The fireman walked away, and Rebecca looked at Jake as horror slowly spread over her. "I didn't turn on my range," she said, her mouth dry. "I walked past it when I came home Saturday. It wasn't on and I didn't touch it."
Jake nodded. "I know. Let's go inside. We've got some things we need to talk about."
Jake knew he had to sit down soon. He'd never before realized that it was possible to become physically weak from emotion overload.
Saturday night when he first began calling Rebecca and she didn't return his calls, he hadn't been overly concerned. But by Sunday he'd become worried, then frantic this morning when she still hadn't responded. He'd driven across town to her condo, rung the bell, pounded on the door and broken it down when she didn't answer.
Finding her home full of gas had sent him into complete panic. He'd raced from room to room looking for her...for her body...until he found the unopened suitcase on her bed. Then he'd worried that she'd been kidnapped.
He forced himself to turn from her, from drinking in the sight of her in hungry gulps, reassuring himself that she was there and safe.
He stepped into her condo, not because he had any reason to go in but simply to try to get away from his own feelings.
She followed. He could feel her presence behind him as if she were physically touching him. As he stepped inside her living room, the scent of summer flowers trailed in and out of the lingering foul odor of natural gas.
"This is getting to be a habit with you," Rebecca said, and he turned to see her examining the splintered frame where he'd kicked in the front door.
"I'll fix it. Won't take an hour."
She wrinkled her nose. "Let's sit out here on the step for a while. It smells awful in there."
"Nothing like what it was when I got here a couple of hours ago." He came out, sank down on the concrete step beside her and plucked a blade of grass. Folding the grass, unfolding it, rolling it up and unrolling it, gave him something to do with his hands rather than pulling her to him and touching every inch of her body to reassure himself she was still here the way he'd been able to do after she'd nearly drowned.
"Where were you this morning?" he demanded. "Where have you been all weekend? I called several times trying to get hold of you to tell you about Charles."
"I went to my parents' house in Plano. What about Charles?"
That was good, referring to the Pattersons as her parents. That meant she really was over her obsession to find her birth parents. She'd slipped back into her slot, would carry on as though the past week had never happened. And so would he.
As soon as he figured out how to end what they'd stirred up in Edgewater, as soon as he knew for sure she was safe.
"I think we may have some major problems, Rebecca."
"You mean like the nest of hornets I disturbed in Edgewater that seems to have followed me back here?" She picked up a pebble from the small flower bed of marigolds beside her front step and flung it across the lawn. "Damn every one of them! What did I do to any of them? Why are they doing this to me?"
He could tell it hurt, but her anger was a shield against the pain. She'd learned a lot, come a long way from that vulnerable, fragile woman who'd walked into his office.
"I have some more information, Rebecca. But I think it's going to bring up more questions than it's going to answer."
She looked at him a long time, her eyes shifting from green to blue and back again as the shadows from the live oak blowing in the breeze shifted. Finally she exhaled in a long sigh, drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them and looked away. "I probably don't need to know, but go ahead and tell me."
"Actually, you do need to know. You need to know who you're up against." What the man who could be her father was capable of. "When I got back up here Saturday and checked with my office, I had a message from my buddy on the force that I asked to run a check on Charles."
She flinched but remained stoically silent.
"Using the official information my friend got, I made a few phone calls and came up with a fairly well rounded picture of Charles. Seems His Honor the Mayor got off to a rocky start in life. His parents were religious fanatics. His dad wanted to be a preacher, but he was so far off center that no legitimate church would take him. So he formed his own little cult, little being the operative word here. He was zealous enough but lacked the charisma of a cult leader. Nobody wanted to follow him."
Rebecca nodded. "Doris mentioned that Charles would be president except he didn't have the charisma. Guess he inherited that from his father."
"Apparently. Anyway, a few misfits came out to their farm from time to time, but nobody stayed for long. The only congregation the old man could count on was his wife and son. According to the people I talked to who remembered that far back, dad spent a lot of time trying to beat the devil out of his wife and Charles, literally, and the mother then passed her frustration along by abusing the boy, physically and verbally."
"Nice family."
He hesitated, knowing she had to be considering the fact that they could be discussing her own grandparents. And the worst was yet to come. But she had to know. Her life depended on it.
"Charles seemed determined to pull himself up by the bootstrap. In spite of everything, he did well in school, played football, made decent grades, went to college. He wasn't a popular kid, too much of a bully, but he did some things right. He had plans to be a lawyer."
He studied the firm set of her slender shoulders, determined but too narrow to carry what he was about to tell her. That was why he'd decided to deliver the news in person, so he could be there for her.
"The summer before he was to leave for college, the teenage daughter of the Baptist preacher accused him of rape."
Rebecca sat up straight and whirled around to face him, her eyes wide, the pupils pinpoints.
"It never went to trial. In those days the attitude toward rape was different, something to be shoved under the carpet and ignored. The girl didn't even tell anybody until she turned up pregnant. Charles denied it, of course. Accused the girl of trying to ruin his life, making up lies. Then two more girls came forth to accuse him of the same thing, both of them good church-going, God-fearing kids."
"Janelle Griffin," she whispered, the sound so soft he read her lips more than heard her words. "That describes her perfectly. She was the daughter of a minister. He took advantage of her naiveté, got her to trust him, and then he raped her and she killed herself."
"That's pretty much the way I have it figured. Anyway, Charles was persuaded to join the army and serve his country in lieu of embarrassing the girls by having a messy trial. By all reports, he was pretty upset about being forced out of school and into the Army. Blamed the poor pregnant girl, of course. Swore up until the time the kid was born that it wasn't his, but the baby had his blood type, B negative, rare enough there wasn't much doubt. He never went back to Williford. Met Ben Jordan in the Army and made his way to Edgewater."
Rebecca drew a shaky hand over her face. "My blood type is A positive." Her voice was as shaky as her hand.
He didn't say anything, couldn't bear to destroy her single ray of hope.
"Which doesn't prove anything, does it?" she went on, shooting herself down. "Not until we know what my mother's blood type is."
"Yeah. You can inherit your blood type from either parent. Today we have DNA testing. That's the only way to be positive."
She emitted a choking sound somewhere between a hysterical laugh and a sob. "So we just go up to Charles and ask for some of his blood to match to my DNA. Or, better yet, we find his latest rape victim and get a sample of his sperm. Then we dig up Janelle Griffin's body and take a sample of her bones."
He grabbed her shoulders. "Stop it! Don't do this to yourself!"
She twisted away from him and shot to her feet. Feverish spots of pink burned on each pale cheek. "At least we know why dear old dad wants me gone. DNA testing would prove he's been up to his old tricks." She leaned her head back and closed her
eyes. "God, I wish I'd never found that note or that blue dress! I wish I'd never thought I needed to know my roots. My father's a rapist who wants to kill me, and my mother committed suicide rather than live with the guilt of my birth. And both sets of grandparents are religious fanatics. Some roots. Thank goodness I've never had children. What a set of genes to pass on!"
A blinding flash of jealousy shot through Jake as he thought of Rebecca's potential children...of the father of those children.
He stood, wanting to put his arms around her and crush her to him...though the desire came as much from a need to hold her as from a need to comfort. So he didn't dare indulge. "In the first place, you still don't know for sure that Charles and Janelle are your parents, and in the second, you've turned out pretty damned good. I don't think you need to worry about the fate of your children."
He stalked away from her, into her condo, trying to escape the unsettling picture that frightening flash of jealousy had illuminated. Incorporated in the fear he'd had for Rebecca's safety when she didn't return his phone calls had been his own fear of rejection...that she was at home and avoiding his calls, avoiding him.
What the hell was going on with him? The master of loving and letting go, the man who knew the ropes, understood the rules, lived for the thrill of the moment and didn't indulge in impossible romantic fantasies...was it possible he'd fallen in love?
While Rebecca had been learning the temporary nature of love, the need to live in the present only, he'd been losing his mind.
No matter. Whatever it was, it wouldn't last. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, not do anything dumb, ride this out and wait for the feeling to go away.
She came in to stand beside him, tall and willowy and unbowed. In spite of the tough blow she'd just received, a blow that would have been fatal only a few days ago, she wasn't breaking. She was upset, her features ashen and drawn. But she hadn't gone under. She was a survivor after all.
That only reinforced the feeling he had for her. Whatever that feeling was, it was only getting stronger, showed no signs of going away any time soon.
"What do I do now?" she asked, her voice unsteady yet determined. "I have to do something. I can't spend the rest of my life waiting for my father to kill me."
"I don't know. I've been thinking about it ever since I got this report, and I haven't come up with any answers. If it is Charles Morton who's doing these things, we're going to have a hard time getting the authorities to listen. He's got the Edgewater Police Department in his back pocket, and there is an unwritten loyalty between policemen everywhere. Most of the time, it's a good thing, something that has to be there when you're putting your life on the line every day. But that loyalty has been known to cause them to be blind to the faults of fellow officers."
"Like the officers who came to the motel Friday night."
"Yeah, like them."
She wrapped her arms about herself. "So we need tangible evidence, and what we have is a phone call in the middle of the night, a broken headlight, a missing dress, a harmless snake, a near drowning and my gas left on. Threatening, near-fatal, but nothing solid."
"Afraid so. If the motel owner in Edgewater is willing to corroborate the story that you tried to commit suicide, and I'm betting he will, then we don't have much. I called the Dallas police this morning when I couldn't find any sign of you, told them the whole story, and they weren't too concerned. Told me I'd have to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing persons report. None of my former buddies work this area, so I was just your ordinary over-wrought—" He hesitated, the word lover poised on his lips. "Caller," he finished.
Rebecca nodded. "If I hadn't gone to my parents' house, I'd be dead and it would have looked like a suicide."
"I'm sure that was the whole idea."
She smiled wryly. "Even now, my parents—Brenda and Jerry, that is—are still taking care of me."
"Yeah, it looks like they are."
Rebecca was definitely getting her head on straight, getting things worked out.
"I'm going to call Lorraine Griffin and confront her," she said with that same reluctant but determined tone.
"It's a place to start." He reached for the phone on one of her lamp tables.
She took his arm, halting him in place.
"I'll do it," she said. "You don't work for me anymore. Remember?"
He wanted to shake off her grasp, tell her to stop being silly and let him make the phone call. But the bare skin below his shirt sleeve where her fingers wrapped gently around his arm didn't want to shake her off. Her touch, even under these circumstances, was like spring sunshine after a hard, cold winter.
Hard, cold winter? It had only been two days since he'd seen her, two days and two nights since he'd made love to her and held her in his arms. Did that constitute a hard, cold winter?
Apparently it did.
Her eyes darkened as if she could read his distress, and she dropped her fingers.
"I remember that I got a lot more out of Lorraine Griffin last time than you did," he countered, the edges of his words rough and grating. "If I don't work for you anymore, then you can't give the orders. I'll call Lorraine Griffin."
She stared at him for a moment, and he opened his mouth to apologize, to explain that he was irritated with himself, not with her. But he didn't have a chance.
"There's another phone in the kitchen. Get on it if you want, but I'm doing the talking. I don't take orders, either, and this is something I need to do." She brushed past him, sat in the peach-colored chair and reached for the phone.
Okay, she wanted to make the call herself. She didn't need him anymore.
He was already through the kitchen door and had lifted the portable phone from its cradle when he heard her exclamation. "I have nineteen messages!"
He turned around, trying to smile and make light of something that was far from light. "Most came from me. I got worried when you didn't answer my calls. That's why I came over and broke down your door."
"Oh." She smiled. "Thank you, Jake. For rescuing me again. Or at least trying to." She was so damned tantalizing sitting in that chair with one long, slender hand poised over the telephone, wearing a pair of faded cutoffs and a white shirt, looking vulnerable and strong and fragile and tough.
She's getting it together, you jerk. Don't mess her up.
"Any time." He took out his small notebook, flipped through a couple of pages and handed it to her. "Here's Lorraine's number."
She punched in the numbers. "It's ringing."
He flipped the phone he held to on and stood behind her chair.
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Griffin, this is Rebecca Patterson." She hesitated for only a heartbeat. "Am I your granddaughter?"
For a moment electronic silence hummed over the phone line.
"How dare you suggest something like that!" Lorraine Griffin's voice exploded. "My Janelle went to her grave pure as the day she was born!"
"Did she? Or did Charles Morton rape her?" Rebecca wasn't pulling any punches.
"What do you want, coming around and trying to stir up things best left buried?"
"I want to live, that's what I want. Somebody's trying to kill me because of all those shameful little secrets you people have buried in your shameful little town."
"I'd be careful about looking for those buried secrets if I was you. You may not like what you find."
"I'm sure I won't like it, but I don't have much choice as it stands right now. I seem to have started a chain reaction. One way or the other, those secrets are going to rise up out of the muck, into the light. Don't you think it would be best if that could happen before they harm any more people?"
"You stay away from Janelle. She had nothing to do with you. If my girl had a baby, bastard or not, she wouldn't have thrown it away. You're no kin to me, and you'd better not go around saying you are." Rebecca flinched as the receiver on the other end was slammed down.
Jake placed a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"
&nb
sp; She nodded, then turned to look at him. "I believe the part about her not being my grandmother." One corner of her mouth quirked upward in a half-hearted, wry smile. "But maybe just because I want to believe it."
"I think she believes it. But I'm not so sure about the rest. She didn't deny that Charles raped Janelle. Lord only knows how many other defenseless women he's attacked. Doris said he goes to Dallas and Fort Worth a lot. Maybe that's so he can keep his misdeeds away from his own back door."
Her unwavering gaze held his. "Maybe. And maybe we're not completely off base about him. Maybe my mother was one of his victims, and that's why she didn't want me, the child of a rape."
Suddenly Rebecca was ready to take on the world, face her greatest fears, stand alone. Suddenly she was the type woman he could have an affair with, not worry about hurting her because she didn't need him...or anyone else.
He was happy for her.
So why couldn't he be happy for himself, too? Wasn't this what he wanted, this tantalizing woman he couldn't resist, strong enough to handle a no-commitments-given-none-expected fling? Well, wasn't it?
"Doris Jordan knows something," she continued. "Do you have her number?"
"Flip back a couple of pages in my notebook," he told her. "It's in there."
Doris answered on the first ring.
"This is Rebecca. I—"
"Please don't call me again, Rebecca. You've got to forget about everything and everybody down here."
"She'd like to do that," Jake interjected, "but something she unearthed has followed her home. There's been another attempt on Rebecca's life."
Doris' gasp was soft but quite distinct.
"Somebody broke into her condo and turned on the gas. Fortunately, Rebecca wasn't home, but we can't count on that kind of luck the next time. Unless you want to be a party to her murder," Jake continued, pushing his advantage relentlessly, "you're going to have to tell us what you know. We can't fight an invisible enemy."
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