All a Man Is

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Jane seemed to understand. She nodded and went away.

  Eventually Nell McAllister arrived, hugged Julia and insisted on cooking dinner. Nothing fancy—only hamburgers and homemade macaroni and cheese and corn. Julia managed a few bites, if only to set an example for Liana.

  Alec’s phone rang, galvanizing all of them. The number was announced as restricted. Colin nodded at Julia to answer it.

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  Not a word was said, but she knew somebody was there. After a pause, she could tell that whoever it was had ended the call.

  Everyone in the living room stared at each other.

  “It could have been a wrong number,” she said tentatively.

  Colin’s expression was grim. “More likely, they want Alec, not you. I hope like hell they call back.”

  “Of course they will!” Nell exclaimed. “Nobody would go to all this effort and just...just...” She didn’t finish, and didn’t have to. They were all thinking the same thing.

  And just kill a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Kill Matt.

  Julia’s teeth chattered.

  Jane was sent to the airport to pick up Alec. Julia wondered what was happening with the trial. Probably nothing—from what he’d said, he wouldn’t be needed for days anyway.

  Ten o’clock came and went. She decided not to send Liana to bed until Alec arrived.

  When she heard the vehicle stop in front of the duplex, she shot to her feet and faced the front door, straining to hear a voice, so hungry for his presence she was shaking.

  A key turned in the lock and he stepped in, his gaze going straight to hers. Finally, she could move. They collided halfway across the small room, coming together with desperate need that wasn’t all on her side. It couldn’t be.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “So sorry. If I hadn’t left him alone...”

  If it was possible, he held her closer, his cheek scratchy against hers, his voice rough. “It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s, it’s mine. Somebody took him to get to me. Has to be.”

  “You trusted me to keep him safe, and I didn’t.”

  “No. You couldn’t watch him 24/7. We always knew that. If a cop’s involved... God, I can’t even get angry at Matt. He didn’t take off on his own. This took real balls, abducting him so openly.”

  She blinked a few times and managed to let go of some of the physical tension that had had her strung so tightly she’d felt as if she might snap.

  Finally he eased her away, his eyes never leaving her face, sending her messages she couldn’t decode but that comforted her nonetheless. Then he went to Liana, who had stood up but waited stiffly by the sofa. He held her tightly for a moment, too.

  Julia saw him look at the array of telephones lying on the coffee table.

  “No more calls?”

  She shook her head. “You know about the one that was a hang-up?”

  “Yeah.” He turned to Colin. “Nothing new?”

  The police captain grimly shook his head. “Sheriff Brock is dragging his feet about letting our witness look at photos of every deputy. He calls it a witch hunt.”

  Alec made a rumbling sound.

  Colin continued, “He insists she could be mistaken about the color of the squad car. It would help if she could give a better description of the officer, but unfortunately, she was more scandalized that a neighborhood boy was being arrested than she was in paying attention to some policeman’s face.”

  “That’s the vibe she got? That he was being arrested?”

  Colin grunted. “With good reason, from her description. The deputy kept a hand on Matt’s back from the front porch to the car. Kind of stiff-armed.” He demonstrated. “Opened the car door, blocked any escape with his body until Matt was in. The car was in the driveway, not parked on the street, so it partially blocked the woman’s view the entire time.”

  “They were watching the ranch,” Alec said flatly. “Saw that they had their chance to grab one of the kids.”

  With dread, Julia saw the look the two men exchanged and knew they agreed.

  If only I hadn’t left Matt alone.

  * * *

  NOBODY WOULD BE sleeping much tonight.

  Alec went along when Julia tucked Liana into bed, taking his turn to kiss her on that high, curved forehead and murmur, “Sleep tight, sweet pea. Matt’ll be back plaguing you before you know it.”

  Her laugh was half sob.

  He stepped back into the hall and waited for Julia, who pulled the door almost closed, leaving about a six-inch gap. He tugged her down the hall toward her room.

  Still holding her hand, he took in the near unbearable strain on her face. “Do you have any kind of sleeping pill? You need to get some rest.”

  Her stare held no comprehension.

  “Julia, you should go to bed. Nothing’s likely to happen now until morning.”

  The hitch of her breath was half sob, too. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” He hesitated, thinking of McAllister and Jane Vahalik, both out in the living room. He could hear them speaking quietly. To hell with what they thought. “I’ll lie down with you.”

  “But what if there’s a call?” she asked in panic.

  “I’ll set the phones next to the bed.”

  Those wide, green-gold eyes studied him for a long moment before she nodded. “Yes. Okay.”

  He smiled faintly and brushed her mouth with his. “Give me a minute.”

  When he stepped back into the living room and told Jane and Colin that Julia wouldn’t lie down if he wasn’t with her, they both nodded their understanding.

  “Won’t hurt if you get some sleep, too,” Colin said. “I sent Nell home. Jane and I are going to stay, take turns on the couch.” He shook his head when Alec offered to find some bedding; the throw pillows and afghan out there would do fine, he said.

  Earlier, in a phone conversation, they’d debated going public. Someone might have seen the county sheriff’s unit with a kid in the backseat and at least wondered. Or not. Trouble was, with the courthouse inside the city limits and the sheriff’s department headquarters barely outside Angel Butte, the county’s largest city, it wouldn’t be unexpected to see deputies in town.

  Still, all it would take was one witness. One person who’d caught a glimpse of the deputy’s face.

  The downside was that Matt’s danger increased the more public his predicament became. The Butte County deputy sheriff who had been suborned into kidnapping a thirteen-year-old boy would feel a lot more secure once that boy was dead and couldn’t say a word. The fact that Matt had been allowed to see his kidnapper’s face told Alec that no one had any intention of releasing him alive at the end of the ordeal.

  The debate about whether to call in the FBI was something of an echo. Trade off the feds’ undeniable expertise in kidnapping for losing control over the decisions. What if they chose to go public, say, plastering Matt’s picture everywhere? In Alec’s heart, Matt was his kid, and by God, he wanted to be the one making the decisions. Simple as that.

  Now he and Colin threw around the same arguments, with Jane making an occasional contribution. They all agreed not much could happen tonight. In fact, not much would happen at all until the call came in. The only other possibility of a break would come from the sheriff’s department. The undersheriff, a guy named Josh Sherfield, was being a lot more cooperative than his boss was. Sherfield was quietly engaged in making sure all county cars were accounted for and determining whether there’d been any oddities—say, one not responding to a call in a timely fashion. Alec suspected Sherfield wouldn’t learn anything useful, not without alerting the entire department to the fact that one of their own had committed an ugly crime—and thereby panicking him into the very action they were trying to prevent. />
  Finally, Alec checked to be sure all three phones still had some battery life and carried them along with his suitcase back to Julia’s bedroom, where he laid them out in a row on the bedside table. Like corpses laid out for burial, he couldn’t help thinking, hoping Julia hadn’t had the same thought as she stared all afternoon and evening at them, praying for a ring.

  She returned a minute later from the bathroom and he took his turn. He found her in bed when he got back, lying with her eyes fixed on those damn phones. Alec stripped to his shorts, laying his clothes over the upholstered chair squeezed into a corner of the bedroom. Not caring if that was her usual side of the bed, Alec nudged her over and got in closest to the nightstand. Then he rolled to face her. Their knees touched and he wrapped his hand around her nape, gently massaging.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “They won’t have hurt him. No matter what they want from me, they have to know I’ll insist on talking to Matt.”

  “But then what’s to stop them—” A shudder traveled through her.

  Nothing. But there was no damn way he was admitting that.

  “I think we can rule out the election as a motive. It’s too far out. Even if I were a more important player than I am—and the truth is I have no meaningful influence on voters in this county—nobody could expect to hold Matt until November to force me to take a public stance. The idea is ludicrous. I think those phoned-in threats were nothing but misdirection. At that point, maybe they intended to kill me. If that had happened, nobody would have been thinking about the Perez trial. They’d have been looking at Brock’s campaign.”

  Julia’s teeth sank into her lower lip, but she nodded.

  “It has to be the trial.”

  He could see that scared her as much as it did him, but it also didn’t surprise her.

  “That limits the time frame. Even so, even if it proceeds as planned, I wouldn’t be testifying until Monday at the soonest. Which means, were I to agree to their terms, I’d be demanding to talk to Matt daily.”

  “Were you to agree?”

  “You know I’d do anything for Matt.”

  She relaxed minutely.

  “My point is, we have time,” he said. “We can’t trust them to release him in the end, though.” It had to be said. “We have to find him.”

  “Oh, God,” Julia whispered.

  “Come here, honey.” He pulled her closer, shifting so that her head lay on his shoulder and he could wrap her in both arms. “He’s probably asleep right now. He knows we’ll be looking for him. Matt’s a smart kid. He’ll help in any way he can.”

  Her head bobbed slightly. Her breath was a warm caress on his chest. Alec felt his body stirring and cursed it. She’d have every right to be offended if she noticed him getting aroused.

  Think about Matt. Picture him locked up alone, maybe tied up, bruised, scared out of his skull. No pain meds, so he hurts.

  It worked like a douse of cold water.

  “If you don’t sleep,” he murmured, pitching his voice to soothe, “it’ll be hard to be strong tomorrow.”

  “I know, but...”

  “But?” Of course he knew.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Yeah.” Alec rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, his eyes closed. Behind the lids, his eyes prickled and burned. “Me, too.”

  Neither of them talked after that. As the hours passed, there were a few times he could tell she’d dropped off, although her sleep never lasted long. His didn’t, either. He’d start awake and grope for his phone or the weapon that lay on the table, too, before realizing that if he’d heard anything at all it was Jane or Colin moving around the living room or kitchen.

  Somewhere in the middle of the night, Alec heard a faint squeak of the door. His eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness for him to make out the paler shape of Liana in her pink shorty pajamas.

  “Mommy?” she whispered.

  Julia bolted upright. “Liana?”

  “I’m here, too,” Alec said.

  “Uncle Alec?” Her surprise didn’t last long. “I can’t sleep.”

  “You can get into bed with us,” Julia said. “Go around to the other side. Uncle Alec needs to be able to reach the phone.”

  Alec was really glad she hadn’t suggested Liana climb between them. Tonight he especially needed the contact with Julia. Though this wasn’t how he’d hoped to spend a first night with her.

  The small figure hurried around the bed. The mattress barely depressed beneath her slight weight, but the bedclothes rustled as Julia shifted to put an arm around her child.

  Alec rolled to spoon her. Operating by feel rather than sight, he smoothed Liana’s hair back from her face, then Julia’s in turn. She and Liana whispered for a minute until Julia finally whispered, “Shh. Let’s try to sleep.”

  Alec slid his hand along Julia’s cheek and jaw in a final caress and felt the kiss she pressed against the pad below his thumb. She didn’t say anything, but he heard the echo of her last words at the airport.

  I love you. The most precious words in the English language.

  He mouthed them himself, knowing she wouldn’t hear him, but wishing he’d said them earlier. But how could he, when this was all his fault?

  Still wide-awake, his arm lying loosely across the woman and child he loved, he lay there wondering if Josh could have done any better than he had in the same place.

  * * *

  IN THE GRAY LIGHT of dawn, Julia felt Alec trying to slip out of bed without waking her or Liana, who slept heavily. She let him go, waiting through the rustle of him pulling on trousers, at least, and the tiny scrape of plastic against wood when he scooped up the phones and his holstered weapon, then left the bedroom. A minute later, she got up, too, leaving Liana to sleep. The light seeping through the cracks in the blinds was enough to allow her to pick out clothes and get dressed.

  The bathroom door was closed when she passed and she heard the shower go on. She continued to the kitchen, where she found Jane Vahalik leaning against the counter, apparently waiting for coffee to brew.

  “Colin asleep?” Julia asked quietly.

  “No,” he said behind her.

  “I’m sorry.” She turned. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was just lying there.” He shook his head at her expression. “I got a few hours. Don’t worry.” His gaze fastened hopefully on the coffeemaker.

  He was as sexy a man—in a different way—as Alec was, Julia realized belatedly. The two men had that same self-contained air, but Colin was taller, with sun-streaked brown hair and perceptive gray eyes. No easier to read than Alec, and she might have found him intimidating if she hadn’t seen the expression on his face when he looked at his wife.

  Jane started pouring coffee. “That Alec in the shower?” At Julia’s nod, she poured a fourth cup. “Your daughter still asleep?”

  “Yes, thank goodness. She got in bed with us in the middle of the night and finally conked out completely.”

  “I was tempted to join you, too,” Colin said. “Your couch is a little too short for me. When I saw your daughter sneak down the hall, I thought, where there’s three, why not four?”

  Julia surprised herself with a chuckle, if a weak one. She couldn’t help picturing them all in bed together, having to roll over in concert.

  “Sadly, my bed’s full-size, not a queen.”

  “Ah. Maybe not, then.” He turned his head. “Alec.”

  Even as Alec nodded at the others and laid the collection of phones on the kitchen table, his gaze was on Julia. She could see him running the same checklist she was on him: Did he get any sleep? How is he holding up? Does he need anything I can give him?

  Finally, he stepped forward, kissed her cheek and accepted the coffee Jane had just poured for him. After a long swallow,
he transferred his gaze to Colin.

  “Anything?”

  “It’s early.”

  Julia hadn’t even looked at the time. Now she did. It was 6:39 a.m. “I’ll make breakfast,” she offered.

  Nobody demurred, although Jane offered to help. A woman’s role, Julia thought ruefully, exchanging a glance with Jane, whose eyebrows had lifted at the two oblivious men.

  “You can do toast,” Julia suggested.

  She went for easy—bacon and scrambled eggs, with ricotta and pepper Jack adding some flavor. Jane located jam and honey, and they all sat down around the small table to eat. Julia felt a burst of rebellion—this was the wrong four people. She wanted these two near strangers gone, Matt and Liana in their place. The next moment, she was ashamed. Jane and Colin were here to help. They’d been incredibly kind. She didn’t think she’d have survived yesterday until Alec arrived if they hadn’t been here.

  At first she didn’t do much but stir her food around on her plate, but beneath Alec’s stern eye, Julia finally took a few bites. He was right—she had to stay strong. He ate mechanically, without his usual enthusiasm. Jane said, “Whatever you did to these eggs is good.”

  Colin had risen to replenish their coffee cups when a phone rang, the sound shocking. Julia jolted and her eyes met Alec’s. From her peripheral vision she saw Jane looking down to check her own phone.

  A muscle flexed in Alec’s jaw and he pushed back his chair. “It’s mine.”

  Julia swiveled in her chair to stare at it. On the next ring, it gave a tiny jump. Of course it was set to vibrate, too. Colin had done that.

  Alec picked it up, his eyes on Julia, then on the third ring touched the screen. “Raynor here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “GUESS YOU KNOW we have your nephew, Chief Raynor.” The voice was muffled, just as the earlier phone threats had been. Maybe some cloth between mouth and receiver, Alec thought coldly. Same speaker. Male.

  “I’m aware,” he said.

  “Simple deal. You refuse to testify in the Perez trial. Do a memory wipe. Claim not to remember a thing. Or you’ve got a lot of doubt about what you thought you saw or heard back then. Tell them anything you want, except that we’re holding the kid. If the trial gets put on hold, the kid is dead. If we see cops sneaking around too close to where we’re holding him, he’s dead. When the trial is done, we let him go. Got it?”