Not a Moment Too Soon

by Linda O. Johnston

  Shauna’s heart went out to him. As usual. That particular part of her body always seemed to be engaged around Hunter, whether she liked it or not.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, tired of the inadequate sentiment.

  She wished she could say something that really would make him feel better.

  And then it dawned on her exactly what that would be.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “Do you feel like taking a breather?”

  “What, do you want to drive?”

  “I will if you’d like, though I’m not wild about L.A. area freeways. But what I meant was that if we stop for a while, we could get my computer from the trunk, and I’ll add into my story the fact that when we got to Aitken’s place in the mountain, he wasn’t there.” She tried to speak lightly, as if their wasted time wasn’t a big deal. “Maybe my fabulous flying fingers will add something else that’ll be helpful.”

  Chapter 16

  It wasn’t like he’d really expected Shauna to come up with something good.

  But Hunter, sitting in the fast-food restaurant’s booth clutching a foam coffee cup as if it was the only thing that could warm him on the inside, still couldn’t melt away the icy steel vise that had attached itself to his gut.

  “Ready to give up yet?” His voice was gruff enough to be a challenge.

  He had to hand it to her. She met that challenge by giving back as good as she got. “Want me to?” Her brown eyes flashed her continued anger, which was better, he figured, than the sympathy he hated to see. Her long, light hair was wispy, maybe from the humidity in the air up in the mountains.

  Most women he knew—like Margo—would have headed straight to the rest room and combed her hair. Fixed her makeup.

  Not that Shauna needed anything artificial to make her soft, pink skin look any better, or to bring out the color of her eyes.

  “Hell, no,” he answered her. “I’ll never give up, and I won’t let you, either.”

  Her ironic grin was only directed at him for an instant.

  Then she directed it to her laptop set up on the table.

  He’d waited until they’d gotten off the mountain and onto the freeway before stopping at a busy exit to take Shauna up on her proposal to mess with her story again. Foolish, maybe, but he was pinning some of his hopes on that story.

  Changes to it had sent them to where Aitken had been.

  Next time, they wouldn’t be too late.

  Shauna had immediately set up in the booth while he got them coffee. By the time he’d gotten through the line and joined her at the table, she’d told him she had already entered the part where Big T wasn’t there when Hunter and she reached his mountain cabin.

  “It saved,” she’d told him. “But my change to the ending didn’t. And I didn’t start writing anything I wasn’t aware of.”

  He’d given her a couple of suggestions on things to add, like a generic inclusion that Simon’s research led to more places Aitken might hole up.

  It didn’t save.

  Neither did anything that might lead them to some unnamed conspirator who’d tipped Aitken off.

  Nothing much seemed to be working here. They had to get back on the road to L.A.

  Maybe.

  Would Aitken have been stupid enough to return there, where he was more likely to be recognized than somewhere far away?

  But if he had kept going, how could they possibly learn where?

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “Do you want me to add that?” Shauna eyed him sideways.

  “If it’ll help.”

  She was pulling his leg, trying to lighten his mood. Of course, right now, nothing would help.

  Would it?

  He got out of his side of the booth and slid in beside Shauna. He saw a couple of teenage girls look at him from the next booth and giggle together. He ignored them as he got close to Shauna to read the screen.

  Got so close that her body heat, radiating through the long-sleeved white shirt over her T-shirt and jeans, curled around him and warmed that metallic clamp around his insides—just a little.

  It also reminded him of other heat they’d shared during their brief reunion.

  It fired up, all over again, his resentment of that other story on her computer.

  Before he pulled away, she said, “Here,” and typed the word “Damn” where the cursor was blinking. The paragraph around it must have been what Shauna had just added, as it said that Big T’s cabin was empty.

  The part after that he’d read before. It got into Andee’s thoughts.

  How scared she still was.

  He felt his body tighten, his muscles contract until he shook.

  Shauna turned toward him, soft curves brushing against him. He shouldn’t be noticing her nearness that way, not now.

  Not when all he cared about might be so close to being lost.

  “Hunter,” she said, “let’s—”

  He turned toward her. “Don’t say it.”

  One edge of her mouth turned up in a half smile. “Okay, I won’t tell you I’d like to speculate on how you think Andee would react to your frustration in finding her gone. If I can somehow tune into her emotions that way, then—”

  “Then you’ll fade off into one of your big, bad writing z-states?”

  “Interesting way to describe them. And probably not. They never show up when I want them to. But it doesn’t hurt to try.”

  “What the hell. Okay, Andee’s only five, but she’s smart for her age. She knows her dad’s got a temper. She has one, too. If she knows I’m mad, she sometimes pulls a tantrum of her own to distract me. Other times, she’s sweet as can be. Shames me out of my mood.”

  Shauna smiled. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  Hunter shot her a look. Did she mean it? If her story unfolded as she wrote it, she would never meet his daughter.

  “So here,” Shauna said, “where she knows you’re mad at Big T, not her, and you’re really worried about her, what would she tell you?”

  “The only thing I can think of that’d be similar is when she knows Margo and I have had words.”

  “And what does she say to that?”

  He had to take a moment before he could respond. When he did, his voice was thick. “She says, ‘I love you, Daddy.’”

  Hunter almost didn’t catch Shauna’s slight reaction—a twitch of one index finger on the keyboard. But he knew the woman was touched by his words.

  She kept her voice level as she repeated slowly, while typing it onto the screen, “‘I love you, Daddy.’ And your reaction would be—?”

  “I’d grab her, fling her up in the air and laugh with her, and tell her I love her, too.” He spoke in a harsh monotone. He wasn’t used to describing personal moments like that.

  Especially not when he feared they’d never happen again.

  His eyes lit on a couple of kids about Andee’s age at the other side of the crowded restaurant—a little boy in a Dodgers T-shirt. A little girl in something pink with lace on it.

  He drew his gaze away. Fast.

  “And then,” he continued without looking at Shauna, “I’d—”

  She was still typing. He edged a glance toward her face.

  Her eyes were closed.

  Hot damn! Had she gone into one of her writing states just like that?

  She looked fragile, her skin pale and translucent, as if every ounce of blood, every gradation of her existence was centered in her fingers. She still sat straight in the booth, though, not slumping at all.

  Still, worried about her, he put an arm around her.

  She felt cold.

  If he lent her his body heat, would it break the spell?

  But could he let her freeze anyway?

  He compromised by not drawing too close. Instead, he watched the screen. Read the words she wrote.

  And grinned.

  “It’s okay, Daddy,” Andee said. “But you have to come and get me.”

  “I will, honey. Tell me where yo
u are, and I’ll get there just as soon as I can.”

  “I don’t know,” Andee cried.

  “Is it someplace you’ve been before?” her daddy asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Andee agreed.

  “With Mommy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And with the man who’s with you now?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “Is it a house?” Daddy asked.

  “A great big place,” Andee said. “And it’s cold and yucky.”

  Shauna stopped typing.

  “No,” Hunter whispered. “Keep going. Please. We need more to find her.”

  But Shauna’s hands dropped from the keyboard as she slumped on the seat beside him.

  He gathered her into his arms, holding her close. She felt as cold as the top of the San Bernardino Mountains in skiing season, and she shook as hard as if she were out there, in the snow, in the light clothes she had on now.

  “Hang on,” he said, kissing her eyelids, which remained closed. “I have a jacket in the car. I’ll go get it.”

  But her eyes popped open and regarded him with shock, as if he were a complete stranger. The sensation of her not recognizing him kicked him right where it hurt. Especially when she began struggling in his arms.

  “Shauna, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  Recognition dawned on her face, and she stopped moving. Looked up at him in what appeared to be an agony of embarrassment as she tried to pull away in the booth.

  “I’m sorry, Hunter,” she said. “What happened?”

  “You went into one of your big, bad writing z-states,” he replied. “And it was a doozie.”

  “Did it say how to find Andee?”

  “No, but it gave a damned good clue or two.” And without regard for the anger he’d felt for her earlier, or the fact they were in a restaurant crowded with kids, he leaned toward her and gave her one big, grateful, sexy kiss.

  They were nearly at Margo’s when Hunter, stopped at a traffic light after hopping off at the final freeway exit, looked at Shauna and asked, “Did you try to change the story’s ending again at the restaurant? I mean, when you started writing about Andee and me together. I know you said you did earlier, but nothing happened.”

  He actually looked curious, not incredulous or mocking…or angry.

  Shauna loved that particular expression on his handsome face, which only got better-looking with time—even when shadowed with worry. His straight, black brows were raised just a little, his green eyes quizzical, and he appeared interested as he waited for her reply.

  “Not then,” she said. “Weren’t you watching me and what I wrote?”

  “Mostly. But when I kept an eye on you, I couldn’t be certain what you were writing.”

  “Neither could I,” she said ruefully.

  “Tell me more about how your writing z-state goes. Do you think hard then about what it is you want to write? Or are you vaguely aware of what your fingers are typing? Or is it like your mind goes somewhere and your hands are someplace else?”

  “All three, at different times. And sometimes none of them. Mostly, it’s like the last one—I’m not conscious, like I’m sleeping. My hands are awake, though, and write automatically, like they and not my mind are what’s tuning into…whatever. The emotions of the people I’m writing about, at least initially, though it goes beyond that since I usually type out a whole story—beginning, middle and end—and the subjects I’m writing about can’t possibly know what’s going to happen in the future.”

  “But your fingers do?”

  Shauna had been watching Hunter, though his eyes had returned to the road as they’d proceeded when the light turned green. “I honestly don’t know how I get to the stories’ endings. I generally can guess how they start, thanks to the descriptions of the emotions of others at the beginnings. The ends, though—”

  “Can be wrong.” He made it a statement, and she saw the stubborn set to his broad jaw.

  “All I can tell you is what I’ve seen, Hunter. They’ve always come true. On the other hand, I’ve never been able to save even a single change before, so this one is, somehow, different. If only I understood what caused that difference, maybe I could say with certainty that the ending to this one could be changed.”

  “Or couldn’t.” His voice was hard again, but before she could think of how to reply he turned the steering wheel, and they went around a corner a little too sharply. She braced herself—and wished she had mentally, too. “So the story you wrote about you and me was caused by someone else’s strong emotions, which I’d guess you figure were mine.”

  “I—”

  “And then you expect it’ll come true like the others?”

  Shauna had never thought she would be glad to arrive at Margo’s, but there it was, the two-story blue house that dominated the street’s residential skyline.

  And there was the horde of media vans parked along the street, undoubtedly waiting till something happened to excite all the reporters inside them.

  Like a glimpse of anyone connected with the kidnapped child. Such as her father.

  But maybe even braving cameras and microphones would be better than responding to Hunter’s last question. Expectations were so very different from impossible dreams.

  “Is that Simon’s car?” She pointed toward a foreign model almost as sporty as Hunter’s GTO.

  “No, he drives a black sedan that’s nearly invisible on stakeouts,” Hunter said. “And you’re changing the subject.” He pulled into one of the few empty spaces, behind the vehicle in question, and turned off the engine. He reached over and put his forefinger gently beneath Shauna’s chin, turning it toward him.

  She kept her eyes level as she considered her response, trying to ignore the fact that his hand hadn’t left her face. His closeness, his touch, made it even harder to speak in a monotone, but she did.

  “If you’re asking whether I wish that story tracked reality, you know I’d be lying if I said no. As to the ending, though—that’s a trap. If I say yes, that things will happen that way, you’ll say it’s impossible. If I say it won’t come true, you’ll remind me I believe that the ending to Andee’s story will come to pass, so why not this one? I’ll put it this way. I want Andee to come back safe and sound. Whether I believe it’ll happen is irrelevant. And the story about our relationship? We don’t have a relationship, Hunter. Not one that could go where that story implies. I wrote it, but I have to distinguish it from the rest without a really good explanation.”

  He appeared ready to interrupt, but she didn’t let him.

  “We were thrown together again because of circumstances neither of us could control. When we have Andee back—hopefully safe, well and unharmed—I’ll go home, you’ll stay here, and I’ll sometimes recall that particular story nostalgically in years to come, just as I wished for a long time that things hadn’t ended between us before the way they did.” She reached for the door handle. “And now I’m ready to question your ex-wife about all the places she’s taken Andee that your daughter might recognize.”

  Hunter hadn’t actually intended to let Shauna handle the latest round of questions for Margo, but she’d stormed right by the herd of reporters who’d leaped out of the vans parked along the street, ignoring them all. She’d kept her head high, ignoring their shouts and Margo’s tearful criticism when she opened the door.

  In fact, Shauna had stalked into the house as if ready to take on the world.

  Or at least Margo.

  Now he stood leaning against the kitchen wall while the two women faced each other over Margo’s table. Shauna had a pad of paper in front of her that she’d pulled from her computer bag, and she kept her pen poised above it as she began to quiz Margo.

  “Assume Aitken has taken Andee someplace that she’s been before with you, but not in his presence. Just start naming places you’ve been recently with your daughter that fit that description.”

  Margo sighed and swiped at her eyes. “What’s this about? I’d t
ell you anything to help find my daughter, but I don’t understand. I mean, there are thousands of places I might have gone with Andee when John wasn’t along. Why are you asking your question like that?”

  “Humor me,” Shauna said.

  “This is ridiculous,” Margo cried. “A waste of time. My poor Andee. She must miss her mommy and daddy.” She sniffled, then grabbed a tissue. Her snug, sleeveless sweater was a shade of red that Hunter had always thought looked particularly good on her. She looked at him pathetically, as if for support.

  “We got an anonymous tip that was really cryptic, Margo,” he said. He wasn’t about to explain the origin of that tip. “We can’t afford to ignore any possible lead to Andee, can we?”

  “Of course not.” Barely glancing at Shauna, Margo rattled off places in the neighborhood first—supermarkets she went to with Andee, fast-food and sit-down restaurants they’d gone to, a movie theater.

  Shauna made notes, but after a short while she interrupted. “You’re on the right track, but those aren’t places Aitken could hide Andee on a long-term basis. What about—” Shauna’s face lit up. She turned toward Hunter. “I was going to ask about mutual friends, but it’s obvious. BillieAnn!” Looking at Margo again, she said, “Didn’t you tell Hunter she’s out of town somewhere shooting a commercial? Where does she live? That could be the perfect place for Aitken to take Andee.”

  “But BillieAnn has a roommate,” Margo sniffed.

  “Does the roommate know Aitken?”

  “How should I know?”

  Shauna looked at Hunter. “We should check there anyway, roommate or not.” Turning back to Margo, she said, “Who else do you know in common? Anybody who’s also out of town?”

  Margo’s list of mutual friends and acquaintances was a lot shorter and didn’t pour out as fast as the places she’d mentioned. When she was done, she’d come up with half a dozen names.

  “If you ladies will excuse me for a minute,” he said, and nodded toward the hall leading to Margo’s guest bathroom.

  Not that he was so desperate to use her facilities, but it gave him a way to steal off and contact Simon fast.

  In the small powder room that smelled of herbal air freshener, Hunter used his cell to call his second-in-command.