Harlequin Intrigue November 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2

by Carla Cassidy

  When she returned to the porch, she handed him the drink and then returned to her chair, aware of him watching her intently as the purple shadows of twilight began to fall.

  “Thomas Brady is a local carpenter who has made it clear that he wants to have a romantic relationship with me. We went out a couple of times, but for me the relationship has never been anything but a friendship. But Thomas has been persistent, and he believes we belong together.”

  In the deepening shadows Gabriel’s features looked sharper, a little bit dangerous. “So what could your relationship with Thomas have to do with the Connellys’ disappearance?”

  Marlena paused to take a sip of her lemonade. She set the glass on the wicker table between them and released a sigh. “Sam and Daniella don’t like Thomas, and they’ve made their feelings toward him fairly clear. They don’t think he’s good enough for me. They don’t want to see us together as a couple. They’ve always been cool to Thomas when he’s come here to visit with me.”

  She frowned and looked out to where John and Cory were loading up their gardening tools into a wheelbarrow. “Thomas stopped by yesterday, and we visited for a little while. He was more at ease than he’d ever been, with Sam and Daniella not around.” She shrugged. “He suggested it would be safer for me if I moved in with him. I just thought you should maybe check him out. He was supposedly out of town working on a deck in New Orleans when the family disappeared.”

  “I will check him out,” Gabriel replied. He took a drink of his lemonade and leaned back in the chair, looking nothing if not exhausted.

  “Bad day?” she asked sympathetically.

  “Bad case,” he replied. He looked out to where John and Cory headed to the gardening shed. They stopped suddenly, and John grabbed a hoe and began to smack the ground.

  “What’s he doing?” Gabriel asked.

  “Must have stumbled across another snake. We have a nest of rattlesnakes and way too many cottonmouths on the grounds, and John is our official snake killer. Cory would rather try to catch them. He loves snakes and reptiles, but John has a healthy fear of them and always cuts off their heads.”

  They both watched as John picked up on the hoe what was obviously now a dead snake and tossed it into the wheelbarrow.

  “I hate snakes,” Gabriel admitted. “I’d rather face a perp with a gun than stumble on a snake.”

  She released a small laugh. “I’d rather not face either of those situations.”

  “Your brother seems like a good kid.”

  “He’s a pretty normal kid. And by that I mean one day I want to kiss him to death and the next day I want to wring his neck,” she admitted and was rewarded with a brief smile from Gabriel. “What about you? What kind of a kid were you when you were around Cory’s age?”

  “Tough. I was basically living on the streets, working at a fast-food joint to get by.”

  “Where were your parents?” she asked.

  His features took on a dark and dangerous mask. “My mother took off for parts unknown when I was seven, leaving me in the custody of the meanest bastard in the state of Mississippi—my father. I lived in constant fear of him from the time my mother left until I left home at sixteen.”

  He paused and took another sip of his lemonade. “That’s why I had my window open the other night, because from the time I was a little kid, I had to have an escape route from my old man.” He was silent for a moment and then jerked, as if pulling his thoughts back to the present.

  “After I left home, for the next couple of years I did whatever I needed to do to survive on my own.”

  “So how did you wind up as an FBI agent?” What she wanted to say was that she was sorry for what he’d gone through with his father, that her heart ached for the little boy he had been, but she knew he’d hate her for going there.

  “A street cop got friendly with me and encouraged me to finish school, get into college, and that’s when the FBI tapped me on the shoulder. And here I am, working on the right side of the law.”

  “Funny, we have similar backgrounds. I think I mentioned before that my mother took off when Cory was young. The truth of the matter is she discovered she loved drugs more than she loved her husband and her kids. Cory was about four when my father told her she had to leave. She came around a couple more times after that looking for money, and when my father refused to give her any, she finally disappeared for good.”

  She picked up her glass and finished the last of her lemonade. “One of the final times she came to the house, I remember she hugged me and told me how much she loved me and then asked me for my allowance. I was so mad at her that I told her I never wanted to see her again, and I didn’t. My dad tried to hold it together, but when Cory was thirteen, he died of a heart attack.”

  Her whole body ached as she remembered those moments when her mother had held her close, stroking her hair and telling her how much she loved her. She had so wanted to believe, had needed to believe that her mother had changed and their family would be put back together. When her mother had asked for Marlena’s allowance money, it had irrevocably broken any mother-daughter bond that might have survived.

  “I guess we both got tough breaks,” he said. His features were no longer visible in the darkness that had finally claimed the area.

  For a few minutes they sat in silence, and Marlena wondered what he was thinking. What scars had been left behind by his mother’s absence and father’s brutality? By life itself?

  “You think they’re dead, don’t you?” she asked. It had been a question that had tormented her since the morning she’d awakened to find Sam, Daniella and Macy gone; a question she’d been afraid to ask until this very moment.

  “It’s possible that they’re still alive. We can always hope for the best,” he answered after a long hesitation.

  She was grateful that it was dark enough that she couldn’t see his features, for she heard the lie in his voice but was glad she didn’t have to see it in his eyes.

  Minutes later, after he’d gone inside, Marlena remained in the chair, watching the fireflies begin to take over the area. Tears blurred her vision as she remembered Macy chasing the flashing bugs and her squeals of delight when she managed to capture one in a jar.

  How Marlena wished Macy was out there now, chasing fireflies, her laughter filling the air. How she wished Daniella and Sam were sitting on the porch with her, enjoying the last of the evening before bedtime.

  As the sound of bullfrogs rose in the air, a shiver swept up her spine as she thought of her plunge into the pond. She no longer knew if she’d really been pushed or had stumbled and fallen off the path and into the lake. It all felt like a bad dream now, unclear and fuzzy.

  But the night air suddenly felt fraught with danger, and she quickly jumped up from her chair and went inside, even knowing that for Sam and Daniella and little Macy, the house hadn’t been a safe haven.

  * * *

  SUNDAY EVENING GABRIEL told his two agents to take the next day off. Their Sunday had been a long one, and he felt as if they all needed a little downtime to clear their heads.

  On Monday morning, Gabriel was still in bed when Jackson and Andrew knocked on his door and asked if he wanted to go with them for breakfast at a café in town. He declined, but as he went downstairs to the dining room and heard Marlena humming from the kitchen, he was sorry he hadn’t gone with his two partners.

  As he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot in the dining room, he realized he liked the sound of her humming. It was an unfamiliar but pleasant feminine noise he’d never enjoyed before.

  He followed it into the kitchen and paused and watched as she stirred a big pot of what smelled like rich spaghetti sauce. He noticed that her bottom wiggled with each stir of the big spoon.

  “I checked out your boyfriend last night,” he said.

  She whirl
ed around, obviously startled by his presence. “You scared me.” She placed the spoon in the spoon rest. “And he’s not my boyfriend.” She grabbed a cup of coffee that was on the nearby counter, then sat at the table and motioned for him to join her.

  He hesitated. He could smell her scent, clean from a morning shower, sprayed with the fresh floral fragrance that had imprinted itself into his head. Her scent, combined with the tomato-and-herb odor of the sauce, somehow brought to his mind what home might smell like.

  Stop it, he mentally commanded himself. He sat at the table and tried to staunch the alien thoughts that drifted through his mind.

  She sat across from him and looked at him expectantly. “So what did you find out about Thomas, and how on earth did you do it so quickly?”

  “Ah, the wonder of the internet and the magic of the FBI’s powers.” He paused to take a drink of his coffee and then continued. “Thomas Brady, thirty-seven years old. Never married, no criminal background—the man appears on paper to be squeaky clean.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I still need to have a face-to-face meeting with him and check out his alibi. Just because somebody has managed to keep a clean record doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not a bad guy.”

  Marlena frowned, the dainty line dancing in the center of her forehead doing nothing to detract from her beauty. “I can’t imagine Thomas being so upset that he would do something terrible to the family.” She got up from her chair. “You want some breakfast? I’ve got bacon already cooked, and it would take me just a minute to fry up a couple of eggs.”

  “Okay, if it isn’t too much trouble,” he replied. Maybe he would find her less distracting if she was doing something instead of sitting across from him and gazing at him with her amazing eyes.

  “Sam and Daniella never talked about having a will?” he asked as she moved across the room to the refrigerator.

  “Never. It wasn’t something we would have talked about.” She carried the egg carton to the counter next to the stove. “Scrambled, over easy or hard cooked?” she asked.

  “Scrambled is fine. Pamela seemed to think that if Sam and Daniella had a will, then Macy would be a beneficiary and so would you.”

  Marlena laughed and turned to face him. “I told you before, there’s no way I would be in any will. Daniella would never do that. This bed-and-breakfast was her dream from the time she was a teenager, but she knew it was never mine.” She turned back around to the counter and placed two slices of bread in the toaster, then moved an iron skillet over a heating burner.

  “Daniella knew that my plan in the next couple of months was to move to either Baton Rouge or New Orleans. She and Sam paid me a good wage, and I’ve managed to squirrel away most of it so I can go to college and get my teaching degree. I’ve even made Cory put half of his paycheck each week into a savings account so that when we get to the city, he can enroll in a trade school. Daniella would have never left me this place because she knew I wouldn’t want it.”

  She looked at him again with a wry smile. “I guess that removes me as a suspect with a financial motive.”

  “You’ve pretty much been taken off my suspect list anyway,” he replied.

  “Thanks. I appreciate your clarity.”

  He was surprised by the small burst of laughter that escaped him. “That’s about the only clarity I’ve had about this case so far.”

  She turned back around, and as she tended to his breakfast, they fell into silence. He sipped his coffee and stared out the window where a flower bed exploded with a variety of colorful blooms.

  “John came up clean, too,” he said as she set his plate before him and then rejoined him at the table. “What do you know about him?”

  She shrugged, her bare, faintly freckled shoulders enchanting him. “I know he’s from New Orleans but used to work for some big hotel in Shreveport, and was looking for a change of pace and a smaller town. When he saw the ad that Sam had run in the paper, he applied for the job and then came here for a visit.”

  “Apparently Sam liked what he saw in the young man,” Gabriel said as he picked up a slice of his toast.

  “I like what I see in John. He’s been like a big brother to Cory, and he seems to know everything there is to know about plants and trees and flowers. I think he has a degree in horticulture. He came here with a glowing recommendation from his former job.” She frowned. “Surely he isn’t on your suspect list. Sam and John got along great, and he was considered part of the family.”

  Gabriel fell silent as he ate his breakfast, his thoughts going over what little they knew about the disappearance. He had no idea specifically what time the family had vanished. They had now been missing over three days, and his hope to find them alive was shrinking.

  “Our suspect list stinks, we have no real leads to follow and we’re no closer to figuring out what happened to the family than we were when we first arrived,” he said with disgust. He shoved his empty plate aside and reached for his coffee cup.

  Marlena got up and went for his plate, but before she grabbed it, she laid her hand over the back of his. His heart stopped as she gazed at him, her smaller hand warm over his.

  He fought an impulse to snatch his hand away, unaccustomed to anyone touching him for any reason. She offered him a smile of encouragement. “You’re going to figure this out, Gabriel. I just know you and your men are going to get to the bottom of things.” She gave his hand a quick squeeze and then released it, leaving him feeling oddly bereft.

  As she moved to the sink with his plate, he once again stared out the window, his thoughts jumbled with both the crime and her. She topped up their coffee and then sat across from him.

  “Tell me about the people on your suspect list,” she said.

  “To be honest, we don’t even have a real suspect list at the moment. All we have is a person of interest list.”

  “Then tell me about your persons of interest.”

  He leaned back in the chair. “Your boyfriend, until I can check his alibi.” He’d deliberately called Thomas that to get her reaction.

  His reward was the flash of aggravation in her delicious green eyes. “He is not my boyfriend.” She must have seen a spark of something in his eyes, for she suddenly grinned. “Ah, the big dark FBI agent does have a sense of humor after all.”

  “I have my moments,” he said easily. “In any case, for now Thomas Brady is on my list, along with Ryan Sherman.”

  “I’d forgotten about Ryan,” she said. “He’s a thug, a creep, and he hated Sam with a passion. Of course, he hates anyone who has anything to do with law enforcement.”

  “The problem is that Ryan has an alibi. He was supposedly with his girlfriend the night of the disappearance. The other issue is, if somebody took the family and is keeping them alive, then they have to have a place for them. There’s no way Ryan would be keeping hostages in his dinky apartment. Jackson spent some time Saturday morning at City Hall checking to see if Ryan owns any other property in the area, but we came up with nada.”

  “His parents own some property out in the boondocks. I think Ryan does mechanic work on the side in an old shed out there.”

  “You have an address?” Gabriel asked.

  “No, but I can give you directions.”

  He held up his finger and then pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He called Jackson and explained the situation to him, and then put Marlena on the phone to give him the directions.

  “Check it out and get back to me,” he said to Jackson when Marlena handed his phone back to him.

  “We’re on it,” Jackson replied, and then the two men disconnected. Gabriel pocketed his cell phone, but was surprised to realize he wasn’t in a hurry to leave the kitchen or Marlena.

  He told himself it was because she might hold some nugget of information that could advance the ca
se, such as the fact that Ryan’s parents owned a place where perhaps people could be stashed. Who knew what other little tidbits she had that she didn’t even realize might be helpful for finding anyone who posed a threat to the family.

  He told himself he was here at the table with her because he still believed she was part of the key to solving the mystery of whatever happened to the Connellys.

  He assured himself it had nothing to do with the sunshine in her curls, the graceful motion she displayed when she got out of her chair to stir the sauce and then return to the table or the warmth of her smile when she gazed at him.

  “We know they weren’t taken for ransom because we haven’t received any kind of a money demand for their safe return,” he said, trying to focus on business and not the pleasure of her company.

  “Who would pay any kind of ransom? Neither Sam nor Daniella had family, and although this place holds its own, they aren’t exactly millionaires,” she replied.

  “I keep thinking there had to be more than one perp. Otherwise how could a single person control three people at the same time, one of them a seasoned FBI agent?”

  “Simple,” she replied. “It was love that kept them easily controlled.”

  He looked at her curiously, wondering if she was being silly, but her eyes held a glow of knowing, of certainty that told him she was being serious.

  “Love?” Disbelief laced his tone.

  “All it would take would be a single person getting through the back door and putting a gun to Sam’s head. Daniella and Macy would instantly become compliant to whatever he told them to do. It would be the same thing if somebody threatened Daniella or Macy. It would only take a threat to any one of them to effectively neutralize the others because of their enormous love for one another.”

  “I’ve never experienced that kind of love for or from anyone,” he said.

  She gazed at him for several long moments, her eyes holding a wealth of emotion. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”