“I don’t know, Chief. I think Agent Collins is warming up to me.”
He sighed. “Where’s Brooker?”
“He doesn’t check in with me.”
There must have been something in her expression, because Rivera rubbed the back of his neck and heaved another sigh, deeper, regretful. “It’s none of my business, but a guy like that will break your heart.”
For once, Juliet didn’t argue with him or make a comment she’d regret.
On his way out, he stopped and looked back at the living room, shaking his head. “Seventeen. Your niece shouldn’t be exposed to such violence at that age. Any age. No kid should be.” Rivera’s black eyes shone. “I’m sorry, Juliet. I’m sorry as hell.”
Thirteen
Faye Carhill welcomed Ethan into her sun-filled breakfast room, kissing him on the cheek and insisting he sit down for coffee and warm pecan rolls fresh from the oven, baked from scratch by the family cook.
“Ethan, Ethan,” Faye said, shaking her head as if she’d never expected to see him again. “You look good, Ethan. I had no idea you were home.”
“I got in last night—spur-of-the-moment visit.”
“Your parents won’t be back from Denver for another few days. You’ll stay to see them, won’t you?”
“Depends.” He didn’t elaborate. “I saw Luke and Dorrie and the boys last night.”
“Aren’t the boys getting big? Luke, Jr., reminds me of you, always on the go.” Faye tried to smile. “Although I think it would devastate your mother if he went off to West Point. One boy in the family is enough.”
Ethan didn’t take the bait. Military service was for other people, other families—not the Carhills. He wondered just what Faye knew about her son’s activities in South America. But he wasn’t going to ask, and he sure wasn’t discussing his own family with her.
“Is Ham around? I’d like to say hello.”
“He was.” She lifted a pecan roll onto a flowered china plate, intent on what she was doing but Ethan had heard the catch in her voice. “He left yesterday afternoon. I’d hoped he’d stay awhile longer.”
“When did he get home?”
“About a week ago. It was good to have him here.”
She spoke as if he were a college student home on break. Ham had graduated at nineteen, earned his master’s at twenty, his Ph.D. at twenty-two, then chucked it all and headed to South America. Faye was clearly in denial of the fact that Ham was no longer a kid, that he had his own life.
Ethan watched Faye carefully place the plate on the glass table, snatching a pecan that had fallen off one of the rolls. But the smell of butter, cinnamon and pecans didn’t tempt him. He wasn’t hungry.
“Ham’s still drifting,” Faye said.
“He’s only twenty-five. He’s got time to figure out what he wants to do.”
“You were fighting terrorists at twenty-five.”
Not that Faye would want her son to do the same—but not that she wouldn’t want him to, either. In a way, she’d like it if Ham told her to go to hell and signed up for the Marines. She’d always been conflicted about her son. Protective, because he was gawky and awkward with people. Distant, because at the same time, she was determined to shove him out of the nest. She and Ham’s father were generous with financial support, yet eager to see their son make it on his own. And always, mother and father both were not quite able to hide their disappointment in their only child.
“He was very thin when he arrived here,” Faye went on. “Emaciated, really. He had these little welts all over him. I don’t know—insect bites, I think. He refused to see a doctor.”
“Ham’s smarter than most of us, Faye.”
“Too smart for his own good. These so-called adventures he’s having—I thought they’d make him stronger, toughen him up. Now, I don’t know. It doesn’t look as if they’re doing him or anyone else any good.”
“Did he say where he went, when he’s coming back? I’m at a loose end. I’d like to see him.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even have his cell-phone number. I don’t know if he has a cell phone. I can’t reach my own son. What if something happened to John or me? What if the house burned down? We wouldn’t be able to find him.”
“It’s not that easy to hide these days. Someone would find him.”
“You could, I suppose,” she said with sudden earnestness. “Find him, talk to him…I’d pay you. You said yourself you’re at a loose end—”
“Faye, that’s not why I’m here.”
She lowered her eyes. “I know. What Ham’s put us through—” She raised her eyes again, her liner smudged from moisture. “You can’t imagine.”
Ethan drank some of his coffee, which, of course, was perfect. He thought of Juliet and the rotgut she’d drink, then pushed her out of his mind, because it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“It’s very sweet of you to stop by,” Faye said, on the verge of tears now.
“Faye,” Ethan said, “I need to know everything.”
She sprang to her feet. She wore trim white pants with a hot-pink-and-white top and hot-pink sandals, as if she’d deliberately dressed to cheer herself up. “More coffee?”
“Faye—”
“Just—” She spun around to him. “Just find my son, Ethan. Please. Find him and bring him home before he does something none of us can undo. I want him out of harm’s way.”
Ethan pushed aside his coffee. “Tell me everything, Faye, or I go quail-hunting.”
She smiled wryly. “You don’t hunt. Luke does, but you—” She took a breath, a sharpness coming into her expression. “I should say you don’t hunt quail. People, yes. You’re a search-and-destroy specialist. Isn’t that what you are, Ethan?”
There was a superciliousness about her tone—a sarcasm combined with an almost romanticized take on what he did—that set Ethan’s teeth on edge. He got to his feet. “Did you and John pay off Ham’s kidnappers?”
She grabbed the plate of pecan rolls and brought it to the counter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
She tried to smother a sob, her back to him. “We’d have done anything, Ethan. Anything. If you haven’t been in our position, you don’t know.”
Ethan didn’t react to her emotion. “Go on.”
“Someone contacted us.” She didn’t turn around. “Just a voice on the end of the phone. He promised to call us with details. He never did.”
“How much did he want?”
She ripped open a drawer and pulled out a box of Saran Wrap, snapping it down on the counter. “Five million. We didn’t balk. We didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t give us a chance to respond.” Her tone was argumentative now, anticipating Ethan’s reaction. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“When did you get the call?”
“Three days before Ham turned up here.”
Two days before Ethan and his team had freed her son. “Did you tell the authorities?”
“What authorities? Ham was being held in some rat-hole in Colombia, for God’s sake! There was no one to tell. Low-life mercenaries in a foreign country had my son. They wanted money. What were we supposed to do?”
Take matters into their own hands, Ethan thought. It was what Carhills always did.
“I thought the voice might have been yours,” she whispered, tearing off a sheet of Saran Wrap. “I almost wish it had been.”
“You wish I’d kidnapped your only son. For money.” Ethan stared at her, truly stunned, then moved for the door. “I should go.”
She started to cry. “I’m sorry for even thinking such a thing. I’d hoped—I knew if it’d been you, there’d have been a reason, a larger purpose.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“You can’t tell anyone about the ransom call,” she said, spinning around at him. “Nothing came of it. We never got another call. John—he’ll be furious I told you. We’re worried abo
ut Ham, Ethan. No—we’re terrified for him. I don’t know what he’s involved in. I understand we don’t show emotions well, but we love Ham with all our hearts.”
Mia O’Farrell would want to know about the five million. So would FBI Special Agent Joe Collins and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Rivera. And Juliet, up in New York with her dead doorman and her dead fish and her traumatized niece.
If Faye and Johnson Carhill had been ordinary parents receiving a ransom demand for their son, they’d have called the feds the minute they hung up.
But, then, if they’d been ordinary parents, Ham might never have gone to South America in the first place.
Faye averted her eyes, her hands shaking. “Please, Ethan. Find my son.”
He kissed her on the cheek, ignoring her tears. He had no illusions that she’d given him the whole story. The Carhills never laid out all their cards at once.
And, as he headed out of the huge house, Ethan reminded himself that Faye Carhill never said anything without her husband’s approval.
When he was on the open road, Ethan turned a country-western music station up loud and drove fast, fighting an assault of memories. Ham Carhill as a little kid, tagging along with the Brooker brothers on a quail hunt, trying to rope a steer, asking a million questions in that annoying, rat-a-tat way he’d had. The skinny genius. Ham could tell them how many feathers were on a quail and the geological origins of a canyon. He could think things, smell things, see things that Luke and Ethan never could. But Ham could never get the quail—his brain was too busy. He couldn’t focus in time.
And, as much as he pretended otherwise, Ham couldn’t pull the trigger to actually shoot the bird.
How he’d gotten mixed up with Mia O’Farrell didn’t make sense on one level—Ham didn’t seem the spy type. On another level, it made perfect sense. He’d go along for the ride, for the approval and the mental stimulation, and never see the dangers. He wasn’t so much naive as oblivious.
Char had met Ham once, but she didn’t romanticize the Carhills. “They think they live in the real world. One day they’ll find out they don’t. It won’t be pretty.”
She hadn’t liked Texas. Ethan would try to impress upon her that it was a very large state with a diverse population—didn’t matter. Their house in the country wasn’t going to be in Texas.
The thought of their plans—their dreams—of a quiet, normal life in the country, with babies and dogs, tugged at his preoccupation with his unanswered questions about Mia O’Farrell’s little rescue mission.
On a day like today, Ethan thought, Char would have bitched about the bright Texas sun and the constant wind.
He smiled, surprising himself because there was no bite of guilt this time—no pain.
He was almost back home when his cell phone rang.
“Where are you?”
Juliet. Ethan eased up on the gas. “I’m in my brother’s truck, enjoying a fine Texas morning. You, Marshal?”
“You’re in Texas?”
“I got in last night.”
“The hostage you rescued is a Texan,” she said. “Black cowboy hat, thin, smart-looking.”
Gritting his teeth, Ethan pulled over to the side of the road. Perhaps he’d underestimated Deputy Longstreet. “You’ve been busy. I should remember that you marshals are good at finding people.”
“Is he the reason you’re in Texas?”
She was hammering him. There wasn’t even a glimmer of the woman he’d made love to Friday night, gentle, eager, as in need of a few hours of forgetting as he was. He decided he could be as hard-edged. “I’m not doing this over the phone.”
She didn’t let up. “Your Texan in the black hat was in New York in late August. He showed up at my place. Tatro was out of prison, stalking me. Still no ID on the doorman, but he was hired about that time.”
Ethan gazed out at the broken clouds in an endless autumn sky.
He hadn’t known Ham Carhill went to New York in late August.
“I want a name, Brooker,” Juliet said. “I’ll get the big guns involved if I have to.”
“He isn’t here. I don’t know where is he. His mother says she doesn’t, either.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
“Just left,” Ethan said. “Juliet—damn. He could have realized I was in New York in late August.”
“Hunting your assassin, getting knocked on the head.” Juliet paused a moment, then said, only half out loud, “So he wasn’t at my building to see me. He was looking for you.”
Why? Ethan couldn’t begin to guess. Ham Carhill had never needed him or anyone else. “Within a week, he ended up in Tatro’s hands.”
“Who is this guy, an army buddy, a drinking partner? Someone you used to rope steer with? Do you owe him money?”
Ethan didn’t answer her. “Where are you right now?”
She bit off a sigh. “On my way to Vermont.”
She didn’t explain why, but Ethan didn’t need to be in law enforcement to have a fair guess. On Friday, everyone thought the doorman had been killed while heroically trying to stop Bobby Tatro from getting into the building. Now that the picture had become more complicated, Juliet would want to know exactly what Juan and Wendy had talked about before Tatro slit his throat.
“Your niece—”
“Picking apples and trying to put Bobby Tatro out of her head. Brooker—”
“I’ve got to go. Sun’s in my eyes.”
He disconnected her, then dialed the number he had for Mia O’Farrell.
She answered on the first ring but didn’t say anything, just breathed into the phone.
“Dr. O’Farrell?”
“Brooker,” she said, sounding relieved. “I wasn’t sure it was you. What can I do for you? Is everything all right?”
“Depends on your point of view. Do you have our skinny friend stuck in some cubbyhole?”
She obviously knew he meant Ham Carhill. “No. Why?”
“He took off.”
“When?”
“Sometime yesterday.”
She didn’t respond.
“Tell me, Doctor,” Ethan said. “This rescue mission is going to blow up in your face. How far will you go to protect yourself?”
“Go to hell, Major.”
It was strong language for Dr. O’Farrell. “You set up a mission without giving the people who were putting their lives on the line all the facts—”
“I didn’t set up any mission. I don’t have that authority.”
“That’s cover-your-ass language. Who told you I could ID Ham? Who told you he was being held by a guy with a thing for the blond, female marshal?”
He could hear her shallow, rapid breathing on the other end, but she didn’t answer him.
“You don’t like making mistakes,” Ethan went on, feeling only the slightest twinge of guilt at his unrelenting tone. “I’ll bet you used to cry when you got less than a ninety on a test.”
“You won’t be able to collect on that bet.” Her voice was icy, unemotional. “I never got below a ninety.”
No wonder she and Ham ended up working together.
She hung up.
Ethan tossed his phone onto the passenger seat. He could have handled frightened, dedicated, intelligent Mia better—more diplomatically, at least. But he wasn’t in the mood. Ham Carhill had taken off. His mother was worried about him—or maybe that the kidnappers would make another try for the five million. Ethan hadn’t mentioned the ransom call to Mia. He needed time to think.
And Juliet. She spoke her mind and had the bluest eyes and the very tightest butt—but Ethan had the feeling she was flat out of patience with him.
Right now, she was en route to her family in Vermont. Landscapers, cops, traumatized vegan niece. Apples and pumpkins.
Ethan had never been to the Green Mountain State. It’d be pretty this time of year with the foliage. He wondered what airport he’d fly into and whether he could get to Vermont by nightfall.
Fourteen
&
nbsp; Wendy held up a knobby, misshapen apple, next in line for her apple crisp in progress. “It’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”
Juliet sipped coffee at the table in the Longstreet family kitchen. She’d arrived in the middle of Sunday lunch. Parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews. They all were there. But after the last of the applesauce cake was gone and the dishes were done, everyone had cleared out, with excuses of homework and soccer games and wood to split.
Except Joshua. He had stayed and now was leaning stiffly against the sink, trying, Juliet knew, to keep his mouth shut—reticence was not a Longstreet family trait.
“The Yoda of apples,” Wendy said, falsely cheerful, and put it aside, giving it a little pat as her smile evaporated. “I’m going to spare it.”
A muscle worked in her father’s jaw. “Wendy, it’s not alive. It’s an apple.”
Ignoring him, she chose another apple from the pile on the counter and took a deep breath before slicing into it with her paring knife.
Joshua glared at Juliet, as if she were to blame because his daughter was having trouble cutting up apples.
And maybe I am, Juliet thought, drinking more of her coffee.
Wendy peeled one of her apple quarters. She had on an oversize dark green sweatshirt that made her look even tinier. She finished peeling the apple quarter and sliced it into her deep-dish pie plate. She wasn’t making her grandmother’s apple crisp. Her recipe involved wildflower honey, expeller-pressed canola oil and steel-cut oats, all of it organic. No butter, no white sugar. Juliet wasn’t sure how it’d turn out, but at least they all could eat something healthy and guilt-free.
“Wendy, I need to talk to you,” she said. “About Juan. The doorman—”
“I know who he is.”
“You talked to him on Thursday when you arrived at my building and then again when you came back to meet me, and on Friday morning when you—”
“I know when I talked to him.”
“I’d like you to tell me everything he said to you.”
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