Pelican Pointe Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 (A Pelican Pointe Novel)

by Vickie McKeehan

  “That’s why I think it’s a good idea to keep her off the phone to her family and keep her here in Santa Cruz until you guys get back in town.”

  “Look, Ethan, if Hutton’s in any kind of danger, we’ll cut our trip short. With traffic, we should be back in two and half hours, be back at the cove by tonight.”

  “That’s entirely up to you, but I think she’s safe here at my mom’s house as is Hayden if you want to stay another night. Once you two get back in town, though, I think it’s a good idea if Hayden stays at my place at least until I talk to Brent and figure out which way we go from here. No sense bringing Dochenko to your front door when Hayden can stay with me. Do me a favor though, when you guys get back, if you have a single male book a reservation, or show up unannounced for a lengthy stay, let me know. If he’s looking for the last known ping on Emile Reed’s cell phone, my guess is it will bring him to Pelican Pointe sooner or later.”

  “You got it. And Ethan, thanks for letting me know all this. You be sure and take care of Hayden. Despite all this with Dochenko, she’s a good a person.”

  Ethan glanced over at the woman in question as she sat, legs crossed, playing dolls with Hutton on the floor of his mother’s living room. His belly tightened. “Yeah, she is.”

  He just hoped he could convince his parents of the same thing. But even if he couldn’t, he’d already made his decision on the drive to Santa Cruz in the car.

  Ethan Cody intended to marry Hayden Ryan aka Emile Reed even though, at this point, there seemed to be a helluva lot standing in their way.

  Markus Cody walked into his living room Monday afternoon and couldn’t believe his eyes. His wife, Lindeen, sat on the sofa with the mysterious Hayden Ryan having an honest-to-goodness conversation with the woman.

  “Markus, it’s about time you got home. How’d it go? Did you find any sign of the missing woman?”

  He gave his wife a curious glance, but shook his head. “Once I got down there, I got nothing. Maybe I’m losing my touch. Maybe Ethan should have been the one to go.”

  And maybe his son had been right. Maybe he needed to take a closer look at this woman to find out the true nature of her heart.

  About that time Ethan came through the door from the kitchen carrying a little girl on his hip. Markus did a double take. He stared at his youngest son holding the toddler. Ethan was a nice enough man, but Markus hadn’t seen a domestic side to his youngest son. He couldn’t help wonder what had changed that put that look in his eyes. A look that said he might be thinking about settling down with this woman, making her a part of his life in the long-term. Had he missed that on his son’s face during the birthday party or just conveniently ignored it?

  Markus shook his head. Just one more sign life had dramatically changed over the short amount of time he’d been in San Diego.

  Chapter 18 Book 2

  After a long twelve-hour shift in the ER, Sydney Reed, dragged her weary body out through the automatic doors of the ER at Saint Louis General Hospital and headed to her car parked in the employee lot.

  It was twelve-twenty a.m.

  Once she got outside, she breathed in the night air, grateful she was done with work for the next forty-eight hours.

  She was about thirty feet from the car when she noticed what she thought looked like a man crouched in between her Chevy and the vehicle immediately to the left. She stopped her forward progress and hit the panic button on her car key, engaging the alarm. The noise of the horn going off brought the man from his hiding place. He started sprinting toward her.

  Sydney took off running back the way she’d come, screaming at the top of her lungs across the lot. After what seemed like several long minutes, one of the on-duty residents who had been standing outside the ER doors, smoking a cigarette, heard Sydney’s calls for help. He left his position at the entrance and ran out to meet her halfway into the lot, already on his cell phone dialing the cops.

  Eight hundred miles to the northeast, in Pellingham, New York, Luka Radovan waited until the Trenton household was tucked in for the night before heading around to the back of the house and jimmying the lock on the sliding glass patio door.

  He stepped inside a tidy kitchen in the dark, waited for his eyes to adjust, hoping he could locate what he was looking for without having to resort to violence. But if someone decided to investigate any noise in the middle of the night, he certainly wasn’t above using the untraceable .38 strapped to his shoulder.

  He took out his penlight, thumbing it on and shining the beam around the appliances and counters. It didn’t take long for him to realize what he wanted wasn’t in this part of the house.

  Trying not to make too much noise, he moved on, going out into the connecting dining room. He spotted a woman’s purse sitting prominently on the table. After digging around in the handbag and not finding what he was after, he moved on. Probably on a charger somewhere, he decided as he headed for the living room. There on an end table next to the sofa he spotted a cell phone cradled in its charging station. He picked it up, turned it on, and worked the menu around until he found the call history.

  Taking out a pad and a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket, he began listing names and numbers from the screen. Luka could have just taken the phone, any other time he probably would have. But in this case, taking the phone might raise suspicion, maybe alert someone that he was in pursuit and getting closer.

  This way, they would never know he’d been in the house, never know he’d gotten a look at the call history.

  He didn’t have to scroll down far until he found several possibilities. Deciding that jotting down every potential number might take too long, Luka took out his own cell phone, began snapping pictures of the entire list of phone calls going back several weeks.

  When he’d finished, he left the way he’d come, out the sliding glass door. As he made his way through the dark neighborhood back to his car, Luka wondered if his associate in St. Louis had gotten as lucky as he had.

  With Sydney Reed’s cell, they could compare numbers rather easily. If a number had been called by both the sister and the mother, then he would get the word to his counterpart who kept track of such things.

  Luka put the car into gear to head back to his hotel room in a better frame of mind. After six months on the run, the search for Emile Reed might be coming to an end.

  The next morning it was a hectic time at the Trenton household as Laura loaded the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. As soon as she finished that chore she turned to the roast defrosting on the kitchen counter and absently dumped it into her Crock-Pot for dinner that night.

  She checked her watch, decided she and Rob were both running late. Heading out to the dining room she grabbed her purse off the table, headed into the living room to grab her cell phone from its place on the charger.

  She bumped smack into Rob in the hallway as he picked up his briefcase to head out the front door to make the eight o’clock economics class he had that morning.

  “Professor Trenton, if you don’t get moving I’ll have to write you a tardy slip,” she teased her husband.

  “I know. I know. Had to go back and retrieve my wallet. I’m meeting that cheapskate Roy Shaughnessy for lunch and he never picks up the tab.”

  Without thinking, Laura snatched up the cell phone and grabbed her coat from the hall closet, never realizing in her haste to get out the door, her cell phone battery had gone dead. The thing hadn’t charged because it had been left off the charging station.

  Since his associate had failed so miserably in St. Louis to get Sydney Reed’s phone, comparing contact numbers was taking forever. Luka had to eliminate phone numbers the hard way, one call at a time. Going through the list he had already tracked most of the calls back to friends and relatives of Laura Reed-Trenton.

  None had turned out to belong to Emile Reed.

  But when he zeroed in on the seven-seven-five area code indicating a Reno location, he sat up a little straighter in his chair. It was th
e only number on the phone with such a distant area code, two thousand miles to the west of Chicago. Knowing the Reno number had potential, Luka placed the call to his friend enlisting him to track down the carrier assigned to that particular cell.

  “How long before you retrieve the data?” Luka asked.

  “Give me twenty-four. If my manager comes back on duty though, it might be longer.”

  “Fine, but I want every last known call from that phone.”

  “Why don’t you just call the number, see who answers?”

  “And tip her off that I’m closing in? No way. I’ve been spending twenty-four-seven on this woman for months now. No way will I give her the chance to take off.”

  Because once Luka had the last known calls, he could triangulate the phone’s location, once he had the last known location, he would catch the first plane out west and wherever Emile Reed had last used that phone.

  Chapter 19 Book 2

  It was almost six o’clock when Nick and Jordan arrived back at the cove Monday evening to the enthusiastic applause of their own baby daughter, who couldn’t stop clapping her hands and offering them kisses.

  As ecstatic as Hutton was to see mommy and daddy, her babysitter was a bit more subdued, apologetic even.

  Hayden stood a couple of feet back from the car parked in the driveway waiting to offer an explanation of sorts. “I would never have intentionally put Hutton in danger, not for anything. You have to believe that,” Hayden told them. “And except for a brief time on Saturday, when Ethan was on duty, he never left us alone. Not once. We had a member of law enforcement right there beside us the entire time you were gone.”

  Jordan put an arm around Hayden’s shoulders. “If we’d known your circumstances, I doubt we would’ve gone anywhere.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Jordan glanced at Nick who was unloading their bags from the back of the car. “We had a wonderful time, Hayden. I missed Hutton like I missed my right arm. But Nick and I needed to get away, if for no other reason than to have some time to ourselves to relax, to talk.”

  Hayden snorted. “Is that what they’re calling it now?” She bumped Jordan’s shoulder in a playful gesture that had the other woman laughing.

  “Oh, we did that plenty of times, too.” She sighed. “We ordered room service, ate breakfast in bed Sunday morning, then again this morning. Nick ordered a masseuse to come to the room for a soothing massage. I swam laps in the pool. It was fantastic. I feel so―rested.”

  She looked Hayden in the eye. “We talked about you on the drive back. We aren’t mad at you, Hayden. In all these months, you were the only one who offered to look after Hutton for us, to keep an eye on this place. It’s really good to be home though. I feel as if I’ve been away for years instead of just two measly days.”

  “You do look rested.”

  “Oh, I am!”

  At that moment, Jordan grabbed Hayden’s arm in a death grip. “Oh. My. God. It’s him! It’s Scott!” She took two steps toward Nick, captured his arm as well. “Look, over there, by the front porch. Do you see that? I see him, Nick.” Tears formed in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

  As everyone followed her gaze to the long front porch, Jordan yelled out, “I’m not mad anymore, Scott. I’m not mad. I was missing you so much, that’s all. I was lonely out here by myself without you. But I have Nick now. I’m sorry, I was so mad at you for leaving me. But I’m over it.”

  Hayden looked over at Ethan then at Nick to catch his reaction to Jordan’s epiphany.

  Nick had tears in his eyes as he watched his wife’s animated conversation with his best friend’s ghost.

  But soon all three of them noticed the transformation that came over Scott’s face. Joy maybe. Certainly elation at the prospect Jordan had opened up enough that she could finally see him.

  The knowledge had his lips curving into a wide smile.

  Hayden looked over as Jordan took Hutton out of Nick’s arms and smiled back.

  “You’re here, Scott, in Hutton, each and every day. I never gave up on this place, not even when things looked so awful.” She picked up Nick’s hand and dragged him closer to the porch, closer to Scott. “Neither did Nick. We worked ourselves silly doing this―for you.” Jordan’s hand flew to the top of Hutton’s head. “And for her. She’ll grow up here, Scott, just like you did, just like you wanted.”

  Her hand went to her flat belly. “And she’ll have a brother or sister to play with soon. We all love you, Scott. We all miss you so much!”

  They watched as Scott’s arm lifted in a wave and then, like every other time before, he was gone.

  Later, after Ethan and Hayden had moved her few belongings over to Ethan’s house, she was hanging some of her clothes in his closet, when she asked, “Do you think he’s gone for good? Do you think that was why he was hanging around all this time, waiting until Jordan finally saw him?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw, though. If I hadn’t been right there, I might not have believed it.”

  Hayden sunk down on the bed. “I know. It’s amazing how Scott is so―accepting of Nick, you know, being with Jordan. It’s so obvious he wants her happy. If you ask me that’s gotta be the ultimate way of showing how much you loved someone in life, to want them to be happy without you. And knowing she’s having Nick’s baby has to hurt on some level. Can a ghost hurt?”

  “Watching them together has to be tough on him, no doubt about that. But hey, he’s chosen his role in the afterlife, or whatever it is you believe happens after a person dies. He doesn’t have to hang around there so aware of what’s happening.”

  Ethan turned to her then, took a seat next to her on the bed. “Look, there’s something we need to talk about. Brent will be back tomorrow. We’re going in to see him, sit down face to face, get all this out in the open.”

  Her face fell. She sent him a sulky stare. “That means he’ll contact the feds. Ethan…”

  “No, don’t look at me like that. This is the only way, Hayden. What do I call you now anyway? It’s bothered me now for a couple of days. Do you prefer Emile or Hayden? Which is it?”

  She sighed and picked up his hand. “Hayden. This is my new life, use my new name. It’s legal by the way. A lawyer friend helped me change it. And the other day Sydney used it for the first time. Now, my mother’s a different story. It’s taking her longer to leave Emile in the dust. But for some reason the name feels right.”

  She eyed his face for any lingering doubts and then asked, “What else bothers you, Ethan? I don’t want you spending another two days holding back. You might as well get it all out now.”

  “The phone calls you’ve been making are a problem.”

  “I just don’t see how. I was careful. Are you saying I can’t even use my phone to check my messages? I bet my family’s tried to call me.” She was itching to get her hands on the device and make certain her family was okay.

  But one glance at Ethan had her realizing how serious the phone issue really was.

  “Making calls on that phone is one sure way to bring Dochenko’s men right to your front door. It might as well be an open invitation, Hayden.”

  “But you won’t even let me turn it on.”

  “That’s right, turning it on pings the nearest cell tower, which we don’t want to do. If you want to call your family, then I’ll take you to a pay phone over in San Sebastian. Caution is our byword from here on out.” But he didn’t even want to bring up the fact it might already be way too late for that.

  Hayden was nervous. Sitting in Brent’s office the next day with the door closed gave her a feeling of déjà vu, even claustrophobia. The walls were closing in. The room wasn’t all that large to begin with and with three people crammed into the closed-up space, it felt confining.

  She’d been answering Brent’s questions all morning. But according to him and Ethan, a federal agent was on his way down from the Bay at this very momen
t, scheduled to arrive any minute to take yet another official statement from her.

  At the prospect of having to go over all of it again for the umpteenth time, her throat tightened. Just thinking about the federal agent had her stomach cramping. She knew what was coming. A lecture about how she shouldn’t have taken off.

  When the door opened and Brent’s assistant showed a well-dressed, suited, forty-something man into the office, Hayden knew this was the federal agent.

  The cocky demeanor was a dead giveaway.

  “Well, well, well, Emile Reed. I’m Matt Russell.” He turned to Brent. “Nice work, Sheriff. Collaring this one will get you some attention from the director.”

  Brent simply shook his head and angled a look at his brother, who was all but ready to snap at this man’s smug behavior.

  It was Ethan who sneered, “He didn’t collar her, you idiot. No one collared her. She came in of her own free will to make a statement.” Ethan didn’t mention that he had practically had to drag her out of the car and through the front door to get her inside the building. But the fact was he didn’t like this guy’s attitude one bit and could detect Brent’s derision on his face, as well.

  “Is that so?” Russell put his focus back on Hayden. “There are plenty of people at the justice department hoping you’ll do the right thing this time around and stick it out.”

  “First of all, I didn’t take off because I didn’t want to do the right thing. I took off because someone tried to kill me in a parking garage. I’m not used to people wanting me dead. I was scared, okay? And not just for myself but for my entire family. The lack of faith wasn’t in me, Agent Russell. It was in you and the federal government for not being able to protect what you called, ‘your star witness.’”

  “Come on, Miss Reed, how do I know you didn’t make up that attempt-on-your-life story just to get yourself a new name and start over someplace else in that little backwater bird town?”