Bringing Benjy Home (Security Ops) (25 page)

“How ya doin’?” The man on the other side of her door greeted her with a half smile. “I been having some car trouble. Left it down at the bottom of your lane there.” He jerked his head to indicate the area behind him. “You don’t happen to know of any good mechanics nearby, would ya?”

Jaida looked at the man carefully, but he seemed harmless enough. The frustration in his voice was reflected on his blunt features. He was solidly built, although only a few inches taller than she was, with hair the color of walnuts, slicked back from a square forehead.

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “But the nearest mechanic is Ernie, in Dixon Falls, and he usually closes late afternoon and goes fishing. There’s no telling when he’ll be back.”

The man checked his watch and grimaced. “Just my luck,” he mumbled. Squinting hack at her he asked, “And how far to the nearest town of any decent size?”

Jaida’s eyes followed his to the gold watch on his wrist and remained glued there. The face of the watch was black, with a small diamond indicating where the twelve would be. It wasn’t the watch’s face she was focused on, however; it was the thick gold band encircling his wide wrist. It glinted as a ray of fading sunlight strayed across it. Her attention caught; she noted the large bones in his hand and arm and the black hairs that curled over the watch band.

After a moment she said, “That would be Little Rock. I could make some calls there if you want. Surely someplace has a tow truck.”

His smile this time looked more like a grimace. “How far’s that? Fifty miles or so?”

Jaida felt a spark of sympathy for the man’s plight. “I’m afraid it’s more like sixty-five.”

“Well . . . shoot. That’d be one heck of a bill, now wouldn’t it?” He scratched his head. “I guess I’ll take my chances a while longer and see if I can get a bit farther down the road. The car’s been cutting out on me while I’m driving, but it always starts again. I was just thinking about getting it seen to before it decides to quit for good. But it looks like I’m going to have to keep going and hope it gets rue another sixty-five miles.”

Jaida eyed him doubtfully. “It’s going to be dark in a couple hours. Maybe you should have me call that tow truck after all.”

The man began to back away from the porch. “Naw, I think I’ll chance it. Unless I get to the car and find it don’t start at all. Then I’ll be back. Thanks for your time.” He edged away.

Jaida watched him for several minutes, until he disappeared around a bend into the trees. She closed the door, troubled. There was something about the man that bothered her. Something about his appearance. She leaned her back against the door. Something hovered in her consciousness, just out of reach. She tried, and failed, to summon it. Her feeling of unease increased.

Shaking her head wryly, she pushed away from the door and headed for the kitchen to finish the dishes. The solitude was certainly telling on her if she was going to obsess over a poor guy with car problems.

She washed up her dishes quickly. The cabin had been fitted with most modern appliances at her insistence years ago, but Granny had resisted putting in a dishwasher. She claimed she enjoyed washing the dishes, and Jaida hadn’t pushed the point. It would have taken quite a bit of remodeling to fit the appliance into the old kitchen anyway, and even at the time she’d understood the importance of immersing oneself in small tasks that calmed.

She picked up the towel and began to dry the utensils she’d cleaned. The dinner knife gleamed brightly, reflecting her features, and in an odd association she abruptly remembered the light glinting off the stranger’s gold watch. Her movements stilled. While she’d tried to summon the memory that teased her about that sight earlier, now it was flashing across her mind without invitation. And it left goose bumps rising on her arms.

The wide gold watchband encircling a thick wrist . . . the forearm lightly dusted with black hair . . . the fingers clutching the back of Benjy’s shirt, yanking him back up on a bed . . .

Jaida gasped and the knife clattered as it dropped to the floor. That was why the sight of that watch had teased at something familiar to her. The slightest flick of imagery she’d had about the other kidnapper had been brief and not very helpful. She’d never seen the kidnapper’s face. Only his arm.

His wrist encircled by a wide gold-banded watch.

For one fleeting moment she wondered if she was losing her mind. Why else would she insist on linking a hapless stranger with car trouble with Benjy’s kidnapper, based on a watchband?

Feeling foolish and no less nervy, she moved to the front window of the cabin. The familiar scenery was like a balm. Her truck was parked where she’d left it, at the top of the lane. It could never pass for a driveway, or anything other than what it was . . . a narrow path through a heavily wooded area, leading unexpectedly to the clearing where their cabin sat. Every spring the rains would turn the lane into a muddy, rutted mess. The summer months would bake the ruts deep and solid, and they would provide a bone-numbing jar each time she hit one.

But her mind wasn’t on the condition of the lane right now. She was peering into the trees, trying vainly to discern whether a stranger’s car sat on the road half a mile in the distance. It was ridiculous, she knew. The lane took a sharp bend a hundred yards from the cabin and disappeared into the trees, the first of four curves it would take before leading to the road. The dense foliage provided the cabin with a natural privacy barrier and shielded it from the intrusive sounds of civilization. It would be impossible to see what lay beyond that first bend, and yet still her eyes strained.

After several minutes Jaida turned away from the window, feeling foolish. There was nothing to see out there but dogwoods gathering shadows in the approaching dusk. There was no movement out of the ordinary. The solitude must be working on her more strenuously than she knew. That was ironic, really. There had been a time in her life, after the ill-fated concert in Phoenix, that this same solitude and privacy had beckoned her, soothed her. Since she’d returned alone it seemed to underscore her loneliness.

And now it was seeming a bit sinister.

Impatiently, she shook off her uncustomary nerves. She wasn’t going to stand at the window and obsess over what was likely an unfortunate incident for a guy who just wanted to get home. For a swift moment she allowed herself to yearn to hear Trey’s voice. She got as far as the phone, her hand reaching for the receiver, where it hovered and then dropped. She forced herself to go to the kitchen and start cleaning out cupboards that didn’t need to be straightened.

The one element of pride she’d managed to hang on to when she and Trey parted was that she hadn’t begged and she hadn’t asked him to stay. Calling him now would seem contrived, a mere excuse to hear his voice, and there was a grain of truth to that, as well.

But she wouldn’t allow herself to wallow in her misery, and she wouldn’t let herself try to force Trey into admitting feelings for her that just didn’t exist. She had no doubt that she could make him feel something; she hadn’t misread the pure masculine possessiveness that had shone in his eyes each time he’d looked at her in their last days together. She knew well that a deep streak of protectiveness ran in him, too. He felt it for Lauren and for Benjy. But she wanted more, much more, for herself.

And she wasn’t likely to get it from him.

That knowledge sent pain lacing through her heart. It seemed like life’s cruelest ironies that she had spent her life avoiding physical contact and avoiding intimacy. She’d doubted her ability to respond as a woman as her mind grappled with the thoughts and emotions that would rush to her from her partner’s touch.

Trey had been different. From the beginning there had been an awareness between them that she couldn’t fight and hadn’t known how to deny. At first she’d been dismayed by the unexpected sparks that flared at their most casual touch. She’d been even more dismayed at how easily he could make her respond to him as a woman. Jaida had been half-fearful that if she ever responded to him physically, the combination of her psychic gift and that awareness would combust and literally destroy her.

Instead, for the first time she’d found a man who could still her intaking stimuli and immerse her totally, completely, in him and in her own responses as a woman. The first time that happened she hadn’t known whether to be glad or frightened. She still didn’t.

The last cupboard was straightened, and she contemplated whether she should spend the next hour scrubbing the woodwork to an even greater shine. She rubbed at her aching spine, wishing it were just as easy to rub away the feeling of impending doom that still hovered over her. Unconsciously, she moved to the front window again.

There was nothing to see out front, and it was growing too dark even to try. She turned away from the window, a frown on her face. She’d never been afraid to stay alone at the cabin before, and she wasn’t afraid now . . . exactly. The source of her unease was probably already in Little Rock, happily ensconced in a motel room while an all-night garage worked on his car. But as ridiculous as it seemed, she’d be a lot more comfortable if she knew that for a fact.

Her gaze landed on the telephone. It wouldn’t hurt to call Granny and tell her she’d arrived home safely. She picked up the phone and started to dial. When it didn’t respond, she disconnected, ready to try again. Only when she failed to get a dial tone the second time did the realization hit her.

The phone was dead.

A long moment passed while Jaida held the receiver to her ear, listening to its silence. That silence seemed to grow into something else, something much more malign. It oozed out of the dead receiver and encompassed Jaida in a blanket of dread.

Her fingers clutching the phone seemed suddenly numb, and she was unaware of her actions as she replaced it on the table. When she’d lost her purse, her cell had been in it, so she had no other options with the landline out of order. Without thought she went to the front door and turned the dead bolt, checking to make sure the chain was still on. Then she moved from window to window like an automaton. She made sure each was secured, and pulled the rarely used blinds and curtains. The kitchen door didn’t open to the outside. Instead, it led down to the cellar, where Granny kept the vegetables she canned each year. There was another set of stairs leading from the cellar to the outside, but they were covered with thick double doors, secured from the inside with a solid wooden bar.

She returned to the living room, her arms clutching her middle. She attempted to reassure herself. Phones went dead sometimes. This one had a few years ago. That had been in a windstorm, however, and right now there wasn’t even a breeze rustling the leaves on the trees shrouding the lane. The night air was completely still, as if, like her, it was waiting for something.

The logical, reasonable voice in her mind was warring with the part that seemed, for the moment, to be paralyzed with fear. Her ears picked up a sound outside, and all her senses strained, as though to transmit energy to her hearing. But the sound wasn’t repeated. This cabin was surrounded by wildlife, and at night it wasn’t unusual for a raccoon, possum or skunk to come sauntering close to the cabin looking for food.

She heard another sound, this coming from outside the back of the cabin. Calling herself ridiculous, Jaida went to the bedroom window and peered out. She saw nothing. Without thinking, she turned off all the lights, except for one dim lamp in the corner.

She was definitely spooked, and it had all started by the appearance of the man who had seemed completely harmless and unfamiliar—
except for the wide gold band encircling that thick wrist
— and now she was letting the coincidental loss of phone service spook her into imagining things. She sank into a chair, wrestling with her runaway nerves.

Minutes ticked by. She was never sure how long she sat there. Long enough for darkness to fall completely. Long enough for night noises to begin outside, each sounding threatening, despite its ordinariness. Her gaze traveled unseeingly around the room before landing on her keys. Her focus sharpened. The truck was right outside. She could unlock the front door and run to the truck, turn it around and speed away from the cabin, away from . . . what?

She crossed to the table and reached for the keys, clutching them reflexively. Somehow they made her feel better. Until she heard the noises.

Her temporary peace was shattered at the foreign sounds coming from the side of the cabin. She listened intently for a moment, almost expecting that she had imagined the sounds. But these were real.

She heard the alternating tapping and rasping sounds. They came over and over, first one set, then another. It was long minutes before she could identify them. It took even longer for the realization to sink in.

Someone was outside, taking the cellar doors off their hinges.

Chapter 16

The sun was setting over the Rockies, majestic purple peaks backdropped against brilliant orange and red. The scene was lost on the two men sitting together on the deck. They were engrossed only in their conversation.

“So there’s been no sign of Franken?” Mac asked.

Trey shook his head. “Not yet. Hell, he could be anywhere. He could have left the country before Maria Kasem ever named him as her accomplice. If he’s smart, that’s what he would have done.”

“Smart isn’t necessarily a trait of a kidnapper,” Mac remarked.

“Maybe not, but he was clever enough to steal the drug to inject Lauren with, stage the kidnapping and leave the scene without any of the bystanders able to remember who had strolled off with Benjy.”

“He got lucky. Most likely when Lauren collapsed a crowd gathered, and he and Kasem were able to fade away.”

“The same way he was able to fade away at Kids’ Kingdom at the first sign of trouble,” Trey said grimly. “There are APBs out for his arrest all over the nation, but he’s proven damn good at eluding the police and the FBI throughout this whole case.”

Mac studied him. “He evaded the police, but he couldn’t evade Jaida, could he?”

“No.” Trey’s voice dropped. “He couldn’t evade Jaida.” He didn’t welcome his friend’s reminder of the woman who had saved his nephew. But it didn’t take Mac’s mention of her to summon her image. He’d already lost too much sleep thinking about her. Every time he lay down he’d be tortured by the memory of that one image—or was it a vision?—of her lying naked on black, silk sheets. He shifted restlessly in his chair.

“When did you last speak to her?” Mac inquired.

Trey scowled at him and didn’t answer. Their roles had neatly been reversed. He’d always been the one to effortlessly charm the women, and on more than one occasion had lectured Mac on softening his abrasive edges. But the charm that Trey had used with such effect in the past hadn’t had much effect on Jaida. The easy way she had said goodbye had puzzled and, yes, angered him. She’d acted so casual about the whole thing, and dammit, their relationship was anything but casual. He’d been worried about Lauren and in a hurry to get back to his sister, to be the one to tell her about Franken. But, dammit, he hadn’t planned to go back to Colorado alone.

He hadn’t given it much conscious thought, but he’d assumed Jaida would accompany him. She had effectively laid that plan to rest. With her cool little smile she’d said she understood completely, and matter-of-factly started making plans to get back to Arkansas. And on a plane, no less. The easy way she’d gone about getting ready to return home, without a question of lengthening their time together, had effectively squashed his half-formed plans.

It had also made him mad as hell.

He wasn’t used to being in the position of chasing after women, and he hadn’t cared for the experience. And he certainly wasn’t used to that unsure feeling he’d been left with at the airport, that of something infinitely precious being snatched out of his grasp.

How the hell had she managed that cool little scene? His guts had felt like they were being ripped in two, and she had strolled off without a backward glance. Just the memory made his jaw clench. She’d left as easily as if they’d spent a weekend away, casual sex between two strangers, and he knew damn well it had been more, much more than that. She’d been a virgin; she couldn’t pretend that their time together hadn’t meant something to her, not when he’d been the first man she’d trusted enough to make love to.

Maybe it had frightened her, this bond that had grown so intense between them. It sure as hell had scared him, still did. But now she’d had more than enough time to contemplate what they’d had. He wasn’t going to allow her much more time alone.

“Have you talked to her since you got back?” Mac probed.

“No,” Trey answered shortly. After a time he explained grudgingly, “I called the cabin twice today, though. This morning there was no answer. I called again right before you got here, but the line was no longer in service.”

“That’s odd, isn’t it?”

He didn’t know about odd, but it was damned inconvenient. He needed to talk to her, needed to reestablish the almost mystical connection between them. He wasn’t going to give her the chance to forget him; he was going to make damn sure that was impossible. “She lives in the Arkansas Valley, in a cabin in a wooded area off the beaten path. I’m not sure how dependable the phone lines are.”

“Isolated, huh?”

“Very,” Trey replied. “She lives with her grandmother, but Jaida thought she would be gone visiting relatives when she arrived home.” He frowned for a moment, something about the thought of Jaida being alone in that cabin bothering him.

“Maybe she went to visit her relatives, too,” Mac said. “But I’d think she’d be interested to know that Lauren identified Franken as a former employee of Penning’s. She’s got to be thinking the same thing we are, that there’s still a possibility that Franken will try to snatch Benjy again. She’s probably going crazy wondering what’s going on—”

“God Almighty.”

Mac gave his partner a strange look. For a man with accomplished finesse, he was being unbelievably obtuse. “What I’m saying is you need to contact her. Hell, I know there’s something going on between the two of you, and you’re crazy if you just let her go.”

If Trey had been listening he might have been amused at his partner’s machinations to push him at Jaida. But he hadn’t been focusing on Mac’s words. A thought was forming, one so horrible in its implications that he didn’t want to contemplate it.

His chair clattered over backward as he strode into the house. He snatched up the phone in the kitchen and redialed Jaida’s number. When the recording informed him the line was out of service, he slammed the receiver own.

Mac joined him. “Calm down. Maybe the line will be fixed in the morning.”

Trey turned to face his friend slowly. “I don’t think I ever mentioned it to you, but Jaida lost her cell and purse that day in Kids’ Kingdom, when she found Benjy.”

Mac was taken aback at the man’s seeming non sequitur. “Yeah, that’s tough. But I’m sure she can replace the stuff, right?”

“Maria Kasem claims Franken was with her in the park, but that he took off when Jaida started making a scene. What if he didn’t?”

“What if he didn’t what?”

“Take off,” Trey said impatiently. He thought of how he’d found Jaida in the midst of the huge crowd, people pressing in from all sides. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything besides her. Her and the precious little boy who was taking such an interest in her moon-glow hair. “He was there,” he muttered. The pieces started to snap into place like an automated jigsaw puzzle. “He might have faded back into the crowd at the first hint of a scene, but he didn’t go far. He stayed close enough to watch what went on without having to worry about getting caught. He saw the whole thing . . . me finding Jaida, the security guards taking us all away . . . and Jaida’s purse lying on the ground.”

Finally his friend’s words started to make an awful kind of sense to Mac. “Her wallet was in her purse?”

Trey nodded grimly. “Driver’s license . . . address.” He saw understanding flicker in his friend’s eyes. Self-castigation filled him. “I never thought of it. Not once. Goddammit!” His fist came down on the counter with the force of a sledgehammer striking steel.

He wasted no more time. He marched through the house, past Lauren, who had come to check on the noise, and into his bedroom. His sister and Mae followed him. Without a hint of his usual fastidiousness, he began throwing clothes into his suitcase and slinging orders at Mac.

“Get hold of the sheriff in Jaida’s county,” he said. Mac nodded. “Tell him to get out to Jaida’s, and fast. Rouse McIntyre, tell him to get our plane ready. Have him file a flight plan to the airport nearest Dixon Falls, regardless of size. I’ll need a vehicle once we get there.”

“You got it.”

Lauren’s gaze went from one man to the other. Trey’s face was terrible; the only other time she’d seen that expression was when her baby had been kidnapped. Her voice quavered. “Trey, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it Jaida? Is she in trouble?”

Her brother’s face remained stoic, but his eyes were anguished. “I hope not.” The words were harsh, fervent. His gaze met hers. “I sure as hell hope not.”

Time had long ceased to have any meaning to Jaida. She assumed it had been hours since the noises began, but how many, she couldn’t be sure. The only thing she was certain of was that the threat that had hovered on the brink of her consciousness since late afternoon had materialized.

She’d spent the time in a numbed state of disbelief. There was no question in her mind that the stranger who had come to her door was the same man outside at this moment trying to break into her house. She was certain of it, just as she was certain of his identity. Somehow Benjy’s kidnapper had traced her here. She was alone, she was isolated and there was no way to summon help.

She could rely only on herself.

The realization had a curiously calming effect on the fretful jumble of half thoughts and fears in her head. She had no options, no recourse. She couldn’t try for the truck now. The creak of the heavy front door would give her away and she wouldn’t make it halfway to the vehicle before he came to investigate.

That meant that she stayed here, in the dim light in the living room, and waited. Each minute was nerve-racking. If she allowed herself to, she could have easily lost control, focusing on the noises coming from outside, imagining with each renewed sound how much closer the man was to getting inside. But after the first long minutes of panic, she firmly banished those thoughts. She had other things to worry about right now.

Like how to stay alive.

Jaida had no illusions. Benjy’s kidnapper had come here to learn from her the boy’s whereabouts. And once she had seen the man, she’d be able to identify him, so her fate would be sealed. Once he had the information he sought, she would be expendable.

She used most of the time she waited searching for a weapon. The results of her search were dismal. There were no firearms in the cabin, of course. There were several lethally sharp kitchen knives, but she seriously doubted her ability to use one on the man. She’d have to get very close to utilize such a weapon, and she simply could not take the chance of touching him. If he attempted to fight with her for the knife, his thoughts and emotions might transfer to her at his touch. She was unsure of her ability to protect herself if she found herself immersed in the twisted, evil workings of his mind.

Her attention finally landed upon Granny’s selection of nonornamental canes. One of them could more accurately be described as a walking stick. Made of rough-hewn oak, it was solid and heavy. The handle was a round brass knob attached to the top. It would have to do.

She grasped it tightly and padded soundlessly over to the lamp. She turned the switch off, plunging the room into darkness. Then she moved stealthily into the kitchen. The most obvious place to hide would be in the corner the kitchen door would make when it opened. But she would have to push the door out of the way to get at the intruder, and she couldn’t be sure that the precious seconds that would take wouldn’t tip him off to her presence. So she chose, instead, to stand back on the right side of the door.

She would be immediately visible when he entered the kitchen, but she was going to have to hope that she could strike before he would see her. She had no doubts that he’d be armed, and once he saw her, she wouldn’t have much chance, regardless.

He was in the cellar now.

Jaida swallowed hard and hefted the walking stick into the air, fighting panic. She couldn’t allow fear to overcome her, not in these final moments when she was going to need every bit of wit and cunning. But the seeds of terror, earlier sown, threatened to spring forth, crowding rational thought aside. Her mind frantically sought a point to fixate on and immediately landed on one.

Trey
. His name screamed into her mind, and she mentally clutched it as she would a talisman. It had taken him a long time to come to trust her, to depend on her ability to help him find Benjy. She would never betray that trust now and put that little boy at risk again. For Benjy’s sake, she had to escape the madman in the cellar. She would focus on Trey, on the strength and courage that were so much a part of him, traits that had drawn her to him, made her love him.

She took a deep breath, feeling the terror ebb a bit, even as she heard the first step of the man on the cellar stairs. She fixed her thoughts on Trey, and a curious sense of comfort flickered through her veins. It was the same sensation she’d felt whenever she’d been held by him, protected by him For the first time since they’d parted she sensed his presence so strongly, could almost feel the strength of his will. It was a curious experience, oddly consoling, but she had no more than a minute to wonder at it.

The waiting was over. The kitchen door was making its telltale creak as it was pushed open; the man was closer than she’d thought. He was through it before she had a chance to react.

He must have sensed her presence almost immediately. When Jaida sent the solid piece of oak swinging through the air at him, he was already turning toward her. He didn’t have time to get out of the way, though. His arm came up, a gun pointed at her, before the oak caught him squarely in the side of the head.