by Jean Barrett
If Ellie had any doubt about this, he dispelled it a moment later.
“The painting over your bed,” he said, his tone entirely sober this time. “The winter scene with birches and a stone wall.”
“You noticed it?” Considering the events back at her house, she was amazed he would have paid the slightest attention to that picture, or any other on her walls.
“I noticed it. Yours?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I don’t think so.”
He ignored her objection. “The light on the snow. I liked the way you caught the light on the snow.”
His simple approval both warmed and confounded her. That winter landscape was one of her favorites, but David had been indifferent to it. Now the man who was her kidnapper was telling her he appreciated it, was offering her the kind of understanding her ex-husband had never demonstrated.
“So you don’t hate traditional art, after all.” “Maybe not. How did you manage the light?” “Sometimes you don’t manage it. You just get lucky, and it happens.”
What was she doing? She had no business discussing her art with Noah Rhyder, surrendering to his praise. It was dangerous. He was dangerous.
Ellie concentrated on the road. That was the wisest thing to do. The safest thing. But Tennessee was a big state. It was a long, long road, and surviving it was a challenge growing more treacherous by the hour.
Chapter Five
“I’m hungry.”
How could he be thinking of food again, Ellie wondered, after that enormous breakfast he had put away back on the interstate, including the Danish she had refused?
“It isn’t noon yet,” she pointed out. It was the first thing she’d said to him since their exchange about her art more than an hour ago. He had respected her silence this time, maybe because he preferred it himself.
“I don’t care. I still want lunch.” He consulted the map spread across his knees. “There’s a town coming up. Ridley. We’ll see what’s cooking there.”
She didn’t argue with him. Any one of their necessary stops offered her the potential opportunity to escape or to communicate her need for help.
But Noah, exercising his usual caution, ordered her into another fast-food restaurant when they arrived in Ridley moments later. Once again he kept contact to a minimum by choosing the drive-up window. This time there was no police cruiser in sight. No one was interested in them. They were just another vehicle passing through.
Noah surprised her when they pulled away from the restaurant with their order.
“We’ve been sitting in this damn car for too many hours. This time let’s go find somewhere outside to eat.”
She was afraid to agree with him, fearing he would find it suspicious and change his mind.
Ridley was an old-fashioned country town in a wooded river valley. The main street was also the highway. There was a sign on its edge that directed travelers to a town park out along the side of the river.
“Let’s try there,” he said.
People, she thought eagerly. There was the likelihood of other people occupying the park. The chance to pass a message.
But Ellie was disappointed when they reached the place. It was a weekday, and no one was around. They were the only car in the lot.
“Perfect,” Noah said as they emerged from the parked van.
For you, maybe, she thought sourly as she watched him pocket the keys. He had one of her sweaters tied around his middle. It concealed the revolver stuck inside his waistband.
The park was long and narrow, bordering the shallow stream that was more of a creek than a river. She had no choice but to accompany him as he struck out along the path that followed the waters burbling over a rocky bed.
The van was well behind them before Noah found a deserted spot that satisfied him. They settled at a picnic table within sight of a small, Victorian-style gazebo.
“Now, Ellie, isn’t this nice?” he asked as he unpacked the sandwiches, fries, and sodas from the bag.
Under other circumstances she might have agreed. The morning chill had lifted. There was a drowsy, autumn warmth in the air. Leaves drifted down from the tulip poplars and the hickory trees while the midday sun poked through the clouds, spangling the river with golden lights. It was a lovely, lazy setting for a meal—if she hadn’t been sharing it with an escaped killer. She ate in silence.
Noah gazed at her across the table, thinking how despondent she looked as she bit into her ham-and-cheese sandwich. He was responsible for that look, and for a moment he was seized by a spasm of guilt. Then he hardened himself against any dangerous sympathy. He told himself he couldn’t afford to be soft with her, knowing she wouldn’t hesitate to turn him over to the cops at the first opportunity. Told himself he had yet to be convinced she wasn’t involved with Brett Buchanan, and Buchanan had his kid.
But he couldn’t stop looking at her. She had found a scarf in her bag and tied it around her neck. A boldly patterned thing, bright as a butterfly. He’d wondered at first if the scarf was a gesture of defiance because he’d ordered her to remove her eye-catching outfit last night. He had since decided that the scarf was not a conscious opposition. It simply relieved the drabness of her navy slacks and sweater, and Ellie needed vibrant colors. They were as essential to her as air and water. He already understood that much about her. Against his better judgment, he let her keep the scarf on.
There were other things Noah noticed. Couldn’t keep himself from noticing. There was a small white scar on one side of her chin. He wondered how she’d gotten it. He found the scar appealing. He also liked the faint laugh lines at the corners of her amber eyes. They made him wonder how old she was. Somewhere in her early thirties, he guessed. Probably six or seven years younger than himself.
Damn it, what was he doing? If he didn’t watch himself, he’d be wondering what fascinating little details he could discover under those slacks and the sweater. With the mess he was in, he had no business being interested in her as anything more than a means to an end.
They had finished their lunch. He attacked the discarded wrappings with an angry resolve, crushing them into a ball which he tossed into a nearby refuse container.
“Ellie.”
She looked up, wearing a puzzled frown. “What?”
“It’s raining.”
She had been so preoccupied she hadn’t noticed how the clouds had thickened while they ate. He watched her hold out her hand, palm up, to verify the first drops that were falling.
“Let’s get back to the car,” he said.
But it began to rain in earnest as they left the table. The van was too far away. They would be drenched before they could reach it.
“The gazebo,” he decided. “We’ll take cover there until it lets up.”
They ran to the structure, gaining its shelter just seconds before the rain escalated into a downpour. There was a small bench in the center just wide enough for two people, providing they squeezed close together. Noah could see how reluctant she was to share the bench with him. But the gazebo was so tiny that its single seat offered the only protection against a soaking. She had no choice.
“What did I promise you last night?” he asked when they were settled side by side. “At the rest area, remember?”
She didn’t answer him. She tried to move away, except there was nowhere to move.
“Told you we’d be cozy, real cozy. Looks like that’s just what we are, Ellie. At least until the rain lets up.”
He was teasing her, but it wasn’t so funny. The heat of her body intimately pressed against his was starting to arouse him, giving him crazy ideas about the two of them. Hell, he could still taste her from that reckless kiss last night, and right now he wanted a lot more than her mouth. He could swear she wasn’t totally unaffected either.
This wasn’t smart, he thought He had to find a way to defuse the sexual tension between them while they waited out this rain, or they’d both be in serious trouble. M
aybe if he talked to her, tried to relax her a little on the subject of Noah Rhyder…
Why? he asked himself. What difference did it make what she thought about him? But it did matter, he decided. For one thing, he was getting damn tired of watching her every second, forever worrying about what she might try next. And for another…well, keeping her in line by having her think the worst about him was just something he no longer wanted to do, although he was afraid to look too closely at that one. The point was, if she started to trust him a little, maybe she wouldn’t be so eager to see him back in handcuffs.
Yeah, and you’re gonna win the lottery, Rhyder, and live happily ever after. That’s right after you prove your innocence to the state of Missouri.
All right, so he was a fool to think he could convince her that he wasn’t a monster, but how else was he going to get Joel’s address out of her? Nothing ventured, Noah…
“You think I’m pretty bad, don’t you, Ellie? A cold-blooded killer keeping you alive only because I need that address.”
She wished he would stop trying to be friendly. It only made everything harder. She also wished he didn’t have that voice as he leaned toward her, warm and deep and disarmingly rough around the edges. It was unsettling enough to have his hard body hugged against hers on this scrap of a bench.
“I don’t want to hear this,” she told him sharply.
“Why? You afraid a little doubt might slip past your conviction that I’m guilty as sin? Maybe even a little sympathy? They say that happens between kidnappers and their victims. That what you’re guarding against, Ellie?”
She was about to surge to her feet, move away to the edge of the gazebo, endure a soaking. Anything to avoid listening to him. Then it struck her. She’d been so unnerved by the threat of a seductive trap that she had failed to recognize the opportunity she’d been waiting for. The chance to soften his vigilance by pretending to care, and he was giving it to her himself.
Don’t overplay it, Ellie. The man is no fool.
“Go on then,” she urged him, pretending to be immune to his challenge. “This ought to be good. A talented man like you, an architect and all, should be very inventive when it comes to the fiction of just how pure he really is.”
“Okay, so I’m no saint. I’ve got some things in my past I’m not happy about. But murder? Uh-uh. I sure as hell didn’t shoot that deputy when I got away.”
He told her the story of what happened and how his escape occurred without his direct involvement. She had to admit it was a persuasive explanation, but she wasn’t falling for it.
“I see,” she said dryly. “And this bad cop, the one who shot his partner, did he also kill Senator Buchanan?”
“That one is a bit more complicated.”
“I just bet it is.”
He was quiet for a moment while he marshaled his thoughts. Or, rather, she told herself, his lies. The rain continued to fall without interruption, beating with a hollow sound on the roof of the gazebo.
“How much do you know about my ex-father-in-law?” he asked her suddenly.
Ellie shrugged. “Only what I’ve read or heard on the newscasts. That he was old St. Louis money and that no one seemed to have any complaint about his record in office.”
“Yeah, Howard was a smart politician and, publicly, a pussycat. Privately, he was a ruthless bastard.”
“Naturally, you would think that.”
“I had a good reason for my opinion of him. He didn’t want Jennifer to marry me Loathed the idea of me as a son-in-law. I wasn’t good enough for his daughter.”
“You and how many millions of other sons-in-law, except they don’t go around murdering their fathers-in-law because of it.”
“Oh, I wasn’t worried about his disapproval. In fact, Howard was pretty decent after Joel was born. By then I’d earned my stripes as an architect, so I was almost respectable. In fact, he was a major investor in the project I was designing and building. We were recycling an old brewery into upscale shops and apartments.”
Ellie remembered the references to that project during the trial. She detected the note of pride beneath his bitterness when Noah spoke of it now.
“It was a big undertaking involving a lot of funds. I didn’t want Howard’s money in it. I didn’t want to be obligated to him, but Jennifer pleaded for it. I think she figured it was a way of bonding me to her family. I should have refused. I didn’t. She was already sick at the time, and I wanted to please her.”
He paused. There was silence in the gazebo except for the sound of the rain slashing against the trelliswork. He’s remembering his wife, Ellie thought. She was disturbed by that. She didn’t want to have to regard him on that kind of level. It made him too human, too vulnerable.
“It was okay while Jennifer was alive,” he continued. “There was no trouble on the project, but after she died it all fell apart. Howard wanted custody of Joel, and although there was no way I was going to allow that to happen, he was ready to do anything to get him. Including sabotaging the project.”
“For what purpose?”
“To help build his case against me as an unfit father.”
“They said you were dipping into the funds. That your father-in-law discovered it and was ready to bring charges. There was all that evidence at the trial.”
“Yeah, from an accountant who was paid by Howard to cook the books and make it look like I was the one who was cheating. The guy would have been in serious trouble if he’d told the truth at the trial. I guess he figured perjury was safer.”
Ellie stirred restlessly on the bench. “You’re not making a very good defense for yourself. Everything you’ve told me so far adds up to a motive for murder.”
“It gets worse.”
“Yes, I know. You were alone in the house with Howard Buchanan the afternoon he was murdered.”
“I was there,” he admitted. “I went to get Joel. He was spending a couple of days with his grandfather while I met with the auditors to try to sort out the accounts. Joel was gone. Howard told me the housekeeper had taken him to the zoo. My kid is crazy about animals.”
“He loves the tigers,” Ellie murmured.
“And the bears.”
They exchanged smiles, briefly sharing this innocent knowledge about his son. And then she quickly looked away, watching the rain on the river.
Noah went on. “By then I was pretty sure what Howard was up to, and all I could think about was getting my son away from that barn of a house in Ladue and never taking him back there if I could help it. That’s when Howard told me he had no intention of letting me keep Joel.”
“He admitted how he was ruining you? Or I should say how you claim he was.”
“In so many words, yes. We had a pretty rough scene, just the two of us in that elegant library of his.”
“And you struck him.”
“I was angry, damn angry. And I was scared of losing my kid. Yeah, I hit him, but Howard Buchanan was alive and healthy when I stormed out of that house.”
“They said you were running away.”
“They were wrong. All I did was drive around the city for a while to cool off, and then I went looking for Joel. Only, before I could find him, the cops found me.”
“Your fingerprints were on the fireplace poker that killed him.”
“Thumbprint, Ellie. Nothing else. The murderer wiped off the poker after he used it, but that much got left behind.”
“Either way, your hand was on the poker.”
“Howard asked me to stir the fire while he took a call. We were still being polite to each other at that point, so I obliged him. And, no, I didn’t hit him with the poker afterward. Not my style, Ellie. I used this.” His fingers closed into a fist, which he swung past her nose. “I never touched the poker again after I stirred the fire. When I walked out of that place, it was leaning against the hearth where I’d left it.”
This was altogether different from listening to the reports on the ten o’clock news, she thought. There wa
s a reality here, an earnestness in the way he told his story that made her uneasy. All of it had to be lies. She knew that. Then why she was afraid of hearing any more?
“All right, you didn’t kill him,” she said impatiently. “Some phantom murderer appeared on the scene afterward and smashed in his skull. Who?”
“How do I know? Maybe Brett Buchanan. There was no love lost between father and son. They were too much alike, including the women they chased.”
“Brett was in Chicago at the time on a business trip. That was established.”
“Right, solid alibi, no motive. I had all the motives, didn’t I? The prosecution even made it look like I believed I’d be able to get my hands on the wealth my son inherits from his grandfather. The jury loved that one.”
“Why do you bother to tell me all this?” she asked him, her voice deliberately emotional, as if to suggest she was torn by indecision, no longer unquestioningly convinced of his guilt.
“You know why. It’s because of Joel. Because I need to get him away from Brett Buchanan. That’s why I’m on the run and why I intend to disappear with my son. I don’t trust him with Buchanan.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Maybe. But what if it is possible that Brett murdered his father, or paid to have him killed? What if it’s dangerous for Joel to be in Brett’s custody?” He leaned toward her, his voice as low and seductive as the serpent’s in Eden. “Think about it, Ellie. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just think about it…”
She faced stiffly forward, refusing to look at him. She could feel him gazing at her, watching her closely. She made sure her face registered uncertainty, that her expression would satisfy him she was actually considering the possibility of his innocence.
And the awful thing, the frightening thing about her performance, was her knowledge that it wasn’t entirely a pretense. Her scheme to relax his guard had backfired on her. She found herself shaken by the concept that maybe, just maybe…