushing eighty now and barely remembers the names of her own grandkids. Says the little girl had the same curly blond hair as the kid on the milk carton she saw and she remembered a lisp and a broken front tooth, something she never told the original investigators.”
“I’m assuming your sister lisped.”
“Yeah. And she broke a tooth just the day before she was kidnapped when she was trying to ride my kid brother’s bike.”
“Did she remember anything new about the woman?”
“No. According to the original report, she says the woman was in her midthirties and acted like she was drunk or stoned. That’s why she remembered them in the first place, because the woman tried to walk out of the store with a gallon of milk hidden under her shirt. Before the clerk could call the police, the woman ran out of the store, dragging the kid with her.”
Cale settled back in the recliner. Gage had worked with him enough to know the wheels in his head were spinning as he tried to work out connections in the case. “So what are you thinking might link that and these other five kidnappings?”
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