Hidden Falls
Page 59
“Thank you, Jack.”
Out in his car again, Jack exhaled. He wasn’t very experienced at letting go of a case that wormed its way into his mind, but he felt an odd sense of relief.
7:22 p.m.
Across the table at Fall Shadows Café, four eyes stared at Nicole. She cringed.
“Cooper, I was really hoping Ethan would have spoken to you by now,” she said. Sylvia and Ethan both had said they would talk to Cooper.
Cooper didn’t speak. Around them, tableware clinked and conversations rose and fell. Gavin zipped by with two platters of food.
“Say something,” Nicole said.
Cooper turned his head to look at Sylvia. “Mayor, you don’t seem surprised.”
“I tried to talk to you this morning,” Sylvia said. “It wasn’t a good time for you.”
“It wasn’t the easiest day I’ve ever had.” Cooper pulled his phone out of its holster on his hip. “I don’t see any missed calls from either of you. Or Ethan.”
Nicole and Sylvia exchanged glances.
Cooper cocked his head. “Is this where you tell me you’ve been out looking for Quinn on your own?”
“Well, I haven’t,” Nicole said. “Ethan wouldn’t take me with him. I would have slowed him down.”
“And you, Mayor?”
“I did what I could this afternoon, but I didn’t come up with anything.”
“I wish you had called me,” Cooper said.
“You had your hands full.” Sylvia laid her knife and fork across the top of her plate. “Liam needed you, and your staff has two people in custody.”
“I could have called in more officers from Birch Bend,” Cooper said. “Now it’s been twenty-four hours.”
“It’s Quinn,” Nicole said. “Of course Ethan and Sylvia are going to look for him.”
“If there is foul play, interference could make it worse.” Cooper tossed his napkin on the table.
Nicole didn’t know Cooper until ten days earlier, but in that time she hadn’t seen him this close to the edge. She pressed her lips together, giving him time to think.
“So what has Ethan been doing all day?” Cooper finally asked.
“Knocking on doors, stopping hikers, showing the picture he took last night.” The process was nearly identical to what Nicole and Ethan had done together the day after Quinn disappeared—and with equal result. “Nobody saw Quinn.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Cooper said.
Sylvia tapped the table nervously. “But what if it was?”
“I saw the photo. It was Quinn.” Nicole nudged her plate away. “Cooper, let’s rehash what we should or shouldn’t have done later. Right now what matters is looking for Quinn.”
Cooper pulled a few bills from his pocket and dropped them on the table. “I’ve got to get to the station. I’m going to pull officers from Birch Bend, but we’ve lost the advantage of daylight now.”
Nicole watched him stride out of the café and turned to face Sylvia.
“He’s angry.”
“It’ll be all right,” Sylvia said. “He keeps his cool most of the time, but it had to be hard to watch his brother go through what happened this morning.”
“You and Ethan covered a lot of ground today,” Nicole said. “I’m not sure Cooper’s team could have done much better—not with the arrest going on and Bobby Doerr in custody.”
At least Ethan and Sylvia had been focused. Ethan combed the woods around the falls and the cabins along the lake for hours without being distracted by everything that would have been on Cooper’s mind.
“We’re going to find Quinn,” Sylvia said. “And he’d better have a good reason for coming back to town and not letting us know he’s here, or I’ll throttle him.”
Nicole puffed her cheeks and blew out her breath. Cooper was frazzled. Sylvia was frazzled. Ethan was frazzled.
And Nicole wished she could go for a long run to loosen the tension in her muscles.
“I have to get going.” Sylvia scooted her chair back. “I want to see my mother before she goes to bed and then go make sure Lauren doesn’t need anything.”
Nicole’s phone rang. “It’s Ethan,” she muttered as she answered.
“I’m leaving the hospital now,” Ethan said. “Have you eaten?”
“Just finished, at the café. Ethan?”
“Yes?”
“Cooper knows.” Nicole glanced up at Sylvia.
“Good. I wanted to tell him a couple of hours ago, but I didn’t want to get into it in front of Lauren. She still needs her rest.”
“Well, he knows now. You should probably call him.”
“I will. Will you wait for me there?”
“I’ll be out front. We can go see Cooper together.”
“I should be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
Nicole ended the call. “Ethan’s coming.”
“Good,” Sylvia said. “I didn’t want to leave you on your own.”
“I’m fine,” Nicole said. “Lauren’s apartment is just down the street.”
“It’s far enough you should have a ride.”
“Go,” Nicole said. “Tell Lauren I’ll see her tomorrow.”
Sylvia paced swiftly through the restaurant. Nicole moved more slowly behind her. Outside, Nicole bypassed the wooden bench in front of the café, once again aching to go for a run, to let her body free and clear her mind. But she couldn’t run. The best she could do was try to hop with more speed. On a clear sidewalk she could set her crutches down firmly and swing between them with more vigor than indoor maneuverings allowed. The motion felt good, and with plenty of time before Ethan would show up, Nicole moved farther down the street. At the end of the block, she paused and went a few feet around the corner before turning around to retrace her path.
When a hand clamped over Nicole’s mouth, she nearly lost her balance. Pressure on her shoulders compelled her to hop in a half circle. In the stillness that followed, the tune fell on Nicole’s ears.
Quinn’s tune.
Nicole focused on the eyes twelve inches from her face. They were not Quinn’s.
13
Distinguishing Marks
Wednesday
7:30 a.m.
Quinn tucked a throw pillow under Nicole’s ankle propped up on a footstool. “I have orange juice concentrate in the freezer. Oh, and some sausage links.”
Nicole looked into his yellow-brown eyes and gave herself once again to the sensation of relief and gratitude.
Quinn was home. Quinn was safe.
“You don’t have to wait on me,” Nicole said.
“My house, my rules,” Quinn quipped. “I threw out all the fresh food because it was, well, not so fresh anymore. But we’ll find enough odds and ends for a breakfast feast.”
Nicole didn’t care about the food. She only wanted to feast on Quinn. He picked up three large coffee mugs and a plate of cookie crumbs, evidence of the casual sustenance that had punctuated the last twelve hours, pausing to smile at her for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, Nicole grinned back.
“When you were a girl, you were never allowed to stay up all night gabbing with me,” Quinn said.
“Now I am.” It was the best all-nighter Nicole remembered with anyone.
“Sorry we had to nab you the way we did last night.”
“I’ll admit you scared me half to death.”
“I should have told my minion to be less thug-like in his approach.”
Nicole laughed. Quinn’s minion—the man Ethan caught in the photo on Monday evening—turned out to be more of a teddy bear than a thug. Her heart rate had shot up when his hand sealed off the protest springing from her throat, and his humming of Quinn’s tune launched a host of scenarios spinning through her mind. Only seconds later, though, with his hand still on her mouth, he’d shifted his position to allow her to see past him.
And Nicole saw Quinn’s head tilted out of the shadowed window of a parked car across the quiet side street.
Whether the stranger accurately reflected Quinn’s wishes, Nicole wasn’t about to dispute the conditions of a reunion with Quinn. She nodded agreement—she would have done nearly anything to get to Quinn—and the stranger released his hold before gesturing that she should feel free to walk in front of him.
He could have a gun, Nicole thought at the time. But she didn’t care. Quinn was in that car. She scrambled into the backseat, and Quinn twisted to smile at her.
It was all right.
The stranger got behind the wheel and asked directions. Quinn described the first couple of turns, and Nicole knew they were headed for his house.
And now she sat in Quinn’s living room, beside the low-burning fire Quinn had tended in the hours approaching dawn. Safe. And he was safe—and had been safe all along.
In the kitchen, Quinn opened cabinets and drawers and the refrigerator. Nicole heard the plop of frozen concentrate dropping into a pitcher, the rush of water at the tap, and the rhythmic clunk of Quinn’s stirring motion. The smell of a fresh pot of coffee wafted through the house as sunlight wiggled between curtains that were not quite closed. All of it was so wondrously normal.
Nicole couldn’t stand not to be in the same room with Quinn. She let the booted foot down to the floor carefully and picked up her crutches. The carpet absorbed the sounds of her movement, and at the threshold to the kitchen, Nicole paused to watch Quinn in action. He’d pulled bread from the freezer and was now intent on separating frozen slices for the toaster. On the stove, sausage links sizzled in a frying pan.
He looked up. “I was going to bring you breakfast on a tray. I have a cloth napkin and everything.”
“I should be making you breakfast, to welcome you home.”
“Nonsense.”
“I feel positively naughty and absolutely lucky to have you to myself for the whole night.” Nicole’s phone was full of frantic messages from Ethan, but Quinn had pleaded for a few more hours before the inevitable blitz of attention. She wouldn’t deny him anything he asked, not under these circumstances after all this time.
“It’s been an unexpected treat, though I suppose it will come to an end soon.” Quinn pointed at the kitchen table with a wooden spoon. “You’d make me a lot less nervous if you’d sit down.”
Nicole obliged. “Quinn, thank you.”
“It’s just breakfast and not a very good one.”
Her throat thickened. Right now she would eat sand if Quinn put it in front of her. “I was so glad to see you at the banquet. Then when you disappeared—”
“I just went away for a while.”
“Right. When you went away—and no one knew where you were—I was afraid I would never get to tell you how grateful I am for the presence you were in my life growing up.” Words Nicole had kneaded smooth for a week tumbled together as they came out of her mouth. It wasn’t quite the speech she’d prepared, but this was the right moment. “A broken ankle suddenly gives a person a lot of time to think, and I kept thinking about how much you loved me, how often you were there when I needed someone, how no matter how confused I got, you straightened me out. Thank you.”
Quinn stirred the juice. “You’re welcome.”
“You saved me,” she said, her voice hushed. “After my mother died, my life could have gone badly a dozen different ways. You were the one who made me believe I could still have a good life.”
He looked at her, his eyes full of examination. “Are you happy?”
“Yes. Very.”
“And your father?”
“He’s well. I’m sure you know he moved away and started fresh, finally. We’re in touch often now.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I always hoped you would someday forgive him his grief.”
Nicole supposed that was exactly what happened. Quinn held her up when her own father couldn’t, buying them both time to find their way out of trauma and toward each other.
Footsteps thudded down the stairs. When the man from last night entered the room, freshly showered and his hair still wet, Nicole marveled again. She had watched one resemblance after another unfold in the late evening hours before Andrew—or was she supposed to call him Scott?—went to bed and left Nicole and Quinn to catch up on missing years. Their eyes were different colors but the same shape. Their noses sloped at the same angle. Their speech lilted with the same cadence. Even the way their shoulders and elbows were hinged was the same.
Brothers.
Quinn had a brother. And Nicole had nearly met him months ago in St. Louis. She might have, if the story she worked on about a doctor who caused disfigurement with his treatments for port-wine birthmarks hadn’t settled out of court before her story hit the papers—and before she met the man who had been willing to see the doctor undercover if necessary to expose him. Instead, she had filed her story without a quote from Scott Wilson.
Or Andrew Kreske.
Nicole still couldn’t believe she was right about the witness protection program—almost. She still hadn’t pieced everything together. Quinn promised he would tell her everything, but last night he was much more interested in hearing about her life than explaining the reasons he entered the witness protection program just shy of his college graduation.
Scott Wilson was Andrew Kreske.
And Ted Quinn was Adam Kreske, Andrew’s older brother.
He would always be Quinn to Nicole, but if he wanted her to learn to call him by the name on an obliterated birth certificate, she would do it.
“Good morning,” Nicole said, when Scott—Andrew—peered at the coffeepot hopefully.
“Good morning. Did you two ever go to bed?”
Quinn and Nicole both laughed.
“Nope,” Nicole said.
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t.” Scott took a mug from the cupboard. “Imagine how I felt when he turned up on my doorstep.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Immediately. I didn’t want to go to sleep for two days.”
“Make yourself useful,” Quinn said, “and set the table.”
Scott cocked his head at Nicole. “A bossy big brother is always a bossy big brother.”
She chuckled. “He does have a way of getting people to do what he wants them to do.”
Quinn removed two slices of bread from the toaster, dropped two more into the slots, and then took the sausage off the stove.
“Adam, what are you going to do today?” Scott took three plates from a shelf.
Quinn sighed. “I wish I could just slip back into my life, but I suppose now there will be even more fuss than the night I left.”
Nicole smiled. If Quinn thought the banquet was too much attention, no wonder he didn’t want to face the extreme commotion ahead of him now.
“Will you go back to your real names?” Nicole asked.
“I guess we could.” Scott glanced at his brother. “I admit it felt awfully good to hear someone call me Andrew.”
“Are you certain there’s no more reason to stay protected?” Nicole said.
“None whatsoever,” Quinn said. “But what is a ‘real name’? I’ve lived with the name Ted Quinn for more years than I was Adam Kreske. Even if I went through the legal hoops, can you imagine trying to get the people of Hidden Falls to call me by another name?”
“So you plan to stay in Hidden Falls?” Relief warmed Nicole.
“It’s my home.”
Nicole went soft at her core. Hidden Falls wasn’t just a hiding place for Quinn.
“Of course, I’ll feel free to leave the county now,” Quinn said. “And have my picture taken. So I’ll lose my charming quirkiness.”
Nicole chuckled. “Marv Stanford is going to have a field day with this story in next week’s Dispatch.”
“I may have to reel him in a bit,” Quinn said. “I just want things to get back to normal. If I don’t return to
my classes soon, I’ll be off track for the rest of the school year. There’s no telling what the sub has been doing all this time without lesson plans.”
“How long will you stay in Hidden Falls, Scott—Andrew?” Nicole said.
“Scott’s fine. We’ll see. I’ve got plenty of vacation time in the bank, and Oklahoma isn’t going anywhere.”
In her back pocket, Nicole’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out. “It’s another text message from Ethan.” She scrolled through a long string of messages that had come through the night.
WHAT HAPPENED?
WHERE ARE you?
I’M WORRIED. CALL ME.
I’VE LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR YOU.
ARE YOU HURT?
WHAT’S GOING ON?
WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING?
NICOLE, YOU’RE SCARING ME.
“You should respond,” Scott said.
Nicole glanced at Quinn.
“Seriously,” Scott said. “Quinn, there’s no telling what Ethan will do if he doesn’t hear from Nicole soon. Hidden Falls has been frantic about you for ten days. Why add worry about Nicole to the list?”
Quinn set the platter of sausages and toast on the table. “Call Ethan. But only Ethan. I want to do this on my terms.”
8:03 a.m.
At first Ethan was unconcerned that Nicole wasn’t waiting for him outside the café on Tuesday evening. He took a little longer to get there than he’d estimated, and she could have run into somebody she knew or decided to duck into a nearby shop while she waited.
By the time he’d been up and down Main Street, though, he was worried. Even people who didn’t know Nicole should remember whether a woman matching her description had come into a store in the last few minutes. In his experience, something like a knee-high boot cast would catch people’s eyes, especially when the cast was combined with crutches. But he’d been in every shop up and down Main Street twice—first expecting to spot her in a store, and then when he didn’t, to ask if anyone had seen her. Gavin remembered what Nicole ordered for dinner, and that Cooper hadn’t looked happy when he left, but no one else seemed to have noticed what happened to Nicole once she stepped outside the café.
She couldn’t have gone running on a broken ankle. She couldn’t drive, either—and her car was parked at her empty family home where she’d left it on the day of her injury. Nicole couldn’t have just disappeared on her own.