by Dana Mentink
Hawk cocked his head, reacting to the tension in his master’s voice.
King waved a weary hand. “I’m sure you didn’t come here just to threaten me. Can we get to the point? I have a session with a personal trainer shortly, and I’m sure you’ve got crimes to solve, don’t you? There are enough of them cropping up in our happy little town.”
James threw down the packet of cigarettes on the table. “I know you’re peddling smuggled cigarettes, but that’s not why I’m here. Myron Falkner. I want him.”
“Falkner? I’m afraid that doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Try ringing harder. Big guy, bald, forty-five and ugly.”
King tapped his temple. “Still no ringing.”
“Well, listen up, then,” James snapped. Hawk let out a whine. “He’s tried to kill this lady twice, and he’s going to pay for that. I’m going to stick on him like the skin on a pudding until I find him. You know all about bloodhounds, so you’ll understand when I tell you that I’ve got a scent article that is going to lead Hawk right to this guy if he’s anywhere in Desert Valley.”
King pursed his lips. “I don’t doubt that your dog is tenacious.”
“Tenacious doesn’t even touch it. He won’t stop until he has Falkner between his teeth, and neither will I. We’re going to get him, and if he works for you, I’ll squeeze him so tight he’ll tell me everything about your operation. He’ll roll over on you in a heartbeat.”
Madison was in awe of the steely promise in James’s voice. If she was King, she’d have told him everything. Goose bumps prickled her skin. He’s tried to kill this lady twice, and he’s going to pay for that. The words sent a thrill through her. The only man who’d ever tried to protect her was Uncle Ray. A few guys had attempted to get close over the years, but she’d never let them see the vulnerable places inside. Too risky. Uncle Ray always told her God had someone out there for her if she’d only let him in. She took in James’s powerful shoulders, his hands braced on his gun belt, the flat-out determination in his blazing eyes, which were riveted on King.
It’s his job, Mads. Don’t get all silly about it.
King cleared his throat. “Now that I’m thinking of it, I did employ a man named Myron Falkner six months or so ago, to drive a truck for me.” He gave Madison a graceful smile. “I own an import-export business.”
I’m sure you do, she thought.
“He became troublesome, irresponsible, late. I found I could not trust him, so I let him go.” King smiled. “You’ll find he doesn’t know much about my business, Officer. He wouldn’t be able to tell you much even if you did squeeze him, as you say, but I don’t want any trouble. I’m happy to let the police have him. He’s got nothing to do with me, so our conversation has come to an end.” He rose. “It’s time for you to leave and take your dog with you. He smells.”
Madison saw a ripple of rage spasm across James’s face. “Thanks for your time,” James said. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll be back.”
“You won’t,” King said.
“You’d better hope not.”
James led Hawk out the front door, and Madison followed him to the car. They didn’t talk until they were back on the main road, the windows rolled down to catch the breeze that had sprung up at dusk.
The ugly words rolled again and again through her mind.
...he murdered your mother.
...strangled her.
...raised you under an assumed name.
...serving a life sentence.
The grief that she kept rolled into a tight ball deep down in her heart swelled up inside. How many times had she prayed for God to take away the pain? And how often had she found herself and her relationships crippled by it?
A life sentence.
Looking down at her clenched fists, Madison tried not to cry, but the tears slipped out, anyway.
Seven
James was still reeling inside. He’d known about the murder, but not the fact that Madison’s father had abducted his two children. King’s facts were correct, he didn’t doubt. The shudder that went through her body when King had uttered them was telling. He tried to imagine it. How had she reacted to learning she’d been living a lie? Had she ever suspected the truth about her father, or had she been blindsided when her uncle revealed her father’s crime? What did that do to a person, coming to terms with a lie of that magnitude, a lie you’d believed your whole life? He wanted to spend some time in prayer, to ask God how to approach the matter with Madison, but he had to figure out what to do right now. Gentle, was all he could think. Be gentle.
She had cried quietly on the way back to the campground. When he’d offered to pull over, she’d declined with a violent shake of the head, arms wrapped around herself, taking the box of tissue he offered with a silent nod.
When they finally arrived, she got out without a word. Shoulders slumped, she started back to her cabin, the gathering dusk cloaking her in shadows. She shouldn’t be alone, his instincts said. Not now.
“Wait,” he called. “I want to check to see if your cabin is secure, but I need to get Hawk some water first. Can you hang out here for a minute?”
She stopped, head cocked, the breeze toying with her hair, which she’d let loose from the ponytail. To hide her face? The shame she didn’t deserve? He thought she’d decline his invitation, but slowly, she returned. He handed her Hawk’s leash. “Hold tight. If a squirrel runs by, he might just lose his mind and take off.”
“And what do I do if that happens?”
“Hunker down and hold on until he stops.” It worked. He’d earned a wan smile.
He opened the door of his cabin and went inside. Hawk barreled in, yanking Madison along. Good dog, James thought. He filled a bowl with water and put it on a mat for Hawk to slurp down. Without asking, he retrieved two bottles of water from the fridge and handed Madison one. “Sit for a second, okay?” He gestured at one of the two chairs clustered around the tiny kitchen table. “I need to let him cool down before I feed him. Bloodhounds overheat quickly with all that bulk, and he’s been out the whole day.”
She nodded, taking a small sip. They watched Hawk slopping water everywhere, his long ears dripping by the time he was finished.
“Messy,” she said with a faint smile.
“Wait until you see him eat.” James took a towel and wiped down Hawk’s face, quickly putting in a few eyedrops and rubbing them into the red-rimmed lids. “With all this saggy flesh, you’ve got to keep things clean. I’ll do your ears after dinner, boy,” James said to the dog.
The silence grew uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about what happened today, Madison. I shouldn’t have brought you to King’s place.”
She shrugged, tucking a section of hair behind one ear. “You tried to dissuade me. I didn’t listen. My sister says I never listen. My father said so, too.”
“So you were a teen when you learned the truth?” he asked softly.
She fixed soulful eyes on him that brimmed with heartbreak. “I was a whopping seventeen years old when I started to suspect something was wrong. Can you believe that? How clueless can you be? My dad...” She swallowed. “He was very attentive, doted on my sister and me, but he was very strict. He was an appliance repairman and when he was at work, it was just Kate and me. We had no TV or computer, and we weren’t allowed a cell phone. He told us there was a lot of evil in the world and he didn’t want us exposed to that. How’s that for irony? The worldview according to a murderer.”
The acid in her voice cut at him. “I can’t imagine living with that.”
“I guess the strange thing is that he let us go to church with our neighbors while he was at work. I think he believed it would make us fit in to the community, so people wouldn’t become suspicious.” She sighed. “Knowing God...it’s the only thing that gets me through, so I guess I sh
ould thank my father for that, at least.”
The dim light stripped away the guardedness, the protective armor she always wore, leaving her looking like the vulnerable teen she must have been. A shadow drifted across her face. “Just after my seventeenth birthday, I was going through a box in the garage, and I found an old photo of a woman and two girls who looked astonishingly like me and Kate. We thought our names were Bethany and Ann, but the back was labeled Madison, Kate and Allison. I asked my father about the photo, and he went ballistic, which wasn’t typical for him. He said they were some cousins he didn’t speak to anymore. He took the photo and burned it.”
Burned it. A memory that must haunt her. “You had no idea until then that he was hiding something?”
“Oh, I was happily oblivious. I would still be, maybe, if Uncle Ray hadn’t kept looking for us. The story our father always told us was that our mother’s name was Linda and she’d died of cancer just after Kate was born. All lies. Her name was Allison, and she was perfectly healthy until the day he killed her.”
“How did your uncle find you?”
She sighed. “Dogged research.”
“It must have been.”
She nodded. “He knew Dad had previously lived in Arizona, so he figured he might have gone back there. He set to work faithfully calling up every company he thought my dad might possibly work for. He managed to con people at each office into telling him whether or not a man matching my dad’s description had been hired. I didn’t want to believe him, but he showed up one day at our house when Dad wasn’t home. He knew things about my mother and us. He showed a picture of us when we were just toddlers, in my mother’s arms. He said to stay put and he would come back with the police, but it took him a while to convince them.” There was a little catch in her voice. “I was afraid even to tell Kate, but I did.”
“She didn’t believe you.”
“No, and why would she? He was our father. We had no memories of our mother. This was the man who took us to the park every Wednesday and stayed up late helping us with math homework and taught us to play the piano. She was sure Uncle Ray had made up everything.” Madison sighed. “Kate told my dad what I’d done. He was furious, said it was all lies, locked us in our room and immediately began packing.”
He thought about how that must have felt to a couple of young teens who were getting the first inkling that their father was not the man he pretended to be.
“Uncle Ray and the police arrived just before we pulled out of the driveway. My father was arrested for murdering my mother. Uncle Ray said she’d tired of my father’s abuse, threatened to leave him, and he lost his temper and strangled her. And then, just like that, my life turned completely upside down. It was like being suddenly split open.” Her face was bleak.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shrugged, sitting up a little straighter. “I dealt with it—still am, I guess—better than Kate. That day in the driveway, she screamed at me. I can still hear it clear as anything. ‘You wrecked my life. I’ll never forgive you.’” Madison’s lips twitched. “She was right, in a way. I did wreck her life, and mine, too, when I chose to believe Uncle Ray instead of our father.”
There was such a heavy weight of grief in her words. He wanted to hold her then to offer comfort, solace, prayer. “You had no choice.”
“Sure I did. I could have trusted my father, the man who raised me, instead of a stranger, a reporter no less, but that nosy reporter instinct was alive in me even then, you see.”
“You did the right thing, Madison.”
“I think I did, and I hope that Kate will come to see that someday. I can handle losing my father, or the man I thought he was, but not my sister. Not her, too. That would be too cruel, wouldn’t it, to lose my father and mother, and my sister?” Moisture sparkled like diamonds on her lashes.
He wanted to say he knew what it was like to have a hand in the destruction of a family, but how could his story comfort her? Her past was a wasteland of distrust and betrayal due in no way to her choices. His could be laid entirely at his own two feet. He reached for her hand. “You’re really strong to get through that.”
“I didn’t get through it. God brought me through it,” she said, “and He taught me an important lesson.”
“What’s that?”
Gently she pulled her hand from his. “You can’t trust people, only Him.”
It was such an easy thing to believe, especially in his career. Police work could turn your heart to granite. Everywhere, in every circumstance, friends and family let each other down in the worst ways. Snippets of memories circled his brain. The man who beat his wife for burning the pot roast. The mother who left her baby in the hot car to score a hit of drugs. But there are people to trust in this world, he wanted to tell her, people who will stand by you, if you let them. But who was he to say so? He’d trusted Paige heart and soul and put her above his own family, his God. His struggle rose up afresh. Madison Coles did not trust anyone else.
And tough K-9 cop James Harrison could not trust himself.
* * *
The knock on the door startled Madison. She realized that aside from the soft glow of the overhead light, it was approaching evening. How had the time passed so quickly? James got up to open the door. A man who strongly resembled James stood on the doorstep holding a pot, each of his hands hidden in an oven mitt. A small gray-haired woman stood at his shoulder, smiling.
“We brought you some dinner, J.J.,” she said.
Hawk shot to his feet, tail wagging, and bounded over to sniff the new arrivals.
The man who had to be James’s brother caught sight of her. “Oh, uh. Sorry. Didn’t realize you had company.”
James grabbed a towel and took the pot from his brother, sliding it on the stove. “This is my brother, Sterling, and my mom, Betty.” James hesitated a moment, she thought, and cleared his throat. “This is Madison Coles. I’m assigned to her protection detail.”
I’m assigned...making it clear to his family that this was nothing personal. And it wasn’t, she thought angrily, getting to her feet. So why had she just shared the most intimate moments of her life with him? Unloading everything in a moment of carelessness? You didn’t have a choice after King dropped his bombshell.
“Hello,” Madison said, forcing a bright tone. “I didn’t realize we were all in the same campground.”
“Cozy, isn’t it?” Sterling said, brows drawn.
“Uh...hello,” Betty said. “How nice to meet you.” Her cheer was as forced as Madison’s.
“Talk to you later.” Sterling whirled around and disappeared into the night.
Betty massaged Hawk’s head for a moment. “Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Since you’re staying in the campground, too, I’m sure we’ll see you again soon,” she said.
James stood helplessly in the doorway as his mother backed away and followed Sterling.
“They hate reporters, don’t they?”
“My mother doesn’t hate anyone. My brother is...wary.”
“I understand. I get that attitude a lot.” She went to the door. “I’m going back to my cabin. There’s no need to check it over. If there’s anyone inside, I’ll scream.”
“Why don’t you stay here and have some of this dinner with me? My mom’s a great cook.”
“Somehow I don’t think your family would want me eating with you.”
His expression hardened. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” She fastened her gaze on those iridescent blue eyes and saw from the flicker there that she was right. As far as the Harrisons went, she was a potential enemy. Fighting down a swell of disappointment she did not understand, she checked her watch. “It’s after five. You’re off the clock. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Madison,” he said, stepping out into the night after he
r. “I meant what I said. You are an incredibly strong person to overcome what you have.”
And I meant what I said. You can’t trust people...
He was still following her. She offered a vague smile. “I told you I don’t need you to check my cabin.”
“Guess I’m not going to listen to you on that point,” he said. He whistled to Hawk. “Come here, boy.”
“Are you expecting him to sniff out Falkner or something?”
“No, but if I leave him alone in the cabin, he’ll have that pot licked clean before I get back.”
Hawk ambled past her and went ahead to examine the bushes around her cabin.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” James said. “My shift doesn’t start until noon, and the church is having a potluck. Would you like to go?”
She felt spark of pleasure until she realized what his motivation must be. Pity. It was the last thing she wanted, especially from him. It was the inevitable consequence of knowing her twisted family story. Poor Madison. “Look, I appreciate all you’ve done, but I don’t need you to feel sorry for me, or try to arrange some spiritual mentoring. I know God, and I don’t need to go and sing songs with a bunch of strangers.”
He gave her a devastating smile that would probably have convinced anyone else. “Once you meet them, they won’t be strangers. They put together an amazing dessert table and all the coffee you can drink.”
“Thanks, anyway. I’ve got work to do.”
“They won’t judge,” he said quietly. “They’re good people, I’ve discovered. They wouldn’t hold your past against you.”
“If you had a past like mine,” she snapped, “you wouldn’t be so full of advice. Since you insist on keeping an eye on me, pick me up after your potluck tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll go my way and you go yours.” She regretted her sharp tone. He’d only invited her to church, for goodness’ sake, but it was too late to take it back.