“Nothing,” she told him, holding out what looked like part of a ring from a gumball machine.
She was right. It was nothing. The prize possession of some child who’d once played in this yard.
Obviously disappointed, she dropped the piece of toy jewelry back where she’d found it. Her finger was smeared with dirt.
Leaning forward, Scott took hold of her finger with the edge of his shirt, wiping it off.
He pretended not to notice when her knuckles brushed against his belly, though he didn’t know whom he was pretending for. They’d both felt her fingers there.
“All clean,” he said, backing away from her, glad she was willing to play along. They had to pretend there was nothing wrong between them. They had business to do. Much more important business than the two of them and their messed-up lives.
If he never breathed the scent of lilacs again as long as he lived, it would be fine with him. Standing there next to her, determined not to feel anything, he was damned pissed that lilacs even existed.
In that brief, awkward moment, Laurel looked at him. He could see the stress lines around her eyes and wished he had the right to soothe them. To ease her troubles.
He wished he had the right to do so much more.
After an almost silent trip out to Leslie’s, they searched her yard, as well, keeping a careful distance from each other.
And when they found nothing, they crossed the street to see if Katy had any news for them. Scott’s attempt to time things so that Katy’s girls would still be asleep had failed. Within seconds of answering the door, Katy had both of them playing around her feet, making it very difficult for the adults to talk.
Not that Katy had anything new to tell them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think the girls are missing Leslie. Every time the doorbell rings, they think it’s her. She’s great with them and they’re used to her being here for lunch fairly often.”
The toddlers were attempting to play some rendition of dress-up—at least that was Scott’s guess, based on the odd assortment of attire they were wearing—and when they started to fight over their accessories, a plastic bracelet specifically, he and Laurel excused themselves and left.
Scott couldn’t remember ever being more happy to make an escape.
* * *
“WE NEVER HAD LUNCH.” Laurel made the pronouncement as she climbed out of the Blazer back at the motel more than an hour later. Arnett had not shown up for his appointment with his parole officer, so Murphy was going to follow up on the hospital calls and check the morgue before he officially put out an APB on the man. He was going to call as soon as he’d done so. “Why don’t I go for something while you go inside,” she suggested. “You said you have some calls to make.”
“That’d be great, thanks.” Scott tossed her the keys, allowing himself a small, appreciative grin that he hoped she wouldn’t notice. He wasn’t used to having his thoughts anticipated. And no matter how good it felt, he wasn’t going to get used to it. The domesticity of the whole thing struck him as ludicrous under the circumstances—yet oddly natural, too.
Laurel returned the grin, and Scott hurried inside.
He called Maureen immediately, and she took the news of Dennis’s recent connection with the Nevils better than Scott had expected, especially in light of the fact that both Owen and Arnett appeared to be AWOL at the moment.
There was nothing to indicate that Owen Nevil was not on a hiking expedition as reported, she and Scott decided.
Scott could have been speaking with any number of his colleagues, if not for the hint of vulnerability in her tone. There was no doubt this was personal for Maureen. Her livelihood, her very life might depend on this case.
She asked if there was anything she could do. And then, as though thinking out loud, remembered her inability to do anything. She was an innkeeper, she told him. Nothing more. Scott had a feeling she was convincing herself more than him.
She still had her babies to keep safe, she reminded him. This scare had shown her that more clearly than ever before.
Just before ringing off, she begged Scott to keep her posted.
* * *
LAUREL PUT A BOWL of chow mein in front of Scott where he sat at the table in his motel room, studying pages of notes, as though he didn’t already have all the answers drumming through his mind.
“I’m sure we’ll hear soon,” she told him, wishing there was more she could do than push food at him that he probably didn’t want any more than she did. It couldn’t take Murphy that long to make his calls and write up the report.
Why couldn’t they just go back a couple of days.
He glanced up and smiled, a weary yet warm and grateful smile. Laurel looked away. She didn’t know this man—or the things he’d been thinking all those years when she’d loved him like a brother.
She had, hadn’t she? Loved him like a brother?
Too upset to eat, too restless to do nothing, Laurel went over and washed her hands, then put a cool washcloth to her face.
“You still need to eat, even if you don’t want to sit with me.”
She jumped, dropping the washcloth. She hadn’t heard him come up behind her with the water running.
“I...” How could she tell him that this motel room was far too small for a woman who hadn’t been properly held for such a long time and a man who’d confessed he’d been lusting after her for eighteen years.
She took the bowl he held out to her, leaned back against the counter and started to eat, praying that the phone would ring and save her.
* * *
THE PHONE DIDN’T RING. And when the silence made the motel room almost more than she could bear, Laurel talked about the case.
“You know,” she finally told Scott, “I’ve never even met Cecilia, and yet, after searching for her all these days, I feel really close to her.”
She was surprised to see the frown on his face when he glanced her way. “Maybe that’s because you were so fond of William...”
“What’s wrong?” she asked him before she remembered her decision to steer clear of personal conversation.
“We might not get to her in time,” he said gently.
“I know.”
He gathered up their trash. “If you make it personal, it’ll hurt like hell if we don’t.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
His words were soothing. Intimate.
“I know,” she said again.
Scott would give his life rather than hurt her. She knew that instinctively. It was something that hadn’t changed over the years.
And that mattered to her. It mattered a lot.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JUST A FEW MINUTES after four o’clock, Officer Bill Murphy called Scott to tell him that Dennis Arnett was dead. They’d just identified him today when Murphy went down to the morgue. Dennis had been on his way to the airport, flying under a false identification, which was why they hadn’t been able to find next of kin.
“What?” Laurel cried when she heard the news. Sinking down to the bed, she stared up at Scott. “How? When?”
“Last Sunday afternoon.” Scott’s tone was as grave as the look in his eyes. “He was killed in a car accident going to the airport. He’d reserved a seat on a flight to Bermuda. They found almost a million dollars in a suitcase on the seat beside him.”
“What about William and Cecilia? And Leslie?”
He leaned back against the dresser, his feet crossed in front of him, his arms folded. “Nothing.”
All this effort. All this time. And nothing. Laurel couldn’t believe it.
“They’re pretty sure he was trying to make a call when he crashed,” Scott added. “The officer on the scene cited the cell phone
still clutched in Dennis’s hand as the cause of the accident. Witnesses said Dennis hadn’t been paying attention to his driving and missed the shuttle bus coming up in the lane he was merging into.”
“Was anyone else hurt?”
Scott shook his head.
“I wonder who he was calling?”
“Murphy’s number was still on the phone’s LED readout,” Scott said.
“You think he was going to tell him he was leaving town?”
“Or maybe tell someone where his sister is...”
Laurel was so frustrated—and frightened—she had to fight tears.
Dennis Arnett had been fleeing the country with a fortune of his sister’s money. And Cecilia, William and Arnett’s girlfriend, Leslie, were still nowhere to be found.
Even after all life had shown her, Laurel still found it shocking. It all seemed so pointless.
She got up and walked over to gaze out the window until she had herself better under control. Eventually she turned to face Scott.
He hadn’t moved.
“So what do you think?”
He watched her for a long time, just looking into her eyes, into her. “I don’t know what to think,” he said softly.
And Laurel knew suddenly that he wasn’t just talking about William and Cecilia and Leslie.
He didn’t know what to think about her. And him.
She didn’t know, either.
“I need you to be my friend,” she whispered.
“Always.”
She had no idea what she and Scott could ever be to each other, or even if they would stay in touch beyond this time. All she knew was at this moment, she needed him.
* * *
DAMN. SCOTT HATED the helplessness that washed over him.
He didn’t know what to do to take the stricken look from Laurel’s beautiful gray eyes. Didn’t know how to help William and Cecilia. Couldn’t even find out if they still needed his help.
And Leslie.
“She could still have them,” he said suddenly, straightening from the dresser to face Laurel.
“Who?”
“Leslie. If she and Dennis were partners, she could still be holding Cecilia and William someplace.”
“I don’t...”
“Think about it,” he said, almost giddy with the surge of adrenaline pumping through him. “She could have been the next person Dennis was going to call, and when the call didn’t come, she wouldn’t know what to do. She’s a technical writer, not a criminal.”
“At least not until she fell in love with her own uncle.”
Scott cringed. “We don’t know for certain that he was her uncle.”
“We don’t know anything for certain,” Laurel reminded him.
“Suppose William and Cecilia are still alive somewhere, that Dennis was holing them up someplace while he made sure he could access the money he’d made Cecilia transfer and then get his butt out of the country. He probably had Leslie stay with them until he was certain that Cecilia had done what she’d said at the bank and he had the money in hand. It’s possible that Leslie had been told to wait for his call and then meet him at the airport. And when the call didn’t come, she was stuck with two kidnap victims on her hands.”
“He only had one plane ticket,” Laurel objected.
“Maybe she had her own. On the other hand, do you think he’d really plan to take her?”
“No.”
“So, to follow this through...”
“He could have been calling Murphy to tell him where to find William and Cecilia and then maybe he’d been planning to call Leslie so she’d get the hell out of there,” Laurel finished for him.
“Yes.” There was a particular feeling Scott got when he was finally making things fall into place. He was pretty sure he was getting that feeling now.
Of course, it could just have been the fact that he and Laurel were working together again as one unit. Not two separate entities who just happened to be traveling along an identical road.
He watched her pace around the room. Loved the grace with which she moved. Loved...
Something was teasing Scott’s mind. Slumping into the chair he’d vacated earlier, he pulled out his notebook and flipped through the pages, hoping to trigger whatever was escaping him.
There were pages and pages of stuff. None of it good. Worse, nothing was clicking.
His gut like rock, Scott read on, anyway.
“I’d forgotten Maureen had run into Dennis in Cooper’s Corner.” Laurel’s voice was hushed behind him, giving him chills. Or perhaps it was the words scrolling in front of him that were doing that.
He hadn’t known she was behind him. Laying the notebook in the middle of the table, he turned it so that, if she sat in the other chair, they could both see it.
Once she was seated, Scott forced himself to relax, to allow the thoughts to flow so everything could fall naturally into place.
Another, not completely related thought struck him, and it was one he couldn’t share with Laurel. He was fairly certain, based both on instinct and the fact that things were so tidy without Owen Nevil’s involvement, that the New York criminal had nothing to do with William Byrd’s disappearance. It didn’t seem like the Nevil brothers to let another man, one with as little kidnapping experience as Dennis, handle a job with such a high payout. And that would let Maureen completely off the hook—except that Dennis had seen her.
What if he’d also seen a picture of Maureen, Carl Nevil’s nemesis, while hanging out with Nevil in prison? It was highly likely that if Carl intended to put a price on her head, he’d be showing her picture to people. Especially someone who might be getting out soon and could help him keep an eye out...
And if Dennis knew the Nevils were looking for Maureen, if he recognized her that day in Cooper’s Corner, that phone call to Owen Nevil might have some very serious implications.
* * *
REACHING THE LAST PAGE of the notebook, Scott read the notes he’d jotted after their walk around Dennis’s house.
“I know where they are.” Finally.
Scott was so relieved, he almost felt good for a second.
Laurel was staring at him. “Where?”
“Remember that piece of ring you found today?” he asked, pictures flashing through his mind.
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that it wasn’t any dirtier?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“It’s obviously been a long time since any kids lived there, so whatever child might have lost that ring during play would have had to lose it a long time ago.”
“Unless it was a neighbor kid.”
Maybe. But he didn’t think so.
“Remember that bracelet the Miller kids were fighting over today?”
“Oh, my God!” Laurel jumped up and grabbed her purse. “It was the same kind of plastic jewelry.”
“Katy said Leslie plays with the kids all the time. That ring must have fallen from her pocket, or her purse. Maybe she dropped her purse.” Yeah. That sounded more likely to him.
“They’re at Dennis’s,” Laurel said, waiting by the door as Scott collected his keys.
“Or at least they’ve been there,” Scott said. He looked up at her. “My guess is they’re locked somewhere in the abandoned side of that house....”
* * *
OTHER THAN THE QUICK phone call Scott made to Murphy, tense silence filled the Blazer. Although Laurel found it uncomfortable, small talk was impossible. Thoughts of what they might find—two older people locked up without food or water for a full week—were too frightening.
“I didn’t see that ring in the yard today,” Scott finally said. “Good work.”
“Hurry, please?�
��
“Of course,” Scott said, pushing a little harder on the gas. “You know, I’m wondering if maybe Leslie was an innocent pawn in all of this, as well,” he said. “Maybe she dropped that ring on purpose, to let someone know where they were.”
“Maybe.” Laurel liked the sound of that. “It would certainly make more sense. Otherwise, where has she been all this time?”
“Running? Hiding? Scared to death?”
“Or she could be coming late at night to bring food and essentials and is just keeping them there until she can figure out what else to do.”
It could have been any of the above.
“Don’t worry,” Scott said in response to Laurel’s heavy sigh when he finally exited the highway. “We’ll find them.”
He wasn’t looking at her, but he reached across to take Laurel’s hand where it rested on the console between them.
She wrapped her fingers around his, gathering up his warmth and the innate goodness that had compelled her to be near him all the years she’d known him.
Until she remembered him telling her why he’d been responsible for Paul’s death.
Feeling guilty as hell for liking the feel of his strong male hand wrapped around hers, Laurel slid her fingers away, folding her hands in her lap.
* * *
SCOTT STOPPED THE blazer in front of the partially renovated house. Murphy knew the landlord and was bringing a key to both sides of the house.
That instinct that he’d learned to respect when he was still too young to understand what it meant had taken over. With complete confidence, he followed where it led.
The end was coming. There was no longer any doubt.
He just wasn’t sure which end. For Cecilia and William? For Leslie? For him and Laurel? For all of them?
Once they reached the house, he had to stop himself from suggesting—begging—that Laurel stay in the Blazer. He wanted her safe. And if Leslie was still there...
If she was holding William and Cecilia hostage...
He had no right to dictate Laurel’s life.
“Remember, if it gets dangerous, you do exactly as I say,” he instructed, more for his own benefit than because he had any doubts about her.
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