“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Sadie’s mother said.
“Thanks. That’s very…reassuring. Thank you.”
She gave her son a hug, then lavished one on Sadie, as well. “Be safe until I get back, both of you.”
Then she left the room with Bryan and the agent flanking her, her heart in her throat as she prayed that this was the end of Shadow Falls’ latest nightmare, and that the child killer was dead. Long live the children.
14
There was something wrong with Carrie.
Gabe didn’t know what—or maybe he did. He could only think of two reasons why she might suddenly have turned so cold toward him. Either she’d found out who he really was and why he was in town, or she suspected him of having something to do with the kidnappings.
Or maybe both.
She barely spoke to him on the way to the little pull-off near the stream, where they parked the vehicles and started trudging through the woods again, following the streambed as it twisted amid the trees. It was an overcast morning, with dark clouds rolling in, slow but ever thicker, and blocking out the sun. The temperature was dropping rather than rising, and the air was heavy with pent-up rain. Gabe tried to engage Carrie in conversation, but she replied with one- or two-word responses that were little more than he might have elicited from a total stranger.
Okay, okay, he told himself. He would figure that out later. Talk to her when they were alone and could get to the bottom of this. For the moment, he had to focus on what was happening in the here and now.
And that became a whole lot easier when they passed the crime scene tape and the broken body came into view.
The man lay on his back, arched over a large boulder that was surrounded by scrub brush. He wasn’t more than a dozen yards from where they had found Sadie, but the surrounding brush had hidden him from view. And of course, once they’d found Sadie, the police had pulled all searchers from the woods and taped off the area. The F.B.I. had taken time to organize their own team before going back in, thinking there was a murderous kidnapper in the vicinity. They’d insisted no one else get close—not even the local cops.
And maybe there was. It was just that he was dead.
“Do you know him?” Agent Cooper asked aloud, to no one in particular.
Carrie moved closer, but Gabe stayed where he was, just watching her, wishing he could read her mind, worried to hell and gone about what was happening to the easy, sexy energy that had flowed so readily between them up until now.
He couldn’t see the man’s face. But then Carrie pushed the brush aside and leaned in, before jumping back again with a sharp gasp. “Oh, God, it’s Nate Kelly!”
Bryan tipped his head skyward and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Who is Nate Kelly?” Agent Cooper asked. “How do you know him?”
“He’s a local,” Bryan said. “He owns Sugar Tree Lodge, a ski resort.”
“But what could he have to do with any of this?” Carrie asked. “He’s no kidnapper, and certainly no murderer.”
Cooper tipped his head to one side. “Was the ski lodge in trouble? Financially?”
Sighing, she lowered her head. “It was. He was on the verge of being forced to sell out.”
“Then he might have been after the reward for that missing baby, just as you people theorized. It certainly fits,” Cooper said.
“No.” Carrie shook her head emphatically. “No, he might have been unpleasant. Standoffish. A little odd, even, but not a killer.”
“I don’t know,” Bryan said. “A half-million bucks has a strange effect on people.”
“And we know he was in particular need of it,” Gabe suggested. “I just heard someone the other day commenting on what a bad couple of years the ski business has had out here. No snow. Am I right?”
Carrie nodded. “Damn global warming.”
“It’s a natural cycle,” Agent Cooper said.
She sent him a look that said he was not only ignorant but gullible, then shook it away. “I want to take a closer look at him.”
The agent nodded, quickly retrieving a pair of latex gloves from the crime scene crew who were already there, taking photographs and measurements. Carrie pulled the gloves on and moved closer, bending over the body, touching, examining.
“Where is this Sugar Tree Lodge?” Agent Cooper asked.
Bryan lifted his head, looking around to orient himself. “The main lodge and the slopes can’t be more than half a mile as the crow flies. Farther by road, though. He also has several private cabins, for guests who like more privacy.”
Carrie looked up from the body. “Autopsy will say for sure, but I think he died of a broken neck, probably from a fall.”
“He probably chased that poor kid right off the cliff,” Agent Cooper said, looking up. “Someone was sure as hell looking out for her, huh?”
“She was looking out for herself,” Carrie said softly. “Women have to, these days.” Then she shook her head. “I’m just not sure he’s been dead long enough to have fallen at the same time Sadie did.”
“We don’t know what time Sadie fell,” Agent Cooper said. “Only that it was dark outside.”
“Yeah, and it’s been light for three or four hours now. I think he’s been dead less than two.”
“You’re basing that on what, Doc? Feeling his forehead?”
She pursed her lips. “I’ll get a more accurate reading when we get him to the morgue. He does have a head injury.”
“Just like Sadie said he would,” Bryan said. “Where she hit him with the bolt on the end of that chain.”
“Or where he hit himself on the rocks,” Carrie said. “It would be tough to imagine him not having a head wound after a landing like that.”
Agent Cooper frowned at Bryan, and then they both looked at Gabe, as if he might understand why Carrie seemed to be looking for reasons to doubt this was the guy. But Gabe was as puzzled as any of them.
“All right, let’s get him bagged and out of here.” Agent Cooper pulled out a cell phone. “Now that we have a positive ID, I’ll get a warrant to search that ski lodge of his and anything else he owns in the area.”
“He already gave us permission to search his properties,” Bryan said. “They were on our list for today.”
“Probably intended to move the kid somewhere else and hide any evidence she’d ever been there before you got to it. But dying wasn’t on his agenda,” Cooper said. “Ten to one we’ll find where the girl was held.”
Gabe saw that Carrie still looked doubtful. “I just want to get that body temperature before we move him. The longer we wait, the larger the margin of error on time of death will be.”
“Fine,” Agent Cooper said. “Do you want to observe the autopsy again?”
Gabe stepped forward. “Maybe you could just read the report this time, Carrie? I think you need a little rest. You’re damn near dead on your feet.”
She nodded, sighed deeply. “Yeah. That’s probably the best idea.” She took the reading she needed, then let him take her arm to walk her back down through the woods, along the edge of the stream, toward the vehicles. And then she stopped along the way, and his heart jumped into his throat when she turned to face him and said, “So why don’t we just get this out of the way here and now?”
“I can see something’s wrong, so okay, shoot. What is it?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew.
“When were you going to tell me, Gabe?”
He frowned. “Tell you what?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence by keeping up the lie. Or is there more than one big thing you’ve been lying about? Oh, wait, actually, I already know there are at least two big lies, don’t I? One is that the things you’ve been pretending to feel for me were ever anything other than an act to get closer to my son. And the other is the reason why you wanted to get closer to him. Isn’t that right?”
He licked his lips, averted his eyes, searched his mind and came up with the lamest words possible. “I can explain.”
“I should have seen it sooner. You’re his father, aren’t you, Gabe?”
He lowered his head. “If his birth mother was Livvy Dupree, then yeah. I think I just might be.”
Carrie let her head drop forward. “I hoped it wasn’t true. I hoped that you would tell me it was ridiculous. Damn you for letting me…for letting me believe in you. Trust you. With my son, for God’s sake.”
“I wanted to tell you… Dammit, Carrie, I didn’t even know—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She turned away from him and resumed traipsing through the woods, her pace a reflection of her anger. “And I don’t want to talk to you. Not ever, Gabe. Not ever.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around to face him. “If he’s mine, I have a right to see him. To get to know him. You can’t deny me that. You can’t deny him that. You know he’d want to know me, to know the truth. If you keep it from him, he’ll never forgive—”
She smacked him, hard, right across the face. And Gabe staggered backward, stung and wounded.
“Don’t you dare threaten to take my son from me, you son of a bitch!”
He stood there, holding his temper in a grip of pure iron. “I didn’t. I wasn’t threatening that. I just said—”
“What’s your blood type?”
“A Positive,” he said softly.
She swallowed hard, averted her eyes.
“What’s his?”
When she didn’t answer, he knew. “It’s the same, isn’t it? What was hers? His mother’s?”
“I’m his mother, you deceitful bastard.”
“I meant Livvy’s. You were the M.E. when she was murdered. You must know what hers was. It wasn’t the same, was it? This means he’s mine. This proves it, doesn’t it, Carrie?”
“It proves nothing.” She turned away and continued walking.
“Carrie, I know you’re angry,” he said, hurrying after her. “But you have to listen to me. Please, just hear me out. What I’ve started feeling for you, it’s—I know what this looks like, but—”
“Get a ride back with one of the cops, okay, Gabe? We’ll do a DNA swab and send it out. Until the results come back, I don’t want to see or hear from you again.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“Won’t you need a DNA swab from Sam, too? For comparison?”
She whirled on him. “If you breathe one word of this to Sam, I swear to God, I’ll…I’ll…”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t. Jeez, Carrie, will you let me get a word in here?”
She turned away again. “I’ll get a sample from his toothbrush or something. It’ll take a couple of weeks. Marcus is dead, so—”
“I didn’t know it was Sam when I came out here,” he said. “When I met you, I had no idea. I swear it.”
“Right.” She emerged from the forest into the parking area alongside the stream, where a brown wooden sign announced in white lettering that it was for anglers to park while fishing. She quickly unlocked her car with the remote and opened the door.
“Carrie!”
Gabe caught up, gripping her shoulders and turning her around to face him. He was stunned to see tears in her eyes. He knew he’d hurt her, that she was only lashing out because she was in pain and saw him as a threat to her son. He would have expected nothing less of a mother as devoted as she was.
She stared into his eyes but couldn’t hold his gaze for long. She had to turn away. “That look in your eyes is so real, so hard not to believe. But I know that it’s nothing more than a lie, Gabe. It never has been. And that hurts me more than I can make you understand.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he told her.
“Leave me alone, Gabe.”
“Carrie, don’t. Don’t throw us away. What’s been growing between us, it could be something special.”
“Us? How can you say that, Gabe? There’s no us. There never was. It was all a lie.” She held up a hand as he began to interrupt. “No, you can’t just say it was real and expect me to take that on faith, Gabe. You can’t, not when the evidence says otherwise.”
“You’ve got it backward, Carrie. Try believing what you wish were true, what it feels good to believe. And then you’ll see evidence of that. Instead of seeing is believing, believing is seeing. Don’t you get it?”
“I’m not a gullible idiot.”
“Neither am I. And I know I screwed this up—badly. But it was a mistake. That’s all. A mistake, Carrie. It wasn’t vicious or deliberate or cruel. It was a huge bout of bad judgment, and I’m sorrier than I can tell you. Don’t let my poorly thought-out choices ruin what could have been.”
“You lied to me. And I believed you. I really, really believed in you. You hurt me. So now ‘could have been’ is all it will ever be. Goodbye, Gabe.”
Then she got into her minivan and drove away.
“We got our guy.”
Those were Bryan’s first words when he phoned the next morning. And Carrie found herself breathing a sigh of relief, even while doubting it could possibly be true. Nathan Kelly? A killer?
“Are you sure, Bry? It just doesn’t seem—”
“We searched Nate’s properties. One of the cabins—one that used to be someone’s home a hundred years ago, that Nate had bought and renovated—was only a half mile from the cliff where we found him and Sadie. It had a rudimentary basement, more like a root cellar, really, with a hatchway.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed hard. “Still…”
“That basement had a cot and a hole in the wall where we presume Sadie’s chain was anchored. We found a broken hypodermic with traces of Benterol still inside. And we’ve collected hairs and other trace evidence that we fully expect will match samples from Kyle Becker and Sadie Gray.”
“I see.”
“Moreover, we spoke to Ambrose Peck. Apparently, he was giving Nate Kelly some financial advice. He said Nate was in a lot more trouble than we probably knew. Said the state was getting ready to put Sugar Tree up for auction over unpaid taxes.”
“No.”
“We verified it. Peck was dead on target. Nate was desperate, Carrie. The temptation of that half-million-dollar reward must have been more than he could resist.”
She sighed, lowering her head and feeling a sense of relief wash over her like a warm, soothing bath. “Thank you for letting me know, Bryan. I really appreciate it.” She licked her lips and said, “What about that anonymous person, the one who put up the reward? What ever came of that?”
“We still don’t know who it was, but they did withdraw the reward, and their lawyers say now that they know it was a motive for kidnapping and murder, the person won’t offer it again.”
“But you still don’t know who it was?”
“No. The lawyers are adamant about protecting their client’s identity.”
“I’d like to know why.”
“You’re borrowing trouble, Carrie. This is over. Our kids are safe again, and I hope to God this is the last trouble Shadow Falls sees for a long, long time. Fill Gabe in for me, will you?”
Gabe. God, if it hadn’t been for Gabe, and what he knew, Carrie would have breathed a sigh of relief and closed the book on this entire segment of her life. But for her, it wasn’t over at all. Not yet.
For her, the trouble was only just beginning. Because Gabriel Cain was her son’s father. She didn’t have any doubt about that, even without the DNA test results she would insist on waiting for. If he wanted to take her son from her, there wouldn’t be one thing she could do to stop him.
“Carrie?” Bryan prompted.
“Yeah? Oh, yes, I’ll tell him. Bye, Bryan.”
“Bye.”
She hung up the phone and stared at it for a long moment. Like a fool, she’d been waiting for it to ring all night long. And then, when it had finally complied, the wrong man’s voice had come from the other end of the line. She hadn’t heard from Gabe overnight. Apparently he had taken her reque
st to be left alone to heart.
Men were so freaking clueless. Didn’t he know that being left alone was the last thing she wanted? What she wanted was for him to make her believe what she so desperately wanted to believe. She needed a grand gesture. She needed him on his knees in apology, in remorse, with a tear or two in his eye. She needed a card filled with beautiful words. He was a word-smith. Surely he could write something that would convince her. She needed flowers, and maybe some tiny, meaningful gift, and an explanation that would prove to her, beyond any doubt, that his feelings had been real.
She wanted his heartfelt promise that he would never take her son away from her. Because he loved her. Yes, that was it. She wanted him to love her. And say so. And prove it.
But she didn’t want to have to ask for any of those things. He should know what she wanted and needed from him right now. He should know. A moron would know.
She hadn’t gotten any of those things from him, though. He hadn’t even bothered to call. And so she knew, as any other red-blooded woman would know, that the lack proved her most heartbreaking suspicions true. He didn’t care for her, never had, probably wasn’t even mildly attracted to her. He was just a good actor willing to do whatever he had to in order to find and claim his offspring.
She had lost Gabe. Hell, she’d never really had him. She had probably ensured that she would lose her career, too. Because when it came out that she had used her position as a doctor and forged signatures in order to commit an illegal adoption, her medical license would almost certainly be pulled.
But the only thing that truly mattered to her was that she was about to lose her son. God, she didn’t think she could bear it. Losing Sammy. It would be more than she could take.
“Mom?”
She looked up as Sam entered the kitchen, where she’d been baking cinnamon rolls when Bryan had called. She tried to paste a smile on her face, but she had no doubt the tear tracks were still visible.
Frowning, Sam moved closer and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her hard. “It’s okay now, Mom. It’s over. Sadie’s safe.”
“I know. I just got off the phone with Bryan.” She frowned. “How do you know?”
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