by Beverly Bird
Jake’s blood instantly roared.
Gone was the lingering goodness, even the confusion, of a few moments ago. This was hot, fierce, furious. He wanted Devon Mills. He wanted to kill him with his bare hands. He wanted to fulfill his promise.
“Sam?” he bit out, already grabbing his shirt. “Do they have Sam?”
“No,” Adam answered, and there was real pain in his voice. “He wasn’t with them.”
Katya cried out.
Jake was halfway into one sleeve. He let it dangle and went back to her. “Hey, easy.” His voice changed. Even he heard it. It went soft, coaxing, gentle. “This is something, baby. He dropped Sam off somewhere, that’s all. And I swear to you and your God that I’ll pound the information out of him if he won’t tell me willingly.”
He let go of her shoulders and looked back at Adam. “I’ll need some more cash. My bank account is pushing empty. I need to rent a car to get over there.”
Adam nodded and backed away from the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Jake finished dressing. Katya picked up her dress and slipped into it, then she stood rooted, her apron still dangling from her hand. She finally threw it away with a high-pitched sound of disbelief. “Why am I putting this on to just...just wait?” she cried.
“I don’t know,” Jake answered honestly, going to her again. He drew her into his arms. “As soon as I know anything, the minute I know anything, I’ll get word to you somehow.”
“Yes.” She trembled. “I know you will. It will still seem like forever. I hate the waiting the most.”
Jake made a strangled sound. That was the single thing that had had them tumbling onto that bed in the first place, he realized. It had nothing to do with yearning. Nothing to do with need. Not at first. Then, in the explosion of a heartbeat. everything had changed. He couldn’t think about that now.
“We’re closing in,” he went on. “We’ve got him. It’s just one more step to getting Sam.”
His mind was already racing ahead. The fool had been stupid enough to go back to New Jersey. But then, he probably hadn’t known that Adam was still here in the settlement, that Jake himself had made the trip up. He didn’t know that he was tangling with the same two men who’d tracked him down the first time, last month.
“I’ve got to go,” he said hoarsely. He closed his eyes, grazed his mouth over her hair. She reached up suddenly and caught his face in her hands. She kissed him hard.
“For luck,” she said.
He stepped back from her unsteadily. For luck. For things to be different this time. For him to win, finally win, finally do something.
He left the room without another word. Adam was downstairs pacing the kitchen. Coffee was on. Mariah was nowhere to be found. By Jake’s best calculation, it was maybe four o’clock in the morning. Some cash was sitting on the table. Jake took it and shoved it into his wallet.
“I’m out of here,” he said, turning for the door.
“Not so fast,” Adam growled.
Jake shot him a warning look. “Not now. There’s a kid missing—”
“You’ve already used that excuse—earlier, out by the pond. It won’t fly this time.”
“Sam’s still out there.” Jake’s voice went threatening. “And we don’t know where yet.”
“Mills knows, and Mills is in custody. He’s not going anywhere. At least not in the extra five minutes this will take. You’re damned well going to stand still and listen to me, Jake. I mean it.”
The rage came out of nowhere. It actually turned the edges of his vision red. Jake crossed back to his brother. This time he didn’t lay a hand on him. He didn’t dare. He didn’t trust himself.
“This is none of your business,” he said for what felt to him like the thousandth time. What the hell was wrong with his brother these days? “Back off. Now. She doesn’t want you poking your nose into this, and neither do I.”
“Are you coming back?” Adam countered.
“When? After I’m finished in Jersey?” But already his pulse had started to thrum. Already panic began cavorting in his stomach again. He could have dealt with any question but that.
“Or are you going to head straight on back to Texas?”
“My problem, my decision,” Jake snapped.
“Not this time. I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and watch you hurt this particular woman.”
“It’s none of your business!” Jake roared.
“Mine is the only sane head in this household!” Adam shouted back. “Even Mariah thinks I should butt out! But I know you, Jake. I’m the only person left in this world who does. And I know what you’re going to do now. You’re going to do the only thing you’ve ever been good at. You’re going to run.”
It hurt. It really hurt. Jake stepped back from his brother’s words. “That’s not true,” he said finally.
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m a damned good cop.”
“The hell you are. If you were a damned good cop, you’d be doing something with all the knowledge you’ve gleaned over the years. You wouldn’t be horsing around in a low-paying job, turning down most every promotion, turning down the FBI and God knows who else has tried to hire you over the years. You’d take over ChildSearch.”
“Don’t start on that,” Jake warned. “Don’t you dare rake up the whole ChildSearch thing! You’re just looking for an easy way out there, bro. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, supporting ChildSearch and two houses in Texas, and a new wife and a kid, and five more mouths to feed besides with Katie and her kids! You can’t afford to run the whole damned show anymore, so you’re looking for a way to back out without losing face!”
“You stupid damned fool,” Adam snarled. “I’ve already listed the houses for sale. I want to give you ChildSearch because you are ChildSearch. You always have been.”
Jake turned hard for the door again. “I don’t have time for this now.”
“Then make time for this! Either one or two things just happened upstairs. Either that meant nothing to you, not a damned thing, and she was just a port in a storm—in which case, you won’t come back. Or it did mean something to you, it meant a lot to you, and that scares the hell out of you so you still won’t come back. You’ll run. Again.”
Jake’s face hardened. “We still haven’t cleared up the question of where you get off thinking this is your business,” he said with careful control.
“Because I care about both of you,” Adam said more quietly. “Especially you. You’re it, Jake. You’re my family. My blood. The only blood I’ve got left, except Bo. And I’ve come to learn lately that that means a lot.”
A shifting pain hit Jake’s chest. He’d thought that, too, before that cop had found him at Mariah’s house and told him Adam was married.
“Tell you what, bro,” he sneered. “Why don’t you spare me this garbage and go upstairs and play house with your wife? There’s your family.”
“What’s the matter, Jake? Are you ticked off because I found peace and you’re too scared to take a grab at it?”
“Don’t make me hit you.”
“It seems to me that you were the one who said we were getting too old for that, just a few weeks ago in Texas.”
Jake stared at him. “You’re trying to make me lose it, aren’t you?”
Adam didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, I am. Because I want to know why. I want to finally hear the truth. I want to know why you’re going to do this to that really good woman upstairs, because maybe if I understand, I won’t end up hating you for it.”
“Because I’m no good for her.”
The words slid out of him too easily. Jake realized he was closer to the edge than he’d thought. And his brother had shoved him right over.
Or maybe he’d been teetering there for a while.
Adam stared at him. He opened his mouth to argue, then something in Jake’s eyes silenced him. He believed it, Adam realized, dumbfounded. “Why?” Adam asked at last.
&n
bsp; “Ten minutes ago, you were trying to convince me of the same thing. I’ve got to go.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve got to go to New Jersey.”
“Don’t run this time, damn it!” Jake had opened the back door. Adam leaned around him and slammed it shut again.
“This is going to come to blows, isn’t it?” Jake asked levelly, without turning around. His voice was strained. It vibrated with the effort to keep his tone flat.
“Why?” Adam asked again.
Silenced stretched out, flattening the air with its weight.
“I can’t believe you even have to ask me that,” Jake answered finally. He kept speaking to the door. “Look around you, Adam. Open those love-struck eyes! Look at what we are! Remember what we are. We don’t belong here. We’re just a couple of poor kids from the wrong side of some Texas tracks, and we’ve lived with all the ugliness that went along with that every day of our lives. Now you think God’s going to save you or something.” He had thought the same thing upstairs. Briefly. Very briefly. He had to convince himself he knew better. “There are no happily-ever-afters in this world, bro,” he finished. “Not for the likes of us.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is.”
“I won’t buy it. You’re better than our beginnings. Hell, you’re a man who regularly maxes out his own credit card trying to help kids he doesn’t even know.”
And in that moment, incongruously, Jake remembered what had happened to the missing ninety dollars from his checking account. He’d used it for a cash tip to pay off an informant in the Amber Calabrese case. A ChildSearch case.
That infuriated him. Because it made his brother right.
He turned back to Adam fast and hard. “Because I didn’t do it the first time!” he shouted.
“What?” Adam asked blankly.
“I have to save those kids because I didn’t do it the first time. Now will you let me get the hell out of here?”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Adam said carefully.
Jake made a sound of disgust. “There was plenty I should have done. When I was eight and you were nine, I cringed in that bed with you, listening to our father beat the holy hell out of Mom. I didn’t get up and go in there and do something. I could have created some kind of diversion, set the lawn on fire, something to take his attention off her, but I didn’t. When Kimmie was six and I was fifteen, I stood there in the doorway of her bedroom and watched him bounce her off the walls, and when I tried to stop him, he laid me flat. He knocked me out cold. I helped a lot then, didn’t I? Kimmie finally had to run off with a broken heart and a broken arm to save herself. And you have to ask me why? The only things I’ve ever saved in thirty-seven rotten years were the things I didn’t let myself have, the things I didn’t let myself love!”
Adam was shocked.
“No,” Jake went on quietly, angrily. “I won’t come back. Happy now? You wanted to hear me say it? There it is, bro. I’m not coming back. Trust me on this one—the best thing I can do for that woman is keep going. If I hang around here too long, sooner or later I’ll let her down. I got lucky this time, bro—I had enough contacts to reel Mills in. But if I stay too long, I’ll end up promising something I can’t give her. At least now I have a chance to set the first screwup straight. At least now I have a chance to find her kid. And if I can do that, then yeah, I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”
Adam finally found his voice. “Why you? Why not me? You blame yourself for cringing in that bed while Mom got hit. But that makes no sense. She chose to stay. She wouldn’t leave. And I was there with you, Jake. Why are you pulling all this down on your own head? There were other responsible parties. Why not me? I was the oldest. I should have done something.”
Jake shook his head in disgust. “You were always the one with the heart. You bled, Adam. You felt too much, cared too much, and you always believed in miracles. Look at the whole business with Bo! He was gone for four years and you never gave up! I was the cocky one, the tough one.” He paused. “I was the one who was always shooting my mouth off and saying I was going to do something. But I never did.”
“What could you have done, Jake? Come on, be reasonable.”
“I should have taken that goddamned shotgun down off the living-room wall and blasted him clear to hell with it,” he snarled. “Man, don’t you see? Don’t you get it? I had a thousand opportunities, a thousand chances to make it right, and that shotgun just kept sitting up there, gathering dust.”
“Because you’re not a killer!”
“No.” He said it flatly. “I’m a coward.”
He turned away again. This time he opened the door. And Adam didn’t slam it shut.
“You watch over her, Adam,” he finished quietly. “You do it. You love it here. It’s in your eyes. And I know that you love your wife. Hell, I’ve fought admitting it for days, but she’s a fine lady. So stay with her. Take your chances that things can be different from what we’ve always known. You’ve got the heart for it. I don’t. Just watch over Katie. Don’t let that bastard of a husband come back to hurt her.”
Jake went outside. He had stepped down off the porch and took two long strides, then he stopped to speak without looking back. “Just for the record, you were right the second time. What happened upstairs did mean something to me. It meant a lot to me, and yeah, that scares the hell out of me.”
He began walking again.
Chapter 16
Katya crept soundlessly up the stairs. She met a sleepy Mariah on the landing. Her friend reached out for her.
“Katya, what’s happened? I heard shouting and your face is white.”
Katya stepped carefully past her without answering. She slipped into the bathroom, leaned weakly against the sink and promptly got sick. Finally, feeling shaky and empty, she slid down to sit on the floor.
As soon as she had known that Jacob and Adam weren’t discussing Sam, she should have retreated. Or at the very least, she should have interrupted and made them aware of her presence. But she’d known somehow that if she had, the things that had been said would never have been spoken. There had been a raw intensity to their argument that had been too powerful to interfere with. It had been a private moment between them, one she had no place in.
So she should have gone away. But she had stood rooted. She had stayed and listened, and now, when she finally cried, she did it mostly for the boy Jacob had been.
I was the cocky one, the tough one. I was the one who was always shooting my mouth off. This time, she knew, he’d sold himself short. Because a boy who was only cocky, only shooting off his mouth, would not have felt such pain at being unable to do anything. He would not have chastised himself over it for so very long. She’d lived ten years with a man who was cocky and all talk with no substance. She certainly knew the difference.
You wanted to hear me say it? There it is, bro. I’m not coming back. I’ll quit while I’m ahead. She cried out a little without realizing it.
She had known that, of course. She had known from the look in his eyes when the loving was over. And when they had spoken about the quilt. There had been panic there, not immediately, but flickering, then building. So, Katya thought, it really was over this time.
She took in a shuddering breath of almost overwhelming sorrow. And loss. Yes, there was the selfish ache of loss there also. Because she had discovered something incredible in his arms last night and she was never going to be able to reclaim the feeling again. She’d found a dizzying feminine power within herself. A vast reservoir capable of giving and receiving pleasure. She’d discovered love.
She covered her face with her hands. Should she also feel shame? she wondered. What she had done was so terribly against the ordnung. She’d loved a man who was not her husband. She’d revelled in it, enjoyed, had needed it fiercely. That shook her down to her core—but with awe, with wonder, not regret. Jacob had been right. The quilt would not work its magic on them. Because what they had
done, what they had shared, was so much more than what anyone else had ever shared upon it before. Of that she was sure.
In any event, she would be punished for it. She would have to let it all go, would have to put it behind her, and that would hurt her as much, if not more, than anything had ever hurt her before in her life. Still, it was necessary. She would have to think clearly, not emotionally, if she was going to do the right thing now. For Adam and Mariah. For her children. For ChildSearch.
And for herself.
Hugging herself, shivering, she replayed in her mind the conversation she had overheard. She smiled weakly. Yes, she knew what she would have to do. She could no longer keep relying on Adam and Mariah. If Adam had to continue supporting her and her family, he would not have any money left to put into ChildSearch. And if she had learned one thing loud and clear from Jacob in all these many days, it was that that company meant something to him. It gave him something irreplaceable, something no one or nothing else could give. It gave him a sense of self-value, of doing something for the powerless and the lost, that he needed desperately. It was, perhaps, the first thing he had done right in his whole life, she realized, at least in his own mind. She knew differently. He had also given her herself.
So she would use that precious gift and she would save ChildSearch. And she would give her children a life, vistas, opportunities in the process. She would leave the settlement and start over.
When the sun finally began to creep up over the horizon, Katya got to her feet again and went back to her room. She felt shaky, strangely empty. And Jacob’s words kept echoing. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, supporting ChildSearch and two houses in Texas, and a new wife and a kid, and five more mouths to feed besides! She groaned and pressed her palms to her cheeks. No more. Mariah and Adam did not even have a farm. They did not have chickens to provide eggs. They did not have cows to provide milk, a garden to offer fresh vegetables. Adam had been actually purchasing every morsel she and her children put in their mouths. If she did not do something to rectify that, Adam’s company would fold.
No more. She was tired of relying upon a God who did not answer her prayers. It was time she relied upon herself. Enough. She ripped off her dress and flung it to the floor. Then she grabbed it again because she didn’t want to leave Mariah anything to clean up. She wished more than anything for the jeans and the sweater she had lost. Her purple Church Sunday dress would have to do.