All these years he had no idea she thought these things. Had he misinterpreted everything?
They had arrived at his doctor’s office, Gage saw. Lynn parked out front, but neither of them made a move to start the complicated process of transferring him from the vehicle to the wheelchair. Lynn turned off the engine and faced him.
“I love you, Gage. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become. I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed these past weeks, getting to know you again. I’d like to try to build a relationship with you now, if it’s not too late. Do you…do you believe you could ever find it in that tough heart of yours to forgive me?”
This time his fingers stayed clenched. Forgive her? She had it all backward. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“There is,” she insisted. “You and Wyatt needed me to be strong and I wasn’t. I let my grief over losing Charlotte cloud everything.”
“We both know who holds the most blame for Charley.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked genuinely confused. Suddenly Gage abhorred the way they tiptoed around the subject as if it didn’t exist. He wanted it out in the open, wanted to rip off the polite plaster cast that concealed the wound festering between them and let air into it.
“I was supposed to be watching her. Instead, I was screwing around with my friends. Because of that, some bastard took her. How can I blame you for not wanting me around afterward?”
Lynn gasped, her features going white. “Is that what you thought? That I blamed you for Charlotte’s disappearance?”
He said nothing—what was left to say?—and her skin paled another shade. “Dear heavens. You do! That’s ridiculous. Completely ridiculous! I never blamed you!”
“You should.”
Before he realized what she was doing, she reached out and covered his fist with her smaller hand. Tears seeped from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
“No. Oh, son. I never dreamed you felt this way. I should have realized.” Her voice caught and her fingers tightened over his. “It’s not your fault your sister was kidnapped. If anyone shoulders any blame, it should be me! I should have just taken her to the store with me.”
“You couldn’t have known someone was out there watching.”
“And you could? You were a child! I’ve long ago accepted I couldn’t have prevented it from happening. Someone could have snatched her out of a shopping cart or taken her from the car when my back was turned. If I couldn’t have stopped it, how could you?”
“If I had been tending her and Wyatt as you asked me to, she might still be here.”
Lynn was quiet, her gaze out the windshield. When she looked back, the vast, aching sorrow in her eyes whipped through him like a blade, just about more than he could bear.
Even harder to handle was the realization that her pain wasn’t for Charlotte or for her own loss of her daughter but for him.
“Do you tell the parents of all those missing children whose cases you work so diligently that it’s their fault their child was taken?”
He frowned. “No. Of course not.”
“Then how can you blame a twelve-year-old boy for something out of his control, something that happened more than twenty years ago?”
He stared at her, stunned. The truth of her words hit him like ten thousand watts of power rushing through every cell of his body. Damn it, she was right. If this had been a case he worked, he would have done his best to assure the family it wasn’t healthy and would accomplish nothing worthwhile to spend their time assigning culpability.
But hadn’t he done exactly that? He had spent twenty-three years blaming himself for his sister’s disappearance. Had he been wrong all this time? Just thinking about it made him shaky, numb.
“It was a terrible thing to happen to any family,” she said quietly. “But the only one truly responsible is whoever took her. Please don’t punish yourself for someone else’s sins.”
Lynn watched him for a moment then offered a watery smile and opened her door to begin setting up the wheelchair.
* * *
Lisa’s car still wasn’t in the driveway when Gage returned from the doctor’s office, feeling about a hundred pounds lighter, figuratively and literally.
The doctor had removed both casts. The right leg, the one with the simple fracture, was mending cleanly and he’d been given the green light to start a little weight bearing on it and eventually transition to crutches. The left leg, with the pins and rods, would require more time to heal but the doctor had agreed to trade the cast for a brace.
Liberation beckoned him with tantalizing allure. Without the bulky casts, he could have far more mobility. Once he regained the full use of his right leg, he could drive himself places, could return to work, could regain the independence he had taken for granted but had missed so bitterly.
Even as he thought it, he had to admit he hadn’t minded so much having his mother around these last few weeks. And before that, there had been Lisa with her sweet scent and her ready smile and her unfailing compassion.
He wanted to celebrate his newfound freedom with her. As he had suggested to her the day before, now that he would be able to get around easier, he wanted to take her out to one of the many fine restaurants in Park City.
She hadn’t exactly bubbled over with enthusiasm for the idea, he remembered, but maybe she didn’t like leaving her daughters more than she had to. He would figure out a way to convince her. If not, he could always make plans for some outing that included Gaby and Anna.
But first she had to come home so he could talk to her about it. With one last look at her driveway, he transferred from his mother’s SUV to the wheelchair.
“Don’t think just because your doctor took those casts off that you can start acting crazy. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up right back in casts.”
He was feeling so good that he even managed to smile at Lynn’s fussing. “Yes, Mother.”
“It shouldn’t take me long to change for work,” he said once inside. “I appreciate you being willing to drive me in for a few hours. But really, like I told you before, there’s no reason for you to stick around to bring me home. I can catch a ride with one of the guys.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Lynn assured him. “I’ve been wanting to do some shopping in the city. This will give me the perfect excuse to check out some of the new stores until you’re done at work.”
“Thanks. I, uh, appreciate it.”
Lynn smiled, and Gage was once more reminded of their conversation earlier and the air they had somehow managed to clear between them.
He liked this new ease between them, unexpected though it might be. The tension and guilt that always used to simmer under his skin whenever he saw his mother seemed to have disappeared. In its place was a relaxed, comfortable peace.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” he said again, then wheeled to his room where he quickly changed out of the loose side-snap sweats he’d come to detest into one of his familiar suits. Putting it on again was like climbing back into his own skin after far too long away. Even with the brace that had to fit over his left pant leg and the wheelchair he would have to use for a while yet, the suit felt right.
Once dressed, he wheeled out of his room and found Lynn in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes.
She turned around as he rolled through the doorway and gave him an approving smile. “You’re always handsome, but there’s just something that’s so appealing about a man in a business suit and crisp white shirt. Your father rarely wore one, but when he did, my-oh-my. He always could make my heart race a little faster.”
Her face took on a dreamy expression and Gage couldn’t help squirming. He didn’t even want to picture his parents together.
Funny, he thought, but Sam always wore the same expression on his face whenever he talked about Lynn. Why had neither of his parents ever remarried? he wondered. Both of them were still young, really, only in their midfifties.
He didn’t know a
bout Lynn but Sam never even dated. Was it possible they still had feelings for each other? If so, why had they spent all these years apart?
He wondered briefly what would happen if the two of them ever had reason to meet up with each other again. As soon as the thought entered his head, he quickly discarded it. Was he crazy? Didn’t he have enough trouble with his own love life? Why would he possibly want to start messing in his parents’?
“I’m ready when you are,” he said quickly.
“Just one more pan to scrub and then I’ll be finished here.”
“I think I’ll just head outside, then, while I wait.”
He refused to admit that he secretly hoped he might see Lisa and her girls pulling up while he was outside. The need to see her again—to reassure himself those incredible moments they had spent together hadn’t been just a dream—was intense, almost violent.
But no little green Honda had appeared while he was inside. He tried not to let himself be too disappointed as he wheeled to the passenger side of Lynn’s SUV. He had almost reached it when he heard an engine approaching in the still, warm afternoon.
With an eagerness that dismayed him, he wheeled away from the car so he could see who was coming. Disappointment whipped through him as he recognized the small utility truck his landlady drove.
Ruth Jensen looked more dour than usual as she jumped down from the truck, hauling a toolbox in one hand and a caddy full of what looked like cleaning supplies in the other.
She marched up the steps of Lisa’s porch, then used a key to unlock the door, something that struck him as odd. Granted, she was the landlady but should she really just be walking in like that?
“Mrs. Jensen,” he called before she could disappear inside.
She turned and the glum look on her features lightened a little when she spotted him. “Agent McKinnon. Good to see you up and around.”
“I’m trying,” he said. “Listen, is everything okay over there?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t been inside yet. But Lisa Connors and her girls were clean tenants. I don’t expect they left much of a mess.”
“What do you mean?” Sudden unease rippled through him like the wind tossing the heads of the columbines in the backyard.
“Thought you knew,” Ruth said, her voice abrupt. “She and her girls cleared out this morning. Dropped a note round the office before we opened saying thanks for the help but she needed to be moving on.”
CHAPTER 16
Gage stared at his landlady, certain he must have misheard her.
“Moving on? What do you mean?”
Ruth shrugged. “Just what I said. Moving on means moving on. Clearing out. Heading out of Dodge.”
“She’s gone?”
“Guess so, since she left her last month’s rent and told me in the note to keep the security deposit.”
He was frozen suddenly. An ice sculpture carved by some artist’s chainsaw. He couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, was only conscious of the vast, yawning emptiness in his stomach.
Gone. She had left his arms warm and contented and happy—he knew she had, dammit—then returned home to pack up her girls and drive out of his life without leaving a single word about where she was going.
The ice began to melt, leaving red-hot emotion. Betrayal and loss and shock vied for violent control inside him. Why did he feel as if he had just been hit by Lyle Juber’s damn pickup truck all over again? Only, this time his legs weren’t the only thing crushed—every square inch of him felt bruised, shattered.
He was in love with her, he realized. In love with a smart-mouthed little caregiver with a sweet smile and gentle hands. He had spent his whole adult life protecting his heart, but somehow she and her beautiful daughters had sneaked inside and nested there, made a home.
Then ripped it all out by walking away from him.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
The raging flood of emotions threatened to drag him under. He wanted to crawl somewhere—well, wheel, anyway—and try to cope with his feelings and her betrayal, but before he could move, Lynn opened his front door and trotted down the steps.
“Hello, Ruth,” his mother said cheerfully. “Isn’t it a lovely day? That rain yesterday was just the perfect amount to green everything up and make the garden look fresh and clean.”
“Won’t last,” Ruth muttered. “Heat will dry out the grass.”
“I know. But in the meantime we can enjoy it. We’ll all be remembering glorious summer days just like this in a few months when we’ve been snowed in for weeks.”
Ruth said nothing, and after a moment Lynn continued in the same friendly tone. “I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I have enjoyed your flowers these few weeks I’ve been staying with Gage. At night, I like to sit on the back patio and just inhale all the delicious fragrances. It’s been such fun trying to see if I can identify the different smells. You’re a gardening genius. I’d like to know your secret.”
“Cow manure.”
Lynn laughed, then looked to Gage as if urging him to join in. He stared back stonily, and his mother’s smile slipped away, concern darkening her eyes. “Gage, dear. Is everything all right?”
Nothing was right anymore. Nothing. But he knew he couldn’t express the turmoil boiling through him. Not to his mother and definitely not in front of Ruth.
“Fine. Everything’s fine,” he lied. “Are you ready to go?”
Lynn raised an eyebrow at his clipped tone but only nodded. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s be on our way, then.”
He spent the forty-minute drive into the city trying to conceal the depth of his shock and hurt from his mother’s all-too-perceptive gaze. He had a feeling he wasn’t very successful at it, especially after they entered the parking garage near the gleaming office building that housed the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office.
His mother pulled into a parking stall and shut off the engine, then turned to him, her usually soft features set into definite battle lines. “Okay, I’ve let you get away with it long enough. Are you finally ready to tell me why you’re acting like a bull raised on sour milk?”
The expression took him aback. Lynn was usually so cultured and refined it was sometimes easy to forget she was the daughter of a rough-and-tumble Utah cattle rancher.
He didn’t want to tell her the truth but he couldn’t come up with a convenient lie. “Lisa took off,” he finally said. “Moved out.”
Lynn gaped at him. “When? Why?”
“I guess this morning. That’s what Ruth Jensen was telling me back at the house. As to the why, I couldn’t tell you.”
Her reason for running away had to somehow be connected to the intimacies they had shared the night before. Wouldn’t she have told him she was leaving otherwise? She would have had plenty of opportunities over dinner and afterward.
Had he come on too strong with her? Scared her away, somehow? No, he remembered. Not that he had been an unwilling participant, but she had definitely been the one who initiated their kisses and who had pushed for more.
So she seduced him and then just disappeared. What the hell was going on?
“Where did they go?” Lynn asked helplessly. “I don’t understand. Why would she just pack up and leave without a word?”
“I don’t know. She left a note for Ruth but didn’t tell her where they were heading.”
“You’re an FBI agent. Can’t you do something to find her?”
He swallowed the bitter laugh scouring his throat. “It’s not that easy, Mom. I can’t file a missing persons report on an adult woman simply because she decided to move away.”
“It’s more than that,” Lynn said, with an urgency that took him by surprise. “I know it is. She’s in trouble, Gage. I sensed it several times when I was talking to her. She has problems. I don’t know what they are but somehow her leaving must be connected to whatever has been bothering her. I should have done more to find out what that was, to help her with it. You’ve got to find her!”
Just for a moment he wondered if that could somehow be the reason for her sudden, precipitous flight, if she might be running from justice. No. He couldn’t believe it. The Lisa Connors he knew was too innocent, too artless, to be involved in anything illegal.
“You can’t just let her disappear like this!”
He wanted to ask his mother how he was supposed to find Lisa when he couldn’t seem to unearth a single trace of the sister he had spent the last two decades seeking. But of course he couldn’t. Lisa was gone from his life just as surely as Charlotte.
“I don’t think we have a choice. She’s a grown woman.”
Lynn opened her mouth to argue but he forestalled her by reaching behind his seat for the wheelchair in the back. He pulled it out and set it on the ground, then unfolded it.
“Thanks again for the ride. I can catch a ride home with Davis or Thom Lovell.”
“No. You’ll do no such thing. I told you I’d be back in a few hours and I will.” She still looked dazed, but to his relief she didn’t press him about Lisa. Instead, she hurried out of the SUV and came around to help him transfer into the chair.
Once he was settled, she touched his arm and he was startled to see soft compassion in her eyes. Did she have some inkling of his feelings for Lisa? He sincerely hoped not.
“Gage. Honey, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t know how to answer her. Besides that, he wasn’t exactly sure he was comfortable being on the receiving end of this kind of empathy from his mother. In the end, he decided he would be best just to ignore it.
“I’ll see you around five,” he muttered and wheeled toward the elevator.
* * *
Gage shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position behind his desk at the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office. With this blasted brace on his left leg it was definitely a challenge, but he would bite his tongue off before he would complain.
Hiding in Park City Page 18