Secrets Rising

by Sally Berneathy

  Their waitress appeared so rapidly Jake thought she must have watched Gates come in. "What'll you have, Farley?"

  "Just a big, tall glass of iced tea, Phyllis."

  "With extra lemon, right?"

  Gates grinned and winked up at her. "You got it, honey. Thank you now." He turned back to Jake. "How you folks doing today?"

  "Great, Farley, just great. You don't mind if I call you Farley, do you?"

  "Of course I don't mind, Jake."

  That told Jake what he wanted to know. Farley Gates knew who they were and why they were there. He was not part of an official welcoming committee. Jake would be willing to bet the police chief was going to try to talk them out of searching for Rebecca's mother. She must be one powerful lady in this town to justify so much official interest.

  "So what can we do for you today, Farley?" Besides leave town.

  "Not a thing. I just wanted to come by and introduce myself to you and Ms. Patterson."

  "Rebecca," Jake corrected. "We're all good buddies here, right? All on a first name basis."

  Gates looked a little disconcerted, as if the possibility had just occurred to him that perhaps Jake was being sarcastic. But the thought seemed to leave as quickly as it came, and Gates' perpetual smile reappeared. "Charles said you were a good-looking filly. If I'd ever seen your mama, I'd'a remembered her."

  "Then perhaps I look like my father," Rebecca said smoothly, though Jake could tell from the tenseness around her lips that Gates' obvious knowledge of her situation had disconcerted her.

  Gates nodded. "I reckon that could be, but I can't say as how I know any men that you look like, either."

  The waitress arrived with his tea and their sandwiches. Gates accepted his drink with another wink. "Thanks, honey."

  Jake ignored his sandwich, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "And since you've never seen anyone who looks enough like Rebecca to be her mother or father, we might as well pack our bags and head back to Dallas."

  Gates' forehead wrinkled as if he was trying very hard to decide how to take Jake's comment. "I don't think there's any call to be rude."

  "Was I? My apologies."

  Gates grunted and took a long gulp of his tea. "So, are you having any luck?"

  Jake shrugged noncommittally. "Some."

  Gates looked from him to Rebecca. She gave him a tight smile.

  "You know, sometimes it just don't pay to go digging up the past. Some teenage girl gets herself in trouble, goes to the big city to have her baby so nobody will know, comes back, marries a nice guy, has a family, makes a life for herself, then nearly thirty years later that illegitimate baby shows up on her doorstep and ruins that life."

  Rebecca went even paler than normal.

  "Is that what's happening here?" Jake asked, forcing Gates' attention to him, giving Rebecca a chance to regain her composure. "Does this mean you know who Rebecca's mother is or maybe even who her father is?"

  He looked from one to the other, his bonhomie slowly melting into scowling disapproval. "I don't know, and I don't care. This isn't your big city. We take care of each other down here, look out for our own." He focused on Rebecca. "I think by now it oughta be real clear your mama don't want you to find her. Why would you want somebody who doesn't want you?"

  Rebecca's eyes rounded in shock, dismay and pain. Jake clenched his fists to keep from punching this jerk in his drooping jaw. Antagonizing the local authorities, even an idiot like Farley Gates, was not a smart thing to do in any investigation.

  "Ms. Patterson needs to find her family medical history," he said.

  That brought Gates up short. His gaze scanned Rebecca carefully. "She looks pretty healthy to me." Surprisingly, concern edged his voice.

  "You're not a doctor."

  "What's the matter with her?"

  "I can tell you what isn't the matter with her. She isn't deaf, and she isn't retarded. You can talk directly to her."

  "Oh!" Gates shifted uneasily, his face turning even redder. He cleared his throat. "Are you sick, ma'am?"

  Rebecca looked at Jake helplessly. He'd succeeded in two things—diverting her from that hurt despondency at Gates' suggestion that her mother didn't want her and showing her she had no business being in the middle of his investigation.

  "You know, Farley, I don't think the three of us are good enough friends that we can discuss something so personal as Rebecca's health."

  "Oh, well, yeah, okay." He stood, taking his hat in one hand and rubbing the palm of the other down the side of his uniform. "Well, um, it was nice to meet you folks." He attempted a smile, but it didn't quite work.

  He left the restaurant hurriedly, bumping into two tables on his way out.

  "There goes one confused police chief," Jake said as soon as the door closed behind Gates.

  "Why did you tell him I was sick?" Rebecca demanded.

  "I didn't tell him that. He assumed it. You do need to know your family medical history. That's the only legitimate reason I could come up with for you to pursue this. Gates jumped to conclusions all by himself."

  Befuddling the enemy gave Jake a smug, satisfied feeling. He took a bite of his sandwich. Gates was right about one thing. It was good barbecue.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Rebecca lift the edge of her bread, then put it back down and push the sandwich away. "You think he knows my mother?" she asked in a small voice.

  "It's possible. It's also possible he's just following orders from our friend, the mayor." He could leave it there, ought to leave it there. She was starting to have doubts about this whole thing, and that was good. If anything, he should encourage her doubts, encourage her to get her sexy butt back to Dallas and build a life for herself, the way Gates suggested her mother had done.

  But some demon in his soul felt compelled to try to erase the sadness from those smoky green eyes. "You thinking he brought you a personal message from your mother, that she doesn't want to see you?"

  "I told you before, that doesn't matter to me. I'm not expecting anybody to bring out the fatted calf. I just have to know."

  He didn't believe her, but she was working hard at convincing herself.

  He shrugged. "You may get your wish. We seem to be stirring up something."

  "You mean because of the phone call?"

  "That and the mayor's visit to warn us away." He ticked the events off on his fingers. "Then today the mayor sends his number one brown noser to give it another shot. We must be closing in on something real interesting. I gotta admit, I'm starting to get curious."

  "This was never about curiosity." The ice in her voice could have cooled the entire restaurant for a week. But at least she didn't look so sad and beaten anymore.

  "Maybe it ought to be. Your mother must be one important person in this town to justify so much interest from the local big wigs."

  "You're a real bastard."

  He grinned. "Could be, but I doubt it. My parents were really into marriage. They committed it five or six times each."

  She glared at him, pinched white lines etched around her mouth.

  He took another bite of his sandwich. She snatched hers up and bit into it viciously.

  Good. She was fighting again.

  Jake enjoyed the triumphant feeling for at least a minute before realizing he'd only made things worse. What did it matter to him if Rebecca gave up, if she was dejected, if she quit and went home or kept fighting to find her mother? Hadn't he just been trying to talk her into doing that very thing until he'd fallen into the well of despondency in her eyes?

  He'd let his competitive personality take over. He didn't like Gates, and he didn't like Morton, and he didn't like the idea of their dictating what he and Rebecca should or shouldn't do. That's all it was.

  He hadn't done her any favors, though. The evidence was mounting that eventually she would have to give up. If her mother could bring this much pressure to bear, no way would she welcome Rebecca with open arms. More likely she'd call out the troops to esco
rt her long-lost daughter back to Dallas.

  Then there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do to remove that crushed, devastated look from her eyes. And in the meantime, she was going to be dogging his every step, not to mention sleeping in the motel room next door to his.

  It was his turn to bite viciously into his sandwich.

  Chapter 8

  Rebecca leaned back and rubbed her neck, rolling her head from side to side. After sitting in the hard wooden chair for most of the day, viewing the Edgewater Public Library's microfiche files of newspapers for the last half of 1979, every muscle in her body ached.

  Of course, every muscle in her body was exhausted from two nights of very little sleep. Though last night had not been interrupted by any ominous phone calls, her own mind had kept her either wide awake or in the midst of disturbing dreams in which her mother and father, Charles Morton, Farley Gates, Doris Jordan and Jake, threatened her, cajoled her, served tea to her in flowered cups, chased her, and, in Jake's case, seduced her. She wasn't sure which of the dreams bothered her the most.

  Even the dream of Doris, which began happily enough in a flower garden, soon filled with foreboding when a storm came up and Doris climbed into a car with Rebecca's parents. She'd awakened to the familiar empty feeling that had been her constant companion since her parents' deaths, then gone back to sleep to dream of Jake. He'd seduced her but stopped short of making love to her and walked away without a word.

  The real Jake, seated at the next viewer, scooted his chair back and looked over at her. "I tried to tell you how exciting detective work can be."

  "You never told me how boring a small town could be. Any paper that prints feature articles about Louise Arnold's sugar cookies and Henry Fletcher's home-made bird houses is really scraping the bottom of the news barrel."

  To her surprise, Jake smiled...a real smile, not the phony kind they'd been passing back and forth the last couple of days. "Don't let Eunice hear you say that."

  To her further surprise, Rebecca heard herself laugh at the image of the gravely intent librarian with contradictory carrot red hair handing over the requested microfiche to two strangers as if it contained national secrets.

  "First time I've heard you laugh," Jake said.

  "I haven't done a lot of it the last few weeks."

  "Several hours of tedious work will do that, make you slap happy and so bored you forget whatever else was bugging you."

  Amazing. Jake sounded like a human being, a real person with a heart beating beneath the muscles of that wide chest. The well-formed muscles, as she recalled from her first night there.

  Immediately she tried to erase that image from her mind. Bad enough she'd had those kinds of thoughts about him when they were together in his motel room and he was half naked. Now as they sat in the quiet, musty confines of the old library, surrounded by ceiling-high shelves filled with books, both fully clothed, there was absolutely no reason for her hormones to spill over.

  But they were doing just that.

  Jake the Smiling Man in the Library was every bit as compelling as Jake the Angry Detective in the Motel Room.

  "Well," she said, "guess I better get back to it. I'm only up to the middle of October. I'm sure there'll be big spreads about Jimmy Green's Halloween costume, Thanksgiving dinner at Mrs. Jones' house and Mr. Brown's roof-top display at Christmas."

  She slid back to the viewer, reluctant and eager to tear her gaze from Jake's angular, chiseled features that looked so incredibly good wearing a smile.

  The day to day minutiae of small town life was even harder to focus on now.

  Until the front page headlines of the October 22, 1979, issue.

  "Oh, Jake! Here's the story about Doris' son."

  She halfway expected Jake to tell her that had nothing to do with their case and to stop wasting time, but instead he gave her a sympathetic glance. "What does it say?"

  "Local policeman slain," she read. "Ben Jordan, local police officer, was killed yesterday in a shoot-out at a deserted farmhouse south of town. Jordan and his partner, Charles Morton...Charles Morton?"

  She looked up. "His partner was Charles Morton. Does that mean...?"

  "What?" Jake asked when she hesitated.

  "I don't know. Nothing, I guess."

  "You're thinking if Charles was Ben's partner, that might explain how he knows who your father is, that Ben Jordan might have left a pregnant girlfriend behind." He leaned back and folded his arms, giving her his full attention. "Could be. That might explain why Morton's being so protective of the woman. His former partner's girl. Read the rest of it."

  "Jordan and his partner, Officer Charles Morton, were investigating reports of drug users living in the vacant farmhouse. Morton reports that they knocked on the door and announced themselves as police officers. An unidentified white male shot Jordan from a broken window beside the door. Morton radioed for assistance, but Jordan was pronounced dead upon arrival at Woodward Memorial Hospital.

  "Police recovered the gun, an unregistered .38 caliber revolver, and assorted drug paraphernalia, but have no clues as to the identity or whereabouts of the assailant. Morton describes the man as medium height and build with long, brown hair and beard, between twenty and thirty years of age and driving an older model Ford automobile, license plates obscured or hidden.

  "Jordan, an Edgewater native and recipient of the purple heart, is survived by his wife, Mary Baker Jordan, and his parents, Edgar and Doris Jordan." She sat back. "Well, so much for the girl friend theory. He had a wife."

  "Which doesn't mean he didn't have a girlfriend, too, Miss Ivory Tower. In fact, that would be all the more reason to hide her pregnancy. Trade places with me, and let me see that article."

  Rebecca rose at the same time he did and stepped away, attempting to switch positions without touching Jake, but he moved the same direction. She felt a flush rise to her face as she moved back and he did the same.

  Jake put his hands on her shoulders and gazed at her, a faint, suggestive grin tilting the corners of his lips. "This is a tough dance. There's no music, and the floor's carpeted, but you just follow my lead, and we'll get this step right."

  As Jake turned her, it did seem like a dance, and her blood pulsed faster in rhythm to the primitive beat of some music felt rather than heard. They seemed to be revolving round and round in a waltz of desire, though she knew they only moved half a circle.

  Then they were still, his hands on her shoulders, his breath warm on her cheek, his nearness setting off some insane electrical storm in her body. His masculine scent along with a faint wisp of the deep blue scent of denim swirled around her, blocking the musty odor of the library just as his deep blue gaze blocked the sight of everything around them.

  Without moving his hands or his eyes, he lifted one thumb and traced the line of her jaw. His lips moved, parting ever so slightly. Or maybe it was only a shifting shadow.

  His eyelids drooped as though he would close them.

  But he didn't. He blinked twice, jerked his hands from her shoulders as if burned and moved away.

  Only then did Rebecca realize her own lips were parted, waiting for his to touch them.

  Blushing hotly, a little breathless and vaguely disappointed, she fell into the chair where Jake had been sitting, where the warmth of his body lingered.

  What was the matter with her? She wasn't even sure she liked Jake Thornton. Certainly she couldn't get along with him. Her hormones, however, completely ignored any problem she had with him. She understood and accepted that she'd lost control of her life, but what had happened to her resolve to at least take charge of her own body chemistry?

  "Couple of follow-up articles here. I'm going to see if Eunice will print copies for me." Jake's voice contained faint traces of huskiness. She wasn't the only one dealing with runaway urges. Knowing that made it more exciting but also more difficult. If she knew he had no interest, that she was alone in this absurd attraction, she'd be too embarrassed to even let herself think about h
im. As it stood now, she not only had to struggle to control her thoughts of him, but she found herself speculating on what he might be thinking.

  As if her life wasn't messed up enough, she was fantasizing about a man who embodied exactly what she didn't need right now—someone who held himself aloof from the world, someone who had no need for human involvement.

  She focused on the newspaper in the viewer Jake had been scanning. John and Nancy Whittaker's oldest son made the Dean's List at the University of Texas at Austin.

  Edgewater was the town of vintage movies. Even now it was like taking a step back into a more innocent time...except for the creepy feeling that had begun with Mayor Morton's visit, then been reinforced by the threatening phone call in the middle of the night and Chief of Police Gates' intrusion at lunch. Even sitting in a library, a place she'd always before considered a haven, that eerie sensation of things out of kilter still niggled at the base of her neck.

  A hand fell on Rebecca's shoulder. She gasped and whirled, her heart racing.

  "Sorry," Jake said. "I had no idea the Edgewater Post could be so absorbing."

  "Believe me, it's not. I just didn't hear you come up. Did you get the copies?"

  "Yep. Got 'em right here. You didn't find anything else?"

  "If I found it, I didn't recognize it."

  "Let's knock off for the day. I want to read these stories in detail and see if anything jumps out at me."

  Rebecca nodded her agreement. She'd wanted to suggest that herself. After looking at so many articles for so long, she could have seen her own birth announcement and not recognized it. But she wasn't going to admit that to Jake, wasn't going to give him any reason to try to send her home. While that would solve her problem of wrestling with her irrational fascination with the man, she couldn't go back when her life was still in chaos, still unresolved.