Operation Reunion

by Justine Davis

  Dane opened the door and stepped out. Cutter moved to him, sniffing, looking, nudging. Finally he sat, apparently satisfied that Dane had come to no harm while out of his care.

  “You,” Dane said, rubbing a hand over the dog’s dark head, “are something else, dog.”

  Cutter made a sound that Dane could only call satisfied. Whether it was that he was all right, or that he had finally realized the uniqueness of this animal, Dane wasn’t sure.

  Cutter’s head turned just slightly, back toward the warehouse. Seconds later a man came out, someone Dane hadn’t seen before. Tall and rangy, he walked with a barely perceptible limp on his left side. He was wiping his hands on a shop rag; he’d clearly been working on something mechanical.

  “Rafe Crawford, Dane Burdette,” Quinn said.

  Rafe nodded, indicating with the greasy rag why he wasn’t offering a hand to shake. “Checking out the backup generator.”

  Dane nodded at the man. Without the distraction of a handshake, it was the man’s eyes he noticed; they reminded him of Kayla’s, not in color but in a certain quality of having seen too much, of reflecting too much pain lived through.

  Opposites, he thought, the two Foxworth men they’d met. Teague, with his easy, crooked grin and jokes, and now this man, unsmiling in face or eyes. That interested him—as much as anything outside his own current dilemma did just now.

  “Is it working all right?” Quinn asked the newcomer.

  Rafe nodded. “Not that it’s as crucial, now that you’re living...elsewhere.”

  Quinn’s smile, quick and contented, was the only answer he gave to that.

  “You got things settled in Boise?” he asked.

  Rafe nodded again. “Everybody arrived. Happy reunion.”

  “Good. Why don’t you take some time? That was a tough one.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Didn’t say you weren’t.”

  Rafe glanced at Dane. “Thought you might need another body on this one.”

  “Interested?”

  “Cold case,” Rafe said with a shrug.

  “All right then,” Quinn said. “Meet us inside.”

  “I’ll go clean up.”

  “What was that all about?” Dane asked. It was obvious the two men were old friends; they’d spoken in the kind of shorthand that showed long familiarity.

  “Rafe’s got a thing for cold cases,” Quinn said. “And he never gives up on them.”

  “He and Kayla should relate then,” Dane said. There was none of the recent sourness at the thought in his voice or his mind; nearly losing her had wiped all that away, at least for now.

  But it hadn’t really changed anything. It hadn’t caused some great revelation about how much he loved her—he’d already known that. He’d always known that.

  Just like he knew he always would love her.

  Even if he had to go on without her.

  Hayley met them at the door.

  “You’re here early,” Quinn said.

  “She just couldn’t bear to stay still any longer, so we came here.”

  “How is Kayla?” Dane asked, unable to hold back the question long enough to offer a hello.

  Hayley didn’t seem offended by the lack of a greeting. “She’s steadier now. She’ll be sore tomorrow, I’m guessing, but for now she’s all right. As soon as we’re done going over everything, I’m going to run over to her place and see what I can salvage in the way of immediate needs.”

  “They’ll let you in?” Dane asked.

  She smiled. “I checked just now, and the arson investigator has pulled all his evidence. Besides, the fire chief was a friend of my father’s. I’ll get in.”

  “Do they know what it was yet?”

  “They’re still reconstructing. But I’ll pester them until we know.”

  Quinn snorted. “You, a pest? Nah.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “If I wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t be here now.”

  Quinn’s voice went soft. “And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

  “Nor would I.”

  Dane shifted as pain jabbed through him. He and Kayla had once sounded like that. Teasing in the most loving way possible. Hayley flicked a glance at Dane, and he knew something must have shown in his face because she went on briskly.

  “Kayla wanted to come, too, but I don’t think that’s wise. And she doesn’t need to see the damage yet.”

  “Agreed,” Quinn said. “I think they should both stay away until we find out who was really behind this.”

  “Teague’s working on that, by the way. He called while you were at the police station, said he had an idea he was going to check out.”

  “That’s why I hired the boy,” Quinn said with a grin. “Let’s get started.”

  * * *

  The moment she heard footsteps on the stairs Kayla knew, with that sort of sixth sense that always told her when Dane was nearby, before they even got close to the door. Hayley had been in and out a couple of times, and the tall, lean, intimidating man she’d introduced as Rafe Crawford had come through that door once, but this time it was Dane. She could feel it.

  She drew in a deep breath and tried to steady herself. She’d rehearsed it all in her mind from the moment Hayley had told her Quinn had gotten Dane out and they were on their way. She would greet him like a normal person. It would be awkward, sure, as it always was between former lovers, she supposed. She didn’t actually know; Dane was the only lover she’d ever had.

  The only lover she’d ever wanted.

  She would greet him no differently than, say, she would greet Quinn when he came in. Pleasantly but as a man who didn’t belong to her.

  It hit her again, as it had so many times last night before her world had exploded. He didn’t belong to her anymore.

  Which meant he was free to belong to someone else.

  Images shot through her mind, of Dane with some unknown, carefree, unhaunted woman who could give him the kind of love he deserved, free of baggage. She could see him smiling with her, laughing with her, making love to her. It hurt so badly she would swear she was bleeding inside.

  Quinn and Hayley had been there for her last night, she couldn’t deny that. But it wasn’t the same, not by a long shot. Nothing could replace the comfort and knowledge of a shared history. She’d always had Dane to turn to for comfort. Had always counted on him to be there. And then he was gone, and she felt more lost than she had since the night she’d come home to find her parents lying dead in their blood-spattered den.

  Was it worth it? Was this endless pursuit really worth it? Trying to find someone who clearly didn’t want to be found even, or as Dane had said, maybe especially not by her?

  She’d thought before about quitting, but she hadn’t. She’d even sort of prided herself on not giving up. But was it truly all worth it if it cost her the one person who had always been her rock?

  She felt the sudden urge to call it all off, to finally give it up, except that now it had gotten even more complicated.

  Now someone had tried to kill her.

  The door opened. Quinn came through first.

  And then there was Dane, looking tired and almost as haggard as she felt.

  All her good intentions vanished and she ran to him. She couldn’t help herself—he looked so weary. She may have had the worst of it physically, but to see Dane, strong, steady Dane, look like this was more than she could bear.

  She threw her arms around him. After a split-second delay perhaps only she would notice, his arms came up and wrapped around her. For a long moment they simply stood there, as if either of them would fall without the support of the other.

  Don’t talk, she ordered herself. Don’t say anything because then you’ll have to face reality, that this is only temporary, that it’s only because of what happened, that he’s holding you because you were hurt, that he would do it for anyone who needed it because he was the kind of man who helped.

  He spoke first.

  “You
’re really all right?”

  She nodded against his chest.

  “Stitches?”

  She nodded again, this time hunching her left shoulder to indicate where.

  “Your hair smells different.”

  She sighed at the simple yet intimate statement. And gave in.

  “Yes. I borrowed some of Hayley’s shampoo.”

  She felt him move then, lifting his head to look at Hayley and Quinn, who were quietly ignoring them.

  “Thank you for taking care of her,” he said.

  “Of course,” Hayley said. “Do you want some more time? We could go—”

  “No.”

  The flat statement dug into that painful place inside Kayla. She heard Dane draw in a deep breath.

  “I’ll take care of her now. I’m not leaving her alone again until this is over.”

  Hope, battered, bloody, yet ever-ready to rise again, stirred from that painful place. As if he’d sensed it—of course he did, Dane always knew—he quickly smashed it into oblivion.

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said to her. “I just want to walk away by my choice—not have that choice made by someone else, leaving me to grieve your death.”

  Kayla shuddered, then straightened and stopped leaning on him. Just as she was going to have to learn to do the rest of her life.

  Chapter 23

  “Thanks, Chief Byers,” Hayley said into her cell phone, then pushed the button to disconnect.

  They had all fallen silent when the call from the fire chief had come in. They were seated around the same table where they’d begun this barely a week ago. So much had happened in that short time, Kayla thought as Hayley listened carefully.

  “He got the reports just now,” Hayley said as she set the phone down.

  “Good of him to call so quickly,” Quinn said.

  “He and my dad were close. When I was little he was like my uncle. And he helped when my mother was ill and was there for me when she died.”

  “That puts him on the ‘come running if he calls’ list for me then,” Quinn said.

  To Kayla’s surprise, Hayley blushed. It reminded her that, relatively speaking, their relationship was fairly new. Of course, relative to her and Dane, and at their ages, most were.

  She glanced at him surreptitiously. He’d taken a seat across the table from her this time, making an obvious, physical point about the new distance between them. She should have expected this, she’d thought when he’d done it. Dane was not a man to make a decision and then crumble at the first difficulty. The strength that had always been hers to borrow when needed was now arrayed against her, and he was as distant as if that table was miles wide.

  She was distracted slightly when Cutter showed his displeasure with the new arrangement. He walked from Dane to her and back again, nudging them and whining quietly.

  “Not now, sweetie,” Hayley said softly to the dog, who sighed audibly and plopped down on the floor. Kayla felt the weight on her right foot and looked down to see his head resting on her toe. Coincidentally—or perhaps not because this was Cutter—his tail appeared to be wrapped around Dane’s left ankle, as if the dog would maintain contact between them even if they wouldn’t.

  She scratched the dog’s ear, straightened and looked at Dane. He didn’t react. His expression was stony, emotionless. If he’d noticed the flash of warmth, of tenderness between Hayley and Quinn, or the oddly touching action of their dog, he wasn’t reacting.

  She had put that expression on his face, she thought sadly. She had never meant to do that.

  Kayla tuned back into what Hayley was saying about the device used to start the fire.

  “—the explosion was apparently some type of homemade grenade. The fire starter was a rather amateurish Molotov cocktail, he said. The bottle he used was too heavy to shatter, so it only broke into a couple of big pieces, which contained things a little.”

  “That doesn’t help narrow it down much,” Quinn said. “It could still go either way unless Chad had a fascination with fire. Did he?”

  This was clearly directed at her, Kayla realized. “No,” she said. “Never.”

  “Never interested in blowing up toy buildings or cherry bombs in mailboxes or the like?”

  “No,” she said again. “Firecrackers as a kid, but we all did that. I don’t think he’d even know how to build something like this, even it if was simple.”

  “Too much like chemistry,” Dane said. “Which is too much like work.”

  “That’s—”

  “True,” Dane said, cutting her off. “Did you think I really believed that chem homework you asked for help with was your friend Crystal’s?”

  “A moot point,” Quinn said rather quickly, as if he thought another kind of explosion was imminent. “He’s obviously had enough time to have learned.”

  “And he didn’t have to learn well. Good thing he never did, isn’t it?” Dane asked.

  Kayla opened her mouth to protest, a reaction she hadn’t realized until now had become so automatic. She stopped herself and remained silent. Something about Dane’s tone was...different.

  “But it was effective enough,” Hayley said. “If Kayla had been in that room, the outcome would probably have been very different. If there’s a next time—”

  “If there is she won’t be alone,” Dane said.

  The words should have heartened her, and they would have if Kayla hadn’t just realized why he sounded so odd, why his voice was so different. Gone was the trace of irritation, impatience. He was speaking in a dispassionate voice. Like a man not personally involved.

  He was speaking as if he were some kind of bodyguard who had never met her before, as if he were simply doing a job he felt obligated to do.

  This is what it would be like, she thought, if Dane really didn’t care. Fear grew in her until she could hardly breathe. With an effort almost as great as it had taken to get to the front door last night, she reined in her rampaging thoughts and made herself pay attention.

  “—he thinks Foxworth would quit and go away, even if he’d been successful, he’s very, very wrong,” Quinn was saying. “We don’t give up.”

  Kayla remembered Hayley telling her something about a leak, possibly a mole, who had threatened the operation that had thrown her and Quinn together. And that Quinn would never, ever stop until he found who it was. It eased Kayla’s mind a little, that idea, that even if something happened to her, there were people now who would carry on.

  “What about Rod Warren?” Dane asked. “If he was into burning small creatures....”

  “Good point,” Quinn said.

  “And torturing animals is frequently a warning sign of sociopathic behavior,” Hayley said.

  “Why don’t you call Detective Dunbar and plant that idea,” Quinn said. “He liked you.”

  Hayley let out a muffled, embarrassed sound. “Please.”

  “Trust me on this. I know when a man’s looking at my fiancée that way.” Hayley blushed then. “Fortunately, I also know he’s the kind of man who’d never poach.”

  Hayley glanced at Kayla as if for female support. “Don’t you just love it when they go all guy on you?”

  “Yes.” With an effort, Kayla didn’t look at Dane. “As a matter of fact I do.”

  Dane said nothing, and Kayla wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

  “Do we have that list of the crime victim group members?” Quinn asked quickly, as if he’d sensed the tension.

  “I have it,” Hayley said, pulling a sheet out of the file. Then she turned to the laptop computer that sat on the table beside her. “And here’s the background we’ve turned up on them. I finished entering it all from Teague’s notes while we were waiting for you to get here.”

  Quinn smiled at her. Kayla remembered Hayley telling her about how she’d begun actually working with Foxworth, after meeting—and falling for—Quinn. How she’d been rather rudderless after her mother’s death, and finding this work that so appealed to her had been the second
-best thing, after finding Quinn, that had ever happened to her.

  Obviously she’d gotten into it wholeheartedly and efficiently. She envied them the obvious solidity of their lives together. She was sure they would make it. While she and Dane might not.

  She clung to that “might” with a fierceness that she knew was foolish even as she did it. One look across at Dane’s face told her that.

  “Here’s the one that had caught my eye,” Hayley said as the screen went live and an image flashed up on the screen.

  “Art Solis?” Kayla asked, startled.

  “He’s working for a building contractor now, but he used to work for the Department of Transportation. Road construction. Assigned to a mountain district.”

  “They occasionally use explosives,” Dane said, as if he were contemplating a merely interesting puzzle.

  “No!” Kayla shook her head. “Art would never hurt anyone. He’s a sweet, nice man. He was devastated by his daughter’s death. In fact, he’s still in the processing stage, practically nonfunctional.”

  Hayley patted Kayla’s hand. “I said he had caught my eye. But the call from Chief Byers changes that.”

  Quinn nodded. “Not dealing with a pro here. And if he’s in the state Kayla describes, not likely. But then again, if he’s in that state, he might have been sloppier than he would have if he were thinking straight.”

  “But why would he?” Kayla asked. “Samantha was killed when her car was broadsided by an escaping bank robber. Why would that make me a target? In fact, why would I become a target to any of them?”

  “Maybe none of them are thinking straight,” Dane said.

  “He’s right,” Hayley said gently when Kayla tightened her jaw to keep from reacting. “You know better than most that grief can deeply affect your thinking.”

  “Reasons are something we may have to figure out later,” Quinn said. “Right now we just need to know if there are any others with the potential.”

  They began to go through the list. Kayla watched uncomfortably as the familiar names flashed by on the screen. She knew the painful stories behind every name, and she didn’t like that they were being paraded like this. She hadn’t betrayed any confidences, had only given names that weren’t confidential anyway, but Foxworth clearly had an efficient and far-reaching research capability.